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Monday, August 13, 2007
MARIA LANDO
David Byrne
Afro-Peruvian Classics: The Soul of Black Peru
Luaka Bop: 1995
[Buy It]
Some of you may remember the Tom Tomorrow cartoon where Sting, Paul Simon, and David Byrne, all wearing pith helmets and holding microphones, run into each other in a jungle searching for world music. (Was there a fourth guy? Maybe Ry Cooder or Mickey Hart?) The cartoon probably appeared a few years before The Soul of Black Peru was released, on the Luaka Bop label co-founded by Byrne with his new-wave wealth. Because of the cartoon, I've always been a little sheepish about liking the album. There was some imperialist sell-out anxiety. There was also the fact that Byrne insisted on recording an embarrassingly bad version of one of the most beautiful songs on the album: Susana Baca's "Maria Lando." What was he thinking? Did he think he was good? Did the marketing people make him do it? Was Baca stroking his ego, "Ah, David, you have such a gift for the tradition"?
The album didn't need Byrne and I wish he'd said no. Still, without his celebrity clout and his ethnographic bent, I probably wouldn't have heard this music. The African music revival only broke through to the Peruvian mainstream in the late 60s, one local outgrowth of Black Pride movements around the globe. Until then, most African-derived songs, dances, and instruments weren't considered part of official Peruvian culture. (In Peru, as elsewhere in the Americas, the rituals of enslaved Africans - especially the dances! - had been branded lewd, obscene, and un-Christian. The offending practices were suppressed, without irony, by the same morality police who invented the mestizo and the mulatto. The Spaniards also banned drums and marimbas, hoping to control that demon rhythm.)
The musicians and folklorists of the 50s and 60s recovered, and in some cases recreated, a musical idiom that was on the verge of dying out. And that brings us to "Toro Mata" ("The Bull Kills.")
TORO MATA
Lucila Campos
La Mejor Del Ritmo Negro Peruano
El Virrey: 1973
available on: Afro-Peruvian Classics: The Soul of Black Peru
This song has become the "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" of Peru. But I didn't know that until recently. I grew to love this song because of its tight, springy horns and the cha-cha congas. The vocals are very salsa-influenced, which I would guess is less local style and more dance hit style. It makes me do a sort of stiff-legged merengue mixed with a samba-style shimmy. The way I do it, it's pretty strenuous. The song has Kikongo words in it, which suggests its great-great grandparents may be Angolan. If that's the case, my samba shimmy isn't so far off: A large percentage of Angolans were shipped to other Portuguese-held territories, such as Brazil. And the lando, another dance central to the Afro-Peruvian tradition, is close cousins with both the Brazilian londo and the Angolan londu.
Like the lando, the toro mata is a dance as well as a song. According to Wiki, the toro mata dance "mocks and parodies the stylized waltzes of European Conquistadores." The Wiki entry is also full of mistakes, so I'm not sure I should trust it. However, this bit of information does help explain the strange costumes you can see in this clip, where the Peru Negro junior dancers accompany Eva Ayllon's performance of the song.
And that brings us to Peru Negro.
TORO MATA
Peru Negro
Sangre de un Don
Times Square : 2000
[Browse Freely and Buy It]
Peru Negro were revivalists who could put on a show. They date from the late 60s, which makes them early adopters of the folk idiom, once its crossover appeal had become evident. Their shows featured not only the songs, but the lost dances of Afro-Peru, and it was the dancing that made Peru Negro famous. Consider how Dan Rosenberg describes the dance called the alcatraz:This is a couple's dance. Traditionally, the woman has a piece of tissue on her behind while the man dances with a lit candle. If the man can light the woman's fire, she is his. You see where the banning came in? Wait, there's more.Eventually, one of the dancers succeeds and the "burning dancer" gyrates uncontrollably until finally collapsing and grinding against the floor to put out the flames. For years I had idle visions of browsing a record store in Lima and stumbling across a 1970s Peru Negro release (worn but in good condition). Ah, dreams. I like this version fine, but the Campos still rules my heart. The legato delivery here masks the violence of the song lyrics, which include lines like "Who brought this black man here? / We must kill this black man." Note that both versions use a female lead, which is interesting. Although I can't hear Lucila Campos as a woman, no matter how hard I try. Is it just me?
What I discovered when pulling together this post is that Lucila Campos and Caitro Colina (the lyricist) were both members of Peru Negro in its early years. (I'm also guessing Lucila is related to Peru Negro founder Ronaldo Campos.) The Campos version was so hot, and such a big hit, it brought back to life the whole genre of the Toro Mata, which turns out to have a whole variety of secret meanings. And that means the David Byrne compilation was even more right on than I'd originally thought.
Are you guys over this, already? I have a few more stories and two more versions I could post, including a hot salsera rendition by Celia Cruz. Make yourselves heard.Labels: afro-latin, megan, world
posted by Megan
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