Frevo is a popular spectacle of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Concerning the word “frevo”, three meanings were ascertained : 1) dance which is witnessed in the streets and dance parties during a carnival (
Frevo as a street dance with characteristic steps is especially called
Passo), 2) music which is characterized by its syncopated, violent and frenzied rhythm and 3) enthusiastic crowd which parades through the streets during a carnival. With these three meanings in mind, in this study the popular spectacle was examined from two points of view : 1) historical examination about the circumstances of
Frevo's appearance in the streets of Recife's carnival and 2) analysis of
Passo's steps (which are practiced at the pres-ent day) and performances.
The first topic was examined by means of written materials which were collected in Recife by the author. The data utilized for examining the second topic were videotapes in which the steps and performances of
Passo had been recorded by the author under the direction of Mestre Nascimento do Passo who was the leading expert on this dance. The video recording was held in Recife and Olinda in August, 2003. The eighty-six steps of
Passo were classified from five points of view (which were found out by observing the videotapes closely) and the steps used by five
passistas (
Frevo dancers) in their solo performances were specified. The results of this study were summarized as follows.
Frevo was appeared in the streets of Recife during a carnival early in the 20th century. It was considered that two social factors had had a great influence on its appearance. The first factor was a change of festival style in the street carnival (In Recife, after the 1850s, fancy dress parade gradually took the place of disorderly street carnival style called
entrudo). The second was an large-scale influx of the black lower classes into the city of Recife as a consequence of the abolition of slavery in 1888. Carnival clubs which appeared successively in the 1880s and were called
clubes pedestres impelled the residents of Recife to a new carnival diversion, that is, to make merry accompanying a parade of those clubs in large numbers. On that occasion, enthusiasm called
Frevo appeared in the crowd. The mainspring which led the crowd to enthusiasm was music played by brass bands of carnival clubs. This music called
marcha-polca (march-polka) was considered a principal source of
Frevo as a music (There were two distinct points of difference between
marcha-polca and
Frevo : 1) presence or absence of the lyrics and 2) tempo of the playing). The roughs called
capoeiras also accompanied the parade and practiced physical movements of
capoeiragem (martial arts of African origin) brandishing weapons such as a stick or a knife (It was supposed that the abolition of slavery had made
capoeiras' antisocial activities more lively). Concerning the appearance of
Passo, a hypothesis was brought forward : to avoid attracting the attention of the police,
capoeiragem was disguised as lively dance in the streets during a carnival (In the process of transition from
capoeiragem to
Passo, blows and kicks at other people and undisguised hand weapons disappeared).
In this study,
Passo was considered “a dance composed of various steps”. On the occasion of analysis of
Passo, the effectiveness of this idea was considerably made sure (Mestre Nascimento do Passo had already applied the idea to his instructional method of
Passo by inventing forty basic steps). As a result of motion analysis of eighty-six steps, five characteristics emerged : 1) two basic positions of
Passo, that is, a standing and a squatting, 2) repetition of movement (which was found in seventy-three steps), 3) bilat-eral symmetry
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