Candombe en Uruguay : What is Candombe?

Candombe en Uruguay

What is Candombe??

Hello, everyone, who reads my blog. I am a Thai woman who is living in Uruguay and this article, I would like to show you about Candombe.

This is video of small candombe.

This is the first time for me to see the real Candombe which makes me wonder and would like to know about it. I was searching for information, What Candombe is and why people love to see it.

In Montevideo, the Candombe starts every Summer in February for whole month.

I had been watching it with friends.

It was a lovely time for me. In the candombe, people were smiling and dancing.

Everyone was having fun along friends and family

The Candombe was a big show whice a lot of people were coming so we needed to buy tickets for our seats in advance. The shows held for two days.

If you couldn't find any ticket you still can see the small candombe whice in your neighborhood during February.

I enjoyed seeing people smiling and dancing, that made my feet moving and dancing along.

Here is the more information of Candombe.

www.candombe.com

Candombe is a rhythm from Africa that has been an important part of Uruguayan culture for more than two hundred years.

Uruguay, with a population of approximately 3.2 million inhabitants, is a small country located in South America, whose neighboring countries are Brazil (162 million) to the east and Argentina (34 million) to the west.

This rhythm came to Uruguay from Africa thanks to the black slaves, and still beats in the streets, in the corridors and in the carnivals of this charming little country.

To understand how this rhythm, deeply rooted in Uruguayan culture, evolved, it is necessary to turn the pages of African and South American history to see how this contagious rhythm anchored in the coasts of Montevideo.

The texts that follow are fragments taken from books and articles about candombe, as well as opinions of some characters who have lived it very closely.

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Montevideo, capital of Uruguay was founded by the Spaniards in a process begun in 1724 and completed in 1730.

In 1750 the introduction of African slaves began. At the beginning of the 19th century, the population of African origin in Montevideo surely exceeded 50% of the inhabitants.

The origin of this population was not a homogenous Africa, but a multiethnic and culturally very varied Africa. The majority being 71% of the Bantu area, East Africa and Equatorial Africa, while the rest was of non-Bantu origin, from West Africa: Guinea, Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone and Costa de Oro (now Ghana).

The Candombe is the survival of the African ancestral Bantu root brought by the blacks who arrived at the Río de la Plata.

The term, is generic for all the dances of blacks: synonym then, of black dance, evocation of the ritual of the race.

His musical spirit reflects the yearnings of the unfortunate slaves, who were suddenly transplanted to South America, to be sold and subjected to hard work.

They were sorrowful souls, keeping incurable nostalgia for the native lot. In colonial times, newly arrived Africans called their drums with the name of tangó.

With this word they also called the place where blacks performed their candomberas dances, which were also called with this term.

With the word Tangó the place was designated, the instrument and by extension the dance of the blacks.

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In Montevideo, the Uruguay of the Sunday nights, the drums of the South Quarter meet in the light of the fire at an intersection of the historic black neighborhood, in a quiet corner of South America.

The flames dance in the powerful light of a bonfire that is lit to warm the drums. Rows of drummers parade down the street in a confusion of muscle, sweat and sound, filling the night with a rhythm from Africa, known as Candombe.

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The corner ritual of the street is part of the forgotten chapter of the African Diaspora.

The drums tell the story of the profound impact that African culture has had in Uruguay and elsewhere in Latin America.

In fact, Afro-Uruguayans celebrate a fragment of history, which is often ignored.

By Merry Happy Fashion

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