stinkygoat: marujada!

stinkygoat (

stinkygoat) wrote,
@ 2008-03-30 02:32:00

marujada!

delira delira delira galera azulada! }:-D

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	shatterstripes 2008-03-30 01:49 am UTC (link)
	Mr. Minter, you are a peculiar man. (Reply to this)(Thread)

stinkygoat
2008-03-30 10:27 am UTC (link)

Not unduly; I am simply a fan of "Boi Caprichoso" (the Capricious Ox), one of the two competing dance crews that take part in the annual Amazonian Ox Dance festival.

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum/volume2/vol2_article3.html

http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-93132006000200002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en

Each team has an associated band of musicians; those of boi Caprichoso are called the Marujada de Guerra. The clip is from one of the songs from the 1999 Ox Dance and is of a song called "Zig Zag da Marujada".

It is not really surprising that I should enjoy stuff from a uniquely ox-oriented culture whose most important annual event is a three-day-long celebration of the ox };-).

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shatterstripes
2008-03-30 02:18 pm UTC (link)

Aha! The first sentence alone gave me enough context to know exactly why a long-term associate of the ox such as yourself would be posting this. And it made me laugh.

Now that I skim the references, I remember you posting something about this a while back. All my myth-interpretation pattern-making senses are tingling at these things; it's not only not surprising that you'd enjoy things from this particular spring/resurrection/fertility festival, but it's also quite in character* for you to prefer the dark ox from the stars!

*or at least in character with the eidolon of you I've put together from the odd scrolltext over the years

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stinkygoat
2008-03-30 06:30 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, I'm really pleased to have discovered the Parintins festival. It's nowhere near as well-known as it deserves to be, really - it's second in scale only to the big Rio festival that is known worldwide, but outside of Brazil it remains almost completely unknown.

I found out about it quite by accident when some ox-related googling led me to one of those academic treatises I linked previously. I remember sitting and reading with an increasing sense of "blimey!" and then hitting Youtube where the first thing I found was this:

which gave some idea of the sheer scale of it, and definitely transformed "blimey!" into "fucking hell!" }:-).

The more I read and learn about it the more fascinating it becomes. There are variants of it all over Brazil (all of which vary in style and detail and scale of the presentation depending on region) but Parintins is by far the most elaborate. It's really interesting how the festival builds on an old traditional story about the death and resurrection of a precious ox, and weaves into it the local allegory and mythos of the Amazonian tribes that predated the Portuguese arrival, and celebrates the "cabloco" culture that arose out of the union of those peoples. The festival itself is absolutely stunning in scale - each dance team comprises 3,500 members. Not only is it a remarkable outpouring of musical and dance creativity, there are also some incredible design and engineering skills on display too, as you realise when you see some of the immense and skilfully articulated structures that the teams build as part of their display.

After watching what we could find on Youtube and seeing the displays and hearing the music of each group I just knew that boi Caprichoso was the team for me. It's just right. The dark ox of the star - "Boi da Estrela" }:-). I won't be content now until I can make the trip to Parintins myself and take my place in the "galera azul" (the people in the blue side of the Bumbodromo, where the supporters of Caprichoso sit) and experience the whole thing for myself at first hand. It simply has to be done. It's a mission for me now }:-).

Space Giraffe is full of references to the Parintins festival, too }:-).

Obscure Parintins-related fact: Parintins is the only place in the world where you'll see a blue Coca-Cola logo. Coca-Cola provides sponsorship to both bois Caprichoso and Garantido - and since Caprichoso's colours are blue and Garantido's red, they allow their logo to be done in blue when displayed in a Caprichoso-related context }:-).

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shatterstripes
2008-03-30 07:01 pm UTC (link)

Reading the links you threw out, it sounds like the Parintins festival is relatively young as these things go, with tons of little Ox dancer groups coalescing into two mega-groups after a formalization in the mid-sixties.

Also I just clicked on that first video there and HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Getting down there to see that would be pretty fucking awesome. Man, I bet that a not-insignificant portion of Parintins's artists work in the companies that have grown up around this, too; I know Mardi Gras parades were a significant portion of New Orleans' economy, and kept artists employed... OH SHIT THE OX IS STANDING ON A GIANT GREEN LEAF-WOMAN HOLY FUCK.

I'm gonna have to dig around this. It's fraught with complexity and will surely inspire something interesting. Thanks for the links and details!

I was wondering about the intense REDNESS of the Coke logo when I read that they sponsor the festival! I'm also wondering which one Giles is for. *grin*

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stinkygoat
2008-03-30 10:36 pm UTC (link)

Well as I understand it the Brazilian variations of the ox dance go back to at least the mid 19th century. The festival at Parintins is much younger, of course (both of the current ox groups date their origin back to around 1912/1913) and they likely originated in Manaus and then migrated to Parintins. In fact the "currals" or home bases of both oxen are actually in Manaus, and a lot of the lead-up to the Festival takes place in Manaus before a mass exodus down the river to Parintins some days before the Festival begins.

A friend of ours is Angolan and fled there due to war and ended up spending several years living in Brazil; she now lives in Portugal. Discussing the festival with her, she thinks that the roots go back further than that, and that it borrows from older mythos both Portuguese and African. Certainly there seem to be links to some older European tale involving an ox that was blessed by Saint John and which could dance.

Coincidentally this same friend of ours had family a couple of generations previously in Manaus, and she's always wondered about going back there. We may actually be able to get her to come along if we go out next year, which would be all kinds of awesome.

And yeah, the scale is stunning, the sheer skill and creativity of the artists just blew me away. Like you the first time I saw Caprichoso dancing on that giant green woman I was just "HOLY FUCK" :D. It's really worth going to parintins.com and ordering up a DVD of the Festival, you can see a lot more clearly the sheer epic scale of the performances. When that DVD arrived from Brazil Giles and I got no work at all done that day because we were just watching it in awe and pointing at the screen in pure amazement. I can only begin to imagine how awesome it must be to be there and see it all first hand (and to do so in the company of a bunch of passionately enthusiastic Caprichoso fans) }:-).

We got the 2005 DVD and it comes with a couple of extras in the form of a piece about Parintins the city and another about the artists who create the displays. Incredible work. Bear in mind Parintins isn't connected to the rest of the world with roads, they can't easily ship stuff in, so everything they make is made locally with what they have to hand, and it is fucking. awesome.

Giles is for Caprichoso as well, by the way (bringing the concept of goatliness next to that of oxliness I guess that's not surprising). And when we do travel there it'll make life easier - it's a good day's travel downriver from Manaus to get to Parintins, and as Caprichoso supporters we'll be wanting to get on one of the blue boats that'll be full of Caprichoso fans partying and dancing to the Caprichoso music. Being on a red boat would not be so good };-).

We were supposed to be going this year but with all the crap that happened last year it isn't really possible (anyway to do it properly you should be booking the trip the previous year since the place gets pretty full). I am fucking determined to go next year though. I just know it'll be one of the most awesome things I'll ever get to do in my life, just to be in the Bumbodromo for the Festival, on the blue side }:-D.

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