13. Forró: Songs of Migration

Introduction

Audio: Som da Massa, “Transcontinental Baião”

Juliana Cantarelli Vita: I’m Juliana Cantarelli Vita.

Schuyler Whelden: And I’m Schuyler Whelden.

JCV: This is Massa, a podcast about Brazilian music and culture.

SW: Juliana and I are musicians and music professors. 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.  

JCV: No messing around today, Schuyler. 

SW: No promises.

JCV: We have a lot to get to, and the people want to hear “Asa Branca.”

SW: Hit it, then!

JCV: Okay, here’s Luiz Gonzaga singing “Asa Branca,” which he wrote with Humberto Teixeira in 1947.

Audio: Luiz Gonzaga, “Asa Branca” (Youtube) (Spotify)

SW: I have no statistical basis for this, but, in terms of importance and recognizability, that has to be one of the top 4 or 5 songs in the history of Brazilian popular music.

JCV: Yeah, could be.

SW: I’ve heard it performed live dozens of times.

JCV: All kids in music schools learn this on recorder.

SW: Wow, really?

JCV: Yes. And in a forró pé-de-serra performance—that is, a traditional forró performance with the classic trio of accordion, triangle and the bass drum-like zabumba—you will almost always hear it.

SW: In addition to being the song that cemented Luiz Gonzaga as a star in the recording industry, “Asa Branca” also established a thematic template for forró, both in the tone and topics that forró musicians would return to over and over again.

JCV: Specifically, it speaks to the story of migration that has touched generations of Brazilian northeasterners and their children.

SW: So, today, we’re going to dive right into “Asa Branca” and examine its lyrics and musical features.

JCV: Then we’ll listen to a few other songs that either follow this template or expand on it.

SW: Sounds good.

Forró as Genre

JCV: Before we look at the lyrics, let’s remind ourselves of some of the musical features we’ve highlighted in the last few episodes, many of which are on display here.

SW: First, there is the ensemble.

JCV: This has the instruments associated with forró pé de serra, namely accordion, triangle, and zabumba.

SW: As well as an acoustic guitar and a coquinho, which is a wooden version of the bell known as agogô that we’ve discussed before.

JCV: It’s called coquinho because it would have been made from coconut shells.

SW:  Let’s talk about the genre.

JCV: Forró.

SW: Yeeeees. But, as we’ve noted, forró is a big category that includes a number of sub-genres such as xote, xaxado, arrasta-pé, and baião.

JCV: Well, looking at the label of the original 78 rpm disc, we can see that this song is classified as a toada.

SW: Right. Toada is a word that means, basically, “tune,” but is used in the Northeast of Brazil to describe what we might nowadays call a ballad. Something a little slower, often melancholy.

JCV: Hmm. Doesn’t seem very slow to me.

SW: Not at all. And we’re going to have to wait until we discuss the lyrics to get to the melancholy aspect.

JCV: So, if it’s not really a toada in its musical aspects, what do we think about the genre?

SW: If we zero in on what the zabumba player is doing, I think it’s pretty clear.

JCV: Sounds like a baião to me.

SW: Me too. We went into great depth about what characterizes a baião in episode 12, so check that out if you haven’t already. But to give the briefest recap: it’s a duple meter dance rhythm. The zabumba plays a muted stroke on the first beat and an accented, open stroke just before the second beat, creating an asymmetrical pattern that some would call “syncopated.”

JCV: Here’s “Asa Branca” again. Listen for that baião pattern.

SW: It’s worth noting that in 1947 when this song was written and first recorded, forró was a term used to describe a party, not a genre. 

JCV: Due to Luiz Gonzaga’s success with songs like this one, the baião was the most popular dance rhythm played at these parties. So a lot of people used that term as the broader genre designation. Only some decades later did forró come to take the place of baião as the name of the genre.

SW: The shift in terminology has created some confusion over the years. If you read newspaper articles from the 1950s and 60s, artists might talk about playing baião, but mean something different than what you and I are talking about here. baião in those days could include all of these rhythms.

JCV: For clarity, we use forró as the broadest umbrella term, while baião is the specific rhythm we’re hearing today.

SW: In a little while, we’ll share an example that confuses things again.

JCV: We’re nothing if not confusing here at Massa!

SW: Well, we’re certainly not dumbing it down.

JCV: That’s true. Okay, back to “Asa Branca.” For our purposes, I’ll say that this is a baião.

SW: Sounds good to me.

JCV: It also showcases an element of northeastern music that we’ve highlighted quite a bit: the mixolydian scale.

SW: Yes, it has that flattened seventh scale degree that distinguishes it from the major scale.

JCV: [sings] DO RE MI FA SOL LA TE DO

SW: You can hear it very clearly in the introduction.

JCV: [sings opening melody of “Asa Branca”]

SW: Okay, so musically, this probably isn’t too surprising given all that we know about forró. 

JCV: Right. The ensemble is pretty much what we’ve come to expect. It uses the baião rhythm, which was the most popular forró dance rhythm of the time. It has that mixolydian scale. It seems pretty standard.

SW: But we have to keep in mind that Luiz Gonzaga was in the process of establishing—

JCV: —some would say “inventing.”

SW: Sure, “inventing.” He was in the process of inventing this tradition, so these things weren’t totally standard yet. This song is part of the story of them becoming standard.

JCV: And the lyrics are important in that regard as well.

SW: So let’s break them down!

Saudade for the Sertão

JVC: The opening lyrics are, “Quando olhei a terra ardendo / Igual fogueira de São João / Eu perguntei a Deus do céu, ai / Por que tamanha judiação.”

SW: Which means, “When I saw the earth burning / Just like the bonfire of São João / I asked God in heaven / Why such punishment?”

JCV: It sounds like a nightmare.

SW: Totally. If you listened to Episode 9, about the festas juninas, you might have already figured out the reference to the bonfire of São João.

JCV: Yes, on the night of the 23rd of June, for the feast of St. John the Baptist, it’s common to light bonfires in celebration. 

SW: Here, though, that bonfire doesn’t seem very celebratory. 

JCV: No, he’s comparing it to the literal scorched earth of the interior of the Northeast, a geography called the sertão, where droughts have historically threatened the survival of subsistence farmers.

SW: The structure of the verse, you may have noticed, is four short lines, the second and fourth of which rhyme.

JCV: But then, the last two lines are repeated.

SW: That’s a structure that seems to imply the participation of the audience or a small chorus, who are cued by the lead singer.

JCV: It’s something that you encounter in oral traditions, this kind of call and response. It’s the leader’s responsibility to know the parts, and the crowd can jump in without having rehearsed.

SW: We’ve heard this a lot in our recent episodes. In Episode 11, on xaxado, we heard Marinês do this with “Rainha do Xaxado.”

Audio: Marinês, “Rainha do Xaxado” (Spotify) (YouTube)

JCV: And in episodes 7 and 8, about maracatu de baque solto, we also heard this structure.

Audio: Siba e Barachinha “Morte do sambador” (Youtube)

SW: The difference here is that Luiz Gonzaga doesn’t have a chorus backing him up. He repeats the line all by himself.

JCV: This might have to do with the limitations of the studio, or be a choice that he made to adapt some traditional structures to a commercial setting, but it seems clear that it’s a vestige of some of these northeastern musical characteristics.

SW: Absolutely.

JCV: Let’s check out the next stanza.

SW: “Que braseiro, que fornalha / Nem um pé de plantação / Por falta d'água perdi meu gado / Morreu de sede meu alazão.”

JCV: “What an oven, what a furnace / Not a root left on the farm / For lack of water I lost my cattle / My horse died of thirst.”

SW: Wow. More drought-caused misery.

JCV: This kind of melancholy is probably why the song was classified as a toada. Though I’m not sure if it was originally written as something slower or not.

SW: So he’s describing, in unsparing detail, the harsh realities of surviving in the sertão.

JCV: Yeah. And another thing to note is that Gonzaga is singing with an accent that is pretty identifiable as pernambucano.

SW: Pernambuco being the northeastern state where he was born.

JCV: Indeed.

SW: In the 1940s, a lot of radio singers were using a sort of standard radio accent, so it seems notable that he was singing in a different way. What are the characteristics of that accent that we can listen for?

JCV: First, you can hear how he pronounces the “d” in the word “de.”

SW: Which I, because I learned to speak Portuguese from people from Rio de Janeiro, would pronounce “de.”

JCV: Yeah. But he also pronounces the word plantação as prantação, which some might interpret as a caricature of a poor rural person who transposes their r’s and l’s.

SW: Does it read as caricature to you?

JCV: Not so much. It’s likely that his family spoke like this, but he may have adapted to a less regionally specific accent, especially after he moved to Rio in the late 1930s. Here, it reads as more a real character from this milieu, but not a disrespectful one.

SW: So, northeasterners listening to this recording would hear it has someone really from there?

JCV: I would say so.

SW: The next stanza is the one that gives the song its title and its central metaphor.

JCV: He sings, “Inté mesmo a asa branca / Bateu asas do sertão / Entonce eu disse, ‘adeus Rosinha / Guarda contigo meu coração.’”

SW: “Even the white winged dove / Beat its wings and flew away from the sertão / So I said, ‘goodbye Rosinha / Keep with you my heart.’”

JCV: The life is so difficult that even the asa branca or white-winged dove has flown away in search of something better.

SW: And he doesn’t say it explicitly, but the protagonist has also left. 

JCV: But he has done so with lots of regret, and even left his heart with his love, Rosinha.

SW: Presumably, many many people could relate to this story.

JCV: I would say.

SW: It’s notable that up to this point, the whole song is in the past tense.

JCV: Yes, he seems to be singing it from afar, these events having preceded a migration that has already taken place.

SW: As we’ll get into in a moment, millions of people migrated from this area, forced to seek better opportunities in the cities of the Brazilian Southeast.

JCV: Specifically Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

SW: He’s singing from the perspective of one of those migrants, expressing saudade, or nostalgic longing, for his homeland.

JCV: Saudade is a topic that characterizes a lot of Brazilian music and he makes this theme  abundantly clear in the following stanza.

SW: “Hoje longe, muitas léguas / Numa triste solidão / Espero a chuva cair de novo / Pra mim voltar pro meu sertão.”

JCV: “Today from afar, many leagues away / In a sad solitude / I wait for the rain to fall again / So I can return to my sertão.”

SW: Here, the perspective pivots from the past to the future via the quick mention of “today.”

JCV: Yes, saudade is very much about the past and the future. The past that you miss and the future possibility of getting back to it. The present is merely a moment to remember the past or wish for the future.

SW: And this future possibility is where the song finds hope.

JCV: “When the green of your eyes / Looks out across the fields / I ask you not to cry / Because I’ll be back, my love.”

SW: He makes a promise to Rosinha that he will return. 

JCV: It’s a sentiment that a lot of people felt, the desire to return to the Northeast one day. By putting it into the song, it transforms it from completely melancholic to hopeful.

SW: Yes, things have been difficult, but they can get better.

JCV: It helps explain why the song would be very popular. It allows the listener to experience the emotions associated with migration, but leave on a hopeful note.

SW: What I find interesting is the ways that he navigates some of the expectations of masculinity in expressing these emotions.

JCV: How do you mean?

SW: Well, he talks about crying, but he’s not the one crying. It’s Rosinha. He’s, sort of, projecting his emotions onto her. The feminine character is allowed to express sadness in this way, while the masculine character is saying, “don’t cry, don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

JCV: Hmm. Yeah. That reading certainly fits with some long-standing notions of machismo and gendered notions of comportment.

SW: For sure.

JCV: So, let’s recap. With “Asa Branca,” we have the template for forró about stories of migration. 

SW: We have a northeasterner, a sertão resident, who was driven to leave by droughts, encapsulated in the metaphor of a bird.

JCV: There are loads of signifiers of northeastern-ness, from the bonfires of São João, to the regional fauna, to Gonzaga’s own accent.

SW: And this saudade for the past is met with the promise that the protagonist will one day return.

JCV: The emotional character of the saudade is there too, if projected into the otherwise passive Rosinha.

SW: And the musical backdrop is also part of the template.

JCV: Yes, we can hear the classic forró pé de serra ensemble.

SW: We have the audible baião rhythm and the mixolydian scale.

JCV: And we also have some structural elements that carry over from other Northeastern poetry and dance musics.

SW: How about now we follow the migration pattern south towards Rio de Janeiro and listen to some songs that draw from and expand on this template?

JCV: Sounds good!

Migration

JCV: Let’s start with the migration itself. There were many ways that people traveled south.

SW: For example, Luiz Gonzaga was in the army and presumably traveled on military convoys.

JCV: I would say, yeah. There were also eventually bus and train routes, though the most heavily mythologized mode of transportation was the truck called pau-de-arara.

SW: An arara is a kind of macaw, a colorful bird that used to be (and still is?

JCV: Yeah.

SW: …sold at Northeastern markets. The pau is the wooden stick that the macaw sits on in the market.

JCV: The truck was called pau-de-arara because it was a large flatbed vehicle with handrails. People would load into the back en masse and hold onto these handrails. That image seemed similar enough to the macaw at the market that the trucks took on this name.

SW: In some cases, the term is also used as a pejorative descriptor of the migrants themselves.

JCV: There are dozens of songs that describe this journey and this mode of transport, so let’s just highlight one.

SW: Okay. This is the Pernambucano duo Venâncio and Curumbá with their composition “Último Pau de Arara.”

Audio: Venâncio e Curumbá, “Último Pau de Arara” (Youtube)

JCV: The title of the song means “The Last Pau de Arara.”

SW: Unlike “Asa Branca,” this song is written from the perspective of someone who has not yet migrated. 

JCV: And that’s somewhat ironic given that Venâncio and Curumbá wrote and recorded the song in Rio de Janeiro.

SW: Indeed. The lyrics say, “Life here is just bad / When it doesn’t rain on the ground / But if it rains, we have everything / Mountains of abundance / Hopefully it rains soon / I hope, my God, I hope / I’ll only leave my Cariri / On the last pau-de arara.”

JCV: Cariri is a section of the sertão, which extends across state borders throughout the Northeast.

SW: Once again, the song highlights the precarity of life in the sertão. If there’s rain, all is well. If not, it’s dire.

JCV: And the protagonist doesn’t want to leave, but circumstances may dictate that he must.

SW: So he’s resolved to stay as long as possible, to only get on the very last pau-de-arara.

JCV: There’s another irony here, because the performers are from the city of Recife, not the sertão.

SW: Of course, they might be the children of people from the sertão. They may have grown up visiting uncles and aunts and grandparents there.

JCV: Oh yeah, that’s definitely a thing.

SW: Thought I’d heard about that from someone.

JCV: Anyway, before we talk about the second verse, it’s worth noting the form and rhythm and such.

SW: Yeah! I noticed that there are two singers this time and that they trade off.

JCV: This is part of a long tradition that goes back to the repentista poets and the violeiros. We’ve seen it with maracatu de baque solto and nowadays, it’s something that has become an important part of the genre known as sertanejo.

SW: Maybe the most popular and most listened to genre in all of Brazil.

JCV: Probably.

SW: “Último Pau de Arara” also has that repeated final couplet.

JCV: Except here we have the chorus of voices singing it.

SW: Exactly.

JCV: And rhythmically, this is a baião.

SW: As we said, back in the 50s, this genre was mostly known as baião. This song was recorded in 1956, by the way.

JCV: Oh, okay. Let’s listen to verse two.

SW: What’s interesting here, and different from “Asa Branca,” is that life isn’t all bad.

JCV: Right! They sing, “As long as my little cow / Has hide and bones / And can still walk / With the cowbell around its neck / I’m going to keep living here / With God’s help / Whoever leaves their native land / Won’t find a place to stop elsewhere.”

SW: The protagonist doesn’t need much to be able to stick it out in the sertão. The only mildly sinister part is the final line, which implies that the migrant can’t find contentment elsewhere.

JCV: This is more like the Luiz Gonzaga angle. And it might also be informed by the duo’s time in Rio, who knows.

SW: It’s possible. A little warning for those who might be leaving.

JCV: Speaking of which, the perspective here is from within the Northeast, so it’s fair to say that it offers something for people who are still there.

Música de Protesto

SW: Yeah. The market for these songs is broad and reaches people with a variety of experiences. So, speaking of the huge numbers of migrants, listen to this: 

Audio: Maria Bethânia, “Carcará” (Youtube)

JCV: That’s the song “Carcará,” written by João do Vale and José Cândido and sung by Maria Bethânia.

SW: What you heard was a clip from the end of the song, in which Bethânia recites some statistics related to migration from the Northeast region to the Southeast.

JCV: She says, “In 1950, more than two million northeasterners lived outside of their places of birth. Ten percent of the population of Ceará migrated. Thirteen percent of Piauí. More than fifteen percent of Bahia. Seventeen percent of Alagoas.”

SW: These numbers are pretty staggering.

JCV: In 1950, Brazil only had about 50 million people. So we’re talking about four percent of the country having left their homes.

SW: If you’re wondering why a popular song features a statistical rundown like this, let’s explain.

JCV: Let’s. In the first half of the 1960s, Brazilian political groups were very polarized. 

SW: As we’ve discussed, the agrarian economy in the Northeast was run on a sharecropping system, with poor people living and working on the land of a handful of wealthy landowners. Leftwing activists and politicians agitated for land reform, including redistribution of these lands to the people that lived on and worked them.

JCV: Meanwhile, rightwing politicians saw and characterized these reforms as communism. And in 1964, the Brazilian military, backed by the CIA, seized the presidency in a coup d’état. This began a military dictatorship that lasted until 1985.

SW: Given the importance of rural life in the themes of these songs—

JCV: —and the importance of these songs in rural life—

SW: —you would correctly expect that some of these issues would make their way into the music of the time.

JCV: You would. 

SW: So, in 1964, some 8 months after the coup, a group of artists put together a stage production called Opinião, which served as a protest against the military government and a way to call attention to these issues.

JCV: Aren’t you writing a book about Opinião?

SW: Am I? Yeah, I think I am. Anyway, both this song’s composer—

JCV: —João do Vale.

SW: And this performer—

JCV: —Maria Bethânia—

SW: —were part of Opinião’s cast.

JCV: So the statistics were part of the play and were captured in the studio recording as well.

SW: Exactly. Though there is another song from Opinião that speaks even more explicitly to the theme of migration.

JCV: Oh, great!

SW: Let’s listen to João do Vale sing his song “Sina de Caboclo.” 

JCV: That title translates to “The Fate of the Caboclo.” 

SW: We talked about the various meanings of caboclo in Episode 10. But in this case, caboclo seems to mean a person from the sertão.

Audio: João do Vale, “Sina de Caboclo” (Youtube) 

JCV: Can we pause for a moment and talk about what he’s saying?

SW: Sure. It starts “I’m a poor caboclo / I earn a living with my hoe / What I harvest is divided / With those who don’t plant anything.” 

JCV: This is exactly that sharecropping situation that we talked about earlier. He’s bemoaning the injustice of the system.

SW: Completely. Here comes the migration story: “If it continues like this / I’m going to leave my sertão / With tears in my eyes / And pain in my heart / I’ll go to Rio to carry cement / For the builders there.”

JCV: In this case, the reason for leaving the sertão is not drought, but the unjust life that the sociopolitical system has left for him.

SW: He continues, “God is even helping / It’s raining in the sertão / But plant just to share / I won’t do this anymore.”

JCV: Yeah, this is the line where the song becomes a statement of protest. A line in the sand if you will. 

SW: And this is not far off of João do Vale’s actual story. He did, in fact, leave the sertão to go to the city, first to São Luis, which is the capital of his native Maranhão, then to Salvador, Bahia, a larger city nearby, and eventually to Rio, where he did work as a mason’s assistant, even as he was starting to work as a composer. After the military coup, he told these stories on stage in Opinião.

JCV: If there’s a sense of saudade in this song, it’s not wistful or hopeful. It’s defiant and challenging.

SW: Totally.

JCV: And it’s interesting that this isn’t even a forró.

SW: Right! João do Vale wrote lots of xotes and baiões and things, but this song is… well, maybe it’s a toada?

JCV: Maybe!

SW: Opinião was maybe the first musical protest of this period, but it certainly wasn’t the last. The show was something of an inflection point in the birth of a new genre, one that we’ve talked about before, called MPB

JCV: MPB stands for Música Popular Brasileira. It’s a genre that tends to combine Brazilian genres with elements associated with the popular music industry. In the mid 1960s it was frequently characterized by the social and political commentary of its lyrics.

SW: The genre spread throughout Brazil in part due to a series of televised song competitions called Festivais da MPB, or MPB Festivals.

JCV: As it happens, one of the first place songs from the 1966 Festival was another example of a song of migration: “Disparada” by Geraldo Vandré. 

Audio: Jair Rodrigues, “Disparada” (Youtube)

SW: Geraldo Vandré is from the state of Paraíba, just to the north of Pernambuco. He moved to Rio as a teenager in 1957 to go to college and while he was there, he became a member of one of the political groups that was agitating for things like agrarian reform. He became a composer and recording artist during these years and his songs of that time tend toward political and social commentary.

JCV: This is the live performance from the 1966 festival, where it was sung by Jair Rodrigues, a singer and television star of the time.

SW: Jair Rodrigues was not from the Northeast himself, but this performance has some other regional markers.

JCV: The primary accompaniment comes from the viola caipira, a guitar-like instrument that is common in rural areas. And the percussion is provided by the shaker known as caixixi, and a dried donkey’s jawbone, which the percussionist strikes creating a sharp rattle reminiscent of a horse whip.

SW: The song has two sections. The first is slow and rubato, while the second is uptempo. And, while it’s hard to hear in this recording, seems to have the characteristics of a baião.

JCV: It’s sung from the first-person perspective of a cow herder. He sings, “Prepare your heart / For the things I’m going to tell you / I come from there in the sertão.”

SW: Like João do Vale’s song, there is mention of destiny and fate, and a resistance to the status quo.

JCV: He says, “In the herd I used to be just another bull / But one day I mounted the horse / Not for my own reasons / But by necessity.”

SW: The combination of first person testimony and metaphor is really powerful. It’s a mixed metaphor, but not in a bad way. He starts as an animal in the herd and then becomes self-actualized.

JCV: The move that the character in the song makes is an example for people who find themselves in a situation of oppression. 

SW: He’s both talking about and giving an example of what the theorist Paulo Freire would call conscientization, which is when people become aware of the oppression they are suffering and actively work to remove themselves from it.

JCV: This character is telling their own story and giving an example of how they began to overcome these circumstances.

SW: And by calling the song “Disparada,” or “Stampede,” it becomes a call to action.

JCV: Because one person alone can’t be a stampede. It requires all of the bulls in the herd to mount their own horses, so to speak.

SW: Haha. Yeah. The lyrics are confusing, but they make sense if you think them through.

JCV: Yeah. And the chorus helps: “But the world kept turning / Under the hoofs of my horse / And since I mounted it / Now I’m a horseman / My strong arm on the reins / In a kingdom with no king.”

Forró as Rhythm

JCV: In the 1970s, these themes continued to be an important part of both MPB and forró, though protest lyrics often had to be softened or obscured due to the increased scrutiny of government censors.

SW: At the same time, the genre of forró finally coalesced under that name. The genre would continue to use the zabumba, triangle, and accordion as its primary instruments, though many ensembles began to incorporate instruments like drum set and electric bass, perhaps owing to the genre’s interactions with MPB. 

JCV: All of the rhythms we’ve highlighted in the last few episodes continued to be part of the genre, though a new one also emerged. And confusingly enough, this rhythm is also called forró.

SW: So, just to be clear: in the early part of the 20th century, the word forró meant the party where this music was played?

JCV: Yes.

SW: Then it was an umbrella term for a number of dance rhythms played by this ensemble?

JCV: Yep.

SW: And somewhere along the way, it came to mean a specific rhythm?

JCV: Exactly.

SW: Let’s talk about how that rhythm works and listen to it in context.

JCV: Sounds good. You might remember the baião from last episode.

SW: Yes, it’s that asymmetrical rhythm we talked about earlier. A muted stroke followed by an open stroke.

JCV: Exactly. Well, forró is the same rhythm, with the muted and open strokes swapped.

SW: Wow, it would be very easy to confuse that for a baião.

JCV: Very.

SW: One of the most iconic examples of a song with this forró rhythm is the song “Feira de Mangaio” written by Glória Gadelha and Sivuca. Here’s Clara Nunes’ 1978 recording of the song, which is probably the best known version. Try to hear that interpolation of the baião rhythm.

Audio: Clara Nunes, “Feira de Mangaio” (Youtube) (Spotify)

JCV: Just in that short introduction, you can hear that this is forró. We have the typical ensemble augmented by the prominent bass guitar. This is pretty typical of what happened to the ensemble in the 1970s.

SW: And I could hear that rhythm that we discussed, the interpolation of the baião. It’s both in zabumba and then later in the bass guitar. 

JCV: This song is in a minor tonality. That’s not something we’ve highlighted very much in this series, but there are examples.

SW: Including “Último Pau de Arara,” which we heard earlier.

JCV: Yeah, Now, let’s check out the lyrics.

SW: As always, the title tells us a lot. “Feira de Mangaio” means something like “Street Vendor Market.” Mangaio is the person with the cart of goods.

JCV: What we would call secos e molhados in Portuguese.

SW: Yeah, “dry and wet goods.” So, food, but also clothing, other things.

JCV: She starts by listing rolling tobacco and ox yokes, but then talks about corn cakes, coconut candy, peanut brittle, and spices like rosemary and cinnamon.

SW: All of the things that you would encounter at one of the fairs of the Northeast.

JCV: Yes, all of the larger towns have these. Farmers and artisans sell their wares. And people who live further away might travel there occasionally to stock up on some product or another.

SW: These markets are also common in other parts of Brazil. In Rio, the very famous Feira de São Cristóvão is specifically organized around Northeastern products and foods.

JCV: Oh, really? 

SW: Yeah, actually the official name is the Centro Luiz Gonzaga de Tradições Nordestinas.

JCV: Aww. The Luiz Gonzaga Center of Northeastern Traditions.

SW: I’ve actually never heard it called that, but it makes sense, right? They also have a performance space where you can hear mostly northeastern performers.

JCV: Another lyric in this verse reminds of something we already mentioned. There is a street kid who the protagonist sends away to the bird fair.

SW: Ah, where, possibly, he would encounter the macaws in their cages, on their perches.

JCV: Yup! Like the pau-de-araras we discussed before.

SW: Right. Let’s listen to verse two.

JCV: Once again we have more secos e molhados: horse collars, flour, candy.

SW: Some listeners might have heard the word candeeiro, meaning oil lamp. We talked about that in our xaxado episode.

JCV: And there’s a rendeira too.

SW: That’s someone who does embroidery, probably following one of the traditional styles of the Northeast.

JCV: But the end of this verse is super interesting to me.

SW: Okay.

JCV: The scene being set here is one of bustling commerce, but it’s not easy. It’s hard work. And just as the protagonist is losing their motivation to be here, they hear an accordion player on the street corner with their bellows snorting and creating a dance party.

SW: Yeah, it’s a lovely image and it really shows the importance that music plays in signifying Northeastern identity here.

JCV: Of course, one of the song’s composers, Sivuca, is a master accordionist, so that could explain the connection here, but I think we’ve shown that this music has that effect.

SW: You know, we’ve lost a little bit of that saudade for the sertão here. In fact, the Northeast is never officially mentioned.

JCV: No. This is more subtle. It’s building on decades of history of forró. Northeasterners would recognize the portrait of their home.

SW: As, presumably, would the displaced people who still frequent these kinds of markets to get the ingredients they need to make Northeastern dishes.

JCV: Definitely.

SW: I can bring you to some good Brazilian markets when you visit Massachusetts (if you’re missing anything.)

JCV: It’s a deal. See you next month!

SW: Okay.

Going Back

JCV: One of the major themes of many of these songs, going back all the way to “Asa Branca,” is, well, going back.

SW: Right. The protagonist in that song promises he’ll go back to his Rosinha.

JCV: Yup.

SW: I also remember that João do Vale, who wrote “Carcará” and “Sina de Caboclo” always talked about retiring to his home in Maranhão.

JCV: Did he?

SW: He did. I really want to visit there. As well as other places in the region.

JCV: I can show you some good Brazilian markets when you do.

SW: Okay, okay, I see what you’re doing. But be careful, because I’m going to say yes.

JCV: Well, good. Anyway, Luiz Gonzaga actually wrote a follow up to “Asa Branca” that tells the story of going back.

SW: Just for variety’s sake, let’s listen to a recording of “A Volta da Asa Branca” (or “The Return of the White Winged Dove”) by the singer Maria Dapaz.

Audio: Maria Dapaz, “Volta da Asa Branca” (Youtube) (Spotify)

JCV: So, this is not a baião.

SW: No, it’s an example of the dance rhythm called arrasta-pé that we discussed in Episode 9.

JCV: And this version adopts basically the same instrumentation as the Clara Nunes song we heard, with accordion, triangle, zabumba, and bass guitar. It sounds like there is an agogô or a coquinho in there too.

SW: Each stanza of the song has that repeated final line that we noted earlier.

JCV: Yes, and we’re back to the mixolydian mode.

SW: The lyrics tell the story of the dove who, hearing the thunder in the Northeast, goes flying back.

JCV: It’s safe to do so because the drought is over.

SW: The protagonist then says, “The drought made me desert my land / But fortunately God has now remembered to send rain / To this suffering sertão / A sertão of serious women / And working men.”

JCV: It’s interesting, because, unlike Luiz Gonzaga, Maria Dapaz sings the word “plantação” with the L sound lllll, while Gonzaga emphasized a rural pronunciation, singing prantação.

SW: What do you think about this? Is this a “correction” of the original lyric? Or is Dapaz just opting to sing in her way, rather than put on the accent that Gonzaga used in the original.

JCV: I think—well, I hope—it’s the latter. I don’t think she’s correcting anything, so much as singing it in her way. She’s from Pernambuco, but a totally different generation.

SW: Oh, that makes sense.

JCV: And she maintains other Northeasternisms from the lyrics, such as “Deus agora se alembrou.”

SW: Ah, right. That means “God has now remembered,” but typically, or in other parts of Brazil, you would say “Deus agora se lembrou.” 

JCV: Adding “a” to the beginning of the word is very common in the Northeast.

SW: I noticed that she says, “das muié séria” and “dos homê trabaiadô” instead of “das mulheres sérias” and “dos homens trabalhores.”

JCV: Yes, for those of you taking Portuguese classes, you probably clocked this as an error, but it’s just a way that we talk.

SW: Yeah, it’s very common to have the article be plural, while the noun itself isn’t. It’s not a mistake.

JCV: Yeah. Anyhow, the river and waterfalls are running with water. The earth is wet and the forests are green.

SW: And of course, the protagonist returns to Rosinha, who has dutifully waited for him. They’ll be married at the end of the year.

JCV: It’s a happy story, I guess, but the power dynamics are a little out of whack.

SW: Totally. It’s something I often think about when we have these canonical songs. They sometimes teach us about how to behave, whether as part of gendered norms, gendered roles, or in many other ways. And the lessons don’t always line up with the way we might prefer to see or be in the world.

JCV: Nope. And if we’re arguing that many of these songs are made to create possibilities of identification for northeasterners, whether in the Northeast or displaced through migration, or even the children and grandchildren of northeasterners who grew up in Rio or São Paulo, but dancing forró and eating canjica—if the songs do that, then they do other things as well.

SW: Definitely. But even though this song, which was written in 1950, and, actually, all of the songs we’ve heard today, are all part of the repertory, there are younger generations of forrozeiros, some from the Northeast and some from the Southeast and other places, that have carried these traditions forward.

JCV: But not always without controversy and complaint.

SW: Nope.

JCV: So, to wrap up our forró series (for now), we’re going to do one more episode on a phenomenon called forró universitário, or university forró. This is a style that emerged primarily in São Paulo in the 1990s. It’s a style that helps us think about the roles of tradition and innovation, as well as issues of authenticity and appropriation, in forró.

SW: So if you aren’t caught up, listen to the rest of the series and get ready for one more episode on forró!

JCV: I’m looking forward to diving in.

SW: Me too. 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 transcripts and links to further reading, 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. Follow us @essefoimassa on Instagram and Twitter. Our intro music is by Som da Massa and our outro music is by Sammy Bananas. Please join us in two weeks as we wrap up our forró series with a discussion of forró universitário. Until then, esse foi Massa.

*Cover photo by Rodrigo Farhat.