Virginia Rodrigues, who is proud of her Afro-Bahian and African roots and a fierce critic of Brazil’s camouflaged racism, approaches these Afro-sambas in her own way and with enormous sensitivity. For almost twenty years she has been an initiated member of the polytheist Afro-Bahian candomblé cult. A determined person, she is a daughter of Ogum, the god of war and iron, and therefore prepared (even more than Vinícius de Moraes and Baden Powell, who needed to do field research in Bahia before writing their Afro-sambas) to breathe new life into songs which deal with candomblé divinities and ceremonies.