Event Detail

Juan Diego Díaz, Assistant Professor of Music, UC Davis

Crossing the Atlantic (Once Again): The Return of a Tabom Master Drummer to Bahia 

During the first half of the 19th century some eight thousand freed enslaved Africans and creoles resettled from Bahia, Brazil to West Africa. In adapting to their new realities they formed communities with distinct Afro-Brazilian identities known today as Tabom in Ghana, Brésiliens in Togo, Agudas in Benin, and Amaros in Nigeria. Although most no longer speak Portuguese and have never set foot in Brazil, they are keen to maintain and strengthen their Brazilian heritage. In July 2016, Eric Morton, the Tabom master drummer, accomplished a long held desire of most Tabom: visiting Bahia, the land of their ancestors. This presentation follows Morton's steps in Accra and Bahia in discussing how the Tabom construct a trans-Atlantic identity by engaging musical and religious practices from Brazil, or perceived as Brazilian. It explores the role of memories, beliefs, expectations, and musical aesthetics during encounters with local musicians and devotees of Afro-Brazilian religions. 

Presented by the UC San Diego Division of Arts and Humanities | Institute of Arts and Humanities

Please click on Professor Diaz's image on the left for full biographical information.

JUAN DIEGO DÍAZ
Assistant Professor of Music
Ph.D. Ethnomusicology, University of British Columbia

Juan Diego Díaz is an ethnomusicologist with a geographic research interest in Africa and its diaspora, particularly Brazil and West Africa. He is interested in how African diasporic musics circulate and transform across the Atlantic and how they serve individuals and communities in identity formation. He uses a variety of approaches including close musical analysis, timeline theory, groove analysis, phenomenology of the body, and discourse analysis. He is also a long term Capoeira Angola practitioner and has led capoeira and samba ensembles.

Previous to UC Davis, Juan Diego held posts as a lecturer at the University of Ghana and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Essex, the latter funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The funded research investigates the music of the descendants of freed enslaved Africans who resettled from Brazil to Ghana, Togo, and Benin during the 19th century. This research has produced a book called Tabom Voices: A History of the Ghanaian Afro-Brazilian Community in their Own Words (2016) and the documentary film “Tabom in Bahia” (2017), documenting the visit of a Ghanaian master drummer to Bahia, Brazil.

Juan Diego’s articles appear in journals such as Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, and Analytical Approaches to World Music.