World music culture and global traditions

¶ … Music Culture: Congado

The purpose of this work is to review the article written by Lucas Glaura about the music rituals of the Afro-Brazilian Group who has the "Ceremony of Congado."

Each year religious musical festivals take place in Minas Gerais, Brazil in which musical worship is the focus. These festivals and ceremonies hail from a past when the whites were actively making slaves of the blacks and these ceremonies were the cultural response to those dark times. The religious ceremonies are complete with chanting, singing, dancing and playing instruments. Considered a form of praying by the Afro-Brazilian religious groups that take part the ceremony and they are very serious about their dance and playing of instruments as all of this is a part of their worship and is considered to be highly sacred to these people.

Congado

This musical worship is known as "Congado" with thousands of the people coming from the small villages in which they live to take part in the ancient memorial. The groups that take part in this "Brotherhood of the Rosary are the Congo, Catope, Marujos, Mocambique, Candombe and Cabocios groups and they are called the guardas or ternos. Each group has its own definitive expressed through clothing, ritual objects as well as the choreography of the dance and other specific musical individualities.

Candombe: The Father

Candombe is considered the father and is expressed in street ceremonies and musical dance and performance in some regions. However, in most of the regions the Candombe is an indoor ceremony, which is of a very privatized nature and is attended only by those of the elite heads of the spiritual groups. The Candombe ritual "the three drums" are drums which the participants play by hand along with the guaias which are a type of rattles that are made from baskets and finally the puita or cuica which are a type of "friction drum."

The kings and queens rule over the ceremony standing in stead of "Our Lady of the Rosary," royalty of Africa and the saints. The attendance of royalty is part of the heritage since the time of colonization. Each year a new king and queen is chosen who will hold the position for the following year.

II. The Lady in the Sea

The basis for the festival is the creation story. There is a legend told that during the time of slavery that "Our Lady of the Rosary" materialized out in the sea. In this legend the black people rescued "Our Lady of the Rosary after the whites failed in their rescue attempt. The Congado ceremony begins at the ending of Holy Week, which corresponds with Easter Sunday in the U.S. The first ceremony in the festival is the "congadeiros" meaning "The Opening of the Reign." The festival goes until sometimes in October or November. The most anticipated festival is the rosary festival which last three days and requires a month's preparation.

Several individual rituals are enclosed within the ceremonies. The difference in rhythm is what defines the differences in the participating groups. The performances are structured in rhythmic patterns that are "adorned" or "extrapolated through variation processes." There are three possible patterns of rhythms as follows:

Base: The base is the "basic structure" with variation allowed dependent upon the "performer or the circumstance;

Floreios and Enchimentos, or adornments and fillings respectively are add-ons of minor nature, which are added to the base or basic structure of rhythm.

Repiques: Variations that are extreme in nature creating breaks from the original pattern of rhythm.

The repique temporarily transforms the basic pattern's nature. Generally the basic pattern is maintained by one drummer with another drummer or two playing the repique which results in a polyrhythmic structure. The "rhythmic behavior that is the functional complementaries of the groups in the ceremonies of Congado is evidenced on the musical level." The hierarchy determined that the Congo would be the initiator of the parades with Mocambique leading the royalty.

The drums each have a different pitch with the Marcacao being played by the drum of higher pitch while the Requesta is played by the other two lower pitched drums in the ceremony.

The Marcha Lenta, or "slow march" and Marcha Grave, or "grave march" have ritual functions quite different from one another which somewhat put limitations on the allowance of repiques. The more solemn part of the Congo ceremony as well as the mournful parts are both led by the Marcha Lenta and this is done without repiques in the rhythm. Performed in the parades and allowing repiques, the Marcha Grave is in tempo faster than the Marcha Lenta.

The basic patterns of rhythm are easily distinguished in the Mocambique due to the fact that at least one performer plays the base with other performing the repiques. However, in the Congo repiques are faster than those of the Mocambique are however the variation in the Mocambique are heavy with meaning and through their power the Candombe becomes emergent. In Lucas' account of the Congado Captain Joao Lopes from Jatoba states that: