Anitta, the popular Brazilian singer, faced strong backlash for releasing a music video in an episode that highlighted persistent religious intolerance and racism in Brazil.
The furor began on Monday, when the 31-year-old pop star shared a preview of the video for his new song, “Aceita” (“Accept” in Portuguese), with its 65 million followers on Instagram. In the space of two hours she lost 200,000 followers, she said.
The video describes the practices of his faith, Candomblé. Her Instagram account featured images of the artist dressed in religious garb with a Candomblé priest and still images of spiritual objects and other iconography associated with the faith.
Candomblé is considered a syncretic religion, meaning it draws from different faiths and traditions.
It evolved from a mix of Yoruba, Fon and Bantu beliefs brought to what is now Brazil by West African slaves during the colonial expansion of the Portuguese empire, scholars said.
According to one study, although practiced by only 2% of the population, Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomblé make up a disproportionate number of reported cases of religious intolerance. U.S. Department of State 2022 Report on religious freedom in Brazil.
For centuries Candomblé was relegated to the shadows. It was considered demonic witchcraft and a public danger in a predominantly Catholic society.
“They were prosecuted under the premise that they were dangerous to public health, because the witchcraft laws were hidden in the public health code,” said Ana Paulina Lee, a professor of Latin American and Iberian cultures at Columbia University.
Despite the backlash this week, the reaction to Anitta's video has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of her praised her for paying homage to religion.
However, critics flooded her Instagram post.
“This is pure witchcraft, even a layman can see that this is Satanism,” one person wrote in Portuguese.
Its black-and-white video depicts other faiths, such as Catholicism, and the lyrics appear to speak generally to the theme of acceptance, suggesting that the song is a commentary on religious intolerance.
Born Larissa Machado, Anitta burst onto the scene in 2013 with a pop song, “Meiga e Abusada,” written in Portuguese that was a big hit in Brazil.
He consolidated his popularity with several albums in the 2010s and with a performance at the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro.
After releasing some Spanish-language hits with well-known reggaeton artists, such as J Balvin, Anitta has established herself among Latin American audiences. She was part of a wave of Latin American artists who successfully entered the US market.
She performed on “The Voice” on NBC on Tuesday and this month Anitta joined Madonna in her free show in Rio de Janeiro that drew 1.6 million fans. Last year, Anitta performed at the MTV Video Music Awards and was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist. In 2022, she appeared on the main stage of the Coachella music festival.
As her celebrity grew, Anitta candidly addressed questions about her faith.
In 2018, when she was criticized for failing to condemn Brazil's newly elected far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, Anitta said she was isolated for several weeks as required as part of her Candomblé initiation.
Characterized by its percussive rituals and celebrations honoring various deities, the faith has been forced into hiding since its inception.
Practitioners at one point veiled their practices by adopting Catholic iconography, Professor Lee said.
It was only in the 20th century that mainstream society began to tolerate Candomblé expressions in an effort to recognize Brazil's African heritage and cultivate a stronger Brazilian national identity, said Luis Nicolau Parés, professor of anthropology at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil. , who wrote a book about Candomblé.
Brazilian artists and intellectuals in the 1970s and 1980s embraced and celebrated the religion. Government officials have recognized this.
At the same time, Brazil's evangelical Christian population flourished, increasing to 26% in 2022 from a single-digit percentage share of the population in 1991. The rise of the neo-Pentecostal churches helped revive anti-Candomblé sentiment.
“It was demonized so that people transformed and converted to Christianity,” Professor Parés said of Candomblé.
Such as acts of violence and discrimination continued to target Candomblé and other Afro-Brazilian religions, activists have highlighted the issue of race, which they say is inextricably linked.
In a posts on social mediaAnitta said she had been subjected to “religious racism”, a term introduced by Candomblé leaders to describe acts of religious intolerance towards Afro-Brazilian faiths, Professor Lee said.
“What happened to Anitta happens every day,” said Professor Lee, who highlighted the murder of a famous Candomblé priestess last year.
“I think it's an incredibly important thing to show that this is not new, but it's part of a long history of anti-Black racism, and it's not just about skin,” she said.
“When you chase faith, you chase the soul,” he added.
Leonardo Coelho contributed to the reporting.
