Desfile de Llamadas

The drum calls

Candombe is the drum music and dance of Montevideo’s people of African descent, whose ancestors were brought to the Río de la Plata as slaves. According to one account, the name llamadas, “calls”, goes back to the calls that enslaved Afro-Uruguayans made with their drums when they wanted to gather in the streets on their one day off. Another explains that in the 19th century the troupes, or comparsas, walked to their performances, and a drummer would go from house to house calling his companions with his drum.

Black comparsas joined the Montevideo carnival parades in 1865, the year the first one, Raza Africana, appeared. Until 1956 the calls set out from the conventillos, the tenement houses where almost all Black families in Uruguay lived, above all Mediomundo in Barrio Sur and Ansina in Palermo, which were closed and demolished in the 1970s. In 1956 the city government held the first official Desfile de Llamadas as part of the carnival. Calls still go out in the neighbourhoods on other days, and every one begins the same way: around a fire, where the drummers tune the skins of their drums. UNESCO, which inscribed candombe on its heritage list in 2009, describes it as an expression of resistance and a memory of the community that draws former residents back to its historic heart.

A comparsa passes

At the front comes the standard bearer, then the flags, then masked young people carrying moons, stars and half-moons that light the troupe’s way through the night — symbols said to recall Islam, the religion of most enslaved Africans before they were brought to the Río de la Plata. The dancers follow, then the gramillero, the oldest man in the troupe, who represents the healer who cured with herbs, in a cotton beard, top hat, frock coat and glasses, with a cane and a doctor’s bag. Beside him walks the mama vieja, modelled on the housekeepers of colonial Montevideo, with a parasol, a fan and a basket. The escobero sweeps negative energy from the street with his broom, amulets of mirrors, beads and bells hanging from his waist. Just ahead of the drums dance the vedettes, part of the parade since 1948.

At the back is the cuerda de tambores, the drum line and pulse of the parade. Each comparsa must bring at least thirty-six drummers — twelve each of the three candombe drums, chico, repique and piano — and may have no more than 150 members in all. The drummers wear sandals like those of the slaves, black stockings crossed with white ribbons that recall the lash, and a bright jacket modelled on those of Spanish soldiers, and they march with a short, rocking step inspired by those who walked in shackles. In the neighbourhood calls, the beat of the piano, the largest drum, is different in each district, so that the call and response of candombe both unites the neighbourhoods and marks their identities.