Samba Chula de São Braz
Primordial Samba
from São Braz, Bahia
Brazil's deepest roots, its delta blues...
Samba-chula (or samba-de-roda, there is a slight difference) is a seminal but dying art played nowadays by a mere handful of people. The music fulfilled a role analogous to that of the delta blues in the United States in that it was/is the root foundation for most everything which came after it in Brazil's musical world, from the golden age of radio to bossa nova to tropicália to Brazilian hip hop. And ironically and in total contradiction to the situation of the blues, this cornerstone of culture now finds itself precariously close to disappearing forever (although those last legs certainly do have some life left in them!).
Samba Chula de São Braz on their home turf in São Braz, Bahia
"Chula" is a Portuguese-language word denoting something worthless, of no value. It was applied by the masters to the music of the Bantus on the sugarcane plantations of the Bahian Recôncavo, coming to be innocently used by the slaves themselves...eventually metamorphosing into a term of pride. The rhythmic basis for samba-chula is that of the candomblé rhythm called cabila, or cabula, utilized in candomblé angola (candomblé is the West African religion transplanted to Brazil aboard the negreiros; candomblé angola was the first of the three candomblé nations to arrive on Brazilian soil.) Laced into the polyrhythms of the atabaques, pandeiros, and rebôlo are the patterns of the cavaquinho (a small, high-pitched string instrument) and the violão (guitar). The dancing style -- precursor to the more ostentatious style of Rio de Janeiro -- echoes that of candomblé angola ceremonies.
A note on the film clip above: The girls and the woman with the flower-filled boat on her head are from another small community in the Recôncavo, Bom Jesus dos Pobres (Good Jesus of the Poor). The boat is paraded through the community every 31st of December, an altar into which offerings to Yemanjá (goddess of the salt waters) are placed by town residents. On the 1st of January the boat together with Yemanjá's presents is launched into the waters of the bay.
Towards the end of the 19th century there was a huge outpouring of freed Bahian slaves moving to Rio, looking for work. These people carried their music with them to the territory around another great bay (Guanabara), where their descendents, forced up into the morros (hills) would come to see this heritage rise from its lowly-esteemed position to proudly assume the mantle of the National Music of Brazil (more on this here). But not all freed slaves would make the journey south, and in Bahia the primordial samba, samba-chula, would live on, sublimating away over the course of a century-and-some-decades like vapor from dry ice until now almost nothing is left behind.
Of the few people left in the backwaters of Bahia who continue to sing and play this essential music (having learned it from their parents, who learned it from their parents, who learned it from...), it can be safely stated that none express it with more vitality and charisma than the Saturno Brothers, João and Antônio, popularly known as João do Boi (John of the Ox, for the cows he keeps) and Alumínio (Aluminum, for the way he shone, literally, as an energetic, sweat-drenched kid on the football fields of his youth).
João do Boi (John of the Ox), out behind his house with his grandson
The brothers play together with friends and family from the small community of São Braz, located some 5 kilometers outside of Santo Amaro, itself located at the north end of the Baía de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints), the huge bay "discovered" by Amerigo Vespucci on All Saints Day in 1501 (Santo Amaro is hometown to Caetano Veloso and his sister Maria Bethânia).
This music is meant to be played loudly enough to feel the drums and Kaú's (see below) pandeiro!
João in front of his house...
Alumínio in his living room...
Atabaque player Mário Santana is a master of candomblé rhythms...
In addition to candomblé, São Braz has a Catholic church across the road and up the hill from João do Boi's house...
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Kaú is master of the peculiar style which is Recôncavo pandeiro, with a swing unlike that found anywhere else in Brazil (not to mention the world!), easily confirmed by listening to the songs in the player. |
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It'd be great to board a time-machine and pay a visit to 1930's Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama, stepping up to a front porch on a humid summer's evening to clap hands to the rural American version of the above. But alas that time is gone and the time-machine is only a wistful figment of our imagination. Things have "progressed" more slowly here, but soon enough one will never be able to see or hear again what now requires but a journey into the Bahian interior to bear witness (or dance) to, if one knows where to go, and on what night...