In São Paulo, Brazil, an annual carnival is held in the days leading up to Lent in the Christian calendar. It usually takes place in February or early March and ends on Ash Wednesday. During this period, the city comes alive with various celebrations, including street parties, samba school competitions, and, most importantly, powerful cultural and political expressions.
At the 2026 carnival, tributes to Yoruba deities took center stage, serving as a powerful reminder of Africa’s cultural footprint carried across the Atlantic during the transatlantic slave trade.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, millions of Africans were taken by force across the Atlantic to the Americas. Brazil, which was then a Portuguese colony, received the largest number of enslaved Africans. Many of them were Yoruba-speaking people from what is now southwestern Nigeria and nearby regions, especially in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when conflicts weakened the Oyo Empire.
Even under harsh conditions meant to erase their identities, enslaved Africans kept parts of their spiritual traditions alive. They passed them down through memory, storytelling, and shared rituals. Sacred songs, drumming, initiation rites, and respect for ancestors were practiced quietly within enslaved communities and later within Afro-Brazilian neighborhoods.
Over time, these traditions changed and adapted. Yoruba deities, called Orishas, were sometimes linked to Catholic saints so that people could continue their worship without attracting punishment from colonial authorities. This adaptation helped African religious traditions survive across generations and later shaped Afro-Brazilian religions like Candomblé, especially in places such as Bahia, where large communities of African descendants built strong cultural and religious traditions.
Here are some book, film, and documentary recommendations that explore the Yoruba/Afro Brazilian culture and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.
Directed by Toyin Ibrahim Adekeye in 2018, Bigger Than Africa is a visual exploration of how the Yoruba people, one of Africa’s largest ethnic groups, maintained their identity across the Atlantic.
The idea first came to Adekeye in his final year at the Los Angeles Film School. While researching his thesis, he stumbled upon Oyotunji African Village in South Carolina, a small community keeping Yoruba traditions alive. Discovering his own culture thriving in North America surprised him so deeply that he stretched a planned 15-minute short into a feature-length project, four years in the making.
Asé is a scholarly work by Clarence Bernard Henry. The book is a culmination of several years of field research on sacred and secular influences of àsé, the West African Yoruba concept that spread to Brazil and throughout the African Diaspora. Ásé is imagined as power and creative energy bestowed upon human beings by ancestral spirits acting as guardians.
This Wikipedia article explores Nago, or Nagô, a term for Yoruba-speaking people from the Ketu region who became a dominant, culturally influential group in Brazil, especially in keeping religious traditions alive. It also covers the 19th-century wave of Afro-Brazilian returnees, called Aguda or Amaro, who settled in Lagos and built the Brazilian Quarter, bringing distinct architecture, surnames, and trade links back home.
The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World
Edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs in 2005, this anthology traces the Yoruba experience from enslavement and the middle passage to their cultural transformation and resistance in the New World.
Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble
J. Lorand Matory contests the idea of culture as mere “survival,” showing how Yoruba identity in Brazil was a strategic choice maintained through travel and commerce. In his book, he provides a groundbreaking “historical ethnography” that challenges the traditional view of Afro-Brazilian culture as a passive “survival” of the African past.
Orixás da Bahia (1951), directed by Pierre Verger, is a Brazilian documentary exploring the Afro-Brazilian religious traditions of Candomblé in the state of Bahia. The film focuses on the worship and rituals of the Orixás, the Yoruba-origin deities central to the faith. It is notable for its anthropological depth and for documenting rituals that were rarely captured on film at the time.
“A Defeito de Cor”(A Colour Defect) by Ana Maria Gonçalves
This 2006 novel is a cornerstone of Afro-Brazilian literature. It narrates the life of Kehinde, a woman born in West Africa who is enslaved in Brazil and later returns to Africa, offering a rich portrayal of Yorubá traditions, the slave trade, and daily life in 19th-century Brazil.
Palmares by Gayl Jones is a historical novel set in 17th-century Brazil. It follows Almeyda, a young woman who escapes slavery and searches for her mother.
Her journey leads her to Palmares, a community of formerly enslaved Africans who built an independent settlement.
The novel explores freedom, identity, motherhood, and resistance to colonial oppression.
The Yoruba in Brazil is a book edited by Niyi Afolabi and Toyin Falola. It talks about how the Yoruba people and their culture survived and changed across the Atlantic world. It tells the story of the Yoruba people, many of whom were taken to Brazil during the slave trade, and how their traditions, beliefs, language, and identity adapted and continued in Brazil over time. The book also looks at how Brazilians of Yoruba descent and later Yoruba migrants connect with their “homeland” in Africa, showing a strong, mixed Yoruba culture shaped by history, slavery, and migration.
The Yoruba culture on display at the São Paulo Carnival is a symbol of remembrance and resilience. A forgotten culture is as good as dead; it becomes a trampling of our ancestors’ efforts, a dismissal of the pain they endured to pass these traditions from one generation to the next.
These books, films, and documentaries will illuminate your path and perhaps, in their own way, guide you home.
