Iemanjá : Bembé do Mercado. Santo Amaro, Bahia

by Michaela Melián & Thomas Meinecke, Thomas Meinecke

Iemanjá is not only the title of Thomas Meinecke and Michaela Melián s new
project but also the name of one of the most important goddesses of Afro-
Brazilian queen of the ocean, protector of children and the essence
of motherhood. Each year, the Brazilian beach town of Santo Amaro honors
Iemanjá with a massive festival. Meinecke and his wife, Melián, both well-known
members of the beloved German New Wave band F.S.K., attended the festival in
2010 in order to research these unique Afro-American religions. They discovered
Santo Amaro through the legacy of pop literature writer Hubert Fichte, who
famously conducted ethnographic research on the festival with photographer
Leonore Mau in the mid-1970s. With the influence of Fichte s research, Meinecke
melds Melián s 170 documentary photographs, along with inspiration from his prior
novel Lookalikes (Suhrkamp, 2011), to create this intriguing new hybrid novel.

216 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2014