Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Vol 7, No 1 (2011)
“Na Cadência Bonita do Samba”: Accomplishing Suingue in Toronto1 Natasha Pravaz My friend Layah Davis, a Torontonian tamborim player who is a member of local samba bands Batucada Carioca and Samba Squad, once told the following story: [. . .] For me, in terms of the uplifted quality, mostly that’s my own creation. I think the music does it, but it’s because I allow myself to experience, to go there. And sometimes it feels like drudgery, you know. You’re in this gig, it’s cold, it’s rainy. Or nobody’s [. . .] for instance we go to do a wedding and everybody’s standing there like this [arms crossed] and watching us. We’re like “What the hell are we doing here? What a waste of time.” But interestingly enough, even at the end of gigs like that, we feel great. We walk out. They’re all still standing there going . . . Sourpussing. Although, truth be told, it’s very hard to be like that at the end of the show. Most of them, they have to let loose in some way. Foot tapping, shoulders moving. Even when they don’t really want to because they think they’re above it or whatever. The truth is most of the time people do free up themselves, as they’d say. Even we, we have a joke for instance in the Squad we often say: “We just did that gig for ourselves.” We don’t play for anybody but ourselves, really. What happens when Afro-Brazilian sounds such as samba are lifted from their contexts of origin and performed by and/or for non-Brazilians in Canada? In particular, what happens to the samba groove—cadência or suingue as Brazilians call it—and what does this suingue do, or not do, to those performing? I am interested here in exploring these questions by focusing on two interrelated matters pertaining to Brazilian improvisative consciousness: the pedagogical dynamics of samba transmission, and the dialectics of freedom and restraint in samba’s creation 2 processes, particularly within Canadian samba. This essay analyzes Canadian expressions of cultural practices of Brazilian origin, highlighting how local bodies at times resist the call of samba, generating social tensions. In particular, I look at (a) the corporeal dimensions of music instruction; (b) the distinction between improvisation-driven backyard jams and increasingly market-driven escolas de samba; and (c) the manifestation of Brazilian modes of being-in-the-world such as the ethos of malandragem (mischief). My argument is based on ongoing fieldwork and research with Toronto-based performers of Afro-Brazilian music who play in large, amateur ensembles such as Batucada Carioca, of which I am a member. While Afro-Brazilian culture became a symbol of mestiço (mixed) national identity at the hand of early 20th century populist leaders, the appropriation of subaltern cultural practices by those in positions of privilege is evidently not unique to Brazil.3 The transnational dimensions of this cultural circulation, in particular, deserve further attention. I am interested here in exploring the ways in which samba is transmitted, learned, and performed outside of Brazil at a time when Afro-Brazilian practices have become thoroughly embedded in global understandings of Brazilianness. The racialized dimensions of this process shift in meaning as the qualities associated with Afro-Brazilians back home (e.g. sensuality, tropical abandonment, cheerfulness) become markers of Brazilian migrants in general. Yet, in their exchanges with host-land nationals, Brazilians are not the strawparrot of a Walt Disney cartoon.4 It is indeed crucial to differentiate appropriating impulses in Euro-American relationships to black culture from forms of cross-cultural identification that serve emancipatory ends and that encourage taking stock of one’s experiences and responsibilities (Lipsitz 56). In terms of the consumption practices of Afro-Brazilian culture abroad, not only are migrants often active in setting the terms of intercultural encounters, they also choose to build relationships with non-Brazilians who “take stock” of their experiences and responsibilities vis-à-vis their engagement with Afro-Brazilian culture. In more than one way, it is Brazilians who have the upper hand in such exchanges: they have something Canadians want, but can only get if they make themselves vulnerable, allowing themselves to be transformed. Surreptitiously insinuating themselves in the bodies and minds of the locals, Afro-Brazilian modes of being in the world assert their power the malandro (trickster) way: exercising a rather oblique seduction. The pedagogical dynamics of intercultural samba transmission are rife with misunderstandings based mostly on divergent proxemic and kinesthetic worlds. They may also be thought of as transnational manifestations of historical tensions between two competing paradigms at the heart of the samba world: the highly-structured, market driven style of escolas de samba (the large samba groups who parade during carnaval celebrations); and the slower-paced, 5 improvisation-driven backyard jams or pagodes characteristic of neighborhood life in Rio’s poor suburbs. This distinction is not meant to be taken as a sharp rift clearly observable to the “naked eye,” but as a heuristic methodological device that allows us to highlight differences which occur mostly on a continuum. As documented by Nei Lopes, the Centro Cultural Cartola (see Brazil), and others, pagodes were the breeding ground of escolas de samba: “Certainly, the first moments of the first Carioca samba entities [i.e., escolas] were marked by pagodes 6 dominated by partido-alto [an improvisation-based style of samba characterized by verbal duels]” (Lopes 177). Such
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pagodes were held at the homes of Tia (Aunt) Ciata and other Baianas of Rio’s Pequena África in the early twentieth 7 century. While samba jams were at the root of the emergence of escolas in the 1920s, they have become increasingly relegated from the quadras (escola rehearsal spaces) to environments such as the quintais da velha guarda (“old guard” backyards where long time, senior members of escolas de samba get together to rehearse in preparation for carnaval parades, but also for the sake of camaraderie). As carnaval parades (the main focus of escolas) became progressively timed events with ever faster andamentos (musical tempi), sambas-enredo (escolas’ theme songs) distanced themselves from their own matrix and improvisation lost prestige to the point that it was officially banned from parades in 1946 (Brazil 37, 40). While escolas de samba continue to be a fulcrum of life in Rio’s Zona Norte (poorer North region) and beyond, the social and cultural transformations undergone by these institutions have significantly hampered the presence of ancestral practices based on collective authorship, provocation, jest, and amateurism, practices that strongly emphasized improvisation and community (Centro Cultural Cartola 24-30). In the 1930s and 1940s, samba players and composers were the main organizers of escolas and therefore felt a sense of ownership from which they have become increasingly alienated (Monarco, qtd. in Trotta and Castro 66). In terms of how the texture of the samba sound has been affected, escola mestres (teachers/masters) such as Maninho Costa and others have pointed out that the speed at which samba must be performed today makes it more akin to frevo (a very fast Northeastern musical form) than to the groovy samba of escolas from the 1980s, which they cherished (Maninho Costa, personal communication). Maninho, in particular, has reported that it is difficult to play the repinique (one of the main instruments in samba improvisation) with any flair in the new context: he seeks to recreate the cadência of the 1980s through his samba leadership.
“ Cadência É Isso Aqui Ó ” Born Joelson David Costa, but largely known by the friendly nickname of Maninho (Little Brother), Costa is a Brazilian samba master who relocated to Toronto in the early 2000s after having been invited to perform for the Carnaval Ball Gala, one of the most prestigious charity events in Canada.8 He eventually started his own band, Batucada Carioca, assembling a motley crew of amateur and professional musicians from very diverse backgrounds and nationalities for whom collective music making has become a central part of their social and cultural life. Maninho has not had formal training in music: his schooling was in the trenches of the União da Ilha and the Grande Rio, escolas de samba whose percussion wings (baterias) were usually in the range of 250 to 300 members and that were at different points 9 in time led by his uncle, mestre Odilon Costa. Embodying ginga (swing; constant rhythmic movement; nimbleness; flair), Maninho abruptly stops Batucada rehearsals in exasperation to underscore what he calls the cadência. He stomps one foot after the other and moves his arms from side to side in a slightly delayed fashion, saying loudly: “cadência é isso aqui ó” (this is the groove, right here). While most Batucada members are not fluent in Portuguese, we all understand his meaning: Samba’s quintessential trait is a flavourful suingado or cadenciado, a specific way of playing that maintains a steady core tempo while gracefully emphasizing the off-beat. At a recent rehearsal (September 14, 2010), Maninho taught caixa (snare drum) players a rhythmic pattern that illustrates this point. The pattern was on a simple 2/4 meter, alternating left and right-hand drumstick strokes, four on each beat of a measure. Maninho does this Ta Ka ta ka, one stroke with each hand to a total of eight per bar, emphasizing the first two of each beat, playing the second two softly. He tells us to play it. Then he stops us to tell us what is not working. M: We need to play this with ginga. The ginga is here [emphasizes the strong notes while demonstrating]. It has to have a little onion, tomato, green pepper, you have to be flavourful. Don’t play it like this, mechanical [“ta ka ta ka,” all sounds are the same – he pretends to be an automaton], this is not good, you need to find the swing. It’s like the tamborim [tamborins’ main pattern, the carreteiro, consists of 8 sixteenth notes per measure]. Then he tells us that it’s not good either when we only emphasize the strong beats but we can’t hear the soft 10 ones. He says this is the secret of samba: the cadenciado. (Author’s fieldnotes) Maninho struggles to communicate the importance of a multilayered approach to rhythm, an approach that emphasizes syncopation and a heightened, simultaneous awareness of tempo and dynamics. Such issues are of
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great concern for Canadians invested in learning the intricacies of Afro-Brazilian percussion. Carlie Howell, for example, a fellow tamborim player in Batucada Carioca, stresses that it is impossible to represent on paper the sixteenth notes played by our instrument because of slight variations in timing and attack that make you feel like you are floating. You need to throw yourself in the groove, she says, rather than trying to find it with the help of a metronome. Indeed, thinking, feeling, and perceiving in terms of syncopation (a concept which emphasizes stressed and non-stressed beats) should be accompanied by an understanding of the off-beats as layer and dimension in their own right, as failure to do so is often at the root of difficulties in participating fully in the samba experience, including 11 the ability to personally generate rhythmic patterns. The recurrent use of the term “cadência,” then, may be interpreted as a reminder of how the dynamics of rhythmic patterns can throw one off-balance, providing encouragement to keep moving the body as a way of finding sure footing while “floating.” Muniz Sodré’s conceptualization of the syncopated dimension of samba helps draw attention to the fundamental place corporeality plays in this musical form. His insights bring light to the pedagogical impasses Maninho confronts in helping his students actualize the samba suingue or cadência into specific sound and movement sequences. In the syncopated, polyrhythmic musical form of samba, the strong accent is suspended. For Sodré, this suspension calls the body to fill in the gaps: “Within the meaningful dimension generated by traditional samba, the physical presence of the human body is indispensable” (Samba 47). While Sodré’s argument addresses the embodied dimensions of Afro-Brazilian art forms vis-à-vis their roots in candomblé ritual,12 this “calling” is also what Layah makes reference to when she notices the shoulder move and the foot tap among the “sourpussing crowd” of the proverbial stiff wedding. Batucada members are not far from this crowd at times, in our hesitation to loosen up the body and allow strange sounds to take over our field of perception/action. Can suingue be learned methodically? Maninho is hopeful. He insists that we move our bodies as we play, keeping the main beat with our feet. Advocating a pedagogy of embodiment, his greatest challenge is to impart an oral/somatic tradition in a setting where most are accustomed to being taught “by the book.” Maninho’s emphasis on the corporeality inherent in the production of AfroBrazilian sounds is as evident in his directives to Batucada as in his beginners’ workshops. The latter start off with a lesson in walking, a teaching tool Costa adopted while observing his uncle teach samba technique with music 13 educator Lucas Ciavatta (“Maninho – First Lesson” video, 1 minute 35 seconds. Credits: Mike Filippov). The ability to properly execute the intricate polyrhythmic patterns of samba rests on a thorough absorption of the two main beats marked by the key bass drums, surdo de segunda (second) and surdo de primeira (first), until they become second nature. For those who grew up listening to samba and watching their relatives dance to it, a lesson such as this is as unthinkable as it is unnecessary. Primary socialization has facilitated the mastery of the most basic samba skills on a preconscious level, through incorporation into the habitus—the culturally-informed system of “regulated improvisations” in which our embodied dispositions or physical faculties develop and are negotiated (Bourdieu 72-95). Those unfamiliar and uncomfortable with an emphasis on the offbeat, on the other hand, painstakingly count “one, two, one, two,” and need to be continuously reminded of keeping time with their feet. While for Maninho it is only natural to emphasize this in beginners’ workshops, his expectations for Batucada Carioca are high: we have been playing together for several years. My instrument section—the tamborins, together with the chocalhos and agogôs—adds color to samba’s basic rhythmic patterns, played by the cozinha (“kitchen”): caixas, surdos and repiniques.14 Tamborim players, in particular, are expected to remember long rhythmic phrases that change with each song or break. Always the optimist, Maninho trusts that we will eventually have incorporated enough of his suingue to produce our own riffs or desenhos (in Brazil, the tamborim section of any escola de samba has a leader who creates specific, complex phrases for the sambaenredo that usually accompany the song’s melody). The ability to create desenhos requires an embodied grasp of the centrality of tempo, dynamics, and off-beat notes, knowledge that comes from extended experience in this particular samba sub-genre. While Batucada’s tamborim players show little sign of being able to produce desenhos, Maninho generally assumes that we will be comfortably able to follow his last-minute creations (which may change from one rehearsal to the next). The players, including myself, sometimes get frustrated with Maninho’s need to teach us new things before we have worked out old versions of breaks and tunes, and with the fact that he throws new songs at us at the last minute (i.e. one or two rehearsals before a gig). I once asked him about his desire to constantly change things around, as opposed to staying with what is tried and true. He responded that he wants to show us what is possible, where we could be going as a band, and what our sound and repertoire could be like. His dream is to have a completely different set of songs for each gig, which is not without its challenges, considering our difficulties keeping up even when things stay the same. One of the keys to understanding the source of pedagogical tensions at the heart of Batucada is to think in terms of the gap between Maninho’s cultural background and that of most other band members. While several either grew up
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in Brazil or can trace Brazilian descent, Maninho is the only one who was raised in a samba-dominated neighborhood, Ilha do Governador, home to an important escola de samba, Escola União da Ilha do Governador. This is the context in which, at a very early age, he learned the craft of musicianship from some of the best samba masters, including his uncle Odilon. It was here that Maninho honed his skills and learned the pain and pleasure of being a member of an escola’s bateria. Escolas de samba are well-established institutions with decades-long traditions and are readily recognized by neighborhood communities and society at large as repositories of local knowledge. In fact, the epithet mestre encapsulates the meaning of both “master” and “teacher,” and such mestres are known as acadêmicos (scholars). Yet, Maninho himself admits that the transmission of knowledge in this context can be ruthless, with escola leaders screaming in players’ ears and chastising them publicly when they do not play correctly. Perhaps this strict disciplinary mode of being stems from a class habitus conditioned by the hardships of Brazil’s economic divide. In order to be acknowledged in a hierarchical society dominated by great class and race divisions, marginalized Brazilians of color have to work twice as hard to prove themselves. In order to be successful at parades and please both jury members (who evaluate their every move) and TV stations (who broadcast every detail), escolas have become well-oiled machines where no glitches are allowed. In this way, escolas are today practically the opposite of the pagodes de fundo de quintal (backyard jams), where spontaneity, playfulness, and horizontal social relations are key. In her pioneering study of the ethos of malandragem as expressed in samba lyrics between 1932 and 1954, Claudia Matos emphasizes that during the first half of the twentieth century, samba production was mostly seen by composers and players as a communal activity in a context where authorship transcended the limits of individuality and gave voice to a collective being (18). Today, it can be said that escolas represent the quintessential communal embodiment of samba: certainly, the thrill of participating in such organizations is largely based on the sheer mass of bodies embracing this togetherness through music and dance. However, the quality of creative dialogue characteristic of musical exchanges at the beginning of the last century has lost significant ground in such environments. Escolas have become larger-than-life marching bands based on strict discipline, following a script, and obeying a leader: three axes that may give a militarized feeling to the experience of participating in parades.15 Apprenticing to become a member of the bateria of an escola de samba may be disheartening at times. Yet, belonging to one is a dream come true for any Brazilian percussionist interested in the heavy sounds of sambasenredo. Achieving this feat usually involves years of learning the craft at the hands of local mestres and rehearsing on a very strict, demanding schedule during the months leading up to carnaval. Bateria directors must master all instruments in the bateria, and becoming a bateria director takes tremendous amounts of artistic, organizational, and interpersonal skill, not unlike the skills needed by a symphonic orchestra conductor. Such is the social and cultural context that informs Maninho’s approach to samba transmission in general and his ambitions for Batucada Carioca in 16 particular. While Maninho is as accomplished a musician as any escola director in Rio, he makes due with a group of players who for the most part were until relatively recently not familiar with samba, let alone a surdo or a tamborim. Maninho would like to directly transfer the reality of Rio’s baterias to Canadian soil; he does, however, understand the restrictions of his new environment—in particular, that chastising “bad” players is counterproductive and even dangerous for Batucada’s continuity. In the Canadian context, not only do escolas de samba not carry any particular cachet with the average citizen, the number of musicians interested in or able to play the loud, highly intricate, and syncopated rhythms of sambas-enredo is extremely limited. Despite the difficulties inherent in learning a foreign tradition, both Maninho and other Batucada members get something from making music together that goes beyond the technicalities of learning to keep time with cadência: they delight in the experience of collective musicking as a community-building endeavor. Indeed, in his displacement across the hemisphere, Maninho Costa has found a way to contest the current hegemony of speed. In our reception of Rio’s samba styles via his pedagogy, we become acculturated to a form virtually lost in its original environment. In this way, Maninho challenges the massive transformations underwent by samba due to the institutionalization of escolas in the last two decades. Yet as much as Maninho is a free spirited trickster—a malandro—, he is also bound to the ethos inculcated in him by escola mestres. The following sections discuss the dialectics of freedom and restraint in samba by looking at the role of improvisation in the creative process and at malandragem as a mode of being-in-the-samba-world. These incursions should also shed further insight into the somatic incongruities that shape much of the pedagogical conflicts at the heart of Batucada.
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The Language of Samba: Improvisation and the Collective Until the 1970s and before the massive commoditization of escola de samba culture, it was common to hear at the quadras impromptu compositions based on improvisation-driven subgenres such as the partido alto. In this way, the environment of escolas de samba reproduced in a larger scale the conviviality of Rio’s pagodes. Today, however, sambas-enredo need to be well rehearsed and as close to the chosen arrangement as possible, and rehearsals leading up to the carnaval season reflect this pressure to conform. Under this system, composers do not have a lot of freedom: melodies need to be catchy, lyrics easy to follow. The escola may even lose points if the song presents vícios de linguagem: language “vices” or tampering common in local popular slang (gíria). The speed of samba, as mentioned above, is a central way in which the art form has become disciplined, but particular uses of certain instruments have been just as strongly affected: the presence of pandeiro and cuíca solos, for example, has greatly diminished in the context of escola rehearsals. What remains of off-season improvisational flavors is best represented by the repinique. Further, while recordings of sambas-enredo document improvisations by individual tamborim players well into the 1970s, the 1980s brought about tamborim patterns and conventions prevalent today (Zeh 170). Within Batucada, back in Toronto, improvisation is clearly regulated by our skill levels, and collective jamming is a rarity. Maninho is the only regular soloist, although at times he is joined by others, such as Nacho Alvarez Conde and Jon Medow, who have begun to develop the craft of the repinique. The spontaneous, amateur characteristics of pagodes are thus demoted while Maninho attempts to have a financially viable group known about town as a repository of Carioca escola styles. Sitting uncomfortably as an uninvited guest at our rehearsals, improvisation brings mayhem to attempts at institutionalization. Players on occasion intervene unexpectedly to make amusing sounds with their instruments in the midst of a particular break or groove pattern. Most of us laugh and take delight in the spur-of-the-moment occurrence. Maninho, on the other hand, makes it clear that he sees this as a transgression bordering on disrespect, one that represents wavering duty toward samba. He has mentioned that he dislikes jams due to the absence of professionalism involved and the lack of care shown to instruments, tuning practices, etc. Maninho’s leadership exhibits a paradoxical relationship between institutional samba culture on the one hand and the autonomy and freedom characteristic of pagodes on the other. While unstructured jams are not his cup of tea, Maninho does attempt to pass along multi-instrumental improvisational skills grounded in the samba idiom. Precious little time is devoted to this endeavor, however, and more often than not his apprentices feel like they are producing an artificial hodgepodge of licks. Yet, Humberto (Beto) Porto (one of Batucada’s cavaquinho and caixa players) invites us to think about the process of samba creation as an impeachment of motif theory (i.e. the notion that Afrological improvisation is based on memorized motifs or “licks”), using a linguistic analogy that resonates significantly with George Lewis’s work (146) (“Beto Porto Linguagem” video, 47 seconds). Beto argues that to be able to “speak” in samba it is necessary to learn the specifics of samba’s vocabulary: “Just as when after learning how to speak a language fluently, you improvise your sentences, you create poetry with those phrases and so on, music is like that. After you become fluent, you are able to feel that number of bars without counting, you are able to sense where the melody goes.” Beto’s reflections on music, language, and improvisation also touch upon the difficult topic of spontaneity, a full understanding of which he believes should not reduce it to amnesic, “immaculately original” practices focused on individual expression, but take into account its community-building dimensions:17 It is a process that takes a long time for you to do it with, let’s say, speaking the language with spontaneity, right? You can be really spontaneous, but you are not speaking the language. You can be very spontaneous, and “follow me, if you can, because I am going for a ride.” That’s easy. I can do that too. That’s easy to do, understand? Now, for you to be spontaneous and really be there playing together with everybody, that’s the real challenge for me, that’s it, when I see the guy playing I say “ahhh, that’s it.” That’s the stuff. Crucial here is the emphasis on “playing together with everybody.” There is a deep listening (Oliveros xxiii) implied in this togetherness, a care for understanding not only the traditions involved in the idiomatic form of expression that is samba, but also the context-bound dynamics of the social encounter within which samba’s actualization takes place. Yet, as Toronto-based samba players listen to each other’s sounds at rehearsal and in performance, the common ground upon which communication is achieved may turn into quicksand. Socially inflected listening practices do, after all, implicate distinct forms of knowledge, belief, and subjectivity (Becker 137). Just what kinds of identification with culturally diverse notions of musicality and personhood are and are not possible across the divide between Canadian artists without a comprehensive experience of Brazilian traditions and someone like Maninho who lives and breathes samba?
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“Pretend You Are Happy” At rehearsal, Batucada is in formation: all facing forward, organized by instrument into different rows. Maninho gestures for us to come closer to each other: “you need to support each other, take energy from each other. Not like this.” He makes a facial expression of disgust, walking away from an imaginary fellow player, shaking his hands as if to rid himself from germs or dirt. “Like you are friends. In Brazil it is like this.” His speech-act challenges our habitual understanding of relationships within Batucada as being defined by the bonds of friendship. He implies we are not “really” friends if we can’t literally “rub elbows.” Maninho’s embodied and verbal narrative discloses deep-seated Brazilian beliefs about the central place of physical closeness in proper sociability, beliefs that challenge Canadian preferences for “personal space.” At every turn, Maninho confronts an unspoken cultural border. He challenges what we can stereotypically generalize as the “coldness” of Canada’s ethos by making a display of sadness when the cadenciado is off. Bringing his hands together, fingers folded in, one hand wrapping the other, Maninho gestures toward his heart. He gently taps his chest twice, a look of heartfelt longing mixed in with a bit of disappointment. The music we make is linked to our heartbeats: “É o coração. Bum, bum.” This statement not only indicates belief in a primordial, embodied connection between samba and human physiology, but also brings to the fore the understanding that music making should never be a mechanical act, that expressivity (symbolized by the heart as seat of the emotions) should carry us through. In preparation for a gig in Montreal, Maninho takes steps to groom the band in ways that go beyond musical concerns. Rehearsing the tunes, we are tense, concerned that we will not be able to pull it off (particularly as a large portion of the band will not be in attendance and things keep changing in terms of repertoire and arrangement). We have been rehearsing one of our war-horses, a samba-enredo from the escola Acadêmicos do Salgueiro that we perform accompanied by a little choreography: during the chorus, we all walk in line to one side of the stage, and then back, and forth and back, etc. Maninho stares at us and sees the stiffness, the blank faces. He stops us mid-way and says in frustration: Hey, what’s going on, this is supposed to be something happy, to make people happy. When you play this song in Brazil, people go crazy, they really love it. Look at you [imitates someone walking slowly and tentatively toward one side of the room, looking over their shoulder, talking to themselves], “oh, not again, I have to do this, when is this going to end?” [generalized hysterical laughter]. How are we supposed to get the crowd going like this? This is not an orchestra, where you have to be all serious and follow a script. This is supposed to make you feel happy. Even if you don’t feel this, at least pretend. You can try to fake it. Tongue-in-cheek, as if to literally throw us off balance, he adds: “Pretend you actually like samba, that you actually like what you are doing.” At first glance, this statement merely seems to elicit that we see the incongruence between our intention (to play samba for fun) and our actions (serious expressions and stiffness, representing boredom, insecurity, disengagement, etc.); yet his words have an imperative quality. He gestures with open hands, ten fingers spread apart, as if to draw out cat’s whiskers from his own face while smiling broadly: a forced, fake smile. He gets us to laugh again, but he is also demanding more from us in our commitment to Batucada: total immersion in Brazilian modes-of-being. The arrival of Maninho Costa has been a watershed for Torontonians’ ability to experience Rio’s samba firsthand and to learn from a traditionally-trained master. The pedagogical challenges experienced by Maninho as our teacher and by us as his students stem from significantly divergent worldviews and listening dispositions (Becker 137). Out of our collective struggle to inhabit a shared musical habitus is borne a particular expression of what Jason Stanyek has theorized as interculturalism, an embodied strategy for creative engagement with “the shifting politics of co-presence” (27). Stanyek emphasizes the spatial dimensions of interculturalism, a practice, he argues, that “implies an unusual simultaneity, a cohabitation of a discrete space by disparate individuals who, under normal circumstances, would be isolated from one another” (10-11). Toronto’s intercultural samba most certainly brings about unexpected simultaneities. The difficulties experienced by Batucada members when asked to stand closer together or be cheerful are the product of deep cultural rifts that go beyond commonplace stereotypes. Such rifts bespeak divergent subjectivities and modes of personhood expressed in different evaluations of such things as work, friendship, camaraderie, wit, and permanence. The gaps that need to be breached for intercultural samba spaces to be actualized in Toronto are best understood by briefly outlining the ethos of malandragem, its origins, and the ways in which it emerges across borders.
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Malandro: The Unbearable Lightness of Feet Maninho Costa’s demands for Batucada members to smile may be read as the imperative of a tyrannical happy-golucky tropical ideology linked to the historical appropriation of samba by nationalist rhetoric and to the mise-en-scène of escolas de samba, which by definition play for an audience that wants to be “entertained.” Yet, the continuous development of samba forms within and outside Brazil by disenfranchised groups and persons of color deserves closer inspection. For Maninho, as for the thousands of musicians who grew up in his social milieu, samba continues to be, rather than a disembodied symbol to be consumed, a concrete, “somatic mode of attention” (Csordas) through which a space of collective, hopeful meaning is wrested from the quotidian alienation imposed by the city’s clenched fists. This is because for these Brazilians samba is the means par excellence for the expression of a politics and poetics of malandragem. In her insightful analysis of Rio’s emergent samba world in the 1930s, Acertei no Milhar, Claudia Matos discusses the development, alongside governmentally sanctioned patriotic sambas, of another samba modality—the sambamalandro—which performed an alternative worldview and ethos that went against established petty-bourgeois values and morality. Articulating what Matos calls the “discourse of malandragem,” these sambas praised in song the trickster/hustler figure of the malandro, a male character who represented for the largely black, urban working class a utopian escape from their subordinate social condition. Embodying an ambiguous mode of being defined by the ability to walk the fine line between licit and illicit worlds, malandros avoided the heavy manual labor that condemned so-called otários (fools) to a life of toil, hardship, and poverty. Matos asserts that sambas-malandro not only highlight the struggles of the working class, but also articulate grievances against the capitalist ideology of work by pointing fingers at “the boss” and “the rich man.” In this way, they present a dialogic discourse that stresses the notion of border between social classes, the very border upon which malandros’ and bosses’ existence rests (80). This dialogism is expressed in an ambivalent play between dream and reality, where no answers, definitions, or even coherent ideologies are offered, but where the self and the world are constantly being questioned (66). By privileging samba’s texts over analytical frameworks chosen a priori, Matos’s work allows for samba-malandro’s plethora of voices to be heard without producing semantic closure. I would further argue that her analysis helps us visualize otherwise obscure links between the malandro’s ethos and the ontology of interculturalism as defined by Stanyek (11), which “rests on a presumption that boundaries can be breached,” yet whose existence presupposes the very continuation of such boundaries. We may even posit that interculturalism and malandragem share a politics and poetics that revolve around, as Sodré has asserted of AfroBrazilian religious and cultural forms (O terreiro e a cidade 9-10, 142-3), originality as revelation, reversibility of meaning, and mystery, opposing themselves to capitalist-driven worlds of work and rationality while still remaining bound by them. The samba-malandro “celebrates the ideal of a language capable of containing within itself the multiplicity of simultaneous significations” (Matos 67). It is this multiplicity of significations that sambistas like Maninho seek time and again in their attempts to reshape songs such as the racist carnaval hit “O Teu Cabelo Não Nega,” by Lamartine 18 Babo. The song’s main chorus goes: “Your hair doesn’t deny it, mulata, Because you are a mulata of color, But since color isn’t contagious, mulata, Mulata, I want your love.”19 Maninho once irrupted into a rehearsal break with the following rendition: “Your hair doesn’t deny it, mulata, Because you are a Yoruba mulata, But since color doesn’t deny it, mulata, Mulata, I want your love.”20 The creative impulse inherent in such improvisations offers a radical reformulation of hegemonic discourse by reaffirming ethnic and racial heritage against ideologies based on notions of “phenotype” and “contagion,” thereby turning the song on its feet. Batucada’s rendition of “Aquarela do Brasil” expresses a similar principle: no lyrics praising the “Brasil trigueiro” (swarthy Brazil) or “mulato inzoneiro” (sly mulatto) are heard, only a “free jazz” trombone. In this way, the band’s version refuses identification with received understandings of Brazil as a mestiço paradise. A malandro’s ultimate métier is that of sambista: “a gifted improviser of solos to which other bambas [samba experts] formed in a circle around him [respond] with a refrain accompanied by tambourines and cavaquinhos [small guitars]” (Ari Araújo, qtd. in Rowe and Schelling 129). Within this circle, Matos claims, the sambista is able to speak the multiple voices of the people through an agile mimeticism that imitates collective speech and is linked in practice to a disposition toward establishing symbiotic relations with the other (75). Here, the author raises two fundamental issues in tandem: mimeticism and symbiosis, concepts that should be analytically differentiated in order to understand how malandragem defines Batucada’s outlook. First, let us consider the former. Not only does the malandro mimic the collective voice of the people, he also engages in a mimetic parody of established aesthetic values. In his preoccupation with a very particular period dress code (white linen suit, silk scarf, and Panama hat), the malandro reveals a “front work” (Goffman) that imitates white
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petty-bourgeois aesthetics, with a twist. As Matos argues, the excessively polished nature of the outfit betrays a subordinate position, making the malandro vulnerable to police surveillance. Yet, this mimeticism lends malandros their liveliness and grace, enabling their street smarts (such as the ability to eat at fancy restaurants without paying). In mimicking dominant forms, malandros subvert them at every turn. Antonio Candido’s comparison of the Spanish pícaro (a rogue who lives by his wits) and the malandro is relevant here: while the pícaro’s deceit always has a pragmatic end, the malandro acts out of a pleasure for play (3). Wordplay is precisely what Batucada Carioca engages in on its promotional website. Alluding to Brazilians’ command of samba steps, the main page states that Batucada’s “repertoire includes [. . .] the greatest past Carnaval themes [. . .] which will prove once and for all how Brazilians come to be so light on their feet!” Various sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary and the Free Dictionary define the expression “to be light on one’s feet” as the ability to move quickly and gracefully, and include the adjectives “lively” and “agile” to describe the idiomatic expression. The fact that words such as “grace” and “liveliness” can describe not only physical movement but also inner dispositions lends richness to Batucada’s website statement. Brazilians are thus simultaneously characterized as vibrant people with a sunny disposition and as skillful performers of intricate footwork. More to the point, in encompassing the concepts of life force, dexterity, speed, and beauty, this expression succinctly encapsulates the aesthetics of the malandro’s street smarts, an improvised dance in its own right that also moves to the tune of samba. This lightness of being, while defining Maninho’s broad appeal, is also at the heart of pedagogical difficulties experienced by Batucada members. When players complain about lack of structure, predictability, or consistency, they unmask the flipside of malandragem as they point to wider stumbling blocks on the road to intercultural engagement. While existential freedom is a dominant trope in the discourse of malandragem, this freedom is not conceived of as an individual trait. A symbiotic orientation is fundamental in the creative process of the parceria (compositional partnership): The sambista malandro speaks his individual voice, but his voice is the voice of the shanty [morro in the original]: it is never an isolated voice, but a conjunction with one or more other voices [. . .] To the individualism at the basis of petty-bourgeois ideology, preaching sacrifice and effort to “get ahead” and climb the social ladder, samba counterpoises collective, group vigor, in order to enjoy the playing [gozar da brincadeira]. The sambista facilitates play, and the malandro, a projection of this sambista at the border between social classes, is the one who knows how to transgress this border at the same time that he guards it: he is there as a reminder that it exists, and to avoid the contamination of this world of samba with values that go against it. (Matos 73, 75) Maninho Costa’s pleas for players to stand closer together, accept unpredictability, and listen deeply to samba’s collective cadenciado express his desire to pass on malandragem values and build community through music. He models playful demeanor in the hopes that some malícia (mischievousness) will rub off on us; at the same time, he also struggles to preserve samba’s improvisative values by teaching the craft of repinique and encouraging tamborim players to come up with new riffs. As the director of what he defines as a bloco (a group of street drummers), Maninho merges the desire for success that drives escolas with the mischievous improvisation of backyard jams. Even if his demands for smiles may be read as a reiteration of the “tropical nation” rhetoric linked to the mise-enscène of Afro-Brazilian culture in general and escolas de samba in particular, they are also performative efforts to guard against “the contamination of the world of samba” (Matos 73) by extraneous values. In particular, I am thinking here of the blasé attitude of cosmopolitan Torontonians (Simmel 329-330), who at times resist the call to embody Brazilian malandragem and prefer to “keep it cool,” parodying Maninho’s own parodies of them. After all, who said happiness is “cool” in Toronto?
Conclusion Foot tapping, shoulders moving. Samba appears to bring about an “uplifted quality,” as Layah calls it, if only one is open to it. This quality emerges in a willingness to engage in active, embodied listening: the kind of listening that understands musical creation as the language of the multitude, as opposed to the cool, detached individual. The “detached individual” emerges in different forms in Canadian contexts where Brazilian samba is consumed. Appropriating impulses are not easy to ward off when different somatic modes of attention, or embodied ways of being in the world, are at stake. New forms of engagement may challenge the proxemic and kinetic ways through which we express deep-seated moral values. While it is true that Maninho’s efforts to pass down his teachings often fall on deaf ears, the eagerness to learn his malícia, embody his cadenciado, and learn the malandro way of being-in-the-world often seduces Batucada members
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enough for us to become steeped in the aesthetics and modes of sociability that Maninho invites us to mimic. We may even, at times, let go of the self-imposed pressure to “pull it off” and remember that we “don’t play for anybody but ourselves, really.” Ourselves, in this case, refers to the smallest unit of samba community, represented by the band. The band is the concrete space within which intercultural dialogue becomes possible: it is an emergent social form where improvised sounds and relations materialize as locals and migrants make themselves vulnerable, allowing themselves to be transformed. The desire to experience a form of collective musicking takes us beyond known realms, allowing us to “play together with everybody” and wrest a hopeful space of collective meaning from quotidian alienation in the cosmopolitan metropolis, perhaps unwittingly leading to new dialogisms.
Notes 1 “Na Cadência Bonita do Samba” (in the beautiful groove of samba) is part of the chorus of the famous song Na Cadência do Samba composed in 1962 by Ataulfo Alves, Paulo Gesta, and Matilde Alves. The whole chorus goes, “Quero morrer numa batucada de bamba, na cadência bonita do samba” (I want to die in a drumming session of samba experts, in the beautiful groove of samba). 2
It is not within the scope of this article to engage in a detailed description of the multiple styles of samba that populate the Brazilian landscapes of yesterday and today. Suffice it to say that over a dozen different types or subgenres exist, ranging from the melodic samba-canção to the improvised partido alto, from samba-jazz fusions to percussion-heavy sambas-enredo. As the latter are the focus of this essay (particularly in the context of Toronto’s samba ensembles), my comments will be largely circumscribed to this genre, with a few references to other relevant styles.
3
For discussions of the racial and gendered politics of samba in Brazil, including analyses of the trope of mestiçagem, see Pravaz, “Brazilian Mulatice” and “Samba, Carnaval.”
4
In the 1940s Walt Disney Studios produced a series of cartoons featuring the character Zé Carioca, a street-wise and lively parrot embodying the friendliness, warmth, and skill at samba thought to be characteristic of Brazilians. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mQHr8bAojU.
5 Escolas de samba are cultural associations based upon the collective playing, singing, and dancing of samba. They come to life in the months leading up to carnaval, when they parade in the Sambódromo (samba’s footbridge) and compete for best place. Each escola parades with approximately 4,500 members who don standardized costumes representative of the yearly samba-de-enredo (official theme-song). Escolas are evaluated by a jury that considers their performance in several categories: plot, costumes and props, bateria (percussion wing), special wings (such as that of women dressed as Baianas, a mandatory wing that pays tribute to the role of women in founding escolas—see note 7), mestre-sala and porta-bandeira (main male dancer and flag-bearer), theme-song, etc.
The term “pagode” has been part of Brazilian musical language since at least the 19th century and refers to a party (brincadeira, festa, diversão) without commercial intent marked by music, food, and drink (Lopes 177). In the 1980s, the term became popularized to refer specifically to a highly commercial sound, one actively pursued by the music industry and disparaged by many samba traditionalists (see Trotta and Castro for an informed analysis of pertinent debates). In fact, this state of affairs was spurred, in part, by the interest of the recording industry in the success of figures such as Zeca Pagodinho, Beth Carvalho, and Grupo Fundo de Quintal, household names who made albums in the style of traditional, improvisation-driven pagodes at a time when such events had been removed from most escolas de samba. These musicians are considered by sambistas “in the know” to be performing “samba de raíz” (roots samba), as opposed to “pagodeiros” (a pejorative epithet): a market-driven, unsophisticated, and often vulgar form of samba. 6
All translations of Portuguese texts are mine unless otherwise noted.
7
A Baiano is someone who was born in the Northeastern state of Bahia. The term Baiana, however, is often applied to women of Afro-Brazilian descent who don the white garments characteristic of Candomblé devotees and sell AfroBrazilian delicacies on the streets. After the abolition of slavery (1888), many Baianos migrated to the city of Rio de Janeiro (then the nation’s capital) in search of jobs, bringing with them their religious, culinary, and musical traditions. Pequena África (Little Africa) is the name given to the downtown area in Rio where many Baianos settled. 8
For a brief biography of Maninho de Costa, see (http://www.batucadacarioca.com/about.asp).
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9
Odilon Costa is considered one of the most important escola de samba mestres in Rio de Janeiro.
10
My fieldwork is based on long-term participant observation among several Afro-Brazilian music bands in Toronto and includes ethnographic data collection techniques ranging from audio-recording qualitative, in-depth interviews to gathering promotional materials (both print and online) and video-recording a variety of events and situations from everyday life. My participation in these bands has included attendance at rehearsals, concerts, festivals, meetings, friendly gatherings, and other group activities, as well as one-on-one engagements with participants of diverse backgrounds. I played with several ensembles across the city since 2001, and this participation has enhanced my ability to understand the sociocultural context of transnational samba learning in the city.
11
I thank one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for bringing this issue to my attention.
12
Candomblé is a Brazilian-based polytheistic religion of Yoruba origins, and its gods and goddesses are called orixás. These deities embody and synthesize the different forces of life, death, and nature. In Candomblé ceremonies, cavalos (initiands) become suffused with divine energy while “recebendo o santo” (incarnating the orixás) in performances where specific body movements denote the qualities of each divinity. Concrete connections are said to exist between the dances of the orixás and the samba moves performed by passistas (solo samba dancers) and other escola de samba members (Rego 6; see also Browning).
13
Ciavatta is author of O passo: a pulsação e o ensino-aprendizagem de ritmos (The step: pulsation and teachinglearning rhythms [out of print]). He regularly holds popular rhythm education workshops throughout Brazil and leads the Bloco do Passo, a percussion and vocal group (http://www.opasso.com.br/).
14
The following are the main percussive instruments used in contemporary Brazilian escolas de samba: tamborins consist of a small metal frame with a nylon head (traditionally, the instrument had a wooden frame and leather head) and no jingles, and are played with a single or multipronged stick; chocalhos have a metal frame and several small jingles, or platinelas; agogôs are African double bells; caixas and surdos are snare drums and bass drums of several sizes, surdo de primeira (First) being the largest and surdo de terceira (Third) the smallest; cuícas (laughing gourds) are friction drums with a hanging stick inside that is rubbed with a wet cloth; finally, repiniques are deep-framed drums played alternately by a wooden stick and a bare hand.
15
See Pravaz, “Where is the Carnivalesque?”
16
See Maninho’s comments from one of our interviews: “When I started the group Batucada Carioca 6 years ago, I was thinking to put some name like, maybe, because we are not an escola de samba. An escola de samba is this [shows pictures]. I grow up in samba school. And they know exactly how it is. So I think is more [. . .] I didn’t want to put the name, like, some kind of samba school, because we are not, you know, we are just drums. Most people in batucada, they know, like superficially, what is a samba school, but the majority, they never went to Brazil, they don’t know what we have. Like, my wife Negin, she went there and she saw it, and she said, ‘it’s more than I was thinking.’ So when the Batucada, it’s I was trying to work this with the names, and batucada was something very, you know, catch me really fast. I said, oh, batucada’s name, you know, people really talk about this, in so many songs, in Brazilian songs, and also the DJs and CD. So I was planning to put the name batucada to get more of a fast idea of what we do. Of course, we play like grooves from samba school, but we are just a bloco, and bloco means street drummers. But the idea is the same, it’s just, I don’t want to be [. . .] Anyways, so batucada means samba groove, a samba groove or any, let’s say, in Northeastern Brazil, they have Timbalada, or Olodum, and this, we can call batucada too. We can say, ‘oh, let’s go to batucada’. Batucada is some drum, drum [. . .] ensemble, and Carioca means from Rio de Janeiro. Of course, we maybe have two or three members, like, they are from Rio, but I just put it because that is what I am teaching here, right? The rhythms are from Rio de Janeiro. I don’t teach rhythms from Northeastern music, Southestern music; I just try to focus on rhythms from Rio de Janeiro, the Carnaval and Sambódromo, Marques de Sapucaí, escolas de samba. So that is what I teach there. So batucada means samba group, Carioca means from Rio de Janeiro. Everything from Rio de Janeiro, let’s say, if you are born in Rio, you automatically, you are Carioca.” 17
See also Lewis (145) and Fischlin and Heble (23).
18
The song first came out in January of 1932 and was so overwhelmingly influential and popular that ten years later the LP had to be recorded again due to the wear and tear of the matrix copy. In 1952, another recording was made
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and the song became the “official” opening song of carnaval balls. For an extended analysis of this and other samba lyrics, see Pravaz, “Imagining Brazil.” 19
“O teu cabelo não nega, mulata, Porque és mulata da cor, Mas como a cor não pega, mulata, Mulata eu quero o teu amor.”
20
“O teu cabelo não nega, mulata, Porque és mulata Nagô, Mas como a cor não nega, mulata, Mulata eu quero o teu amor.” Works Cited Batucada Carioca. Home page. N.d. Web. 1 June 2011. Becker, Judith. “Anthropological Perspectives on Music and Emotion.” Music and Emotion: Theory and Research. Ed. Patrick Juslin and John Sloboda. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. 135-160. Print. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977. Print. Brazil. Centro Nacional de Folclore e Cultura Popular, Iphan (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional), MinC (Ministério da Cultura), SEPPIR (Fundação Cultural Palmares), and Central Cultural Cartola. Dossiê das Matrizes do Samba no Rio de Janeiro: Partido-Alto, Samba de Terreiro, Samba-Enredo. N.d. Web. 1 June 2011. Browning, Barbara. Samba: Resistance in Motion. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. Print. Candido, Antonio. “Dialética da Malandragem: Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias.” Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 8 (1970): 67-89. Print. Costa, Maninho. Personal Interview. 7 Sept. 2009. Csordas, Thomas. “Somatic Modes of Attention.” Cultural Anthropology 8 (1993): 135-156. Print. Fischlin, Daniel and Ajay Heble. “The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue.” The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue. Ed. Daniel Fishlin and Ajay Heble. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2004. 1-42. Print. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor, 1959. Print. Lewis, George. “Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.” The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue. Ed. Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2004. 131-162. Print. Lipsitz, George. Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Focus of Place. London: Verso, 1994. Print. Lopes, Nei. Partido Alto: Samba de Bamba. Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 2005. Print. Matos, Claudia. Acertei no milhar: samba e malandragem no tempo de Getúlio. Rio de Janeiro: Paz & Terra, 1982. Print. Oliveiros, Pauline. Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice. Lincoln: iUniverse, 2005. Print.
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Pravaz, Natasha. “Where is the Carnivalesque in Rio’s Carnaval? Samba, Mulatas and Modernity.” Visual Anthropology 21 (2008): 95-111. Print. ---.“Samba, Carnaval and the Myth of ‘Racial Democracy’ in Rio de Janeiro.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 15 (2008): 80-102. Print. ---. “Brazilian Mulatice: Performing Race, Gender and the Nation.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8 (2003): 116147. Print. ---. “Imagining Brazil: Seduction, Samba and the Mulata’s Body.” Canadian Women Studies/les cahiers de la femme 20.2 (2000): 48-55. Print. Rego, José Carlos. Dança do Samba : Exercício do Prazar. Rio de Janeiro : Aldeia, 1996. Print. Rowe, William and Vivian Schelling. Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America. London: Verso. 1991. Print. Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” 1903. Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms. Ed. Donald N. Levine. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1971. 324-339. Print. Sodré, Muniz. O terreiro e a cidade: a forma social negro-brasileira. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1988. Print. ---. Samba: o dono do corpo. Rio de Janeiro: Codecri, 1979. Print. Stanyek, Jason. Diasporic Improvisation and the Articulation of Intercultural Music. Diss. U of California San Diego, 2004. Print. “To be light on one’s feet.” Free Dictionary. 2011. Web. 1 June 2011. “To be light on one’s feet.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2010. Web. 1 June 2011. Trotta, Felipe and João Paulo M. Castro. “A Construção da Idéia de Tradição no Samba.” Cadernos do Collóquio (Dec. 2001): 62-74. Web. 1 June 2011. Zeh, Marianne. “O criador na tradição oral: a linguagem do tamborim na escola de samba.” XVI congress of the National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Music (ANPPOM). Brasília. 2006. Web. 1 June 2011.
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