UNIENDO RITMOS: Afro-Uruguayan Music & Dance
Uruguayan artists Eugenia Silveira Chirmini & Daniel Marquez
Wednesday August 15, 2007
$15 - 8pm
This performance will demonstrate the Afro-Uruguayan Candombe rhythm, song, and dance. This 300-year-old tradition originates from the Bantu culture of the African people who were brought as slaves to Uruguay in the late 1600s. They brought along a distinctive sound, produced by three drum parts that are represented on the chico, repique, and piano drums or tamboriles. Each has a different size, tuning, and role, and grouped together they form a cuerda de tambores (drum corps). In late February, carnival flourishes in the streets of Montevideo with the sounds of the comparsas, the candombe ensembles made up of drummers, dancers, and characters. Each one represents a different neighborhood competing in the llamadas (calls) of the Barrio Sur. As Luis Ferreira wrote, "The drums spread through the streets of the city; their music, their powerful sound and the solidarity and identity they represent, form a kind of cultural resistance which is patiently pacifist but surely not passive."
Images will be projected to show the social and cultural impact that this tradition has had on the Uruguayan people. Performers include Bay Area local artists along with special guests from Montevideo, percussionist Daniel "Tatita" Márquez and dancer Eugenia Silveira Chirimini.
Afro-Peruvian Music with De Rompe y Raja Cultural Association, Freddy Huevito, and Felipe Pumarada.
