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Experience Brazilian Folk Music at Festa de Sao Benedito
Published by Jeff McCreight, Writer
Country: Brazil 
The Experience
Brazil in mid-summer is hot. My wife and I needed to escape the summer doldrums, and so we found a place up the highway where the folks are making music the old way.
After reading about a festival of Congo musicians in the local paper, a trip to Timbui up the highway was in store to check it out. In front of the country church, a converging marching band were preparing to parade. Around a street fire, men began playing heavy rhythms, and women started to twirl in white dresses and wave big flags. A shout chorus of Portuguese lyrics lifted into the air telling of religious and agricultural folklore. Among the bands, burly men in harnesses rolled a huge fake boat through the streets in honour of St. Benedict.
Congo, a folklore tradition common in the state of Espirito Santo, is something equivalent to fiddle bands in the U.S. that used to tour the Appalachia playing the revival tent circuit. In the 1950s the work of Alan Lomax and the Smithsonian Institute helped Appalachian music to enter the American mainstream. Brazil also popularized its folk music styles; samba most prevalent among them. But Brazil is full of regional styles. Congo missed the boat and continues today as it always has, unchanged since slave times.
Congueros are poor folk, mostly African-Indian mestizos. They are sharecroppers, pot makers and labourers living together in pockets around the state.
This thing called Congo all started one day in the mid 19th century when a slave ship out of Palermo, having stopped in Africa to pick up slaves, was shipwrecked in a storm off the coast of nearby Serra. Twenty-one slaves were saved by clinging to pieces of the ship, and they eventually washed up on shore. It was proclaimed by the locals, already deeply entrenched in Portuguese Catholicism, to be a miracle of Saint Benedict: the only African ever canonized, beloved to the poor for his humility, generosity and good cooking. This legend melded with a music and dance tradition among the slaves who lived in shacks outside the towns.
Because social roles here have not changed a whole lot, the tradition remains as a window into the past. The intersection of three cultures is as apparent as though the colonizers’ boats were still anchored in the bay and curious natives still peeked out from the mangroves.
The music is drum heavy and African sounding. They play old barrels, painted with their troop’s colours, stretched with animal skin and tuned over a fire. The drums look exactly as though an African slave, in a fit of nostalgia, had scrapped together a new world version of a tribal drum. Other musicians play rattles or multi-grooved long hollow boxes that are rasped with a stick. These come straight from Amer-Indian traditions, and all of it is organized around the religion, materials and customs of the Catholic Portuguese.
Congo took this form when the Africans and the Indigenous people fit their religious traditions into the mold that the Portuguese had imposed. Until the middle of the last century, slaves weren’t allowed inside the big stone churches, but congregated outside to celebrate in their own way. Catholics of European decent would parade an idol to the Cathedral on Saint’s days, accompanied by a brass band and the clergy. The excluded slaves made their own processions. They found their own saint, the black saint, and put him in a miracle boat. Church music was replaced with drumming, and the ranks of pious church members were replaced by a jubilant mass of shouting and twirling revellers.
Around New Year’s, with no funding or endorsement, and largely unrecognized by commerce, mass-culture or time, Congueros continue to come together to sing and dance all over the state. They come to talk about the harvest and the price of rice, and to thank their saint for small blessings.
So if you’re in mid-coast Brazil during the summer, and you're bored of the beach, consider being the only tourist in sight on a dusty lane as you follow a jubilant procession of a thousand country folk. They will be waving flags and hauling a boat and singing songs a hundred years old praising Saint Benedict—a poor ex-slave who found peace and happiness in nothing more than his faith and simple pleasures.
After reading about a festival of Congo musicians in the local paper, a trip to Timbui up the highway was in store to check it out. In front of the country church, a converging marching band were preparing to parade. Around a street fire, men began playing heavy rhythms, and women started to twirl in white dresses and wave big flags. A shout chorus of Portuguese lyrics lifted into the air telling of religious and agricultural folklore. Among the bands, burly men in harnesses rolled a huge fake boat through the streets in honour of St. Benedict.
Congo, a folklore tradition common in the state of Espirito Santo, is something equivalent to fiddle bands in the U.S. that used to tour the Appalachia playing the revival tent circuit. In the 1950s the work of Alan Lomax and the Smithsonian Institute helped Appalachian music to enter the American mainstream. Brazil also popularized its folk music styles; samba most prevalent among them. But Brazil is full of regional styles. Congo missed the boat and continues today as it always has, unchanged since slave times.
Congueros are poor folk, mostly African-Indian mestizos. They are sharecroppers, pot makers and labourers living together in pockets around the state.
This thing called Congo all started one day in the mid 19th century when a slave ship out of Palermo, having stopped in Africa to pick up slaves, was shipwrecked in a storm off the coast of nearby Serra. Twenty-one slaves were saved by clinging to pieces of the ship, and they eventually washed up on shore. It was proclaimed by the locals, already deeply entrenched in Portuguese Catholicism, to be a miracle of Saint Benedict: the only African ever canonized, beloved to the poor for his humility, generosity and good cooking. This legend melded with a music and dance tradition among the slaves who lived in shacks outside the towns.
Because social roles here have not changed a whole lot, the tradition remains as a window into the past. The intersection of three cultures is as apparent as though the colonizers’ boats were still anchored in the bay and curious natives still peeked out from the mangroves.
The music is drum heavy and African sounding. They play old barrels, painted with their troop’s colours, stretched with animal skin and tuned over a fire. The drums look exactly as though an African slave, in a fit of nostalgia, had scrapped together a new world version of a tribal drum. Other musicians play rattles or multi-grooved long hollow boxes that are rasped with a stick. These come straight from Amer-Indian traditions, and all of it is organized around the religion, materials and customs of the Catholic Portuguese.
Congo took this form when the Africans and the Indigenous people fit their religious traditions into the mold that the Portuguese had imposed. Until the middle of the last century, slaves weren’t allowed inside the big stone churches, but congregated outside to celebrate in their own way. Catholics of European decent would parade an idol to the Cathedral on Saint’s days, accompanied by a brass band and the clergy. The excluded slaves made their own processions. They found their own saint, the black saint, and put him in a miracle boat. Church music was replaced with drumming, and the ranks of pious church members were replaced by a jubilant mass of shouting and twirling revellers.
Around New Year’s, with no funding or endorsement, and largely unrecognized by commerce, mass-culture or time, Congueros continue to come together to sing and dance all over the state. They come to talk about the harvest and the price of rice, and to thank their saint for small blessings.
So if you’re in mid-coast Brazil during the summer, and you're bored of the beach, consider being the only tourist in sight on a dusty lane as you follow a jubilant procession of a thousand country folk. They will be waving flags and hauling a boat and singing songs a hundred years old praising Saint Benedict—a poor ex-slave who found peace and happiness in nothing more than his faith and simple pleasures.
When to Go to Festival Congo Brazil
The best time of the year to see Congo bands in action is between Christmas and New Years. During this time, in honour of Saint Benedict, various festivals are held in towns around the state of Espirito Santo. Any of them will give you a good flavour of Congo.
In Timbui, you'll see truly rural Brazilian life. In Vitória, the capital, you'll witness how the Catholic mainstream interact (or don't) with this folk tradition. In the Barro de Jucu neighborhood of Vila Velha, you'll see a beautiful beach and a place where the semi-trendy next generation have latched onto Congo as a worthy cultural institution. Serra, a workingman's port town, hosts one of the biggest festivals.
For dates and places, you'll have to check the local paper when you’re there. Anybody in the region can help you out.
In Timbui, you'll see truly rural Brazilian life. In Vitória, the capital, you'll witness how the Catholic mainstream interact (or don't) with this folk tradition. In the Barro de Jucu neighborhood of Vila Velha, you'll see a beautiful beach and a place where the semi-trendy next generation have latched onto Congo as a worthy cultural institution. Serra, a workingman's port town, hosts one of the biggest festivals.
For dates and places, you'll have to check the local paper when you’re there. Anybody in the region can help you out.
Odds n' Ends
Congo is not on the bigger cultural map of Brazil, so you'll have to take some local buses and ask around to find it. This can be daunting in a place where no one speaks English, but stick with it because in the end you'll have a great time. This is the only way to see the real Brazil as it was two hundred years ago, and still is today.
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