« Putting Myself First (cont.) | Main | Wrapping Things Up before Vacation »
Bumba Meu Boi
By Jay | December 15, 2007
So I came home from the gym this afternoon to find a bull’s head by the window. Not a real head of course, but still it gave me quite a start.
There is an explanation. My partner M. is Brazilian and, like a large number of Brazilians, is a Spiritist. A major aspect of the Spiritist religion is charity, especially one-on-one, helping those who are alone. So every year his Spiritist group (there are about 20 people in this group put together a show for nursing homes in poor sections of Brooklyn.
This year the group is doing a traditional Brazilian folk play called Bumba Meu Boi, or Boi-Bumba. M. is going to be the bull.
This folk tradition is something that I didn’t know about until today, and is one that I find absolutely fascinating. There is a town about halfway up the Amazon river — in the middle of nowhere, only reachable by boat or plane — called Parintins. I doubt anyone has heard of this town outside Brazil, nor have many people outside of Brazil heard of the Bumba Meu Boi festival. In fact, I looked it up in Wikipedia, and all they have to say about it is:
Bumba Meu Boi or Boi Bumbá is a popular regional festival which takes place annually in North and Northeast Brazil. It tells the story of the death and resurrection of an ox.
I did some more reading, and found out that the Bumba Meu Boi festival is more than that. In fact, it is the largest mass festival in Brazil outside of Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro. I saw Carnaval in Rio once — endless Samba parades and hundreds of thousands of people watching from the parade stands — I couldn’t believe they actually had a stadium called the Sambodromo in Rio, where the huge Carnaval Parades happen.
But the Bumbodromo, built in the shape of a bull, takes the cake. The Bumbodromo is a stadium in this little town I mentioned earlier — Paratins — in the middle of the Amazon jungle, and it holds about 80,000 people. That’s bigger than Yankee Stadium in the Bronx! The number of people who descend on Parintins for this festival is far larger than the number of inhabitants of the town. Most people end up sleeping in hammocks on the boats that brought them.
So what happens in this festival is this: the entire town splits into two teams; a blue team called Garantido, and a red team called Caprichoso. Each team is lead by an ox, dressed in the color of the team.
The teams enact the rather Freudian legend of a wealthy farmer who gives his favorite boi (ox in English) to his daughter as a gift, asking a ranch hand named Pae Francisco to take care of it. The ranch hand’s pregnant wife, Mae Caterina, develops a craving for ox-tongue, and the ranch hand kills the ox to satisfy his wife’s demands.
The farmer finds out and is furious, ready to execute the ranch hand. But St. John the Baptist comes to him in a dream, and warns him not to kill the couple.
In the end, Caterina and Francisco enlist rainforest witchdoctors to help them harness the power of a drum beat to resurrect the ox, thus saving their lives. The legend itself brings many speculations to my mind, but the enthusiasm with which it is celebrated is the most amazing thing to me. Each of the two teams enacts the legend in front of the crowd in the Bumbodromo. The main characters are:
The Boi
Pai Francisco
Mae Catirina
The Witchdoctor/Priestess-an intense and striking costume, this dancer embodies the all-important role of the Witchdoctor, whose powerful magic brings the Boi back to life
Cunha Poranga- with a rich and highly ornate native costume, this is the Boi Rumba’s version of Rio’s Rainha da Bateria (Queen of the Bateria)
Rainforest Dancer- a dancer representing the vivid, beautiful and enchanting rainforest plants and trees that define the world’s largest rainforest.
Sweet Water! River Dancer-this dancer wears a rich beautiful blue costume to represent the life force of the Amazon and all its living things~Water.
I’ll stop writing now as words do not do the show justice. You can see a clip on this Youtube video.
Popularity: 22% [?]
Stumble it!
Topics: Misc |