Researchers and who considers to analyze the origins of the São Paulo samba always comes back its attention to a small city located to the edges of Rio Tietê, the 54 kilometers of the city of São Paulo: Pirapora do Bom Jesus. Full of constructed cultural and religious manifestations throughout its history, and that they attract a series of tourist for the region, the city received the nickname from cradle of the São Paulo samba.
Pirapora was, the principle, a farm that belonged to Santana de Parnaíba. It was in 1730 that its history gained new contours, when enslaved ones had found an image of Mr. Bom Jesus to the edges of the Tietê and the city was established.
From the episode, a series of miracles was attributed to the saint, becoming the city a destination for diverse fidiciary offices. Slaves of other regions folloied gentlemen who went to the place to search miracles or to pay promises. They had started to appear, at this time, the meeting carried out for drum players of the interior of São Paulo. This because, while the landlord was useful the religious activities to it, the slaves if dedicated to batuques.
With the abolition of the slavery in 1888, the former-slaves and its descendants had followed with the visits to the Pirapora do Bom Jesus when he had the pilgrimages. They had been constructed, then, at the beginning of century 20, two sheds for the people who did not have where if to house. In such a way, the whites were in pensions and hotels and the blacks, in these sheds, known as “large cabins”.
The cultural aglutinação of the customs and musics practised for the libertos slaves when they were in the large cabins – where made presentations of the developed forms of samba in its respective cities – the birth of the São Paulo samba packed. Blacks who came of Campinas, Capivari, Piracicaba, Sorocaba, Tietê, as well as of other cities of the interior, practised the Samba Handkerchief, the Samba of Umbigada, the Tambu, the Campineiro Samba, among others styles.
Bumbo, or zabumba, started to be an instrument of prominence in these meeting, what it made with that the denominations of the sambas practised in the large cabins were synthecized in the expression Samba of Bumbo, or Samba of Pirapora.
The presence each marcante time of the drum player in Pirapora became the small city – that it little possesss more than 100 kilometers squared – a legitimate redoubt of the São Paulo samba, from the religious decades of 1910 and 1920, being that the romeiros that visited the city had passed if to divide between batuques and celebrations.
Influencing the samba of the capital
the Samba of Bumbo practised in Pirapora do Bom Jesus influenced the samba carried through in the capital of the State of São Paulo, has seen that several of its representatives, as the sambista Geraldo Filme, had been between the frequentadores of the religious parties of Pirapora. Considered one of the biggest composers of samba of São Paulo, Film composed the classic “Row of Pirapora”: “Back in barraco/All age joy I deny beat in zabumba/and the ox moaned Initiated neguinho/In a place of fetichism row Samba of Piracicaba/Tietê and campineiro”.
Another personality of the São Paulo samba that marked presence in these events was Dionísio Barbosa, founder of the first carnavalesco group of São Paulo, the Group Deep Bar. It was the first one to take the serious noise of bumbo for the carnival of street of the São Paulo capital, in the decade of 1930. The instrument passed later the central characteristic being in carnavalescos laces of the city.
Today, Pirapora do Bom Jesus if became one of the main destinations in the State of São Paulo during the carnival. The festivities at this time of the year always count on the classic marchinhas and the Samba of Bumbo.
The city still possesss the Space Alive Samba, also known as House of the Samba. Located in the center of Pirapora, the place presents a permanent exposition on the São Paulo samba – with the register of images of the cultural manifestations in the city – and propitiates the meeting of groups as the Samba of Wheel, that honors the tradition of the drum player in Pirapora do Bom Jesus.
The Samba of Wheel is formed by about 25 people, all born in Pirapora. The integrant ones had grown in way to the tradition it samba caipira, that it loads in its essence African rhythms, dance and louvor to the patron saint of the city.
Owner Maria Esther is the puxadora of the group. With more than 80 years, it it overlaps the joy of the samba to any barriers represented for the age. She was this good-tempered lady, also, that it helped to establish one of the oldest paulistanas schools of samba, the Lavapés. Without never losing the spirit, it it continues participating actively of the carnival parades.