Juan Diego Díaz

Juan Diego Díaz is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses geographically on Africa and its diaspora, particularly Brazil and West Africa. His work examines how African diasporic musics circulate and transform across the Atlantic and how individuals and communities use music to construct, negotiate, and sustain identities.

He has published three books that develop these concerns from complementary perspectives. Tabom Voices: A History of the Ghanaian Afro-Brazilian Community in Their Own Words (2016) presents a curated collection of interviews with elders from Ghana’s community of descendants of Brazilian returnees. Through their testimonies, the book documents the community’s history while highlighting the importance of music, dance, and religion in sustaining a distinctive Brazilian identity. His award-winning second book, Africanness in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in Brazil (Oxford, 2021), turns to Bahia, Brazil, to examine how musicians understand, reproduce, and negotiate essentialist ideas about African music and culture. His most recent book, Echoes of Brazil: The Musical Experiences of Brazilian Ancestry in West Africa (Oxford, 2026), brings these transatlantic interests together through a study of four communities in Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria that identify as descendants of Brazilians through histories shaped by the transatlantic slave trade and subsequent return migrations. The book investigates how narratives of Brazilian ancestry are embodied musical experiences.

His work on transatlantic connections between Brazil and West Africa is also featured in his documentary Tabom in Bahia (2017), co-directed with Nilton Pereira. This film follows the first visit of a Ghanaian master drummer to Bahia, where he encounters Afro-Brazilian musicians, dancers, and religious leaders and explores the musical and cultural connections linking their communities across the Atlantic.

A longtime practitioner and scholar of capoeira angola, Díaz has also published numerous articles on this art form and directed the UC Davis Brazilian Capoeira Ensemble. He is currently collaborating with historian Matthias Röhrig Assunção and capoeira master Cobra Mansa on several projects examining the history of capoeira music, capoeira practice in Angola, and the musical dimensions of combat games in southwestern Angola.

Echoes of Brazil

The stretch of coast between Accra and Lagos is home to four distinct national communities who identify as descendants of Brazilians: the Tabom in Ghana, the Brésiliens in Togo, the Agudas in Benin, and the Amaros in Nigeria. These communities were established by people who migrated from Brazil to West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, forming what is arguably Brazil's oldest diaspora. Despite their historical, cultural, and physical separation from Brazil, they maintain a strong sense of Brazilianness through music, dance, and religious practices. Echoes of Brazil explores how these communities use music and dance to preserve, celebrate, and negotiate their complex allegiances to Brazil, to the ethnic groups they have integrated into, to their West African nations, and to the broader Black Atlantic community.

Selected Publications

Books

Díaz, Juan Diego, 2026. Echoes of Brazil: The Musical Experiences of Brazilian Ancestry in West Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.

Díaz, Juan Diego, 2021. Africanness in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in Brazil. New York: Oxford University Press.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2016. Tabom Voices: History of the Ghanaian Afro-Brazilian Community in Their Own Words. Brazilian Embassy in Ghana, Tabom Heritage Project, Accra: Legend.

Journal Articles

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2026. “From Bi-Musicality to Compositional Poly-Musicality: Reflections on the Composition of Suíte Afrobrasileira.” Traditions of Music and Dance 1–29. Open access.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2025. “Hard Conversations: Discussing Musical Transcription with our Interlocutors.” TRANS Revista Transcultural de Música 29: 1–21. Open access.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2024. “From Clave Ethno-theory to Clave Theories: A Path Toward Decolonizing Musical Analysis.” Ethnomusicology 68 (2): 218–46.

Díaz, Juan Diego, and Cinézio Feliciano Peçanha (aka Mestre Cobra Mansa). 2024. “Reflections on Capoeira Ritmo from the Kalunga Line: Ancestry, Ambiguity, and Holism.” Latin American Music Review 45 (2): 137–69.

Díaz, Juan Diego and Alex Rossi. 2024. “Singing in Tune: Berimbau Tuning and Song Mode in Capoeira.” Analytical Approaches to World Music 12 (1): 1–117. 

Díaz, Juan Diego, Matthias Röhrig Assunção and Gregory Beyer. 2021. “Arching over the Atlantic: Exploring Links Between Brazilian and Angolan Musical Bows.” Ethnomusicology, 65 (2): 286–323.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2020. “The Musical Experience of Diasporas: The Return of a Tabom Master Drummer to Bahia.” Latin American Music Review, 41 (2): 131–66.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2017. “Experimentations with Timelines: A Strategy of Rhythm in Afro-Bahian Jazz Complication.” Analytical Approaches to World Music 6 (1): 1–34. 

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2017. “Between Repetition and Variation: A Musical Performance of Malícia in Capoeira.” Ethnomusicology Forum 26 (1): 46-68.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2016. “Listening with the Body: An Aesthetics of Spirit Possession Outside the Terreiro.” Ethnomusicology 60 (1): 89–124.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2012. “Orkestra Rumpilezz: Reinventing the Bahian Percussion Universe.” ICTUS, Journal of the School of Music of the Federal University of Bahia 13 (1): 6–40.

Díaz Meneses, Juan Diego. 2007. “Notación y Transcripción para el Berimbau Usado en Capoeira.” Ensayos: Historia y Teoría del Arte 13: 157–78.

Díaz Meneses, Juan Diego. 2006. “An Analysis and Proposed Organization of the Capoeira Song Repertoire.” Ensayos: Historia y Teoria del Arte 11: 145–70.

Book Chapters

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2026. “A Big Band Playing Percussion.” In The Oxford Handbook of Orchestration Studies, edited by Moe Touizrar, Julie Delisle, Robert Hasegawa, and Jason Noble, Pp. 795–814. Oxford University Press.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2026. “Disinterest in Capoeira: Exploring Brazilian Descendants’ Relationship with Capoeira in West Africa.” In Reconfiguring Capoeira: Global Transformations of an Afro-Brazilian Art, edited by Sergio González Varela, Pp. 57–81. Springer.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2025. “Experimentações com Linhas-Guia: Estratégias de Complicação Rítmica no Jazz Afro-Baiano.” In Ritmos em Trânsito: História, Música, e Musicologia na Bahia Negra, edited by Katharina Döring, Fabrizio Mota, and Marcos Santos. Curitiba: Editora CRV, Pp. 187–220.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2025. “World Music Analysis.” In Handbuch Musikanalise: Pluralität und Methode, edited by Ariane Jeßulat, Oliver Schwab-Felisch, Jan Philipp Sprick, and Christian Thorau. Kassel: Bärenreiter and Metzler, Pp. 565–579.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2023. “Toques del Pasado: Los Toques de Berimbau en la Capoeira de Mediados del Siglo XX.” In Capoeira: Pasado, Presente y Futuro de una Práctica Afrobrasileña, edited by Sergio González Varela and Ricardo Nascimento, pp. 61–107. Parquelândia: Radiadora.

Documentary Films

Díaz, Juan Diego and Nilton Pereira. 2017. Tabom in Bahia. Documentary film, 52 min. Ethnographic Film Catalogue of the Royal Anthropological Society, London (2018).