To The Beat Of The Drum by Mylan Gray

When you feel at home thousands of miles away from your birthplace, what choice do you have but to return? I take a return trip to the Festival of the Rosary—an African syncretic festival in the southeast of Brazil. In returning, I learned African diasporic peoples might be connected by more than just African ancestry. Marked by cultural loss from the middle passage, this festival births a culture of its own. Its songs and rituals speak to the suffering of slavery and embrace a remembrance of forgotten homelands. As a black person from the United States, being in the presence of this grieving made room for something else to take root.

Producer: Mylan Gray

Featuring: Ana Luzia Da Silva, Padre Jailson, Rainha Cleusa, Dayonna Tucker, Ramona Greene, Cameron Woods