History told by Peru Negro

Peru’s Roman Catholic Church once frowned on the zamacueca, a seductive courtship dance performed by African slaves, but today it lives on in the whirling sensuality of the celebrated national dance of Peru, the marinera.

When Peruvian authorities outlawed African drums, fearing they could be used to organize slave uprisings, slaves turned to the heavy wooden boxes of cargo they carried, and in 2001 the cajon, or “big box” drum, was declared a Cultural Heritage of the Nation.

The stubborn survival of Afro-Peruvian music that such facts illustrate makes Peru Negro, which will be appearing at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Saturday night, more than just a Grammy-nominated Peruvian music and dance ensemble. It’s a celebration of the triumph of those performing arts over disapproval, disdain and disenfranchisement.

“We are showcasing the roots of a cultural heritage that has been forgotten or ignored,” says the group’s manager and producer, Juan Morillo. “The rhythms are borrowed or handed down from an African tradition, in a form that is uniquely Peruvian.”

Peru Negro’s new album, “Zamba Malato,” is a collection of the kind of Peruvian songs chanted and sung by slaves as they worked, a genre that Peru Negro (Black Peru) helped to usher onto the world stage.

Royce Hall, in fact, played a role in that when it hosted the group’s first U.S. show in 2001, says Rony Campos, its current artistic director and the son of one of its founders.

“That show was our calling card,” Campos says. “Our objective was to show the world that there were Afro-Peruvians, with unique traditions. Now we have an international audience.”

Live Afro-Peruvian music is almost narcotic. Multiple cajon drummers pound out elegantly layered rhythms; criolla guitar drives the swaying sound with classical and flamenco flourishes. Dancers, traditionally male, challenge each other to elaborate duels of zapateo, or tap dance. But on this tour, women are stepping up.

“It was a challenge to tradition,” Campos says. “Women have always known how to tap-dance very skillfully in Peru, but they haven’t been used as performers. Why not?”

Indeed, recognition for Afro-Peruvian music and dance alike is relatively recent. Many Peruvians still have no idea that the patrimonial marinera was fueled by a risque slave dance, just as people across the Americas remain unaware of the African roots of much of their rhythmic music. Peru’s slaves arrived with the unprecedented forced migration of African captives, some of whom came with Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro.

The Spanish conquerors hoped slaves would bring silver and gold from the bowels of Andean mines. But the tropical Africans succumbed to illness in the cold high altitudes, and their owners brought them to the Pacific plain. In the capital, Lima, slaves were so in demand that they were, for a time, the majority, lending a strong African pulse to the developing of mestizo coastal culture.

Some scholars trace the provocative zamacueca to a Peruvian predecessor, lando. Like the American cakewalk, lando eventually incorporated -- and sometimes satirized -- the formal movements of European dances, and some lando lyrics fervently protest slavery.

European high society looked down on the more openly sensual movements, but white South Americans appropriated the zamacueca not only as the ballroom marinera but also as Chile’s national dance, the cueca, scholars say.

Today’s versions are highly theatrical hybrids. Waving handkerchiefs and shawls, the woman taunts the man with swaying, enticing steps, and the man responds in kind.

Peru Negro’s performances of accompaniments for these dances helped drive the revival of Afro-Peruvian music, as did the title track of its new CD. The song’s refrain grew out of a fragment of an old work song about a laundress at her labors that was overheard by Afro-Peruvian musician Nicomedes Santa Cruz, according to Heidi Carolyn Feldman’s 2006 book, “Black Rhythms of Peru.” Santa Cruz, a pioneer, unveiled such songs at his 1957 “Black Rhythms of Peru” concert in Chile.

“They were chants done by women with very difficult chores in haciendas or homes,” Morillo says. “One of the few joys they had was to sing.”

Peru Negro was founded in 1969. By the 1980s, Afro-Peruvian music was spilling out of neighborhood clubs and into the cosmopolitan bohemia of the upscale Barranco district, launching such cult stars as Susana Baca -- a cousin of Campos.

Another popular Afro-Peruvian singer, Eva Ayllon, played at Walt Disney Concert Hall last Friday with some of Peru Negro’s musicians. Now they are set to perform with her in November at Carnegie Hall.

“My mission,” manager Morillo says, is “to make Afro-Peruvian as well known as Brazilian music -- around the world.”

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anne-marie.oconnor @latimes.com

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Peru Negro

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Price: $24 to $48

Contact: (310) 825-2101 or www.uclalive.org