Entrainment in Congado music

The Entrainment in Congado Music project builds on Dr Glaura Lucas' many years’ experience researching Congado rituals among Afro Brazilian communities in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. 

During Congado festivals several groups of singers, dancers, drummers and percussionists process around a host’s community or home town performing ritual songs. When individual groups meet or pass close to each other, the focus is on staying together, and on not being influenced rhythmically by the other group (thus, “resisting entrainment”). This focus is linked to their own sense of group identity in the ritual context. This project aims to analyse entrainment in the musical performances of Congado and to investigate the involvement of entrainment in the processes of defining and projecting ritual identity in this music as well as of constructing meaning. 

The feasibility of such research depends on the combination of Dr Lucas’ extensive work on Congado with the expertise developed within the “Experience and Meaning in Music Performance” project, especially in the use of professional audio-visual recording equipment and video analysis software. 

In May 2006 the Open University funded the first stage of this research, involving the documentation of Congado rituals during the May Festival hosted by the Arturos Community in Contagem (Minas Gerais, Brazil). Dr Lucas’ stay in the UK in May 2007 (funded by the British Academy 44th International Congress of Americanists Fund) has allowed trial analysis of the video material collected. Empirical analysis has been the focus of the final stage of research, taking place in winter 2007/08 thanks to a British Academy Visiting Fellowship awarded to Dr Lucas.

Congado – From historical reference to current rituals

The massive presence of African slaves in Brazil since early Portuguese colonization gave birth to a range of cultural Afro-Brazilian practices. One of these is Our Lady of the Rosary’s Reign, popularly known as Congado, a religious tradition in many corners of Brazil. To this day, especially in the state of Minas Gerais, Congado moves hundreds of communities, predominantly black and poor, located in villages and country towns as well as in the outskirts of the big cities. It is a particular form of popular Catholicism, which includes contents inherited from African religious expressions mainly connected to Bantu cultures. It reveals trans-cultural restructuring, a consequence of a history of contacts and conflicts between Europeans and Africans beginning in the 15th century in Africa, and later established in the bosom of the Brazilian brotherhoods by the rules of slavery. 

In colonial times, social organization in Minas Gerais was tightly linked to Catholic brotherhoods. Each brotherhood had a patron saint, who was worshiped in yearly feasts. The religious practices of the Black population, gathered around Our Lady of the Rosary’s brotherhoods, were heavily repressed. Even within the practices of the official religion, however, the slaves rebuilt their traditions, by including their music, dance and the coronation ceremony of kings and queens in Rosary feasts. Thus, they created a specific context of social and spiritual interaction, which was not fully apprehended by the oppressive eyes and ears of political and religious power holders.

With music and dance, Congado’s participants – congadeiros – honour Catholic deities, especially Our Lady of the Rosary and the Black saints, while paying tribute and fulfilling obligations to their ancestors. This conception and spiritual attitude is dressed in deep pain and respect due to the enslaved condition of their ancestors. The rosary’s prayer is conducted by the ngoma – an African drum. Both rosary and ngoma are core symbols of Congado, and have their original meanings recreated and blended. They constitute the main objects for individual and group communication with the realm of the saints and ancestors. 

Different kinds of groups celebrate Congado in Minas Gerais, each one having its proper functional, ritual and aesthetic characteristics. They are Candombe, Congo, Moçambique, Vilão, Catopês, Marujos, and Caboclos. During the Festival, the groups guide and protect the royalty. Kings and queens are still the main authorities in the ceremonies, representing the devotional saints. In Belo Horizonte, capital of the state, Congo, Moçambique and Candombe prevail. They may come as separate entities, but they often belong together to present day brotherhoods performing complementary functions, which are established by a founding myth. According to the myth, an image of Our Lady of the Rosary appeared in the sea and was successfully recovered by black slaves, represented in the Belo Horizonte versions by the three groups mentioned above. This is how the myth installs a hierarchy and a functional complementarity among the groups. Congo starts ahead in the processions, opening and cleaning the way with its faster music and dance, while Moçambique follows behind, conducting kings and queens with slower chants. Candombe, the most important, may appear as a group taking part in public performances, like the others. However, in many communities it is an indoor private ritual that is performed in order to open and close the Congado Festival.

Each community promotes its annual Festival. The ceremonies are conducted with non-stop music produced by the many participant groups – hosts and guests – playing and singing different songs and rhythms simultaneously during the three or four days of the Festival. Masses, processions, corteges, dinner feasts, fulfilment of vows, coronation of kings and queens and the raising of flagpoles are all stages the congadeiros must go through during the Festival, accomplished by means of their chants and dances.

Congado – Musical expression

Moçambique conducts the crown. Congo does not wander.
Captain Antônio Maria da Silva
(Arturos’ Community – Contagem/ MG)

Congado constitutes a context of extremely rich and complex musical experience. The non-stop music performed by the various groups creates an aura of sound, which frames and defines ritual space-time. Thus, the music establishes a connection between the devotees and the realm of saints and ancestors. The many chants and rhythms fill houses, chapels and churches, and run through the paths in the communities, as well as neighbouring streets and squares. It is therefore by means of the music that the ritual obligations are fulfilled, and both spiritual interaction and most social relations occur. The sound constructions and the processes by which they are performed thus present a complex network of meanings, with which the congadeiros build or translate ritual instances. Moreover, this promotes a network of verbal and non-verbal communication, both within the group, and between different groups. 

The long musical flows are facilitated by a number of lead singers and percussionists who take turns in performing the key roles in the group. The groups start each ritual instance in their community chapel. Little by little, the participants begin to tune in and synchronize with each other, dissolving individualities and harmonizing around shared feelings. The sounds and dance movements imbue the bodies with new vibrations, transforming inner and outer energies.

Short call and response chants, intensively repeated, together with cyclically repeated rhythmic patterns played on percussion instruments characterize the vast majority of each group’s music. The chants will allow improvisation, through which the captains – the leaders of the groups – praise the saints, pay homage to the ancestors, express their feelings, convey messages and comment on momentary circumstances. On special occasions, certain chants are preceded by what is known today as embaixada: a metrically more flexible song, whose melodic contour emphasizes a narrative’s intonation, being performed without accompanying instruments. The drums roll at the end of each stanza sung by the lead singer, together with collective performance of a sustained chord by the chorus.

Each type of group is identified by a set of distinctive rhythmic patterns that cannot be played by any other group. In the Belo Horizonte region, Congo plays five patterns, Moçambique plays two, and Candombe, just one. Throughout performances, these patterns are submitted to some degree of variation, according to the context and the group’s function. These variations are called repiques. They are longer and more frequent for the Congo’s caixas (cylindrical drums), while shorter and less frequent in Moçambique – the group that ‘pulls the crowns’ – and they do not occur in Candombe’s ritual. The repiques often arise, for example, in between the performances of the lead singer and the choir or vice-versa, thus establishing a dialogue between caixas and voices. For the congadeiros, this promotes joy and motivation, very important to musical firmness (firmeza). It is this firmness that signals the union and spiritual strength of the group which, symbolically, is interpreted as a rosary. 

Within a given group, the rhythmic behaviour follows from each ritual context. Thus, repiques are more frequent in the streets, during retinues, than in more solemn moments, such as those within churches and chapels, where steadiness in performance is required.

Once we consider all components characterizing each group – chants, bodily movements, pacing, tones, rhythmic variety, repique possibilities, etc. – Congo is the group with the most flexibility, followed by Moçambique, while Candombe’s ritual presents the narrowest range of possibilities. Candombe thus represents a convergence point of the energies, expressed by the non-varying repetition of its sole rhythmic pattern. The much wider range of spatial movements and much greater sonorous and visual density of Congo, on the other hand, are compatible with the role it plays, as the front line group. Congo, therefore, projects itself in many directions to protect Moçambique and the royal court, which follow it along the paths.

Congo captain José Bonifácio da Luz (Zé Bengala), from Arturos’ Community, summarizes the above characteristics of the groups, using the image of a tree, when he states that “Candombe represents the roots, the ancestors; Moçambique is the trunk, and Congo spreads out as the branches, moving wherever the wind will take it.”

Congado – Musical entrainment 

If they [the groups] play the same thing, only one meaning is achieved.
Captain Mario Bras da Luz, patriarch of Arturos’ Community

During the most public days of a Congado Feast in the Belo Horizonte region, a typical soundscape is formed by the simultaneous performance of various chants and rhythms by the many participant groups, who perform the necessary rituals through music and dance. Each type of group – Congo, Moçambique, etc. – has distinctive general features, according to its function defined by the founding myth and its role in the feast, as host or guest. Besides, each brotherhood or community carries a particular history according to its own ancestors. This entails that each group shares a set of private meanings derived from the joint experience of its members. Thus, during these simultaneous performances, each group fulfils its obligations through songs, dance, gestures, texts and its own specific styles, which represent both its role and its identity. Because of these characteristics, the groups in Belo Horizonte never play, together, one and the same musical piece.

The co-existence of many different musical flows for long periods of time makes Congado a very interesting context for the observation and analysis of musical entrainment, both within one group and between distinct groups. 

Spiritual strength is assessed by the firmness of the binding among the participants in each group. The image of the rosary and its linked beads metaphorically expresses this binding. The quality of the performance thus becomes an index of the spiritual strength of the group, since collective production of the same song and the sharing of one and the same temporal organization stress the feeling of union and firmness of the rosary’s links.
During the long musical flows, performances adapt to each ritual event. The groups vary their musical behaviour within the permitted range of tempo, density, rhythmic and choreographic changes, according to the needs and possibilities of place and time. Thus, transition periods between chants and/or rhythms, besides other circumstantial interference, may represent moments of disturbance of the musical flow. Therefore, they require extra attention from the congadeiros so that musical cohesion is reestablished as soon as possible.

The greatest challenge to the firmness of a performance, however, is proximity to other groups and their music. Besides playing different rhythms and singing different chants, the groups also make a special effort for their tempo not to meet, since the speed of the musical flow represents the general emotional state of the group from moment to moment. This speed should thus alter solely according to the group’s internal decisions, and should not be disturbed by external influences.

It is known from the concept of entrainment, nevertheless, that two or more independent rhythmic processes close in periodicity tend to synchronize when they interact. Not only are the groups constantly near each other during the Festival, but also there are occasions when two groups must interact as they perform particular ritual acts together, each group sustaining, however, its own songs. Especially at these moments of closer interaction, intense concentration is called for so that the groups keep the links of their musical rosaries firm. The tendency towards synchronization is perceived by the congadeiros. This tendency is thus seen as a challenge and opportunity to reaffirm the spiritual power of each group during the rituals.