The cities
The captive Africans sang as they trooped off the slave ships and stepped on the soil of Brazil for the first time. Hearing them in Salvador in 1821, Maria Graham wrote in her journal: ‘This very moment, there is a slave ship discharging her cargo, and the slaves are singing as they go ashore … [A]t the command of their keeper, they are singing one of their country songs, in a strange land.’1This is
the poignant detail the future Lady Callcott adds to our aural picture of early- nineteenth-century Salvador, Recife and Rio de Janeiro as cities alive from dawn to dusk with the cries of black street-sellers and the songs of black porters.
Not every European or American visitor found the street cries and worksongs of Brazil agreeable; some heard them as groans, moans, howls, screams or grunts rather than as music of any kind. Mrs Nathaniel Edward Kindersley, a much travelled Englishwoman who spent two months in Salvador in 1764, about a year after it had ceased to be Brazil’s capital city, was carried about by two black slaves in a sedan chair, from which ‘a stranger is in danger of being thrown out at every step’.
The chair is carried by two negro slaves on their shoulders; at every step the foremost gives a groan, which the other answers: this helps to make them keep an equal pace; but it is a melancholy disagreeable noise, and when we first came on shore, hearing the slaves, who were in parties, carrying any thing from one place to another, utter these kind of moans, we thought they were oppressed with burdens beyond their strength; which excited in us much pity for the slaves, and accordingly great contempt for their masters.2
When the ruler of a petty German state, Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied (1782–1867), arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1815, he noticed
Negroes, some of them half naked, … drawing heavy burdens; and this useful race of men convey all the merchandise from the harbour into the city: united
in parties of ten or twelve, and keeping time together by a kind of song, or rather howl, they carry ponderous loads, suspended from long poles.3
Two years later, an uncomprehending American who spent a few weeks in Rio – he was Henry Marie Brackenridge (1786–1871), lawyer, author and secretary to a US government commission sent to study the political situation in South America – wrote that black water-carriers in Rio ‘relieved the bodily pain of suffering, by a kind of harsh noise, not unlike that made by a flock of wild geese’, while ‘others hitched to carts or carrying burthens’, were ‘all screaming in the same style’.4In 1819–20 the German visitor Friedrich Ludwig von Rango
heard continually in Rio the ‘monotonous songs’ of black people accompany- ing themselves on ‘self-invented’ [selbst erfundenen] instruments: ‘One seldom sees, even during the hardest tasks, three of them together of whom one is not singing or strumming on a string.’5William Webster, an English surgeon who
paid the city a brief visit in 1828, was hardly more impressed by what he heard (it should perhaps be pointed out that the chains referred to in the following passage were those with which the slaves pulled the carts):
A stranger on landing at Rio Janeiro is immediately struck by the great number of slaves, which may be said to infest the streets. As he leaves the landing-place, his ears are assailed by their monotonous shouts and the rattling of chains which proceed from the various parties of them as they perform their work. These unfortunate creatures supply the place of the beasts of burden to the people of Rio, and are to be seen linked together drawing carts and sledges [i.e. low-wheeled carts], and performing other laborious duties, with an apparent unconcern and a degree of hilarity which are hardly credible.
It is the custom of the slaves, and it appears to be general among negroes, to accompany their labours with their own native music, at least with such as their voices afford. This has no doubt the effect of inspiring them to greater efforts, and the streets resound with the echo of their uncouth song and the rattling of their chains.6
Two other Englishmen, briefly glancing at Brazil on their way to Paraguay in the 1830s, dismissed the songs of black slaves as ‘howlings as they work’.7A US naval officer, William Ruschenberger (1807–95), visiting Rio de Janeiro in the early 1830s, found the street cries of the city ‘indescribable’, since ‘the ears are assailed with the shrill and discordant voices of women slaves vending fruits and sweetmeats; and of the water-carriers crying “agua”, which they carry about on their heads in large wooden kegs, filled at the different fountains’.8In 1856 an English midshipman wrote of black porters in Rio ‘trotting along to the tune of a loud monotonous howl, with a heavy cask hanging from a pole that runs from shoulder to shoulder of the group’.9
Other visitors were less dismissive. John Luccock (1770–1826), a Yorkshire merchant who lived in Brazil from 1808 to 1818, tells of
slaves sent into the streets, with empty baskets and long poles, to seek employment for their owner’s benefit. Heavy goods were conveyed between two, by means of these poles laid upon their shoulders; then a pair of slings was attached, by which the load, raised a little above the ground, was carried to its place of destination. If the burden were too heavy for a couple of men, four, six, or even more were united, and formed a gang, over which one of the number, and generally the most intelligent of the set, was chosen by them to be their captain, and to direct the labour. To promote regularity in their efforts, and par- ticularly a uniformity of step, he always chaunted an African song to a short and simple air; at the close of which the whole body joined in a loud chorus. This song was continued as long as the labour lasted, and seemed to lighten the burden, and to cheer the heart … It is certain that their songs gave a cheeriness to the streets which they would otherwise have wanted.
Luccock also reported that when a dozen or so black men yoked themselves to ‘a clumsy truck’, with four very low wheels, they sang ‘their usual favourite airs’ while hauling it forward ‘with their utmost might’.10
Maria Graham’s ‘country songs’, William Webster’s ‘their own native music’ and John Luccock’s ‘African song’ clearly indicate the use of African languages in urban worksongs, as does the English artillery officer Lieutenant Henry Chamberlain’s description in 1819–20 of ‘Pretos de ganho, or black porters’:
[To] maintain the regularity of step, so necessary to produce uniformity of effort, the Capataz [foreman] chants a few African words, at the close of which the whole body joins in chorus, and thus singing, and stepping together, they perform the service undertaken … The Capataz generally contrives to get behind, and push the load forward, saving himself, at the expense of his people, to whom he sings, and by whom he is answered in chorus.11
The African languages used in such songs would most likely have been Yoruba, Kikongo and Kimbundu, which were those in which slaves generally conversed.12But there is evidence from the early nineteenth century about the
use of the Portuguese language, too, in such songs. This is not surprising, for Portuguese was not only the dominant language of Brazil but had been a trading language along the West African coast since the fifteenth century, and fala de Guiné – so familiar in Lisbon, and so fascinating to the Portuguese playwright Gil Vicente (c. 1470–1536) – was a Portuguese-based creole.13The chief witness for the early use of Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro worksongs is the orientalist Sir William Ouseley (1767–1842). On his way to Persia in 1810 he spent ten days in Rio de Janeiro, where he watched slaves dragging ‘an immense cask of water from the public fountain to their master’s house, … five or six pulling the vessel on a sledge, or low four-wheeled frame’. Already, he tells us, some Rio worksongs were sung in Portuguese, and he points to a significant difference in function between those and the ones sung in African languages:
During this exertion, they cheered each other by singing short sentences, either in the language of their own country, or in Portuguese. There was a pleasing kind of melody in this simple chant; and a gentleman who had resided many years at Rio de Janeiro, informed me that the usual burden of their Portuguese song, was little more than an address to the water-cask, ‘come load, come soon home!’; but that if they belonged to a cruel master or mistress, their own language served as a vehicle for lamentation and condolence, and for impreca- tions on their oppressor.14
CaptainOtto vonKotzebue of the Russianimperial navy, who visited Rio in 1823, either did not hear or did not recognise the use of Portuguese or fala de Guiné in slaves’ worksongs. He reported that the ‘immense weights’ they carried ‘are usually fastened on a plank, each end of which is borne by a negro, keeping time to his steps by a monotonous and melancholy song in his native language’.15But a Brazilianwriting in1896 quoted a few words infala de Guiné from the song of the Prince Regent’s ‘black guard’, twelve strong black men in green uniforms and large military caps decorated with the royal arms, who carried the prince around the Rio streets ina sedanchair inthe 1830s, and whom he held in high regard. They ‘sang and danced a fado’ (sic) which included what onthe surface seems to have beena reference to Brazil’s then recent declaration of independence from Portugal in 1822. But, with emanci- pationstill half a century inthe future, this verse may also have a deeper, ironic meaning:
Our master has come, Captivity is over.16
Somewhat earlier, the German visitor Theodor von Leithold testified to the slaves’ ‘extraordinary agility and physical strength’, and their ability to ‘carry unbelievably heavy loads on their heads’, adding: ‘The harder the work seems that they have to perform, the more readily do they burst into wild song which, like our woodcutters’ “Hm!”, seems to stimulate or fire their strength.’17 The
blind traveller James Holman (1786–1857), who visited Rio de Janeiro in 1828, took note of both the porters’ ‘national’ songs and the street cries:
[E]ach group of porters as they pass along with their heavy loads, chant their peculiar national songs, for the double purpose of timing their steps and concen- trating their attention on their employment. To these sounds are added the variety of cries, uttered in an endless alternation of tones, by the pretty negress fruit venders, who, smartly dressed, and leering and smiling in their most captivating manner endeavour so to attract the the attention of the sons of Adam.18
According to Debret, the sound of the songs regulating the steps of the black men who hauled huge carts (cangalhas) around the Rio streets ‘warns from afar absent-minded coachmen and horsemen to respect their laborious and fettered
progress’.19 ‘When those of the same caste [i.e., presumably, nação] work together’, wrote the Revd Robert Walsh in 1830,
they move to the sound of certain words, sung in a kind of melancholy cadence, commenced in a tenor tone by one part [i.e. party], and concluded in a base [sic] by the other. A long line of negroes, with burdens on their heads, sing it as they go along, and it is heard every day, and in almost every street in Rio.20
Like Luccock’s ‘loud chorus’ in which ‘the whole body joined’, this obviously refers to call-and-response singing, as does the account of Rio de Janeiro porters’ songs, accompanied by rattles but sung in Portuguese, given by Dr Melchior- Honoré Yvan (1803–73), physician to the French embassy in London for several years, who visited Rio de Janeiro in 1844 (the call quoted here may have meant ‘How hard! How bad!’; the response means ‘It’s good!’):
I could not suppress a feeling of amazement on seeing the streets completely filled with negro population, and involuntarily stopped to gaze on the half-naked and noisy throngs of beings around me, who frisked about in the rays of a burning sun, as blithely as so many devils in a furnace. I shall never forget the impression made upon me by this band of strange looking creatures, as I watched them passing to and fro before me, laden with heavy burdens, continuously singing in a monotonous tone ‘Que calo! que malo!’ whilst some of their companions replied in a grave serious tone, ‘Esta boa! esta boa!’ at the same time shaking about a noisy sort of rattle which they held in their hands. I really could have imagined myself present at some mysterious ceremony, or some rite of infernal worship.21
Less excited by what he saw and heard, as befitted a sober American theologian, the Revd Walter Colton (1797–1851), who was in Rio in 1845, wrote that the porters ‘carry … enormous burdens on their heads, and trot along with a sonorous grunt, which works itself off into a sort of song. You wonder how they can have so much wind to spare for their tune.’22
Three years earlier the ‘sad and monotonous song’ of the Rio coffee-carriers had made a ‘painful impression’ on the Comte de Suzannet23 (about whom nothing is known except that he wrote a book about his travels in the Caucasus and Brazil). In 1850 the Austrian globe-trotter Ida Pfeiffer (1797–1858), who visited Rio de Janeiro in 1846, wrote disparagingly of the coffee-carriers’ songs, but agreed with Debret that they did perform one useful function:
The greatest amount of noise is made by those negroes who carry burdens, and especially by such as convey the sacks full of coffee on board the different vessels; they strike up a monotonous sort of song, to the tune of which they keep step, but which sounds very disagreeable. It possesses, however, one advantage; it warns the foot passenger, and affords him time to get out of the way.24
To the Belgian Count Eugène de Robiano, the black porters he heard in Rio in the 1870s were ‘singers whom nothing can keep silent’ and who always had ‘some ancient song which they readily repeat in chorus when they go in step through the city streets, carrying heavy loads’.25
The Revd Charles Samuel Stewart (1795–1870), an American ex-missionary who was in Rio de Janeiro in 1851–52, seems to have been the only nineteenth- century foreign visitor to Brazil to attempt any kind of taxonomy of the street cries and worksongs he heard, and his account is therefore especially valuable. After mentioning ‘the rapid lope and monotonous grunt of the coffee-bag carriers’, Stewart went on to describe
the jingling and drumming of the tin rattles or gourds borne by the leaders of gangs, transporting on their heads all manner of articles – chairs, tables, sofas and bedsteads, the entire furniture of a household; the dull recitative, followed by the loud chorus, with which they move along; the laborious cry of others, tugging and hauling and pushing over the rough pavements heavily laden trucks and carts, an overload for an equal number of mules or horses …
[T]he first sight which arrests the eyes of the stranger on landing in Rio is the number, varied employments, and garb of the negroes. The first and chief human sounds that reach his ears are also from this class. Their cries through the streets vary with the pursuits they follow. That of the vegetable and fruit venders is monotonous and singular; but so varied, that each kind of vegetable and fruit seems to have its own song. The coffee-carriers, moving in gangs, have a tune of their own to which they keep time, in an Indian-like lope, with a bag of one hundred and sixty pounds’ weight, poised on their heads. The bearers of furniture form a regular choir. One or two, with rattles of tin in their hands, resembling the nose [sic] of a watering-pot, perforated with holes and filled with shot, lead the way in a style truly African. To this is allied, with full strength of lungs, a kind of travelling chant, in which at times all join in chorus. It is full and sonorous, and rendered pleasant, if from no other cause, by the satisfaction from it visible, in the shining and sweating faces of the poor blacks.26
That Rio porters often used rattles, and that they sang in call-and-response form (‘at times all join in chorus’), is confirmed by several other mid-century visitors. The British ‘sketcher’ Robert Elwes, who was in the city in 1848, wrote:
The best and strongest negroes not brought up as servants or to any trade are employed in carrying coffee from the stores to the custom-house, where it is shipped. They work in gangs of ten or twelve, each carrying a bag of coffee on his shoulder. They … work cheerfully, one singing a song and often carrying a rattle, whilst the others join in chorus, and always go at a jog trot.27
Two more American clergymen, the Revd Daniel Parish Kidder (1815–91) and the Revd James Cooley Fletcher (1823–1901) described what they heard in the same decade as a ‘wild Ethiopian ditty’: the singing of the Rio coffee- carriers, who
usually go in troops, numbering ten or twenty individuals, of whom one takes the lead, and is called the captain. These are usually the largest and strongest men that can be found … Each one takes a bag of coffee upon his head, weighing one hundred and sixty pounds, and when all are ready they start off upon a measured trot, which soon increases to a rapid run.
As one hand is sufficient to steady the load, several of them frequently carry musical instruments in the other, resembling children’s rattle-boxes: these they shake to the double-quick time of some wild Ethiopian ditty, which they all join in singing as they run [Fig. 7]. Music has a powerful effect in exhilarating the spirits of the negro; and certainly no one should deny him the privilege of softening his hard lot by producing the harmony of sounds, which are sweet to him, however uncouth to other ears. It is said, however, that an attempt was at one time made to secure greater quietness in the streets by forbidding the negroes to sing. As a consequence they performed little or no work, so the restriction was in a short time taken off. Certain it is that they now avail themselves of their