Black soul black, black sou : o corpo e a corporeidade negra no movimento Black Rio

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the Black Rio Movement from the perspective of the history of the body and black corporeality at soul balls, from 1970 to 1980. The Black Rio Movement is understood as the promotion of balls that played soul music hits from North American black music records. Considered as an important movement for the black cultural scene in Rio de Janeiro, the Black Rio Movement is observed as a cultural project by black people for black people, whose activities intended to enhance the black beauty of the youth who attended the balls and expressed black pride in being gathered as a community. In this research, the body is an element thought of by culture and corporeality, that is, the way subjects relate to their bodies, participate in processes of racial/ethnic acceptance/rejection and in the construction of black identity(ies). From the perspective of the history of the body and the African diaspora, the research focuses on the creation of the black style, which demonstrated how black youth created their own style of dressing, speaking, dancing, and manipulating their curly hair in search of positive relations with their bodies. In the political scenario of the Civil­Military Dictatorship (1964­1985), the Black Rio Movement began to be monitored by the intelligence community, structured by the Doctrine of National Security (DSN) and established by the National Intelligence Service (SNI). Under the reality of racism and police violence against the investigated subjects, it is understood that the construction of black identity participates in a process of regulation and emancipation of the black body and corporeality. It is understood that the regulation of the body occurs through arbitrary actions by the political police, and the emancipated body, sees the black corporeality as knowledge produced by black subjects as strategies of resistance against racism and the myth of racial democracy.