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Peru Negro, Linking The Worlds of the African Diaspora

By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 18, 2006; C05

The world feels a little smaller when you watch Peru Negro. The group hails from Lima, but there's something Cuban in their drumbeats, something African in the way they whip the air with their hips and shoulders, even a bit of the American South in a body-slapping musical routine as near to the hambone as you'll see north of the Carolinas.

What feels so familiar in Peru Negro's program, performed Thursday night at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center, is part of the mystery of the African diaspora, linking islands and continents and cultures in ways that resonate to this day. It was the drive to preserve Peru's African heritage -- the leavings of Spanish colonization and slavery -- that brought Peru Negro into existence in 1969 (its founder, Ronaldo Campos, was apparently inspired by the U.S. civil rights movement). And so there were no Andean reed pipes to be heard, but there was heavy use of the cajon -- a wooden box that derived from fruit crates used by slaves as drums when they were forbidden to use proper musical instruments.

As the drummers paddled out galloping rhythms, the dancers responded with effortless syncopation -- hips shaking along the bass line, while heads bobbed in counterpoint and the feet stamped out another undercurrent altogether.

The evening's strongest moments incorporated a dose of attitude along with the drumming and dancing. In "Toro Mata," the costumes hinted at the fancy dress of slave masters, while the dancing was an elegant mockery of the stiffness in the minuets and waltzes of the colonial age. Any sense of courtly formality was undercut with shimmying hips and jiggling backsides. Yet the execution was smooth as smoke.

"Zapateo II," a blistering routine of percussive footwork, brought to mind soft-shoe dancing and tap, but with unusual features, including a syncopated time-step and high, light jumps. "Son de los Diablos" brought together dancers in elaborately horned devil-masks, the vestiges of a spiritual practice rendered with wit and irreverence. They clowned around, they smacked knees, thighs, the soles of their feet and even the floor in what you might call a juba jive. One of the devils played a quijadas de burros , a dried donkey jawbone with raspy rattling teeth, the whole sculptural thing curved and polished to a gloss. Behind the dancers, a line of singers crooned in velvety harmony, tinged with melancholy, tying it all back to the spirit world.

The vocals were particularly rewarding in this 22-member company of singers, dancers and musicians. Lead singer Monica Duenas Avalos has a voice that easily carried over the drumming -- she could hold a note and send it bouncing around the Kay Theatre like a big rubber ball. She demanded as much as she gave -- if the audience reaction wasn't up to her standard, she wasn't shy about calling for more. And so the evening became participatory in parts; in one call-and-response segment, even non-Spanish speakers found themselves belting out lines of Spanish verse to Avalos's exacting specifications.

Ronaldo Campos died in 2001, but his son Rony carries on his work, and other members of the Campos family participate. Wisely, they have updated their heritage somewhat, introduced a fast pace along with slower, mournful numbers. What they convey above all is that hundreds of years of history, so close to perishing out of neglect, have fallen into good hands.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company