Caribbean Beat — March/April 2018 (#150)

In an anonymous meeting hall on a São Luís backstreet, the
sweat is dripping off the walls. Several generations of one
family are partying together at the front of the dance floor,
and the divisive demarcations of race and class that often
dominate contemporary Brazil seem absent. Although
English is not widely spoken, dancers mime the choruses
of obscure roots classics by Eric Donaldson, the Maytones, and
Larry Marshall, all Jamaican countryside singers of a bygone
age — you could be forgiven for thinking that dancehall never
happened, let alone soca, grime, or dubstep.
A handwoven tapestry of the Maranhão State Vinyl Association
hangs proudly from the ceiling, and when DJ Jorge Black drops
the needle onto Tradition’s “Gambling Man”, a languid slice of
British lovers rock from 1978, waltzing couples push to the fore,
anxious to demonstrate their command of ritmo agarradinho, an
intricate, ecstasy-inducing move for clinching close-dancers that
roughly translates as the “rhythm grab.” It is the dance of choice
for all discerning Maranhese, who shun prospective partners that
cannot master it.
São Luís do Maranhão is one of the most intriguing and
atypical cities of Brazil’s far northeast. Located midway
between the beach bum’s utopian expanse of Fortaleza and
the ornate Amazonian metropolis of Belém, it was built on
an island flanked by two broad rivers that feed an Atlantic
bay, the picturesque yet dilapidated town centre attesting
to its former opulence. São Luís’s complicated history and
peculiar geographical location have rendered it one of the most
ethnically diverse of all Brazilian cities, its relative isolation
yielding a strikingly unique culture. The town’s long locus as a
Waltzing couples push to the fore, anxious
to demonstrate their command of ritmo
agarradinho, an intricate, ecstasy-inducing
move for clinching close-dancers
Opposite page Festival time in São Luís
Above Even the city’s traffic lights are
decorated with azulejos
ostill/shutterstock.com
slave port and its proximity to the Amazon basin have resulted in substantial
black and Amerindian communities, and many of European descent reached
the city from the barren hinterlands known as the sertão, all of which is
reflected in local cultural practices.
For instance, the annual festival of Bumba-meu-Boi centres on the myth
of a slaughtered bull resurrected by an Amerindian shaman with the help of
St John the Baptist. The local variant of Candomblé, known as Tambor de Mine,
mixes West African spiritual traditions with Amerindian elements, while the
Tambor de Crioula and Cacuriá dance traditions have their roots in West Africa,
augmented by European and Amerindian influences.
São Luís also has deep associations with romantic and Parnassian poetry,
and reggae, not samba, is the music of choice, being so deeply engrained in the
local psyche that the state government has just established a Reggae Museum
in the heart of the old colonial centre — the only such institution outside of
reggae’s Jamaican homeland. It is another of the many unexpected aspects
of this vibrant and colourful city, known variously as the “Brazilian Athens,”
“Love Island,” and the “Brazilian Jamaica,” which forms a very rewarding
destination for travellers who make the effort to reach here.
“
São Luís is a distant place that’s not easy
to get to, even by plane,” says Otávio
Rodrigues, a journalist and broadcaster
who presented the popular Bumba Beat radio
show in São Luís during the 1990s. “The nearest
metropolitan capitals are about 1,000 kilometres
away, and historically the city was more connected
to Europe than to the rest of the country, which
resulted in a well-educated elite with a remarkable
list of writers, poets, and journalists, but also a
poor mass, mainly of African descent, or of mixed
Amerindian, African, and European. Aside from
the beautiful buildings of the historic centre and
a kind of bucolic poetry in certain circles, the city
has none of Europe’s glamour. Instead, popular
traditions like Bumba-meu-Boi and Cacuriá stand
as some of the best examples we can find of
Brazil’s rich folkloric universe.”
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