Zé Paraíba – De São Paulo ao Ceará (1974)

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Zé Paraíba – De São Paulo ao Ceará
1974 Beverly (81.269)


01 – De São Paulo ao Ceará (Renato Leite)
02 – Bagunceiro (Zé Paraíba)
03 – São João na roça (Luiz Gonzaga – Zé Dantas)
04 – Teimoso (Renato Leite)
05 – Sarrabuiado (Zé Paraíba)
06 – Remoido bom (Oscar Teodoro)
07 – Fumaçando (Zé Paraíba)
08 – Revendo Brasília (Renato Leite)
09 – Forró no Juazeiro (Renato Leite)
10 – Xodó de 8 baixos (Zé Paraíba)
11 – Remelexo (Renato Leite)
12 – Reboliço (Zé Paraíba)


Vinyl -> Sansui XP-99 with Denon DL-160 capsule >
 Sansui G-7500 receiver> Zoom H4N at 24-bit 96khz -> Click Repair -> individual clicks and pops removed in Adobe Audition 3.0 -> Dithering and resampling (for 16 bit only) in iZotope Rx Advanced


This is an instrumental album of forró pé de serra by hotshot accordionist Zé Paraíba, who has recorded dozens of albums. But this one presents the listener with a particularly provocative album cover. It provokes questions and more questions the longer a person stares at it. Who is he talking to on the telephone? Is he receiving a call or making a call? Don’t be ridiculous, it’s Zé Paraíba, you don’t call him — he calls you! Well then, what is the call about? Did he find a lost dog, the one uncomfortably cradled in his lap? Is he calling the cleaners to find out if his other shirt is ready to pick up? “Which one?! The one with the rhinos and giraffes on it, of course. Yes, the one with the sarapatel stains. It’s still not ready? Vai tomar no cú, seu safado!” Zé Paraíba is always getting in arguments with dry cleaners and tailors. It is up to you, the audience, to decide who reigns victorious, but if you encounter Zé Paraíba on the street I suggest you compliment his clothing.

This record came from my friend Tchêras’ collection and was transferred at his house at one of our extended sessions of conversation and music. This is a good record for conversation, especially if you are lucky enough to have a friend as solid as Tchêras, with whom I can hang out with for hours and never get bored, without the need for any alcoholic lubrication. And without the engaging conversation, a record like De São Paulo ao Ceará usually necessitates a drink or two, because twelve tracks of instrumental forró is an awful damn lot. I recommend invoking your inner DJ and pulling out a few tracks for your mix tape, party, or rug-cutting session, because LP’s like this are not necessarily meant to be listened to from start to finish. In fact while editing some of the blemishes out of the vinyl, I began thinking about how João Donato started out as an accordion player and hated it. He once said that if there is music in hell, it would be an orchestra comprised entirely of accordions, and where no one is allowed to sing. (Actually I am not sure if he ever said that, I may be making that up.)  

But with that caveat, this is in fact solid pé de serra, or “traditional” forró,” and at any São João party worthy of the name you will find an instrumental ensemble like this, although the presence here of guitar and cavaquinho is often optional. In cities in the northeastern interior, pé de serra might still be an integral part of São João but it is also frequently segregated onto a separate stage from the more popular electrified forró estilizado (modified or stylized forró) of groups with classy names like Garota Safada. Now, on principle I make an effort not to dismiss entire genres or subgenres of music base on classist or elitist biases. It is all too common a sight to find a middle class member of the university set preaching about the real popular culture and how those uneducated and poor people in the small town just don’t know what’s good for them and go on listening to that brash, vulgar and impossibly-loud forró estiliazado, “music of low quality” (the phrase is música de baixa qualidade, with ‘quality’ having a distinctly classist ring). The paternalistic attitudes behind those kind of sentiments need to be questioned. That being said, I am still trying to find some redeeming musical qualities and examples of ‘forró estiliazdo’ because I generally find it to be god-awful and unappealing, although the best bands are definitely capable of coming up with a catchy tune now and then. So catchy that they are blasted out of car trunks on every street corner from São João until Carnaval, inescapable soundtracks that you hear in your sleep in spite of yourself, like an infernal accordion orchestra except substituted with synthesizers equipped with accordion and brass patches, requiring deep hypnosis to yield a cure.

Putting aside the elitist paternalism of the universitários regarding “the masses” and what they should be listening to, there are legitimate concerns about preserving the old-school pé de serra. In the first place, it is not as if there needs to be an either-or choice: although there might be some who regard it as “old fashioned”, and in my experience many cannot identify an old song with its composer or singer like a generation or two before them, most of the audience that goes to an electric, stylized forró show would also dance to a good traditional pé de serra band if given the opportunity. And therein lies the crux of the issue – opportunity. There is a lot of money to be made off of the slick electric forró bands mounted on the backs of huge sound trucks (trios eléctricos) and typically adorned with scantily-clad dancing females. There is not so much money in pé de serra. In the world of big events, the more traditional styles often depend on state subsidies and arts funding to maintain visibility, although on the local level you can find neighborhoods or church parishes pooling their money to hire a local forró band to play for a family-oriented São João.  I have never gone to commemorate São João in the city of Caruarú, where it holds a record in the Guinness Book for the largest outdoor celebration or concert, because I think I’ve become slightly agoraphobic over the years (a very un-Brazilian trait, mind you).  But the tension between “traditional” and “modern / stylized” forró has been a hot topic there over the last decade.  Elsewhere in Pernambuco, some of the most “traditional” music during São João can be found in Recife at places like Sítio Trindade and the Pátio de São Pedro, free performances that would not be possible without the robust system of cultural subsidies in place there, while in the small towns of the interior – the “source” of much of this cultura popular – the municipal governments are swayed by kickbacks and corporate sponsorship money to allow these gigantic trios eléctricos to set up in their town and rattle windows with their trucks loaded with subwoofers. For whatever reason, in Pernambuco the majority of these touring groups come from Ceará and the music they play is heavily influenced by styles made popular in Bahia like axê and calypso. When you talk to local musicians or music fans over the age of 30 in these small towns, you are likely to hear someone express that their traditional celebrations (like São João) are being “colonized” by this stuff coming from outside their borders, and that there is a need to preserve their raízes or roots. However the flipside of this argument is that these trio eléctrico bands have adopted remarkably successful business models that allow them to exist as self-managed entities. Although some do get quite a bit of radio airplay in the interior, and exposure on television, these styles are by and large not dependent at all on record sales (their fans are more likely to buy pirated copies of their albums on the street), but subsist by relentless touring. The more traditional acts, as well as innovative / artsy / hybrid artists that cater to the university crowd, have depended largely on the aforementioned arts funding and state subsidies to stay visible, and as a result have often suffered from meager renumeration or payments that show up so late as to be leave a lot of people hungry. (It is common for artists to be left waiting up to six months to a year to receive payment for one of the city- or state-sponsored presentation during Carnaval.) So in a sort of ironic twist, more and more independent “high-brow” bands and artists are beginning to look toward corporate partnership to fund mini-tours. This seems to be often presented as some kind of novel idea about ‘sustainable’ art but the more candid artists will likely admit that this model was pioneered by these “low class” bands years ago, instead of being left suckling at the teat of the benevolent state, a situation that can be just as unstable as the free market when you consider how much depends on the patronage systems of local political bosses.

I’ve strayed a long way from Zé Paraíba, his zoological shirt, and mysterious phone call. But I guess the digression can still be relevant, because back in 1974, only a few years into the “Disco É Cultura” incentives that the military regime put into the phonographic industry, this kind of good-time party music was still of relatively little consequence in the cultural hierarchy. Although forró pé de serra had briefly been so fashionable in the 1940s and 50s as to become a new kind of ‘national music’ embraced as widely as samba, it was overtaken in the marketplace by the bossa nova craze and went through a period of relative obscurity. Northeastern composers and a handful of ‘traditional’ singers had become de rigeur again starting with the ‘engaged’ musical theater Show Opinão and later with the Tropicalistas trotting out tunes from Luiz Gonzaga, the king of baião, and Jackson do Pandeiro (the king of rhythm!) whose careers underwent a second wind. Samba giants like Clara Nunes or Elza Soares included forró and baião in their repertoires. Some forró artists began to play in the upper-middle class Zona Sul of Rio for the first time of their lives, where they performed in theaters rather than dance halls, in big “shows” that employed directors and set designers. (This close relationship with the theater, particularly with MPB from the 60s onward, merits a whole other blog post or maybe a book.) Other singers like Ary Lobo or Marinês had more modest careers in this era. The unique Dominguinhos, a student of Gonzaga’s and his natural heir on the accordion, featured prominently on some of the biggest-selling albums of top-shelf MPB in the seventies, but the records released under his own name only garnered a cult following. Forró had become another tonal shading in the palette of Brazilian musicians and composers, a fonte or well to be dipped into for inspiration, but rarely an end in itself. Then there were the regional conjuntos like Trio Nordestino and their fans who never really went away, and virtuosos like Zé Paraíba, always ready to drop into the nearest São João party and play for a receptive public. As much as I like to champion the idea of a symbiosis between the acts of listening and dancing, this type of instrumental forró is really better suited for getting up and moving than for sitting down and critically listening. Most likely, Zé Paraíba’s records were an appendage to his live performances, a physical souvenir to help spread the word for the next time he played in your town. This album may not rock your world, but it will move your feet. Or torso if you are into chair-dancing.    

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0 Comments

  1. getting good download speeds, thanks Flabber 😉

  2. The album cover is indeed provocative and your description of it is a good one, however, I have a narrative for it that I think is equally plausible. To wit:
    Zé Paraíba, disgraced member of the Tupí tribe, holds his dinner in his left hand as he finishes a phone call from Patrão Ouro, the kingpin of hydraulic gold mining on the Atlantic coast of Brazil. Paraíba sold out his tribe to become the overseer of Ouro’s operations and now enjoys the trappings of the bourgeois ruling class that he and his fellow tribesmen have been so thoroughly subjugated by. Gone is the native garb he wore so proudly and except for the haircut one would never know the tribal roots that Paraíba now repudiates. An icy, cold stare has replaced the welcoming smile he used to give so freely and his gaudy silk shirt is festooned with cartoonish images of the zebras and jungle cats he used to worship as sacred. As Paraíba reaches to hang up the phone and leave to do Ouro’s bidding he thinks, “Damn, these pants really cramp my testículos”.

  3. This may be the first album of forró pé de serra that I have heard. IMO a little goes a long way but I enjoyed it from a cultural curiosity standpoint. I'm not much of a dancer but I can only imagine the good time that would be had by those who know how to whirl to this stuff. Your writeup was extremely interesting, thougtful and informative as usual and I appreciate the time it must take you write stuff of that length and quality.

  4. Kovina Kris! Yes, a little DOES go a long way with this particular type of instrumental music. Maybe I should have put a disclaimer at the beginning: if you have never heard forró before, go get some Luiz Gonzaga or Jackson do Pandeiro – don't start here! All my Gonzaga links got taken down last year (perhaps because it was his centenary and there was a lot of activity around him). The Jackson links should still be up as well as Ary Lobo, it's good stuff from the 'golden era'.

    I liked your interpretation of the album cover too. You are spot on about the indigenous or faux-indigenous haircut. Your reading would be entirely plausible, except that they don't have zebras in South America.

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