IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 123

For them, the living nature of their performativity is something that binds,
them through communication, with the
‘over-world’ of their ancestors and, by
extension, with Africa itself.

club exclusively for Afro-Porteños, the
Shimmy Club started opening up to
other clientele, even white patrons, from
the fifties on.
The carnival dynamic at Casa Suiza
was based on the fact that it was celebrated on varying dates, sometime between the end of January and early
March, depending on the year. Between
5-8 nights were chosen.

According to written sources and oral
history, which go back to the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, respectively, singing and dancing were common among Afro-Porteños. In terms of
what is considered tradition, Candombe
is its highest expression, although there
were and are other genres earlier and
later in time. There are also carnival
songs, songs for children and adults’
wakes, children’s games, lullabies, etc.

The formal dance took place in the
principal dance salon on the ground
floor, with two orchestras: one tango
group and a jazz/tropical group, depending the period. Each set contained
45 minutes of dancing and 45 minutes
of rest for the orchestra. After these two
sessions, the attendees tended to go out
to the terrace and, above all, the basement, where there was a buffet. This is
where the dance truly important to AfroPorteño life took place, and members of
the Shimmy Club did it: the porteño
Candombe dance and open rhumba.

This musical family life has social dimensions represented in own entities:
for the last two hundred years these
were known as “naciones” or “nation
sites,”7 the “drum,” “carnival societies”—or just “comparsas”—and mutual aid, cultural, labor and political societies (Cirio 2009b).
Contemporary, Afro-Porteño memory
preserves great recollections of the
Shimmy Club, which was recently a site
of protest. Founded in 1882 by Alfredo
Núñez, for the purpose of holding
community dances, it seemed to lack a
headquarters, unlike other group societies. Instead, it rented rooms for its
dances, which were held on national
holidays, for carnival, for Mi-Carême,
or to celebrate some foreign, African
personality—but above all, for carnival.
From end of the 1920s till about 1978,
these dances were always held at the
Casa Suiza. The tie between this place
and the Shimmy Club was so strong that
regular attendees made the two names
synonymous. Even if it came about as a

Many families took their drums, and
took turns playing them. Unlike the
vocal-instrumental style they practiced
at home, this was basically instrumental
music. Almost all oral memories and
photos are of this underground place, a
privileged locus that generated, diffused
and affirmed their identity.
There is no agreement about when the
Shimmy Club closed, although it seems
it was in 1978. As far as reasons go,
there are quite a few, the most common
one being the high cost of living then,
thanks to the prohibition of carnival. Its
organizers went back to the original old
practice of travelling carnivals, but this

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