Black suffragette’s sheet music unearthed and revived on the piano
Seventy-five-year-old piano student Maria José Febraro’s eyes smile as the melody casts a spell over her senses. The notes of Noturno come from the fingers of teacher Renata Sica and fill the living room of a house in Araras, São Paulo. The student feels swept away through time as she learns the piece was composed by a black woman like her, with dreams and hard-fought achievements not unlike her own.
The author of the song was suffragette, typist, and trade unionist Almerinda Farias Gama (1899–1999). Born in Alagoas state, Northeast Brazil, Gama was an unrecognized figure in the 20th century hitherto unknown to the teacher, the student, and the world. The two women know that the yellowed sheets they have before them is nothing short of a historical relic.
The first to realize it was rese...