KURATED NO. 277
VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL 49
LATEST RELEASE Améfrica by Bia Ferreira
Issued last week, Améfrica is the artist’s third studio album
Famina / Hungry (2023) on the left and Igreja Lesbiteriana,
O chamado /The Lesbian Church/ The Call (2019)
Contents
- PLAYLIST:
– Améfrica – 10 tracks on YouTube and Spotify
– 19-song sampler from her 4 albums on Spotify - VIDEO PLAYLIST:
– Dois Dedim (5.27 mins)
– Tiny Desk Meets GlobalFest 2023 (18:45 mins)
– So Far Concert on YouTube: Cota Nao Esmola (6:42 mins) - WEBSITE: biaferreira.com
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– - PLAYLIST: FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL 49: a 35-song artist sampler
curated by Artistic Director Fiona Black - THE FESTIVAL ON INSTAGRAM
- VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL: buy weekend passes, check out the artist biographies
Brazil’s Bia Ferreira is a must-see act at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival next month. Catch this dynamic performer at the daytime stages.
LOVE AS RESISTANCE
“If I have more people fighting with me to have peace, to have love, the respect, equal rights, so we will walk ahead.”
When she was 20 Brazil’s Bia Ferreira thought her anger voiced through music could make a point. “I was very, ‘“Yeah, let’s change the world by the angry, by the hate,”’ she told Afropop Worldwide magazine last year.
Now 33 and with a few years as a travelling performer behind her, the picture has changed: “… now I’m looking to find people that love as I love. People who believe in this revolution with love, with affection. Because if I have more people fighting with me to have peace, to have love, the respect, equal rights, so we will walk ahead.” Essentially love itself is an act of resistance.
In recent work her lyrics are focused on solutions to “present tenderness as a survival technology and information as the key to liberating black, native or LGBTQIA+ people who have suffered any form of oppression.”
Born to evangelical, church-going parents Ferreira started learning piano at three. At 12 she wrote her first song – a plea to god to “cure” the idea she was a lesbian. It didn’t work. By 15 she was involved in Brazil’s Black women’s movement and the seeds of her political and musical growth were planted. This early interest led her to study piano at Brazil’s Conservatorio Brasilero de Musica, where she began playing other instruments including guitar, bass, drums and djembe. She calls herself an “artivist” – a mix of “artist” and “activist” – and has adopted Música de Mulher Preta – Black Woman Music – with a focus on feminism, anti-racism and homophobia.
Ferreira has recorded four albums since 2018. Her 2011 hit Cota Não É Esmola has 14 million views on YouTube
A potent singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
Améfrica – released last week – is Ferreira’s third studio album in addition to her 2018 live debut recording Bia Ferreira no Estúdio Showlivre (Ao Vivo). Over these four collections she shares powerful performances demonstrating dexterity in a range of genres including funk, R&B, reggae, soul as well as rap with Brazilian styles such as samba and repente.
Two of her earliest songs were hits – Cota Não É Esmola and Não Precisa Ser Amélia – both composed in 2011. She became famous for Cota Não é Esmola which is about the importance of the quota system for Black Brazilian people’s access to university.
Her performance of the song on YouTube has 14 million views and 500 thousand likes. The lyrics are required reading for the University of Brasília’s entrance exam. It appears on the live album and is reprised on Améfrica.
Compared to her live album’s stripped down approach on drums, vocals and guitar – 2019’s studio effort Igreja Lesbiteriana, O chamado (The Lesbian Church/ The Call) features richer instrumentation and underlines her stance on social issues damning racism, anti-feminism and homophobia.
On her double album, 2022’s Faminta (Hungry), Ferreira presents contrasting themes and sounds departing abruptly from previous work. The title is about being “hungry of love, hungry of life, hungry of art, and hungry of information,” she says. The 10 tunes on the first disc feature lush ballads, chill beats, vocoder-inflected vocals presenting an easy going, radio friendly feel. She describes it as “an open letter of love and appreciation of Black women.”
The second disc is “informational” focused on the environmental decimation of the Amazon and the people resisting it. Her voice is raw and earnest with rapid fire, rasped vocals. The jarring tone and strident instrumental edge on the 11 works make no secret about her anger and opposition to the destruction.
Améfrica: honouring the music of the Americas.
Musically the new album Améfrica lands somewhere in between the contrasting sounds on Faminta. Rich reggae beats and brass colour several of the songs. The themes are visionary and inclusive honouring the cultural heritage of the music of the America’s.
The album’s title and vision is inspired by late Brazilian black feminist intellectual Lélia Gonzalez, who coined the term Amefricanity to highlight the shared identity, culture, and resistance of Afro-diasporic and Indigenous communities across the Americas.
On her website Ferreira writes:
“Améfrica was born as a calling.
It is not just a name, but a living concept.
An affirmation of identity, of the diaspora, of the future.
This album is not just music; it is a movement to reunite peoples who were separated by colonization but have always been united by the art and culture that runs through us.
Peoples who recognize themselves in the beat, in the language, in the skin, in the song.
Améfrica is a bridge between Brazil and all the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.
An album that weaves together stories of love, resistance, and recognition. That transforms the stage into a space of celebration.
The idea arises from encounter and reunion, because the body holds memories and music is the connecting thread. Each song is about memory, about honoring the cultural heritage of the music of the Americas.
This album also plants seeds of affection and resistance.
An album to awaken consciousnesses lulled to sleep by time.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific.
From the Andes to the Caribbean.
From the forest to the country side.
Améfrica!”
Some song samples
Améfrica serves as a musical and cultural bridge connecting Brazil with the rest of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. The 10-track project—featuring eight original songs and two new versions of past tracks—uses love, joy, and dance as powerful tools for collective resistance and cultural reconnection. The following brief song notes were gathered from a range of sources including interviews and album reviews:
• Améfrica: This song anchors the entire project. It acts as an anthem to the shared bloodlines and ancestral roots that colonisation tried to break but music kept alive. Musically, it is driven by a strong reggae spine mixed with swelling horn sections and percussion. The track seamlessly weaves together different languages —using Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French— to physically embody the borderless, unified map of Améfrica
• Algoritmo: A highly rhythmic collaboration with Cuban-French artist La Dame Blanche, recorded in Paris. This track serves as an insightful critique of how algorithms condition and manipulate the human mind, encouraging listeners to “dance with their brain”
• Pra Alegria Se Achegar: Described by the artist as a celebration of joy and affection, acting as a language of collective reconnection and community
• Cota Não É Esmola: A new rendition of one of Bia Ferreira’s most iconic hits. This highly influential anthem originally served as an urgent plea to support affirmative action and educational equality in Brazil
• O Seu Silêncio: Blending conscious rap and soul with reggae or afrobeat, this song weaves messages about fighting oppression with themes of love and emotional healing.
05 June 2026
