National Afro-Peruvian Museum in Lima, Peru

After decades and decades of neglect, the government of Peru finally decided to recognize and salute the African descendants that form perhaps as high as 10 percent of its population.  An important element in this recognition was the creation of the Museo Nacional Afroperuanos (National Museum of the Afro-Peruvian Peoples) in the capitol city of Lima.

The museum was given a fine building -- a beautiful late 18th century edifice -- as well as a budget and a director.  Under the director, the museum built up a collection of artifacts and documents related to the history of Afro-Peruvians including the two and a half centuries in which they were enslaved in Peru.

The museum also engaged in a great deal of outreach, including classes in dance, cajón, history and culture.  These classes, some directed towards adults and some intended for children, were for the most part free.  They boasted good instructors, including Lalo Izquierdo, the star of our documentary A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz, who taught many of the cajón classes.

Then, a few months ago, something happened.  I am not very conversant with Peruvian politics, so I can´t really tell you what, but I can tell you the effects.

The museum´s director, Dr. Augusto Lavala, was terminated.  No new director was hired.  The budget was either cut drastically or completely eliminated.  All the classes had to be cancelled.  And then, the government turned the administration of the museum´s building over to a government organ unrelated to Afro-Peruvian culture (the Oficina de Participación, Proyección y Enlace con el Ciudadano).

I am very, very sad to see this happen.  In any event, if you want to see the museum´s still extant web site, which gives a virtual tour of the building it no longer occupies, go HERE.  If you want to see photos from the former classes, and other evidence of what the museum used to do, go to its Facebook page, which is HERE.

One happy note:  Lalo Izquierdo and others are continuing to give classes in cajón, Afro-Peruvian dance, and more in the town of San Luis de Cañete, to help maintain the tradition.

OUR NEXT POST will be about the Centro Cultural Afroperuano San Daniel de Carboni of the predominantly Afro-Peruvian town of el Carmen, Peru.

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More about "A Zest for Life," documentary about Afro-Peruvians

I've been thinking a lot recently about what I would say if someone asked me, "Why in the world would I be interested in watching a video about Afro-Peruvians?"

Well, because they are resourceful, resilient, and have a great sense of humor.  These are skills all of us could use.

Plus the music and dance are really cool:  great rhythms, music and dances that you've almost surely never seen before, and unique percussion instruments.  Then, there's the connection with the larger African diaspora, the parallels with African Americans, and the fact that this is a cross-over, a bridge if you will, between the Latino and the African American communities.

Some of those percussion instruments (and Lalo Izquierdo).

In other words, why WOULDN'T you be interested in watching a video about Afro-Peruvians.

To the best of my knowledge, my documentary film is the ONLY video about Afro-Peruvians to be found for an English-speaking public.  There are some good ones in Spanish, but they are not accessible to people who don't speak that language, which is one of the reasons I made mine.

So I hope you will forgive me for running on a bit about my documentary, A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz.  

On the DVD for Home Use, which is already available, we have the A Zest for Life documentary itself, plus a slide show.

For the Educational version (which will be out in late November or early December), we've added five Extras.  Three of these are interviews with Lalo Izquierdo, and he´s talking about Afro-Peruvian history.,  Lalo is a very charismatic man, and these interviews are great stuff!  Here is one of them.



One of the other two Extras is about the hatajo de negritos in el Carmen, Peru and the other, about Afro-Peruvian percussion instruments, especially the checo and the angara.  Here´s the one about the hatajo de negritos.


Due to time limitations on documentaries produced for television airing, in A Zest for Life I was only able to briefly mention the son de los diablos.  But just as the Centro Cultural Afroperuano San Daniel Carboni de el Carmen, Peru is doing wonderful work in keeping alive the tradition of the hatajos de negritos (SEE HERE), the Museo Afroperuano de Zaña is helping keep alive the son de los diablos, as THIS VIDEO makes clear.

And that´s it, about A Zest for Life.

OUR NEXT POST will be about Peru´s national museum dedicated to Afro-Peruvian history and culture.

A Zest for Life: documentary about Afro-Peruvians

Well, we've done it.  The final version of our documentary film about Afro-Peruvians is officially out on DVD.  As you may already know, it's called A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz.  and boy are we glad it's out.

Several months ago, we gave a party to celebrate its completion and afterwards, I located some new footage which I really wanted to include.  Getting it in the proper format and with the proper permissions was a long, involved task, but I did it.

The new stuff is mainly a segment in which three famous Afro-Peruvian percussionists are sitting on the front steps of a building in the city of Zaña in Peru, improvising on the checo together.  The checo, as you surely know by now, is a percussion instrument made out of the checo gourd.

Who are these famous percussionists?  Well, there´s Hugo Bravo, who plays percussion for Susana Baca.  There´s Juan Medrano Cotito, who plays percussion for almost everyone, including Novalima.  He recently toured in the United States and I´m very, very sorry to say that I missed him.

And there´s Mangue (Manuel Vasquez Goyoneche) who, I am sad to say, recently passed away.  Below, you see him doing zapateo footwork (after the young lady, a relative, finishes), with Cotito behind him on cajón and Roberto Arguedas playing the guitar.


And when you see the three of them playing together, it is awesome.  I wish I could do that!
  
By the way, I do want to make it clear that what we´ve just brought out is the Home Use version.  We'll produce the Educational version in November.  The main difference between the two versions, other than price, is that the Educational version will have some different Extras, directed towards, well, education.

So if you want to check out our great new DVD, purchase it now at www.AZestforLifeDVD.com.  Or if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can go watch it in the Berkeley Video & Film Festival.  The festival runs from Dec. 7-22.  I´ll let you know the day and time of the screening for A Zest for Life once we´ve been told.

OUR NEXT POST will be a few more details about A Zest for Life.

The checo and the angara: preserving traditional musical instruments

The checo and the angara are two percussion instruments made out of gourds that come out of the Afro-Peruvian tradition.  Both are big;  that is to say, the checo is very big.  The angara is huge.

The angara, both the vine which bears the gourd and the use of that gourd as a percussion instrument, seems to have disappeared.  Indeed, it is so little known today that National Geographic´s article on Afro-Peruvian music confuses it with the checo.  You can, however, still see it being played in a YouTube video taken from a Peruvian television show filmed in the 1970s.

 

This great video (above), with host Dr. José Durand and percussionists Abelardo Vasquez and Arturo Zambo Cavero, is the only one in which I´ve been able to find anyone playing the angara.

The checo, on the other hand, is staging something of a comeback, due largely to the efforts of the Museo afroperuano de Zaña, whose directors searched for its seeds, planted a field with those seeds, harvested and prepared the gourds, and started classes for local youth.  The organization also persuaded the Peruvian government to declare the checo to be a national cultural treasure.

This is lovely, and delightful.

But why should we bother to preserve traditional percussion instruments...or any traditional musical instrument, for that matter?

First, other than the checo and the angara, what are some of these instruments?  Well, think of all the different kinds of flutes made out of bamboo, or cane, or ceramics.  Think of drums made out of hollowed out logs, or giant jars, with their heads covered with animal skins (a specific animal favored for each specific drum).  Think of zithers made out of bamboo or sticks of wood.  Think of conch shells used in the islands of the Pacific as a musical instrument, and the shekere made of ceramic and shells used in West Africa.  Think of chimes, again made out of wood or bamboo.  Think of rattles made out of deer hooves and bells made out of ceramics or iron.  Think of musical instruments made out of animal bones.  Think of the viola de gamba, the tambourine, the bagpipe.


 

Above is some very good checo playing, although not typical--he isn´t singing in Spanish, and in addition, the sound hole is at the top instead of on the side, as is more usual.

For a larger list, which is very interesting but unfortunately restricts itself mostly to traditional instruments from Europe, see this LINK.

There are hundreds of traditional musical instruments in the world, and they bring an astounding richness to our collective musical heritage, in addition to their contributions to the culture of the specific community which developed them.

And why preserve them?  Well, if reading the list above doesn´t convince you that they are in fact essential to music including modern music, I´ll add a few more reasons:

Many of these instruments have beautiful and/or interesting sounds that you cannot produce by any other means.  No, a synthesizer won´t do it.  Doesn´t have the flexibility, the depth of sound, or the sweetness you find in some of these instruments.


More Afro-Peruvian musical instruments...all except the kalimba, which comes from West Africa (Ghana and nearby countries).


Many of these instruments are so deeply linked to the history and heritage of the community which produced them that to lose them is to damage that heritage.

And for a last reason, keeping these instruments alive helps preserve us from sameness, from monotony, from homogenized music in which one composition sounds depressingly like all the others.

Just to let you know that we have put our money where our mouth is:  in the home use version our documentary, A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz, we have a section in which master percussionists are playing the checo.  In addition, in the educational version of the documentary, not only do we have that checo segment but as one of the Extras we have the videoclip you see near the top of this post of someone playing the angara.

So there.

OUR NEXT POST will be news about our documentary, A Zest for Life.

Dance of the Devils (Son de los Diablos) part 2 of 2

If you´re like me, you´re interested in where things come from.  Well, one of the people most knowledgeable about the Afro-Peruvian tradition is Nicomedes Santa Cruz, and he says the Son de los Diablos really didn´t come out of African tradition as most people assume, and instead, it´s very much a transplanted Spanish celebration.  Of course, African descendants have given it their own particular stamp, but, says Santa Cruz, its origins are in fact European.

Since the Son de los Diablos was originally part of the Corpus Cristi celebration, I checked out Corpus Cristi celebrations in Spain, and found that there are several in which there are special dances performed as part of the celebration.   Since the Son de los Diablos is a dance, and is supposed to have in part been something the Spanish Catholic slave owners used in order to convert Africans to Catholicism, I figured I should find out more about these dances to see if they resembled the Son de los Diablos.

 
This verison of the son de los diablos is by Perú Multicolor.  I like the dance, but the sound is not so good.  There´s some good zapateo about halfway through the video.

One of the most interesting celebrations in Spain for Corpus Cristi reminds me a good deal of the Son de los Diablos.  It takes place in a small town in central Spain called Camuñas (population 1,772).  In addition to a more standard religious procession, it includes two groups that parade and dance, one representing sin and sinful activities while the other represents virtue, and the virtuous.  It´s called the Pecados y Danzantes (Sins and Dancers).

Both groups, the one for the sins and the one for the virtues, dance wearing masks.  The costumes resemble somewhat the costumes worn by the dancers in the Son de los Diablos, but I think it´s mostly the masks and the parading of evil and evil beings that provide the link to the Afro-Peruvian celebration.  In addition, the sinful figures include the Demon/Devil (ah, ha!), the World, and the Flesh.

Image of the (sinful) World in Camuñas´ Corpus Cristi celebration.

 Best guesses are that the tradition of these dancing groups in Camuñas began in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The Son de los Diablos began no later than the 19th century, and probably started 100 or more years earlier, so it would have been very possible for the Camuñas celebration to have been brought over to Peru.

There are other places in Spain, larger places such as Toledo where the procession for Corpus Cristi includes figures of giants and, until recently, a monster called la Tarasca.  (The monster is in bad repair now, and so has not been taken out for the past several years.)  Again, the tradition in Toledo dates back several centuries. 

La Tarasca is also part of the Corpus Cristi celebration in Valencia (in southern Spain).  She´s part of a tradition that entered Spain from southern France.

It is said that la Tarasca was used by a saint to convert the local inhabitants (in Spain) to Christianity in the 17th century.  It´s not clear what religion they followed prior to their conversion.  This reminds me of how the Son de los Diablos was used in Peru.

One image of la Tarasca -- said to be part lion, part dragon, part turtle, part..... and very fierce.

In other words, although it´s certainly possible that the Son de los Diablos came from West African traditions of masquerade dancing, there is also plenty in the Spanish tradition that could have produced it.

I leave it to you to make a decision.

Want a free download of some Afro-Peruvian music?  Go to LINK.

OUR NEXT POST will be about the checo and the angara:  preserving traditional musical instruments.

Dance of the Devils (Son de los Diablos) part 1 of 2

As with most things in life, the more you dig down into the Son de los Diablos, the more complex you find it to be.  The more complex and also, the more interesting.

First, let's start by explaining that the Son de los Diablos is a dance and a procession or parade in which the diablos--the devils--dance down the streets (or these days, dance across the stage), accompanied by drum beats from the cajón and/or a cajita, a quijada de burro and a conga drum.  In addition, in the old days, there was also a form of harp but now a guitar is usually used instead.

The devils wear masks and also wear very colorful costumes, usually with a lot of frills and a lot of red.  There is a head devil, who is larger than the others, and then there are the littler diabolitos (little devils).

19th century watercolor by Pancho Fierro

In the watercolor, we see two devils, one with his mask lifted up.  We also see someone playing a harp and another person playing the cajita.  And one of the devils has a long whip.

You see it now as a stage production, or in festivals in certain regions of Latin America.  Traditionally, it was something that you only saw during processions down the streets in honor of a Catholic festival, the Corpus Cristi festival, which takes place in the spring (40 days after the Thursday of Semana Santa/Holy Week, which comes right before Easter).

Traditionally as well, the head devil carried a whip, and a huge book in which, it was said, he wrote down the names of all the people he was going to drag down to hell.

Most sources refer to it as something exclusively Afro-Peruvian but I have found in my investigations that it is also performed, and has been performed for generations, in certain African descendant communities in Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and Mexico.

Here's one version of the dance, by a group called Yuyachkani.

But it does seem to have been particularly important in Peru, and so its association with Afro-Peruvians is logical.

And its origins?  Well, it developed out of the Corpus Cristi celebrations in southern Spain, mixed with the African traditions (especially Congolese traditions) of the people kidnapped and brought over to Latin America as slaves.

It began in the New World about 200 years ago.  As time passed, and particularly after the abolition of slavery in the mid-1900s, in most areas it was all but abandoned but in recent decades, relying on the memories of community elders, it is once again a living celebration.

The group Baila América performs the son de los diablos.

In the photo above, the head devil has a quijada de burro, while the two smaller devils are playing the cajita.

 Now, however, it is not confined to the Catholic celebration of Corpus Cristi.  As suggested above, you also see it in other celebrations including ones that have nothing to do with religion.  And today it is also performed as a stage show by many cultural organizations.

OUR NEXT POST will give more details about the Son de los Diablos.

Hatajo de Negritos in Peru

The hatajo de negritos are part of the Catholic Christian tradition as celebrated in the Afro-Peruvian community since the mid-17^th century.  The hatajos are groups of dancers to be found primarily in the coastal provinces of Chincha and Pisco, most famously in the towns of El Carmen, Chamorro, Caserio Guayabo and San José..  The celebrations in which they dance are those for Christmas and the subsequent celebration honoring the day in which the Virgin Mary in her form as the Virgin of Carmen is said to have appeared in this region.  These festivities begin on Dec. 24 and continue until mid-day on Dec. 28. 

 
Here, we see a part of the celebration performed by the family of Amado Ballumbrosio.

For several months preceding these celebrations, starting in October, images of the Virgin and of Baby Jesus are taken in procession from one town to another, as the Virgin and the Christ child of each community “visits” the others.  One purpose of these visits is to solicit funds to finance the subsequent celebrations.  Since the image of the Virgin carried from town to town is very small, these visits are sometimes referred to as the peoncita (little work).

At the same time, residents of the communities (in the past, mostly men and boys but now, girls are also included) practice and learn the elaborate, special dances and songs including elaborate footwork called zapateo, the performance of which is an important part of the repertoire of the hatajos.

The festivities begin around 10pm on the night of Dec. 24 with a Catholic mass in which there is a symbolic simulation of Christ´s birth.  Immediately following this mass, the hatajos dance briefly in front of the church.  Then, everyone hurries home to be with their family at the hour of midnight, the traditional hour at which Jesus is said to be born.   

This video of the Hatajo de Negritos of el Carmen was made by a Peruvian television station.  Non-Spanish speakers:  the part where you actually see the celebrations starts about 30 seconds into the video.  Hispano-hablantes--lo que dice el sacerdote de los origines de la celebración es solamente una interpretación.  Hay otras que dicen que es una mezcla de tradiciones llevado desde la África, y ritos enseñado por los amas españoles de esclavos que quierían catequisar a los negros.

It is worth pointing out that each hatajo has an image (or in some cases, two) of baby Jesus, which they carry with them as their performances are in honor of his birth.

On Dec. 25 (Christmas day), the groups of dancers are invited to visit private homes in the neighboring towns.  These homes will have set up an image of baby Jesus as part of their Christmas celebration.  The hosts welcome the hatajos and the family and friends who accompany them with open arms and offer them food, drink, and other refreshments.  The hatajos perform as a group, following which individual members often demonstrate their skill at zapateo, all done in front of the image of the Christ child as a way of honoring Him.   

As we see here, Peruvian zapateo (or more properly, Afro-Peruvian zapateo) has also moved to the stage but in the Hatajo de Negritos, it is only used as a means of praising the Christ Child.

In the evening of the following day, Dec. 26, the celebration of the Virgin of Carmen begins with a mass, followed by a cultural performance.  This celebration takes place exclusively in the town of El Carmen, where She is said to have appeared.  Beginning at 7pm the next day, Dec. 27, the Virgin is paraded through the streets.  The procession continues through the night until ending at 11am the following morning.  The hatajos de negritos accompany this procession and form an important part of it.

The procession stops briefly in front of the homes of those who want to venerate her.  Most often, these are the homes of people who provide special help in maintaining the hatajos, such the family of Amador Ballumbrosio and of Margarita Córdova.  The families so honored will offer flowers to the image of the Virgin, and refreshments to those who form part of the procession (especially to those who are carrying the image).

The celebrations end when the procession returns to the church were the image is housed.  The hatajos disband until the following year, and the town returns to its more normal life.

 NOTE:  I am grateful to Edith Maldonado Carillo of the Centro Cultural Afroperuano San Daniel de Carboni de El Carmen, Peru and to Carlos O. López-Schmidt of los Cimarrones del Perú for the information they provided me.

OUR NEXT BLOG will be about the Son de los Diablos and an event in Zaña, Peru.