Anitta, the Brazilian singer, was the target of intense negative reactions for the release of a music video, in an episode that highlighted the persistent religious intolerance and racism in Brazil.
The furor began on May 13, when the 31-year-old pop star shared a sneak peek of the video for her new song, “Aceita” (“Accept”, in Portuguese), with his 65 million followers on Instagram. In two hours, he lost 200,000 followers, she said.
The video shows practices of your faith, candomblé. Her Instagram account showed images of the artist dressed in religious attire alongside a candomblé priest, and of spiritual objects and other iconography.
Candomblé evolved from Yoruba, Fon and Bantu beliefs brought to what is now Brazil by enslaved West Africans. For centuries, it was considered demonic sorcery and a public danger in a majority Catholic society. Although they are practiced by 2 percent of the population, Afro-Brazilian religions represent a disproportionate number of cases of religious intolerance, reflects a 2022 US report.
The reaction to Anitta’s video was mostly positive; The lyrics seem to talk about the theme of acceptance, suggesting that the song is about religious intolerance. Still, criticism flooded her Instagram post. “This is pure witchcraft,” one wrote.
Born Larissa Machado, Anitta burst onto the scene in 2013 with a pop song, “Meiga e Abusada,” which was a hit in Brazil. As her celebrity has grown, she has been candid about her faith. In 2018, when she was criticized for not condemning the new far-right President, Jair Bolsonaro, Anitta said she had been confined as part of her initiation into candomblé.
The faith, characterized by drumming rituals and celebrations honoring various deities, has been forced underground since its inception. It wasn’t until the 20th century that broader society began to tolerate expressions of candomblé in an effort to recognize Brazil’s African heritage and cultivate a stronger national identity, said Luis Nicolau Parés, a professor at the Federal University of Bahia who wrote a book on candomblé.
The rise of neo-Pentecostal churches in Brazil helped revive anti-candomblé sentiment.
As violence and discrimination against Afro-Brazilian religions have persisted, activists have pointed to the issue of race. On social media, Anitta said she had been the target of “religious racism,” a term used to describe acts of religious intolerance toward Afro-Brazilian religions, said Ana Paulina Lee, a professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University in New York. .
“What happened to Anitta happens every day,” he said.
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