Spirits & Spices: for all or for maids and taxi drivers only ?

March 18, 2011

for all or for maids and taxi drivers only ?

There are three or four competing theories about the origin of the word forró. The most convincing is that forró is a derivative of forrobodó, an Afro-Brazilian word meaning “great party” or “commotion.” Another theory holds that forró is a corruption of “for all” and dates from the early 1900s, when the railroad companies would throw big dances on the weekend and designate them as either “employees only” or open to the general populace, “for all.”

Forró emerged as a distinct style of dance music in the late 1800s, about the time Brazil was in the process of becoming a republic. Forró, a name which refers both to a dance and to the accompanying music, is an energetic blend of Afro-Brazilian percussion and European dance music of the late

1800s, specifically the polkas, waltzes and mazurkas that constituted the primary accordion repertoire at the time.

Forró developed in the northeastern part of Brazil, the most Africanized region of the country. Most of the African slaves the Portuguese brought into Brazil worked the huge plantations along the Atlantic coast, and many of the descendants of those slaves have remained in the general area. Relegated to less desirable land a few miles inland, large numbers of thenordestinos (northeasterners) live in an arid, rocky region known as the sertão.
Life there is hardscrabble and unforgiving. Forró began the evolution from regional style to national obsession as nordestinos gave up on farming and moved to an even more uncertain life in the coastal cities such as Recife and Salvador and, farther south, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The harshness of life on the sertão is indicated by the name given to those who pack it in for the cities—flagelados, the scourged.
The nationalization of forró was completed by accordionist Luiz Gonzaga (1912-1989),
who reinvigorated the traditional folk style and turned forró into a national craze
that has influenced all subsequent Brazilian music.

Traditional forró, known as forró pé de serra, is played on just three instruments: the piano accordion, a metal triangle and a large bass drum called the zabumba, played with a mallet in one hand and a stick called a bacalhau in the other. The melody is played by the accordion, with the drum and triangle pounding out a surprisingly complex and funky polyrhythmic beat.

Forró includes both accordion-led instrumentals and songs. Like vernacular music the world over, the subject matter of many forró songs is love, in all of its many manifestations—lost, found, unrequited, unforgettable, passion, jealousy and so on. Songs that aren’t about love mainly address the more serious concerns of the nordestinos—alienation, cultural dislocation, racial prejudice and a longing sense of nostalgia.