LITTLE AFRICAS

As they lost ground in the samba schools’ courts, where the carnival parade’s theme song, the samba-enredo, began to take up all the attention, sambistas found the essential creative and social environment for inspiration in the court of the carnival block Cacique de Ramos. It was not just another block; founded in 1961 by a group of youths from the Leopoldina suburbs who mixed samba’s musical traditions with Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, Cacique de Ramos considered the opportunity for conviviality, which stimulated creativity, to be more important than the carnival parade. Proof of this is the fact that it is the birthplace of Fundo de Quintal, the group that revolutionized samba at the end of the 1970s, creating pagode, a sub-genre of samba. The use of percussion instruments adapted to produce a more intimate sound and the melodic and poetic richness of the group’s compositions soon achieved great success, making the court the meeting point for the most important and creative elements of Carioca samba at the time.