Dona Neuma
Neuma Gonçalves da Silva was a Brazilian samba dancer. She began dancing samba in a small group at age seven and was president of the Mangueira samba school for multiple terms, establishing the institution's children's and female's wings. Neuma housed several temporarily homeless people, and took some students to her home to learn to read and write through a literacy programme featuring local swear words invented by her. She was a member of the Superior Council of the Samba Schools throughout the 1960s and performed on four albums. A 2001 song about Neuma was written by the composer Arlindo Cruz and an overpass and school were named after her.
Early life
On 8 May 1922, Neuma was born in a favelas suburb of Madureira, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. She was the oldest daughter in a poor family, and grew up in Madureira. Neuma's father Saturnino Gonçalves co-founded the traditional samba school Bloco dos Arengueiros in 1928, which later became the Estação Primeira de Mangueira. She became interested in music as a child, learning samba, and performed in the annual parade as a dancer for the school from age seven in a bloco. In 1938, Neuma and other girls formed multiple groups raising flags for contributions when Mangueira's participation in an annual carnival parade was put at risk by a needleperson who refused to give over a new flag she embroidered for the parade from having a lack of money for payment.Career
To earn a living income, Neuma began washing clothes after she was not allowed to take up employment in factory because she was black. In the 1950s, Neuma learnt of a school in Madureira that had a substantial default rate and brought some students to her shack made of brick-and-wood to learn to read and write through a literacy programme featuring local swear words that she invented. Neuma took part in the Superior Council of the Samba Schools during the 1960s, discussing the organisation of Rio de Janeiro schools. She was president for several terms of the Mangueira samba school and established the children's and female's "women's department" wing. Neuma housed many temporarily homeless people and did not turn a single person away, fostering 23 children alongside her four biological children, with her husband, a carpenter.Neuma regularly sought carpenters and sculptors who constructed floats and the designers and seamstresses that created the costumes for the annual carnival celebration. She said she would not attend the 1993 carnival in protest over the school's administration but subsequently relented. Throughout her life, the pre-Lenten dance and song celebrations evolved from "simply presented, purely community-based celebrations of Afro-Brazilian culture to the fiercely competitive, flashy, televised spectacles of today's Carnival." When samba evolved to a commeralised art form, Neuma questioned whether it would "still capture with frivolity the ferocity of existence, as it did when the Mangueira samba school was starting out." Individuals such as Chico Buarque, Ricardo Cravo Albin, Pedro Ernesto Baptista, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Negrão de Lima, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Noel Rosa frequented her home.
She recorded the track Brasil, terra adorada with Cartola and Carlos Cachaça on their LP Cartola entre amigos in 1984. In 1998, Neuma appeared on the album Chico Buarque de Mangueira in celebration of the Mangueira samba school and performed a single track on the 1999 CD album Velha Guarda da Mangueira e convidados. In 2000, she was a primary collaborator on the album Mangueira – sambas de terreiro e outros sambas, performing on five tracks. Neuma is a 1998 recipient of the Ordem do Mérito Cultural.