To The Beat Of The Drum

Producer: Mylan Gray When you feel at home thousands of miles away from your birthplace, what choice do you have but to return? I take a return trip to the Festival of the Rosary—an African syncretic festival in the southeast of Brazil. In returning, I learned African diasporic peoples might be connected by more than just African ancestry. Marked by cultural loss from the middle passage, this festival births a culture of its own. Its songs and rituals speak to the suffering of slavery and embrace a remembrance of forgotten homelands. As a black person from the United States, being in the presence of this grieving made room for something else to take root. Featuring: Ana Luzia Da Silva Padre Jailson Rainha Cleusa Dayonna Tucker Ramona Greene Cameron Woods Music: Original music from the Festival of the Rosary Blear Moon Brevyn Kai Engel Zion Dirty Sound Ikebe Shakedown