Verde Mar de Navegar: Merging Dance Phrases

Students' Work

Ashley

Saskia

Verde Mar de Navegar: Song, Dance and Carnival

One characteristic of this style of Brazilian music is its dissonant harmonies; so do not be surprised if the voices sound off tune. This music emerges from local musical experiences rooted in popular religion, dance and celebration. Its driving force, as you saw in the study of the lyrics in our last post, was the emerging identity of "poor urbanized blacks following the abolition of slavery (Treece 1).

Lia de Itamaracá - Verde Mar de Navegar

References

Treece, Davis (1997). Gun and Roses: bozza nova and Brazil's music of popular protest 1958-68. https://www.jstor.org/stable/853435?seq=1

Verde Mar de Navegar: History and Lyrics

This piece is about Brazil's struggle to get independence from Portugal in the XVIII century. this struggle like in the rest of the Caribbean, was manifested in their carnival music and dances. Thus, Verde Mar de Navegar is a carnival song that commemorates this struggle by singing to the names of not only martyrs, but also important carnival artists.

Verde Mar de Navegar

Lyrics/Translation

Batuqueiro que baque é esse?

Drummer what beat is that?

É o baque de nossa alteza

It is the sound of our highness

E não há mais que outro baque

And there is nothing but another thud

Ó senhor mas é só tristeza

 Oh Lord but it is very sad

Cadê Leão Coroado

The case of Coronado Leão (1)

Cadê Cambinda Brilhante

The case of Cambinda Brilhante (2)

Cadê Cruzeiro do Forte

The case of  Cruzeiro do Forte (3)

Maracatu Elefante

Elephant Maracatu (4)

Olha o céu olha para o mar

Look at the sky on the ocean

Verde mar de navegar verde mar

Green ocean to sail green ocean

Olha o céu olha para o mar

Look at the sky on the ocean 

Verde mar de navegar verde mar

 Green ocean to sail green ocean

 "Paixão pelo Pernambuco pelo P de Portugal

Passion for the P of Pernambuco for the P of Portugal

Por Olinda por Holanda por Mauricio de Nassau

for Olinda (5), for Holand, for Mauricio de Nassau (6)

Pelo Recife magia no dia de carnaval"

In the magic day of Recife's carnival

Batuqueiro que baque é esse?

É o baque de nossa alteza

E não há mais que outro baque

Ó senhor mas é só tristeza

Cadê Leão Coroado

Cadê Cambinda Brilhante

Cadê Cruzeiro do Forte

Maracatu Elefante

Olha o céu olha para o mar

Verde mar de navegar verde mar

Olha o céu olha para o mar

Verde mar de navegar verde mar

(1) Captain José de Barros Lima, or Leão Coroado (Recife, 1764 — Recife, July 10, 1817), was a Brazilian military revolutionary.  His reaction to the arresting voice of Portuguese commander Barbosa de Castro, killing him with sword blows, was the trigger of the Pernambuco Revolution. He was condemned to death.  De Barros Lima was hanged, his head was severed, his hands were cut off and his body was tied to two horses and dragged through the streets of Recife.

(2) The Cambinda performed in the Paraiba city of Lucena, was a festival on Easter Sunday to celebrate the emancipation of African slaves in Brazil in 1888. This is the oral tradition passed on by Joao Marcos Chagaz, king of the group of fishermen who constituted the Cambinda Brilhante de Lucena. Formed up in two files, with the royal family between them, the participants danced through the streets accompanied by zabumba bass drums and shakers (Retrieved from Rhythms of Resistance: African Musical Heritage in Brazil, By Peter Fryer).

(3) Cruzeiro do Forte is the oldest Maracatu Rural of Recife city. In 2009 they celebrated their 80 years aniversary. The CD below was a goal of the community of the Southern Cross in order to register their 75 year old performance history that is no longer practiced. See also video. (https://www.womex.com/virtual/selo_mundo_melhor/maracatu_rural_do_de)

 

(4) Maracatu Elefante: Maracatu Elefante or (Elephant Maracatu) Group was founded in 1800 by the slave Manuel Santiago, after his discontent with the direction of Maracatu Brilhante (Shiny Maracatu Group), taking many members of the old group with him.A maracatu group in the nação (nation) or baque virado style, Maracatu Elefante became popularly known as Maracatu de Dona Santa (Mrs Santa’s Maracatu Group), the group’s most famous queen, whose reign spanned from 1947 to 1962.In their origins, maracatu groups were a representation of the African royal courts in Brazil, in an attempt to preserve the uses and customs. With the influence of Catholic traditions, its procession was more or less in the mold of the Portuguese  monarchy, with the king, queen, princes, vassals, flag-bearer, ambassador, baianas (women from Bahia), spear holders and a slave bearing the royal canopy, a cover supported by poles to protect the person honoured in the procession. (http://basilio.fundaj.gov.br/pesquisaescolar_en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1150&Itemid=1)

 (5) Olinda: A historic city in the Brazilian State of Pernambuco, located on the country's northeastern  Atlantic Ocean coast, in Greater Recife (capital of Pernambuco State).It is noted as one of the best-preserved colonial cities in Brazil. Olinda features a number of major tourist attractions, such as a historic downtown area, churches, and the Carnival of Olinda, a popular street party, very similar to traditional Portuguese carnivals, with the addition of African influenced dances. 

(6) João Maurício de Nassau-Siegen; (17 June 1604 – 20 December 1679) was called "the Brazilian" for his fruitful period as governor of Dutch Brazil. He was  Count and (from 1664) Prince of  Nassau-Siegen, and Grand Master of the Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg).

Choral Arrangement

Verde Mar de Navegar - Bel Canto Choir Vilnius

Un Panal de Rica Miel: Merging Dance Phrases

Ashley

Filly

Saskia

Un Panal de Rical Miel: Musical Composition

Un Panal de Rica Miel

(feat. Alberto Grau, Luimar Arismendi & Gonzalo Grau) 

(Las Moscas)

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  Alberto Grau

Composer Alberto Grau (1937) is one of the best known contemporary musicians in Venezuela.  He is know for being a chorus conductor. However, Grau has also become a leading composer in Latin-America. In 1967 Grau founded the Schola Cantorum of Caracas.  Currently, he conducts the Choral Ave Fénix founded in 2003.

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Cha Cha Cha Master Class

The musical accompaniment of Un Panal de Rica Miel in the recording above, as Talia so accurately identified it earlier, sounds like cha cha cha. Please, watch this master class with dance teachers Gladys Gonzalez and Antonio Sanchez. They explain in detail how cha cha cha is danced. Feel free to apply this rhythm to your phrase.

 

 Gladys Gonzalez and Antonio Sanchez

Un Panal de Rica Miel: Literary History

 Aesop (620 – 564 BCE) 

Aesop was a  Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of  fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics. 

Gaius Julius Phaedrus was a 1st-century CE Roman fabulist and the first versifier of a collection of Aesop's fables into Latin in the 1st century CE. At about the same time Babrius turned the fables into Greek.  A 3rd-century author, Titianus, is said to have rendered the fables into prose in a work now lost.  Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs. The 4th-century grammarian Dositheus Magister also made a collection of Aesop's Fables, now lost.  Aesop's fables were tranlated into Frech by Roger L'Estrange in 1692 and into English by George Fyler Townsend in 1887. 

This particular fable in Spanish, Un panal de rica miel, is attributed to Spanish writer Félix María de Samaniego who published his Fábulas from 1781–1784.  They were one hundred and fifty-seven in number. Un panal de rica miel is one of the most popular ones. Samanigo's fables were inspired in Aesop's and Phaedrus' fables among others. Aesop's Fables continued to be revised and translated through the ensuing centuries, with the addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told.

"The Flies and the Honey-Pot"

Explicating Aesop's Fables: "The Flies and the Honey-Pot" (Story #28)

 

https://fablesofaesop.com/the-flies-and-the-honey-pot.html

The Flies and The Honey Pot - Fables of Aesop The Flies and The Honey Pot. 27 March 2017 (last updated) Flies were attracted to a honey jar. They ate greedily. But, their feet and wings got covered with the honey so they could not get free. They died. Too much of a good thing can be bad. A number of Flies were attracted to a jar of honey. They entered and ate greedily. fablesofaesop.com

THE FABLE

Un panal de rica miel / A Honeycomb of Tasty Honey

By Félix María de Samaniego (1745 - 1801)

A un panal de rica miel

To a honeycomb of rich honey

dos mil Moscas acudieron,

Two thousand flies came,

que por golosas murieron

who died of a sweet tooth

presas de patas en él.

 their legs tied to it

Otras dentro de un pastel

Other ones inside a cake

enterró su golosina.

buried their candy

Así, si bien se examina,

So, if well examined

los humanos corazones

the human hearts

perecen en las prisiones

they will perish in the prisions

del vicio que los domina.

of the vice that dominates them.

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Musicalized version of Felix Samaniego's fable

Music: Alberto Grau. 

Chorale: Schola Juvenil de Venezuela. 

Conductor: Luimar Arismendi

El Manisero / The Street Vendor: Merging Dance Phrases

Students' Work

At this point students merge the two previous phrases into one becoming a total of 32 moves.

Talia

Filly

Ashley

Saskia

Mickey

Long

Kim

Corinne 

 Kim

Cara 

Rachel V.