Calundu's Winds of Divination: Music and Black Religiosity in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Volume 3 | Number 2 Article 3 2017 Calundu's Winds of Divination: Music and Black Religiosity in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil Jonathon Grasse California State University, Dominguez Hills Follow this and additional works at: http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr Part of the Music Commons, and the Other Religion Commons Recommended Citation Grasse, Jonathon (2017) "Calundu's Winds of Divination: Music and Black Religiosity in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 3: No. 2, Article 3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1080 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Calundu’s “Winds of Divination” Music and Black Religiosity in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil Jonathon Grasse The drum-laden music of calundu religious In addition to its very religiosity running practice punctuated life in cities, mining counter to Christian beliefs, calundu’s Af- towns, and farms (fazendas) in eighteenth- and rican-derived liturgical music and language nineteenth-century Minas Gerais, Brazil. This help distinguish it from creolization, syn- article seeks to more clearly understand cretism, or hybridization.2 Drumming—both calundu historically, its religiosity’s links to figuratively doctrinal as sacred commu- music, and its meaningfulness as a vital yet nication and imagistic in its sensual timbre and seemingly lost sacred music tradition from an attractive musical patterns that induce dance understudied region of the African diaspora. and trance possession—is a primary conduit Discussion of its oppression, subsequent for ancestor worship and spirit com- fragmentation, and transformation leads to a munication. A key to religious parallelism, brief examination of notional scenarios of drumming here remains “uncompromisingly cultural redirection and absorption of calun- African.” 3 Likewise speaking to parallelism du’s music among other black religious music was calundu’s equally uncompromising chant, genres in Minas Gerais. These include the calling forth spirits and ancestors in African syncretic Afro-Brazilian religions of macumba languages including a “dialect of the mines” and Umbanda, the black Catholic congado, and (falar Africano or calunga) specific to Minas the quasisacred remnants of the otherwise Gerais and southeastern Brazil, which de- secular batuque circle dance. Examining eigh- creased in prevalence, like calundu itself, in teenth- and nineteenth-century music and isolated parts of Minas.4 black religiosity, and calundu’s fate, offers insight both into links between music and religious belief, and into these identities in 2 See Kalle Kananoja, Central African Identities and Minas Gerais as a unique cultural territory. Religiosity in Colonial Minas Gerais (Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi University, 2012), 17–22. Using Afro-mineiro Another role calundu music plays arguably religiosity as a focal point, this author effectively rests in its appeal to the “parallelism” summarizes divergent views on distinguishing creo- approach found in scholarship on Atlantic lization from among other theories. 3 José Jorge de Carvalho, “Black Music of All creole religious belief. For instance, James Colors: The Construction of Black Ethnicity in Ritual Sweet maintains that early eighteenth-century and Popular Genres of Afro-Brazilian Music,” in Music and Black Ethnicity: The Caribbean and South America, ed. African religions in Brazil were often less Gerard Behague (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, syncretic or creolized than “independent 1992), 188. systems of thought” paralleling Catholicism.1 4 Steven Eric Byrd, “Calunga, an Afro-Brazilian Speech of the Triangulo Mineiro: Its Grammar and History” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1 James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa (Chapel Hill: 2005). Regarding the cultural and religious power of University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 7 and 115. secretive, African-derived language in Brazil, see also Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 3, No. 2 (2017) 43 From Africa to Brazil Bengo, Angola, describes quilundu (calundu) Calundu’s dynamic social spaces define a and maconza, a scraper idiophone known in chapter of Minas Gerais’s history, helping Brazil as reco-reco and canzala: illustrate the unique cultural territory of this They also had a pot placed over a fire. In the interior highland state also referred to as pot [were] blood, wild honey, red feathers, and bones of animals. Three men danced Minas, whose inhabitants are known as around the fire, accompanied by musicians mineiros (miners). A cross-section of colonial playing maconzas. The purpose of the mineiro society dominated by a Catholic ceremony was to cure a sick black woman. Portuguese minority sought out secretive Paulo, the master of the ceremony, invoked a calundu healers who maintained trance- spirit named Angola, clearly a reference to the title ngola.5 possession customs within a hidden world that contrasted with the public soundscapes Slaves and their descendants formed of other Afro-mineiro religious music. Some ethnically diverse generations of Afro- calundu sessions attracted paying clients mineiros who acknowledged the liturgical seeking remedies, spiritual protection, and music upon which calundu’s efficacy rested, good fortune in matters of love and finance. contributing to the transformed traditions of Directors of calundu ritual (calundeiros/as) an increasingly pan-Bantu culture, dominated relied upon music, chant, and dance for trance as it was by Congolese and Angolan possession, inviting ancestral spirits (some- influences. Liturgical chant and dance were times known as zumbi) to prescribe treatments likely accompanied by combinations of and advice. Enslaved nganga priests and membranophones of various shapes and sizes priestesses from Angola likely contributed to played by hands or sticks: frame drum (adufe, calundu’s presence in Minas, as did perhaps later pandeiro), friction drum (cuíca or puíta), the slavery-shattered remnants of secretive wooden or bamboo notched scrapers (reco-reco, Congolese kimpasi religious societies. The or canzala), shakers metallic or otherwise Bacongo people, for instance, placed nganga (generic term: chocalho), bead or shell net- practice alongside the work of itomi, advisors covered gourds (chekere), basket rattles (caxixi), in supernatural communication who encoura- struck metallophonic bells (agogó), and shaken ged fertility and resolved family disputes, and bells with clappers (adjá). While no of ndoki fortunetellers practiced in divination. transcriptions of calundu music exist, we can Two centuries before the decades-long surmise that these sacred timbral textures mineiro gold rush began in the mid-1690s, the were combined with syncopated, polyrhyth- Portuguese and missionaries spread Catho- mic patterns similar to those heard in known licism in Africa while interpreting these rituals African and Afro-Brazilian percussion music. as creolized concepts of fetish (feitiço) and Arguing for timbres and generic style as sorcery (feitiçaria), with practitioners known as primary contexts for religiosity allows us fetishists (feitiçeiros). Early eighteenth-century through conjecture to establish historical con- Portuguese Inquisition testimony given by tinuity of some musical traits with other Afro- Matheos, a Jesuit College estate slave in Brazilian religious practices. We ascribe to Carlos Vogt and Peter Fry, Cafundó: A África no Brasil 5 Cited in Kananoja, Central African Identities and (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996). Religiosity, 202. Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 3, No. 2 (2017) 44 calundu’s musical import not just this process of urbanization, and the local pro- commonality, but also a heightened sense of duction of gold.7 what Suzel Reily posits in her ethnography of Though of great historical value, sources such southeastern Brazil as the “sensual stimulation as observations published by nineteenth- and loosely qualified affective experiences . century European travelers—who were in the construction of religious conscious- sometimes unaware of the sacred-music ness,” as she navigates between dichotomous functions they witnessed in Afro-mineiro notions of “doctrinal” and “imagistic” modes communities—were prone to racist cha- of religiosity.6 racterizations. 8 Some misidentification likely Diverse Central African ethnicities in went both ways: secular entertainment may Minas likely shared to varying degrees music’s have been conveyed as sorcery, with sacred role in articulating religious beliefs concerning rituals described as simple dance music. everyday social roles, relationships, fluidity “Feast” and “dance” labeled what could have between the worlds of the living and the dead, been calundu. Some whites and mulattos and beliefs in the eternal force of human participated in calundu healing rituals, while souls. The relatability with spirit pantheons some blacks did not, adding to potentially and ancestral heritage through music confusing socially heterogeneous musical remained a cornerstone. Other shared features meanings. Ladinos, acculturated Africans who likely included communal vocabularies of turned away from their ancestral

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