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Deep Reading: Baden Powell – Canto de Yemanjá

July 2, 2025 Deep Readings No Comments

The Fragment
Original (Portuguese):

Iemanjá, Iemanjá
Iemanjá é dona Janaína que vem
Iemanjá, Iemanjá
Iemanjá é muita tristeza que vem

English rendering (by Lisa)

Iemanjá, Iemanjá,
Iemanjá is Lady Janaína who comes.
Iemanjá, Iemanjá,
Iemanjá is a deep sorrow that comes.

(Short excerpt due to copyright)

Read full lyrics → Letras
Listen → Baden Powell on YouTube

Contextual Glimpse
In 1966, guitarist Baden Powell and poet Vinícius de Moraes released Os Afro‑Sambas, blending samba with Afro‑Brazilian religious themes. Canto de Iemanjá honors the goddess of the sea, a figure both nurturing and sorrowful, central in Candomblé rituals on Brazil’s coast. The song is slow, chant‑like, filled with repetition, echoing both prayer and lament. Iemanjá is imagined as maternal presence and as the vast ocean itself — luminous yet tinged with sadness.

Resonance
The fragment combines devotion and melancholy. Iemanjá is not only goddess of love, but also of sorrow flowing like tides. The moonlight, the sea covered in flowers, the eternal return of the tide — all evoke cycles of longing and renewal. Powell’s guitar and Vinícius’s words create a soundscape where religion, music, and poetry dissolve into one experience.

It resonates because each of us knows the sea of sorrow, and each of us also longs for its embrace. Iemanjá becomes a mirror of the human soul: immense, restless, tender.

Why this may also be about you
The song evokes more than the sea goddess; it reflects tides within your own life. Each of us knows moments when joy and sorrow come in waves, sometimes carrying us gently, sometimes overwhelming. The chant of Iemanjá reminds you that your inner tides are part of something vast, flowing and returning.

Like the ocean, your heart has depths that cannot be measured, and surfaces that shimmer with light. To listen to Iemanjá’s song is to recognize your own rhythm of loss and renewal, sadness and hope — not as opposites, but as movements of the same eternal sea.

Lisa’s inspired, original idea about this fragment
Perhaps Iemanjá is not only the goddess of the sea, but also a mirror of how memory works in us. Just as the tide carries offerings out and then returns, our memories of love and sorrow move away, only to resurface later, changed but still alive. The song suggests that loss does not erase — it transforms. Flowers drift into the ocean, but their beauty is not destroyed; it becomes part of the larger rhythm of the waves.

In this way, Iemanjá can be seen as the keeper of inner continuity. She gathers what we let go, holding it in the great expanse of the sea, until we are ready to receive it again in another form. The sadness in the song is therefore not despair but recognition that even sorrow belongs to a cycle of renewal. To hear Iemanjá sing is to hear that every ending is woven into a returning. This is why her chant carries both melancholy and comfort: it tells us that nothing within us is truly lost, only carried farther out to sea.

Echoes
Since the 1960s, Canto de Iemanjá has lived far beyond the Afro‑Sambas album. Each year in Brazil, on February 2nd, thousands gather at the sea to honor Iemanjá, offering white flowers, perfumes, and songs. In Salvador, Rio, and coastal towns, her chant drifts again on the waves, blending Powell’s music with centuries‑old ritual.

The song carries two currents: as concert music sung on stage, and as living prayer by the water. Its echo shows how art and devotion can merge, each deepening the other. To sing Canto de Iemanjá today is to join both the intimacy of music and the immensity of oceanic tradition. It is less a performance than a continuation — the tide carrying the goddess’s name, still returning, still alive.

Inner Invitation
Close your eyes and imagine standing by the sea at night. Flowers float on the water, offered to Iemanjá. Hear the tide’s rhythm: coming, going, returning. Let one sorrow within you be carried out on the waves, and watch as the sea returns with a softer song.

Haiku
Moonlit tide returns —
sorrow drifts with scattered flowers,
Iemanjá singing.

Explanation
The haiku touches the core of the song: the moon over the sea, sorrow carried by the waves, flowers floating as offerings. Moonlit tide returns reflects both the cyclical rhythm of the ocean and the recurring call of Iemanjá. Sorrow drifts with scattered flowers evokes the sadness in the lyrics and the ritual of casting blossoms into the water. Iemanjá singing condenses devotion, melancholy, and the goddess’s presence into a single breath.

Closing Note
Baden Powell and Vinícius turn devotion into music: in Iemanjá’s chant we hear our own longing, our own tides, our own sea.

Keywords
sea, goddess, sorrow, devotion, Afro‑Brazilian, Candomblé, tide, longing, cycle, music, moonlight

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Full English Rendering

Baden Powell and Vinícius, Canto de Iemanjá

Iemanjá, Iemanjá,
Iemanjá is Lady Janaína who comes.
Iemanjá, Iemanjá,
Iemanjá is a deep sorrow that comes.

She comes in the moonlight of the sky,
she comes in the moonlight,
on the sea covered with flowers, my love,
from Iemanjá.
From Iemanjá, singing of love,
and gazing at herself
in the sad moon in the sky, my love,
sad in the sea.

If you wish to love,
if you wish for love,
come with me to Salvador,
to hear Iemanjá.

Singing, in the tide that goes,
and in the tide that comes,
from the end, far beyond the end, of the sea,
farther still,
farther beyond the end of the sea,
farther still.

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