She has a small cottage-industry with her husband and a few young men who help with the embroidery.
Even though her work is regional, she is part of an international market. The best beads, sequins and decorative glass pieces are made abroad and only available in the markets of Sao Paulo. Each year or so she must import another expensive load of material for the new season.
The batizado of Bumba-meu-boi da Floresta was especially meaningful, and sad, this year. The founder and leader of the group for over 40 years had died the previous week. This leading Baixada group, based in a bairro of Sao Luis, holds a private baptism on June 23-24 — in the heritage manner. The ceremony begins late in the evening in the group’s headquarters (sede), and the boi is baptized after midnight after prayers and hymns in a long liturgy. The group then enters the street in a procession that lasts into the early hours of the morning.
The recently-deceased leader, Mestre Apolonio Melonio, died at the age of 96. He joined Humberto de Maracana, another iconic figure of the BmB, who died only a few months before. Just a few years before that Maranhao’s popular culture lost Terezinha Jansen, leader of Boi de Fe em Deus, who died in 2008.
As the older generation of founders and leaders leaves the scene, leadership is passing to a new group of leaders who are often women and products of a more modern and urbanized Maranhao. This is especially true for groups in Sao Luis, the capital city, but even groups in the interior find that their survival depends on adapting to the needs of modern government, media and commercial organization.
The batizado honored tradition, but also honored the passing of a member of the older generation and another step in the transition in the transformation and modernization of the festival.
For years much of the management of the group been shared by Mestre Apolonio with his wife Nadir Cruz. Now Nadir, her daughter Talyene Melonio, and the senior members of Floresta are adjusting to the new era of the group.
This is the heritage practice, once considered necessary before the boi enters the street to dance. In less commercial times the celebration would take place in a private space or community and might last all night. In the more commercial, performance-oriented environment of the festival in Sao Luis, it is often abbreviated or even performed early. This shows a perfunctory acknowledgement of tradition while allowing the more commercially-oriented groups to begin (paid) performance before the day of Sao Joao. The batizado is one of the heritage customs that has changed with the urbanization and professionalization of the Bumba-meu-boi performance schedule (now largely determined by the city government and commercial entities).
The batizado of Boi Uniao da Baixado, in the bairro of Monte Castelo, is somewhere in between. This ceremony was performed before the day of Sao Joao in order to allow the group to perform that night on a municipal stage. However, the batizado was performed from a specially-prepared liturgy by a priest of the Catholic Church, Padre Haroldo. He is sometimes known as “Padre boeiro,” the priest who dances with the boi.
In this ceremony he wears his boeiro hat and cape over his priest’s vestments. After the batizado we also saw that he wore the rest of his costume under the vestments, doing a quick-change in order to dance with the boi as it entered the street. He later appeared with the group as it performed at the city venue known as Maria Aragao.
The private batizado is usually attended only by members of the groups, close neighbors and friends. They are not advertised and are only known to a smaller circle.
In this case, we did not know the group well, but were friends with Izaurina Nunes, a leading local proponent of cultura popular who was instrumental in having the Bumba-meu-boi designated as a national cultural landmark in 2011. She served as the madrinha (godmother) of the boi, just as in a official baptism there are godparents to assure the spiritual development of the person baptized. Being asked to be godmother or godfather is an honor to special friends and dignitaries, and often to supportive public figures and financial contributors.
The priest is careful to say that this is not a person and therefore not a real baptism in the sense of the institutional church. Shortly after this official disclaimer, he baptizes the ox in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, sprinking water on the new boi and the crowd.
Groups have also sprung up in sotaques that were historically associated with another sotaque, such as Zabumba groups in areas of Costa-da-mao.
The names of the sotaques may have originated with popular usage, but this language has been adopted and codified by governmental and cultural agencies in Maranhao and the city of Sao Luis. Groups are identified as being of one rhythmic style or another, and the official city performance programs are based on that codification. So is the public funding that is given to the groups to support their public performance.
One famous scholar of the Bumba-meu-boi (Neto) has suggested that each group (there are some 400 or more in Maranhao) is its own sotaque, or accent. Certainly some of the groups show a hybridization of style that incorporates elements formerly unique to a particular sotaque.
There remains a popular and official understanding of the sotaques or “accents” in the culture of the celebration in Sao Luis:
Matraca (or Ilha)
Named for its use of the matraca as the rhythmic force, often with hundreds of participants and supports. It is historically associated with Sao Luis, which is an island capital — therefore the alternate name of Ilha. (This style is not pictured below.)
Zabumba
This sotaque is understood as the most “African” in style. It uses large standing drums (zabumbas) as its rhythmic accent.
Baixada
Originally from the interior of Maranhao, the sotaque exists in force in the area of Viana and Matinha. It also migrated to neighborhoods of Sao Luis with residents of the baixada interior coming to the city for work. In general, while the Baixada groups in the city have evolved considerably in their performative style; the groups in the interior tend to be more modest and closer to what is considered the heritage style.
Costa-da-mao
The name literally means “back of the hand,” which is the way the signature rhythmic drums are played. Originally associated with the region around Cururupu, it was celebrated by fishermen and laborers. A few Costa-da-mao roups survive, but their distinctiveness is now preserved by a diminishing number of heritage performers.
Orquestra
This style originated in the 1950s in the area around the river Munim (in such towns as Morros and Rosario). The legend is that a music school in the area provided a number of musicians skilled in “European” instruments that were not used in other sotaques (e.g., trumpets, banjos and other wind instruments). Orquestra pioneered the introduction of lightly-clad female indias/tapuias and evolved into the most performative and mediatic of the sotaques. It is a relative “newcomer” to popular culture, having its roots in the 1950s. In the memory of some younger people in Maranhao (marinhenses) it is now also a “traditional” style, but some members of the older generation, especially those in the older sotaques, are ambivalent about its heritage.
Orquestra’s instrumentation, rhythmic style, costumes, elaborate use of scantily-dressed performers and performance values have made it the fastest-growing style in the region. It is thought to account for as much as 50% of the groups in Maranhao. The use of women performers changed the celebration and performance of the Bumba-meu-boi, but also raised questions about the esthetic/performance of women (and the inevitable comparison with the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro).
A Zabumba group: Boi Unidos Venceremos
This video shows the typical dance of the boi/ox with other characters during the performance (called a brincadeira, from brincar meaning “to play”).
The sound track shows the distinctive pulsing of the large drums (zabumbas) that give this rhythmic style its name. There are two ox figures being danced. The most prominent performers are the vaqueiros, representing cowhands in the narrative. The dancing indias toward the end are, at least in this group, young women and girls. This is one of the groups associated with an old heritage style, and its indias are dressed modestly compared to the newer Orquestra groups.
A Baixada Group: Boi da Santa Fe
A Nearly-Vanishing Style: Costa da Mao (here: Bumba-meu-Boi de Elezio)
Costa-da-mao is now represented by only a few groups and one must search the schedule to find one in performance in the Sao Luis festival. Its distinctive percussion and costumes may be preserved with government support (now more likely since the Bumba-meu-boi was declared a national cultural patrimony), but the rural culture on which it was based is changing rapidly.
UW-Milwaukee Study Abroad students were taught the traditional Tambor da Crioula dance by members of Bumba-meu-boi de Floresta, a celebration group in the Baixada rhythmic style. Like many BmB groups they also practice the heritage dance of Tambor da Crioula, now designated a heritage practice and cultural landmark. Its origins are traced back to the slaves and African-descendants of Maranhao.
Historically the dance seems to have been the performance outlet for women in the group who did not perform in the early decades (centuries?) of the Bumba-meu-boi. There may have a number of reasons women were excluded: patriarchy, the rural division of gendered labor, and perhaps the violence associated with the early celebrations (groups were often rivals and violent confrontations were reputed to be common, sometimes ending in injury, jail or even, rarely, fatalities).
All these factors have changed with the domestication and urbanization of the festival. Women have taken on performance and management roles in the Bumba-meu-boi itself, rendering it less patriarchal and gender-segregated than in the past. But even as the Bumba-meu-boi has changed, the traditional gender separation of the Tambor da Crioula remains. Women of all ages dance, the few men involved are accompanists.
The dance seems distantly-related to the Samba da roda practiced elsewhere in Brazil and danced exclusively by women. Men do not dance in the TdC, but perform the percussion on three drums (somewhat reminiscent of the drums used in African-Brazilian spiritual practice).
The women and girls dance in counter-clockwise fashion, improvising on a simple, basic set of steps that become swirls and turns — dramatized by large flowered skirts.
Women of all generations dance together in the Tambor da Crioula. One enters the center of the circle and dances. The solo is passed on via the umbigada or punga. A new dancer receives the solo by bumping bellies with the dancer in the middle. This passes the dance from one to another, eventually bringing each dancer to the center.
Of the three drums playing accompaniment, two are rhythm. The third has a higher tone and can play improvisation. The dancer often signals to the soloist drummer for a change in rhythm or special pulse to her solo.
The umbigada that passes along the solo to a new dancer comes from the Portuguese word umbigo, which means navel or umbilical. In some ways, the Maranhao term punga is onomatopoetic even more evocative.
Though the umbigada/punga may appear as just a performative element of the Tambor da Crioula (moving the dance from one performer to another), it is also evocative of women’s sexuality and the transfer of power from woman to woman, generation to generation.
The Bumba-meu-boi festival is a popular celebration in Brazil that has its epicenter in the northeast federal state of Maranhao. There, some 400 celebration groups are registered with the government (making them eligible for support). There are many more smaller celebration groups not registered but informally celebrating some part of the festival.
It is different from Carnaval in Rio, but it follows the religious calendar. Here are a few basics:
Carnaval in Rio and elsewhere is the pre-Lenten period of celebration, in the same religious calendar as Fasching in Germany and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is a highly stylized derivation of the samba with thousands of participants (originally associated with Rio neighborhoods) that culminates in a competition of groups at Rio’s Sambadromo (the outdoor amphitheater built specifically for that one night of the year).
The Bumba-meu-boi is also based in the religious calendar and in Maranhao it occurs during the “saints’ days” of June. The crucial period is the day of Saint John (Sao Joao) on the night of 23-24 June. Coming somewhat is the day of Saint Anthony of Padua (June 13), the day on which Ogun was celebrated in Salvador (see post on religious syncretism in Salvador).
After the day of Saint John the Baptist is June 28, the feast day of Saint Peter (Sao Pedro), beloved in Sao Luis because of its maritime history and reverence for the patron saint of fishermen and sailors. The June festival period officially concludes on the day of Saint Martial (Sao Marcal) on June 30. Sao Marcal is a lesser-known saint who was a 3rd century bishop of Limoges — his connection to Maranhao is not obvious, and he may be chosen because his birthday on June 30 provides another occasion for a festival and a procession closing the Bumba-meu-boi festival.
A few terms:
Bumba-meu boi (BmB): A “boi” is an ox, the central symbolic character (represented by a four-foot ox puppet that is the center of the narrative (known as the auto or comedia). The meaning of “bumba” is ambiguous and multivalent, but it seems most commonly to evoke the sound of the large frame drum (Zabumba).
Sotaque: An “accent” or rhythmic form of the Bmb. There are five, each originally based in a different region of Maranhao.
Batizado (baptism): In the older heritage practice, the ox is baptized on the evening on Sao Joao so that it can enter the street celebration as a sanctified “being” — that is, no longer a pagan. The batizado traditionally occurs on the eve of Saint John’s day with the ceremony culminating after midnight, Saint John’s birthday. On this day a new ox is unveiled and “danced” in the celebration of the saint. Because of the tradition of Brazilian syncretism, Saint John is also associated with other entities from indigenous and African-Brazilian practice. Thus, the batizado is practiced also in many houses of African-Brazilian spiritual worship.
The ox is a revered symbol of the performance and groups do not perform without one. Out of pride, groups baptize a new ox every year when they can afford it, but the highly embroidered skin may cost $2000, a significant sum for the groups and unattainable by the smaller groups in the interior. The couro above is done by Sao Luis’ most famous embroiderer, Dona Tania, and takes several months to craft.
The skin of the ox is often laden with Christian symbols, but also with evocations of African-Brazilian practice (e.g., Pombagira, Iansa/Saint Barbara, Iemanja or her representation as a mermaid, or Saint Benedict/”Preto Velho”). Another symbolism shown on a recent boi was that of Saint Cosme/Saint Damien — the twins of Catholic hagiography; in African-Brazilian practice they are often merged or syncretized with Ibeji, the holy twin orixas in Yoruba/Candomble practice.