Here is a video of xaxado to go with the post profiling this dance! I’m so sorry for the delay and recent lack of updating; I’ve been travelling and had little to no internet access, and went to two batizados in two different places within a week of each other! They were really good, but now it’s back to normal everyday life…thank you to everyone for your patience and comments, and I will be replying to all of them (from way back) and posting regularly again as I settle down into exam-study mode!
Capoeira é Dança, Part 4: Xaxado
24 04 2008Wild Wild…North
The lament of a mournful harmonica whistles phantomly through the air. The wind blows, and a single tumbleweed rolls across the dry, arid land. These are the badlands, the sertão nordestino, home of the notorious cangaceiros. Defenders of the poor, bane of the rich, these nomadic outlaws will live forever in the dance of xaxado.
(Alright, so there was no harmonica and who knows about the tumbleweeds, but the rest of it is true!)
Xaxado is a lively folk dance associated with baião that originated in Pernambuco, Brazil (specifically in the regions of Pajeú and Moxotó), in the 1920s. Popularized by Luiz Gonzaga of forró fame and other northeastern Brazilian musicians, this dance comes to us from the adventures and exploits of the northeastern bandits known as cangaceiros (from the word cangaço, meaning banditry). With brash and energetic movements, xaxado enthuses with their “work hard, play hard” spirit and evokes life in the hard northeastern countryside.
Lampião and His Merry Men
One of the most famous cangaceiros and celebrated figures in Brazilian legend and history was Lampião, once called the “King of Cangaço”. Despite recent research stating otherwise, many believe that Lampião was specifically the person who created xaxado. Whether or not this is true, it is thanks to Lampião and his gang that xaxado spread throughout the lands, and its strong association with the northeastern cangaceiros and their exploits (such ambushing police “macacos”) remains to this day.
1, 2, Sha-sha-sha!
How did xaxado get its name? There are two main explanations. The first is rooted in onomatopoeia—more specifically, in the sha-sha sound of dancers’ dragging sandals or boots as they go through the dance. The second explanation attributes xaxado’s name to an old sertão war song or war cry, “Parraxaxá“.
Natural Rhythm
Originally, xaxado was danced to no instruments. Dancers sung to provide music, and rhythm was marked by the sounds of sandals dragging through earth and rifle butts hitting the ground. Then, xaxado was danced to the same instrumental trio as was originally used in forró: accordion (sanfona), triangle (triângulo), and zabumba (bass drum). Today, one can see xaxado performed with as many instruments as the original three plus bongos, flutes, and maracas. As for the songs themselves, they consist of lyrics with satire and aggression, reminiscent of how the cangaceiros must have viewed and treated life.
Tap Dance de Terra
Xaxado is usually danced in a line, a result of Native Brazilian influence, as opposed to more circular forms found in dances such as maculelê. Most modern-day xaxado performances are choreographed, and involve both women and men, although only men used to do the dance when it was first developed.
Dancers of xaxado wear old cangaceiro costumes while performing, which include (fake) rifles and bullet belts. The basic step involves putting the right foot forward and out to the side three or four times quickly while dragging the left foot behind, resulting in what one source describes as “a dragged out, slippery kind of tap dance.”
Click here to see other posts in Capoeira é Dança
Sources:
http://www2.uol.com.br/uptodate/glossae.htm
http://www.aquarela.com/Styles.html
http://bellsouthpwp.net/l/u/luiscnogueira/Learn_About_Brazilian_Dance.html
http://www.sambaolywa.org/whatissamba.htm
http://www.bellinati.com/publics/publics.html
http://www.musicabrasileira.org/zezoribeiro/
http://www.bellinati.com/compositions/compositions.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serra_Talhada
http://www.jornaldesafio.com.br/meio/xaxado.php
http://www.edukbr.com.br/artemanhas/folclore_dancas_xaxado.asp
http://www.recife.pe.gov.br/especiais/brincantes/ingles/5b.html
Picture sources:
http://www.filmreference.com/images/sjff_01_img0089.jpg
http://sarecife.vilabol.uol.com.br/Apresentacao1.html
Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: brazilian dance, forro, lampiao, maculele, parambuco, xaxado
Categories : Dances
Videos: Forró Music and Dance
25 03 2008Following up yesterday’s post, here are a few forró dance and music videos to go along with it!
This is a fun/offbeat music video of “Asa Branca”, Luiz Gonzaga’s most famous and successful hit. It’s a rendition by Forró in the Dark featuring David Byrne, and is sung in English but keeps the original, familiar music and melody!
Another fun video showing a couple really dancing it up. I’m not sure exactly what style of forró this falls under, but it’s fast and energetic. It also very clearly blurs the line between sensual and sexual (note the non-existent skirt, innuendo, and gyrating), but you can’t say they don’t have skill. XD
Finally, a slightly more formal/”professional”/technical sample, demonstrating the baião style of forró:
Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: asa branca, baiao, david byrne, forro, forro in the dark, luiz gonzaga
Categories : Dances, Multimedia
Capoeira é Dança, Part 3: Forró
24 03 2008
“It Came from the North!”
In the harsh, blistering backlands of northeast Brazil, a future musical sandstorm found its roots in the rural music and dance of sundried Brazilian desert dwellers. Known as the sertão region, these notorious 1.5 million square kilometres are parched to begin with, and undergo seasonal droughts every year. When the rains would finally apparate, they summoned celebration in the form of song and dance—what would become the earthy, magnetic forró.
Forró conquered all of northeastern Brazil to the point of becoming a regional icon, but the dance and music suffered disdain from those in the south. Coming from the rural backlands, it was deemed an unsophisticated past-time for country bumpkins by those who were used to waltzing across urban dance floors between mazurkas, foxtrots, and tangos.
However, the old-fashioned, good-times rhythm and dance eventually won southeastern hearts and ears thanks to the efforts of Luiz Gonzaga (1912-1989), forró’s undisputed hero. He “modernized” the original forró rhythm, known as baião, and introduced it to southeastern Brazil in the 1940s, starting in Rio de Janiero. His song “Asa Branca” became an international hit, and soon following that, the whole genre of forró along with it!
Since then it has surfed waves and troughs of popularity, falling into the shadow of dances like samba and bossa nova in the 60s, and is now at the height of comeback from a revival in the 90s. Forró is featured annually in Brazil’s Festa Junina (June Festival), and according to one source is now celebrated on Luiz Gonzaga’s birthday, December 13th, as “National Forró Day” in Brazil. One of the most popular modernized forró bands today is New York City’s Forro in the Dark.
Dancing with Words
The word “forró” refers to the musical genre as well as all the dance styles it encompasses, or is used even as a general term for all northeastern Brazilian music and dance. There are two main possibilities for how this genre got its name. The first is that “forró” came from the word “forrobodo”, which means “great party” or “commotion”. Ironically, “forrobodo” itself came from “forbodó”, which was Portuguese for a dull party!
The other version evokes colonialism and society balls, when either British landowners or engineers working on the Great Western Railroad would throw extravagant parties that were advertised as “for all”, including railroad and other workers. “Forró” (“foh-ho”) was the Brazilian form of pronouncing and spelling the phrase.
Sing Like No One Is Listening
A lone sertanejo farmer plods towards the southern cities, leaving his beloved sertão of the north behind. He sings simple melodies of his hard life in the dry, dry desert, of thankless migration, going from favela to favela looking for work. All he wants is for the drought at home to pass, for the rains to return, so he can return as well; this longing, nostalgia, homesickness—saudade—is added to his song. Eventually, he weaves in other themes as well: love won and lost, passion and jealousy, romance and former lovers. It all ends up in lyric and melody, along with his simple love for the relief of dance, in word and body.
Traditionally, forró music consists of three instruments: the accordion, the triangle, and the zabumba, which is a Brazilian, hand-held bass drum. Modernization of the genre has also added keyboards, electric guitars, and/or drums to the music, but always ultimately retaining forró’s original rustic, folksy sound beneath. Modern day lyrics have also sometimes departed from the themes described above to include more innuendo or humour.
Party Mix
Forró is used to mean forró music as well as forró dance, and there are several variations of both, depending on time period, region, influence, and setting:
Forró pé-de-serra (forró at the “foot of the mountain”) is considered the original forró dance, and uses nothing more than the familiar accordion/triangle/zabumba instrumental trio.
Baião is a quick, 2/4 syncopated rhythm that was originally used for forró. It was this rhythm that Luiz Gonzaga “modernized” and took to the world in the mass popularizing of forró. Baião music was connected with Afro-Brazilian drumming and linked to African circle dances (“African circle dances”? hmmm…) and performed during desafios, or “poetic duels”.
Xote was the main forró dance and rhythm variation that helped increase forró’s popularity throughout Brazil. It has a slower beat, incorporated pop-rock music, and is popular among young southeastern, southern, and centre-western Brazilians.
Arrasta-pé is the final “traditional” rhythm used in forró music, characterized by being faster than the other two main rhythms, baião and xote.
Forró universitário (or college forró) flourished in the early 1990s, named for the majority of southeast Brazilian, middle-class “students, intellectuals, and urban culture brokers” who hit the dance floors to smoothened forró harmonies infused with salsa, samba-rock, and African-derived blues, but still played on traditional instruments. While the music of forró universitário does not sound very different from that of forró pé-de-serra, their respective dance styles are distinctly varied, as are the forró dance styles between northeast and southeast Brazil.
Forró estilizado is considered tacky and uncultural by forró traditionalists, stylized and electronically rendered as it is, moreover with the role of the accordion downplayed.
Other forró variations or related dances include xaxado, coco, and galope.
So You Think You Can Dance?
Forró has been described as “a mixture of ska with polka in overdrive”. Although there are numerous variants of this dance, the basic steps involve a couple dancing very close together. The man’s left hand holds the woman’s right hand as in a waltz (assuming the case of a straight couple), with the man’s right arm around the woman’s back and her left arm around his neck. At the same time, each dancer’s right leg stays in between their partner’s two legs, resulting in the African tradition of dancing with close pelvises. Forró is generally considered a sensual as well as upbeat dance.
Beyond these fundamentals, movements such as spins, fancy heel flourishes, and lifting a woman to sit on her partner’s knee entered through the influence of salsa and other Caribbean dances. Still other styles may have partners, called forrozeiro/as, slightly or much farther away from each other while dancing. Luiz Gonzaga reportedly invented a new style of forró dance to go with each release of a new hit song!
Forró and Brazilian Identity in a Transnational Setting
Every region of Brazil has its own distinct style of forró, some with different names, as well. Megwen Loveless, a PhD candidate at Harvard, describes perfectly how Brazilians’ regional identities are pronounced in the very choreography and idiosyncrasies of each forró dancer’s movements:
[W]hile forró music symbolizes the nation as a whole, Brazilians from various regions dance to it differently. Thus, forró dance styles allow Brazilians to feel a sense of national pride and belonging while simultaneously expressing regionalism and differentiating their provincial identities. Regional distinctiveness can be read through bodily expression on the dance floor, creating a lexicon through which Brazilians position themselves—and their local identities—in a transnational setting.
…
Couples dancing forró generally followed the style of the male lead. Pernambuco: tight, tight dancing, with thighs intertwined and nothing to embellish the grinding. São Paulo: almost sporty, with casual turns and sexy pauses and clearly demarcated shoulder space. Rio: pretty twirls that remind me of latticework on a balcony in Lapa.
Forró is a dance in which a national rhythm can find its voice in a variety of bodies. It is a performance in which regional accents play off one another. Ultimately, it is a genre in which diverse styles speak the same language, albeit with lilting cadences of difference. I’ve found that while forró music and lyrics can tell me about Brazilian national identity, forró dance elucidates Brazil’s distinctive regional identities. Taken together, forró performance can shed light on both the unity and diversity of Brazilian identity.
Click here to see other posts in Capoeira é Dança
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forr%C3%B3
http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/travel/07culture.html
http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/forro_720
http://www.basicalingua.com/culture.htm
http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/view/990
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200609/articles/Abreu20060715.html
http://www.brazzil.com/content/view/9585/41/
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_39/forrotakesmanhattan.html
Picture sources:
http://www.joaowerner.com.br/images/urbanos/forro.JPG
http://www.brasilafro.net/SPIP/IMG/jpg/forro.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Show_de_forr%C3%B3.jpg/800px-Show_de_forr%C3%B3.jpg
Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: arrasta-pe, asa branca, baiao, brazil regional identity, festa junina, forro, forro estilizado, forro in the dark, forro pe-de-serra, forro universitario, king of forro, luiz gonzaga, megwen loveless, northeast brazil, northeastern brazil, sertanejo, sertao, xote, zabumba
Categories : Dances
Videos: Puxada de Rede
7 02 2008Between puxada de rede as ritual, as celebration, as prayer, as livelihood, and as folklore, you can imagine just how many ways there are to interpret and choreograph this dance/play. The following are two videos that I think together fully represent all of what puxada de rede is. Enjoy!
This first video was one of my favourites out of all the ones I saw, because it seemed to incorporate everything, all the elements of the story and of the tradition:
This second video is not of a performance, but—the real thing! It’s a clip from Rex Schlinder’s documentary, Bahia Por Exemplo, and shows a group of fishermen doing puxada de rede as it was originally intended, hauling a gargantuan net of fish out of the sea and onto shore.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: bahia por exemplo, puxada de rede, rex schlinder
Categories : Dances, Multimedia
Capoeira é Dança, Part 2: Puxada de Rede
6 02 2008Although I have never seen puxada de rede performed before, I was enchanted as soon as I started reading about it. Perhaps it was the idea of theatre exalting the real, of the supernatural convening with the natural, or of beauty growing out of tragedy, but something about it hooked me (pun not intended). I hope you feel the same!
Tradition and Necessity
Puxada de Rede, like many traditional Afro-Brazilian dances, is marinated in legend and folklore. Unlike other dances such as maculelê, however, the “original” puxada de rede is still a true-to-form way of life today.
Named for fishermen’s “pulling of the net”, puxada de rede is a dance as well as a “folkloric theatrical play” evoking the lives of traditional fishermen in Brazil. More specifically, the dance/play is a tribute to both the sea and the fisherman’s work in Bahia, where both have figured and continue to figure tremendously into the region’s lifestyle. Fishing by puxada de rede (the method) is one of the most important means of sustenance in Bahia, and commonly seen along the Northeastern coast of Brazil, due to the large amounts of xaréu fish that migrate to the warmer waters there between October and April each year. (“Xaréu” is both a common dark meat fish and the name used for several species of fish in the Atlantic Ocean.) For this reason, puxada de rede is also sometimes known as “puxada de rede do xaréu” or “xaréu hake”.
The ritual of puxada de rede is a legacy with a line thrown back to the period of slavery in Brazil—or rather, the period right after slavery. According to one source, former slaves had difficulty finding jobs in the labour market, and so they made their living at sea; Bahia, apparently, was the first place to see this happen. Today, puxada de rede represents an ever more significantly renewable resource in Brazil, upon which thousands of families depend.
In the Hands of the Goddess
After reviewing a myriad of sources and videos, it appears that the puxada de rede can be performed with a choice of emphasis on one of three concepts: the death of a fisherman who went out to sea at night; acknowledging, entreating, and thanking Yemanjá, the Goddess of the Sea, while celebrating the aquatic windfall she has provided; or the actual process and ritual of puxada de rede itself. Elements of all three are found in the following popular legend, on which most performances of puxada de rede are based:
One night under the full moon, a fisherman went to fish at sea, in order to feed his family. He kissed his wife goodbye. She had a bad feeling about her husband going to fish at night. She warned him and told him of the dangers of fishing at night. Nevertheless, the fisherman left the house, despite his wife’s tears and children’s scared faces.
The fisherman went to sea and took with him the image of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes (Our Lady of Sailors). He went with his fellow fishermen and God’s blessing. Hours before the fisherman was supposed to return, his wife waited for him on the beach. She had an odd vision. She saw the fishing boat return with the fishermen on board. They were very sad, and some of them were in tears. They then got off the ship. In panic, the woman realized that her husband was not there. The fishermen told her that he had fallen off deck into the darkness of the night. They could not find him in Yemanjá’s waters.
In the morning, when they pulled the net that was in the ocean, they noticed that they had caught much less fish than they expected, yet the net was heavier than usual. Once the net was on shore, they realized that the missing fisherman’s body was in the net. Everyone became very emotional and desperation took over those who were present.
They proceeded to hold funerary rituals for the fisherman. They carried his body on their shoulders because they could not afford a coffin. His companions and loved ones took his body to his eternal resting spot.
(Source:
http://www.yourbestsiding.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=78)
Gone Fishing
The actual process of puxada de rede takes place every year in Bahia, flanked with music, rituals, poetry, festivities, and religion. It begins with fishers and their families preparing the xaréu nets, which crisscross rolls of strong, resistant wire with about a thousand metres of rope. Wearing short trousers or shorts and straw hats, groups of fishermen throw the net into the sea at the start of chanting, commanded by the “Master of the Sea”. (One source describes a “Master of Land” as well, who coordinates everything with the “Master of the Sea” and team generals.) The nets are then trawled out in large, heavy rafts that form a semi-circle in order to entrap the migrating, spawning fish. At this point, possibly fishermen go out in canoes and dive under the water to see how many fish have been caught.
Again at the Master’s signal, the bona fide puxada de rede begins—ritual, synchronized movement of bodies pulling the fish-laden net knot by knot out of the sea. The fishermen’s wives and families, meanwhile, sing and clap along the beach in order to fortify the spirits of those involved in the puxada de rede. Finally, the fish are secured, collected, and cleaned, followed by celebrations and thanks given for the catch.
Water Ballet
The dance/theatre version of all of the above transforms hardship, physical labour, and grief into a sublime ballet with the “resonance and poetic power of opera”. Work and joy are united through “force, power, and vitality” in body, along with music, ritual, and poetry in mind, all of which progresses in rhythm with the rolling, watery sphere of Yemanjá. As for the music, puxada de rede is executed to a slow atabaque beat. Song lyrics invoke Yemanjá for protection and abundance, as well as praise and thanks for the goddess. Both sad and joyous, the songs also convey the “natural beauty and daily struggles of the fisherman’s life”.
With the development of technology in the fishing industry and otherwise, some say that the traditional puxada de rede has been reduced to a single, thin stripe of its former rainbow of tradition. Without ritual, songs, choreographed steps, nor the “charm and magic of the past”, puxada de rede may now occur on a much smaller scale than before, and also among fewer and smaller populations in Bahia. If this is true, then it makes the dance of puxada de rede all the more meaningful, as a both a tradition and the vivid memory of one.
Click here for a list of puxada de rede song lyrics
Click here to see other posts in Capoeira é Dança
Sources:
http://www.capoeiranyc.com/puxadaderede.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puxada_de_rede
http://www.capoeirasuldabahia.com.br/eng/default.asp?idp=23
http://gingartecapoeira.org/performances/afro-brazilian-dances/puxada-de-rede
http://formadogarrote.blogspot.com/2007/07/puxada-de-rede.html (with Google translation)
http://ube-164.pop.com.br/repositorio/35645/meusite/puxadaderede.html (with Google translation)
http://www.arteregional.com.br/curiosidades.html (with Google translation)
http://www.capoeiraddr.kit.net/txt_puxada.htm (with Google translation)
http://www.capoeiracaracas.com/?p=35 (with Google translation)
http://www.fumeb.org/pt/show.htm (with Google translation)
http://www.geocities.com/abada_cuiaba/puxada_de_rede.htm (with Google translation)
http://www.raizesbaianas.com/paginas/capoeira_az/capoeira_p.html (with Google translation)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/231575/Puxada-de-rede (with Google translation)
http://www.capoeirabrazil.com.au/music.htm
http://www.yourbestsiding.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=78
http://www.capoeiraaltoastral.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=67 (with Google translation)
http://www.balefolcloricodabahia.com.br/eng/repertorio.html
http://www.abrasoffa.org.br/folclore/danfesfol/bahiaingles.htm
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/archives/2006/3/+We+play+
Picture sources:
www.capoeirasuldabahia.com.br
www.fundacaocultural.ba.gov.br
http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu
http://olhares.aeiou.pt/puxada_de_rede/foto1463444.html
Comments : 11 Comments »
Tags: bahia, fishermen, northeastern brazil, Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes, puxada de rede, xereu, yemanja
Categories : Dances
Videos: Maculelê
18 01 2008Dear reader, please play the following clips of maculelê performances for your viewing pleasure!
With grimas:
With facãos:
Maculelê roda:
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: CAQ, grupo axe capoeira, maculele, raizes brasil
Categories : Dances, Multimedia
Capoeira é Dança, Part 1: Maculelê
17 01 2008Welcome to Part 1 of Mandingueira’s newest series, Capoeira é Dança! Maculelê has always been one of my absolute favourite things about capoeira since the first day I saw it (“That’s even cooler than the backflips!”), and I hope you enjoy finding out more about this spellbinding dance as much as I did!
Myths and Legends
Maculelê has its origins steeped in waters as murky as those which surround the origin of capoeira. Some say it came from Africa. Some say it came from indigenous Brazil. One story features slaves on a sugarcane plantation; another features two tribes at war. What is agreed, however, is that maculelê is a warrior dance—clashing blades, flying sparks, and heroic movements all blend together in a whirlwind performance against the pounding of hypnotic drums.
One of the most popular origin stories of maculelê attributes it to African slaves working on the sugarcane plantations in Brazil. The maculelê sticks were to represent stalks of sugarcane, and machetes the large knives used to cut them. Slaves, according to this theory, either formed the dance for entertainment in the fields or senzalas while resting between work, with the dance movements representing the motions of cutting sugarcane; performed it to vent their anger and frustration; or, like capoeira, practiced it as a form of self-defense disguised as a dance, later using the sticks, knives, and movements to protect themselves from physical punishment. Maculelê performances have also been known to use flaming torches in place of sticks or machetes; these represent the sticks some say slaves used to fight their “captains”, which were pulled, still burning, from the fire.
The other principal version of maculelê’s origins features a village hero, and there are variations even within this. As the story goes, all the men of a village went hunting and fishing one day, and left only one man or one boy to protect the rest of the village (i.e. women, children, and the elderly). An enemy village attacked, and the hero fought them all off with only a pair of wooden sticks he picked up off the ground. In some versions he dies in the attempt, but always when the rest of the village men return, they celebrate his bravery and spirit, creating the dance of Maculelê (possibly the hero’s name) in his honour. This story is said by some to have taken place in Africa, and one source goes so far as to give specifics: it was not one man, but 22, and they were from a village in Nigeria.
Finally, maculelê seems to be partly yet very strongly rooted in the indigenous culture of Brazil. Popular Brazilian legends tell the same tale of a sole man or boy fighting off an entire enemy tribe and saving his own, then being celebrated in the dance of maculelê. According to one, the battle was actually part of an ongoing conflict between two tribes, a warlike one and a peaceful one. The latter could not defend themselves against repeated attacks by the former, until during one attack, a young boy named Maculelê ran around with such ferocious energy holding two sticks in his hand that the warlike tribe never came back.
There is much talk of African culture having mixed with Brazil’s indigenous culture in the creation of maculelê, especially as the dance resembles some Brazilian aboriginal ones. A study by Manoel Querino, on the other hand, claims that maculelê was actually derived from the Cucumbi natives in Angola, whose battle traditions involved a “more elaborate and complex warrior dance” that “included group dance formations simulating actual combat”.
That’s it for how maculelê came to exist in the first place, but what happened after? How did this “dance of sticks” migrate from indigenous tribes, whether in Africa or Brazil, into the academies and performances of capoeira schools today?
All the World’s a Stage
That would be thanks to one Paulino Alusio de Andrade, also known as Mestre Popo do Maculelê, in the city of Santo Amaro. Apparently, Mestre Popo first used the movements of this near-forgotten dance in the street, with a friend to attract the attention of women. Then, he gathered family and friends in 1943 in order to teach them maculelê based on his memory. He refined and revived it through a folkloric dance company called Conjunto do Maculelê de Santo Amaro, with the intention of reintroducing maculelê in local religious festivals. As a result, Mestre Popo is now considered by some to be the father of maculelê in Brazil.
If Mestre Popo is the father, Santo Amaro may well be the home. A city in interior Bahia, Santo Amaro is known for its African cultural heritage, which strongly includes maculelê. Incidentally (or perhaps not so incidentally), Santo Amaro is apparently also known for “the green of its sugarcane fields”. It’s not surprising then to hear that maculelê is supposed to have developed in the sugarcane fields of Santo Amaro, where the dance has been performed in local festivals for over 200 years. It is a leading number in the Nossa Senhora de Purificacao (Our Lady of Purification) festival every February, and plays a role in other religious and harvest festivities as well.
Although no one knows exactly how old maculelê is, the role it played in Santo Amaro is unmistakeable, with records such as the following newspaper obituary, published in O Popular, December 10, 1873:
“On the first of December the African Raimunda Quiteria passed away at the age of 110. In spite of her age, she still used to cut the grass and sweep the front and back of the ‘Church of Purification’ for the maculelê festival.”
The popularity of maculelê declined after the abolition of slavery in 1888, coinciding with the death of great maculelê masters in the early 1900s, until it was revitalized by the efforts of Mestre Popo (purely for the tourism, one source claims). Now, the dance takes centre stage once again, especially among festivities in northeastern Brazil.
As for maculelê’s association with capoeira, this supposedly began in the 1960s, through the students of Mestre Bimba. Many capoeira groups today incorporate maculelê into their schools due to its similar Afro-Brazilian roots to those of capoeira.
Dance this Dance
Maculelê is immediately recognizable for its dramatic, expressive motions, high-energy performances, spectacular choreography (if applicable), and mesmerizing rhythms. The sticks, called grimas, were originally 24 inches long and 1 1/8 in. thick, but today have a range of 12-20 inches. Traditionally, grimas are made of biriba wood, the same used to make berimbaus. Maculelê knives, normally machetes, are called facãos, and they were traditionally around 40cm long (about 16 inches).
The dance is performed to a 4-count rhythm: for three beats, players strike their own sticks (or knives, or flaming torches) together in combination with expressive and athletic movements, and every fourth beat, partners strike their right-hand sticks together. Grass skirts are normally worn for performances, and sometimes bodies are painted. Although today many maculelê performances are choreographed and have dancers performing movements individually in straight lines, true maculelê is done in a roda just like capoeira is. Someone begins singing, then two people enter and begin to play. According to one source, the original basic step of maculelê was a “broken gingado” similar to that found in frevo, but through the years has been turned into “a hardened ginga with little swing”.
Maculelê songs are sung mostly in Portuguese as well as in Yoruba, one of the languages spoken by the African slaves in Brazil. Songs can lament working in the sugarcane fields, celebrate the abolition of slavery, recall the bravery of the hero Maculelê, or evoke the battles of Brazil’s indigenous peoples. Up to three atabaques may be used for the accompanying rhythms, one of each type: Rum (large), Rum-pi (medium), and Lê (small). The rhythms usually associated with maculelê are the congo, afoxé, and barra vento. Click here and scroll down for a list of maculele songs (with lyrics and English translations)!
Well, that’s it for Part 1, and I hope you discovered more about maculelê than you ever thought you would! Unfortunately, I can’t list the sources I used right now as they’re bookmarked on my own computer and I’m posting this from a hostel in Morocco, but they will be added as soon as I return home!
Update:
Click here to read a transcribed/translated interview with Mestre Popo, the “Father of Maculelê”!
Click here to read other posts in Capoeira é Dança
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Sources:
http://unterricht.vivastreet.de/unterricht-training+mannheim/capoeira-mannheim-auftrit-fotos
http://paulogualano.com/brazilian_show2.htm
http://www.carnaval.com/capoeira/
http://www.capoeirausa.net/home.html
http://www.capoeirasuldabahia.com.br/eng/default.asp?idp=23
http://carnavalderio-histoire.blogspot.com/2007/01/le-maculel.html
http://www.britannica.com/magazine/print?query=sensual&id=17&minGrade=&maxGrade=
http://www.capoeira.com.au/history.html
http://www.capoeirauniverse.com/how_to_play_maculele.html
http://capoeira.wikia.com/wiki/Maculele
http://gingartecapoeira.org/performances/afro-brazilian-dances/maculel%c3%aa
http://wikimartialarts.org/main/index.php/Maculele
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maculel%C3%AA_%28dance%29
http://www.maculelelondon.com/
http://www.worldartswest.org/main/location.asp?i=46
http://research.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/tap/ARCHIVE/1998/1998-10–maculele.html
http://www.capoeirabrazil.com.au/music.htm
http://www.capoeira.hk/e107/page.php?28
http://www.yourbestsiding.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=26
Picture sources:
http://www.achebrasil.com/photos/MaculeleEclilsonSmall.jpg
http://www.capoeira.com.au/images/maculele.jpg
http://www.capoeirasuldabahia.com.br/eng/images/maculele1.jpg
http://www.capoeiracdp.com/img/fotos/maculele/04.jpg
http://cdodurinho.vilabol.uol.com.br/fotos/m_df_dg_pr/maculele_cdo.jpg
http://www.abadacapoeira.com/2006/aliyah.2.jpg
Comments : 19 Comments »
Tags: afro-brazilian dance, brasil, brazil, capoeira, capoeira e danca, cucumbi, facao, machete, maculele, mestre popo, nossa senhora purificacao, santo amara, sugarcane fields, warrior dance
Categories : Dances
Mandingueira 
