International Festival Nuits d’Afrique | Montreal, Brazilian city!

The Brazilian community in Greater Montreal has grown significantly over the past decade. Its presence is reflected in particular by the increase in forró evenings. Meetings and explanations with local Brazilians, including singer Bïa, who is performing Thursday at the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique with the group Maracujá.

June evening in Little Italy Park. Young girls who are not yet teenagers take a few steps, not far from the pavilion located near Saint-Zotique Street. These children are not practicing tarantella, but forró, a dance that couples perform under the dimly lit circular shelter to the sound of music dominated by the accordion and the rhythms of a drum.

This is not an incongruity in Little Italy: Brazilians who have settled here meet in this park almost every Friday evening during the summer months. “We don’t talk much when we come here: we get together, warm up a little and dance,” says singer-songwriter Bïa, who was born in Brazil and has been a Montrealer by adoption for about 20 years.

There are more and more Brazilian music evenings in the metropolitan area. In addition to the samba evenings, there have been several events dedicated to forró, an emblematic musical style from northeastern Brazil that was rarely heard of just a few years ago. These gatherings, which combine music and dance, take place in different neighbourhoods, but also in La Petite-Patrie and Le Plateau-Mont-Royal. Forró will also be at the heart of a festival that is being reborn at the end of July after a pandemic hiatus.

A growing community

The rise of Brazilian music in the Montreal area is the result, according to many observers, of an increase in immigration from the largest country in South America over the past fifteen years. The Consulate General of Brazil in Montreal does not have official figures to share, but confirms a growth in the community. Cross-referenced data from the City of Montreal and the Quebec Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration also confirm an upward trend.

Maria Julia Guimarães, of the Brazil-Quebec Integration Centre, estimates that the Quebec population of Brazilian origin is about 15,000 people, almost double what the Quebec Immigration Ministry found in 2016. The majority of these people live in the greater Montreal area. This migratory phenomenon is significant enough to have prompted Carla Castilho Simon, a Brazilian now living in Chambly, to devote her master’s thesis in international studies to it at the Université de Montréal.

She calls this population movement “immigration.” lifestyle » (lifestyle). Brazilians who settle in Quebec almost all have a similar profile, she noted: they come from the middle class, are educated and in search of freedom and security. Like her, they are fleeing urban violence in particular.

A culture to share

Composer Gabriel Schwartz is one of those people who left Brazil to lead a “more peaceful” life in 2018. He now performs with Yves Lambert, a pillar of traditional Quebec music, and many other Brazilian musicians including Lara Klaus (with Forró de La) and Bianca Rocha. The increase in the number of Brazilian evenings also seems obvious to him.

“People who come here have a higher level of education and often have a broader knowledge of Brazilian culture,” Maria Julia Guimarães emphasizes. “They also want to recreate the atmosphere of the country to stay close to their roots and alleviate the culture shock.”

Bïa insists, however, that the Brazilian community is not at all withdrawn; it is very welcoming and also very eager to share its culture. Events dedicated to forró, in particular, often offer the opportunity to participate in workshops that allow you to learn the basic steps. Bïa also suggests that forró – traditionally based on an accordion, a drum and a triangle – has “humbly” taken the place it has today in Montreal precisely because it is possible to dance it without having to learn complicated steps.

“What’s interesting in Montreal,” says André Galamba, bassist who will play with Maracujá and Bïa at the Nuits d’Afrique International Festival on Thursday, “is that there are many artists who put forward their own work, original, more sophisticated compositions, which sometimes go towards jazz and show a side of Brazilian music that is not always highlighted in the media, far from the image of carnival.”

“There was a time when people felt compelled to put girls with feathers [pour parler de la culture brésilienne]. It was always the same postcard. I found it almost embarrassing, admits Bïa. What is done now is much closer to the roots and more like what we do among ourselves.

Bïa and Maracujá

The musicians of the group Maracujá and Bïa have known each other for a long time. They will share the stage on July 11, at 9 p.m., at the Fairmount Theatre, as part of the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique for a concert that will mix their respective repertoires. The association, which is obvious, according to percussionist Sacha Daoud, was first an idea of ​​the singer. “After the pandemic, I had requests for shows, but I didn’t want to play alone. I wanted to come together. […] I didn’t want Maracujá to be my backup band, she specifies however. I wanted us to make an association of our repertoires by highlighting the complicity that exists between us. ” Maracujá, completed by the singer Élie Haroun and the pianist John Sadowy, flirts more with jazz than Bïa, whose universe notably mixes samba, forró and song.

Bïa on the radio

Bïa is back on ICI Musique for a third summer. The show, broadcast on Saturdays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., focuses on Latin American and Brazilian music, from the great classics to current forms. “It was a great success from the first year,” rejoices Bïa, always extremely warm at the microphone. Under the sun of Bïa is produced by Marie-Pierre Bouchard.