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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2015
How does slavery's memory work its way out in Afro-Brazilian syncretic culture (and particularly carnival) today? How does this African interculturation react with white Brazilian culture? I shall begin an answer to these questions by paying methodological homage to Raymond Williams and by turning to the contemplation of some “key words” which I believe provide “a vocabulary of [Afro Brazilian syncretic] culture and society.” Batuque and calunga are at the heart of the ceremony performed by Recife's Afro-Brazilian afoxés during the Noite do Tambores Silenciosos (“Night of the Silent Drums”). They are key words which encapsulate music and ritual focussed upon a remarkably charged engagement with Brazil's African inheritance, and its positive cultural manifestations both within and beyond slavery. They are also conceptually multivalent terms that finally emphasize their resistance to, and untranslatability within, the modes of white Euro-American academic thought.
1 Amado, Jorge, Tent of Miracles (Tenda das Milagres) (São Paulo: Livraria Martins, 1969)Google Scholar 168, my translation.
2 For Brazilian race theorists in the first half of the twentieth century see Needell, Jeffrey D., “History, Race, and the State in the Thought of Oliveira Viana,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 75, 1 (1995), 51–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Twine, F. W., Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Wood, Marcus, “Slavery, History and Satire: The Legacy of Gilberto Freyre,” in Oboe, Analisa and Scacchi, Anna, eds., Recharting the Black Atlantic: Modern Cultures, Local Communities, Global Connections (London: Routledge, 2008), 128–32Google Scholar. There is also a fine bibliographic essay available on the web at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/louthan/Historiography-2/bib-essay.htm.
3 See Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Barringer, Tim, Forrester, Gillian and Martinez-Ruiz, Barbaro, eds., Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds exhibition catalogue (New Haven and London: Yale Centre for British Art and Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, and particularly Kenneth Bilby, “More than Met the Eye: African-Jamaican Festivities in the Time of Belisario”, in ibid., 121–33. For English extrapolations of the John Canoe/Jonkonnu ceremony see my discussion “John Canoe and the Slave Ship Brookes”, in Wood, Marcus, The Horrible Gift of Freedom (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010)Google Scholar 388–91.
4 For the musical forms see Metz, Jerry D., “Cultural Geographies of Afro-Brazilian Symbolic Practice: Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nação (Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil),” Latin American Music Review, 29, 1 (2008) 64–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Finley, M. I., Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980), 116Google Scholar.
6 Collins Pocket Portuguese Dictionary, entries “Batucada,” “Batucar.”
7 Elwes, Alfred, A Dictionary of the Portuguese Language … Including a Large Number of Technical Words Used in Mining Engineering etc., etc. (London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1891)Google Scholar entries for “batuque” and “batucadar.”
8 Taylor, James L., A Portuguese English Dictionary (George Harrap: New York, 1958)Google Scholar, entries for “Batuque,” “Batucar.”
9 Novo Michaelis Dicionário Ilustrado, Volume II, Português–Inglês, 13 Edição (São Paulo: Edições Melhoramentos, 1973), entries for “Batuque,” “Batucar.”
10 Schneider, John T., Dictionary of African Borrowings in Brazilian Portuguese (Hamburg: H. Buske, 1991), 25–26Google Scholar.
11 For batchuk see Cacciatore, O. G., Novo Dicionário de cultos Afro-Brasileiros (Rio de Janeiro: Foresne Universitária, 1977)Google Scholar.
12 Megenney, W. W., A Bahian Heritage: An Ethnolinguistic Study of African Influence on Bahian Portuguese (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
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16 Lody, Raul and Martins Batista, Maria Regina, Colleção Maracatu Elefante e de Objecto Afro-Brasileiros Museu do Homem do Nordeste (Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 1987)Google Scholar
17 Lody, Raul, O Negro no Museu Brasileiro Construindo Identidades (Rio de Janeiro, Bertrand Brasil, 2005), 233–43Google Scholar.
18 For the appropriative absorption of commercial doll forms into syncretic rituals in the context of Barbie dolls in Brazil see Wood, Black Milk, 476–82.
19 de Andrade, Mário, “A Calunga dos Maracatus,” repr. in Carneiro, Edison, ed., Antologia do Negro Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Tecnoprint Gráfica S. A., 1975)Google Scholar, 301–8.
20 Taylor, Portuguese English Dictionary, entry calunga.
21 da Costa e Silva, Alberto, A Enxada e a Lança: A África antes dos Portugueses (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1992)Google Scholar.
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23 Carneiro, Edison, Religiões Negras/Negros Bantos (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1991)Google Scholar, 158.
24 Bettiol, Leopold, Do Batuque e das Origens da Umbanda (Rio de Janeiro: Gráfica Editora Aurora, 1963)Google Scholar, 175, defines Calunga as “um deus do mar, idêntiko do Olokum” (a sea god identical to Olokum). Olokum is the son of Orungam and Yemanjá, the god of the sea and of abysms, and like Yemanjá is associated with white and crystal.
25 Desch-Obi, T. J., “Combat and the crossing of the Kalunga,” in Heywood, Linda M., ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 353–70, 354–55. The idea that the Calunga might be an extension of the Bantu and Yoruba belief systems relating to the spirit world was first explored in Carneiro, Religiões, 158–62.
26 Green, Doris, “Traditional Dance in Africa,” in Ashanti, Kariamu Welsh, ed., African Dance, An Artistic, Historical and Philosophical Enquiry (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1997), 13–28Google Scholar; Esilokun Kini-Olusanyin, “A Panoply of African Dance Dynamics,” in ibid., 29–38; Robert W. Nicholls, “African Dance: Bridges to Humanity,” in ibid., 41–63.
27 Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil, 49.
28 Fred Astaire, Holiday Inn, 1942; A Damsel in Distress, 1937; Royal Wedding, 1951; See “Fred Astaire Dances with Props” video compilation, at www.youtube.com.
29 For the popularity of the polka and a fascinating exploration of its relation to the memory of slavery see de Assis, Machado, “The Celebrity,” in de Assis, The Church and Other Stories, trans. Jack Schmitt and Lorie Ishimatsu (Manchester: Carcanet, 1985), 122–32Google Scholar.
30 Welsh-Asante, African Dance.
31 King, Anita, Samba! And Other Afro-Brazilian Dance Expressions (London: Roots of Brazil Inc., 1989)Google Scholar; Cook, Larry, Focus: Music of Northeast Brazil (London: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar; Lewis, J. Lowell, Ring of Liberation: Deceptive Discourse in Brazilian Capoeira (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
32 Quoted in White, Shane, “‘It Was a Proud Day’: African Americans, Festivals, and Parades in the North, 1741–1834,” Journal of American History, 81, 1 (1994), 13–50, 23–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For slave dancing see Emery, Lynne Fauley, Black Dance in the United States from 1619–1970 (Palo Alto: National Press Books, 1972)Google Scholar.
33 The Old Plantation, Abby Aldrich Folk Art Centre, Williamsburg, VA.
34 For a summary of recent scholarship and an account of this painting in the context of expressions of freedom by slaves before emancipation see Wood, Horrible Gift, 178–81.
35 Robert Farris Thompson has described this specific dance in feeling terms; see Lawal, Babatunde, “Reclaiming the Past: Yoruba Elements in African American Arts,” in Ogundiran, Akinwumi and Falola, Toyin, eds., Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007), 291–324, 293–95Google Scholar.
36 For the symbolic powers of the oja see Lawal, Babatunde, The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender and Social Harmony in an African Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 184–89Google Scholar.
37 See Cacciatore, Dicionário, entry for oja, and Schneider, Dictionary of African Borrowings, entry for oja.
38 For the general Central and West African belief in the space of kalunga as spiritual threshold see Desch-Obi, “Combat and the Crossing of the Kalunga,” 354–55; Sweet, James H., Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship and Religion in the African–Portuguese World 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 142–43Google Scholar.