Finding the best in South America: SAMBA
Although it thrives through all of Brazil, especially in the states of the northeast, Minas Gerais, and São Paulo, samba is most frequently identified as a musical expression of urban Rio de Janeiro, where it is said to have been born and developed between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. Many in Bahia question that, claiming that it was actually first performed in Salvador in the times from when slaves first arrived in ‘Bahia dos Santos’, which was the seat of colonial government. We can state comfortably that there was minimal, direct, European influence in the making of samba.
In the Aurélio2010edition dictionary, samba is defined as a Brazilian dance with African origins with a bipedal compass accompanied syncopatically. The second definition is of the music and associated lyrics. Those of us who dance samba usually use all of our bodies with at least part of a foot on the ground most of the time but exponents are seen floating somewhere near the surface of enormous vehicles and dancefloors. There are sambistas in wheelchairs and a few of us can ‘sambar’ in cars and even on horseback! ‘Passistas’, who are the specially trained dancers, wear extraordinarily high-heeled shoes or daintily laced boots and very little more during carnaval. They have an unbelievable ability to make a party shake all around the world and many millions are witnessing continuously more daring innovations at carnaval every year upon year. Samba-ing, if you can imagine doing samba anywhere, anytime: then you’ll be getting a little closer to understanding how popular samba really is, also as a dance!
Batuque is sometimes considered a subgenre of samba and associated ‘batucadas’ produce music and dance originating from Cabo Verde and some historians have asserted that it is a truly pan-African musical form. An explanation as to why batuque and then samba were originally exclusively South American is that drums were never illegalized by the European slave-trading colonial authorities in the southern hemisphere of the Americas, whereas drums were destroyed in the USA, for example. We have also maintained more diverse percussion and it is sometimes difficult to define or find sufficient evidence to place the origins of instruments, like the world famous drum structured ‘cuíca’. In Rio, the dance practised by former slaves who migrated from Bahia in the late 19th century, came into contact with and incorporated other genres played in the city, including ‘polka’, ‘maxixe’, ‘lundu’, and ‘xote’, thus acquiring a completely unique character and creating urban ‘carioca’ samba in its now recognised and established form of traditional ‘samba schools’, for example Leopoldense. Samba schools are large organisations committeed into hundreds and thousands, incorporating many more participants, temporarily, which compete annually at carnival parades with enormous thematic floats (trucks that have a large house-sized structure steadied on the trailer), elaborate costumes, and original music in ‘Sapucaì’, Rio’s sambadrome. The music and stars of carnaval are new every year and there are uncountable aficionados, who’re ready and willing to explain almost everything to evermore newcomers.
In the beginning, carnaval was an organised street rebellion against christian authorities and many contemporary protesters are inspired by the original, samba. It used to be a minority who planned, participated and progressed with this world culture. However, in 1917, Pelo Telefone (By Phone) was recorded and it is considered the first commercially viable samba song, which has been claimed to have been written by Ernesto dos Santos, a.k.a. ‘Donga’. There were, of course, many individuals who were included in that collective effort. From then on, samba started to be struan around Brasil, firstly by radio presenters who were associated with carnaval and then developing its own place in the music market.
The contours of modern samba came to fruition in Rio de Janeiro towards the end of the 1920s, from the innovations of groups of composers forming carnaval blocks in the neighbourhoods of Estácio de Sá, Osvaldo Cruz, Mangueira, Salgueiro and São Carlos. Since then, there have been many great composers of samba, but people in the streets have been carrying the standards, the banners and the rhythms with their feet firmly floating in Brazilian urbanisations, thus protecting, promoting and profligating the dance genre with clear intentions. In Rio, samba was initially viewed with prejudice and discrimination by the minorities in power because it had black roots and the authorities were racist or merely fearful of the consequences. With hypnotic rhythms and melodic intonations, in addition to playful and powerful lyrics, samba eventually conquered the mostly white middle classes as well, thus really freeing the spirits of millions every year most notably just before lent begins. Other genres derived from samba, such as ‘samba-canção’, ‘samba das marchinhas’, ‘samba com breques’, ‘bossa nova’, ‘samba reggae’ and ‘pagode’, have all become respected entities in themselves. Recently, it’s been pagode which has been bridging the annual, pre-lent, free-for-all, carnavalesque festivities and giving credit to the more modest samba gatherings, pagode is an intellectualised and often romanticised version with fewer musicians that is often more fun than the enormous street parades that emerge every year with full blown carnaval.
Samba’s success in Europe and the fareast not only confirms its ability to win followers, regardless of language but the proliferation of samba schools in foreign lands forming a Brazilian diaspora through almost all of western Europe and already in Japan, the recording industries are investing in the launch of sambista's discsets, which has created a market comprising catalogues including Japanese record labels. ‘Os Enredos’ recordings from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are now fast becoming the most sought annual purchase by musiclovers all around the globe. As Robert Marley stated in 1975, being interviewed by Fikisha Cumbo, ‘Americans still can’t dance reggae!’, and as a parallel observation, many around the world still seem incapable of dancing samba!
There are multiple theories about the word samba and its true origins. A few claim that samba transmuted from ‘zambra’, coming from Arabic, from the Moorish times in the Iberian Peninsula around the 8th century. Another theory has been articulated that it originated from one of many African languages, possibly Kimbundu, where ‘sam’ means ‘give’ and ‘ba’ means ‘take’. In Brazil, folklorists have suggested that the word samba is a corruption of the Kikongo word ‘semba’, translated as ‘umbigada’ in Portuguese, meaning "a blow struck with the belly button". One of our oldest records of the word samba, which was published in a Pernambucano magazine ‘O Carapuçeiro’, chronicled to February 1838, when Father Miguel Lopes Gama of Sacramento wrote in counter protest to what he called the ‘samba d'almocreve’, when he was not referring to a musical genre, but to a theatrical dance popular amongst afrobrazilians at that time. According to Hiram Araújo da Costa, over the centuries, the festive slave dances in Bahia were called samba. This adds weight to northeasteners’ claims that the true originators of samba, which is still most widely practised now in ‘rodas de samba’, are from the northeast of Brasil. Furthermore, if we accept the regional migration theory of cultural dispersion, there is little doubt and the southeasterners can always pride themselves that with radio and a record industry, it is they who have been commercialising samba for nigh on a century.
The circles of samba dancers and batucadas are still maintaining various regional characteristics and some of these popular dances are now growing as performance artists perfect their steps. A few generations ago we performed ‘bate-baú’, ‘samba-corrido’, ‘samba-de-chave’ and ‘samba-de-barravento’ in Bahia; ‘còco’ in Ceará; ‘tambor-de-crioula’ and ‘ponga’ in Maranhão; ‘trocada’, ‘còco-de-parelha’, ‘samba de còco’ and ‘soco-travado’ in Pernambuco, Paraíba, Alagoas and Sergipe, ‘bambelô’ in Rio Grande do Norte; ‘partido-alto’, ‘miudinho’, ‘jongo’ and ‘caxambu’ in Rio de Janeiro; and ‘samba-lenço’, ‘samba-rural’, ‘tiririca’, ‘miudinho’, and ‘jongo’ in São Paulo. Many of those have been left for dead, while in the northeast the diversity of dances is maintained and promoted as the original samba dances.
Another peculiarity of northeastern samba is competition. With formalised dance presentations between disputing groups of participants, showing who can perform best within smaller arenas and also involving more freeform rappers and singers with a less formalised structure, musically. There are intricate terminologies including dance phrases such as ‘quadrilha’, ‘corta-a-joca’, ‘separa-o-visgo’ and ‘apanha-o-bag’. There are many more choreographic elements in samba but ‘miudinho’ may seem familiar to anyone who has danced or observed dance. It is a dance solo in the middle of a dance circle. Say, there are 9 dancing in a circular form, then each person takes a turn to dance in the closed octagonal wheel. I’ve witnessed and participated in formats of the like in many different regions of several nations, usually in international sets of from 4 to well, 12 is acceptable, isn’t it? The instruments of traditional Bahian samba are tambourines, which are better named ‘pandeiros’, percussive ‘shakers’, ‘cowbells’, ‘berimbaus’, guitars and sometimes even ‘castanets’. Clapping of palms is often accepted in less formalised samba circles and percussion can be produced with cutlery, crockery, bottles and plastics while drumming can be generated with any imaginable large, hollow object. However, the drum manufacturing industry is required for precision and volume through the spectrum of tonalities and classifications of drums, which for many of us are the really essential instruments of samba.
Although there are many classifications of dance associated with samba, the true contemporary symbol of this dance genre is ‘samba do pé’, which is most usually a solo dance that is often performed impromptu, when any music resembling samba is played. It is an upright dance with very slight feet movements and an incredible wave from toes to headwear, with incidental balancing movements of arms, that is at times too fast for even a keen eye to observe fully. It is known to increase complete corporal suppleness, especially that of the spine. Many are simply mesmerised by competent exponents, who are also referred to as ´passistas`. The basic movement is the same to either side, where a foot moves to the outside lifting up that side of the dancers’ bodies. The other foot moves slightly forwards, and closer to the first foot. The second leg bends slightly at the knee so that side of the hip lowers and the other side appears to move higher. When in full swing, the effect of ‘a passista` is that the person’s hips appear to form a continuously elliptical gyration and ‘sambistas’’ dancers are renowned for taking the limelight, even before they start their enchanting dances, which simply follow the musical rhythms and appear to be evolving with frequently accelerating beats. Men dance with most of each foot on the ground while women, often wearing heels, dance just on the balls of their feet. The best practised just seem to float, almost levitating in gentle circular movements as if defying gravitational forces!
So, why not 'strap on some wings' and get your feet on the move here in South America just as soon as you surely can!
