2024 Samba de Enredo - Part 3 - Verse 1, Middle Chorus

A film by Bosco de Oliveira
2024 Samba Enredo - Part 3 - Verse 1 - 08.41 mins

This film is about the “Refrao do Meio” (Middle Chorus)
Bosco starts by singing this twice:
Eu sou dʼAngloa
Batuque de samba, sou bongo
Tambores do Congo, sou raca
Enfrento a desgraca a sorrir
En sou da ginga, da roda de capoeira
Sambando a vida inteira
Espero contente O meu Porvir

Bosco explains
In the middle chorus he talks about the samba itself
He says this is something that he has done differently to what was described in the theme synopsis.
Bosco says like anything in life, especially with history, art, some myths are created
And in samba there was a myth that the samba started in the house of Tia Ciata
Anybody that works with the history of art, social history, music knows that things do not start with one place
only and suddenly bumpft! Its there.
Everything starts gradually
It all relates to something before that
Which starts to modify
And it gives birth to something
Often its a variation of something that came before, then the two things run parrallel
So this story that samba stated with Tia Ciata and that Pelo Telefono was the first samba, that was composed
at Tia Ciataʼs house
Its a fallacy
Because if samba didnʼt exist before, what existed before?
Thereʼs another myth that samba started in Bahia
And then people from Bahia brought the samba to Rio
But my research shows that the samba is essentially Bantu
Which are in south-western Africa and not in west Africa as in the Bight of Benin, Nigeria etc
But further down in Angola, and the Congo area, but especially Angola
So the “Refrao do Meio” says:
Eu sou dʼAngloa
Batuque de samba, sou bongo
I sing “I am from Angola”
As Batuque de Samba is a style of music, drumming and dancing from Angola
I talk about this is the film I make about the Roots of Samba
Eu sou dʼAngloa
Batuque de samba, Sou bongo
I am Bongo
Bongo is another style that comes from that region of Angola
And its very prominent in the state of Rio and the rural areas around the city and in the states of Sao Paulo
and Minas Gerais, where the predominance of Bantu descendants live

Eu sou dʼAngloa
Batuque de samba, sou bongo
Tambores do Congo, sou raca
Enfrento a desgraca a sorrir
En sou da ginga, da roda de capoeira
Sambando a vida inteira
Espero contente O meu Porvir
Here I sing of the drums of the Congo (“Tambores do Congo”)
So many other manifestations of Bantu music like the Congado is very prominent in the areas I mentioned.
Sou raca
I am race

Normally people refer to how they are afro-Brazilian, an African descendant

Enfrento a desgraca a sorrir
I face the misfortune smiling
The samba gives me the strength to face misfortune
Because all the rhythms that came with the African slaves
Were a great part of giving the strength of facing this misfortune
And the rhythms survive and so on
En sou da ginga, da roda de capoeira
“I am from the Ginga”
The Ginga is the sway - in capoeira, you move in a certain way
And capoeira is another manifestation of music, dance from Angola
“The roda de Capoeira”
This is the capoeira ring
Sambando a vida inteira
Espero contente O meu Porvir

All my life I will be singing, dancing, composing, samba
And I wait very happy for my future
And this repeats twice
Film edited and produced by Mags, July 2024
Transcription by Mags, July 2024