banzo (of unknown African origin) is also similar to saudade formely used in Brazil but it refers to the morbid feeling felt by a black slave towards his culture. In common use, banzo means saudade for one’s own culture and homeland, as opposed to a loved one, a family member, a moment in time, etc. Unlike saudade, whose only negative effects can be an eternal melancholy, banzo is dangerous.
The Houaiss Portuguese dictionary defines banzo as “the psychological process caused by the removal from culture that put black slaves from Africa, transported to distant lands, into an initial state of arousal followed by impulses of rage and destruction and then a deep nostalgia that induced apathy, starving and, quite often, madness or death.”
Banzo happens when one is uprooted from one’s culture, a consequence of disconnection from religion, beliefs, caste system, customs, family, and friends, without hope of ever coming back to them. As a result, the subject will either die, become mad or turn into a “hardened” person whose emotional self is completely disrupted.
The word “banzo” is never used by anyone to describe one’s feelings, but used to describe one’s perception of someone else’s state of mind. Contrary to widespread belief, it does not have an implication of possession by spirit. The word may be related to banzé, another vocable of African origin meaning “confusion”, “humdrum,” or “noise”[citation needed]. In the light of this, banzo could describe the black man’s inability to work due to his mental state. This is likely, as the word was (in colonial times) mostly used by whites to refer to black slaves, not often by the blacks themselves.
It seems that due to historical coincidences Brazil has two words for this specific emotion of longing and missing: saudade and banzo. Semantically, banzo is more specific than saudade: one who feels banzo also feels saudade but not vice versa.
The word “banzo” is rarely used on Brazil and few know its real meaning, while “saudade” is widely used.
