Film | ‘Tabom in Bahia’ | Co-Directed by Juan Diego Diaz and Nilton Pereira (2017)

The Moynihan Institute and the Program on Latin American and the Caribbean are proud to host a screening of the 2017 film Tabom in Bahia with co-director Juan Diego Diaz. 

Tabom in Bahia documents a historic three-week journey of Ghanaian master drummer Eric Odwarkei Morton to Bahia, Brazil, in 2016. Morton is a member of the Tabom community—descendants of formerly enslaved Africans who returned from Bahia to Ghana in the 19th century and who continue to proudly celebrate their Brazilian heritage.

The film traces Morton’s preparations in Accra and his transformative encounters across Salvador, Cachoeira, Santo Amaro, and Valença. Along the way, he meets capoeira and samba-de-roda masters, Candomblé dancers, musicians, spiritual leaders, carnival organizers, educators, and black activists.

In Bahia, Morton is warmly embraced by an Afro-Brazilian community eager to reconnect with their ancestral roots. Through these exchanges, Morton not only experiences the rhythms of capoeira, samba-de-roda, samba-reggae, ijexá, and Candomblé, but also shares agbe, the Ghanaian-Brazilian musical tradition he commands. Tabom in Bahia is a vivid exploration of cultural memory, resilience, and the enduring dialogue between West Africa and Brazil.

Juan Diego Díaz is associate professor of ethnomusicology and director of the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas at the University of California, Davis. He researches musics of the Black Atlantic, with a focus on Brazil and West Africa. His books include Tabom Voices: a history of the Ghanaian Afro-Brazilian Community in their Own Words (2016) and Africanness in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in Brazil (OUP, 2021).

His work on transatlantic connections between Brazil and West Africa is also featured in his documentary Tabom in Bahia (2017), co-directed with Nilton Pereira, and in the forthcoming book Echoes of Brazil: The Musical Experiences of Brazilian Ancestry in West Africa with OUP. A long-term capoeira angola practitioner and scholar, he has published numerous articles about this artform and led capoeira angola university ensembles.