How to Best Get Bodies Dancing in the Street.
Or…
The Strikingly Similar Nature of Montevideo’s Murga and New Orleans’ Jazz Funerals
I arrived in Buenos Aires some months ago. It was a Monday , and I was absolutely dying to dig into what the city had to offer. As anyone who’s been in Buenos Aires the last few years must know, there’s only one place to party on a Monday evening: el Center Cultral de Konex, to see the Bomba de Tiempo. So off I went, carried by the promise of excitement; an excitement that only grew when the show started. Bomba de Tiempo, a self-described “rhythm, trance, raw, tribal forces, drums” show, combines various styles of afrolatino percussion into one big dance party soundtrack. At the time however, I didn’t know any of that. I simply heard the funkiest grooves I’d ever witnessed, and said to myself, “I want to do that!”
From the second I got going on the “bombo y platillo” rhythm (bass drum and cymbal), while Facundo was drumming out the redoblante pattern, I was struck by profound sense of familiarity. I’d definitely heard this somewhere before. I knew the feeling of this sound passing through me. Then it hit me. French Quarter. Bourbon Street. Mardi Gras. Jazz Funerals.
New Orleans! That’s where I’d heard this before.
Now, they certainly aren’t playing murga in the streets of the Quarter. But what are they playing, and how does that relate to other people, playing other music, in other streets, in a city on the other side of the world?
The History of Murga
What that music from the other side of the world is and where it comes from seems like an appropriate place to start.
The instrumentation is derived from the European military band, and consist of a bombo (a shallow bass drum word at the waist and played horizontally), a redoblante (a snare drum), and platillos (crash cymbals). It is generally agreed upon that the murga originated in 1906, when a Spanish zarzuela group came to Montevideo. Zarzuela, a subgenera of the Spanish Chirigotais "a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance. The name derives from a royal hunting lodge, thePalacio de la Zarzuela near Madrid, where this type of entertainment was first presented to the court."
Chirigota is still performed in Spain during the period before Lent.
While the modern manifestation of chirigota has developed differently than the murga,
Listening to the murga, especially in the porteñostyle, you hear the very pronounced (1234 1234) of the snare drum 16th note pattern (see the rough sheet music above), alongside the syncopated off-beats of theplatillosand the bombos. On top of that rhythmic scaffolding, the 17 male voices create a complex and interweaving pattern that forms the melodic segment of the murga.
"The Second Line": New Orleans’ Social Aide and Pleasure Clubs and the Jazz Funeral
Why is it called the Second Line?The term originates in the New Orleans street parade culture (of which its been said many times, that people from New Orleans will parade for just about anything, from the happiest to the saddest of occasions). The foundations of any New Orleans parade are the Social Aide and Pleasure Clubs.
These clubs have a long history, dating all the way back to just after the Civil War. The New Orleans Freedmen’s Aid Association was founded just seven months after the Civil War came to close in 1865. The organization’s original purpose was to provide loans, assistance and legal counsel, and a means of “education”, to the newly freed slaves. They eventually became known as social aide and pleasure clubs, of which Zulu was the largest and most renowned.
As these clubs continued to grow, the scope of their activities likewise increased. As an extension of their existence as a “social safety-net”, the clubs began to pay funeral costs and arranged for funeral celebrations. When the church funeral service concluded, the procession of the casket began from the church to the cemetery. A band would play funeral hymns, known as “dirges”. The "main line" were the members of the S & P Club themselves; the revelers who followed behind the band and danced “with wild abandon” were (and are) known as “the second line,” and developed alongside the nascent Jazz in New Orleans to become what is today known as Jazz Funerals.
“Led by a “Grand Marshal”, the band and mourners would move to the burial site, with the band playing a dirge to signal the struggles, the hardships, the ups and downs of life… On the way back, the music became more joyful. The band played high-spirited tunes [to] signal the dismissal, and interment of the physical body, and the joyous event of the release, of the soul, to heaven." (History of the Main Line, Willie Clark)
Notice how closely the previous passage matches this description of the murga and how similar the photos look:
“The message that the murgas propose in their retiradas, although they express the sadness of exile, departure, the return to normalcy, is one of encouragement, a promise of utopia… Murgas consist of a chorus, director, and battery of musicians, […] Dressed with exuberant, fantastic, or allegorical costumes and with their faces painted, the performers march to the rhythm and song of the instruments and voices…” (Remedi 97)
The intent and execution of both themurgaand the second line parades are so strikingly similar, in their pursuit to contextualize the sadness of life with joyous music. To begin unraveling the history of their deeper connections, one needs to dig all the way back to the origins of Jass.
***WARNING: We’re about to get expansive***
The dance of the “second line”, this dance of “wild abandon” is rooted in the earliest seeds of Jazz, in a place known as Congo Square. Congo Square was and is an open space located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans just across Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. In the French and Spanish colonial eras of the 1700’s, slaves were typically given Sundays off from work. They were allowed to gather in the "Place de Negres” or informally "Place Congo" at the "back of town," where the slaves would sing, dance, and play music. In addition, because of the wave of French “refugees” fleeing from the Haitian Revolution (some of whom brought slaves), New Orleans received thousands Africans and Creoles in the early 1800’s. (Importantly, as we will see, so did Cuba). Perhaps a little colonial text to set the scene:
Creole Slave Dance: The Dance in Congo Place.
By George W. Cable
1886
The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns called to the gathering. It was these notes of invitation, reaching beyond those of other outlandish instruments, that caught the Ethiopian ear, put alacrity into the dark foot, and brought their owners, male and female, trooping from all quarters. The drums were very long, hollowed, often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a sheep or goat skin stretched across the other. One was large, the other much smaller. The tight skin heads were not held up to be struck; the drums were laid along on the turf and the drummers bestrode them, and beat them with the head madly with fingers, fists, and feet, with slow vehemence on the great drum, and fiercely and rapidly on the small one. Sometimes an extra performer sat on the ground behind the larger drum, its open end, and beat upon the wooden sides of it with two sticks. The smaller drum was often made from a joint or two of very large bamboo, in the West Indies where such could be got, and this is said to be the origin of its name; for it was called the Bamboula.
In stolen hours of night or the basking-hour of noon the black man contrived to fashion these rude instruments and others. The drummers, I say, bestrode the drums; the other musicians sat about them in an arc, cross-legged on the ground. One important instrument was a gourd partly filled with pebbles or grains of corn, flourished violently at the end of a stout staff with one hand and beaten upon the palm of the other. Other performers rang triangles, and others twanged from jews-harps an astonishing amount of sound. Another instrument was the jawbone of some ox, horse, or mule, and a key rattled rhythmically along its weather-beaten teeth. At times the drums were reinforced by one or more empty barrels or casks beaten on the head with the shank-bones of cattle.
A queer thing that went with these when the affair was pretentious full dress, as it were at least it was so in the West Indies, whence Congo [Square] drew all inspirations was the Marimba.
[…]
But the grand instrument at last, the first violin, as one might say, was the banjo. It had but four strings, not six: beware of the dictionary. It is not the favorite musical instrument of the negroes of the Southern States of America. Uncle Remus says truly that is the fiddle; but for the true African dance, a dance not so much of legs and feet as of the upper half of the body, a sensual, devilish thing tolerated only by Latin-American masters, there was wanted the dark inspiration of African drums and the banjos thrump and strum. And then there was that long-drawn human cry of tremendous volume, richness, and resound, to which no instrument within their reach could make the faintest approach: all the instruments silent while it rises and swells with mighty energy and dies away distantly, Yea-a-a-a-a-a! then the crash of savage drums, horns, and rattles.
[…]
And yet there was entertaining variety. Where? In the dance! There was constant, exhilarating novelty endless invention in the turning, bowing, arm-swinging, posturing and leaping of the dancers. Moreover, the music of Congo [Square] was not tamed to mere monotone. Monotone became subordinate to many striking qualities. The strain was wild. Its contact with French taste gave it often great tenderness of sentiment. It grew in fervor, and rose and sank, and rose again, with the play of emotion in the singers and dancers.
The picture the observer George W. Cable makes here in 1886 is both wildly foreign and exotic, while simultaneously conjuring a picture so similar to the one seen earlier of the modern second line parades in New Orleans. The origins of the great party are there. We’ve got “pretentious full dress” or the origins of the wild costumes, we’ve got “the true African dance, a dance not so much of legs and feet as of the upper half of the body, a sensual, devilish thing,” or the origins of the revelers dance of “wild abandon,” and we’ve got the African rhythms and percussion, still evident in the musical structure of today’s parades, and the strongest link between the Second Line parades and the murga of the Rio Plate.
The Second Line
The Second Line parades and the murgashare a common musical heritage, and one that can be traced back to a basically singular point. In a broader sense, the two forms can be traced back through the slave trade to Africa. The slaves brought from the western coast of Africa (the origin of the majority of the slaves in the Americas) carried with them many of their musical traditions. This was mainly constituted of drum types (which were reconstructed in analogous forms in the New World) and rhythmic patterns. George W. Cable even remarks upon one he noticed called the bamboula saying, “The smaller drum was often made from a joint or two of very large bamboo, in the West Indies where such could be got, and this is said to be the origin of its name; for it was called the Bamboula.”In fact, this style has been somewhat preserved to modern day on the Island of St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
https://globalsound.si.edu/listen2.aspx?type=preview&trackid=11731
Likewise, another rhythmic pattern thought to have been used in Congo Square was the “congo” drumming pattern, here preserved in a modern sample from Trinidad and Tobago.
https://globalsound.si.edu/listen2.aspx?type=preview&trackid=24087
You can start to see the origins of syncopation in the 3 over 2 pattern exhibited in both tracks, but more on that later. Suffice to say, this and other African rhythms were carried over to the New World, where they began to germinate and evolve around the Caribbean and, thanks to the laws of the Spanish Crown, in Montevideo. The city's first real economic boom had occurred when the Spanish Crown made Montevideo the only slave port in the Viceroyalty of La Plata, (infuriating the Viceroyalty's capital, Buenos Aires). The importance of this legal point was it assured that Uruguay would come into contact with the same Afro-Caribbean beats that were percolating in New Orleans, and more importantly, in Cuba.
Many (in fact the majority) of the Creoles fleeing the Haitian Revolution around the turn of the 18thcentury ended up not in New Orleans, but the easternmost province of Cuba, known as Oriente. The French brought a dance known as the contradanza with them to Cuba. This dance was played with European instruments however most the musicians playing them were Black or Mulatto. Traditional African drums were not used in these dances (unlike the danced in Congo Square) because these audiences were still generally European and the tribal drums were thought to be inappropriate and “lower.” However, the sound of the tympani didn’t quite work for these, which required a more pronounced rhythm than their European ancestors and were eventually replaced by a native Cuban instrument, the timbales and the güiro.
The resultant rhythm, of the contradanza combined with the Cubano percussion, is a clear product of a rhythm known as the “cinquillo,” an element of obvious African origin. This cinquillo pattern is present in the bata-rhythms of Cuban Santeria as well as Haitian voodoo. It is made up of a five note syncopated pattern.
This is a typical Afro-Cuban/Caribbean rhythm, found almost universally in the dances of Caribbean. When used in a 2/4 measure, it creates a pronounced syncopation. The cinquillo was used in the rumba, and early slave music style in Cuba. Though more Afro-Spanish than Afro-Cuban, the rumba would spawn the habanera, the key (or clave, haha, little joke) to our chronology.
In 1836, an unattributed piece of music known as “La Pimienta,” was the first known use of what we now call the “habanera rhythm,” which was at the time categorized as a contradanza habanera. After 1840, the style became simply Habanera, and the rhythm quickly traveled from Cuba, along the slave trading routes, to New Orleans and Montevideo, making Cuba the common point of departure in the lineage of murga and the Second Line.
We could follow the journey of the habanera southward and watch it evolve into murga by way of candombe, but as we’ve already discussed that viaje in class, I’m going to follow the other leg of the trip, north to the “Big Easy."
Cakewalk, “Ragged Time”, and the Birth of Jass
So we’re back in Louisiana, now firmly a member of the U.S.A., about 50 years after the development and diffusion of the habaneraaround the turn of the 1900’s, and about 10 years after the George W. Cable witnessed a Sunday in Congo Square.
Somewhere between the purely African rhythms danced in Congo Square and 1900, a style of dancing known as originally known as the “chalk line walk,” or “Cakewalk” was born. It took the form of a dance contest amongst now former slaves, in which the winner actually won a cake. “The dance takes its name from competitions held on plantations prior to Emancipation, in which prizes, sometimes cake, were given for the best dancers.”
As a musical form, Cakewalk was defined by a 2/4 notation with two alternate heavy beats per bar which gives is a distinct “ooompah” feeling (similar to the sordo pattern used in Brasilian samba).
Cakewalk also made use of syncopation based on a habanerarhythm superimposed on a traditional European march rhythm.This syncopation was "an idiomatic corruption, a flattened-out mutation of what was once the true polyrhythmic character of African music" but however served as the inspiration for Scott Joplin when he created a new musical style of his own.
“Ragged Time”
Scott Joplin began formulating a new style, what would eventually be known as “Ragtime,” in the brothels of New Orleans in the 1890’s. What they were doing was “mashing-up” popular Sousa marches with the African polyrhythm we saw earlier in the bamboula, the congo, and the habanera; rhythms already present in the Black music of New Orleans.Joplin became famous when in 1899 he published sheet music for a piano-version of his "Maple Leaf Rag" and later in 1902 “The Entertainer.” He is credited with the coinage of the term “swing,” which he used to describe how to play his “ragtime” music: "Play slowly until you catch the swing..." This codification of the idea of “swing” is the last rung in the ladder on the way from traditional African rhythms and the birth of Jazz.
King Bolden
There’s a mysterious man hidden at the dawn of jazz. It’s said he’s, “a legend who turned the lights on for everyone, then left the room unnoticed," and even Louis Armstrong credits him as the originator of the style that would become known as jazz.
While no known recordings exist, anecdotal evidence from the second generation of jazz musicians points to a cornet player named Buddy Bolden as the man who created jazz. They credit him with playing a “looser, more improvised version of ragtime and adding the blues to it." Likewise, he’s credited as the first person to even play the blues on brass instruments in the first place. Until he went crazy in 1907 (literally), he was the influence for all the major musicians from whom flowed the future of Jazz, including King Joe Oliver, who’s group “King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band” would serve as the archetype for our end goal: Second Line parade bands.
Second Line Parade Music
Jeffery Clemmons, of G.Love and Special Sauce, gives an excellent summary of the evolution of second line drumming:
“Well, in musical terms it's the syncopated rhythm and a by-product of Jazz. Parade bands (consisting of a bass drummer, snare drummer, tuba, trombones, trumpets and saxophones) formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. French and Spanish rule of New Orleans collided with the influx of European immigrants, and post-slavery African-American roots. This 'mixing of races',* is the single most important element of the distinct rolling rhythms of 2nd line parade music. This rhythm, a signature to New Orleans music, is still one of the most important threads to the sound and feel of New Orleans, both past and present." Long before "Jazz" was even a word or style of music, the early days of colonial New Orleans were celebrated with events that included these marching bands, indigenous to New Orleans...ranging from lavish balls, society gatherings, parades, and jazz funerals."
*embodied by our previously discussed chronology.
How to Play a Second Line Drum Beat -- powered by eHow.com
More Sheet Music Analysis
What you can see and here throughout the sheet music and demonstration videos is a pronounced swing of the 1234 1234 pattern in the 16th notes of the snare, as well as a "oompah" in the bass drum. Which should feel quite familiar, because it's strikingly similar to the percussion rhythms of the murga, similarly derived from the habanera and other afro-cuban rhythms from almost a two centuries ago.
So we’ve made it our Jazz Funerals. We’ve taken traditional African rhythmic patterns, transported them to the New World, passed them through Haiti into Cuba, sent them on their separate paths to evolve into Jazz in New Orleans and Murga in Montevideo, and watched them collide back together in my own consciousness. I sure enjoyed the journey, I hope you did too.
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