Brazilian Maracatu Residency for Jack Drum Arts

From 8th – 29th July we here at Jack Drum Arts (with support from Arts Council England, Youth Music, and DurhamWorks) played host to Rumenig Dantas, Bigato Pereira, Paijara de Xango, our maracatu de baque virado mentors from Nação do Maracatu Porto Rico. The residency had 3 aims – to further our knowledge and skill within the musical genre (those of us that had studied in Recife) , to provide an introduction to the music to those who had not been on the research trip, and to nurture and strengthen our on-going relationship with Nação Porto Rico.

During the interim between us leaving Recife and the arrival of our guests we had been practicing elements of what we had learning, having spent a great deal of time collating the knowledge via reflection and our bank recorded material. We had begun to cascade elements of the learning to others in the group but were struggling a little due to the limits of our own understanding, and the fact that there were some maracatu instruments and loas that we hadn’t been fully introduced to.

When our mentors arrived we jumped straight into rehearsals as we were to play at Liverpool Brazilica the following weekend. It was once again clear from the off that there is a cultural difference in the level of expectation that is placed on a learner, young or old. The level of dedication, and speed at which one is expected to learn is much higher and faster than we are used to endorsing. There are many elements of this that proved very fruitful and will be incorporated into our own delivery. This includes preparedness, discipline, commitment, and focus. It was made very clear that anything but near-full attendance would result in your not being able to perform. Some parts, however, proved a little stressful for our participants and don’t sit in line with the European models of social pedagogy that we are used to. A large part of the frustration came from our unavoidable inability to sing the Portuguese loas (religious songs / chants) fluently enough to progress at a faster rate. But progress we did.

Our first stumbling block came in session 1 when 4 goatskin heads ripped apart. We think this is due to the British climate. In Brazil the drums get put out in the sun before every performance and rehearsal. The skins we were using had dried out in the cold. The remedy was to put water on the skins and put them out in the brief intervals of July sunlight for almost a week! This, along with un-roping and re-roping the drums every session, will prolong the longevity of the drums and go a little way towards increasing discipline and ownership among our young musicians.

Without the drums, the Brazilians had to adapt their delivery in the lead-up to Brazilica. Though we have a variety of samba surdos, the cultural significance and particular sound of the alfaia is so important that we drummed on the floor. We also stepped away from playing the performance content to develop fundamental skills. We took part in exercises that developed our understanding of the ‘offbeat’. This is very important in maracatu, and it is a very unfamiliar sound to the untrained European ear. The baque paradas (main rhythms) rarely start on the ‘1’, and usually stress the off-beat. The exercises used a combination of marching, clapping, counting, and singing to really work the muscles of our ability to exist musically in an environment of such unfamiliar syncopation and language. This was interesting as a practitioner – all too often we deliver workshops that focus of repeating the performance material and struggling to make it perfect. Another (and potentially more fruitful) way is to dedicate the time to warm-ups and exercises that develop these fundamentals, giving our musicians the tools to play the performance material more easily and fluently, thereby cutting down the time needed in rehearsals.

That’s not to say, however, that repetition isn’t important in maracatu. Unlike samba (which we have found of be chock full of twists and turns and surprise breaks) maracatu is an in-depth musical meditation on a few key tropes and phrases. As such, the music is so rich and full of nuance that the Brazilians masters can hear variations and imperfections that we can only ‘sense’, rather than identify with our novice ears. To develop this skill we had to play, and play, and play.

We took part in other fantastic exercises, my favourite of which saw us ‘speaking’ the rhythms of the drums. We utilise a similar technique to varying degrees of success depending on learning style, coming up with words and phrases that help us remember the rhythms. The maracatu support phrases took this to another level – a mixture of nonsense words and Portuguese that not only laid down the rhythm, bit imitated the sound of the instruments, supported linguistic inflection, and determined the stress and swing that the nuance of the music requires. Suffice to say that I am back to the drawingboard with our English phrases.

As rehearsals progressed, we (adult music leaders / participants and young musicians / leaders alike) were given a whirlwind masterclass in how to lead maracatu. When we returned from Recife we were under the collective impression that we had been given a set of concrete arrangements in the form of the loas, and that the accompanying rhythms and variations were preordained. Slowly we discovered that this wasn’t so. Maracatu arrangements can be made an broken very easily. There are units of meaning (often loas and / or calls being assigned to a particular baque parade or response rhythm, as well as a speed) but they can be used to create new arrangements in the hands of the leader. As long as you are comfortable with the signals, you can do anything. So that is our challenge for the next few months – our leaders will work to become fluent in calling the arrangements. It is at once a liberating and terrifying prospect, but one that I’m sure we will relish until we meet our Brazilian friends again.