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Cultural Geographies of Afro-Brazilian Symbolic Practice:

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao
(Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil)
Maracatu de Nao, A Tradition Reinvigorated

The main carnival of Pernambuco, Brazil, which takes place in the large
coastal city of Recife and the nearby town of Olinda, has received little attention from non-Brazilian scholars either as an annual event or as a
locus of cultural activity year-round.1 One of Pernambucan carnivals most
impressive features is the maracatu de nao groups, which are processions
of predominately Afro-Brazilian percussionists and dancers dressed in resplendent colonial-era Portuguese attire. The focal point of each procession
is its king and queen, a man and woman usually the spiritual leaders and directors of the group, regally dressed and crowned who, according to oral tradition, represent the king of Kongo and his queen parading
with their court. This practice, unique in its musical detail to the urban
area of Recife-Olinda, is related to a host of other widespread Afro-Brazilian traditional festivals evoking the king of Kongo. These were all held in
conjunction with ostensibly Catholic celebrations of Nossa Senhora do
Rosrio, So Benedito, or Rei Baltazar (the dark king who, with two other
wise men, visited the newborn Jesus).2 Prevalent in nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century Recife, maracatu de nao went into decline after around
1960. In 1967, only three groups remained. A 1969 newspaper states, the
authentic maracatus of pure African origin are disappearing with the
deaths of their monarchs ( Jornal do Commercio [Recife] 1969). By 1988,
one prominent observer of Pernambucan popular culture declared that the
tradition appeared to be headed for extinction; another countered that, with
nine groups then dedicated to performing maracatu de nao (many of
them initiated recently by dissident members of older groups), there had
3
been a miraculous rejuvenation of the form.
When I visited Olinda and Recife for carnival in 2004 5, I found a cultural practice showing clear signs of revitalization. Dozens of groups were
present; Santos and Resende (2005, 29) suggests that while thirty-one
maracatus de nao are currently registered with Pernambucos Carnival
Federation, some sixty-five groups are active. There were many young people in their ranks, and the various races of participants in many new groups
were striking. Almost all the groups were arrayed in the characteristic
Latin American Music Review, Volume 29, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2008
2008 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819
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choreographic formations Csar Guerra-Peixe observed in 1949 1952, and

described in his valuable Maracatus do Recife (1980). There are several social forces behind the resurgence of maracatu de nao:
The work of middle-class, lighter-skinned activists to rescue the

tradition by adapting its sonic and visual aspects into stylized,
nonracialized forms (the first and most influential of such groups
is Maracatu Nao Pernambuco, founded by Bernardino Jos in
1989);
The globalized reimagining of maracatu de nao in the mangue
movement (spearheaded in the early 1990s by Chico Science, now
deceased, and the band Nao Zumbi);
A state concern to articulate and project a unique identity, since
exceptional cultural forms attract national status and tourism
revenue; and
A heightened Afro-Brazilian consciousness, inspired by the
internationally renowned afoxs and blocos afro that transformed
Bahian carnival in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Attitudes in Recife vis--vis Bahian influence are divergent. Culture officials have watched in alarm (but tourism boosters in envy) as Salvadors
re-Africanized carnival, with its miscegenated soundtrack ax music, has
elicited unprecedented controversy, prestige, and international interest. If
the invasion of Rio de Janeiro style samba schools in Recifes carnival
4
was the bane of Pernambucan purists a generation ago, the specter of a
Bahian stranglehold on local creativity produced indignant debates and led
some to call for a prohibition on Bahian trio eltricos in the 1980s and 1990s
(Dirio de Pernambuco [Recife] 1989; Jornal do Commercio [Recife] 1993). For
segments of Recifes black population, however, the impact of Bahias electrified frevos on local carnival bands was irrelevant. They hailed the racialized political discourse and neo-African aesthetic of Bahian afoxs and bloco
afros. Internalizing the imperative to rethink history, they drew inspiration
from the idea that the quilombo Palmares, and its leader Zumbi, reigned in
the captaincy of Pernambuco.
According to the Jornal do Commercio, between 1982 and 1991, at least
twelve different afoxs were founded in Recife and Olinda, and all twelve
participated in 1991s carnival. Roberto Santos, founder of the Pernmabucan afox Afro Ax, declared that the goals of the movement were to disseminate African culture and dance more and more, while continuing to
5
point out the farce of the Golden Law of 1888. The journalist explains that
afoxs do this using atabaques, agogs, and other instruments that characterize the expression of African culture ( Jornal do Commercio [Recife]
1993).
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The statement that atabaques and agogs the drums and double iron
bells associated with Brazilian candombl, and also featured in the parades
of afoxs such as Filhos de Gandhi are expressing African culture in
Recifes carnival is suggestive. During recent carnivals, I noticed an occasional departure from what oral tradition maintains is the distinctive symbolic repertoire of the maracatu de nao. Specifically, the large single iron
bell, called gongu, was replaced here and there by the smaller, double
agog. And some groups had augmented their percussive battery with additional instruments: the timbau, a conical, djembe-like hand drum, and
the ab, or large gourd rattle, common in afox. But the calunga, a small,
ornately dressed wooden doll that serves as a sort of fetish, protector, and
portable xang alter for traditional groups, was sometimes missing from
the newer groups; occasionally it was replaced by a female, black plastic
childs doll wearing a homemade African-style outfit. Both of the traditional objects that I saw being replaced the gongu and the calunga hint
at links to a Central African cultural base in maracatu de nao that has not
been adequately explored by scholars.
For many years, the African contribution to carnival in Recife was seen
to be the function of the maracatus de nao. In 1908, Pereira da Costa
praised its typical African features and customs (1908). Decades later,
Afro-Pernambucan journalist Paulo Viana declared that The negro rhythm
brought from Africa with the slaves is present in Recifes carnival, represented by the maracatus (1974). But the social context surrounding maracatu has changed; the symbolic field that gives orientation and depth to
state, national, and racial identity is not the same in twenty-first-century
Brazil as it was in nineteenth- or twentieth-century Brazil. Maracatu de
nao is transforming in several ways at once in a push and pull between
differing symbols of African-ness or Afro-Brazilian-ness within the population of black Pernambucanos that still constitute its highest base of participation. Differing notions of tradition, resistance, and authenticity,
particularly in their modern political and global connotations, are very
much at play.
This essay offers brief examination of two objects in maracatu de nao,
the gongu and calunga (largely ignored by the literature on both Brazil and
Africa), that seem able to offer a renewed sense of African-ness to modern
participants. This is followed by a discussion of competing symbols and
values arriving in the politicized Bahian model of a re-Africanized identity, and how the traditional maracatu de nao groups are positioned with
respect to Afro-Brazilian versus Pernambucan identity. I follow Zairian
ethnomusicologist Kazadi wa Mukunas emphasis on Conceptual and
Contextual Analysis to understand so-called Africanisms in Latin America (1999).12 Although it is important to try to identify the African origin
of cultural manifestations in the New World, an equal priority is placed in
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understanding how those African elements are transformed in their new

local cultural contexts. In other words, the nature of change, recombination, and reconfiguring of contemporary meaning in African-diasporic traditional culture becomes a subject of inquiry in itself.
Origins: From the King of Kongo to the Maracatu de Nao
Maracatu de nao is doubly syncretic. It embodies African and Portuguese
influences, but within the African heritage, aspects of both Central and
West African traits can be discerned. Nearly all the groups with a substantial history in Recife are affiliated with the West Africanderived xang religion, although some (such as Maracatu Nao Cambinda Estrela) profess
ties with jurema, sometimes called catimb, a hybrid of xang with indigenous beliefs. The maintenance of ethnic nations as organizing units in
maracatu perhaps speaks to the significance accorded to the king of Kongo
ritual among local blacks during the colonial period. The practice may have
been inspired by the visit of the king of Kongos ambassador to Dutch
Recife in 1642; it was already occurring in Portugal among Central African
blacks (Kiddy 2002, 159; Dantas Silva 1991a, xxxii). The first record of a
coronation in Brazil of black ethnic royalty in this case, a king and
queen of Angola, not Kongo comes from Recife, at the Church of Our
Lady of the Rosary of Blacks, in 1666 (by which time the Portuguese had
retaken the area). Historian Elizabeth W. Kiddy argues that, because of the
early predominance of Central African slaves in Pernambuco, and the legendary reputation of the king of Kongo among both slaves and Europeans,
kings from all the various African ethnic groups came to be called kings
of Congo the King of Congo became the term of the leader of African descent who represented and received the loyalty of blacks of many nations
and people of mixed descent (Kiddy 2002, 172, 181, 182).
A controversial aspect of the maracatu is this historical relationship with
white power structures. The election of black kings was carried out under
the supervision of state and religious officials, in the context of Christian
celebrations; the kings, mediators between white and black society, were
charged with keeping order among their subjects and could even be
called upon by white authorities to punish them. Against the interpretation
that this was a ritualized exercise in the conciliation, division, and control
of black populations, some scholars counter that the Kongo kings represented powerful, mythic hero figures, affirming an African identity to the
community that elected them and opening new spaces for black agency in
a society based on slavery (Souza 2002, 331). Still, the Kongo king ritual
was linked inextricably with slavery, and in Recife, it was perhaps part of
the institution itself. Leonardo Dantas Silva concludes that, with abolition,
on the 13th of May, 1888, the coronation of Kongo Kings lost its sanction
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and reason for being, because there was no longer the necessity for that
type of authority to maintain order and subordination among the black
subjects (1988, 1991b). Memories of the ritual were kept alive, particularly
in the Xang terreiros and the Catholic brotherhoods. Something like the
contemporary procession of maracatu de nao had perhaps been enacted
for the old Kongo kings. Henceforth, the dance-music-theater of maracatu
de nao, lacking the political and symbolic depth it once had, would be
performed for Catholic festivals for the Santos Reis and Nossa Senhora do
Rosrio, and during carnival and other secular celebrations.
Jan Vansina, anthropologist and historian of Central Africa, suggests the
continued importance of the idea of a Kongo kingdom in Central Africa after
the Kongo state itself collapsed in 1665: The faade of the kingdom was
eventually restored Kings were sacralized rather more than in earlier
days; in the 18th century this turned them into mere figureheads, almost
figments of the collective imagination. Besides the ideal of kingship, some
of its emblems and rituals survived (Vansina 1990, 221). In contemporary
Pernambuco, there was very likely a search among diverse Central African
peoples for new cultural common denominators, and objects with strong
symbolic significance might have been valued and locally reconfigured.
Kongo Concept: The Gongu
The gongu is a single, clapperless iron bell, one to three feet long, considered fundamental to the performance of traditional maracatu music. In the
historical record of Brazil, reference to the bell seems to appear only in
Pernambuco. Larry Crook, an ethnomusicologist specializing in AfroBrazilian music, opined that the term gongu is possibly related to the Ewe
term gakogui (iron bell) (2002, 244), which would imply a derivation from
West Africa, specifically in the region of Ghana. Crook offers no evidence
for this idea. A more promising observation came from Guerra-Peixe,
some fifty years previous, who identified the term gongu as a corruption
of the Bantu ngonge for iron gong (1980, 58).
Granted, Bantu is a complex family of languages which contains many
different words referring to bells: kengede, mulangu, kengelengele, njinjo,
bembo, nyengede. But there is a vein of words based on the root gong, referring to bells, including gonga (time, bell) and gunga (bell). Ngongi
is described as an iron bell or gong producing two different sounds, used
in the past by headmen to assemble people for public works or war (Comparative Bantu Online Dictionary 2006). Portuguese anthropologist Jos
Redinha, in a study of Angolan musical instruments (1988),6 noted that the
large (often, but not always, double) bell was widespread in the northern
half or two-thirds of the region, encompassing the majority of people in
Angola, and called by a variety of names: gongo, ngongue, ngongu, xigongo,
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FIGURE 1.
Clockwise from left: gongu from Recife, Brazil; single bell and
double bells from the Democratic Republic of Congo; double bell from Uganda.
PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR.
chingongo, longa. It was associated with aristocracy, kingship, and political

functions, notably with the Jaga people. Traditions related to the Cabinda
area suggest that the bells were once made of copper. Redinha unearthed
documents showing that such bells were played by native royal functionaries to mark the arrival of the Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias Novais at the
island of Luanda in 1575.
Combining linguistics and archeology, Jan Vansina produced a suggestive study of the histories, uses, and distribution of Central African bells
(1969). Evidence exists that they were used for bridewealth and as money
across the Ubangi River, possibly linking them with the river trade in general. However, Vansina described how large single or double iron bells were
emblems of authority and power across the Kongo kingdom (1990, 158 65).
He writes that the single bells were sometimes used as purely musical
instruments, for diversion and entertainment. But in times of war, they
were used in the old Kingdom of Kongo to signal from one army unit to
another, and to lead the soldiers in battle. Among some peoples, single
bells were deemed public property; among others, such as the Mbuun, such
bells were regarded as emblems of high state honor and could be owned
only by soldiers who had shown extraordinary bravery (Vansina 1969, 190).
In general, double bells were property of the chief and played only at events
in which he took part. Wherever he went, runners with bells went ahead to
announce his arrival, playing his praise name. In societies where double
bells were absent, the single bell was an insignium of political leadership,
whether of chieftainship or of the leadership provided by the eldest of a
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lineage or of the village associations In some cases, where important

chiefs had double bells, minor headmen or chiefs had single ones.
Among the Kuba, the single bell, rather than the double, was the preferred
emblem of kingship. The association of large single or double bells with
royalty in Central Africa followed kings to their graves: the playing of such
bells in the funeral rituals of kings was common historically across the re7
gion (Vansina 1969, 190).
Unlike the double bells of Sudanese West Africa (including the Ewe
gakogui), which place the smaller bell above the larger bell, Central African
instruments characteristically place the two bells side by side; they are
often larger and heavier than West African bells. The pitch interval between their two notes is generally smaller than that of West African bells.
A double bell from West Africa, called akok (iron or time) in Yoruba,
agog in Brazil, is central to many Afro-Brazilian musical-cultural practices, most famously the samba as well as capoeira and the secularized public performance of candombl music called afox. Guerra-Peixe (1980, 58)
noted that in the public performance of xang in Recife, a single bell similar to the gongu was played; but it was always, without exception, called an
agog. (Today, the small single bell often used in both xang and Bahian
candombl tends to be called adj.) He also observed that the gongu was always played with a wooden stick, whereas the agog in candombl or xang
was struck with a metal rod: the sound of iron on iron is supposed to be
pleasing to certain orixs.
In sum, if the charter myth of Kongo identity by the early eighteenth
century drew from imagined connections with the fallen Kongo kingdom,
it is plausible that one of the pervasive symbols of Kongo kingship the
iron bell would continue to be associated with ritualized activity involving political power and authority. Similarly, given the fairly widespread
metalworking knowledge throughout the Kongo region, one could imagine
that people of Kongo origin might have carried to Brazil both the technological knowledge of how to produce these bells, and a cultural meaning
for those bells related to the rituals of kingship. Certainly, more research
remains to be done into the gongu, its possible Central African antecedents, and its history and meanings in Pernambucan maracatu performance. It is unlikely that a specific ethnic or tribal origin of the gongu
could be discovered, even through aligning slave-trade demographics with
the sort of work Vansina advanced. And even limiting the search for roots
in historical Central Africa to societies who associated single bells of the
gongu type, instead of double bells, with kings (an indefensible limitation,
since this form in Pernambuco could have resulted from a negotiation of
cultural values, influenced by the greater costs of a double bell), Vansinas
research shows the distribution of single bells as a broad swath along
southern coastal Gabon deep into the Kongo. Still, the maintenance in
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FIGURE 2.
Above: a small akok bell from Nigeria, West Africa.
Below, left and right: agog bells from Brazil. PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR.
Pernambucan maracatu de nao of this Bantu-derived word and its royal

Kongo associations is unique in Afro-Brazilian culture.
Kongo Concept: The Calunga
Guerra-Peixe summarized the principal themes of maracatu songs, called
toadas, that he heard in Recife in the early 1950s: The most common was
each groups referencing of its own name and importance. Other prominent references were to Luanda, kings, the imperial or royal court, xang,
the gongu, the seashore, and the calunga. The calunga is a doll, typically
carved of dark wood or painted black, considered by traditional maracatu
participants to be essential to satisfactory performance and to maintaining
the identity of the particular nao. Indeed, the calunga is believed to be a
sacred protector of maracatu, holding the memories of all the ancestors of
a given maracatu nation. An informant in Nao Elefante told Guerra-Peixe
that the calungas are from a remote epoch, dating back to the foundation of
the group, in this case 1800 (Guerra-Peixe 1980, 37 39). Its particular powers or ritualistic functions in the xang terreiros are tenaciously guarded.
The director of each maracatu nao, who should ideally be one of a familial lineage of directors, is personally responsible for looking after the calungas during the year.
Each calunga is given a name, and several exemplars can exist at one
time of a certain name. Thus, Katarina Real observed among three maracatus three different dolls called Dona Joventina: one made in 1835, currently in the historical museum of Igarassu; one made in 1905, currently
in Recifes Museu do Homem do Nordeste; and the third presently in use
by the Maracatu Nao Estrela Brilhante ( Jornal do Commercio [Recife]
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2000). Other names of traditional female calungas are Dona Leopoldina,

Dona Clara, Dona Emlia, Dona Bela, and Dona Isabel. The doll is almost
always female, although at least two male calungas, named Dom Lus and
Dom Henrique, have been observed. The male dolls are said to be named
for kings of Kongo; Dona Isabel refers to Princess Isabel, who signed the
Golden Law of abolition in 1888. When a new maracatu de nao was
formed in 1967, partly through the guidance and patronage of anthropologist Real, the groups leader named one calunga Dona Jlia this was the
given first name of of Dona Santa, the matriarch of Nao Elefante and a
major figure in Pernambucan xang. The second calunga was called Dona
Ins de Castro. Real admired the intelligence and imagination of Eudes
for choosing the name of a medieval Portuguese queen, but never asked
him why he chose it (2001, 45, 105).
Mrio de Andrade studied the calunga in the early 1930s and presented
remarks on its various meanings for the first Congresso Afro-Brasileiro in
1934 (Andrade 1967, 301 8). He suggested that, in Bantu-speaking Central
Africa, the word was used as a greeting or nickname for people of high
status (senhor, chefe, grande) or as a synonym for ocean. He cites the idea
(of an unknown Englishman) that calunga came to refer to God in Angola:
Not their god, Zambi, well known and familiarly represented in sculpture, but the unknowable god of the missionaries that was impossible to
comprehend whose latitude cannot be measured (Andrade 1967, 302).
Through the writings of a Portuguese soldier stationed in Luanda, Andrade
was aware that leaders of small villages in the interior of that region used
crowns of vine and a staff with a doll at the end to symbolize their
power (Andrade 1967, 303). But, he maintained that the application of
the word calunga to a doll, as in the world of maracatu, was a Brazilian
innovation even perhaps a simple mispronunciation. For him, it was derived from calumba, which had various meanings in colloquial nineteenthcentury Portuguese: little girl, and a doll; as well as sugar cane syrup (and
the trough it is kept in), a flowering shrub (Schneider 1991). That is,
African people and their descendants in Brazil came to call the calumba
doll by a similar name that was more familiar to them, calunga. He does
record that the dolls were believed by some Afro-Brazilians to have magical powers to move and communicate; he found evidence that the dolls
were occasionally part of the ritual objects of xang leaders.
The dolls were also sometimes called catita, or catitinha, in the maracatu
nations Andrade explored. Kalunga, the Bantu word, refers to the sea or a
large body of water that is the threshold dividing the living and the dead,
this world and the spirit world. Andrade suggests this meaning with this
excerpt from an old song: h, cad Dona Catitinha/Que no mundo no
aparece?/Ela est debaixo dgua/Que no assobe nem desce. Similarly,
Edison Carneiro (1981) collected candombl songs from Angola-Kongo
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rituals that mention the calunga. One states, O calunga um poo muito
fundo. Another piece includes the lines Ora vamos ver/Duas conchinhas/
Do Calunguinha/Na beira do rio/Uma subia/E a outra descia.
Carneiro describes the syncretic relation between Bantu and Yoruba beliefs regarding water as Iemanj [Yoruba orix of the waters] lives in the
depths of the Calunga (1981, 158). How should this statement be read?
Carneiro would appear to grant a prior, foundational existence to calunga,
and by extension the whole Kongo-derived belief system, over the West
African candombl, in Afro-Brazilian religious practice; or he just might
be nodding to the earlier arrival of Bantu-speaking slaves in Brazil.
Schneiders dictionary of African words in Brazilian Portuguese lists fourteen definitions for calunga, including a Bantu divinity; the fetish doll of
this divinity; anything of a very small size, possibly including dolls, children, or adults; a kind of fish. Calunga-grande is defined as the sea, calungapequeno as death, a cemetery, or the little realm of the dead.
The calunga in these maracatu texts does imply a connection with the
spirit world. More precisely, here it carries a double connection, one spiritual and one geographic. The calunga or sea, metaphoric in one case (the
Bantu concept) and literal in the other (the Atlantic Ocean), is what mediates between the Kongo descendants in Brazil and their African ancestors.
Guerra-Peixe collected these lines from Nao Elefante (Dona Diamante
was one of their calungas):
Princesa Dona Diamante/Pra onde vai?/Vou passear/Eu vou para Luanda/
Eu vou, eu vou. The names of individual calungas are often evoked in
maracatu songs as a sort of geographic and cultural reconciliation.
An old song from Elefante says: A bandeira brasileira/Nosso rei veio de
Luanda/Oi, viva Dona Emlia/Princesa Pernambucana.
A possible link between the maracatu/xang calunga and public performance of candombl religious practice is made in Raul Giovannis Lodys
1979 study of the Bahian afoxs. He records that it was common to see a
young initiate from each organization in Salvador carrying a babalotim, or
small wooden doll, painted black, wearing satin clothes. The dolls were hollow, and charms or objects sacred to each particular candombl house were
placed inside. Animal sacrifices were occasionally made to the babalotim,
which constituted a sort of mobile altar specific to each group and the
orixs with which they were connected; the doll was believed to repel evil
and emanate good. For the afoxs, a young boy was charged with carrying
the babalotim, while the maracatus de nao traditionally choose a woman
to carry the calunga.
This raises a question about historical similarities between maracatu
and the afoxs. In the early 1960s, Katarina Reals centenarian informant
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told her that the original name of maracatu was nao, or, he elaborated,
Afox da frica. Each practice, maracatu de nao and afox, has a foundation in West Africanderived religion; in public, each performs a sort of
profane representation of their religious beliefs and activities, mixed with
other Afro-Brazilian elements. The similarity may be a consequence of the
general need to mask African beliefs in more acceptable outward appearances in Brazilian history. More specifically, it could also be related to the
period of repression suffered by Afro-Brazilian culture in general in the
decades following abolition. Many cultural practices (including capoeira)
went underground, their followers often taking refuge in the terreiros of
candombl or xang that could be relocated far from the citys persecutions.
A rich mixing of identities, ideas, and strategies would have occurred in
these terreiros. If maracatu and Bahian afoxs once enjoyed a sort of easy, familial relationship, that has become an irony for Pernambuco that will be
explored in the next section.
For now, it is enough to note that the history and meanings of the
calunga in maracatu de nao are far from well understood. Ethnomusicologist Philip Galinsky, in his insightful book on Recifes modern music
scene, refers to the maracatu calunga as a voodoo doll (Galinsky 2002,
108). Casual English translations do not give the calunga its due. Certainly
its Central African links need to be explored, both as a word and spiritual
concept, and also as a material form (based perhaps on dolls as insignia of
power, or on the small portable altars common to villages after the collapse
of the Kongo kingdom).8 Today in Recife, artists known for their work
sculpting and restoring sacred religious art are commissioned to carve new
calungas for maracatu; how were the dolls made in the past? Capoeira, the
dance-fight game with an oral tradition linking it to Angola, has been analyzed as a ritualized crossing of the kalunga rooted completely in Kongo
history, culture, and cosmology (Obi 2002). The calunga needs to be reconsidered in the context of maracatus. The babalotim has all but disappeared from Salvadors afoxs; the calunga appears to exist nowhere outside
Pernambuco, where it retains great importance to the few traditional maracatus. As with the gongu, the persistence among traditional maracatus de
nao of a complex set of Central African perceptions pertaining to the
word-object calunga is striking.
Afro-Brazilian Context: A Wider Symbolic Field of
Tradition and Resistance
Maracatu Leo Coroado was founded in 1863. Although younger than Elefante (founded in 1800), it is Recifes oldest continuously active maracatu
de nao, and is aware of its status and role as such. The liner notes to the
groups CD in commemoration of 140 years of existence describe its current
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Gongu player, Maracatu Estrela Brilhante, Carnival 2004, Recife.

Note the leg brace to help support the instrument. PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR.
FIGURE 3.
leader, Afonso Aguiar Filho, as guardio do segredo do Leo Coroado

Sua misso manter e transmitir procedimentos tcnicos e seus instrumentos,
associ-los a sistemas simblicos, mitos, mistrios e ritualizaes (Noqueira
2003). The visual layout of the booklet depicts Afonso, on the right, looking stolidly at a separate picture on the left of Leo Coroados previous director, Luiz da Frana, who appears to be offering a handful of seashells
outwards and to the right towards the younger Afonso. The message is
clear: the torch has been passed to a worthy successor. Afonso, a babalorix
like Luiz de Frana, has stated: Tradition has to be maintained. I am
against the changes and stylizations that theyre doing today in maracatu
For this I say to everyone that the evolution of Leo Coroado will be to arrive at its roots (Documento Nordeste 2002).
The changes he criticizes are arriving from principally two sources.
First, there are many new maracatu groups started by people outside the
Afro-Pernambucan and xang community. Some, notably Maracatu Nao
Pernambuco and Maracatudo Camaleo, present ornate, highly produced
performances mixing maracatu with other traditional styles; they will also
introduce African percussion and electronic instruments, as well as horns,
to their stage shows. Because of their greater networking skills and more
open cultural discourse, these groups attain a level of success and international exposure that eludes the traditional groups. They typically express
their goal as resgatando (restoring, recuperating) the maracatu de nao
tradition; but ironically, many of their members are white, and no particular
9
connection with Afro-Brazilian belief systems is necessary to participate.
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Their critics often refer to them as maracatus de universitrio. Because of

their different positioning with respect to the meanings and accessibility of
these traditions, they release recordings containing original compositions
about the beauty of maracatu de nao, its African roots, the unique glory
of Pernambucan culture, and so forth. The creator of Nao Pernambuco
said in 2005 that he wants to reveal the connections between maracatu
4
music and other kinds of music around the world (Jos 2005). 2 (Nao
Pernambuco is credited with recording the first full-length maracatu album,
but the record also contains elements of samba and other regional styles.)
Conversely, Leo Coroado, Estrela Brilhante (founded in 1910) and other
groups that maintain a traditional posture generally limit their repertoire
to material based on, or thematically and musically aligned with, maracatu
toadas in the oral tradition and public dominion.
Because these stylized groups perform shows onstage throughout the
year, and because they have no Afro-Brazilian religious requirements to
satisfy, they may be seen with no calunga (or with a simple cloth doll to
visually represent a link with traditional groups); they do tend to express a
strong commitment to the gongu as a fundamental component of maracatu. But another aspect of change in maracatu de nao that Mestre Afonso
may be referencing comes from a very different source, although it also
centers on conflicting notions of tradition.
In a process starting in the mid-1970s, Bahian carnival was reAfricanized (Risrio 1981): old connections with African culture were explored; many new ones were imagined, along with links to the African
diaspora in general; and a new sense of negritude, based on a globalized
identity that reconciled traditional symbols of Afro-Brazilian culture with
modern cosmopolitan style, emerged in Salvador. Candombl, capoeira,
afoxs, batuques in general many such cultural forms came increasingly
to be understood by both practitioners and the public as symbols of racial
strength and resistance. The success of this movement, in terms of commercial returns, international prestige, and racial emboldening (that is,
both personal self-esteem and general social advances for Afro-Bahians)
did not go unnoticed by young black Pernambucans. The image of a politically militant, globally savvy Afro-Brazilian identity has inspired the growth
of afoxs and blocos afro in Pernambuco. Both types of groups occasionally
face charges of importing a copy of Bahian culture into Pernambuco, but
an unlikely defender of the afoxs was anthropologist Katarina Real: For
me the entrance of Bahian afoxs in the carnival of Recife represents another example of the incredible powers of integration of Recifes carnival
(Real 1990, 200201).
Of course, for some of the black movements most militant members,
the powerful traditions of integration in Brazilian society were part of the
problem they were trying to confront. It is a curious coincidence that,
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around the time of the boom in Pernambucan afoxs, black activists

associated with Pernambucos small MNU (Movimento Negro Unificado)
organization tried to help save Maracatu Nao Leo Coroado from disappearing, providing both financial support and the contribution of manpower to fill out its ranks of drummers. This is a chapter of the history of
maracatu de nao that needs to be studied further. How long did this affiliation last? How did the nature of the relationship between the MNU and
black cultural organizations in Pernambuco change over time? It seems that
only Maracatu Nao Cambinda Estrela (founded in 1935 as another type of
carnival group) publicly expresses admiration for the MNU: in their CD
liner notes, they thank the MNU for denouncing racism in our country.
Yoshihiro Arai observed Recifes carnival in 1988 to assess public representations of candombl (1994). In terms of performance, the public spectacular of diverse ritualistic behavior in afox, including clothes, dances,
and musical invocations of specific orixs, is all presented with a detailed
openness and directness that counters the maracatus secrecy and oblique
representations of xang culture. Arai speculates that this could be related
to the different histories of the two traditions: the practice of candombl in
Bahia was long restricted to private spaces, whereas maracatu, through its
history in the Kongo king rituals, inherits a tradition of ludic public performance in an ostensibly white, Christian sphere. By this analysis, the
merging of maracatu with xang resulted in the construction of a protective public faade, an impenetrable envelope, around xangs sacred elements. The strategy of such a faade to protect Afro-Brazilian culture was
undoubtedly one part of the Kongo king processions on Catholic holidays
throughout the colonial period. But the cultural discourse and reception of
the contemporary afox owes much to historical factors in Brazil, and
specifically in Bahia.
It is well known that the afox Filhos de Gandhi was headed towards
extinction when Gilberto Gil, a black Bahian musician of international
prominence, intervened to support them (Gil was followed quickly by the
Bahian government and the state office of culture and tourism). This was
during the early phase of Bahian carnivals re-Africanization. The group
subsequently has become regarded, by both locals and foreigners, as a sort
of living monument to resistance and racial and social awareness. Many
later analyses draw from the characterization by Anamaria Morales, published in 1988, stating that the group originated certainly as a form of ethnic affirmation The participation of pais-de-santo in the afox Filhos de
Gandhy leaves no doubts that this was an organization dedicated to cultural resistance (264 74).
A different image of the afox group emerges from a lively 1971 interview with their procurador, Seu Honrio. He recollects that in February 1949, he and a gang of friends saw a movie called Filhos de Gandhi at
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Salvadors Cine Jandaia. We were all impressed with him [Gandhi], and
Vav Madeira suggested that we create a group with this name [of the
movie]. The syndicate said no, because Gandhi was a statesmans name
and the Police wouldnt allow it. But we worked everything out and
founded the group under a mango tree. For an undisclosed period, the
group sang marchas carnavalescas, until one of their members bought an
atabaque (drum used in candombl ) from a boy on the Rua do Passo we
stopped to sing in the house of Non, who was a filho-do-santo, and from
then on we only sang candombl songs ( Jornal da Bahia [Salvador] 1971).
This puts a somewhat different slant on the groups origins, and reminds us of the context of the 1970s and 1980s in constructing an enhanced aura of Afro-Brazilian meaning and identity around candombl and
groups such as Filhos de Gandhi. As the black consciousness movement
expanded in Brazil, articulating unprecedented challenges to Brazils racial
paradigm, scholars were rethinking the nature of hegemony and agency,
and cultural politics as a subaltern strategy. The particular social history of
Brazil had facilitated a complex racial system in which, as Darin Davis argued, blacks were assimilated into the Brazilian mainstream throughout
history: physically through miscegenation, and psychologically through
the myth of racial democracy, with the mulatto escape hatch to allow
well-behaved, successful, lighter-skinned blacks to advance into a special,
more acceptable racial space (Davis 1999, 230). Given this, Larry Crook and
Randal Johnson could declare in 1999 that any Afro-Brazilian behavior
(recognized as such) is inherently political: Cultural expressions involving
questions of identity are inseparable from broader political processes, even
when the connections are not rendered explicit (Crook and Johnson 1999,
1, 5, 7).
It has become almost an orthodox view among scholars, practitioners,
and large segments of the public that such Afro-Brazilian culture and
symbols represent resistance, as opposed to the mere (communal, festive,
nonpolitical) carryover of traditional, exotic practices into the present. Yet
some practices and symbols have been especially influential in communicating this attitude in Brazil, and beyond; they all also tend to derive from
the black cultural-politics movement that emerged in Bahian carnival. As
blacks were generally shut out of the normal routes to political power,
carnival provided a space albeit a complex one, due to the ambiguous
relationship between carnivalesque expression and quotidian reality to
mount a cultural challenge to the status quo. Now the focus of international
attention, the movement was initially ignored or dismissed in Salvador until
a critical mass of popular interest solidified its base.
If the blocos afro and afoxs of Salvadors re-Africanized carnival have defined the parameters of this new, politicized Afro-Brazilian identity, the
first bloco, 1974s Il Aiy, was both the vanguard of the movement and the
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standard against which later blocos are still (however implicitly) assessed.
The other highly influential bloco afro, Olodum, is familiar to thousands of
foreign visitors to their public rehearsals in Salvadors Centro Histrico or
Pelourinho, recently transformed to a tourism site. The musical style of
Il Aiy is conveyed through what they call batuque or samba duro, a transposition of highly syncopated (and often minutely researched) African
rhythmic sensibilities to a sort of escola de samba rhythm section, whereas
Olodum revels in a globalized, African-diasporic sound focused on the
Caribbean (samba-reggae being its most famous hybrid). Olodum, it should
be noted, began as a recreational carnival club in 1979, but was reorganized
as a black-consciousness organization by dissidents from Il Aiy in 1983.
These and other blocos repeatedly declare as their goals the restoration of
cultura negra in Brazil, the strengthening of black pride and self-esteem,
and the fight against racism.
There were diverse reasons for the growth of this new Afro-Bahian identity. Many of its early leaders were not performers themselves, but educated
workers in Salvadors expanding industrial economy, frustrated by their
own lack of socioeconomic mobility and the alarming rise of the black underclass. African liberation movements (particularly against Portugals lingering authority) were influential, as were the images and sounds of black
pride from the United States. Locally, there also developed an impulse
among activists in candombl and capoeira to reject the states construction
of these practices as touristic folklore. Textually, candombl references and
a foundation of West African, specifically Yoruban, symbols are as integral
to the blocos repertoire as to that of the afoxs. This is perhaps most the
case for Il Aiy, since the mother of their director, Antnio Carlos dos
Santos (Vov), is a me de santo, or priestess of candombl. She oversees the
groups initial procession at the outset of each years carnival, with a ritualistic deployment of white doves, fireworks, and chants, and offerings to the
orixs. Their name, a Yoruban phrase, is said to have emerged from a consultation of the buzios (seashells) during a candombl ceremony. Olodum is
more eclectic, combining references to the orixs, Jamaica, Egypt, Cuba,
South Africa, and Brazils parched northeastern serto with constant evocations of Pelourinho (as a stage of both somber black protest and beery bonhomie). Other blocos also use a range of local and global symbols of black
culture to create particular niches in Bahias crowded carnival market.10
The local press has come to endorse this re-Africanization which, in 1993,
helped Bahian carnival beat Rios for overall novelty and cachetnoting
that it is irrestvel para os turistas No h Estado brasileiro to representativo da herana africana como a Bahia nem parece haver um oceano
separando os baianos da frica (Veja 1993; A Tarde [Salvador] 2003).
The establishment strategy of praising the movements cultural efflorescence while downplaying its political potential replaces earlier, more
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confrontational approaches to defuse it. Il Aiy took the brunt of the attacks, not only because of its pioneer status (debuting during the middle of
Brazils recent decades-long military dictatorship) but because of its policy,
still maintained, of restricting membership to phenotypically black people.
The bloco has long stated that it will change this policy when Brazil no
longer presents systematic, structural racism against blacks in everything
from education, employment, political representation, and wage equity to
the mass media and popular culture. In 1988, the groups rhetoric and notoriety provided a sharp counterpoint to official celebrations of the 100-year
anniversary of abolition: in response, a vitriolic critique of Il Aiy in the
news magazine Veja bore the blunt title Theyre the Racists (Belchior de
S 1988, 134). Indeed all the blocos afro have been targets of the charge that,
by questioning Brazils racial democracy, they are hypocritically introducing race thinking themselves and even worse, it is often alleged, they
are doing this by importing foreign perspectives and symbols of race
consciousness (such as the American black power movement) that are
alien to Brazilian society and national identity. But the power of the symbolic return to Africa pursued by the blocos afro and afoxs has been to highlight a part of Brazilian social history that most Brazilians have been
content to leave unmentioned the overarching distaste for anything remotely African, a prejudice that predated and outlived the freeing of
slaves in 1888.
Because the images, sounds, and tangible elements of black identity in
Bahia have been newly valorized, they are also scrutinized and selected
carefully by participants in the Afro-Bahian scene. A 1987 article in
Olodums newsletter chastised all the blocos for their shabby, improvised
aspect in the previous carnival. It acknowledged a lack of financial support,
but argued: [T]emos que perceber que quem produz essa viagem frica
a juventude negra baiana precisamos estar atualizados, atentos ao que
novo, para criarmos uma nova esttica dentro da cultura Africana contempornea (Nelson Mendes, Akomabu, Jornal do Olodum 1987; in
Rodrigues 1996, 48 49). There is a feedback process, that is, between producers and consumers of the symbols of Afro-Bahian identity. Beyond dance
and candombl references, musical instruments themselves have taken on
a new eloquence in this period of heightened consciousness of symbols.
When Il Aiy uses typical instruments of the Brazilian bateria such as
agogs, surdos, and repiques to play a fusion of batucada with Senegalese
sabar rhythms; or when Olodums former percussion director Neguinho do
Samba used Cuban timbales to signal the percussionists instead of a traditional apito or samba whistle (which he rejected as a coisa de guarda de trnsito [Rodrigues 1996, 29]), their symbolic decisions are being guided by a
critical view of Brazilian society as well as a creative impulse to recast the
texture of local experience in the wider African-Diaspora context.
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Consider, too, the berimbau, an Afro-Brazilian musical bow. As a compelling musical instrument and material object, the berimbaus image has
come to connote the strength and cunning of slave resistance; the personal
liberation metaphors of capoeira practice; and capoeiras own struggles to
survive repression in the years after abolition (the instrument itself was
periodically outlawed). With its primitive, rustic appearance, the berimbau
asserts the relevance of traditional African-derived culture in the high-tech
present. It gained more visibility through the participation of capoeira leaders in the recent campaign to create a day of black consciousness countering the abolition anniversary; the date chosen, November 20, corresponds
to the siege of the quilombo Palmares in 1694, during which Zumbi fought
to his death rather than surrender to Portuguese forces. It is often the only
Brazilian musical instrument familiar to foreigners, many learning of it
through capoeira academies or demonstrations in their home countries.
Ironically, the berimbau appears not to have been part of capoeira before the
mid-nineteenth century, or later; still, international tourists avid interest in
the berimbaus (and capoeiras) contemporary overtones of Afro-Brazilian
resistance and authenticity adds to the cosmopolitan prestige of the berimbau as a visual-musical symbol.
The timbau, a Brazilian conical hand drum, emerged relatively late in
Bahias re-Africanized milieu but has had remarkable impact. It was the
principal instrument in Carlinhos Browns Timbalada, a large percussive
carnival group founded in 1992 as a tribute to the blocos afro and their extinct ancestor, the blocos de ndio. With his many students and disciples,
Brown, a Grammy-award winning percussionist and composer, elevated
this anonymous drum from a casual beach-party instrument to an icon of
Afro-Brazilian musical power and technique. Associated with this transformation is Browns philanthropic investment to improve living conditions
in his poor neighborhood of Candeal, a commitment to community uplift
that the blocos afro formally share but do not equal. With the commercial
and aesthetic success of Timbalada, every bloco afro has added a timbau
player to their ranks even if one might expect Cuban congas or West
African djembes in those contexts. But here, too, candombl has informed
the instruments identity. Ari Lima argues that Timbalada conceived of the
timbau, rhythmically and symbolically, as a representation or profane synthesis of the candombl atabaques, the sacred hand drums used in ritual
55
practice (Lima 1988). Musically, Timbalada draws from many sources, but
has often declared its allegiance to candombl; combined with its ultramodern studio sound and RayBan-wearing chic, this allows it to occupy a realm
between local Afro-Brazilian culture and the international music scene
a realm Brown calls Bahian afro-pop.11
In Pernambuco, meanwhile, attempts by local versions of Bahias blocos
afro to participate in carnival have met with both formal and informal
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discouragement. Whatever the reasons, any mainstream discomfort with

the blocos Afro-Brazilian religious undertones can have little to do with it.
Candombl provides the spiritual and aesthetic foundation of the afoxs,
and it is the very aesthetic model of the afox Filhos de Gandhi, their costumes, dances, textual style, and instrumentation, that has dominated the
afoxs in Recife since their inception. The first Pernambucan afox, Povo do
Od, paraded in homage both to Filhos de Gandhi and to Africa during the
carnival of 1991. They invited leaders of the Bahian afox to Pernambuco
for the event, and to chair an afox strategy session; the objective was to
concretize the interchange between representatives of cultura negra ( Jornal do Commercio [Recife] 1991). The maracatus de nao were not part of
this conference. And the liner notes of a recent CD showcasing three
Pernambucan afoxs drive home the idea that Recifes modern, politicized
africanidade, at a national level of significance, is the purview of these
afoxs.12
The conceptual association between afox, candombl, the blocos, resistance, and the politicized Afro-Brazilian identity represented in Bahian carnival may help throw the African legitimacy of maracatu de nao into
question for some Pernambucans. The agog double bell is central to afox
performance, a staple of the blocos afro, and is also considered integral to
the musical dimension of capoeira. These are symbolic contexts charged
with racial and cultural resistance. As an instrument linked with candombl, the agog also is capable of opening a direct channel to African ancestors and the orixs. Antonio Risrio describes the group Filhos de
Gandhi as beleza pura no toque do agog evolundo em coreografias
3
ancestrais, entre cnticos litrgicos do repertrio jeje-nag. 1 In many of
their songs, Filhos de Gandhi reference the centrality of the agog bells to
Afro-Brazilian tradition; one, which Gilberto Gil has famously recorded, is
O Gandhi by Antnio Caixo: o Gandhi saiu a rua/Abafou/O Gandhi
saiu a rua/Tocando seu agog/O quem falou assim/Foi nag. The afoxs
of Recife also sing about the African power of their bells. All this puts a
sort of pressure on the gongu, which, as an instrument unique to Pernambuco and the maracatu de nao, does not carry the broad racial and cultural meanings that the agog conveys across Afro-Brazil, from So Lus to
Rio de Janeiro.
Might there be a more straightforward explanation for selecting an
agog over a gongu a musical advantage, since the agog is a double bell?
In fact, although the gongu offers only one playing surface, the instrument
produces two distinct pitches (at an interval of anywhere from a third to a
fifth) by striking it varyingly on its narrow neck or wide mouth. In this it
is reminiscent of the handheld cencerro, or bongo bell, of Afro-Cuban
music, although the gongu has a long handle and is held mouth outward;
the cencerro typically has no handle and is held along its side edges, mouth
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down and inward toward the player. The two most common gongu
rhythms in maracatu de nao are reproduced below (pitches indefinite).
EXAMPLE 1.
For the sake of comparison, here is the standard agog pattern of the
afoxs, a rhythm called ijex. Structurally, the rhythmic line resembles the
slow maracatu pattern (beat 2 is displaced one-sixteenth note), although the
two phrases are pitched differently.
EXAMPLE 2.
Guerra-Peixe refrained from in-depth comparisons of the foundation

rhythms of maracatu and xang. Still, in a paper he presented in 1982 on
African influences in Brazilian music, he mentioned a rhythm called
Congo he heard in Pai Joo dAngolas xang house in Belo Horizonte.
Unfortunately, the papers appended notation does not reflect the pitch differences Guerra-Peixe suggested were there in performance.
EXAMPLE 3.
This single-bell agog (today called adj ) timeline is similar both to the
slower gongu rhythm of maracatu and the afox ijex. If a borrowing was
involved here, who was the lender? For his part, Guerra-Peixe declared of
the Congo rhythm: No tenho dvidas sobre sua procedncia angolana
ou conguense, porque j o ouvi em gravaes procedentes dessas areas de
idioma banto (1982). Only further studies will be able to shine light on the
possible musical connections between xang, afox, and maracatu.
But behind the surface tension of agogs cropping up in maracatu, it
may be that the position of the traditional maracatus de nao as relevant
bearers of African or Afro-Brazilian identity is similarly uncertain. Do the
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maracatus not connote racial resistance? After all, they suffered public
censure and repression in the nineteenth century. Impassioned newspaper
editorials often requested police intervention: The maracatu is an infamous, stupid and sad thing! Is a society that tolerates the maracatu civilized? Of course not! Its as though we live in Abyssinia (A Provncia
[Recife], February 16, 1877). But both oral tradition and historical evidence
imply that, as the king of Kongo ritual disappeared, its processional aspect
was unproblematically absorbed into carnival; maracatu has been representing Africa in carnival since the early decades of the twentieth century,
as Pereira da Costa and Mrio de Andrade wrote. That is, perhaps Africa,
by way of the maracatus, didnt have to fight its way back into carnival and
public awareness in Recife, as the story of Filhos de Gandhi and the blocos
afro stresses that it did in Salvador. Such ambiguity is echoed in lingering
doubts about the Kongo king institutions link with Catholic brotherhoods:
did kings who were crowned by priests and sheriffs have genuine political
power and agency, or were they merely pawns in an elaborate ritual of
social control? This debate is far from resolved among Recifes maracatu
community, or in the academy. In the carnival of 1964, Leo Coroado paraded with a float depicting two kneeling slaves, with a banner reading
Nunca Mais. One of the two slaves was white, and Master Luiz de Frana
told Katarina Real A senhora sabe que tambm havia muito escravo
branco! (Real 2001, 26). More research needs to be done on the question
of how maracatu entered the carnival celebration after abolition, with attention to how the practice may have changed throughout the decades in response to local and national political developments, and to the evolving
conceptions of race and race relations in Brazil.
Afro-Brazilian religious practice founded on the orixs i.e., xang or
candombl has long represented in Brazilian society (for better or worse
in different historical periods) the most authentic living legacy of African culture. By contrast, the outward musical, processional aspects of
maracatu in distinction from its traditional, internal xang dimension
are generally considered by local practitioners and observers to be fully
Pernambucan, dating from the late colonial or early imperial era. One Pernambucan researcher has written with pride, In Africa there doesnt exist
anything like our maracatu. (Claudia Lima Web site). This recalls a similar controversy over the roots of capoeira, with competing camps arguing
4
since the 1930s for an African or a Brazilian, specifically Bahian, origin.1
(Both sides have approximated each other somewhat over the years, partaking in the best of what each vision of capoeira offers in terms of teaching
strategies and cultural capital.) The critical point here, though, is suggested
by Lewiss observation (1992, 66) that once the state endorsed a capoeira
that would be taught through standard methodology, and practiced only in
fitness academies targeting the middle and upper classes, the importance
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and prestige of street games steadily declined in the eyes of most players.
Moving capoeira inside was a crucial step in the domestication of the
sport because, according to Roberto da Mattas framework of the casa and
rua in Brazilian culture (in which the house is organized, controlled, and
private; the street risky, unpredictable, and deceiving), the academy becomes a kind of surrogate casa within which activities are supervised, safe,
and healthy, as opposed to the dangerous and unruly street games. Perhaps the opposite has occurred with maracatu de nao perhaps the practice has become de facto domesticated to the extent that it has become a
year-round public spectacle, a festive street parade or staged performance,
with its already obscure connections to the (secretive, dangerous, mysterious, deceptive) Afro-Brazilian xang practice rendered invisible in the
harsh illumination of camera-flash or electric spotlight.
The liner notes to a CD from Maracatu Nao Estrela Brilhante (founded
in 1910) boast that The groups instruments are still made the way they
were in the era of slavery. This way of contextualizing the practice, merely
as a holdover from slavery, may have less cultural cachet for some young
blacks than the bold reinvention of African tradition occurring in Bahian
carnival among the afoxs and blocos afro. For Antonio Risrio, the best way
to understand re-Africanization was to examine how Gilberto Gils song
Ax Bab combined past, present, and future: Its an afox for Oxal, but
recorded in a sophisticated 24-channel studio with handclaps, agogs, and
atabaques combined with the sound of a Rhodes keyboard, electric guitar,
and synthesizer (Risrio 1981, 13). The impulse to rethink maracatus place
in contemporary culture may explain why some maracatus are incorporating the timbau, the industrially manufactured Brazilian hand drum associated directly with Timbalada and blocos afro such as Il Aiy, Olodum, and
Mal Debal. In 2004 and 2005, the young maracatu groups Nao Gueto
and Daru Malungo were both led by musicians who, walking on stilts,
played musical signals and fiery solos on the timbau. Agog bells were also
observed in the ranks of these two maracatus. Gueto did not parade with
any sort of calunga, but Daru Malungo carried a black plastic doll.
Another musical symbol of African cultural heritage has been absorbed,
not only by newer groups, but by the venerable Nao Estrela Brilhante
(founded in 1910): the ab, or large gourd rattle. Traditional maracatu groups
have tended for years to use ganz, a metal tube shaker common to samba
as well as regional styles, but Mestre Walter of Estrela Brilhante decided
that the ab was more traditional than the ganz because older maracatus had probably used this African instrument instead of the industrially
manufactured Brazilian samba shaker. In the opinion of Pernambucan
percussionist Eder O Rocha, a member of the band Mestre Ambrsio
and a fixture in Recifes music scene, The ab was introduced into Estrela
Brilhante through the direct influence of candombl-de-rua [afox ]. He
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notes that groups deriving from the cultos de candombl de Recife use a
trio of differently sized gourds large, medium, and small to play syncopated patterns, and that this practice also appears in Estrela Brilhante
(Rocha 2001).
Maracatu Nao Porto Rico founded in 1967 from a preexisting group,
and so accorded traditional status recently adopted the use of hand
drums: from atabaques to timbaus to other African-inspired drums of simpler (carved-shell, rope-tuned) make. In their study of maracatu, Santos
and Resende note that the introduction of the abs and atabaques is much
criticized by other [maracatu] masters and by folk experts. But according to
Porto Ricos oral tradition, the group traces its heritage all the way back to
the quilombo of Palmares. Jailson Chacon Viana, their director, justifies the
introduction of hand drums by pointing to historical documents, suggesting that funneled and single-membraned drums were played in Palmares
(Santos and Resende 2005, 45 46). There are obviously differing perceptions among Recifes leaders about the meanings and boundaries of maracatu, and the groups monitor each other: Seu Toinho, director of Maracatu
Encanto da Alegria, states flatly that Ill die first, but I wont allow the ab
in, nor will I let women play in this maracatu (Maracatu Nao Encanto
da Alegria liner notes). One school of traditional thought holds that
women should not touch the instruments. However, most groups now
allow women to participate as musicians, not just as dancers. Another
newer group, Maracatu Nao Badia, is named for a famous me-de-santo
in Recife who, the tale is told, led Recifes first maracatu group one that
was itself, according to some popular versions of the tale, made up only of
women.
In the name of tradition, older maracatu groups may not sing or record
new compositions; Porto Rico has composed a few new songs, but in general, the older groups stay rooted in traditional themes and structures. The
result is ironic: Middle-class, whiter-skinned groups such as Nao Pernambuco, Maracatudo or Maracatu Vrzea do Capibaribe release CDs full
of inventive songs about Africa and African culture, and even write whole
songs in Bantu or Yoruba, thereby keeping themselves in contemporary
Afro style; this, while Leo Coroado is still singing about Princess Isabel,
who freed the slaves in 1888. The newer groups, which often start as social
projects for Afro-Pernambucan (or otherwise underprivileged) young people, rarely get the chance to record. One exception has been Nao Er, who
attracted some international support through collaboration with the famed
Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira. Many songs with a socially critical
perspective were composed for their debut album, with titles such as Me
Preta (Tantos meninos na rua/Sem teto, carinho e po/Aguenta muita
rojo/Quem fica na contra-mo) and Treze de Maio No Dia de Negro
(Irmo, irmo/Assuma sua raa, assuma sua cor Vem pra Nao Er /
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Pra denunciar racismo/E contra o apartheid brasileiro). Coincidentally or

not, this group advertises its use of the agog rather than the gongu, and
they parade at carnival without a calunga.
Conclusions
This paper has attempted to show that the apparently unremarkable shift
from one bell to another in some maracatus de nao may tell us something
about the symbolic power of the different objects involved. These small
changes may be an indication of a larger dispute over the symbols of
African or Afro-Brazilian identity and authenticity in Pernambuco, particularly as these symbols are contextualized in the twenty-first century.
Kim Butler has suggested that the Afro-Brazilian Congress of 1937, which
focused on Bahian candombl, promoted an emphasis on authenticity as
a means of legitimation among the houses Another side effect was a
subsequent bias toward Nag traditions in the academic literature (Butler
1998, 207). But this event, influential as it was, probably was not the genesis of the often-invoked Nag bias in Afro-Brazilian scholarship. A distinct preference for Islamist West African, as opposed to Central African,
origins of (Afro-)Brazilian culture was a guiding preoccupation of Gilberto
Freyre, organizer of the first Afro-Brazilian Congress of 1934; and in this,
as Anadelia Romo argues, Freyre was contributing to an earlier debate
among Brazilian intellectuals about the relative cultural and intellectual
5
virtues of slaves from different regions in Africa (Romo 2007).1 At the
level of popular discourse in Pernambuco, discord over authenticity and
traditional validity appears to have divided the maracatu de nao for
decades, although the conflicts are rarely cast in ethnic or tribal terms.
A Pernambucan origin of the practice is regularly cited, although Mestre
Walter and his gourd rattle are stretching the bounds of tradition back to
Africa. Similarly, other elements of the traditional maracatu de nao may
have an African heritage. The elucidation of specific Kongo elements,
should they be verified, would be heralded by some maracatu leaders and
researchers.16 It might be welcome news to Mestre Moraes, leader of the
Grupo Capoeira Angola Pelourinho, a renowned capoeira angola academy in
Salvador, Bahia, which asserts a cultural link with the origins of capoeira in
Angola. Moraes, decrying an alleged Yoruba hegemony pervading the
whole of contemporary Afro-Brazilian thought, has declared his goal to restore the history of Bantu people in Brazil, and publicize the values of this
immense cultural legacy (Revista Exu 1989). Such a focus on African ethnic identity is not widespread among Brazils public, yet it reveals the passion these topics can evoke among Afro-Brazilian culture activists.
The calungas traditional limitation to a narrow cultural phenomenon
in one specific region means that young people are not seeing it in other
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J E R RY D. M E T Z
Afro-Brazilian carnival processions, or through the media (e.g., MTV Brasil).

A brief survey of state tourism literature suggests that the calunga has become part of the palette of official, patriotic Pernambucan identity that
some black youths may wish to militate against even as they choose to
participate in maracatu, which, along with capoeira, is still the most traditional local Afro-Brazilian expression available to them. In historical practice, though, calungas are deeply associated with xang, while the structure
and function of newer groups do not rely on spiritual rituals or lineages.
Some of these newer groups, such as Badia, do include a follower of xang
among their directorate to satisfy a certain vague sense that the religion
brings validity to maracatu de nao. But there is no requirement to be a
devotee of xang to participate, which ironically makes the new black
groups similar in their secular attitude to the whiter, stylized groups.
Finally, the calunga is suffused with highly specific uses and historical
significations that simply might not fit the sensibilities of some modern
young Afro-Brazilians. To parade with a store-bought, black plastic Barbietype doll, as some groups do, may be less the smothering of tradition by
stylization than the interjection into maracatu de nao of a new perspective on black culture and identity. Such toys, typically of the Susi Olodum
7
brand family, are of recent vintage.1 After all, before the success of the
Bahian blocos afro, and the wide social, cultural, and economic changes
engendered by that success, it would have been difficult to imagine such
an ethnic commodity manufactured for and advertised to young black
consumers or their parents. The product demonstrates in a very modern, public sense that the black demographic market exists even if census results regarding race in Brazil remain ambiguous.
In a study exploring the relations between new aesthetics of beauty and
consumption patterns among urban Afro-Brazilian women, Joclio Teles
dos Santos suggests that middle-class black mothers were often involved in
the drive to create such dolls (2001). He notes that AfroDay, a business
started by renowned Rio de Janeiro politician Benedita da Silva, has invested in the manufacture and marketing of black dolls. Silva told the Jornal de Braslia in 1992 that these dolls valorize the black form, in a way
that the child can recognize herself in the toy identifying herself fully,
without rejecting her own traits and characteristics. In a remark that is
particularly revealing, Silva adds: My daughters didnt like [black] cloth
dolls, because there exists wide prejudice against them. Not only do cloth
dolls connote poverty in their simple, homemade composition, but they are
also seen as fetish objects, peas de rituais umbandistas. By contrast, the
plastic, mass-produced, store-bought doll of a black female figure apparently carries no worrisome undertones of African or Afro-Brazilian spiritual practice.
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According to Livio Sansone, in Brazil today, Africa has come to signify

civilization and tradition within black culture, somewhat in opposition to
Afro, which has come to mean a lifestyle adding an African tinge to the
experience of modernity (1999, 39). For Gerhard Kubik, ethnicity as a
cultural consciousness movement is by definition non-ethnic, but it is an
attempt at a large-scale grouping beyond the relatively narrow variation
margin of what in ethnology is defined as an ethnic group (1994). Maracatu de nao presents, in the context of modern flows of symbols and commodities that could represent black identity, a quite narrow variation
margin. This is not because of any ethnic boundaries (West African,
Kongo, or otherwise) that repel nonmembers, but because of its relative
isolation and insularity as a cultural practice including its longstanding
aversion to publicize its connections with xang. There are probably black
youths in contemporary Recife (as in any city in the diaspora) whose interests are more Afro than African: for whom the search for roots and
identity might involve shopping malls, Jamaican reggae, Lakers t-shirts,
the Malcolm X movie, Salvadors Il Aiy, and American hip-hop as much
as local maracatu de nao. For them, perhaps, the agog, timbau, berimbau,
and other emblems of a cosmopolitan, globalized Brazilian negritude offer
more symbolic currency than the gongu and the calunga with or without
a recuperated, specific Central African heritage for these two (now highly
local) Afro-Brazilian cultural objects.
Of course, one must acknowledge the importance of maracatu de
nao long associated with African cultural identity in bringing prestige and new vitality to Recifes carnival and popular music scene generally
since the late 1980s (see Galinsky 2002). But this is not to say there is consensus on the symbolic or traditional nature of maracatu practice: recall
that, as early as 1988, two prominent scholars of Recifes popular culture
drew opposite conclusions about the viability of maracatu as an expression
of authentic local tradition, even as the number of participant groups was
growing. The explosion of new maracatu groups with diverse identities and
emphases, the appearance of the stage as a year-round performance venue
outside carnival, the new black consciousness movements in Brazil, the
trendy aerobics-style classes in maracatu e dana afro offered in Recifes
wealthy beachfront neighborhoods all these have put new strains on
maracatus claims to traditional legitimacy. As arguably the most traditional objects in maracatu (along with the alfaia bass drums), the gongu
and calunga are clearly capable of offering an affirmation of regional-ethnic
pride to many Afro-Pernambucans. But to others, selecting the agog may
present a distinct option for framing local culture in larger symbolic
processes. And if some groups also eschew the calunga, perhaps they see it
as an example of the limited (discreet, ambiguous, non-confrontational)
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symbolic capital of xang in maracatu, in contrast to how the candombl

universe has informed a bold Bahian negritude.18
Sansone has analyzed the hierarchies operant in the exchange of commodities related to modern black identity across the Black Atlantic (Sansone
9
2003).1 He observes that commodification implies a selection among black
objects, bestowing status and promoting those that are selected. Successful
new black objects are often costly (i.e., hair care products, glossy ethnic
magazines, or hip-hop fashions); imported objects generally have higher
status than local ones. The agog is a conveniently inexpensive instrument
that, if we apply to it Sansones framework for categorizing Bahian exports
to the Black Atlantic, is simultaneously a traditional black object (drawn
from venerable Afro-Bahian candombl culture) and a so-called new traditional one (derived from modern Bahian carnival, itself globalized and
re-Africanized). Of course, the agog is not a Bahian instrument per se, although its new sheen of Afro-Brazilian resistance owes more to the Bahian
afoxs, capoeira and blocos afro than to Rios older samba schools. But when
some young Afro-Pernambucans import the agog into their local cultural milieu of maracatu, they may be pursuing two related goals: First, the
articulation of a separate space in which to transcend, if not resist, the conflicting claims to African-versus-local authenticity that hang over the symbolic expression of contemporary maracatu performance; and second, the
creation of a linkage between Afro-Pernambuco, re-Africanized Bahia, and
the Black Atlantic generally, where modern identity construction involves
the selective, dynamic, even contradictory use of various local traditions,
global trends, and African pasts.
Notes
The author would like to thank Julio Conde, Luis Orlando da Silva, Tom Farrell,
Elizabeth Kuznesof, Barbara Weinstein, Saverio Giovacchini, and LAMRs
reviewers.
1. Relevant works in English include Pinto (1996); The Pernambuco Carnival and Its Formal Organizations (1994); Galinsky (2002); and Crook (2002, 2005).
2. See Benjamin (n.d.); Fernandes (1977); Lucas (2002); and Reily (2001).
3. See Dantas Silva (1988, 1991b) and Real (1990).
4. Katarina Real, who sat on Recifes Comisso Organizadora do Carnaval
from 1965 1967, criticized the samba schools, an import from Rio de Janeiro,
every year more exaggerated, threatening to smother the carnival groups of Pernambucan origin (Real 2001, 19).
5. The Golden Law of May 13, 1888, signed by Princess Isabel, put an official
end to slavery in Brazil.
6. I thank Professor Carlos Sandroni, Federal University of Pernambuco, for
bringing this work to my attention.
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7. Recent video footage available in the JVC Video Anthology of World Music and Dance (Middle East and Africa III, distributed by Rounder Records, Cambridge, MA) shows a memorial ceremony for a king among the Tikar people of
Cameroon; mourners are playing very large double bells.
8. James H. Sweet (2003) describes the significance of kitekes, wooden statues that served as representations of the ancestors among the Kongolese.
9. According to one news article, There is no way to deny that all the current
interest in maracatu is due to Nao Pernambuco it was at their rehearsals that the
middle class learned to dance and play the traditional instruments (Lima 2001).
10. Goli Guerreiro (1999) has explored how the blocos afro base their aesthetic
orientation on candombl, as seen in their names and lyrical references as well as
their dance and costume styles; she also creatively analyzed the types of Africa constructed in the discourses of many leading blocos afro.
11. Toque de Timbaleiro by Nem Cardoso, on their 1993 release Timbalada,
declares Toque de timbaleiro/Sacudindo o mundo inteiro/Foi criada na Bahia/
Sada os orixs/Com a fora ijex/Candombl, reggae, magia/ Vem com tranas
negras lindas/Toque o timbau
12. Liner notes to the CD Afoxs de Pernambuco state, The Afro-Pernambucan
scene is one of the strongest in Brazil. In this context the afoxs fit in as powerful
cultural and religious entities, preserving a tradition of the Afro-Brazilian culture
The afoxs contribute generously to raise the self-confidence of the black people of
Brazil. The afoxs are also working politically and socially by informing people
about their rights and fighting against discrimination.
13. Liner notes to the CD Afox Filhos de Gandhi, a restoration of their 1981
long-play record.
14. The brand of capoeira that the state formally recognized in 1937 is associated with Manoel dos Reis Machado (Mestre Bimba), who argued that capoeira was
born in Bahia. Bimba proposed to take his so-called capoeira regional or luta regional
baiana inside a physical-fitness academy, register students with the state, charge
fees, and prohibit students from practicing capoeira publicly; he would teach it
through clear methods, structures, and exercises (derived in part from boxing and
karate); and he would stress its virtues as a means of fitness and self-defense. To a
government eager for healthful symbols of Brazilian national identity, this was appealing. But other capoeiristas in Salvador, led by Vicente Ferreira Pastinha (Mestre
Pastinha), disagreed with Bimbas methods and outlook. They claimed capoeira was
African, and asserted its mystical, naturalistic, and individual nuances against
Bimbas rigorous standardized approach.
15. Elite concern with the Yorubas literacy and strong religious-ethnic identity
was catalyzed by the 1835 Mal Rebellion in Bahia (Reis 1993).
16. For elucidations of Central African influence on Brazilian musical culture,
see Mukuna (1979) and Kubik (1979).
17. The Susi Olodum doll, released in February 2000, boasted a period of
initial sales ten times higher than its manufacturer anticipated (Wall Street Journal
2000).
18. Recifes press tends to refer to maracatu de nao as a folkloric manifestation. Elefante and other longstanding maracatus have also been called patrimnios
do folclore pernambucano, a characterization that would seem to condemn change.
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And whatever the maracatus historic value for representing African culture in Pernambuco, a newsletter from the state Secretariat of Tourism, Culture and Sport
stresses their innate racial democracy and power to unite negros, pardos, brancos
e todas as demais combinaes tnicas que pudermos arrolar (Newsletter of FUNDARPE 1984).
19. While focused on exchanges between nation-states, Sansone also notes that
much of the symbolic exchange and commodification of Africana across the Black
Atlantic has occurred within, rather than across, different language areas, and colonial and ethnic traditions (2003, 91) suggesting, therefore, regional exchange.
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metz.

Cultural Geographies of Afro-Brazilian Symbolic Practice:

Maracatu de Nao, A Tradition Reinvigorated

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

choreographic formations Csar Guerra-Peixe observed in 1949 1952, and

The work of middle-class, lighter-skinned activists to rescue the

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

understanding how those African elements are transformed in their new

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

chingongo, longa. It was associated with aristocracy, kingship, and political

lineage or of the village associations In some cases, where important

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Pernambucan maracatu de nao of this Bantu-derived word and its royal

2000). Other names of traditional female calungas are Dona Leopoldina,

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Gongu player, Maracatu Estrela Brilhante, Carnival 2004, Recife.

leader, Afonso Aguiar Filho, as guardio do segredo do Leo Coroado

Their critics often refer to them as maracatus de universitrio. Because of

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

around the time of the boom in Pernambucan afoxs, black activists

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

discouragement. Whatever the reasons, any mainstream discomfort with

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Guerra-Peixe refrained from in-depth comparisons of the foundation

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Pra denunciar racismo/E contra o apartheid brasileiro). Coincidentally or

Afro-Brazilian carnival processions, or through the media (e.g., MTV Brasil).

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

According to Livio Sansone, in Brazil today, Africa has come to signify

symbolic capital of xang in maracatu, in contrast to how the candombl

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

Maracatu Nao Encanto da Alegria: Pequena Longa Histria. Liner notes.

Tradition and Change in Maracatu de Nao

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