Pisei na pedra, a pedra balanceou,
levanta meu povo, cativeiro se acabou.
I stepped on the stone, the stone tipped over,
rise my people, slavery is over.
(Pisei na Pedra - ponto de louvação, Darcy Monteiro)
Created in the time of slavery and currently practiced in the yards on the periphery of large cities or in small towns and rural communities in Southeast Brazil, Jongo is a manifestation that is expressed through a circle dance to the sound of drums that integrate magical elements. The strength and the use of the word mark this form of expression, which includes singing, collective dancing and music, whose origin goes back to slave labour on coffee and sugar cane plantations in the Southeast of the country, especially in the Paraíba do Sul River valley.
Called jongo, caxambu, tambor or tambu, it is played and sung in various ways, depending on where it is taking place, with similarities and common elements that cause it, even with different names, to be understood as a single event. It is practiced by black people, descendants of slaves, mostly of Bantu origin, as the respect and worship of ancestors and the use of sung enigmas and of belly-touching in dance are characteristic of the Bantu people and are present in Jongo.
A moment of fun and at the same time resistance, the Jongo circles that took place at night to the sound of two or three drums were banned in the slavery period, mainly because the lords feared that black people would organise riots and/or escapes.
The ‘pontos’ (refrains), as the sung verses are called, enabled communication between slaves because they used vocabulary of African origin and coded language, that is, words whose meanings were distorted. Thus, it was possible to criticise and protest without being understood.
In the times of slavery, jongo’s metaphorical poetry allowed practitioners to communicate through pontos that their captors and masters could not understand. Therefore, it has always had a marginal dimension, where black people talk about themselves and their community through chronicles and coded language. (IPHAN, 2007, p.14).
Slavery, the arrival at the coffee plantations, liberation and daily life are recurring themes in the narratives sung in the refrains, whose main feature is the improvisation born from its critical tone and/or protest. It can be said that this form of expression, passed down for generations, maintains and perpetuates the memory of slaves and their descendants in the states of Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Jongo is danced in the June festival period, at celebrations of patron saints, on the Day of Abolition of Slavery (13 May), Black Awareness Day (20 November) and on the birthdays of important people in Jongo communities. Nowadays, it also takes place at events organised by the government or by NGOs. However, Jongo is primarily a community festival, a gathering of neighbours and relatives.
Jongo circles happen in open spaces, often yards. Although the types and number of instruments vary between locations, Jongo’s rhythmic base is composed of a pair of drums: a larger one, called tambu or caxambu, whose sound is deep; and a smaller one, called candongueiro, whose sound is high-pitched. In some places, complementing the group of musical instruments are a rattle and/or puíta, a friction drum (like a cuíca) which may be between 25 and 40cm in diameter. Although most of the drums are handcrafted – made from a hollowed trunk covered with animal skin – today industrially made instruments can be found in circles.
Like the instrumental formation, the ways of dancing and singing are varied. The circle can rotate or remain still. Dancing pairs enter and leave the circle’s centre, where they dance in movements of going apart and coming together, when they give an ‘umbigada’, i.e. touch their navels. In the corner, the soloist, which can be either a man or a woman, sings a refrain, which can be repeated in full by the chorus, singing the same tune only with syllables, without words, or divided into parts, one sung by the soloist and other by the choir. After the soloist sings, the drums begin to sound and the dance begins. Then a sung dialogue begins between the soloist and the choir until the soloist yells machado! (axe) or cachoeira! (waterfall), when the drums and dancing stop. Then, the same soloist either begins another refrain or is substituted. Improvisation, a characteristic of the refrains, is being lost over time, so that there is currently a more restricted repertoire of refrains that is memorised and shared by groups.
Commonly the circle begins with a point of reverence or a request for permission, as sung in Serrinha, Rio de Janeiro:
Bendito, louvado seja (Blessed, praise be)
É o Rosário de Maria, (It is the Rosary of Mary)
Bendito para Santo Antônio (Blessed be St Anthony)
Bendito pra São João (Praised be St John)
Senhora Sant’Ana (Madam St Anne)
Saravá meus irmãos (Hail my Brothers)
(IPHAN, 2007, p.38)
Whoever begins the refrains “usually occupies a prominent position in the group, either by their age and respectability, or by their leadership capacity” (IPHAN, 2007, p.52).
According to the report commissioned by IPHAN, Jongo no Sudeste (Jongo in the Southeast), the Jongo communities divide their refrains into two types, according to their functions and effects: i) visionary or bizarre refrains “are sung to praise entities, ask permission, and report and comment on daily events, cheer and excite the dancers, and to say farewell at the end of the circle” (IPHAN, 2007, p.53); and ii) ‘gurumenta’ or demand refrains, that “lend themselves to the challenge and have the power to ‘charm’” (IPHAN, 2007, p.54). The latter challenges participants to decipher enigmas, can cause rifts between participants or may have magical effects. The enigmas are sung to be decoded, and if they cannot, the jongo is “tied”. The circle, which goes all night, can be finished with a closing or farewell refrain.
Vou caminhar que o mundo gira (I will walk so the world turns)
Vou caminhar que o mundo gira (I will walk so the world turns)
Gira meu povo (Turn my people)
(Vou caminhar/Jongo da Serrinha)
In the late 20th century, there was the emergence of a movement to revive Jongo, since urban transformation and migration caused the cultural manifestation to end in some communities. Also contributing to reducing the incidence of Jongo was the fact that, for many years, Afro-Brazilian practices and expressions were regarded with an element of shame for the population that practiced it, in the context of the surrounding society that devalued it, as it came from black communities that were excluded and made invisible for centuries.
Strategies for the continuation of Jongo have been implemented by Jongo communities, such as encouraging the participation of children, the creation of children’s groups, and not banning the participation of people who are not children of Jongo communities. Groups are promoting artistic performances in other places outside the community to bring greater visibility to the manifestation.
Since 1996, itinerant annual meetings of Jongo have been held in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where the difficulties and possibilities for the manifestation are discussed with nightly performances in public places. In one of these meetings in 2000, the Jongo Memory Network was created, which aims to articulate Jongo communities with each other and with broader society.
As a fruit of this mobilisation, in 2005 Jongo was recognised as Brazilian Cultural Heritage of Intangible Nature and inscribed in the Book of Forms of Expression. In 2011, 26 July was instituted and inserted into the official calendar of the state of Rio de Janeiro as State Jongo Day, through State Law no.6098 on 5 December.
Recife, 11 April 2014.
Translated by Peter Leamy, May 2015.
sources consulted
IPHAN. Jongo no Sudeste. Brasília, 2007.
JONGO DA SERRINHA. Pontos de jongo. Available at: <http://jongodaserrinha.org/pontos-de-jongo/>. Accessed: 10 abr. 2014.
RIO DE JANEIRO. Lei Estadual n. 6.098, de 5 de dezembro de 2011. Available at: <http://alerjln1.alerj.rj.gov.br/contlei.nsf/01017f90ba503d6103256
4fe0066ea5b/531dd48b17559b9c8325795e0067165a?OpenDocument>. Accessed: 10 abr. 2014.
how to quote this text
Source: MORIM, Júlia. Jongo. Pesquisa Escolar Online, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Recife Available at: <https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/en/>. Accessed: day month year. Ex: 6 ago. 2009.