Berimbau de barriga: Musical ethnobotany of the Afro-Brazilian diaspora

Abstract

Enslaved Africans and their descendants were active agents of biocultural innovation and change in the Americas. In this chapter, we examine the cultural and ethnobotanical significance of Brazil's berimbau de barriga, a one-stringed musical bow of West African origin. Methods include archival research and semistructured interviews with berimbau master craftsmen. Appearing first in early nineteenth-century illustrations by European travelers, the contemporary berimbau was originally employed by African-descended street touts to attract customers. Over time, it gained popularity as the iconic musical instrument of the Afro-Brazilian martial art-dance of capoeira. Today, as capoeira increasingly symbolizes Brazil's African cultural heritage, artisans are producing greater numbers of berimbaus to meet the demands of tourists and distant capoeira practitioners. Craftsmen in the past took great care in fashioning berimbaus, but they now increasingly mass produce the instrument to satisfy the burgeoning commercial market. The berimbau is constructed almost entirely of plant products. The fundamental components include the verga (wooden staff), the cabaça (bottle gourd), the arame (wire), and is often accompanied with the caxixi (small fiber rattle). There is no direct evidence of what species were used to build antecedent musical bows in Africa prior to arrival in Brazil. The verga is currently fashioned most often from biriba (Eschweilera ovata), a native tree of the highly endangered Atlantic coastal rainforests. Extraction of biriba to meet the increasing demand for commercial berimbau is leading to conflict between those concerned with the region's cultural patrimony and those who seek to protect the region's unique biological heritage.