ABSTRACT
More than three decades ago in an article on the Portuguese roots of Brazilian spiritism, Donald Warren cautioned scholars and the Brazilian public against over-emphasizing the Amerindian and African roots of Brazilian popular culture to the neglect of the Portuguese background. He argued that the spiritism which Brazil’s white middle class practised had ‘deep roots in historical and contemporary sources in Portugal’. 1 Since then Brazilian scholarly and popular works have filled many of the gaps Warren pointed out at the time. Yet there is still a lot we need to know about the roots of Brazil’s popular culture. This is especially the case of Brazil’s African roots, where studies have yet to delineate clearly the links between Brazil’s popular culture and its Portuguese and African roots. 2 Indeed, most of the works available on Afro-Brazilian culture focus on the nineteenth-century West African (Yoruba/Dahomey) roots of contemporary Afro-Brazilian folk culture, and rarely on its earlier Portuguese/Kongo-Angolan roots. 3
