Hello, everybody! This is Daniel Piper, curator for Latin America at
the Musical Instrument Museum. We thought since you can't be here with us that we
would bring some of the museum to you. During this time of social distancing,
sometimes it can feel a little isolating, and music is a great way for us to feel
connected with our social bonds and with other cultures as well. So right here,
we have part of our display of Brazil focusing on Carnival. Carnival samba
has a lot of different forms and a lot of different traditions depending on what
part of Brazil you are in. I was really excited because I recently got to go to
Brazil and work with some of the greatest historic Samba groups.
So, for example, this is a drum here. This is a repique drum and it's from the group Ilê Aiyê.
Ilê Aiyê was the first afro-bloco from Salvador, Bahia, up in the northeast.
They defined this style that really celebrated the African
heritage in Brazil. Really beautiful thing. They got to be known around the
world and popular artists like Gilberto Gil and other Brazilians have
kind of followed their lead. Some other great groups, if you head down to Rio de Janeiro,
this drum is from Mangueira, one of the oldest
and greatest samba bands. They keep winning, even more recently. They always have a
fantastic huge samba group. This is just a single drum, but their band
can have up to three or four hundred musicians and with all the dancers and
everybody maybe three or four thousand participants in Carnival.
Some other great instruments... this exhibit is full of some of my heroes.
I have been listening to Brazilian music now for a couple decades and one
of the ways I got into it is I was researching Afro-Brazilian ritual music.
So I was down there in 2005 and going to all these ceremonies of Candomblé.
Candomblé is a religion that preserves a lot of beliefs and practices
from different parts of Africa, but of course has transformed in Brazil over the years.
This particular drum here, this is an atabaque drum. This is from one of
the oldest terreiros. A terreiro is like a sort of a mutual aid society,
a religious society—Casa de Oxumarê.
This is one of their drums that they are proud to have here at MIM.
So, of course this ritual music has inspired a lot of great Brazilian music, including popular bands have taken
rhythms and some of the songs. One artist that sort of has straddled a lot of
genres, here you see him in our mural here. This is Naná Vasconcelos.
Naná was a great percussionist from northeast Brazil, but he started taking this
traditional music with instruments like the berimbau and these fruit shell rattles
and caxixis and the gonguê bell and many other unique
percussion from the region and started fusing this with jazz and samba and even
had done orchestral pieces, you know berimbau and orchestra. He was really a
brilliant musician. He passed away a few years ago and his widow was very proud
to have three of his instruments here to permanently give tribute to
Naná Vasconcelos here at MIM. These are his caxixi,
originally from a central African variety of basket rattle.
These are his fruit shell rattles here. This is based on Amazonian fruit shells.
This is a particularly large example. He used to play both of these together. In one hand he
would play the two caxixis and the other hand the fruit shell rattles.
Then he would be singing and creating a really wonderful kaleidoscope of sound.
Then the last one the gonguê is a giant type of bell used in
processions in the State of Pernambuco and the end of
the bell there you have on your waist. That sound just rings out
when you have a whole band together playing the maracatu music, it’s called.