“Saravá o Jongo/Caxambu”: os saberes negro-brasileiros no território de Barra do Piraí, Vale do Paraíba Fluminense

Abstract

The jongo/caxambu is a manifestation of Black Brazilian culture that appears in the narratives of black people from the southeast of Brazil from the 19th century onwards. With references to its emergence in the slave quarters of the coffee plantations of the Paraíba Valley, jongo/caxambu recovers the most distant memories of enslaved people from the Congo-Angola regions of the African continent. Through song, dance and gesture, it reveals the protagonism of the black population, one of whose main characteristics is reverence for their ancestors. In 2005, jongo/caxambu was considered intangible national cultural heritage and had its recognition registered in the Book of Forms of Expression of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN). In this thesis I present the strategies and political articulations of the jongueiros to keep their heritage alive inside and outside the jongo/caxambu circles. Specifically, I analyze the movements of the jongueiros of the Sementes D'África Cultural Association, which brings together two traditional communities in the municipality of Barra do Piraí, in the Paraíba Fluminense Valley: the Filhos de Angola and the Caxambu do Tio Juca. I hypothesize that it is the jongueiros who are responsible for the continuity of the cultural manifestation throughout the Southeast and that traditional jongueiras communities preserve experiences also found in quilombos, as described by Beatriz Nascimento (2021, 2022) and Muniz Sodré (2019). In jongo/caxambu circles, it is possible to experience the continuity of African knowledge which, in the context of the diaspora, was transformed into Black-Brazilian know-how.