Not much more than 20 kilometers from the historic center of Paraty, just outside the Rio-Santos highway, an old rural tradition and a contemporary urban expression coexist in perfect harmony. Jongo, a dance brought by Africans from the diaspora, and hip-hop, a manifestation that emerged in the ghettos of New York, are part of the same original soundtrack that moves the residents of Quilombo do Campinho da Independência, a stronghold of black resistance in Paraty for centuries. Despite the few hundred years that separate hip-hop and jongo in the genealogy of black music, the groups Realidade Negra and Jongo do Quilombo do Campinho emerged at practically the same time in the coastal city of southern Rio de Janeiro state.
Both groups date back to the first decade of the 21st century. Jongo master Laura Maria dos Santos, who helps organize the group’s performances, explains that jongo had been “asleep” in Paraty for a long time. With the support of Pontos de Cultura project, conceived by then Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil in 2004, it was possible to re-establish tradition in Paraty areas. Through workshops given by quilombolas [descendants of escaped and freed slaves] from Bracuí, a community in neighbor city Angra dos Reis, it was possible to awaken the cultural element, marked by singing, dancing and percussion.
– The group came to rescue this culture that was forgotten here. I got to know jongo better in Rio de Janeiro, where I lived for 40 years – says master Laura, who, like many of her generation, left Paraty in search of more opportunities. – We wanted to bring jongo back to Paraty, we even tried to bring jongueiros from Rio, but the distance was too long. Then we met Délcio, master from Angra dos Reis. Through Pontos de Cultura, he came to teach us the first steps. Since then, we followed on with this exchange and never stopped.
Currently, the group varies in size according to the presentation, but it maintains only one golden rule: only quilombolas can be part of it. With women dressed in flowered calico skirts and white blouses and the men all in white, the dancers reproduce the choreographies that emerged in Congo and Angola and were brought to Brazil by slaves of the Bantu ethnic group. In the distant past, only adults were allowed in the dance, but today children can also join in.
– The culture of jongo is enchanting, welcoming. Jongo is a school. It teaches children and disciplines them – argues master Laura. – It is open only to our community because we have a very specific purpose, to rescue our tradition. In Campinho, the jongo is closed to the outside and opened to the inside.
Hip-hop also arrived at Campinho da Independência in the early 2000s, along with other popular electronic rhythms such as funk. Mano Romero, lead singer of Realidade Negra, recalls in detail the first time he listened to rap lines. He received an untitled homemade tape and was told by a friend that what he was about to hear was “spoken funk”. In fact, the magnetic tape contained “Chapter 4, verse 3”, an absolute classic that Racionais MCs recorded in Sobrevivendo no Inferno (1997).
Dressing a black sweatshirt and a New York Yankees cap, sitting at the table in the quilombo restaurant, Mano Romero repeats – word by word – the song intro by Primo Preto, occasional collaborator of Racionais: “Sixty percent of young people from the suburbs without criminal records have already suffered police abuse. For every four people killed by the police, three are black. In Brazilian universities, only 2% of students are black. Every four hours, a young black man dies violently in São Paulo. Primo Preto speaking, another survivor”.
The sharp words of the São Paulo rap quartet echoed forever in Romero’s mind. The composition was the trigger for him to throw himself into the universe of Racionais MCs, who often describe themselves as “the four most dangerous blacks in Brazil”. Romero is a bricklayer who dreams of living solely on music and says that the verses of Mano Brown, Edi Rock and Ice Blue and the scratches of DJ KL Jay helped him fundamentally to solidify the pride about his own roots. Especially in adolescence. A victim of prejudiced comments in childhood, he says he began to realize the power and beauty of identifying himself as a quilombola and yell out his culture claim.
– That fascinated me. At that time, I was 11 to 12 years old – says Romero. – Even living in a black community, I had no idea what it was to be a quilombola. I only heard about quilombos at school, on May 13th and November 20th [Abolishment Day and Black Conscience Day]. My self-esteem as a black was way down. I used to say that I was brown, I smoothed my hair, I tried to deny my origins… And rap came to rescue that pride. We admired the black power hair and the rappers’ posture.
Since then, interest in the subject has only grown, and he began scribbling his first lyrics telling the reality around him. First, the boy joined his cousin Nelião, who also wrote lines inspired by famous rappers. They teamed up with friends from Ágape, at the time a band that performed in churches, to form in 2004 what would be the first quilombola rap group in Brazil. Today, in addition to the composer duo, Realidade Negra has Body Power (bass and voice), Negro Naldo (guitar and voice), B2 (guitar) and Fabio Black (drums). With an eclectic sound, very grounded on MPB [Música Popular Brasileira], the instrumentalists provide the perfect sound base for the verses of Mano Romero and Nelião.
At first, the older residents of the neighborhood didn’t take kindly to the different and slightly aggressive attitude of the hip-hop kids. But, little by little, the band won hearts and minds at Campinho da Independência. The lyrics, which focus on the daily struggles of traditional communities, were approved by the “griôs” sages, guardians of local traditions. Recorded live in the community in 2009, É Prus Guerreiro a Missão, the band’s only album, shows well the group’s strong relationship with the local audience that sings along with enthusiasm.
The quilombola verses had a lot of echo beyond the borders of Paraty and reached other regions of the country previously unthinkable to the members of the group. They traveled through different states and shared the stage with respected rap names, such as Rappin’Hood, GOG, DMN and BNegão, and from MPB, such as Toni Garrido, Sandra de Sá, Leci Brandão and Zezé Motta. In 2007, they participated in a chat and performed alongside English poet and activist Benjamin Zephanaiah during the Paraty International Literary Festival. The group remained on hiatus during much of the covid-19 pandemic and returned to the stage for a virtual performance at the Tradicionalidades festival, in May 2021.
Mano Romero sees some factors that bring hip-hop culture closer to the jongo universe. The first one is the umbilical connection with percussion: while electronic drums provide the beats for the MCs’ verses, three drums play the same role for the jongo dancers. The ability to improvise is another shared element, guarantees the rapper, in addition to the lyrics themes. Both hip-hop and jongo, he argues, are displays of resistance to the established power.
– Rap, like jongo, is an ancient thing. There is no force of time that turns this off – states Romero. – The marking of the rap beats certainly came from the African drum. The two also get the message across. They are symbols of struggle and resistance for us. In the past, jongo circles were used for communication and planning by the enslaved who turned against the masters. Apparently, a harmless dance, but the lyrics were full of coded messages for the good connoisseurs.
For both jongo and hip-hop, territory is a fundamental part of the equation. Therefore, Mano Romero and teacher Laura strongly value the history of their ancestors who fought to guarantee the permanence of black families against the interests of real estate speculation. According to the legend, Quilombo do Campinho da Independência was founded by three women. Some versions say that grandma Antonica, aunt Marcelina and aunt Maria Luiza got the lands from their former slave masters. Others, more credible, say matriarchs remained in the region after the abolition of slavery and the subsequent decline of plantations. Anyhow, the traditional families of the community connect their lineages to the original trio.
For a long time, the quilombo went on nearly self-sustainable, almost city-autonomous community. From the 1970s on, with the opening of the BR-101 highway and the consequent development of the region, the place underwent enormous real estate pressure. With the valorization of the lands, arrogators and supposed heirs of the farmers started to claim their rights and the original quilombo territory was significantly reduced. In 1994, the Campinho da Independência Quilombo Residents Association was founded to fight for the right of residents to stay in the place where they were born.
In 1999, through the articulation of local leaders with the then governor Benedita da Silva, the place was officially recognized as the first quilombo in Rio de Janeiro state and one of the first in Brazil. Since then, the 287-hectare area, Atlantic Forest surrounded and packed with waterfalls, has legally passed into the hands of the natives. Currently, family farming, basket handicrafts and ecotourism attractions are the main economic activities of the approximately 550 people who live in the community. Residents organize in 13 families. In each of them, the main house belongs to the older couple, who then surround themselves with their children and grandchildren, indicating where they can build on the nearby land. That’s why, in Campinho, don’t usually have walls between neighboring fields and backyards.
Laura and Romero guarantee that being a quilombola was never easy in a city that prospered during the colonial period. For years, Paraty was the entrance for thousands of enslaved human beings who were taken to Minas Gerais and to farms in the Paraíba Valley. The inheritances of slavery, they argue, are still imprinted on much of the local society. For them, the biggest challenge for a quilombola in the 21st century is to make their voice heard, crystal-clear, by those who have always pretended to be deaf.
– Being a quilombola nowadays is not very different from what it was during slavery, it’s good to start there – says master Laura. – The sense of enslavement changes according to the mechanisms of society. The abolishment was signed, but we were not compensated. Furthermore, they created institutional mechanisms to prevent us from moving up. We live thanks to our culture and the political advances that we built ourselves. If we hadn’t fought for the land title in 1999, today this area would perhaps be called a dangerous favela and we would all be seen as criminals, as happens in many outskirts of Brazil.
Mateus Campos is a journalist and researcher from Paraty. Since 2013, he has published interviews, opinion articles and reports on culture and society in different print and digital media, such as O Globo, UOL, The Intercept Brasil, Extra and Reverb. He holds a master’s degree in Literature, Culture and Contemporaneity from PUC-Rio (2020). He also collaborates with the Casa da Cultura de Paraty.