1410  My experience with Candombe

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 00:06:12 -0400
From: Sergio <Cachafaz@ADELPHIA.NET>
Subject: My experience with Candombe

I was at the time 20 years old it was the month of March, I believe. I and
some of my friends decided to cross the Rio de la Plata and go to
Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay to dance tango and explore. It was
our first trip there, I remember the age and month because I was drafted
into the compulsory military service at my return ( 'la colimba' slang). All
healthy male citizens were drafted at age 20 then, it became voluntary a few
years ago. Argentina had been ruled by military fascist dictatorships for
most of my life. There was no long hair, no beards, to wear shorts in
downtown was considered to be bad manners. You needed coat and tie to go to
school and also to the movies.
We had never seen a pornographic magazine or drugs or a prostitute.

Uruguay on the other hand was a very democratic country,** it had everything
that we had never seen before :)).
We went tango dancing the first night but unfortunately we discovered the
red light district the following day. The government did/still does
supervises whore houses where the ladies exhibit a medical certificate of
good health on the wall of her room. Some places allowed tango dancing to
meet the ladies at the beginning like in the old times.

Anyways the following night in the same district (because we went back) we
discovered a gathering of blacks, we had never seen real blacks either
before!.
They were playing beautiful drum music. There was some sort of conversation
held between the different drums, more than 20 but then more people with
their drums were gathering and started playing. The music was called the
"llamada" (the call). They had three different types of drums with different
sound .They are called 'chico', 'repique' and 'piano'. Beautiful black
women and mulattas with shorts and very sexy attire started to join as well.

There was a walk through the narrow streets and finally we arrived to an
open square, there the dance started. Men and women danced separated, in
free style, at times one in front of the other moving the hips, following
the drum rhythm. The night was warm, the sky full of stars, perfume of
flower was in the air.
I brought my eyes down attracted by a beautiful mulatto girl that as she
passed in front of me shaking her monumental rear end was singing a lyric
that quite distinctly said in Portuguese (she was Brazilian) something like
"eu tengo o culo mais grande do mundo" ( I have the biggest ass in the
world) .The neighbors joined in the dance and we did as well. After a while
the drummers started to disband disappearing in the deep darkness of the
night.... some authors say that tango was originally danced in the same way.
I know ...this is all pure speculation

We run out of money sooner than expected, guess why??? :))...so we returned
home with very good memories and looking forward to the next "Llamada"
(Call). My call was ....a tank company for about 9 months.

Please read, see pictures and listen to music at the many web pages under
Candombe.

Such as www.candombe.com