Music, rhythms and dances of the Northeast: A Celebration of Brazilian Culture

It’s impossible to think about Brazilian culture without considering the music and rhythms of the Northeast. The themes and inventiveness of Northeastern music represent a mixture of influences, where tradition and innovation coexist.

Cultural influences

Throughout Brazil, the Northeast is the region that most zealously preserves its musical traditions and rhythms, forming a rich heritage that blends indigenous, African and Iberian influences, manifesting itself in hundreds of rhythms sung and danced in each state.

Thus, while the atabaques of candomblé and the capoeira circles that multiply in Bahia are clearly African, the repentes sertanejos, with their improvised verses, are an inheritance from the Iberian Peninsula, with Arabic echoes.

Similarly, the caboclinhos, a choreography performed by dancers dressed as Indians at the Carnival of Pernambuco, has indigenous origins, while the zambê of Rio Grande do Norte, in which participants invite each other to dance with umbigadas, comes from Angola.

Popular festivals

The examples of the music and rhythms of the north-east are inexhaustible: the popular festivals of the north-east multiply throughout the year, but peak at Carnival and in June.

Types of music and dance

Link

Embed

Copy and paste this HTML code into your webpage to embed.

Luiz Gonzada o rei do baião05:21

Frevo01:57

Xote e Xaxado03:19

História do Xaxado05:39

Maracatu02:10

Here are some types of music, rhythms and dances from the northeast: IJEXÁ, FREVO AND MARACATU.

Bahia and Pernambuco are the two centres of Carnival in the Northeast.

The transformation of carnival

In Salvador, the festival has been transformed into a lucrative tourist product. As well as the ubiquitous axé music (a fusion of northeastern rhythms with commercial pop, born in the 1980s) and the trios elétricos, the city is home to events linked to African traditions, such as the afoxés and the blocos afros.

The afoxés began at the end of the 19th century. The popular Filhos de Gandhy run through the streets, dragging sandals, singing ijexás – the rhythm of candomblé songs – and greeting the orixás in the Nagô language. The Afro blocos are very recent, having been formed since the 1970s.

Ilê Aiyê, very attached to the idea of affirming black culture and identity, only accepts Afro-descendants into its community.

Rhythms of Pernambuco

In Pernambuco the carnival is even less structured and more spontaneous. Among other rhythms and dances (caboclinhos, coco, etc.), Frevo and Maracatu reign supreme.

Born at the end of the 19th century, probably from the polka and military dobrados, the frevo is characterised by its unmistakable frenetic rhythm and choreography, an incessant up and down of legs and arms.

Maracatu is based on a collective and rehearsed performance to the sound of drums, rattles and gonguês. The members, dressed in colourful costumes and ornaments, chase the calunga, a richly decorated doll attached to a stick. Seu Salustiano, founder of the Pernambuco group Piaba de Ouro, is the main promoter of the variant known as Rural Maracatu, which is considered the most faithful to its African origins.

During carnival, frevo bands spread the vibrant sound of brass throughout Olinda and Recife. They join the Maracatu blocks, known as nações.

Homage to the enslaved

Since the 1960s, Recife has celebrated the Night of the Silent Drums at midnight on Carnival Sunday: gathered in the Pátio do Terço in front of the church in Recife Antigo, the crowd stops for a minute and all the drums fall silent in honour of the Africans enslaved in the past.

The pause foreshadows the many hours of sound that will come from the gathering of nations from all over Pernambuco, some of them traditional, such as Elefante (founded in 1800), Leão Coroado (from 1863) and Estrela Brilhante (from 1910).

Music and rhythms of the sanfona bellows

Like the drums, the accordion occupies a prominent place in North African music. The “pé-de-bode” (goat’s foot), the popular eight-bass accordion, is a must at a forró – a party livened up by rhythms such as baião, coco, xaxado and xote.

Together with the zabumba and the triangle, they form the basic ensemble of the “dance without a label”, as defined by the folklorist Câmara Cascudo. From being a popular entertainment, forró gained the status of a musical genre, especially with the intensification of the migration of people from the Northeast to the Southeast of Brazil.

The pioneering spirit of Luíz Gonzaga

It was Luíz Gonzaga who pioneered the spread of baião throughout the country. Born in Exu, in the interior of Pernambuco, Gonzaga made his name in the 1940s performing in Rio de Janeiro.

He died in 1989, consecrated King of Baião, in a court that included several illustrious northeasterners, such as the singer Marinês, the accordionists Sivuca and Dominguinhos, and Jackson do Pandeiro, a native of Paraíba who was an excellent tambourine player because his parents had no money to buy him an accordion.

June festivities

Forró marks another high point in the north-eastern calendar: the celebration of the June Festivities.

The celebrations in honour of Saint Anthony, Saint John and Saint Peter take place throughout the country, but in the north-east they mobilise crowds and last for days, often becoming public holidays.

In June, the whole region is abuzz with foot-stomping, square dancing and typical food.

Caruaru, in the state of Pernambuco, and Campina Grande, in the state of Paraíba, compete every year for the honour of being the best June festivals in the world, each attracting 150,000 visitors a day.

Other sounds

Alongside the music and rhythms of the Northeast, and fuelled by them, other musical currents developed in the Northeast.

In the 1940s, while Luís Gonzaga was introducing Brazil to the sounds of the sertão, a Bahian was gaining national recognition: Dorival Caymmi, one of the country’s great sambistas – and musicians.

It’s important to remember, by the way, that samba was born in Bahia and brought to Rio, de, Janeiro by immigrants from the northeast who settled in the suburbs of Rio; In 2005, the samba-de-roda of Recôncavo Baiano was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco.

The samba-de-roda is a cultural manifestation characterised by its dance circles, where participants form a circle and dance to the sound of instruments such as the berimbau, zabumba and pandeiro. It is an expression of celebration and cultural resistance, reflecting Afro-Brazilian identity and the struggle to valorise culture.

At the end of the 1950s, bossa nova was born in the south of Rio de Janeiro. It introduced a sophisticated guitar beat and an intimate style to popular music, in contrast to the grandiloquence that had dominated Brazilian popular music until then; curiously, the best translation of bossa nova in Rio de Janeiro was a Bahian from Juazeiro, João Gilberto.

Festivals and cultural movements

The song festivals that rocked the cultural scene in the following decade were the main channel for young musicians to express themselves during the military dictatorship that began in 1964.

Among them were Geraldo Vandré from Paraíba, known for his political songs, and Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil from Bahia, whose influence would be felt for decades to come.

In 1968, the two songwriters, along with fellow Bahians Tom Zé and Capinam, and singers Maria Bethânia and Gal Costa, launched the Tropicalist movement – which discussed the concepts of good and bad taste, national and foreign, and promoted a meeting of traditional sounds and foreign influences.

In the same decade, Hermeto Paschoal, a multi-instrumentalist from Alagoas, began to combine the rhythms of baião and xaxado with jazz and contemporary harmonies in his Quarteto Novo.

Maestro Moacir Santos, an exceptional composer and arranger, recorded his first album in 1965; born in the backlands of Pernambuco, Santos has built a solid international career.

Music and rhythms from the northeast to the world

From 1970 onwards, the Brazilian recording industry could no longer do without artists from the Northeast.

There is a long list of composers and singers who, more or less tied to the typical music of their states of origin, transcended regional boundaries and achieved popular recognition throughout the country; The names of Djavan, Belchior, Fagner, Raul Seixas come to mind, Elba Ramalho, Zé Ramalho, Nando Cordel, Alceu Valença, among others.

The more traditional rhythms of the northeast were also introduced to the general public: In 1973, Edith do Prato, a samba-de-roda singer from the town of Santo Amaro da Purificação, in the Recôncavo Baiano, took part in Caetano Veloso‘s album Araçá azul (in 2004, at the age of 87, she recorded her first CD).

The unusual sound of the Banda de Pífanos de Caruaru, formed in 1924 in the hinterland of Alagoas, was first recorded on vinyl in 1972. In 1977, the cirandeira Lia, from the island of Itamaracá in Pernambuco, also recorded their first album. By the end of the decade, critics and audiences in the United States, Europe and Japan were bowing to the avant-garde beats of percussionist Naná Vasconcelos.

In the following decade, Salvador’s Olodum Afro Bloc became a national sensation; soon after, it was the turn of Timbalada, led by composer Carlinhos Brown.

Axé music brought singers such as Margareth Menezes, Daniela Mercury and Ivete Sangalo to the national charts, now one of the country’s biggest record sellers, and Lenine became known in Brazil and Europe as a singer, composer and arranger.

In a very different vein, Pernambuco’s Antônio Nóbrega, a dancer, musician and scholar of traditional northeastern culture, has settled in São Paulo, where he continues his important work of musical research and dissemination.

Guitars and samplers

The younger generation is no less creative. Zeca Baleiro and Rita Ribeiro mix the folkloric tendencies of Maranhão with electronic pop, and Chico César from Paraíba is a hit with his powerful repertoire.

Mestre Ambrósio and Cordel do Fogo Encantado are good examples of groups that have combined popular poetry with the rhythms of the sertão (toré, samba-de-coco, reisado, embolada, caboclinho, ciranda).

Annual festivals keep this repository of talent alive. Percpan, the World Percussion Panorama, held in the Bahia capital since 1994, aims to bring together musicians from Brazil and around the world who are linked by percussion.

Two Recife festivals, Abril Pro Rock and Rec Beat, held in 1993 and 1995 respectively, brought the Mangue Beat movement to the fore, an almost unlikely fusion of soul, funk, hip hop and maracatu, originally promoted by Chico Science with Nação Zumbi and Mundo Livre S/A.

In recent editions, Abril Pro Rock has made room for two new figures on the current northeastern scene: rocker Pitty and electronic DJ Dolores. Rowing against the tide, the Bahian prefers the heavy sound of guitars.

DJ Dolores – the stage name of Helder Aragão de Melo from Sergipe – travels around Brazil and the world presenting sampled versions of regional sounds picked up on the streets of his homeland. Their success leaves no doubt: all the sounds fit on the Northeastern chessboard.

Map of Northeastern Rhythms

Music and rhythms of the Northeast

• BAHIA: candomblé, axé, samba-de-roda, capoeira, samba-reggae, ijexá, afoxé
• SERGIPE: reisado, guerreiro, coco-de-roda, bacamarteiro
• ALAGOAS: coco-de-roda, guerreiro, chegança, pagode alagoano, baianá, masseira, boi de maragogi, pagode de viola, martelo agalopado, roda de valsar
• PERNAMBUCO: maracatu baque solto, maracatu, baque virado, maracatu rural, caboclinhos, cavalo-marinho, candomblé, frevo, coco, ciranda, repente
• PARAÍBA: ciranda, nau catarineta, coco-de-roda, baião
• RIO GRANDE DO NORTE: coco-de-roda, zambê
• CEARÁ: reisado, guerreiro, maracatu, maneiro pau
• PIAUÍ: reisado, coco-de-roda
• MARANHÃO: tambor de crioula, boi de pindaré, boi de matraca, boi de orquestra, boi de costa de mão, tambor de mina, reggae maranhense

This post is also on: Português English Deutsch Español Français