This research investigates the samba in Pequena África do Rio de Janeiro during the first decades of the 20th century in order to analyze the role of women in the process its formation. From this, I identified that the Tias Baianas from Pequena África were active and influential women in the music of their time, composers, instrument players, singers, people who shaped a territory considered essentially masculine, such as Ciata, Perciliana, Carmem do Ximbuca, Maria Adamastor, Amélia Aragão, Mariquita, etc. This is a musical world where women were devalued, obscured by a historical construct created by the upper classes, focused on the big men, on the major events in the supposedly more important field of public life and the written tradition, with no interest in the domestic face, in the oral tradition, and in the knowledge of women.
black women in samba; history of samba; Tias Baianas; gender relations in Brazilian music
