This work brings some ideas of my dissertation project in course in ethnomusicology about different forms of ethnicity experienced through musical practices in three quilombola communities of Rio Grande do Sul: Rincão dos Negros, in Rio Pardo; Casca, in Mostardas and Morro Alto, in Osório. Through participant observation and conversations with musicians, masters and dancers, I discuss resemblances and differences that constitute the musical identities that reflect these groups culturally and socially, ethnic marked by the African paradigm, but transformed by the frictions with other ethnic groups. Records in audio and video and pictures treated epistemologically and shared with my collaborators in the field are part of the narrative in the perspective of the Visual Anthropology.