Estudo em Maxixe
by Gilberto Eloízio
The maxixe is a dance that emerged in Cidade Nova, a marginalized neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, at the end of the 1860s. The genre incorporates elements from European dances, particularly the polka, and influences from lundu, a dance of African origin brought to Brazil by enslaved people from Angola.
From polka, the maxixe inherited the use of musical forms such as the rondo and ternary forms. However, compared with the European genre, the maxixe’s tempo adheres to a slower pace, an influence of the rhythm of the drums cultivated in dances and songs from Afro-Brazilian dances. The lundu also influenced maxixe's choreography, which is characterized by sensuality and freedom of improvisation. The researcher Carla Marcílio, in Chiquinha Gonzaga e o Maxixe, spotlights several traits of the dance. She writes:
What was for the lundu the umbigada (the meeting of the navel of a man with that of a woman in the dance choreography), for the maxixe became a pair of bodies glued together, with the hips together in the same movement.[1]
Regarding the influences of other genres in the creation of maxixe, Marcílio also reports that the maxixe inherited its rhythm, characterized by punctuated and syncopated figures from habanera, a slow dance originated by the Blacks of Cuba and Haiti.[2]
Use of syncopation in Feijoada do Brazil by Chiquinha Gonzaga exemplifying maxixe’s characteristic accompaniment.
Maxixe’s characteristic syncopation in Section A of Estudo em Maxixe by Gilberto Eloízio.
The modulation scheme of maxixe, influenced by European dances is as it follows: for pieces in a major key, the second part in the relative minor, and the third in the key of the subdominant; for pieces in a minor key, the second part in the relative major and the third modulates to the parallel major. The Estudo em Maxixe by Gilberto Eloízio illustrates this modulations scheme: written in the key of E minor, section B modulates to the relative major, G major, and section C modulates to E major.
In addition, the researcher Henrique Cazes highlights a fundamental characteristic from Afro-Brazilian music in maxixe’s melodic and accompaniment structure. He writes:
Often the melody was played in the bass region, and this distanced the result from the European model and brought it closer to the musical practice of African origin, where the busiest and most varied lines are in the bass instruments, with the higher instruments playing the role of accompaniment in the form of ostinatos.[3]
Notes:
[1] Carla Marcílio, “Chiquinha Gonzaga e o maxixe,” master 's thesis (Universidade Estadual Paulista, São Paulo, 2009), 64.
[2] Ibid., 65.
[3] Henrique Cazes, “As três fases do maxixe música,” 96-97.
Gilberto Eloízio
Gilberto Eloizio was born in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, and at the age of 10, he began his musical studies under the guidance of his grandfather, Otto Paulo Guedes. Eloizio earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Trumpet Performance from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Currently, Eloizio is a member of the Marine Corps of the Navy in Rio de Janeiro.
Maxixe
Listening Examples
About the
Maxixe
Bruno Kiefer emphasizes the socio-geographical starting point of the genre: the Cidade Nova, a neighborhood that emerged in the Canal do Mangue in Rio de Janeiro around 1860. Due to the decline in coffee cultivation, which forced surplus labor to migrate to new urban centers, the neighborhood attracted immigrants looking for work opportunities in the urban centers. According to an 1872 census, Cidade Nova was the most populated neighborhood in the city, with 26,592 inhabitants.[1] The racial mix that was soon established in the neighborhood was formed by freed slaves people, mestizos, and Portuguese immigrants drawn to the area for the affordability to live there. Inevitably the people of Cidade Nova would adapt the European dances typical of the elite along with the rhythm of the drums that the Black inhabitants would cultivate there, mainly influenced by lundu, a dance of African origin popular among mestizos and whites.
Extensive discussions about the origin of the term maxixe have been raised. José Tinhorão points to the use of the term by the chronicler França Junior in 1881 and in the newspaper, O Globo Ilustrado, in 1882. The term was urban slang to designate the dances and get-togethers practiced in poor urban centers, also known as forrobodó and xinfrim. Another association of the term maxixe is linked to things considered of little value. This is an allusion to the fruit, also called maxixe, commonly found in the backyards of houses in the mangroves of Cidade Nova. Kiefer also cites Jota Efegê, who, in his book Maxixe - A Dança Excomungada, indicates that the term was a metaphor for the fruit in these dances, which were held in small rooms “with many couples compressing each other in a sloppy, swaying dance, unconcerned with etiquette and in an unfamiliar grasp.” Likewise, the fruit “formed by many hundreds, perhaps thousands of seeds grouped together, or, better said, crowded in its core, resembles dances of the lowest class, the criouléus.”[2] The term emerged as a distinctive genre sometime around the beginning of the 20th century when the first scores presented the name maxixe as a musical genre.
The transformations of urban centers in the period led to the creation of organizations aimed at providing leisure and entertainment to the emergent classes. For example, Carnival Clubs and theater magazines were important innovations that attracted the popular classes and members of the middle class. These spaces served not only as the entertainment for their participants but also as a venue to debate the country’s transformations, particularly political subjects. In these spaces, the maxixe popularized and spread until it became the most important urban popular musical manifestation in Rio de Janeiro during the beginning of the century, projecting itself even as far as Europe.
The maxixe soon gained popularity among the assiduous participants of Carnaval associations the dance becoming a necessary part of their social gatherings. The dance, however, gained negative connotations among the elite given the explicit sensuality with which couples performed the steps. In her analysis of the work of three representative maxixe composers, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Julio Reis, and Ernesto Nazareth, Maristela Rocha identifies the main reasons for the trouble created by the dance among the most conservative groups of the country. She writes:
A dance whose choreography implied bodies tangled up like ‘screws’ spinning, inserted in a colonialist, patriarchal, slave-holding society with a predominance of rural domains pointing to urban spaces dominated by foreign cultural influence, especially in the court, could only generate disturbance of the order.[3]
Nevertheless, the sensuality of the dance attracted many merchants and members of the middle class who became regular participants at carnival parties.
The first performance of the maxixe on theater stages in the city of Rio de Janeiro took place in 1883 when the actor, Francisco Correia Vasques, presented the show Aí, Caradura!, whose main attractions were the sung and danced sections of maxixe.[4] However, the genre only became a success after the popularity of the song “As Laranjas da Sabina” by Artur Azevedo. In its lyrics, the composer highlighted a student march in favor of the greengrocer Sabina, who sold her fruit in front of the college of medicine after having been forbidden to do so. The impertinence of the protest grabbed the attention of society, making the song a great success.[5] From then on, this genre achieved a period of success of almost 40 years, becoming a presence in practically all musical theatres.[6]
The maxixe only achieved acceptance into the middle class in 1910, after the Brazilian dancer, Antônio Lopes de Amorim Diniz abandoned his profession as a dentist in Rio de Janeiro and took the maxixe to Paris. In the company of dancers Maria Lina and Arlette Dorgère, Diniz gained the admiration of the Parisians. They were attracted by the sensual choreography of the maxixe and the contagious syncopated rhythm of the music. During the First World War, Diniz appeared on stage in the United States, dancing the maxixe as he had done in Europe.[7] As a result, the genre fostered Americans’ interest in Brazilian dance. Maristela Rocha, for example, points out the success of the maxixe Dengoso by Ernesto Nazareth, which received numerous arrangements by American orchestras and lyrics in English under the title “Boogie Woogie Maxixe.”[8]
Despite the national and international recognition of maxixe, its prevalence among the emergent urban class became difficult in the face of competition with international genres that were becoming popular in Brazil. Tinhorão writes that maxixe “was destined to die as a dance throughout the 1930s and be remembered thereafter exclusive as a song.”[9] From there, maxixe compositions gave way to samba, a new genre that herniated maxixe’s rhythm and grace.
Notes:
[1] Bruno Kiefer, Música e dança popular: sua influência na música erudita, 51-52.
[2] Ibid., 49.
[3] Maristela Rocha, “O maxixe como gênero periférico. Um olhar sobre Chiquinha Gonzaga, Júlio Reis e Ernesto Nazareth” (Rio de Janeiro, 2015), 4.
[4] José Ramos Tinhorão, Pequena História Da Música Popular: da Modinha ao Tropicalismo (São Paulo: Art Editora, 1986), 66.
[5] Debora Bender, and Juracy Assmann Saraiva, “Um Brasil Maxixe: representações culturais e identitárias em composições desse gênero musical,” Iluminuras 20, n. 50, (July 2019), 177-178.
[6] José Ramos Tinhorão, Pequena História Da Música Popular, 15.
[7] Ibid., 87.
[8] Maristela Rocha, “O maxixe como gênero periférico,” 5.
[9] José Ramos Tinhorão, Pequena História Da Música Popular, 88.
References:
Bender, Debora, and Juracy Assmann Saraiva. “Um Brasil Maxixe: representações culturais e identitárias em composições desse gênero musical.” Iluminuras 20, n. 50 (July 2019): 169-185.
Cazes, Henrique. “As três fases do maxixe música.” Música Popular em Revista 1 (July 2019): 92-108.
Kiefer, Bruno. Música e dança popular: sua influência na música erudita. Porto Alegre, RS: Editora Movimento, 1979.
Marcílio, Carla Crevelanti. “Chiquinha Gonzaga e o Maxixe.” Master 's thesis, Universidade Estadual Paulista, São Paulo, 2009.
Tinhorão, José Ramos. Pequena História Da Música Popular: Da Modinha ao Tropicalismo. São Paulo: Art Editora, 1986.
Rocha, Maristela. “O maxixe como gênero periférico. Um olhar sobre Chiquinha Gonzaga, Júlio Reis e Ernesto Nazareth.” Paper presented at XXXVIII Congresso Brasileiro de Ciências da Comunicação, Rio de Janeiro, June 4-7, 2015.
Topine, Matheus Pimentel da Silva. Os Requebros do Maxixe: Raca, Nacionalidade e Disputas Culturais no Rio de Janeiro (1880-1915). Rio de Janeiro: Editora PUC-Rio, 2021