Maculelê
Maculelê
Maculelê, an African Brazilian warrior dance, possibly of southern Angolan, Congolese, Mozambican, and Portuguese origin, traditionally found in Salvador, Bahia, on the feast of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. The dance is performed by ten or twenty men dressed in white cotton shirts, holding wooden sticks in each hand. The dancers, in animated synchronicity, perform a mock battle, rhythmically cross-striking their wooden bastinadoes. Similar stick dances date to at least the nineteenth century in Brazil. Exhibitions of maculelê may be seen in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. They are often danced by the same men who perform Capoeira.
See alsoMusic: Popular Music and Dancexml .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Luis Da Camara Casudo, Dicionário do folclore brasileiro, 5th ed. (1984).
Mary C. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro (1987).
Additional Bibliography
Biancardi, Emília. Raízes musicais da Bahia. The musical roots of Bahia. Salvador, Bahia: Secretaria da Cultura e Turismo, 2000.
Bernadette Dickerson