The Appearance of Frevo and the Practice of Passo

Abstract

Frevo is a popular spectacle of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Concerning the word “frevo”, three meanings were ascertained : 1) dance which is witnessed in the streets and dance parties during a carnival (Frevo as a street dance with characteristic steps is especially called Passo), 2) music which is characterized by its syncopated, violent and frenzied rhythm and 3) enthusiastic crowd which parades through the streets during a carnival. With these three meanings in mind, in this study the popular spectacle was examined from two points of view : 1) historical examination about the circumstances of Frevo's appearance in the streets of Recife's carnival and 2) analysis of Passo's steps (which are practiced at the pres-ent day) and performances. The first topic was examined by means of written materials which were collected in Recife by the author. The data utilized for examining the second topic were videotapes in which the steps and performances of Passo had been recorded by the author under the direction of Mestre Nascimento do Passo who was the leading expert on this dance. The video recording was held in Recife and Olinda in August, 2003. The eighty-six steps of Passo were classified from five points of view (which were found out by observing the videotapes closely) and the steps used by five passistas (Frevo dancers) in their solo performances were specified. The results of this study were summarized as follows. Frevo was appeared in the streets of Recife during a carnival early in the 20th century. It was considered that two social factors had had a great influence on its appearance. The first factor was a change of festival style in the street carnival (In Recife, after the 1850s, fancy dress parade gradually took the place of disorderly street carnival style called entrudo). The second was an large-scale influx of the black lower classes into the city of Recife as a consequence of the abolition of slavery in 1888. Carnival clubs which appeared successively in the 1880s and were called clubes pedestres impelled the residents of Recife to a new carnival diversion, that is, to make merry accompanying a parade of those clubs in large numbers. On that occasion, enthusiasm called Frevo appeared in the crowd. The mainspring which led the crowd to enthusiasm was music played by brass bands of carnival clubs. This music called marcha-polca (march-polka) was considered a principal source of Frevo as a music (There were two distinct points of difference between marcha-polca and Frevo : 1) presence or absence of the lyrics and 2) tempo of the playing). The roughs called capoeiras also accompanied the parade and practiced physical movements of capoeiragem (martial arts of African origin) brandishing weapons such as a stick or a knife (It was supposed that the abolition of slavery had made capoeiras' antisocial activities more lively). Concerning the appearance of Passo, a hypothesis was brought forward : to avoid attracting the attention of the police, capoeiragem was disguised as lively dance in the streets during a carnival (In the process of transition from capoeiragem to Passo, blows and kicks at other people and undisguised hand weapons disappeared). In this study, Passo was considered “a dance composed of various steps”. On the occasion of analysis of Passo, the effectiveness of this idea was considerably made sure (Mestre Nascimento do Passo had already applied the idea to his instructional method of Passo by inventing forty basic steps). As a result of motion analysis of eighty-six steps, five characteristics emerged : 1) two basic positions of Passo, that is, a standing and a squatting, 2) repetition of movement (which was found in seventy-three steps), 3) bilat-eral symmetry