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Peru Negro's music and dance rooted in Afro-Peruvian subculture
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Sun-Sentinel, Peru Negro's music and dance rooted in Afro-Peruvian subculture >>
Soon after Pizarro and the Conquistadors came to the Andes in search of the cities of gold, they settled in for a good long stay, with all the necessities of colonial life.
European furnishings. Liquor and tobacco. Slaves, brought from Africa.
Over time, these people, who came from different parts of Africa and at first could not even speak to each other, developed a culture of their own. Influenced by memories of a distant homeland, by the Indians who worked beside them in the conquerors' fields and by the Spanish ruling class, this Afro-Peruvian subculture remained largely unknown, even decades after slavery was outlawed in the late 19th century.
But the music never died. One family in particular, the Campos clan of Lima, enjoyed an exceptional reputation for its expertise in traditional Afro-Peruvian songs, instruments and dance.
In the late 1960s, the Campos family began to perform as a troupe, Peru Negro, and quickly won an award at a prestigious international festival in Argentina.
"That gave them the validation they were looking for," says Juan Morillo, now the troupe's manager and musical producer. Peru Negro, which performs Friday at the Broward Center, became "the standard-bearer" of Afro-Peruvian music. Although the ensemble has grown to 26 musicians, vocalists and dancers, Morillo estimates that, even now, more than half of them belong to the Campos family.
Unlike Afro-Cuban music, with a strong percussive influence of unmistakably African origins, the Afro-Peruvian style has a number of sources. Songs are built around a rhythmic "spine" -- "That's where its African roots come in," Morillo says -- but also include Spanish guitars, horns and, today, piano.
The percussion instruments speak to the extreme poverty imposed on early Afro-Peruvian performers. They had no drums (drums were, in fact, at times forbidden by clerics who associated them with devil worship), so they used anything at hand. The cajon is a wooden crate that the musician actually sits on, slapping it with his palms. "The technique is similar to conga," Morillo explains, "except that your hands point down, not up."
There's also the cajita, originally a church collection box, that the musician wears around his neck on straps while he strikes the lid. A third instrument, the donkey's jawbone, also plays a big role in creating the distinctive Afro-Peruvian sound; its name is not a metaphor. Bells are used, too.
The songs employ a call-and-response style that dates back centuries. The movement involves a stepping style drawn from the "challenge dances" that African and Indian field workers invented to bring a little pleasure to their hard lives. It's similar to tap-dancing, but it's done without taps or, for that matter, shoes. The powerful shoulder movement predicts the flamenco style that would later be associated with the Spanish lower classes.
Some dances even have European roots, with a twist. Slaves, Morillo points out, were familiar with "the Spanish dances of the colonial period, formal and rigid. The slaves reinterpreted them, mocking the masters."
-Judith Newmark 03/09/05 >> go there
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