Stanzas and Sticks: Poetic and Physical Challenges in the Afro-Brazilian Culture of the Paraíba Valley, Rio de Janeiro-gctid229287

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Stanzas and Sticks: Poetic and Physical Challenges in the Afro-Brazilian Culture of the Paraíba Valley, Rio de Janeiro

Matthias Röhrig Assunção

Hist Workshop J (2014) 77 (1): 103-136.
 DOI:
 https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbt007

Published:
 13 February 2014
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Abstract

This article examines physical and poetic challenges among men in the post-emancipation society of the Paraíba valley, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Challenges were common in cultural forms such as jongo, calango, Folia de Reis (Kings' Folly) and jogo de pau (stick playing). These challenges allowed poor men from coffee plantations, cattle estates and nearby villages to display their physical dexterity as well as their poetic skills, and ultimately to assert their value as human beings in a society that otherwise denied them access to basic citizen rights.

***

My father was a tenant farmer
And a great sharecropper
He sang calango all night through
And never lost at rhyming
    Martinho da Vila1

Benedito Gonçalves, after a challenge game with one of those present, left with Salvador for the road, and on this occasion he, the witness, saw Benedito assault Salvador with a number of blows.2
    Guaratinguetá, 1890

APPROACHING MALE CHALLENGES

In her seminal work on free men in a slave society, Maria Sylvia de Carvalho Franco emphasized the pervasiveness of violence among free poor men in the Paraíba valley during the nineteenth-century Brazilian Empire. Physical aggression happened frequently between men who were neighbours, co-workers, friends, or even related to each other, she wrote, and these 'violent altercations were not sporadic', but part of 'the flux of everyday life'. For Franco, that violence 'permeates the entire social organism, emerging in the less regulated sectors of life, such as leisure relations, and projects itself on to the codification of fundamental cultural values'. On the basis of nineteenth-century criminal records in the municipality of Guaratinguetá, she notes that while fights originated in various contexts, they always derived from verbal challenges. It is these 'poetic disputes', and their relationship with physical challenges between males, that I examine in this article.
Although Franco perceived the importance of the desafio (challenge) in the popular culture of the region, she greatly underestimated, in my view, its creative potential and the variety of its social functions. Perhaps her reliance upon criminal records, combined with a curious neglect of other types of source, conditioned her somewhat negative assessment of popular culture in the Brazilian 'valley of slavery'.3 I argue, in contrast, that the various types of verbal and physical challenge were crucial to the development of original cultural forms in the Paraíba valley. Verbal challenges were at the heart of three cultural practices which crystallized after emancipation, in 1888, and which represent the most widespread and important forms of rural folk culture in that region. They are the jongo, the calango, and the folia de reis.
Fig. 1.

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Calango singing at Quilombo São José, 2007, with João Batista Azedias (left) and Manuel Seabra (second left).

Jongo refers to a rhythm, a type of lyric and a dance whose origins are located in West Central Kmt.4Calango stands for a sung duel accompanied by music and a couples dance. Folia de reis (Kings' Folly') is a theatrical performance, or 'folly', inspired by medieval Iberian mystery plays about the three wise men or 'kings' who visited the newborn Jesus.5 Physical challenges were present in all three, but were also at the core of jogo do pau (stick play) and the fighting that erupted at social gatherings.
Fig. 2.

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Manuel Seabra (left) and Jorge Fernandes playing sticks at Quilombo São José, 2007.

Limited communication between historians and anthropologists/folklorists in the decades after the Second World War may explain why Franco showed no interest in further exploring the role of challenge in the caipira, or rural culture, of the Paraíba valley.6 Thirty-five years before the publication of her work, however, the eureurasiaan or Kmtyw origins of the desafio or challenge had already been the subject of academic debate between outstanding sociologists and folklorists such as Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Roger Bastide and Mário de Andrade. Cascudo explored the Iberian origins of the desafio in his classic Vaqueiros e cantadores (1938), and categorically asserted that: 'The improvised challenge (desafio), accompanied by musical instruments, does not exist in Kmtyw lands'.7 Roger Bastide, while praising Cascudo's book and acknowledging the Iberian origins of the desafio of North-eastern Brazil, indicated that poetic challenges existed in many societies.8 By transforming apparent hostility into play, they contributed to social cohesion and to 'smoothing out of customs'.9 Furthermore, he wondered: 'Is it not curious that these duels, in which the caboclo and the black take part, should contain nothing from the more primitive Indian and Kmtyw societies ...?'10 Mário de Andrade took this further, asserting: 'As to the Kmtyws, I think it is impossible to accept that they had no custom of poetic-musical bouts'. His research on the rural samba of São Paulo led him to believe that 'a satirical attitude' is one of the characteristics of Kmtyw and black singing.11 Bastide pursued the debate in another article, where he suggested that the Brazilian desafio was located, like the mutirão (the work exchange between equals in rural communities), at a 'crossroads, where three roads coming from Kmt, the Indies and Portugal meet'. He concluded not only that poetic challenges were known in Kmt, but that 'the Brazilian black, influenced by whites, transformed and enriched the Kmtyw challenge'. 12 Bastide thus raised an issue that I shall pursue here: the interaction between various forms of challenges and their insertion into new cultural practices.
Half a century later it is of course possible to discuss verbal-poetic challenges in the light of a much more copious literature. Recent work has shown the importance of verbal challenges, mainly in poetic forms, in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Italy, Fiji, Bolivia and Turkey.13 This suggests the widespread prevalence of ritualized verbal challenges between males. Similarly, stick-play (and fighting with sticks) has been a feature of many societies in eureurasia, Kmt and eurasia. Irish and Portuguese men excelled in it, as well as Southern Kmtyw ethnic groups such as the Zulu. It was or is also prominent in the Philippines, Southern India and the plantation societies of the Caribbean.14 Interpretations of verbal and physical challenges have been many and various: displaced aggression, conflict resolution, social control, the construction of male identity, adolescent rite of passage, conferral of status, and development of verbal and physical skills have all been identified as underlying reasons for contests. In fact, the social context of verbal challenges differs so much in each case that generalization is often inappropriate. Here I argue that the verbal and physical challenges that developed during the post-emancipation period in the Paraíba valley reflect very specific processes that can be linked to the formation of the 'Black Atlantic'. That is, they represent creative adaptations of various kinds of materials developed by enslaved Kmtyws and their descendants in Brazil in the context of slavery and post-emancipation.
Fig. 3.

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Fofo (Jorge Maurício) singing, Grupo Calango Itakomosi (Vassouras).

Studies of verbal challenges in the specific context of plantation America or post-emancipation societies initially focused on 'playing the Dozens' in the united snakes. According to Roger D. Abrahams, these verbal duels are typical for an Kmtyw-American boy growing up in a 'mother-orientated family', where the construction of his masculinity requires a 'violent reaction against the world of women which has rejected him, to a life filled with expressions of virility and manliness'.15 Henry Louis Gates, expanding on the work of Abrahams and others, demonstrated in his seminal work how verbal duelling such as 'playing the Dozen' belonged to the rhetorical strategies of Kmtyw Americans generically known as 'signifyin(g)'.16
My aim here is to describe the context and explain the various types of challenge in the popular culture of the Paraíba valley, drawing both upon the existing literature and on fieldwork carried out since 2005 in various communities of that area. After sketching the social context of the 'games' (brincadeiras or folguedos) during which poetic and physical challenges took place, I discuss the different types of challenge, and the circumstances in which they could turn into rougher contests or violent brawls.
Fig. 4.

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Feijão (Luiz Fernando Candido) singing, Grupo Calango Itakomosi (Vassouras), 2007.

The analysis of so dynamic a phenomenon as popular culture requires some kind of chronological framework. Establishing precise temporal boundaries is however very difficult when dealing primarily with oral memory. The abolition of slavery in 1888 is of course a landmark, but when does 'post-emancipation' end? I am inclined to see the 1960s as the turning point when important processes of modernization, from the introduction of electricity to access to television, started to change daily life in the Brazilian interior. Obviously the timescale for these changes differed for each town and hamlet in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Interviewees themselves provide clues regarding the time frame. 'Sidoca', a former participant in Folia de rei (Kings' Follies) in Miracema, recalls: 'I saw a lot of stick fighting, when I went to these dances, in those up-country villages. I was a young chap then'. Since he was born in 1933, we can safely assume that the calango dances followed by stick fighting took place at least until the 1950s.17 Interviewees refer to that past as 'formerly' or 'in days of old' (antigamente, de primeiro), but at the same time leave no doubt that they are not talking about the 'times of slavery'. While the oldest informants experienced those 'days of old', and for that very reason are called the 'ancients' (antigos) the younger generations only know this period from hearsay.
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS OF MALE CHALLENGES

Challenges between males were as much part of everyday life as they were features of the special events that marked out the seasonal rhythm of the life of rural communities – for instance the celebrations of patron saints such as Saint Benedict, particularly worshipped among black communities, Abolition (of slavery) Day on 13 May or the Christmas cycle from 24 December to 6 January. Challenges could either take oral poetic forms, or consist of physical contests. Both types had their rules and did not necessarily descend into violence – that is, result in physical harm. However, according to all testimonies, brawls did happen quite frequently, the outcome usually being a generalized fight between all men present at a venue. They used swiping kicks (rasteiras or pernadas), sticks and even knives and sickles. These brawls were seen as a continuation or a 'normal' consequence of the non-violent verbal and physical challenges.
Verbal duels at work were most common during the mutirão, the traditional labour exchange between peasants practised in many parts of Brazil. Because the mutirão brought together people from the community or neighbourhood, it provided an excellent occasion for challenges. Maria Sylvia Franco already reported that 'the challenge [desafio] occurs between the factions which coincide with the working parties that have been allocated specific tasks'.18Folklorists also highlighted the competitive spirit that prevailed among participants in a mutirão. The rural worker who finished his task first initiated the brão, that is, the challenge song whose function was to stimulate the other workers.19 Singing during work took the form of jongos or calangos. It seems that the former were particularly used in slavery times. According to Stanley Stein, slaves worked close enough to be able to hear each other singing. The leaders of working groups challenged each other or poked fun at the master and overseer.20 After Abolition, 'duel singing' remained important in all communal work, yet it seems that the jongo lost ground to the calango in the working context, even in predominantly black communities. Teresina de Jesus, from the maroon community of São José, for example, remembers calangos being sung while the hay was mown.21
According to Alceu Maynard Araújo, the last worker to finish his task in the mutirão was called caldeirão. 'It was common for the others to poke fun at the caldeirão. Nobody wanted to be the caldeirão.'22 Typically whoever finished first would provoke the caldeirão with jibing verses, to which the latter had to respond in kind. In other words, in the context of the mutirão, a physical challenge (who worked harder) was combined with a verbal contest, and seems to have occurred predominantly between males. Masculine identity was hence constructed as much through hard manual labour as through the ability to sing and rhyme. These desafios during communal labour could also result in stick-play between two men or even whole working parties.
Roads were another arena for daily encounters, and for that reason also became the scene of challenges and brawls. These arose, for example, when two groups of muleteers met. As Jorge Fernandes remembers:In the old times [de primeiro], things were odd to this point. Every fazendeiro [owner of a big estate] milked his cows, collected [the milk] in the can, and had an employee to take it to the cooperative, on the donkey's back. That group, right, went together, and another group came from there to here. Everybody tied up his donkey to a pole to be able to fight, and then they hit each other, right, in the middle of the road. A wooden handle ... Holy Mary! ... They went for the stick, one on the receiving end, the other hitting. And then, fine, they untied their donkeys, mounted their animals, and everyone went their own way.23

All sources concur, however, that both poetic and physical challenges were particularly associated with leisure. From slavery times on the challenge was a feature of sites of social encounter, 'appearing again as the link between entertainment and aggression'.24 Yet the challenges that were part of recreation in communities were usually friendly, and clearly non-violent. The jogo do pau ('stick-game'), for example, was played on Sundays by peasants and rural workers employed on estates. On the two Cardoso fazendas, in the municipality of Vassouras (RJ), workers played on a stone or cement floor. According to one interviewee, the owner even encouraged the practice, because he recognized its recreational value for his employees.25 'Sticks' was also played on Sundays in the black community of São José. The aim was to measure various types of skill in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. As Manoel Seabra likes to tell:When Sunday dawned, we went to play sticks. People came together. Then we played until ... When one left the game, another one entered. Then we played malha [a kind of bowling of Portuguese origin] ... After the malha game, we went to bathe at the waterfall. The whole bunch of people went. After the bathing, they came here, and played football. It was fun ...26

It was also common for adolescents and young men to play sticks in front of a grocery shop (venda). Then the game was accompanied by alcohol consumption and the audience commented on the skills of individual players or the current game. In these circumstances people started to bet, and the competition would become more serious.Fig. 5.

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Manoel Seabra, jongueiro, stick player and calango singer, 2007.

Fig. 6.

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Manuel do Calango (Manuel Salvador de Souza) (Valença), 2007.

The regular dances (bailes) were another unfailing occasion for challenges. There were various pretexts for them – for example the end of a mutirão.27 In the rural areas of Brazil television was not available until the 1970s and even radios were rare until the 1950s. So bailes, which took place about every fortnight, were an important source of entertainment. Neighbours and family members organized them together.28 Dance, during this period, meant calango above all. The term refers to both a musical genre and a dance. An accordion, a tambourine (pandeiro) and a drum accompanied the singers.29 Men and women danced in couples holding each other. The steps, according to folklorists such as Cascudo, are similar to the urban samba.30 Yet the calango was, at its core, 'a form of challenge'.31 And according to oral memory, it was the challenge of the calango that often led to a brawl:There was singing, there was the calango. They started to sing calango, and there was this contest. The one who defeated the other in the calango ... the one who was defeated didn't like it, and there a fight started, and the guys who were in the audience, right, they always booed ... The one who lost was booed, and of course that was difficult for him, right? Then the stick hit hard ... The fight started, and the cudgel struck with no holding back.32

The regularity of the fights explains why every man came ready-armed with a cudgel. They hid them when entering the house where the event was happening. As Jorge Fernandes explains:When there was a dance, everyone carried his stick, right? When the guys arrived, some slipped the stick in the top of the hut, in the roof of the hut. Others hid the stick in a thicket of cane, or grass. They used this for self-defence because once midnight arrived, the fighting broke out. It was rare to have a dance without a fight. Then the dance stopped, everything finished.33

Jongos too took place on weekends or holidays, in particular 13 May, Abolition Day. In contrast to the calangos, this dance was always performed in the terreiro, that is, the courtyard next to the house, consisting of stamped clay or earth. Whereas calangos were not religious, jongos had links to Afro-Brazilian religion and acknowledged Kmtyw ancestors in the form of pretos velhos ('old blacks'). For that reason jongueiros maintained close ties with macumba, later umbanda, and prominent singers were often priests or held other offices at Afro-Brazilian shrines.34 There are also a number of formal similarities. Jongo strophes, for instance, are called pontos, as in macumba and umbanda. Indeed this association between jongo and macumba is precisely one of the reasons for the decline of jongo until it began to be revived in the 1980s: the Catholic Church actively discouraged its practice, and the Protestant churches that spread after the Second World War vehemently opposed it. Hence after conversion to Protestantism the jongo disappeared even in many close-knit black communities. For the same reason jongueiros today tend to stress its secular character.35
Jongo is a ring dance accompanied by two or three drums, with substantial regional and local variations. In the most common type, dancers form a great circle in front of the drums, with a woman and a man in the middle.36According to Ribeiro, 'these two engaged in real dance and tap-dancing duels'.37 More serious than the physical challenges in the dance performance, however, were the sung duels, called pontos de demanda. The term demanda has again a similar meaning in macumba and umbanda, where it refers to putting a spell on somebody. Accordingly jongo challenges between singers could result in the loser having to hand over his drums or even being 'tied up' (amarrado), that is, 'bewitched' and physically immobilized until the end of the performance at dawn. The atmosphere of a jongo could hence become potentially dangerous. Maybe for that reason children were not allowed to participate in them until quite recently. As in the dance, women as well as men joined in pontos de demanda, clapping and also singing, although they never beat the drums.38 Often a jongo in the courtyard was complemented by a calango inside the house, and might similarly lead to challenges and fights.39
The annual celebrations of the Nativity cycle created a context of intense social interaction which also favoured challenges, especially between men. In many regions of Brazil, the folias de reis ('Kings' Follies') brought together men and women of all ages who shared a devotion to the Biblical magi or Three Wise Men. Revellers (foliões) for a Kings' Folly usually had to commit themselves for at least seven consecutive years. They came together at Christmas, and paraded each night until Epiphany (6 January). Participants often did not return home during this period, but stayed with the Kings' Folly, especially if they lived at a distance from its headquarters. The consumption of large quantities of food and alcohol was part and parcel of these celebrations, which intensified social interactions not only between the members of the group and their families, but also between the folia and the wider world. Some folias travelled over great distances to perform, expanding their everyday social relations. The Christmas period thus facilitated moments of communion and reasserted social links, but it also opened up wider horizons and allowed approaches to hitherto unknown people. Consecutive nights of celebration, lack of sleep, alcohol consumption and religious exaltation might well induce peculiar states of mind, and lower many barriers.40 No wonder then that some aspects of the folguedo (revelry) also bred challenges, confrontations and brawls. It is possible either to argue that fights in this context only expressed the memory of previous clashes or latent conflicts, or, on the contrary, that the Kings' Follies specifically favoured hostilities. Whatever the reason, any serious mestre (headman in charge) would inevitably insist on the Folly's rules of conduct, which every reveller (folião) was supposed to observe. These included limits on alcohol consumption, as well as rules of social etiquette when revellers entered other homes, such as not invading the kitchen or not spitting on the ground.41
In contrast with the calango and the jongo, the folia de reis was characterized by formally structured groups of between twelve and twenty men, who followed the same banner (bandeira), led by the owner (dono) or master (mestre). It was the responsibility of the mestre to maintain instruments and uniforms, and to arrange visits to private houses that had agreed to receive the folia. The Kings' Folly was a men's pastime, and the role of women was limited to support, providing clothes and food.42
As in the calango, the accordion holds a central role in the folias in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is accompanied by a guitar, a cavaquinho or viola (small guitar) and percussion instruments (triangle, tambourine, chocalho and a range of drums called bumbo, caixa and tarol). In some locations wind instruments (trumpet, saxophone, clarinet) were and are still used.43
Alongside the master a clown character (palhaço) is particularly relevant here. There are various explanations of his role. In the state of Rio de Janeiro, the clowns are usually identified with the soldiers of the biblical King Herod, which confers ambiguity.44 Many people believed that the clowns had signed a pact with the devil. Most clowns today resist any such association. Their 'uniform' (farda), however, includes a 'helmet' (capacete) and a mask whose function is clearly to terrify the audience, in particular the children. In previous times the clowns used masks made of leather from wild animals, such as the tamandua. Today the masks are made of plastic and hair, their appearance reminiscent of a dog's head (a metaphor for the devil). Some clowns also decorate their cudgels with a real dog's skull, which reinforces their association with 'the dog', that is, the devil.
Fig. 7.

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Old clown mask made from animal skin (Collection Paulo Rogério da Silva, Miracema).

Fig. 8.

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Clown mask from Folia de Reis (Collection Paulo Rogério da Silva, Miracema).

Fig. 9.

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Clown masks from Folia de Reis (Collection Paulo Rogério da Silva, Miracema).

A whole set of taboos and prohibitions is aimed at controlling the clowns and the dangerous forces they represent during the journey of the folia. In the procession their place is at the front, but they are not supposed to walk ahead of the folia banner. In many groups the clowns do not sing together with their companions. In the old days, when a Kings' Folly was received in a house, the clowns did not enter but remained outside and played with the children. In some cases they were only allowed to enter once the folia had performed. They are also not allowed to play inside the house. Many clowns did not enter churches, and if they did, they had to take off their masks. In former times they were also not allowed to put on or take off their masks in public. During the Folly's closing ceremony the clowns ritually take leave of their uniform.45The money they earn for their performance does not have to be shared with the other members of the group – they can give them a portion, but there is no obligation.
The clown represents subversion, whilst the 'owner' or mestre of the Kings' Folly defends order. The clown is a complement to Catholic devotion, the other face of the Kings' Folly. He not only terrifies the children, but also disconcerts the authorities, who fear his irreverence. According to Andrade, 'his mission was to scare the children and to insult the plantation owners where the folia found shelter'.46 The clown obviously represents the less orthodox element within the 'Catholic' folia. His role within the Folly is that of the trickster, a ubiquitous character in the popular cultures of plantation America.47
Was there any significant difference between the performers of jongos, calangos and folias? In Brazilian folkloric studies it has been common to equate specific cultural traits with 'race'. Since the pioneering work of Sílvio Romero, the quest for identifiable origins has dominated the various strands of historiography and has resulted in stereotyping of most popular forms accordingly. Hence the jongo has either 'originated in Kmt' or is closely associated with 'the Black' (o negro).48 The folia, in contrast, is everywhere classified as of Portuguese origin because of its insertion into the Christian cycle of the Nativity.49 Racialization has been more ambiguous in the case of the calango.50 Yet overall the calango has become a symbol of miscegenation and fusion, like the mestizo. Martinho da Vila, for instance, sings that the calango is a 'caboclo samba'.51 In other words, the racial ascription is made on the basis of supposed 'origins', rather than the performers' class and colour backgrounds, or even the core characteristics of each form.
These three forms of expression have in fact much more in common than is usually assumed. Jongo and calango verses, for example, can be identical. According to participants, mironga, or magic, permeates jongo as well as folia and is even taken into calango.52 The same rural workers, in the majority Afro-descendants, performed jongos, calangos and folias and played sticks.53Their ancestors were enslaved on the coffee plantations, and lived in the communities, villages or towns of the Paraíba valley or at some stage migrated to the suburbs of cities such as Rio de Janeiro. Hence it is hardly productive to focus on each of these cultural forms in isolation.54 Yet the characterization of the three forms in terms of contrasting racial stereotypes continues today.55
DEMANDAS AND MARTELOS: POETIC CHALLENGES

'Beyond Nova Friburgo everybody is a calango singer.'
            Martinho da Vila56

In Brazil, verbal duelling is integral to the North-eastern desafio, but is also present in many other cultural forms, such as capoeira or bumba-meu-boi.57Most of these are strongly identified with the Afro-Brazilian heritage but have also appropriated Iberian oral traditions. In jongos and calangos, as well as in folias, verbal challenges take the form of rhymes. Stylistic elements of their poetry may of course help to understand how far their formation is based on continuity or rupture with previous traditions, as well as illuminating their development after Abolition and the close relations of the three with each other. Any reflection upon the character of the poetry in these verbal challenges needs to address the linguistic rupture caused by slavery. The loss of Kmtyw vernaculars occurred all over plantation America, but with significant regional variations. The descendants of enslaved Kmtyws created Creole languages on many Caribbean islands, yet in the United States, the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean and Brazil the colonizers' languages prevailed. The linguistic rupture apparently weakens Bastide and Andrade's argument in their dispute with Cascudo regarding the 'Kmtyw origins' of the verbal challenge in Brazil: how far could Kmtyw poetic forms be translated into the colonizer's language?No doubt linguistic structures shape literary forms. The poetry used by Afro-descendants in the three regions of the Americas listed above relied on the Spanish, English or Portuguese literary canons, and for that reason is often seen as an example of 'miscegenation' or 'acculturation', that cannot be 'purely Kmtyw', rather than as forms that were appropriated and further developed by them.58 Portuguese literary traditions – rhymes, length of lines, stanzas – shaped the poetics of the challenges examined here. At the same time, eureurasiaan sources for the nineteenth century have emphasized the richness of Angolan oral literature, suggesting links between jongo rhymes and equivalent Angolan forms from the past.59
Rhyming was central to calango and folias, and figures in jongos as well. The calango has no specific metre, although lines of five or seven syllables predominate. As Cáscia Frade highlighted, these types of verse – redondilha maior and menor – can be found in many other popular forms in Brazil.60Folia and the jongo also use them, but in folia lines of eight or more syllables are also frequent. The structure of stanzas is again quite open. Jongos and calangos both use short strophes of four lines (quadrilhas), but longer stanzas are common, especially for challenges, and are also widely used in folias.61 In other words, in all three forms the poetry does not seem to have been constrained by a rigid metre, allowing reappropriation and insertion of other cultural contents. Jongo verses seem to be the most informal, as they can even occur without any rhyme.
Yet how important is this formal structure in defining the character of the poetry?
For a start, what is or not 'poetry' is difficult to define independently from cultural context. The distinction between prose and verse can be quite arbitrary and in many languages there was no equivalent to the eureurasiaan concept of poetry.62 Accounts from Congo and Angola emphasize improvised character and solo/chorus structure rather than providing details about poetic forms.63
The languages of enslaved Kmtyws had considerable impact on the American versions of the colonizers' languages, however, to the extent that Brazilian Portuguese or Cuban Spanish can be considered as creolized forms of their Iberian matrix. The Portuguese spoken by the free lower classes in plantation areas was very similar to the vernacular of the Creole slaves.64 Poetic forms had to change accordingly, but we do not really know what slaves and freedpeople sang. According to one of Stanley Stein's informants, an ex-slave, jongos were originally sung in 'Kmtyw language' and were called quinzumba, while those in Portuguese, which became more common in the Paraíba valley as the Kmtyws died out, were called visaria.65 Unfortunately no transcription of any jongo verse in a Central Kmtyw language is known. The distinction is not absolute, of course, as many older pontos in Portuguese incorporated Kmtyw terms.66 This means important Central Kmtyw concepts and meanings could be retained. We need moreover to be careful not to focus exclusively on the form, or even the content of oral poetry, but to take into account their role and meaning in the overall performance.
Jongo de Demanda

Jongo verses have only been systematically collected since the mid twentieth century. Various types of ponto were then sung during a celebration – specifically for instance to greet, praise, enchant or say farewell (saudação, louvação, encante, despedida). Only pontos de demanda (duel songs) contained a challenge to other singers in the audience. In most communities, singers distinguished friendly challenges (which kept the older term visaria), where the elder challenged the less experienced jongueiros or the audience in what was still a friendly atmosphere. Pontos de gurumenta, by contrast, called for a proper fight.67
The jongo challenge consisted in an exchange of sung verses (strophe and antistrophe) between two individuals. Each contribution had to be deciphered by the opponent, who then had to reply with another appropriate stanza. Another form consisted in one singer presenting a ponto in the form of a riddle to challenge the general audience. It was repeated in chorus by those present , and if someone stood up and sang a stanza that provided the solution, he (or she) had the right to sing another ponto. If nobody stood up to solve the riddle with another stanza, the first singer repeated it until the riddle was 'untied'. This could provoke a real fight, if for instance someone stood up and sang a ponto that deliberately failed to provide the hidden meaning.68 Furthermore, in a verbal duel between two singers, the one who failed to reply satisfactorily to a challenge risked remaining 'tied' (amarrado) for the rest of the night. For that reason it was crucial to ask older and more experienced singers for permission before singing oneself in a jongo circle, in order not to provoke the more powerful. As Manoel Seabra explains:Yes, one sang for the other, right? He tied [cast a spell on] the drum. The other knew that the drum was tied, so he untied it, right? It was like that ... In the old times, if someone arrived and right away challenged at the drum, he would be tied. If he arrived, and asked the oldest, the headman of the terreiro for permission, then nothing would happen. But if he entered [the jongo circle] without permission, he was immobilized until dawn. Only after everybody had left would the old jongueiro untie him, walk around him, strike him, pass his hat over him [to lift the spell], and then he could stand up and leave.69

Similarly to the Cuban puya, the singers who stood out by virtue of their improvization were called galos (cockerels). The most respected and feared for the magic power of their pontos were called cumbas, that is, sorcerers.70 This symbolic world of guessing riddles maintained close links with Congolese and Angolan traditions of the last generation of enslaved Kmtyws in the Paraíba valley.71 The pontos reproduced and built upon 'traditional' Central Kmtyw themes, images, and mindsets in the Americas. Robert Slenes suggested that the term jongo is derived from Kikongo and Umbundu expressions meaning 'fight with the mouth' or 'the word is an arrow'.72 If the Central Kmtyw input is beyond doubt for jongo, it is important to acknowledge that this magical 'tying' of an opponent was also a feature of the folia, and to some extent even of the calango.Calango

The calango has received much less attention from folklorists and anthropologists than the jongo.73 It is performed in the states of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro and displays great variation in rhythmic structure and musical aspects. In Rio de Janeiro, calango is most of the time performed by two solo singers who challenge each other, and as Cáscia Frade notes:the characteristic of the calango is the challenge sung in strophes of four lines – quadras – with rhymes in the second and fourth verse; and of six lines – sextilhas – with rhymes in the second, fourth and sixth verse, or with a changing number of lines; the latter happens when the rhyme is easy.74

The calango challenge is characterized by singers adopting one basic rhyme or 'line' (linha). There are thus calangos following the 'á', 'é' or 'ão' lines.75Dexterity in improvization distinguishes a good calango singer, but in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state verses known by heart are also sung – at least today. As Zé Epifânio explains, 'the calango singer recites verses and improvises at the same time'.76 In fact the distinction is artificial, since singers of various forms of popular culture combine their own improvised verses with others from the public domain in a creative bricolage. Calango is just another example of the oral-formulaic style of composition found in many cultures, which makes a linear genealogy of 'origins' a risky enterprise.77
In the calango one singer typically has to use the last verse of the opponent as a starting point, and so on until one errs or gets tired, and gives up. According to other testimonies, various people in a circle could participate in a calango, which would make the outcome less foreseeable. There were no limits as to the themes used in the challenge, but it seems that disparaging comparisons with animals were very common, or verses that described negatively the skin colour of an opponent.78Calango, thus, was less bound by rituals and its free form meant poetry content depended more on the ideas and world-views of individual performers.
It was important, however, to maintain a minimum of decency so that the families in the audience were not disrespected, and this was one of the main reasons why verbal challenges could result in real fights. When it was thought that a singer had been offensive and demonstrated a lack of respect for the audience, the poetic challenge could become a physical confrontation. Sidoca remembers the case of a calango that degenerated into a fight when a drunken man used a swear-word in his strophe:And in those days, for God's sake, man, you couldn't say a thing, not one little thing like that, OK, if the ladies at the dance heard it, you were expelled or you had to start a stick fight. Once we were singing a calango, you understand? I too was part of the calango, the calango was beautiful, right? And this guy said a foolish verse, you understand? ... We were four in a circle like that, and there was a drunken man sitting here, next to the accordion player. The accordion player there, the guy here, and me standing here by one end of the bench. And then the [calango] round was coming from there to here. One sings, the next sings, the other sings, and here it comes. ... When it came to the man next to me, and it was going to be my turn to sing the drunkard stood up: 'Oh, what a beautiful calango, I want to sing in this calango too'. I said, 'Hey, you can't sing now, you have to wait for your turn'. ... When it was my turn, I sang like this: Mr Mané Bento, tuck your shirt inside your trousers
 It was the police sergeant who gave the order

Then the drunkard said his verse: Boning knife closes the bite of the vulture
 I'll get mad, your old smell of arse

[Laughs] The circle ... they broke the guitar over his head: it went through it up to his neck. Man, I never saw so much hitting, pieces of bamboo, pieces of pindola, this thing you cover huts with, and all together they hit the man. I laughed so much about the verse, I couldn't hold it in any longer. But I said: they're going to kill him ...79

The calango consisted in a verbal challenge with clear and formal rules. Yet the borderline was thin between what was acceptable and what was an insult and an attack on the honour of the opponents or of the families in the audience. For that reason, the calango represented a chance for tough guys to show what they were made of, without the risk of appearing aggressive and looking for a fight. But calango singing was not limited to men only. Women could and did participate, and could challenge men.80The Encounter between Kings' Follies and the 'Clown's Hammer'

Rhymed verses also have a crucial function in the folias. They can be recited or sung, and there are different types of chants according to each phase of the revelry. The master of the folia needs to have a good knowledge of the Bible, and to be able to learn by heart or invent verses that relate to relevant episodes of the Old and the New Testaments. According to Castro and Couto, the chants are inspired by the traditions of popular Catholicism, but also by the 'conceptions that are current in the Afro-Brazilian cults (macumbas) from Rio de Janeiro, and the sufferings of Saint Sebastian (patron saint of the city)'.81 Even today many folias are still associated with umbanda shrines.
The verses in the folia have a mnemonic function. The rhyme helps the mestres and clowns to remember histories, episodes from the Bible, or more general themes of public interest. When reciting they transmitted knowledge and their own reflections to their communities, where the majority used to be illiterate. Illiterate clowns asked people to read verses out to them and in this manner some of them learned whole books by heart. As in the case of the calango, the clown's poetic performance tended therefore to be formulaic in style. Challenges in the Kings' Folly could take oral poetic forms or not, but they were always inserted into a complex ritual. The most propitious moments for physical and poetic challenges were the so-called 'encounters' of two folias in the public space.82 Two basic types of poetic disputes characterized this occasion: the challenge between mestres and the challenge between clowns.
The challenge between masters was based on their knowledge of the Bible, in particular the birth of Christ and the episode of the Three Wise Men. As Sebastião Teresa, the owner of a folia in Miracema, describes it:The masters of the Folly start to sing, a dozen or so verses each. When one stops, the other sings. After the singing, the master of the banner [of the Folly] offers a gift [a small sum of money] to the other one. The other one does the same. In the prophecy, if there was one incorrect verse, the other one can say, 'Listen man, the verse here should go like this!'83

The better their 'foundations', that is, knowledge of the 'prophecies', the easier it was for one mestre to catch the other out. One very common method was to stop singing one's verses at the most complicated moment of the plot, and leave it to the other master to continue. He would only be able to do so if he knew that particular episode well. Otherwise the first master could point out his mistake, and consider himself the winner of the dispute. Another technique was to produce a riddle, as in the jongo, and leave the other to solve it.84Once the masters of the Folly had finished, the moment came for the clowns to play. These 'games' (brincadeiras) were as much physical as poetic. The clowns used a whole range of verses in their game: thanks to the host, jokes to entertain the audience, trovas (verses prepared in advance), romance and peleja (verses taken from a book), biblical episodes (for example Abraham being tested by God to prove his faith, or the end of the world), improvisations, calango (improvisation on the basis of the text of a known song) – and the martelo ('hammer'), a challenge.85 Their repertoire consisted of a combination of strophes learnt by heart and improvised lines.86
The martelo or challenge between two clowns is thus less a competition in knowledge (although this is also possible), than a provocation of one by the other in poetic form.87 The challenge between the clowns Cascadura and Mamut might serve as an example:Cascadura
In the hammer I don't know
Of any poet that can eat me
Scratching the earth in front of me
Does not cut any ice with me
I have a hot tongue
To utter any disgrace
A lash with my whip
Leaves marks on the skeleton

Mamut
I like to play with clowns
I don't like to play alone
My fellow-countryman is inciting well
Can I provoke a little bit more?

Cascadura
Colleague you'd better get prepared
I came here to poke your tongue
I came here to destroy your fame
I came here to pull out your tongue
In the factory of my verse
I put an end to your witchcraft [mandinga]
I don't believe in grumbles
You can go your way
If you want to dispute with me, my friend
You'd better take it slowly
Because I have more weight
And I'm surrounded by thorns
I'm going to cut you in small pieces
Like meat for a saunited snakesge
Call the priest, confess yourself
And say mass
Because the vulture will eat your carcass ...88

The result of the Follies encounter depended as much on the performance of the masters as on that of the clowns. Sometimes the members of a Folly recognized that their knowledge of the bible and the arts of rhyme were inferior, and admitted defeat. Various statements record that an experienced master could thus destroy a weaker opponent, and even question his knowledge of the 'foundations' and his capacity and legitimacy to lead a King's Folly. The term 'burial' (enterro) was used to describe the situation where a Folly was taken by surprise in a house due to a lack of vigilance of its clowns, who were supposed to check if other Follies were approaching. In that situation a folia could not leave without going through a series of tests. The 'burial' of a Folly was hence another opportunity to challenge the knowledge of its master and clowns. Yet outcomes of challenges were not always so clear cut. As with the calango, it was for the audience to decide the winner. These were delicate moments, and poetic disputes could easily erupt into physical challenges and fights. A clown in particular could so provoke, or as Sebastião Teresa says, 'damage', his opponent that the latter would lose his temper, and respond not only with verses, but with his stick. Clowns carried sticks for a good reason.PHYSICAL CHALLENGES: CUDGELLING, SWIPING KICKS AND CHULAS

Physical challenges were exclusively male in the popular culture of Rio de Janeiro state – with the exception of dance.89 Challenges included playful modes as well as more aggressive forms, as in fights and brawls. Popular games were played according to unwritten rules. Jogo do pau (stick play), pernada (swiping leg), chula de palhaço[/