Friday Sept. 9: African Drumming

It turns out that Africans more or less don’t exist in Argentina, but the impact of their music is still clear. In addition to Afrolunes and San Telmo African drumming, today I went to an African drumming class.

            Africans, mostly men, were brought to Argentina as slaves, and at some point in the 1800s, promised their freedom if they fought in wars for their masters. They went to the wars, and essentially all of them died. Those that remained in Argentina fled the racism and escaped to other countries.

Nowadays, black people are exotic. Black girls in my program report men chasing them on the street, and one black guy mentioned that a little girl, seeing him, delightedly cried out, “Un negro!” A while back, a restaurant searched far and wide for anyone with dark skin to use as their waiters – in the end they had to get workers from Uruguay, because they couldn’t find any in Argentina. People go to the restaurant as a tourist attraction, to witness real dark-skinned people. It’s an odd sort of positive racism: Argentineans are fascinated by anyone who looks African.

A love, too, exists for the African culture. At this event, three men drummed traditional songs, each one representing a god or telling a story. A remarkably fit woman danced, wearing black athletic spandex, and a few items related to each character – an animal print skirt for the hunter, a stick as prop for the child god, etc. In the story in particular, she made a dance out of acting it out. Pulling on boots became part of the movement of the dance; somehow she balanced conveying information with maintaining a fluid dance.

                                                  Dancing as the mischevious, but happy child god

We then got to wear our own metal drums (which fell uncomfortably on top of the knee, making it hard to walk) and try out the beats, pounding rhythms and spinning or moving together in a circle. A construction worker on top of the neighboring building loved it – he started clapping his hands above his head and dancing around. The drums came with drumsticks, but the style seemed to also include a lot of slapping the face of the drum with your hand.