*Kimbundo - The Kimbundo language is one of the most spoken Bantu languages in Angola. It is spoken in the northwest of this country, including the province of Luanda. Due to slavery and colonialism the Portuguese language has many lexical borrowings from Kimbundo, obtained either in Angola, in São Tomé e Príncipe or in Brazil. It is spoken by approximately 3 million people in Angola, as a first or second language.

THE IDEA:

I. THE TRIANGULATION

On a recent visit to Lisbon, the city where I grew up, I came across a new migratory constellation: among the African communities from Cabo Verde, Guiné Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola and Mozambique, there is a new Afro-Brazilian community which has "recently" arrived.

While the African communities migrated after independence in 1975 to escape the so called "postcolonial war," the Afro-Brazilian community migrated in the late 1990s due to economical reasons.

Two different diasporas portraying two sides of the very same colonial project, meet for the first time in a third space. A rather fascinating triangulation, I thought.

Both the descendants of those who have remained in the African continent and the descendants of those who have been captured and enslaved are re-united in Europe. This reunion however is not a neutral one, it evokes the passage of the Slave Trade and recalls Europe as a place of "tension."

This triangle Africa - Americas - Europe is visible in cities like Lisbon as it is in Berlin - where tese different migratory communities meet for the first time in history. A moving scenario where past re-encounters present.

II. THE BLACK ATLANTIC

Paul Gilroy called this constellation the Black Atlantic, revealing the complex history of the African diasporas as both transnatinal and modern. The "sailing ships" return: now from West to East. It is the return and circulation of pioneering ideas, music, literature, poetry, style, language, culture, and religion which have not only survived the Slave Trade and colonialism, but also have been transformed from "roots" into "routes," from traditional into urban.

The Black Atlantic thus becomes a space where social, historical, artistic and religious lines between Africa, Americas and Europe are redraw - revealing the massive impact of Africa and its diasporas in modernity.

Afro-Brazilians cross the Atlantic, this time in opposite direction: from West to East. While Africans from South to North. And when they meet in Europe, there is a moment of profound familiarity which causes both tension and relief. It is the tension created by a shared historicity of separation, loss and trauma; and the relief created by mutual survival, resistance and union.

The tension and relief reside also in the fact that Afro-Brazilians bring cultural and religious practices which have their roots in the African continent but have been transformed and modified; practices which been often descredited in the continent but respected in the diaspora - such as Capoeira Angola, but most significantly they bring a new religion: the Candomblé.

III. THE CANDOMBLÉ

Candomblé is the Black Atlantic religion. The religion is derived from the Yoruba religion of the Orishas - not only practiced in Yorubaland (today Nigeria) but also in other regions of West Africa, including Angola and São Tomé e Príncipe.

The religion is based on the worships of the Yoruba God Olodumare and its fifthteen Orishas - the African Gods and Godess: Exú, Ibejis, Ogun, Yemanjá, Oxum, Oxóssi, Obaluaé, Oxalá, Oya, Xangô, Nana, Oxum-maré, Obá, Eira, Ifá.

Each Orisha is responsible for a different aspect of nature and human life. While for instance, Oxum inhabits the sweet waters and is responsible for love and fertility; Oxóssi inhabits the forests and is responsible for hunting and abundance.

The original spiritual practices were brought over during the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Brazil by enslaved Africans and transformed into Candomblè. Under the dehumanizing conditions of slavery, the Candomblé religion played a crucial role in political and spiritual resistance.

It was the link to the "roots" saving anslaved Africans from a state of absolute alienation. Although originally confined to the African population, banned by the Catholic church, and criminalized by severeal governments, the Candomblé religion thrived for over four centuries and expanded considerably after the end of Slavery in the late 1800s - returning now to this side of the Atlantic.

While in the African continent under a regime of colonization the religion was "forbidden" and "forgotten,"in the diaspora under a system of slavery the religion not only survived but became vital. Through the religion, the Orishas mithology, the Yoruba language as well as the narrative of Slave Trade was sustained.

As it is common in Candomblé, often former enslaved Africans, the so called Pretos Velhos - related to Oxalá, appear in rituals. In their apperance, they not only advise their children but usually tell parts of their experiences. This dimension of the Candomblé religion gives me the possibility of working with a historical character at a phantasmatical level: Rei Amador.

In this fictinal story, i want to recover part of a silenced history, culture and religion which survived the middle passage of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.