World Music Culture Term Paper

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Music Culture: Congado

The purpose of this work is to review the article written by Lucas Glaura about the music rituals of the Afro-Brazilian Group who has the "Ceremony of Congado."

Each year religious musical festivals take place in Minas Gerais, Brazil in which musical worship is the focus. These festivals and ceremonies hail from a past when the whites were actively making slaves of the blacks and these ceremonies were the cultural response to those dark times. The religious ceremonies are complete with chanting, singing, dancing and playing instruments. Considered a form of praying by the Afro-Brazilian religious groups that take part the ceremony and they are very serious about their dance and playing of instruments as all of this is a part of their worship and is considered to be highly sacred to these people.

Congado

This musical worship is known as "Congado" with thousands of the people coming from the small villages in which they live to take part in the ancient memorial. The groups that take part in this "Brotherhood of the Rosary are the Congo, Catope, Marujos, Mocambique, Candombe and Cabocios groups and they are called the guardas or ternos. Each group has its own definitive expressed through clothing, ritual objects as well as the choreography of the dance and other specific musical individualities.

Candombe: The Father

Candombe is considered the father and is expressed in street ceremonies and musical dance and performance in some regions. However, in most of the regions the Candombe is an indoor ceremony, which is of a very privatized nature and is attended only by those of the elite heads of the spiritual groups.

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The Candombe ritual "the three drums" are drums which the participants play by hand along with the guaias which are a type of rattles that are made from baskets and finally the puita or cuica which are a type of "friction drum."

The kings and queens rule over the ceremony standing in stead of "Our Lady of the Rosary," royalty of Africa and the saints. The attendance of royalty is part of the heritage since the time of colonization. Each year a new king and queen is chosen who will hold the position for the following year.

II. The Lady in the Sea

The basis for the festival is the creation story. There is a legend told that during the time of slavery that "Our Lady of the Rosary" materialized out in the sea. In this legend the black people rescued "Our Lady of the Rosary after the whites failed in their rescue attempt. The Congado ceremony begins at the ending of Holy Week, which corresponds with Easter Sunday in the U.S. The first ceremony in the festival is the "congadeiros" meaning "The Opening of the Reign." The festival goes until sometimes in October or November. The most anticipated festival is the rosary festival which last three days and requires a month's preparation.

Several individual rituals are enclosed within the ceremonies. The difference in rhythm is what defines the differences in the participating groups. The performances are structured in rhythmic patterns that are "adorned" or "extrapolated through variation processes." There are three possible patterns of rhythms as follows:

Base:….....

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