For the first time, on November 20, 2024, the Dia da Consciência Negra (Black Consciousness Day) was recognized as a national holiday in Brazil. The date marks the death of Zumbi dos Palmares, the leader of the largest Brazilian quilombo, who was beheaded in 1695 by the Portuguese Crown—his head displayed as a trophy in a public square (to dispel, it is said, the myth of his immortality). The quilombo was a community of enslaved people who escaped from white-owned plantations, where they were kept imprisoned in the senzalas, the quarters designated for them—hence the name of a classic (and controversial) Brazilian text, Casa-Grande & Senzala (1933), by sociologist Gilberto Freyre.

The day aims to celebrate the fight for racial equality, to commemorate the resistance of Afro-descendant peoples, to promote concrete actions of reparation, as well as to increase Black representation in Brazilian society. The documentary Black Rio! Black Power!, directed by Emilio Domingos, achieves this goal by telling the story of a cultural movement that remains underappreciated. The culmination of 10 years of research, the film has screened at 24 international festivals and won several awards. When talking about Rio de Janeiro, the most obvious associations are samba, bossa nova, and, more recently, funk – little is said about soul. However, not recognizing the thread of continuity between them – and also with hip hop – would be like calling funk “a child of an unknown father.” And Furacão 2000, the record label and producer of the dance parties from that era, represents exactly this line of continuity.

According to journalist Silvio Essinger (O Batidão do Funk, 2005):

the choice of 1976 as the milestone of the movement is because it was the year it became visible beyond its own attendees, thanks to the report Black Rio: the (imported) pride of being Black in Brazil, by Black journalist Lena Frias, a specialist in Brazilian popular music, and photographer Almir Veiga, published in Jornal do Brasil.

In reality, these were years in which “the phenomenon of Black dance parties on the outskirts of Rio” began to draw the attention of the authorities. Brazil was under a dictatorship, and the military viewed with suspicion a movement that brought together more than 15,000 young Black people from the suburbs, who not only danced but also organized politically.

It was the time when the Black civil rights movement was gaining strength in the United States, and many African countries were gaining independence. A newspaper report, featured in the documentary, defines the movement as “A Brazilian version of the racial movement made in USA.” The public order authorities already identified Rio de Janeiro as the epicenter of the “new trend.” Although the  Department of Political and Social Order (Departamento de Ordem Política e Social or DOPS) had infiltrators at the parties, and Dom Filó, the leader of the movement and protagonist of the documentary, reports having been kidnapped by the military police, the authorities of the time underestimated the power of the phenomenon.

Filó describes the impact of Soul Grand Prix parties:

Between 1972 and 1975, almost a million young people received, through dance, a cultural shock, an identity shock, a critical thought about what it means (he did not use the verb in the past…) to be Black in this racist country,

These parties took place at the Rocha Miranda sports gymnasium, in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro—“our Maracanã,” as one of the interviewees puts it. Projected on the walls of the stadium were images of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the idols of the attendees, along with footage of themselves recorded during the parties— “this way people felt seen, and Black pride was born.” Along with that, affirmative messages were launched that strengthened the Black aesthetic, which frightened society (even in 2002, Black saleswomen at boutiques in Rio’s South Zone were required to straighten their hair or, at the very least, braid it). The right to aspire to social mobility was being claimed. “The first Black engineer I met was Filó; our destiny was to have a subordinate place,” says one of the interviewees.

The leader of the movement acted as an MC, and his role was “to deliver a positive message,” so that the youth could raise their self-esteem in a society that did everything to destroy it. It was Rio’s answer to Jesse Jackson and Nina Simone. For attendees of Soul Grand Prix, the Black Panther Party was a reference. At the time, the Brazilian secret services produced a dossier—made public only in 2021—with the surreal title: Black Racism in Brazil. As Filó explains:

This agency has received information that a group of young Black people is forming in Rio, with an intellectual level above average, with the intention of creating a climate of racial struggle between whites and Blacks in Brazil. It is said that the group is led by a Black American who controls the money, which appears to come from abroad, possibly from the USA. Some of the group’s objectives would be: to kidnap the children of white industrialists, to create neighborhoods exclusive for Blacks, and to form anti-white groups among Blacks. The dossier is unsigned.

As the dictatorship supported the thesis of racial democracy through the myth of miscegenation, those anti-racist demonstrations were seen as the importation of a problem that “did not exist” in Brazil. According to the regime, it was the Black people themselves who created the racial problem in the country. During the same period, the government did everything it could to prevent Abdias Nascimento, the intellectual and Pan-Africanist activist, and founder of Teatro Experimental do Negro (Black Experimental Theater) in Rio de Janeiro, from participating in Festac77, the second world festival of Black and African Arts and Culture, held in Lagos. Nascimento would publish an account titled Sitiado em Lagos (Besieged in Lagos) in 1981.

From Soul Grand Prix emerged Banda Black Rio, one of the greatest instrumental references in Brazilian popular music. But it was not the dictatorship that ended the soul movement, rather the imposition of disco music by record labels and TV stations. “We didn’t fit the style of disco music. Disco was John Travolta.” Thus, Soul Grand Prix passed the baton to the disco era, which would later give rise to funk carioca, and Filó left the scene, releasing the LP Soul Grand Prix 78. In the words of  dancer and choreographer Aenor Neto: “Filó is our Zumbi.”