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Berimbau
The berimbau (Portuguese pronunciation: [beɾĩˈbaw], borrowed from Kimbundu mbirimbau) is a traditional Angolan musical bow that is commonly used in Brazil. It is also known as sekitulege among the Baganda and Busoga.
It consists of a single-stringed bow attached to a gourd resonator and is played with a stick and a coin or stone to create different tones and rhythms.
The berimbau was used in many parts of Africa and Brazil during the 19th century to accompany chants and storytelling. It is part of the candomblé tradition, later incorporated into the Afro-Brazilian art capoeira. Until the mid-20th century, it was used almost exclusively within the black community, but after the popularization of capoeira, it gain wider popularity.
Today, berimbau is used in various genres of popular music.
Berimbau is an adaptation of African gourde musical bows, as no Indigenous Brazilian or European people use musical bows. According to the musicologist Gerard Kubik, the berimbau and the "southwest Angolan variety called mbulumbumba are identical in construction and playing technique, as well as in tuning and in a number of basic patterns played." The assimilation of this Angolan instrument is evident also in other Bantu terms used for musical bow in Brazilian Portuguese, including urucungo, and madimba lungungu.
In 1859, French journalist Charles Ribeyrolles described free practices of African slaves on a plantation in Rio de Janeiro province, linking the berimbau to the batuque:
Saturday evening, after the last working task of the week, and on holidays that give idleness and rest, the blacks have an hour or two of the evening for dancing. They assemble in their terreiro, calling, gathering and inciting each other, and the celebration starts. Here it is the capoeira, a kind of Pyrrhic dance, with daring combat evolutions, regulated by the Congo drum; there it is the batuque, with its cold or indecent postures which the urucungo, viola with thin cords, accelerates or contains; further away it is a frenzied dance where the gaze, the breasts and the hips provoke. It is a kind of inebriated convulsion one calls the lundu.
The berimbau first appeared as an instrument accompanying capoeira in the early 20th century in Bahia. The berimbau slowly came to replace the drum as the central instrument for the capoeira game, which it is now famous for and widely associated with.
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Berimbau
The berimbau (Portuguese pronunciation: [beɾĩˈbaw], borrowed from Kimbundu mbirimbau) is a traditional Angolan musical bow that is commonly used in Brazil. It is also known as sekitulege among the Baganda and Busoga.
It consists of a single-stringed bow attached to a gourd resonator and is played with a stick and a coin or stone to create different tones and rhythms.
The berimbau was used in many parts of Africa and Brazil during the 19th century to accompany chants and storytelling. It is part of the candomblé tradition, later incorporated into the Afro-Brazilian art capoeira. Until the mid-20th century, it was used almost exclusively within the black community, but after the popularization of capoeira, it gain wider popularity.
Today, berimbau is used in various genres of popular music.
Berimbau is an adaptation of African gourde musical bows, as no Indigenous Brazilian or European people use musical bows. According to the musicologist Gerard Kubik, the berimbau and the "southwest Angolan variety called mbulumbumba are identical in construction and playing technique, as well as in tuning and in a number of basic patterns played." The assimilation of this Angolan instrument is evident also in other Bantu terms used for musical bow in Brazilian Portuguese, including urucungo, and madimba lungungu.
In 1859, French journalist Charles Ribeyrolles described free practices of African slaves on a plantation in Rio de Janeiro province, linking the berimbau to the batuque:
Saturday evening, after the last working task of the week, and on holidays that give idleness and rest, the blacks have an hour or two of the evening for dancing. They assemble in their terreiro, calling, gathering and inciting each other, and the celebration starts. Here it is the capoeira, a kind of Pyrrhic dance, with daring combat evolutions, regulated by the Congo drum; there it is the batuque, with its cold or indecent postures which the urucungo, viola with thin cords, accelerates or contains; further away it is a frenzied dance where the gaze, the breasts and the hips provoke. It is a kind of inebriated convulsion one calls the lundu.
The berimbau first appeared as an instrument accompanying capoeira in the early 20th century in Bahia. The berimbau slowly came to replace the drum as the central instrument for the capoeira game, which it is now famous for and widely associated with.