TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE
CARIOCA SAMBA
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Carlos Sandroni
S
amba has been recognized, in the last decades, as the
most typically Brazilian musical expression. But the
word "samba”, in Brazil, designates many different
things. Its most common meaning refers to the musical genre
developed in Rio de Janeiro throughout the twentieth century.
The Carioca samba has countless variations, but a
particularly significant difference has been highlighted
by historians of the genre, between the samba composed
in the 1910’s and 1920’s and the samba composed from
the 1930’s onwards. In the beginning of the twentieth century,
those who talked about "samba" in Rio were mostly people
involved with the community of blacks and mestizos
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coming from Bahia, which had settled close to the docks,
in the quarters of Saúde, Praça Onze and Cidade Nova.
Those people held on to many traditions of their homeland.
They were a festive people, who liked singing, eating, drinking
and dancing. They called their parties "sambas". They used the
same word for a musical-choreographic modality they especially
enjoyed, where a ring was formed, someone went to the middle
of the ring and, all the while dancing, chose a partner of the
opposite sex. (The choice was communicated to the partner
with the "umbigada", that is, bumping the navel into the navel of
the selected partner, a choreographic gesture
that is believed to have received from one of the Bantu language
branches the name "semba", supposedly the
origin of "samba"...). The couple danced in the middle of the
ring while everyone sang short refrains, alternating with short
and often improvised solos, backed up by clapping and
instruments like the tambourine, the “plate-and-knife”,
the rattle. After that, the person who had started left the ring
and his or her partner chose a new partner through the
same procedure, and so on successively until everyone
had danced in the middle of the ring.
Among the participants of these Bahian-Carioca
parties were musicians who were becoming professionals,
such as the later on famous Pixinguinha, Sinhô and Donga.
In their own compositions, they were largely inspired by what
they heard there. Donga, son of a partying “baiana”,
was not the first to use the name "samba" as denomination
of genre for one of these compositions; he was the first
to obtain huge popular success when he did so,
with the famous “Pelo telefone", of 1917. But Sinhô was the one
to become known, in the 1920’s,
as the "King of Samba", with compositions such as
“Jura”,“Gosto que me enrosco” and “ A Favela vai abaixo”.
The successful activity of professional composers
would change significantly the connotations
of the word samba in Rio de Janeiro, making it immensely
popular, increasing more and more the number
of people who could identify with it.
At the end of the 1920’s the first "samba schools"
were created. The origin of the name is uncertain.
What does seem certain is that it is connected with a carnival
group of the Estácio de Sá quarter, called “Deixa falar”.
This group is believed to have been the first to parade
in the carnival to the sound of a percussion orchestra made up
of surdos (bass drums), tamborins (sharp drums)
and cuícas (friction drums), to which tambourines and rattles
were added. This instrumental ensemble was called
"bateria" and lent itself to accompanying a type
of samba that was already very different from that of
Donga, Sinhô and Pixinguinha.
Samba a la Estácio de Sá – whose main creators were Ismael
Silva, Nílton Bastos, Bide and Marçal – quickly became the
Carioca samba par excellence. In its wake, people like
Cartola and Paulo da Portela created the samba
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schools that were to become the most traditional of Rio’s
carnival, such as Mangueira, Portela and Salgueiro.
This creation took place in the late 1920’s, early 1930’s, as a
matter of fact along with the creation of carnival competitions.
Why was the samba of Estácio so influential? It is hard to
answer this question fully, but one factor seems to have been
important. The composers of Estácio quickly drew the
attention of a celebrity in the world of professional music: singer
Francisco Alves. At the end of the 1920’s, when the sambas of
Bide and Ismael Silva began to be recorded,
Chico Viola (as he was also known) was already the most
brilliant star in the skies of radio and records in the country. He
joined Estácio, projecting it to a level of prestige only later
reached by Mangueira and other samba strongholds. It is no
wonder that the latter saw in Estácio a model to be imitated.
Accounts of the samba school parades in the 1930’s indicate
that they did not have much in common with what is seen
today in the Sambódromo. Each school sang three sambas, not
only one as from 1940. These were not "samba-enredos"
because the parade did not tell a story nor develop a general
theme. Each samba consisted of a refrain sung in chorus,
after which a soloist improvised verses. Obviously there
was no amplification, and the soloists had to have voices
powerful enough to be heard amidst the bateria.
(There were much fewer people in the bateria than today,
but even so they had to play quietly when the soloists sang.)
The transformations of samba in the first half
of the twentieth century occurred on multiple levels:
in the carnival parades, but also in the recording studios.
The different levels were controlled by distinct social forces:
simplifying things a little, one might say that,
regarding the parades, people like Cartola or Paulo da Portela,
belonging to the poor segment of the population, were in
charge, while the studios were ruled by the art directors of the
record companies, or even by the owners themselves.
The extraordinary worth of Brazilian popular
music produced in that period (and also later) is no doubt
linked to the extent to which such distinct social domains were
able to come together, as co-protagonists of a story that, to a
point, is common to both.
In the early 1930’s, under the impact of the musical innovations
of Estácio, but also of technological innovations – such as the
Photo: Mario Thompson
replacement of the so-called
“mechanic” system by the so-called “electric” system of recording
– the relationship between street and studio samba were
redefined. One of the most important aspects of the new sound
resulting from this redefinition is the inclusion, in the
recordings, of the “rhythmists". This word – and not the much
more recent “percussionists” – was used to refer to the popular
musicians coming from the
samba schools, specialists in
surdos, cuícas, tamborins and
pandeiros. The first time that
such musicians were admitted
inside a studio in Rio de
Janeiro, it seems, was at the
recording of the samba
“Na Pavuna”, by Candoca d
a Anunciação and Almirante,
in 1930. It was only around
1932, however, that the
practice became common.
The presence of the
rhythmists is probably related,
as Flávio Silva suggests, to
another important change
regarding the role of wind
instruments in the
arrangements. In the
recordings of the 1920’s, when
there was no percussion, the
most characteristic role the
wind instruments – particularly of the lower toned trombone
and tuba – was to make a kind of rhythmic punctuation in the
intervals of the singers’ phrases, based on the cell that
Mário de Andrade called "characteristic syncopation",
generally starting with a sixteenth note pause. This
"punctuation" can be heard, for example, in the beginning of
"Jura”, by Sinhô: "Jura... jura... jura... pelo Senhor – pom, pom
pom pom, pom pom pom etc." But it was a true obsession in the
arrangements of the time, being inflected in every possible
variation, in the introductions, in the singing pauses and in the
final chords. However, the samba recordings after 1932 – when
the importance of the rhythmists was already consolidated – do
not show a single trace of the aforementioned "punctuation".
Therefore, It is tempting to agree with Silva, that one element
substituted the other:
the recordings no longer needed the rhythmic
hammering of trombones and tubas, since they could now
count on surdos, pandeiros etc.
In fact, perhaps the significant characteristic of the samba
recordings of the 1930’s – at
least in contrast with those
of the previous decade,
and to a certain extent, with
those of the following decade
– is the strong presence
of percussion, or batucada,
instruments. However,
different from what occurred
in the carnival parades, this
presence was reduced to a
surdo, a pandeiro, one or two
tamborins. (I am not aware of
any recordings including the
cuíca at the time: the
instrument was considered
too bizarre, exotic, strange, as
numerous accounts confirm.)
This "chamber batucada" was
successfully linked to an
instrumental ensemble of the
type called “choro” at the start
of the century, that is, a
harmonic base provided by guitars and cavaquinho joined by
one or two soloist on the flute, clarinet or mandolin.
This new instrumental synthesis of elements from afroBrazilian traditions and elements from the music played by
middle-class urban groups was called "regional",
abbreviation of "regional orchestra", in the recording
studios and the radios, to distinguish it from the “universal”
orchestra based on string and bow.
The first samba school competitions took place in a square close
to the Estácio quarter, the Praça Onze. This was, in the early
decades of the twentieth century, in the fortunate words of
samba player Heitor dos Prazeres, something like a "Little
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Photo: Mario Thompson
Africa". In fact, Praça Onze was celebrated in prose
and verse as the cradle of popular carnival in Rio de Janeiro.
This is largely due to its position in the urban geography.
The square formed a rectangle enclosed by Santana
street on the west, Senador Eusébio street on the north,
Visconde de Itaúna street on the south and General Caldwell
street on the east. On the Santana street side, there was
the end of the Mangue canal, around which
a popular quarter, the “Cidade Nova”, had been built
around 1870 to house emancipated slaves (slavery was only
abolished in Brazil in 1888) and immigrants from inland.
Popular music in Rio at the turn of the nineteenth
century and early twentieth century (choro, maxixe)
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was largely created and played in that quarter.
On the Senador Eusébio side, the square followed the final
stretch of the Central do Brasil Railroad, which brought
to the city center large numbers of workers coming from the
suburbs. A little further down in the same direction,
there were the Saúde and Gamboa hills, also very popular and
inhabited by longshoremen because of their closeness to the
port. On the side of Visconde de Itaúna street was the house
of Tia Ciata. A mãe-de-santo (priestess) from Bahia, s
he was a prominent figure in the origin of samba and the cult of
orixás (African deities) in Rio de Janeiro.
Finally, at the side of General Caldwell street, the square opened
up towards the center of the city, into the rich quarters.
So Praça Onze was not only visited by the poor
from the quarters that surrounded it,
but also by those "of the other side",
either because they looked for the exotic, or
because they had personal relations with
those of the popular world. This "opening"
towards other geo-social spheres lead
anthropologist Artur Ramos to consider
Praça Onze as a "safety valve between
the world of the blacks and the world
of the whites".
Thus, Praça Onze was the place par
excellence of the carnival of the poor, of the
"lesser carnival", as it was called at the time.
The "great carnival", on the other hand, belonged
to the rich, who also organized carnival groups:
the "ranchos" and "Big Societies".
They paraded on the now Rio Branco avenue,
which was, from the point
of view of urban symbolism, diametrically
opposite to Praça Onze. The avenue in question
was opened in 1903-4 and named "Central
Avenue" by mayor Pereira Pasos. Considered by
historian Jeffrey Needel, fittingly, as
"the best expression of carioca Belle Époque",
the new avenue expressed the inclinations
of the Brazilian elite for "their" capital
to be more akin to the Paris of Haussman than
to a tropical, crossbred city.
"The avenue was designed not only to meet urbanistic
objectives: it was conceived as a statement. When, in 1910,
its buildings were finished and its concept completed,
a magnificent urban landscape was unveiled in the center
of Rio. The federal capital now had a truly civilized boulevard
and a monument to the progress of the country [... ]
Popular fancy was dominated by the set of public buildings
on the south end of the avenue: the Municipal Theater,
the Monroe Palace, the National Library and the
Fine Arts School [... ] These facades and the social forces
represented there had been as carefully planned
as the actual design of the avenue." (Needell, 1993)
Elite carnival, elite avenue. The buildings together
formed a kind of synopsis of European style culture
and art: thus the Municipal Theater, a copy of the
Opéra Garnier, of Paris, faced the Fine Arts School,
where classes were conducted in the strictest adherence
to academic tenet.
But history would prove that the opposition between
Praça Onze and Central Avenue was not as insuperable
as it seemed...
During the 1930’s and 1940’s, the samba schools gained
more and more prestige, as samba, as a musical genre,
became a kind of sound emblem of Brazil (Vianna, 1996).
Praça Onze and the streets that surrounded it
disappeared at the end of the 30’s, with the reforms carried
out in the city center, when the enormous Presidente Vargas
avenue was opened (at right angles to the north of Central
Avenue). From then on, the samba school parade
site was changed almost every carnival, but always
attracting more and more tourists, middle class and curious
onlookers from every corner of Rio.
In 1953, a journalist dared for the first time to suggest
that the samba schools had become – perhaps – the main
attraction of the carnival in Rio, more important
even than the ranchos and Great Societies. At the end of the
1950’s, two important changes took place. First, the schools
started to invite, for the work on the visual aspect of the parade
(costumes, floats etc) professionals trained at the Fine Arts
School, whose background included the design of opera stage
sets at the Municipal Theater; later, the parades began to be
held on the avenues where these institutions were located:
the Central Avenue, renamed Rio Branco avenue.
In thirty years, the road covered was enormous. It is hard
to think of anything more opposed to the original intentions
of the designers of the former Central Avenue: that their
jewel would some day be used for the parades of the blacks
from the hills and suburbs, playing African-derived instruments
such as the bizarre cuíca, dancing their
own way. A road covered both by the samba schools, which
organized and transformed themselves, as much as by
the city itself, which, to the sound of the studio-recorded
sambas, like those of Ari Barroso and Carmen Miranda,
gave up its exclusively European model and adopted cultural
crossbreeding as a feasible value.
Bibliography:
Cabral,Sérgio.As escolas de samba do Rio de Janeiro.Rio de Janeiro:Lumiar,1996.
Needell, Jeffrey. Belle époque tropical. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1993.
Sandroni, Carlos. Feitiço decente – transformações do samba no Rio de Janeiro,
1917-1933. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/UFRJ, 2001.
Silva, Flávio. Origines de la samba urbaine à Rio de Janeiro, mémoire. Paris:
EHESS, 1976.
Vianna, Hermano. O mistério do samba. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/UFRJ, 1996.
Carlos Sandroni is a Doctor in Musicology by the Université de Tours,
France, and Master in Political Science by the IUPERJ.
He published the books Mário contra Macunaíma: cultura e política
em Mário de Andrade (São Paulo: Vertex, 1988) and Feitiço decente –
transformações do samba carioca 1917-1933
(Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar/UFRJ, 2001) in addition to several
articles in Brazilian and European publications. Since 2000,
he has been deputy-professor of the Music Department and of the PostGraduation Program in Anthropology of the UFPE.
He is chairman of the Brazilian Association of Ethnomusicology (2001/2002
administration). He is also a composer, writer and guitar player. His songs
have been recorded by Clara Sandroni, Olívia Byington
and Adriana Calcanhoto, among others. His version Guardanapos de papel
(based on the song Biromes y servilletas, by Uruguayan Leo Masliah)
was recorded by Milton Nascimento in the records Nascimento and
Tambores de Minas.
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