European Christianity’s historical characterization of African divinities as demonic has engendered an injurious theology that persists into the present. Scholars and practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions have labored to undo these colonial mythologies. In this presentation, I build on this literature to offer an account of a Pentecostal cosmology of Afro-Brazilian religions. Drawing from on-site research with members of the Christian Congregation in Brazil (CCB), I take as an entry point the perception of Candomblé as “the obscene macumba.” I focus on a site in the periphery of São Paulo where two roads meet, bringing into proximity a terreiro (Candomblé temple) and a CCB church. This intersection provided the space for sonic warfare to unfold when the drumming sounds from the nearby terreiro permeated the congregation’s walls during a night of worship. This sonic permeability undergirded the worship leader’s disapproval of a CCB sister’s seemingly sensual manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Accompanying this suppression was an uncertainty regarding which spirit was taking hold of the woman’s body. What might this sexual and spiritual ambiguity tell us about the ongoing evangelical war against Afro-Brazilian religions? In the context of a church founded on myths of white virtue yet predominantly constituted by mestiças and Afro-Brazilian women, I argue for the need to identify the different investments in this rejection of Afro-Brazilian religions without losing sight of their colonial underpinnings. In doing so, I emphasize the tension between a strategic adherence to a politics of respectability and the networks of marginalization this politics reproduces.

Lahu，one of the oldest ethnic minorities in China, are mainly distributed in the Lancang region of Yunnan, China. Since 1904, Western Christianity began to spread in the Lahu regions of China, leading the Lahu people to incorporate Christianity into their religion. As a result, their music also changed under the influence of religion. Subsequently, the Lahu people began to divide their music into two musical different embranchments (“Likuo Song” and “Gamekuo Song”). Among them, “Likuo Song” is a new component, which mainly includes Western Christian “hymn” music, and uses the four-part chorus singing form in the performance. The Western polyphonic texture form gradually formed in the music of the Lahu people.

Based on six months of fieldwork in the Lahu music of Lancang region, Yunnan. This ethnographic study explores how Lahu music has been influenced by the western religion in the past, which has resulted into two different types of contemporary Lahu music. How did the “Likuo Song” with the characteristics of Western polyphony texture come into being and develop in Lahu music? Revealing the cross-religious and cultural process of the negotiation and coexistence between “Likuo Song” and “Gamekuo Song” (the local ancient song) of the Lahu people. Moreover, I will use a new musical compared analysis to examine how two different music cultures are able to play together. This close musical analysis sheds light on how the cultural identity of Lahu People has been constructed and expressed through a process of musical integration.