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Reinado do Rosário de Itapecerica (MG): Da Festa e dos Mistérios, and: Folia de Reis: Tradiçāo e Fé (review)

2007; University of Texas Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/lat.2007.0022

1536-0199

Suzel Ana Reily,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Reviewed by: Reinado do Rosário de Itapecerica (MG): Da Festa e dos Mistérios, and: Folia de Reis: Tradição e Fé Suzel Ana Reily CD Review: Reinado do Rosário de Itapecerica (MG): Da Festa e dos Mistérios(2005), Associação do Reinado do Rosário de Itapecerica/Viola Corrêa Produções Artísticas; Folia de Reis: Tradição e Fé(2006), Viola Brasileira Show Produções e Eventos. Although Brazil has the largest population of Roman Catholics in the world, the musical traditions associated with popular Catholicism in the country have received very little academic attention. For this reason alone the two sets of double CDs, Reinado do Rosário de Itapecerica (MG): Da Festa e dos Mistérios and Folia de Reis: Tradição e Fé, are most welcome. They offer some of the first accessible recordings of two central spheres of Brazilian popular Catholic expressions amongst some of the poorest sectors of Brazilian society: The Festival of [Our Lady of] the Rosary, a quintessential form of African-Brazilian Catholicism that involves performances by several types of percussion-based dance troupes, and the folias de reis, mummer-like ensembles that go from house to house during the Christmas season to bring the blessing of the Three Kings in exchange for donations to stage a collective festival on January 6, Kings' Day. Both [End Page 173]CD sets were supported by the Centro de Memória Digital of the University of Brasília and funded by Petrobas, which has become a major sponsor of Brazil's cultural heritage. To make the recordings, the production teams took advantage of events where they would have easy access to the ensembles. However, because the two events were distinct, the two sets present rather different ethnographic approaches. The Reinado do Rosáriodocuments the various percussion and dance ensembles that performed during the Festival of the Rosary in Itapecerica, Minas Gerais, in 2004, depicting thereby local forms of a widespread form of religious expression. Folia de Reiswas recorded during the annual Meeting of Folias de Reis ( Encontro de Folias de Reis) promoted by the local government of Brasília in 2005, which attracted numerous ensembles from various parts of the country. The sets are accompanied by booklets containing explanatory texts. A special touch was added through the inclusion of direct quotes made by performers; these quotes give the reader a powerful glimpse into the ways in which participation in the ensembles is experienced by devotees. The complete sung text of each track is also provided, allowing one to follow the ritual scripts during listening. The more extensive booklet accompanies the Reinado do Rosário. Alongside an overview of the festival structure, there are three short studies. The first by historian Marcos Magalhães provides a contextualization of the festival through a general discussion of the emergence and dissemination of devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary in colonial Minas Gerais, highlighting the role of the black confraternities as havens for the preservation of black memory. This is followed by literary critic and sociologist Sebastião Rios's informed reading of the texts used by the ensembles in their toadas(songs); he shows how their themes articulate with the cultural legacy of the mainly black performers, drawing attention to the secretive—or "mysterious"—dimensions of the tradition. The section of perhaps greatest interest to ethnomusicologists comes at the conclusion, in Roberto Corrêa's discussion of the musical elements in the ensembles' repertoires, which includes musical transcriptions of some melodies and percussion parts. While the texts have been carefully crafted to avoid exoticizations, one is still left a bit disappointed by the fact that none of the writers seem to have undertaken extensive field research into the specific traditions they have represented. Thus, the texts are often rather general, at times quite problematically so. In linking contemporary practices in the Festival of the Rosary to the African context, "the Bantu" tend to be represented as a coherent and unified entity. Moreover, there are several different types of performance groups that participate in the Festival, including moçambiques, marinheiros, catoptés, vilões, but no clear explanation is provided [End...