If that trip to Brazil hits a last minute sang, Lusophone fun can be had right in your own
back yard!

Labor Day weekend overlapped Brazil’s Independence Day holiday so we hightailed it out of town for some tasty eats and music at Emilia's Restaurant in downtown Danbury, (68 Keller Street, 203-791-2005). This incredibly friendly hangout features a long bar, pool tables, restaurant and large disco dancefloor. Dinner was excellent at down to earth prices - shrimp pasties, $1; grilled quail, $2; palliea for two, $14; and Portuguese beer at $2.75 per! More than enough reason to make the 60 mi trek.

Friday night featured forró music and Saturday's band played samba. We opted for the forrobodó staring, Bizadão, a guitar and piano accordion duo.

A forrobodó is a dance party or place to play dance music in the sertão - the hot, dry, poor plains of Brazil's northeast. This folk term, forrobodó, is most often cited as the origin for describing the "forró" music played within. Another story tells how people working around the military bases of the 19th c. British peacekeeping force in Recife misheard the "for all" calls to attend unrestricted dances. A variation on this story has early 20th c multinational corporations using the English term to invite employees to their shindigs. Yet another said it was the railroad engineers hosting the dances. The genre greatest artists, Gonzaga, (Luis Gonzaga do Nascimento, 1912-1989) claims that he modernized and energized the baião once he settled in Rio in the 1940s, using the term forró for the first time in his compositions, "O Forró de Mané Vito" and "O Forró de Ze Antão".

With hazy origins, and embracing just about every dance step to come around for a hundred years in an area about the size of Europe, it's only natural that "forró" remains as precise and descriptive as "disco", with a beat as typical as "rock". Indeed the tempos, rhythms, and instrumentation vary greatly - one time sounding like a march, the next a polka, street samba or ballad.

Some of the rural dances that make up música nordestina (from the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, and Sergipe) that invariably found their way into forró include arrasta-pé, xote, xaxado, quadrilha, and baião. In general the music of the sertão borrowed most of it's dances and melodies from Europe, and mainly from Portugal. Arrasta-pé and the quadrilha were both 19th c square dances, the former having a distinctive foot-drag while the later was the Brazilian name for the French quadrille. The xote is derived from the schottische, danced in simple 2/4 time, while the xaxado is a men's line dance that became a macho-must when rumors spread that it was the bandit Lampião's favorite music. Far and away the most important influence on forró was the baião. This is a quick tempoed military music associated with fife-and-drum bands that was adapted to the guitar in this folk dance. There is much debate concerning forró - is it an even faster form of baião introduced at festivals and celebrations, or it's own form. Another 2/4 dance from the coastal edge of the Northeast with a strong African influence was the "coco". One of the few sources from outside the region was chamamé, another cowboy music only this from the far south, a 3/4 time accordion music common to littoral Brazil and Argentina.

The truth is nearly any danceable accordion music from the Northeast might be labeled a forró. Of course it needs a teary lyric. Most lyrics are simple allegories of love, lost love, and longing, and flat out tales of lust, partying and drinking. The playing of forró became a major self-aggrandizing theme, like "Danado de Bom" (Damn Good). Songs often reference water as if to conjure it up, like "Rio de Amarguras" ("River of Bitterness"), and one of forrós most recorded numbers, "E De Dar Agua Na Boca" ("Mouthwatering"). Another favorite theme is the romanticized stories of "tough guys", usually cowpokes and bandits, the most famous surrounding the exploits of Lampião. Adopting the outfits of their bread-and-butter hero-banditos, the traditional forró accordionist-singer wore a leather Napoleonic cap and tasseled leather vest. (see the film, Bye Bye Brazil).

Self-exile created a new lyric thread of leaving, then longing for the sertão. Now one of the most barren places on earth was being romanticized in verse, dancers longing for the hell of home while recounting the hell of displacement. Gonzaga and Humberto Teixeira co-wrote one of Brazil's most beloved songs, "Asa Branca" (White Wing) with such a theme.

Besides Gonzaga the genres most revered artists include his son Gonzaguinha, his adopted son Dominguinhos (José Dominguinhos de Moraes, b: 1941) and Jackson do Pandeiro (1919-1982). In a larger context, as so many northeasterners sought work in the large cities because of drought, the music came to influence main stream Brazilian pop artists like Elba Ramalho and Raimundo Fagner.

...now back to the show:

The all-CD DJ got things going with some forró and a lot of updated cowboy tunes from this region known as, 'sertaneja,' with an obvious electronic drum track. Bizadão found it hard to break the mood, as they added their own much too heavy backbeat to each tune. The sound was best on the dancefloor, forcing us to invent our own versions of these traditional dances. A totally enjoyable evening recommended to all.

Those of you who yearn for some fried clams and sad morna can make the journey along I-95 to New Bedford. A surprising number of Cape Verdians live in the cities along America's North East coastline, where these fishermen settled within the already established Portuguese community.

Morna is the defining song form of the Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) archipelago, a string of 10 islands in the Atlantic, about 350 miles off the coast of West Africa. The Portuguese were early colonizers whose music, infused with longing, was an essential component in the hybrids appearing in both Brazil & Cape Verde. The very word, "morna," was coined to mirror the music's pace and subject matter - a languid, minor key commentary on lost-love, sadness, and "mourning" for a home- land that nearly every inhabitant leaves at one time or another to make a living.

Despite a roadblock of Portuguese restaurants there was time to buy a few local string band CDs. One discovery, a various artists' disk, is, Homenagem a Djedjinho, (no label, AL 0001, 1996), a tribute to violinist José Gomes da Graça (1912 - 1994, aka Djedjinho or Little Joe). Djedjinho, a master violinist, is featured here with a great band and the husky voiced revelation, Alcides da Graça, on this posthumous release put together by José's children.

Another fine disk is by Djom de Mane D'onorfu and Fatima Evora, Ano 2000, (Morabeza Rec., no number, 1997). Djom holds the violin (rabeca) against his chest and projects a haunting sound - hollow & scratchy, a bit like a North African folk violin. On some numbers he's joined by vocalist Fatima Evora, a niece of the better-known Cesaria.

The Lusophone section is in the northern end of New Bedford, along or near Acushnet Ave. Shopping sources include Tropical Barbershop, 282 Union St., and Neves Travel on Acushnet. My fave is Pimentels Multilingual Books & Records at 1709 Acushnet Ave. Here I found the above CDs and stuffed in a basket in the back, a pile of Leonard Cohen 45's in picture sleeves. Food detours included Antonio's Cafe on Coggeshall St., for Portuguese (don’t forget the green wine, Vinho Verde) and Gene's Famous Seafood (technically in Fairview) for anything you can catch in the sea, bread and fry.

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