Cursing in Nago
The Bossa Nova and dictatorship
For the old folks, who know the music, for the “gringos” not acquainted with popular Brazilian songs, and for the younger folks to know a little bit of history…
Great and perhaps useful information, if you happen to hear “Na tonga da mironga do cabuletê” spoken to you or others. About what it is and its origin.
Vinícius and Toquinho return from Italy where they had just begun the partnership with the album “A Arca de Noé” (Noah’s Ark), the result of an old book that the “poetinha”, as we affectionately call him, wrote for his son Pedro, when he was still a boy.
They find Brazil in the middle of the “economic miracle” of the military dictatorship. The censorship at high, Bossa at low. Opponents of the regime paying with the freedom and life the price of their ideals.
The poet is seen as a communist by military blindness, and surpassed by the militant intellectuality that, pejoratively and unfairly, classifies its song as “easy music”.
Vinícius is married to the Bahian actress Gesse Gessy, one of the greatest passions of his life, who would bring him closer to Candomblé, introducing him to Mãe Menininha do Gantois[1]
Feeling her companion’s anguish, Gesse amuses him, teaching him curses in Nagô, among them “tonga da mironga do cabuletê”, which means “the fur of the mother’s ass”. The anal motto and his feeling towards men in olive green inspire the poet.
With Toquinho, Vinícius composes the song to present it in a show at Teatro Castro Alves. It was the opportunity to curse the military without them understanding the offence. And the poet was still amused by all this: “I assure you that at the Superior War College there is not a jarhead, who knows how to speak Nagô”.
See the lyrics of the inspired song by the duo Vinicius and Toquinho:
Tonga da Mironga do Cabuletê
I fall in bossa[1], I am who I am
I come out of the pit, cursing in nagô
You who listen and don’t speak
You who look and don’t see
I’ll give you a clue,
you will have to learn
In the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
In the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
In the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
You who read and don’t know,
You who pray and don’t believe,
You who enter and do not fit,
You will have to live…
In the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
In the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
In the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
You who smoke and don’t drag,
And that doesn’t pay to see,
I’ll curse you,
I’ll send you…
To the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
To the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
To the tonga of the mironga of cabuletê!
LINK TO THIS MUSIC — WITH TOQUINHO: