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📂 **Category**: Uruguay,Culture,Americas,Dance,Music,Slavery
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Like the blues in the United States, samba in Brazil, rumba in Cuba, and plena in Puerto Rico, candombe, Uruguayan music of African origins, was hated, marginalized and even banned – but it managed to survive.
But while other such genres have for decades formed part of the cultural mainstream throughout the Americas, it is only now that candombe is experiencing its heyday.
Once confined to black neighborhoods in the capital, Montevideo, candombe groups have spread to every region in the South American country of 3.5 million people, 10% of whom identify as Afro-Uruguayan.
One Montevideo group, Rueda de Candombe, brings together up to 2,000 people every Monday to hear an all-national music repertoire rooted in Afro-Uruguayan rhythm.
“I think we’ve reached a turning point,” said Claudio Martinez, 47, one of the group’s singers and percussionists.
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Claudio Martinez, drummer of the band Rueda de Candombe, plays at the Sala de Naciones La Calenda in Montevideo. The session was part of a special event hosted by Jorge Drexler to film a music video and preview his new material.
Rueda de Candombe began performing in a bar about a year ago, but as crowds grew, the city council moved her to Plaza España, a public square.
“It’s a very meaningful place,” Martinez said.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Africans and their descendants could play the drums only in the secrecy of homes or in a few licensed marches.
One way to escape complaints from neighbors was to practice just outside the city wall – very close to where Rueda de Candombe now performs.
“It’s crazy, because when you look around, you realize that we are in this very place dancing and singing and having fun with some of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who were condemning us from within the walls,” Martinez said.
Candombe’s newfound popularity is such that one of Uruguay’s biggest singers, Jorge Drexler — the first Latin American artist to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song, in 2005 — has made it the hero of his new album, Taracá, due for release on March 12.
Rueda de Candombe features three tracks, and the genre’s rhythms run through most of the album, including You’re not a doo, Paella (If There Be a Doubt, Dancing), which describes how, in 1807, the Uruguayan authorities banned candombe: “They considered it a lewd and impure dance / For the way it moved the hips.”
Drexler, 61, who describes himself as a candombe lover, not an expert, said that rhythm “is an ecstasy, a spiritual tool” and that “in a world where polarization is worsening, candombe has the ability to build bridges between people.”
He continued: “Candombe has expanded significantly in recent years, which makes me very happy, because I grew up in a country where it was viewed with deep discrimination.”
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Drexler is hosting an exclusive track-by-track preview of his upcoming album, Taracá, at Elefante Blanco studio in Montevideo.
Candombe emerged from more than 200,000 enslaved Africans sent to Uruguay during their 250 years of slavery, most of them from Central Africa.
Its name is believed to be derived from the Bantu language family and was used around the time to refer to something “for black people”.
Its spelling is very similar to that of candombe, the Afro-Brazilian religion, but although Uruguayan drum assemblies had religious elements, candombe is not a faith.
It sometimes includes other instruments, such as acoustic guitar or accordion, but is primarily defined by the use of three drums: piano, chico, and rebecchi.
“Each of them has a distinct voice that corresponds to the human voice,” said researcher, writer and artist Tomás Oliveira Sciremini. For this reason, candombe can be defined as a dialogue between “human” voices.
Despite the ban, candombe gradually gained wider acceptance within Uruguayan society, especially thanks to artists such as Rubén Rada. It was granted protection under national law in 2006, and in 2009, UNESCO recognized it as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
“Here we are now, in 2026, with the candombe plant – which was born in a small part of Montevideo – spreading throughout the country,” Ceremini said.
Candombe’s success also brings with it challenges, Cermini added: “It’s changing colour: more than half of what’s done today is done by white people.”
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Drummers Diego Paredes, Claudio Martinez and Dario Teran, musicians from Rueda de Candombe, pose for a photo and play the drums at Cobo del Sur in Montevideo.
This was also evident when negotiating events or performances, said Diego Paredes, 41, another musician with Rueda de Candombe. “While we inherited spirituality, swing and strength from our ancestors, we also inherited poverty. So when an entrepreneur comes, he is clearly not black,” he said.
Paredes’ connection to music “comes from the womb,” as his mother, Chabela Ramirez, 68, is one of the country’s most prominent candombe artists and African feminist activists.
“Uruguay is a very racist country,” Ramirez said during an interview in Palermo, one of the capital’s most traditional Afro-Uruguayan neighborhoods, but has become increasingly white amid gentrification.
“Sometimes I worry what happened to the tango [in Argentina] “It could happen with Candombe,” Ramirez said, noting that the neighboring country’s symbolic beat has “black roots that no one talks about.”
She argues that candombe cannot be thought of only in terms of entertainment when its origins are in resistance and spirituality.
“Drums replace the human voice, because singing was not allowed, and slaves were not allowed to talk to each other,” Ramirez said. “Candombe played, and still does, a very important role in communication.”
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