“Domingo no Parque”


 

From the samba tambourine in the song “Tropicália” we now turn to berimbau in the song “Domingo No Parque” (“Sunday in the Park”). In this song, Gilberto Gil employed key elements with strong ties to the African diaspora – the rhythms of capoeira punctuated by both the berimbau and call-and-response sequences – to signal resistance. “Domingo No Parque” begins with an accelerated tempo and has performers from the band Os Mutanteson fast-forward. The feverish sounds of the dictatorship were broken by Gil’s introduction of the sound of the berimbau. Strumming an acoustic guitar in time with the tempo of the berimbau, Gil and Os Mutantes began a call-and-response rhythm inviting the audience to respond to the regime with sounds that had clear meaning for Brazilian ears. 

 

While the song incorporated percussion, electric guitar, and an orchestra, the song’s power of call-and-response was set to rhythms of the berimbau. Meaning was generated through repetition set to the sound of the berimbau and the rhythm of capoeira emphasized by the call-and-response echoes of the chorus – all calling to mind larger traditions of resistance through sound in Afro-Brasileiro culture. Breaking into the frantic sounds of the dictatorship (symbolized by the frenzied sounds of the orchestra) with the sounds of the berimbau and call-and-response was an unmistakable signal of opposition to the junta. Gil’s use of the berimbau called to mind the centuries of oppression of Afro-Brasileiros who brought the instrument with them from Africa. As such, Gil’s choice of the berimbau symbolized an unmistakable critique of regimes of oppression of the past (slavery) and present (the dictatorship). Further, the sounds of the berimbau were a covert call to resist the dictatorship with clear parallels with capoeira as a vehicle of resistance. Under the barbarism of state-sponsored slavery, Afro-Brasileiros masked the power of capoeira as a martial art. The majesty of capoeira as a deadly force was hidden by presenting its potentially lethal kicks and whirls as rhythmic dancing set to the berimbau. Just as capoeira was disguised as a dance under the brutal regime of slavery in Brazil, “Domingo no Parque” cannibalized the sounds of the berimbau and the rhythms of Brazilian martial arts into a critique of the dictatorship. The sonic mirroring sent an unmistakable message: a call for resistance.

 

In addition to the berimbau, Gil invoked the call-and-response pattern that is also at the heart of capoeira. In capoeira, set to the cadence of the berimbau, the vocal calls and clapping of capoeiristas take the form of a call-and-response pattern. Gil reconstituted this pattern in “Domingo No Parque” as he narrated the death of José and Juliana using lyrics that call to mind the spinning moves of the capoeiristas. This is for example clear in the alternation between José and João, as well as between Gil and Os Mutantes to signal their demise:

 

O rei da brincadeira, ê José (The king of play, oh José) 

O rei da confusão, ê João (The king of confusion, oh João)

Não tem mais construção, ê João (There is no more construction, oh João)

Não tem mais brincadeira, ê José (There is no more play, oh José)

Não tem mais confusão, ê João (There is no more confusion, oh João)

 

The call-and-response pattern was also underscored by the use of phoneme repetition set in a whirling cycle that call to mind the flying hands and feet of capoeiristas engaged in potentially mortal combat. Just as the beauty of capoeira as a dance concealed from view its destructive power, Gil voiced phonemes in a call-and-response pattern that obscured their references to the dictatorship’s lethal effects, for example, the repeated words with the phoneme “ão”: João, mão (hand), ilusão (illusion), coração (heart), construção (construction), and confusão (confusion). Tellingly, confusão began and ended the song in a call-and-response rhythm. In like manner, while brigar (fight), jogar (play), namorar (flirt) shared the same sound as verbs concluding in “ar,” their disparate meanings created dissonance through multi-layered meanings that paralleled the resistance enacted by Afro-Brasileiros through capoeira. 


“Domingo no Parque”  

(Posted on YouTube by Pedro Correia on September 17, 2006)