Recife Rocks
Marc Starr explores the musical diversity and rhythmic flair of North-East Brazil.
Musical pilgrimages are too often limited to reflections of glories past. Beatlemaniacs travelling to Liverpool, for example, can walk the hallowed streets and go for a night out at ‘The Cavern’ but there’s not much chance of seeing a Beatles gig. I prefer journeys with a more proactive element, and with this in mind have travelled to the state of Pernambuco, north-east Brazil, to indulge my passion for percussion. My intention? To observe and learn from musicians who are both talented and underexposed in equal measure.
The backbone of Brazil’s musical repertoire originated in the north-east. Popular music forms such as ciranda, embolada and maracatu aren’t as well known as samba and bossa nova. Bossa nova, however, derives from samba and samba came from an assortment of song and dance styles taken to Rio by migrants from several north-eastern states, including Pernambuco.
It’s a Sunday evening in January and I’m strolling through the streets of Olinda, the former state capital founded in 1537. A boy approaches and offers a sightseeing tour. I ask about local music and he says there’s something going on right now. I climb the hill to encounter a circle of swaying dancers and two percussionists playing a snare drum and an alfaia, a rope-tuned wooden bass drum. They and a vocalist are working a ciranda, a kind of sea shanty.
Cirandas nearly always pay homage to something Pernambucan. This one’s about Iemanjá, the Afro-Brazilian water deity, and the locals who fish the Atlantic from fragile-looking crafts called jangadas. The beat isn’t quick but it possesses a rasping syncopation that teases my feet into action. The dancers are somewhat more dynamic and, on the leading beat, perform a 90-degree body-swerve and thrust their left legs forward. Dona Lia, the charismatic vocalist, finishes the song and embraces me. Even though I danced she calls me "shy"; but she’s mistaken - I’m mesmerised!
Recife, four miles down the road, is the present-day state capital and one of the principal cities of the north-east. Standing on reclaimed mangrove swampland, this coastal metropolis of 1.4 million people has a curious yet beautiful mix of colonial and modern architecture.
In one of Recife’s many praças (squares) two men are spinning an embolada, creating a fluid backbeat on - wait for it - tambourines! This age-old game of improvised poetic ping-pong is from the arid north-eastern interior, the Sertão. If the Amazon rainforest is ‘the world’s lungs’, the Sertão - irrigable but drought-plagued - is Brazil’s wounded heart and withered feet.
Many emboladas tell of men or women abandoning this mysterious and neglected region to find work in the city, returning to find their families or towns gone - a theme explored in Walter Salles’ award-winning film, Central Station. Emboladores also create songs which lampoon public figures, passers-by or their counterpart’s mothers. Such off-the- cuff, rhymed commentary makes emboladadores unwitting contenders as the earliest ever rap artists! Yet their singing can be some of the most heartfelt Brazil has to offer.
Some Brazilian friends are mystified by my excitement over a poetic battle which has been performed for centuries in squares and marketplaces. I recall one conversation with a Brazilian university colleague: "I don’t care about tambourine-playing hicks from the back of beyond. I like English bands a lot more". The antithesis of this attitude was the inspiration for my journey to the north-east.
A new and more modern sound emerged in Recife in the early ‘90s: Chico Science and his band Naçao Zumbi took Pernambucan popular music forms - including ciranda - and welded them to modern dance forms such as hip-hop, electro and jungle. The fusion became known as ’mangroove’, a stinging reference likening the pre-existing music scene in Recife to the stagnant state of the local mangrove swamps! Despite the death of Chico Science in a car crash in 1997, Naçao Zumbi got back on their feet and returned in 1999 with a re-shuffled line-up to carry on the sound created by Chico.
Another of mangroove’s musical influences, maracatu, is a percussive performance based on the coronation of African royalty. A visual as well as aural extravaganza, I’m keen to find out more, and make my way to a hillside district of Recife where the oldest maracatu band practises every Sunday. I arrive in the area with no idea where Maracatu Nação Estrela Brilhante (Maracatu Nation of the Shining Star) rehearses.
A man directs me down the main street. At the end, I look up at two faces. Before I can speak, one of them asks "Maracatu?", and nods left. At the bottom of this road, two new paths. Again, I’m answered before enquiring by a passing woman. Moments later I hear drums...
From here everyone knows where I’m going. I reach a yard where the most tumultuous acoustic dance music I have ever experienced is being produced by forty individuals, from pre-teenage to middle-aged. The beat stops and someone sings a call; the drummers jolt back in and not a stroke is squandered.
Momentarily, I feel almost suffocated. Girls in handmade regalia twirl as the maracatu beats shudder in and out, sounding like repeated staccato bursts of the very word itself: Ma-ra-ca-tu! I tell the mestre, Master Walter, that one of the Zumbi Nation band has sent me. Two wooden beaters are passed to me as an alfaia drum is hung across my hips. I’m not a born citizen of this maracatu nation but handling the instrument is my passport being stamped, my bloodlines approved; an utter privilege.