The first 100% Afro percussion group from Salvador, at the origin of “samba-reggae”, Ilê Aiyê has revolutionised Bahian music and “re-Africanised” its carnival. This mythical collective has become a source of inspiration for many of Brazil’s Afro-descendants, like godfathers of Brazilian music Gilberto Gil, Margareth Menezes, and Carlinhos Brown. In the early 1970s, two young people from the Curuzu-Liberdade district named Vovô and Apolônio formed an initiative that spoke of an Afro-Brazilian renaissance, echoing Black Power in the US. Their idols were James Brown and Bob Marley, and they felt an urgency to reaffirm Black consciousness through cultural manifestations such as candomblé, afoxé (its musical version), and capoeira, silenced for too long by figures of white authority. From recording Gilberto Gil on one of their songs (on the album Refavela), to Caetano Veloso’s tribute-song to them, the prodigious reputation Ilê Aiyê has grown steadily over time. Five decades after their first days, the collective has grown to include 3000 members. Today, Ilê Aiyê is considered “cultural heritage of humanity”, and continues to be a source of inspiration for the diaspora and for generations to come.