Memória do Jongo is perhaps best viewed as extended liner notes to the CD that accompanies the book, as, in effect, the volume aims to contextualise the recordings made by Stanley J. Stein in 1949, during his research into the daily life on a coffee plantation in the Vale do Paraíba (Rio de Janeiro state) from 1850 to 1900. While the CD contains a few examples of other musical genres, such as sambas, folk renditions of recorded popular songs, and a tune from the mummer-like ensembles known as folias de reis, the bulk of the recordings, 60 in all, are of pontos de jongo, that is, short songs to accompany the jongo, a dance that was performed as both entertainment and religious expression by the slaves on the coffee plantations of southeastern Brazil. Often no more than ten seconds in length, the recordings of the pontos involve a solo male voice, sometimes accompanied by clapping, performing a set of two or more lines to demonstrate the text and melody of each item. These historic recordings, made on a wire recorder owned by the US Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, remained hidden in a drawer for nearly 60 years. Once found, they prompted a series of projects associated with the jongo and the pioneering research of Stanley Stein, culminating in this publication.
In the introductory chapter Gustavo Pacheco provides a basic description of the jongo (also known as the caxambu or tambu), showing its links to other African-Brazilian communal circle dances, such as the batuque, the candombe, the samba de umbigada, among others. The chapter also includes a useful overview of the history of ethnographic recordings across the Black Atlantic, which helps highlight the importance of this collection and its item-based orientation to recording. The chapter concludes by introducing each musical genre contained on the CD. The discussion of the jongo centres on the poetic resources used in the pontos, noting how metaphors were used by the slaves to conceal from their white masters the true meaning of the words.
In the second chapter the reader is treated to a personal narrative by Stanley Stein himself, highlighting the multiple influences that ultimately led him to produce his classic book, Vassouras, a Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1900 (1957), not least among them his wife, Barbara Stein, who had been in Brazil in 1940 studying the abolitionist movement. His own interests centred on colonial export economies, which he hoped to merge with a ‘community studies’ perspective. If such a perspective were to generate a ‘total history’, it would have to encompass the experience of the slaves, a social category whose story could not be uncovered through traditional historiographic methods. Following the lead of other researchers at the time, such as Melville Herskovits and Benjamin Botkin, Stein turned to the songs and narratives of the descendants of slaves. Thus, pontos de jongo, of which 15 are cited in Vassouras, became central sources in gaining access to the ‘voice’ of the slaves.
Although titled ‘Vassouras and the sounds of captivity in Brazil’ (‘Vassouras e os sons do cativeiro no Brasil’), the next chapter, by Silvia Humbolt Lara, is actually a detailed contextualisation of Vassouras within academia. Interestingly, she shows how the reception of the book in the USA, where it was immediately recognised as much more than a local history in showing how wider national processes could affect a local setting, contrasted with its reception in Brazil, where the academic focus was concerned with understanding the shift from a slave economy to agrarian capitalism and its impact on the Brazilian black population. To Brazilian academics, the social world portrayed in Vassouras seemed to confirm the view that the old plantocracy was a hindrance to the country's economic progress. This view of the book would change radically in the 1980s, however, once Brazilian historiography began to encompass the excluded and turn its attention to the documentation of everyday practice. As the range of modes of daily negotiations and strategies employed by slaves throughout Brazil came to be recognised, the innovative research methodologies Stein had employed were heralded as exemplary models to be followed.
Hebe Mattos and Martha Abreu contributed Chapter Four, which provides an extensive survey of historical sources referring to the jongo throughout southeastern Brazil. Beginning in the early nineteenth century and throughout the 1800s, travelers documented their reactions to the dance, ranging from disgust to total fascination. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, the main sources are to be found in the works of folklore collectors, whose interests in the jongo were linked to nationalist projects. A sociological orientation began to develop around the mid-twentieth century, generating studies aimed at gaining an insider's perspective; it is, of course, within this model that Stein's work is situated. Finally, the authors show how local communities of jongo performers today are re-appropriating their heritage. In some instances, as amongst the jongadeiros of São José da Serra, the dance has even been used to legitimise claims to land rights.
The last chapter is a fascinating socio-linguistic study by Robert W. Slenes. It begins by identifying the linguistic links between the jongo and the Bantu-speaking regions in the Portuguese territories of West Central Africa. It then shows how many of the metaphors employed in the texts of the pontos derive from common Bantu associations. For instance, following an African poetic device that associates social roles to distinct animals or plants, many jongos link the plantation owners to the embaúba, a tall, domineering tree, whose wood is, however, useless; furthermore, it seems to be lazy, as it is favoured by the sloth. Similarly, the frequent references to armadillos, animals with a great capacity to dig deep holes in which to hide, highlight the abilities of slaves to conceal themselves from their masters.
At the back of the book there is a series of photos of plantation life taken by Stanley Stein, and this is followed by the texts of all the songs on the CD, a very useful addition, as it is not always easy to understand the singers on the recordings, despite the meticulous cleaning processes they underwent following digitisation. I was somewhat disappointed that the volume did not dedicate more space to the musical dimension of the jongo. But, even so, the book as a whole is unquestionably an outstanding and deserving tribute to Stanley Stein's legacy to Brazilian scholarship.
