Category: Forró

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Jackson do Pandeiro – Raízes Nordestinas (1999)

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Jackson do Pandeiro – Raízes Nordestinas
1999 EMI / Copacabana326 520558 2

Tonight is the night honoring São João, St. John the Baptist.  It’s a very traditional holiday in northeast Brazil and this blog used to have a tradition of São João and Festa Junina-themed posts at this time of the year.  But with everything else going on in the world, and the tragiclusterfuck that is Brazil under fascist fan-boy Bozonazi, I honestly didn’t even notice how quickly June has whizzed by.  So here is a rather generic, eleventh-hour post for São João, with a generic compilation of the great Jackson do Pandeiro.  So generic is this post that I am not going to say anything about the repertoire, the sound, the songwriting credits, none of it.

1 Sebastiana (Rosil Cavalcanti)
2 Forró Em Limoeiro (Edgar Ferreira)
3 Um A Um (Edgar Ferreira)
4 Cabo Tenório (Rosil Cavalcanti)
5 Coco Social (Rosil Cavalcanti)
6 Dezessete Na Corrente (Edgard Ferreira/Manoel Firmino Alves)
7 Cajueiro (Jackson do Pandeiro/Raimundo Baima)
8 Cumpadre João (Jackson do Pandeiro/Rosil Cavalcanti)
9 Coco de Improviso (Edson Menezes/Alventino Cavalcanti/Jackson do Pandeiro)
10 Xote De Copacabana (Jackson do Pandeiro)
11 O Crime Não Compensa (Genival Macedo/Eleno Clemente)
12 Meu Patrão (José Gomes/Riachão)
13 A Mulher Do Aníbal (Genival Macedo/Nestor de Paula)
14 Boi Tungão (Jackson do Pandeiro)
15 No Quebradinho (Marçal Araújo/José dos Prazeres)
16 O Canto da Ema (Alventino Cavalcanti/Aires Viana/João do Vale)
17 Moxotó (Rosil Cavalcanti/José Gomes)
18 Forró Em Caruaru (Zé Dantas)
19 Rosa (Rui de Morais E Silva)
20 Vou Gargalhar (Edgar Ferreira)

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Trio Nordestino – E O Homem De Saia (1979)

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Trio Nordestino E O Homem De Saia
1979 Copacabana COELP41150

01. Fartura de beijo (Durval Vieira – Jorge Paulo)
02. Não sou culpado (Jacinto José – Lindolfo Barbosa)
03. Homem de saia (Enéas de Castro – Gatinho)
04. Chamego proibido (Jorge de Altinho – Lindolfo Barbosa)
05. O fazendeiro (Geraldo Barbosa – Xavier)
06. Linda sinfonia (João Silva – J. B. Aquino)
07. Torrado de moça nova (João Silva – J. B. Aquino)
08. Amor demais (Jorge de Altinho – Francisco Costa)
09. Bem obrigado (Jair do Pandeiro – Severino Ramos)
10. Tá com raiva de mim? (Onildo Almeida)
11. Amor misterioso (Midiam Alves – Lindolfo Barbosa)
12. O xouxinho (João Silva)

Transfer info:  Copacabana vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply); Creek Audio OBH-15; Audioquest King Cobra cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed with Click Repair on light settings, manually auditioning the output; further clicks removed with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

Well I had this post nearly ready to share for Saturday but other things got in the way.  Although the festas juninas were officially over, there were still pockets of activity and parties going on in the Northeast through the weekend.  Oh well, pé de serra has no expiration date, it’s good all year round.

The album title “Trio Nordestino and The Man In The Dress”  might initially have caused me some trepidation.  Northeast Brazil, for all its charms, is also a deeply troubled place and has been since the days of colonization and slavery.  It bears the dubious distinction of leading the country in homicides and in violence against women.   Add to those statistics a horrifying rate of violence against transgender individuals, and one could almost forgive the ham-fisted public health “discourse analysis” article I unfortunately stumbled across recently, which sought to link the lyrical representations of masculinity (and related themes of violence, homophobia, etc) to this hard data.  There are, of course, all kinds of valid arguments one could make by looking at cultural production this way, but these authors chose to cherry pick the worst examples they could find (using a broad quantitative sampling technique whose criteria are known only to them), as well as some very obscure songs that had no broad social impact and were probably not heard beyond a few hundred people, and decontextualized them rather thoroughly to hammer home a very unsophisticated, knee-jerk argument that did a disservice to the very real problem of gender-based violence.

So,  you can imagine my relief when the lyrics of “Homem de saia” turn out to be not just relatively harmless, but practically progressive, to use the current parlance.  It’s simply about a man trying to crash an all-female social event, a party where everyone from the person working the door to the members of the band were all women, by disguising himself in a dress. He is found out, and bounced from the party. Hilarity ensues?  Anyway, one could argue that Trio Nordestino e o Homem de Saia is about the role of exclusively female spaces and their necessity in a culture tainted by patriarchy, which encompasses contentious debates between women with a uterus and transwomen.  Who knew Trio Nordestino would be so prescient?

And for my next trick, I’m going to make this glass of whisky disappear.

Musically speaking, this album once again shows the group in fine form and with lots of memorable tunes, even if it lacks contributions from Dominguinhos and Anastacia like the last one I posted.   Não sou culpado is a catchy invocation blending proud regionalism with an assertion of the Nordestino’s brasilidade or national belonging.  Linda sinfonia brings us a frevo in a forró style.   Bem obrigado sounds like it was written for Jackson do Pandeiro and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him covering it in the 1980’s, it has his syncopation and cadence imitated perfectly.  But what may be most striking is that the Trio has “modernized” with electric bass and a full drum kit here.  Even I tend to hear the new, electric forró bands – most of which are not my cup of tea – as having little to do with traditional pé de serra.  But as always, these things are more of a continuum than a sharp break.  If you listen to the slightly-funky bass riffs on this album and the way the drummer plays loud, booming fills on the tom-tom drums at the end of the choruses of the album’s title track,  the stuff ain’t that different than Mastruz Com Leite, arrangement-wise.

I realize that I’ve fallen into the trap of only posting about this type of music around São João season, which is a pity.  I promise to do better in the future and keep them coming throughout the year.

 

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Quinteto Violado – Folguedo (1975)

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Quinteto Violado
Folguedo
1975 Philips 6349 143 Série De Luxo

A1 Roda De Ciranda No. 2 (Luciano Pimentel, Marcelo Melo, Toinho) 2:31
A2 Rumo Norte (Toinho) 3:00
A3 Chegada De Inverno (Fernando Filizola, Zé Dantas) 2:52
A4 A Volta Da Asa Branca (Luiz Gonzaga, Zé Dantas) 2:52
A5 Olé Menina (Marcelo Melo, Toinho) 3:05
A6 Coisas Novas (Marcelo Melo, Toinho) 2:42
A7 Mundão (Fernando Filizola, Luciano Pimentel) 1:48
B1 Sete Meninas (Dominguinhos, Toinho) 2:24
B2 Brincando De Boi (Fernando Filizola, Luciano Pimentel) 3:07
B3 Prece Ao Vento (Fernando Luiz Camara, Alcyr Pires Vermelho, Gilvan Chaves) 3:13
B4 Crendice (Roberto Santana, Toinho Alves) 2:50
B5 Buruçu Em Garanhuns (Sando, Toinho) 2:54
B6 Canindé (Fernando Filizola, Luciano Pimentel) 2:30
B7 Folguedo (Fernando Filizola, Luciano Pimentel) 1:52

Arranged By – Quinteto Violado
Artwork – Jorge Vianna
Design – Lobianco, Aldo luiz
Mastered By – Joaquim Figueira
Photography By – Rodolpho Machado
Producer – Paulinho Tapajós
Studio technicians – Paulo Sergio, Zé Guilherme

Produced & Distributed by CBD Phonogram
Matrix / Runout: 200 6349143 A1
Matrix / Runout: 200 6349143 B1

Vinyl transfer info:  Original Philips vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply); Creek Audio OBH-15; AUdioquest King Cobra cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 96khz; clicks and pops removed with Click Repair on light settings, manually auditioning the output; further clicks removed with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

Today (June 24) is the feast day of St. John the Baptist, otherwise known as São João holiday in Brazil, which of course is a really huge deal in Brazil.   Earlier this week we had an offering from Trio Nordestino.  Now let’s have something for the universitário set with this mid-70’s record from Quinteto Violado.  This record seemed a bit more fun to prepare for the blog than the other record of theirs  that I posted a whole FOUR YEARS ago, over here.  There you can read all about my misgivings about this kind of conservatory-trained appropriation of roots music.  I’m not sure if I’ve loosened up, or if they have on this record – the group sounds a little less “studied” and more flowing here.  Even if Berra-boi might be the “better” record, it sounds like they are having fun here.  The blazing instrumental acrobatics of Rumo Norte and its wonderful, almost Beatle-esque vocal harmonies make me hopeful they won’t be hamstrung by any traditionalist puritanism. Or maybe the sense of fun  is  really just the “well-oiled machine” effect of groups that have been playing together for a while as a unit.  It’s hard not to be impressed by their virtuosity here, but it still lacks something in the way of passionate conviction.  Their deconstruction of the Luiz Gonzaga / Zé Dantas classic, A Volta da Asa Brança, is certainly fun to hear.  It’s artful (or maybe just ‘artsy’), clever and playful and non-confrontational (unlike Caetano Veloso’s rendition that pushes into edgy performance art territory, as seen in the Phono 73 film).  It’s cool, and their drummer is on fire in the bridge, but it’s coolness is also kind of emotionally flat, isn’t it?  Quinteto Violado often sounds like they just need a vocalist with some soul to make their case more convincing.  But then again, awkward or uninspiring vocalists seem to be a thing in music linked to Pernambuco, so maybe its just something I’m still not ‘getting’ after all this time.  Like much about ‘roots music’ itself, sometimes you just have to be from there, so just ignore everything I’m saying.  Just listen to the drummer, he’s incredible.  What the hell is he doing on Mundão, besides blowing my mind?

They hit all the Northeastern folkloric touchstones here, with motifs from at least a dozen different genres of music or ‘dramatic dances’ that you will find only in the Nordeste, with particular emphasis on their native Pernambuco.  Obviously there is the presence of forró and even a guest appearance by the late, great Dominguinhos, who co-authored “Sete Meninas,” which opens up the second side.  He even sings a little on it.   You’ll also hear  a simulated glimpse of a sacred jurema ceremony and a devotional homage to the caboclo spirits that animate them on Canindé.   Ciranda, chegança, boi bumba, caboclinhos,  cavalo marinho, and pifanos, pifanos, pifanos!  If those words alone excite you then you will at least enjoy spinning this a few times.  If you don’t know them, well don’t expect me to be all didactic about it, after all I’m not writing a book here.  If I were writing a book, my life would probably be in a lot better shape than it is right now.  At the very least I wouldn’t be spending the night of São João, Midsummer’s Eve in my hemisphere, alone in front of a computer screen.

So sit beside the breakfast table,
think about your troubles,
pour yourself some pinga,
and think about the bubbles.
And celebrate the bonfires
And things made out of corn
because he not busy dying
is busy being born.

password: vibes

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Abdias – E Seus Sambas do Sucesso (1971)

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Abdias – “E Seus Sambas de Sucesso”
Released 1971 on CBS/Entré (104194)

01. Pra não morrer de tristeza (João Silva – K. Boclinho)
02. Minha ex-mulher (Severino Ramos – José Pereira)
03. Prefiro a Bohemia (Osvaldo Oliveira – Ayrão Reis)
04. Mocidade que perdi (Laurentino Azevedo – Zito de Souza)
05. Ninguém gosta de ninguém (Antonio Barros)
06. Seu dia chegará (Geraldo Gomes – Anatalicio)
07. Pra não me matar de dor (Anatalicio)
08. Vou doar meu coração (Antonio Barros)
09. Fraguei (Osvaldo Oliveira – Dilson Doria)
10. Nunca mais hei de beber (Elias Soares)
11. Não posso lhe perdoar (Jacinto Silva – Sebastião Rodrigues)
12. Tarimba de bambú (Serafim Adriano – Zito de Souza)

Vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply); Creek Audio OBH-15; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 96khz; ClickRepair, adjusted manually; clicks and pops removed individually with Adobe Audition 3.0; resampled using iZotope RX 2 Advanced SRC and dithered with MBIT+ for 16-bit. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp.  Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

 

The day of São João (June 23) is long gone and yesterday was technically the last day of the festas juninas cycle, but there will still be a few stray parties, which some people have taken to calling festas julinas .  I really dropped the ball on sharing any forró records this year and I apologize to all of you for it.  On the bright side, I did fix a bunch of old links that had been killed by Blogger.   I’m still feeling restless and edgy, man, like it’s all about breaking boundaries and stuff with me, you dig?  So this record only tangentially fits into the holiday cycle, because these are all sambas, but performed with instrumentation associated with forró and baião.    Abdias (full name, José Abdias de Farias) had quite a career in forró, producing records by Trio Nordestino and Jackson do Pandeiro, and played an important role in the career of Marinês, to whom he was married at one point.   He has some arranging and songwriting credits (including one number co-authored with João do Vale, “Balancero da Usina”), but on this disc his repertoire is entirely composed by others.  These are all mostly sambas lamenting broken hearts and doomed love, but (as samba often does) they manage to sound pretty upbeat throughout all the heartache.  A couple of these are credited to an Antonio Barros, who – if this is the same individual – was a colleague of Luiz Gonzaga, who played triangle in his band (yeah that’s right, the triangle, you wanna make something of it?) and wrote at least a couple dozen forró tunes.  One of my favorite tunes here is from Jacinto Silva and Sebastião Rodrigues, “Não posso lhe perdoar,” in fact I liked it so much that I included it on Flabbergasted Freeform No. 14.

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24bit

password: vibes