Bumba-meu-boi of Maranhão

The story of the ox

Bumba-meu-boi, roughly “dance, my ox”, is a folk play that appeared in eighteenth-century Brazil among enslaved people and rural workers, and has long been a way for poorer Brazilians to mock the powerful. Its versions vary, but at its heart is the death and resurrection of an ox. The pregnant Catirina craves an ox’s tongue; the ox is killed and its tongue given to her by the cowhand Pai Francisco. The farm’s owner demands that the culprit be caught; in Maranhão Indigenous healers, the pajés, are summoned, and when the ox comes back to life, lowing, everyone joins in a great feast. The audience cheers, weeps and mocks along the way.

In Maranhão the cast includes the amo, the farm owner who leads the group with a whistle and a maracá and sings the main songs, cowboys, Indigenous figures and the cazumbás, mischievous beings who embody the spirit of the celebration. Today’s performances rarely tell the whole story, and put more weight on the songs, toadas, and the dancing.

Accents of the ox

There are almost a hundred groups in the state, divided into styles called sotaques, “accents” — matraca, zabumba, orquestra, Baixada and costa de mão — each with its own costumes, instruments, rhythm and choreography. Matraca groups, such as Boi da Maioba, beat time with two small blocks of wood; Boi de Axixá is among the best-known orquestra groups.

The festival is also an act of devotion to the June saints, John, Peter and Martial. On St Peter’s Day groups go to St Peter’s chapel to give thanks, and on São Marçal’s Day matraca groups gather in huge numbers in the João Paulo neighbourhood of São Luís. UNESCO, which inscribed the cultural complex in 2019, describes how each year the groups reinvent the celebration — new songs and comedies, new embroidery on the ox’s hide and new costumes — and how the ox, through the cycle of birth, life and death, becomes a metaphor for human life.