1. Start Here
Introduction
Audio: Som da Massa, “Transcontinental Baião”
SW: I’m Schuyler Whelden.
JCV: I’m Juliana Cantarelli Vita
SW: This is Massa, a podcast about Brazilian music and culture.
JCV: Schuyler and I are music professors and musicians. In each episode we dive into a specific genre, song, artist, or issue in Brazilian music to try to understand how it works and what it means. Though today is a little different…
SW: Yes, it is, Juliana! Today we are going to introduce ourselves and the conceit of the podcast.
JCV: Right, we’re going to talk a bit about why we’re doing this and how we see it working.
Who we are
SW: How about we start by introducing ourselves?
JCV: Sure!
SW: So, Juliana, where are you from (he pretends not to know)?
JCV: I was born and raised in Recife, Brazil.
SW: That’s the capital of the state of Pernambuco, which is in the Northeast of Brazil, right?
JCV: Yup, it's the best city in a straight line in the world.
SW: Okay, so I’m going to ask you what every single person asks you when they find out that you study and teach music.
SW & JCV in unison: What instrument do you play?
JCV: Well, my primary instrument is violin, but I also play percussion and other instruments as well.
SW: Did you grow up playing music?
JCV: Yes, I started playing music at 5 years old at an arts school, and then I picked up the violin at 7.
SW: Were you playing art music on the violin?
JCV: Yes. I always had two lives, musically. I studied violin at a conservatory, but at home, thanks to my parents, I was educated in popular culture and popular music. So at the same time that I was playing Beethoven with the youth orchestra, they were playing Luiz Gonzaga and Black Sabbath for me at home.
SW: You studied in conservatory all the way through undergrad?
JCV: Yes, I studied music education at the Federal University of Pernambuco and violin performance at Pernambucan Conservatory.
SW: Both at the same time?
JCV: Yes.
SW: Then what?
JCV: Then I did a masters in Music Education at West Virginia University, followed by my doctoral studies at the University of Washington.
SW: Wow. So, in addition to your music education studies, have you kept playing music?
JCV: Oh yes. So, I compose and play popular music with a number of different projects and I also play and lead a maracatu de baque virado ensemble, which is a music tradition native to Recife.
SW: Okay, we’re going to talk about that. When did you start playing maracatu de baque virado?
JCV: In addition to popular music, my parents introduced me to local traditions. So every Sunday, they took me to the neighborhood of Old Recife to participate in musical events that focused on maracatu and ciranda.
SW: Aha, cool!
JCV: But I only started playing maracatu seriously in 2011.
SW: Got it.
Audio: Nação do Maracatu Porto Rico, “Tumaraca/Saudações aos 500 anos” (Youtube) (Spotify)
JCV: So what about you, Schuyler?
JCV & SW in unison: “What instrument do you play?”
SW: Well, I guess my primary instrument is guitar, but I’ve dabbled in a bunch of things. None of which I play very well.
JCV: When did you start playing music?
SW: Initially, I started in the church. I sang in the choir and stuff like that. And I studied piano and tried my hand at a few other things like violin and trumpet, but they didn’t stick. I eventually picked up the guitar and percussion, and you know.
JCV: And then what?
SW: I studied Ethnomusicology as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University and later got my masters and PhD in musicology at UCLA. Right now, I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Holy Cross in Massachusetts, which is the state where I grew up.
JCV: How did you end up studying Brazilian music?
SW: So when I was an undergrad, some friends turned me on to some Brazilian musicians—specifically Airto Moreira and Hermeto Pascoal—and when I graduated from college, I was lucky enough to get a grant to go to Brazil and study.
JCV: Oh wow, where did you go?
SW: That time I lived in the city of Salvador in Bahia for a few months. And actually I literally spent hours per week in record stores listening to the music that the owners of the stores recommended.
JCV: Oh, I've heard of record stores. They were a thing from the past, right?
SW: Yeah, it’s like Spotify or Apple Music, but in physical form. And they don’t have everything. And you have to pay for music to take it out of the store. But seriously, it was an amazing education. I remember falling in love with this one song, “Dança da Solidão,” which I’d heard Marisa Monte sing. And the shop owner explained that it was a song by Paulinho da Viola, so then I ended up buying all of his records.
JCV: That's awesome!
Audio: Paulinho da Viola, "Dança da Solidão" (Youtube) (Spotify)
What we study
SW: Juliana, can you talk a little bit more about your work as a researcher?
JCV: Okay, so I live in the intersections of pedagogy and tradition: understanding teaching and learning practices within different contexts. When I was an undergraduate, I started applying my pedagogical studies to maracatu de baque virado, which I had been playing.
SW: So what did that look like for you to bring those two different strands of your life together?
JCV: Well, that was pretty cool, because then my two parallel lives kind of blended together. I was studying transmission methods—you know, how these traditions were passed on from generation to generation.
SW: You were presenting this research at the conference where we met, right?
JCV: Yes, but from the perspective of the children who were learning maracatu.
SW: Oh cool, so this work continued past your undergraduate studies then, obviously?
JCV: Yes, but it wasn’t the focus of my master’s thesis. At WVU, I focused on the use of Afro-Brazilian music in childhood education here in the United States and how the values and meanings of that music survived or changed in a very different context.
SW: Wow, that's really interesting. So, now you're working on your dissertation. What about that?
JCV: You’re not supposed to ask about that. It’s kind of a rule.
SW: Sorry.
JCV: But, it’s not about Brazilian music. I’m studying how archives are used with elementary school children as a means of fostering multicultural sensitivity.
SW: Whoa, that’s amazing! Is it fair to say that your doctoral studies lean more on the music education side of your musical life?
JCV: Yes, that's accurate. Now, how about you? What about your research?
SW: Well, I’m sure we’ll get into one of these episodes, but my research is about Brazilian popular music and politics. My current book project is about a musical called Opinião which was staged in 1964 at the beginning of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
JCV: Ah, yes, you presented on this at the conference where we met!
SW: Yes, I did! Opinião is an interesting case, because it includes music from a number of seemingly disparate genres, like samba, a number of Northeastern dance rhythms, and the music that would eventually become the genre called MPB.
JCV: Wow, that's fascinating. Where did you do your research?
SW: Mostly in Rio de Janeiro. I looked at archival materials related to Opinião and I was lucky enough to interview a number of people who saw or participated in the show.
JCV: Wow, so you did spend some time in Brazil. How long did you live in Brazil?
SW: A couple of years on and off. As long as 9 months at a time. But I’ve actually never been to Pernambuco.
JCV: It’s okay, I’ve never been to Massachusetts.
Audio: Bee-Gees, “Massachusetts” (Youtube) (Spotify)
Who we are not
SW: One more thing before we get to the podcast: let’s talk about the limitations that you and I are bringing to this project.
JCV: Right, it’s important to be upfront about our positionality vis-à-vis these music traditions, because it’s the filter through which we hear the world.
SW: Agreed. Personally, I’m a cultural outsider to the stuff I study on multiple levels. Most of the music I study originates in Afro-Brazilian communities, but I’m a White person from the United States. I’m also not of the same generation as the musicians I study, for the most part. And though I speak Portuguese pretty well, I’m not a native speaker.
JCV: For me, the fact that I’m Brazilian doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily a cultural insider either. Although I might be seen as a Latina in the U.S.—and yes, I do identify as Latina in Brazil as well—but I’m White there. And though I’m part of this conglomerate of Brazilians in the U.S., in Brazil, I’m a Northeasterner, which comes with its own set of stereotypes and prejudices.
SW: True. We’ll surely get into Brazil’s complicated history of White supremacy and racism, as well as other kinds of discrimination, like regionalism, as we go. And we're gonna do our best to explain how race is treated differently, and how it intersects with class and other factors differently in Brazil than it does in the United States, for example.
What is our focus?
JCV: So, what is this podcast for?
SW: Well, when we started discussing it, we both felt the lack of an educationally oriented podcast about Brazilian music.
JCV: Yeah, there are so many great podcasts, including some that talk about Brazilian music, but mostly they are either in Portuguese or don’t go into a lot of depth about the musical & contextual details.
SW: Right! With so many people turning to podcasts as a learning tool, we thought it would be worthwhile to put together a library of episodes on Brazilian music.
JCV: The problem is that there are basically only samba and bossa nova and that’s it.
SW: Right, so we’ll have two episodes and be done.
JCV: Sounds great!
SW: But seriously, there are basically unlimited topics.
JCV: Indeed. We’re going to cover so much more than just samba and bossa nova. In fact, our first few episodes are about the music of the Afro-Brazilian religion called candomblé.
Audio: Jorge Alabê, “Vassi for Exu” (Youtube) (Spotify)
The Episodes
SW: Speaking of episodes, let’s talk a little bit about the organization of the podcast.
JCV: Great! Well, we’re planning to release a new episode every two weeks. Mostly episodes will stand alone.
SW: Yeah, you don’t have to listen to them in order.
JCV: But if you do, they build on one another.
SW: Yeah, and in addition, we’ll be tagging episodes on our website with relevant themes, topics, and issues. So if you are excited about how, for example, candomblé’s music has influenced other traditions, you will be able to follow that path to find episodes on maracatu de baque virado, samba, and afoxé, for example.
JCV: Every episode will take on a different topic. It might be a whole genre, a specific artist, an event, or even a piece of music.
SW: Right, we’ll talk about the historical and cultural context for the music and get into some nerdy music stuff. But it won’t be too technical.
JCV: Yeah, just like we do in music education.
SW: Right, the idea is to explain things in a way that anyone who’s interested will be able to understand.
JCV: Our hope is that everyone from fans of Brazilian music to undergraduate students studying Brazil and professors teaching about it will find this interesting and useful.
SW: In fact, if you are an educator and you adopt any of these materials for your courses, we’d love to hear from you.
JCV: Actually, we’d love to hear from everybody, anybody! Feel free to reach out with feedback and questions.
SW: In addition to our explanation of this music, we’re going to be inviting culture bearers and researchers to share their experiences and work on the various topics.
JCV: Yes, stay tuned for some special guests in the very first episodes.
SW: So, our hope is that you’ll subscribe and listen along, but if not, you are welcome to treat our catalog as a sandbox to pick and choose the topics that most interest you.
JCV: Though, you might not know how much a topic interests you if you don’t listen to the episode…
SW: That’s true. Just listen to them all.
Zé Manoel, “Adupé Obaluaê” (Youtube) (Spotify)
Why “Massa”?
JCV: So, Schuyler, you suggested that we call this podcast “Massa.” Why?
SW: Because you say that all the time.
JCV: Ok, that’s fair. Actually, we have to explain: even though we’re speaking English right now, that’s kind of rare. We usually speak in Portuguese. And where I’m from, massa is a common slang term. Basically, it means, I don’t know, “cool.”
SW: Right, and because I’ve mostly spent time in other parts of Brazil, I picked up different slang terms, so this was something of a novelty for me.
JCV: Now you say it all the time.
SW: Right. Well, it also means other things, though, which is important.
JCV: Yes, one of the most common non-slang uses of the term is to describe dough, whether for making bread or for making a host of regional dishes, especially out of the starchy cassava root.
SW: And massa can also refer to a mass of people.
JCV: All of these uses sort of click with our intentions here: massa as dough is a fundamental part of social life, like traditional music.
SW: Massa as slang brings in the importance of music as popular culture.
JCV: And massa as the masses speaks to the role that music plays for many different kinds of people.
SW: It’s also the name of one of my favorite songs, by the Bahian singer Raimundo Sodré.
Audio: Raimundo Sodré, “A Massa” (Youtube) (Spotify)
JCV: Thanks for showing me this song. I am just so in love with it! I can't believe I am from the Northeast and I didn't know this song. How about, to give an idea of what the podcast is going to be like, we talk a little bit about how this song works and what it means?
SW: Sounds great! So this song was written by Raimundo Sodré and Jorge Portugal. It’s a popular song, a commercial recording that was released in 1980 on Polydor Records.
JCV: Even though it’s a pop song, classified in the genre of MPB, it makes use of some traditional styles and techniques that contribute to its meaning.
SW: Yes! For example, right off the bat, we are situated in a particular geography by the sounds of the viola caipira that introduces the song.
JCV: Yes, the viola caipira is a guitar-like instrument. It’s identifiable by its double courses of steel strings.
SW: Usually, when you hear an acoustic guitar in Brazilian popular music, it has nylon strings.
Audio: João Gilberto, “Aguas de Março” (Youtube)
JCV: So this is audibly different.
SW: Another difference is that while a standard guitar has six strings, this instrument has ten. But it’s treated as if it has five. So when you pluck a string, you’re actually plucking two strings.
JCV: Having so many strings vibrating at the same time produces extra harmonics and gives the instrument a particularly full sound.
SW: The viola caipira is associated with the interior of Brazil, rather than the coast, which is where most of the major urban areas are.
JCV: Yes, the name, viola caipira, translates, roughly, to “country guitar.”
SW: And this fits with Raimundo Sodré’s own origins. He’s from the interior of the state of Bahia, which is the largest state in Brazil’s Northeast region.
JCV: He’s from the small city of Ipirá, which is about 200 kilometers from the state capital of Salvador.
SW: There are a couple of signifiers that point more specifically to the Northeast region. First, the rhythmic basis of the song is a dance called baião.
JCV: Yes, the baião is characterized by a rhythmic pattern that divides the two-beat metrical cycle unevenly.
SW: It sounds like this:
Audio: Som da Massa, “Transcontinental Baião”
SW: You can hear this rhythm a bit when the electric bass comes in.
SW: But it becomes very obvious when the drums enter. Listen to the low pitched kick drum in the drum set. It’s imitating the zabumba, the drum in the traditional ensemble that plays the baião.
JCV: Brazilians might also be able to hear that the singer is from the Northeast by his accent. In the chorus he sings, “quando eu lembro da massa da mandioca mãe,” he says “mandioca” [with a hard “d”].
SW: Whereas in the southeast of Brazil, it would be pronounced “mandioca” [with a soft d]. Actually people wouldn’t even say “mandioca,” they’d say “aipim.”
JCV: That’s true! Mandioca is a root vegetable. In English, it’s called cassava. In Brazil, it’s one of our staple ingredients, but it has different names: mandioca, aipim, in my own state we call it macaxeira, depending on where you are. It’s found in many Brazilian dishes, often first cooked, and then mashed and kneaded into a dough.
SW: Speaking of which, let’s discuss the lyrics. Let’s start with the refrain, which has a few layers of meaning.
SW: The refrain is constructed as a call and response between Raimundo Sodré and a chorus of voices.
JCV: He starts with the line “quando eu lembro da massa da mandioca, mãe.”
SW: Which translates to “when I remember the cassava dough, mother.”
JCV: And the chorus of voices replies with “da massa.”
SW: This is tough to explain, but in Brazilian Portuguese, to say “I remember something,” there is a preposition, the word de, or of. So literally, it’s like “I remember of the cassava dough.”
JCV: So when the chorus replies “da massa,” they are literally saying “of the cassava dough”
SW: However, it’s possible that they aren’t repeating his lyric. That they are saying “of the masses” or “of the people.”
JCV: That would make the chorus lyric something like “I remember the cassava dough, mother, of the people.”
SW: Right, the song’s authors are playing with the multiple meanings of the word.
JCV: And because they are talking about a staple crop, a kind of food that sustains a huge portion of the population, particularly the rural population, it seems likely that he’s speaking both to his own experience, nostalgically, but also to a generalized experience that the masses can relate to.
SW: That’s my read on it. But what really breaks your heart is the characterization of the masses that comes in the verses.
JCV: Here he sings, “A dor da gente é dor de menino acanhado / Menino-bezerro pisado, no curral do mundo a penar / Que salta aos olhos, igual a um gemido calado / A sombra do mal-assombrado é a dor de nem poder chorar.”
SW: The first lyric there, “a dor da gente” could either be translated to “our pain” or the “the pain of the people.”
JCV: Right. “A gente,” in Brazilian Portuguese is both “the people” and how we say “us.”
SW: So he’s putting himself in the category, but also expanding outwards to include more than just his social group. Anyway, “Our pain (or the pain of the people) is the pain of a bashful boy / A boy standing like a calf in the world’s corral, struggling / A pain that leaps to your eyes like a silent moan / The shadow of the haunted is the pain of not even being able to cry.”
JCV: I mean, yeah... It seems like he’s speaking to the way that disenfranchised populations are left voiceless.
SW: In the second part of the verse, he connects these ideas to the song’s primary metaphor.
JCV: So, here he says, “Moinho de homens que nem jerimuns amassados / Mansos meninos domados, massa de medos iguais / Amassando a massa, a mão que amassa a comida / Esculpe, modela e castiga a massa dos homens normais.”
SW: Well, I’m definitely going to ruin this poetry by translating, but here goes: “A mill of humans like smashed pumpkins / Gentle tame children, a mass of equal fears / Kneading the dough, the hand that kneads the food / Sculpts, shapes, and punishes the mass of normal humans.”
JCV: So here, the masses are the massa, the dough. The world is kneading them, forcing them into roles, into subjugation, punishing them.
SW: The people who rely on this dough are, effectively, treated like the dough by the powerful.
JCV: In a later chorus, he makes the meaning even more explicit. “Quando eu lembro da massa da mandioca mãe / Da massa que planta a mandioca, mãe / A massa que eu falo é a que passa fome, mãe.”
SW: The first line is the same, “when I remember the cassava dough, mother.” And then he says, “I remember the masses that plant the cassava, mother. The masses I speak of are the ones that go hungry, mother.”
JCV: Here, he starts to point to the hypocrisy of this injustice. The people who plant and harvest this plant are the ones that don’t have enough to eat.
SW: Yes, this is kind of a brilliant political move, because the recording industry has the potential to put these words in the ears not just of rural people, but of urban people: people who eat mandioca or aipim or macaxeira, and might, honestly, not be thinking about who planted and harvested this food. He’s connecting the plight of the oppressed rural worker to something that is part of lives of the urban population.
JCV: Yes, it’s similar to the move of translating the baião, a rural dance form, into a popular song. The rhythm is still recognizable but it’s taken up by bass guitar and drum set, and thus fits into a popular urban genre.
SW: There’s more to it as well. He is calling out the inequities of agrarian life in Brazil in even more specific ways. He waits until the song is nearly about to fade out and then he sings “Lelé, amor, lelé, no cabo da minha enxada, não conheço coroné.”
JCV: Here he references the tool of the worker, saying “the handle of my hoe” and then adding, “I don’t know any coronés.” Coroné is a regional pronunciation of the word coronel, or “colonel” in English. Many parts of the Brazilian Northeast continued to have a sharecropping economy throughout the twentieth century, (and sadly, that’s still a reality today) where landowners with lots of acreage would benefit from the labor of rural workers without their own land. Saying “I don’t know any coroné,” he is both saying “I don’t know the coroné; we’re not in the same social circle” and implying “I don’t recognize the authority of the coroné.”
SW: Later, he references a local method of washing clothes in streams, called quarador. He sings “the civil police don’t want their clothes washed in the stream like everyone else”
JCV: More recognition of Brazil’s power and wealth gap.
SW: It occurs to me that the song starts by saying that the people who are suffering don’t have a voice, that they express their pain in a “silent moan.” But in the end, the chorus has risen up and is singing about these injustices. He ends singing something like “My God, when is this mashing going to end? My God, the places the masses will go.”
JCV: Yes, there is a narrative of overcoming, or potentially a suggestion that the masses can band together and call out their collective oppression.
SW: This is pretty bold for the time. So Brazil was still about 5 years away from emerging from a military dictatorship that was known to censor critical commentary. He mentions the police and the military explicitly.
JCV: Yes, in fact, Raimundo Sodré lost support for his subsequent albums because of this critical position taking.
SW: That’s so sad.
JCV: It is, but it’s also inspiring that Jorge Portugal and Raimundo Sodré were able to put this into music.
SW: Speaking for myself, it’s that mixture of sadness and hope that I hear in his voice when he sings.
JCV: One last thing to mention before we go. You know, Raimundo Sodré’s mom—
SW: —so that’s the person he seems to be addressing throughout the song.
JCV: Yeah, exactly. She taught Raimundo to play music. Both guitar and the drums of the Afro-Brazilian religion called candomblé, of which she was a practitioner.
SW: Oh wow.
JCV: Yeah, in fact, candomblé is more than a religion. It’s something of a way of life. It focuses very heavily on community.
SW: That’s thematically relevant.
JCV: But we don’t have time to get into that today, so how about we devote our first episode or three to discussing the music of candomblé?
SW: Sounds good to me!
JCV: Great! Well, until then, thanks for listening and thanks for chatting, Schuyler!
SW: Thank you, Juliana! Talk to you in a couple of weeks. Esse foi Massa.
Credits
Audio: Sammy Bananas, “Transcontinental Baião (Carioca Remix)”
JCV: Massa is written, produced, and edited by Schuyler Whelden and me, Juliana Cantarelli Vita. For episode transcriptions and links, please visit our website, essefoimassa.com. That’s E-S-S-E-F-O-I-M-A-S-S-A dot com. You can email us at essefoimassa@gmail.com. Our intro music is by Som da Massa and outro music is by Sammy Bananas. Please join us in two weeks for our first episode, which focuses on the music of the Afro-Brazilian religion candomblé. Until then, esse foi massa.
*Photo "Colheita da Mandioca" by CNA Brasil
