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From chains to celebration
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Sunday Star, From chains to celebration >>
A ban on drums never stopped Peru's black slaves from making rhythms.
Wooden fruit crates evolved into the cajon, which people straddled and beat with their hands.
Church collection boxes gave rise to the cajita, which they clapped open and shut, and beat with a stick.
Donkey jawbones developed into the quijada de burro, which they beat with the palm of the hand, causing the bone to resonate like a tuning fork and the teeth to rattle.
PeruNegro uses them all. Formed 35 years ago as a folkloric song and dance ensemble, the group itself has evolved into a top-notch world music act of 20 touring performers. They appear for the first time in Toronto on Friday, at Roy Thomson Hall.
"Black music in Peru wasn't recognized until recently," says road manager and producer Juan Morilio. "And February being Black History Month, there is special interest in what we do."
Peru's black community traces its roots to the West African slaves sent to the Caribbean in the 1600s, and shipped to Spanish gold and silver mines in the Peruvian Andes. When too many died in the mountain climate, survivors were moved to the coast to work on sugar and fruit plantations.
One hundred and fifty years ago this year, they were finally freed. Not until the black pride movement of the 1960s, however, did Peru's black musicians and dancers reassert their cultural presence and begin performing for a wider public.
Out of that renaissance came Peni Negro. Their sound springs from the rich percussion of the cq/dn, the cqjita and the quijada de burro. Guitars and vocal choruses complete the arrange ments, with lead singer Monica Duenas bringing a special warmth and sensu ality to the melodies.
After years of success at home, the group gained international attention in 1995, thanks to former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. His Luaka Bop world music label included Peru Negro on its compilation CD, The Soul of Black Peru. Since then, the group has released two of its own: Sangre de un Don in 2001 and Jolgorio a year ago.
The group's dances are said to be pow erful, sultry and sometimes mocking of former Spanish colonial masters.
"Tora Mata' satirizes the minuet," road manager Morilio said from Los Angeles last week. It ridicules the rigidity and lack of natural grace of European dances of the time, then breaks into explosions of rhythm and style.
From slavery to colonial times to the present, Peru Negro's stage show celebrates a little-known history worth discovering.
02/20/05
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