UW-Milwaukee Study Abroad students were taught the traditional Tambor da Crioula dance by members of Bumba-meu-boi de Floresta, a celebration group in the Baixada rhythmic style. Like many BmB groups they also practice the heritage dance of Tambor da Crioula, now designated a heritage practice and cultural landmark. Its origins are traced back to the slaves and African-descendants of Maranhao.
Historically the dance seems to have been the performance outlet for women in the group who did not perform in the early decades (centuries?) of the Bumba-meu-boi. There may have a number of reasons women were excluded: patriarchy, the rural division of gendered labor, and perhaps the violence associated with the early celebrations (groups were often rivals and violent confrontations were reputed to be common, sometimes ending in injury, jail or even, rarely, fatalities).
All these factors have changed with the domestication and urbanization of the festival. Women have taken on performance and management roles in the Bumba-meu-boi itself, rendering it less patriarchal and gender-segregated than in the past. But even as the Bumba-meu-boi has changed, the traditional gender separation of the Tambor da Crioula remains. Women of all ages dance, the few men involved are accompanists.
The dance seems distantly-related to the Samba da roda practiced elsewhere in Brazil and danced exclusively by women. Men do not dance in the TdC, but perform the percussion on three drums (somewhat reminiscent of the drums used in African-Brazilian spiritual practice).
The women and girls dance in counter-clockwise fashion, improvising on a simple, basic set of steps that become swirls and turns — dramatized by large flowered skirts.
Women of all generations dance together in the Tambor da Crioula. One enters the center of the circle and dances. The solo is passed on via the umbigada or punga. A new dancer receives the solo by bumping bellies with the dancer in the middle. This passes the dance from one to another, eventually bringing each dancer to the center.
Of the three drums playing accompaniment, two are rhythm. The third has a higher tone and can play improvisation. The dancer often signals to the soloist drummer for a change in rhythm or special pulse to her solo.
The umbigada that passes along the solo to a new dancer comes from the Portuguese word umbigo, which means navel or umbilical. In some ways, the Maranhao term punga is onomatopoetic even more evocative.
Though the umbigada/punga may appear as just a performative element of the Tambor da Crioula (moving the dance from one performer to another), it is also evocative of women’s sexuality and the transfer of power from woman to woman, generation to generation.