MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – If seductive Samba rhythms are what you seek for a carnival getaway the week before Lent, then Rio or Salvador in nearby Brazil are the places to be. But here in this port city of 1.3 million it is candombe, the Afro-Uruguayan drum-dance tradition that provides the explosive cultural backdrop to carnival.
Although blacks comprise a small percentage of the Uruguayan population – fewer than 5 percent – their musical tradition of candombe, nurtured from slave days, has seen a resurgence in recent years, corresponding to the growing interest elsewhere in various types of world music.
Candombe is front and center on New Year’s Day, as well as during the Jan. 6 observance of Epiphany and on celebrations of other holidays. Members of dance clubs parade through the streets in flashy costumes and makeup, using a stick and the palm of an open hand to beat on potbellied drums hung around their necks.
Some well-known candombe clubs have named themselves after African countries or African ethnic groups.
The resurgence of candombe has encouraged some Uruguayans of European descent to reexamine a segment of the nation’s history that is not always appreciated.
The Museo del Gaucho, near this city’s old town section, portrays some of the contributions of blacks to the gaucho or cowboy culture of the Uruguayan countryside. In addition, Pedro Figari, a famed Uruguayan impressionist, portrayed black culture in his early 20th-century paintings.
Nonetheless, Alejandro Frigerio, an Argentine sociologist who is familiar with issues facing blacks in Argentina and Uruguay, noted that candombe has become a musical lingua franca, providing a framework for unity between blacks and their supporters in both countries.
Frigerio points to candombe differences between Uruguay and Argentina. And he notes that the musical form has been popularized to the point of being taught and practiced by white musicians in Argentina, which has an even smaller black population than Uruguay.
But just as white suburban teens in the United States have become major purchasers of urban-born rap music, some black Uruguayans worry if their musical form, which thrives in Barrio Sur, home to many blacks, will eventually be co-opted by the larger society.
Ruben Rada, one of Uruguay’s best-known black drummers and band leaders noted in the Aug. 15, 2000, Christian Science Monitor that “Whenever artists were sent abroad to represent Uruguay, they never sent black people. Not many people in the world, including Latin America, know Uruguay has black people.”
That perception is being fought by Mundo Afro, a black cultural and civil rights group formed here in 1988. It runs a cultural center that keeps black dance and theater alive, and it has collaborated with black organizations in other Latin American nations.
In March 2000, it hosted a conference of representatives of various black communities in Latin America that examined such topics as the challenges facing black women, black culture, racial discrimination, the struggle for land and the black role in the foundation of the Americas. Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle addressed the event.
The Third Person 