This catalogue documents the Afro-Brazilian religious art collection known as “Discoteca Oneyda Alvarenga,” which belongs to the Secretaria Municipal de Cultura of São Paulo. It includes 580 pieces, organized within the following groups: (1) musical instruments; (2) clothes; (3) ceramics; (4) jewelry; (5) weapons; (6) ritual objects made of straw; (7) anthropomorphic sculptures of Yoruba divinities (orixás and voduns) and varied objects (pumpkin masks, benches, wooden pots). The catalogue includes an index that is organized by name, genre, type, and material.

The Museu Folclórico’s collection is the most complete archive of Afro-Brazilian artifacts held by any museum in Brazil. It contains examples of three ritual practices from three states: Candomblé (Bahia), Xangô (Pernambuco), and Babassuê (Pará). The collection was shaped by the writer, musicologist, and art critic Mário de Andrade (1893?1945), the then-director of the Departamento de Cultura of São Paulo. Around 1938, Andrade had the idea of sending a Missão de Pesquisa Folclórica (research mission) focused on folklore to the north and northeastern regions of Brazil in order to create a national collection of representations of folk culture and religion from those zones. Here, the researcher Oneyda Alvarenga states that the catalogue only describes the documents, it does not analyze them. Nevertheless, it offers informative data on the pieces, above all those from the port of Recife (capital of the state of Pernambuco) during the 1930s; that era coincided with a persecution of these Afro-Brazilian religions, wherein the police closed religious establishments and seized their objects of worship.

[As a complementary reading, see in the ICAA digital archive the following texts: by Raul Lody “Coleção Arthur Ramos” (doc. no. 1110525); “Coleção culto afro-brasileiro: um documento do candomblé na cidade do Salvador” (doc. no. 1110527); “Coleção culto afro-brasileiro: um testemunho do Xangô pernambucano” (doc. no. 1110526); “Dezoito esculturas antropomorfas de orixás” (doc. no. 1110529); “Símbolo do mando” (doc. no. 1110531); and “Yorubá: um estudo etno-tecnológico de 50 peças da coleção arte africana do Museu Nacional de Belas-Artes” (doc. no. 1110532). In addition, see by Abelardo Duarte “Catálogo ilustrado da Coleção Perseverança” (doc. no. 1110522); by Carlos Eugênio Marcondes de Moura “Religiosidade africana no Brasil; Arte afro-brasilidade” (doc. no. 1110519); by Maria Lúcia Montes “Cosmologias e altares” (doc. no. 1110528); by Luiz Felipe de Alencastro “Geopolítica da mestiçagem” (doc. no. 1111371); from the Museu Histórico Nacional “Para nunca esquecer. Negras memórias. Memórias de negros” (doc. no. 1110530); by Jocélio Teles dos Santos “Catálogo do Museu Afro Brasileiro = Catalogue of the Afro-Brazilian Museum” (doc. no. 1110521); and by Vagner Gonçalves da Silva “Arte religiosa afro-brasileira. As múltiplas estéticas da devoção brasileira” (doc. no. 1110520)].