Songs of Resistance: Call and Response Traditions
Call and response is the main form of musical expression used in the play, which is commonly found in African and Afro-descendent cultural expressions. The democratic and participatory nature of call and response is used frequently in Afro-Brazilian religious practices as way to initiate rituals and was an important oral tradition used to pass down songs, dance, stories, and customs to the next generation.
Congada
Throughout the play the actors play music and songs rooted in call and response. Not only do they sing with each other, but have the audience participate as well in the ritual of the song. Several songs are dedicated to the saints, including the Virgin Mary and Saint Benedict. In the video, Cleydson Catarina calls on the audience to participate in his song to Saint Benedict:São Benedito é negro, ele é nosso pai
São Benedito é negro, ele é nosso pai
Alumeia os caminhos onde as crianças vai
Alumeia os caminhos onde as crianças vai
São Benedito é santo, santo ele é!
São Benedito é santo, santo ele é!
Ele tem nos braços menino de Nazaré
Ele tem nos braços menino de Nazaré
Saint Benedict is Black, he is our father
Saint Benedict is Black, he is our father
Light the way where the children will go
Light the way where the children will go
Saint Benedict is a saint, a saint is what he is
Saint Benedict is a saint, a saint is what he is
He has in his arms the child of Nazareth
He has in his arms the child of Nazareth
The song is not only religious, but takes on a political purpose as the actor and the audience call to Saint Benedict to only venerate him, but ask him to lead the way to protect their children. The children in this context are the Black and Brown youth from Brazil's marginalized communities who also are the target audience for this play.
In another song led by the actor Uberê Guelé, he calls on the Virgin Mary to protect him in the role of Negrinho. The audience engages in call and response singing the refrain as Negrinho dances in a circle with the Virgin Mary after appearing to him:
Vai buscar Nossa Senhora pra tomar conta de mim.
Go search for the Virgin Mary to look after me (author's translation).
Initially, the song serves as a way to call upon the divine to protect Negrinho from the violence of slavery, but the singing of the refrain can also function as a form of solidarity politics in which the the collective is using the song as a way to strengthen each other in the face of ongoing oppression. Therefore, to sing, to dance, and to celebrate as a community within the performance space functions as a form of resistance not only symbolically within the play, but for the lived experiences of the actual residents of the periphery in attendance.
Capoeira
Call and response takes on a ritualistic role to mark the death of Negrinho when the actors sing a ladainha, or litany in the capoeira tradition. The ladainha in capoeira is typically sung at the start of a roda, or the gathering of practitioners in a circle to play this Afro-Brazilian martial art with each other. It has the purpose of sharing histories to do with their lineage or to teach a moral lesson.The actor playing the berimbau, the bow like instrument used in capoeira, starts the ladainha, and the rest of the actors respond in a solemn manner to reflect on the death of Negrinho and the legacy of violence against Afro-Brazilians. In this way, the ladainha serves to mourn not only the passing of Negrinho, but the many lives lost of Black youth in Brazil. There is added depth to the song's meaning and social function when placed within the larger historical context of capoeira. This Afro-Brazilian musical and martial art tradition emerged in the 1600s during Brazil's colonial period when the trans-Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved Africans to Brazil.1 The songs and dancing tied to capoeira serve as a way to not only preserve marginalized histories, but functioned as a way to resist the violence of slavery, specifically the epistemicide of African-based cultural traditons. The singing of the ladainha in Auto do Negrinho calls upon that history of resistance when the actors and the audience are faced with the devaluing of Black humanity and culture by the Brazilian state.
The songs performed in the play not only preserve these popular traditions, but are meant to pass down to the youth of the periphery the value of the stories of death and survival that mark the lived experiences of their own communities and to embrace them as form of empowerment.
Footnotes
- See Matthias Rohrig Assunção's Capoeira: a History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art (2005) for additional information about the history of capoeira.↵