14. Forró: Universitário

Introduction

Audio: Som da Massa, “Transcontinental Baião”

Schuyler Whelden: I’m Schuyler Whelden.

Juliana Cantarelli Vita: And I’m Juliana Cantarelli Vita.

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

JCV: Schuyler 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.  

SW: Hi Juliana!

JCV: Hi Schuyler!

SW: So, this is different.

JCV: Yes, I would say so.

SW: Might as well give a little peek behind the scenes: up to now, we’ve recorded every episode using a video conferencing app, with you in Seattle, Washington, and me and in Worcester, Massachusetts.

JCV: But today we’re recording from the same room.

SW: So if things sound any different, that’s why.

JCV: Though, if you are listening to these episodes out of order—for example, if you were assigned this episode as part of a course in, say, 2026—then a slight audio difference probably doesn’t matter to you.

SW: That’s true.

JCV: So why don’t we get into it!

SW: Okay! This is our sixth episode about the genre known as forró.

JCV: Yes. Forró is a popular genre that originated in the Brazilian Northeast and was spread through the recording industry starting in the 1940s, initially spurred on by a composer and accordion player named Luiz Gonzaga.

SW: Forró is dance music, but it’s not characterized by a single rhythm. You can hear all about some of its primary sub-genres, such as arrasta-pé, xote, xaxado, and baião in the last few episodes.

JCV: It has remained popular until today, though it has changed somewhat over the years. 

SW: Originally it was played mostly by a trio of accordion, triangle, and a large bass drum called zabumba.

JCV: That style of forró still exists today, but it’s usually called forró pé-de-serra to distinguish it from other forms, because by the 1970s, it was common for forró recordings and performances to feature other instruments, like bass guitar, drum set, and keyboards.

SW: Along with the shift in ensemble, forró musicians have also combined the tradition with other genres and adapted it to a number of different lyrical contexts.

JCV: Today we’re going to discuss the genre known as forró universitário, or “university forró,” which emerged in the Southeast of Brazil—specifically in São Paulo—in the 1990s.

SW: We’ll get more into the history and context in a little bit, but for now, let’s jump right in and play a song to give everyone a sense of what forró universitário sounds like.

JCV: Great! Here’s the band Falamansa with their classic, “Xote da Alegria,” from 2001.

Audio: Falamansa, “Xote da Alegria” (Spotify) (Youtube)

JCV: So what do you think?

SW: Well, there are some things here that regular listeners probably picked out as standard elements of forró.

JCV: Like what?

SW: Like the ensemble. It has the accordion triangle and zabumba.

JCV: The bass even follows the zabumba like we’ve seen in so much forró from the past 40 years or so.

SW: It sounds there is also a guitar.

JCV: You can hear it in the right channel.

SW: Actually, the more I listen, I can’t tell if there is a zabumba or not. There is what sounds like a rim click or a snare drum and a quite a few cymbals being played. It’s possible that what I’m hearing as a zabumba is the kick drum from a drum set.

JCV: It’s possible! It’s pretty hard to tell. There is definitely more percussion than just the standard two instruments. For example, don’t forget the chimes.

SW: Ah, besides the instrumentation, this is a specific forró rhythm.

JCV: Yeah, this is a xote, a genre that we discussed in depth in episode 10. You can hear the specific zabumba rhythm that marks pretty much all xotes.

SW: Definitely.

JCV: It seems like forró universitário has a lot in common with other forró we’ve heard.

SW: For sure. For example, check out this song, which is from the same period, but not associated with forró universitário. It’s called “A Natureza das Coisas,” or “the nature of things.” It was composed by Accioly Neto, who we learned about in episode 10. The performer is Flávio José. He’s from the northeastern state of Paraíba. 

Audio: Flávio José, “A Natureza das Coisas” (Spotify) (Youtube)

JCV: Yeah, wow. In a lot of ways, that sounds similar to the Falamansa song.

SW: I think so!

JCV: It has the same ensemble pretty much. I mean, minus the chimes.

SW: Hahaha. Yes, Flávio José’s band includes the accordion, triangle, zabumba, bass, and even drum set. No guitar here, though. Or chimes, of course.

JCV: Also, both songs are xotes.

SW: Definitely. 

JCV: But this is not forró universitário.

SW: I guess not.

JCV: Hmm. Wait, can we compare these to something we listened to in our xote episode?

SW: Sure.

JCV: Let’s listen to “Eu Só Quero Um Xodó” by Dominguinhos.

SW: Okay.

Audio: Dominguinhos, “Eu Só Quero Um Xodó” (Youtube)

SW: Wow. Once again, it’s a xote. And it’s the same ensemble: accordion, triangle, zabumba, bass, and drums.

JCV: And Dominiguinhos is also not associated with forró universitário.

SW: All three of these recordings are from the turn of the twenty-first century. The Dominiguinhos record is from 1998, Falamansa’s is from 2000, and Flávio José released his song in 2003.

JCV: So, if on the surface, forró universitário is similar to other forró of the time, then what distinguishes it?

SW: Well, there are a couple of musical characteristics that we can highlight. And we’ll do that, but it seems that most scholars agree that the thing that distinguishes forró universitário is the social class of its listenership.

JCV: Ah, yes. It’s not called “university forró” for nothing.

SW: No. So let’s talk a little bit about that name and the history of the genre and circle back to some musical details that we can listen for.

JCV: Sounds good!

Forró and Social Class

JCV: Throughout this forró series, we’ve highlighted how a number of dance rhythms popular in the Brazilian Northeast, particularly in the arid interior region called the sertão, became popularized within the Brazilian recording industry, originally by the Pernambucano Luiz Gonzaga but also by contemporaries of his like Marinês and Jackson do Pandeiro, and Venâncio and Curumbá, who also came from the Northeast.

SW: And we’ve also shared examples of performers from subsequent generations, who took up these rhythm and played them in fairly traditional ways, like Maria Dapaz and and Mestrinho.

JCV: But peppered throughout this series, we’ve mentioned examples of forró interpreted through or alongside the genre known as MPB, or Música Popular Brasileira.

SW: Basically from its outset, MPB was associated with the middle class. Many of its most popular earlier stars—people like Nara Leão and Chico Buarque—came from wealthy families in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. They played music that owed an aesthetic debt to Bossa Nova, another predominantly middle and upper-middle class phenomenon. And unlike genres associated with the urban and rural working poor, MPB was distributed through LPs and popularized through television, two media forms that were not accessible to everyone.

JCV: In contrast, from the earliest days of Luiz Gonzaga’s career and continuing for decades, forró maintained a strong association with the working class. Frequently this meant northeasterners, either in the Northeast, or displaced through migration.

SW: But when MPBistas like Zé Ramalho and Djavan adapted forró rhythms like xaxado and baião, they also created a new context for forró, one that helped popularize these rhythms for the middle class.

JCV: And that’s not to say that this is a story of appropriation. Many of these musicians grew up listening to and playing forró. They frequently highlight the importance of people like Luiz Gonzaga and many of them even recorded with him during his life. 

SW: Right!

JCV: But it’s fair to say that, unless filtered through MPB, forró was, in general, not seen as a middle-class genre during the first 40 or 50 years of its existence.

SW: But in the 1990s, some university students in São Paulo—

JCV: —they may have grown up listening to forró-inflected MPB.

SW: Yeah! Well, they began to listen to and eventually play the forró of Luiz Gonzaga and others.

JCV: And they started to frequent the forró clubs that already existed in São Paulo to serve the many migrants who had settled there.

SW: So far so good. Where it might get a little uncomfortable is that a lot of the literature on forró universitário indicates that these students characterized this experience as a kind of “discovery”—that they saw forró as an authentic expression of an older, unadulterated Brazilian culture.

JCV: Yeah, the Northeast of Brazil, as we’ve mentioned, has long been held up in literature and film and music as a kind of untamed, “real” version of Brazil. A version of Brazil that existed in the past everywhere and now only exists in the Northeast.

SW: Which is, of course, incorrect. And, sadly, this is a characterization that has some really damaging effects for northeasterners, who are frequently caricatured as uneducated and backwards. 

JCV: So, for some young people in places like São Paulo, whether they had a connection to the Northeast or not, forró may have represented a way to access their roots. Even if the Northeast is not the "frozen in time" place that they imagined.

SW: And even though forró is actually the product of the encounter between traditional northeastern expressive forms and the southeastern music industries.

JCV: Right! Listeners to the last few episodes will know that forró has never existed as an uncomplicated musical representation of the Brazilian Northeast. It has been shaped by migration and the interplay between traditional forms and their expressions in the market. And plenty of the most revered and influential artists have explored ways to expand the genre’s palette, either by adding new instruments or by crossing forró with other genres. 

SW: That’s very evident in forró eletrônico, as we’ll hear in our next episode.

JCV: But it remains the case that forró universitário is named for practitioners and listeners—mostly university students—who engaged with forró because they saw it as a tether to the roots of an authentic Brazilianness.

SW: Even if we know that it isn’t that in any literal way. 

JCV: Right! 

SW: That said, it’s part of forró tradition to have songs that look back—for example, the stories of migration and the songs expressing saudade—

JCV: —nostalgic longing—

SW: —for the Northeast, especially songs like “Asa Branca” by Luiz Gonzaga, have lyrics that articulate some of these feelings.

JCV: That’s true. So, Falamansa could be picking up on that as well.

SW: Do these lyrics do a similar thing?

JCV: Let’s listen and find out.

JCV: So that first verse says something like, “If one day somebody told me to be what I am and what I like, I don’t know who I am and I’m going to change to be what I always wanted to be.”

SW: Okay, that’s a little a confusing.

JCV: And he goes on, “And if by chance, you say that you dream to be happy, be sure to really mean it. Why cry your pain, drowning in agony, about a tempest in a teapot. Dance the xote of joy.”

SW: Okay, so the lyrics go around and around, but basically they say, “Don’t bother being sad. Dance and be happy.”

JCV: Basically, yeah.

SW: Hmm. So they aren’t really about nostalgia as we’ve seen in other forrós.

JCV: Not really. But it’s interesting that these lyrics are what middle-class folks in São Paulo would put on top of forró, especially if they are understanding it to be a musical connection to an imagined past.

SW: Right, because it makes the past seem like a source of joy.

JCV: And that’s never problematic.

SW: Never.

Distinguishing Forró Universitário Musically

SW: You know, I bet some people are still confused about how the three forró examples we heard before were all so similar.

JCV: Right. In terms of instrumentation, forró universitário tends to be fairly similar to the others, albeit with the occasional guitar.

SW: And chimes.

JCV: And chimes. Who could forget the chimes?

SW: And we’ve already established that the basic xote rhythm is present here and the ensemble is fairly similar. 

JCV: Yes! Exactly the same.

SW: And yet.

JCV: What?

SW: Well, there are some musical differences. At least there are some things in “Xote da Alegria” that distinguish this from most forró pé-de-serra.

JCV: Let’s talk about those.

SW: Okay. What’s one of the most common elements of forró that we’ve highlighted across all of these episodes?

JCV: Well, the rhythms vary, so it’s not that. There are some topics that recur, but that hasn’t been super consistent. I assume you mean besides the instrumental ensemble?

SW: Yeah, besides that.

JCV: Well, then maybe the mixolydian scale? The building blocks for tons of forró harmony and melody.

SW: Yes, that’s what I was hoping you would say. A scale is a series of notes in ascending or descending order. The mixolydian scale is similar to the major scale, except one of its notes—the seventh scale degree—is a little bit lower. 

JCV:  So, instead of this…

SW: You want me to do it? I can do it.

JCV: Okay, you can do it.

SW: Ugh, I’m such a terrible singer.

JCV: You got this.

SW: So instead of [sings major scale], it sounds like this [sings mixolydian scale].

JCV: Yeah!

SW: Good enough?

JCV: Yeah, that was great.

SW: We’ve heard it in a number of songs, including, “Eu Só Quero Um Xodó.”

JCV: [sings: “Eu só quero um amor.”] The first syllable of “quero” emphasizes that lowered seventh degree that marks this as the mixolydian scale.

SW: Yes, exactly! But “Xote da Alegria” uses the major scale.

JCV: It’s quick, but you can hear him sing the raised seventh that tells you that this is not mixolydian on the line [sings] “ser o que sou e o que gostar.”

SW: And Valdir, the accordion player, seems to be aware of this harmonic discrepancy, because on the little lick he plays in the chorus, he actually plays both the lowered and raised 7ths, though he just passes through the lowered seventh on his way to the raised seventh.

JCV: [sings lick] Oh yeah, he does play around with this.

SW: I don’t think it’s just the major scale that distinguishes this song from a lot of the other forró we’ve listened to.

JCV: Oh yeah?

SW: No. I think there is something that really marks it as a turn-of-the-millennium pop song.

JCV: What’s that?

SW: The chord progression.

JCV: Oh. A chord progression is another way of talking about harmony, particularly in music from the European tradition. What is it about this chord progression?

SW: Well, this song’s chords are basically the same as the ones from Johann Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue in D major, specifically the first movement, which is known as “Pachelbel’s Canon.”

JCV: Isn’t that from, like, the seventeenth century? I thought we were talking about the turn of the twenty-first century?

SW: We are, actually! As it happens, it was something of a trend for popular songs from the U.S. and Latin America to use this progression in popular songs in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

JCV: Really?

SW: Yup. There are tons of examples, but here’s a really straightforward one. This is the song “Hook” by Blues Traveler, which was a top 10 hit in the U.S. in 1995.

Audio: Blues Traveler, "Hook" (Spotify) (Youtube)

JCV: Oh wow. That’s the same progression alright. It even has something in common with “Xote da Alegria” in terms of the bouncy, laid back feel.

SW: Totally. There are dozens and dozens of pop songs from that era that use this progression, or a variation of it. We’ll link to a video by the Australian comedy band Axis of Awesome. The video is called “4 Chords” and it showcases a number of these. It’s incredible how many date to this specific era.

JCV: Oh yeah, I’m looking at the list right now and it includes Joan Osborne, Green Day, U2, Train. Dozens of others. 

SW: Now, you’re the one who told me not to be googling while we’re recording, so get it together!

JCV: Oops, sorry!

SW: And as we mentioned, this trend wasn’t limited to anglophone popular music. Here’s Juanes’s 2004 hit “Volverte a Ver.”

Audio: Juanes, “Volverte a Ver” (Spotify) (Youtube)

JCV: Yep, that’s it, alright.

SW: The progression also seems to lend itself to an endless circle of repetitions. A music theorist—that is, someone who’s an expert in 18th and 19th century European harmonic structures—would have to weigh in on how that works.

JCV: Yeah, but regardless, it is culturally informed. Decades of listening to European derived harmonic structures play their part. And those structures were imposed in Brazil, just like other parts of Latin America and the U.S.

SW: For sure. 

JCV: Forró universitário musicians, like all young people, were probably listening to U.S. pop, as well as Brazilian genres.

SW: Definitely. 

Forró Universitário and Brazilian Popular Music

JCV: You know, if we compare “Xote da Alegria” to other Brazilian pop songs from that time, I bet we could find some elements in common.

SW: Let’s do it.

JCV: Okay, two songs jump to mind. Let’s start with one that predates Falamansa by about 6 years: the classic “Te Ver” by the band Skank.

Audio: Skank, “Te Ver” (Spotify) (Youtube)

SW: Aha. I think I know one of the parallels you are drawing.

JCV: What’s that?

SW: Well, this is clearly indebted to reggae, which you can hear, among other places, in the guitar, which plays the offbeats.

JCV: Yes! And the Falamansa song has a guitar that plays the offbeats too. In fact, a lot of xote in forró universitário is played with this pseudo-reggae feel.

SW: Xote and reggae have some similarities in terms of swing.

JCV: Yes. And reggae is very popular in Brazil. 

SW:  I’m sure we’ll do an episode on Brazilian reggae and we’ll also talk about samba-reggae, which is a form of music that adopts the word “reggae” as part of the genre name, from the state of Bahia.

JCV: And it also shows up in subtle ways in all kinds of pop genres. Check this one out: 

Audio: Os Paralamas do Sucesso, “Ela Disse Adeus”  (Spotify) (Youtube)

JCV: That’s “Ela Disse Adeus” by Os Paralamas do Sucesso from 1998.

SW: Paralamas do Sucesso adopt that offbeat feel as well.

JCV: These examples also bring one more element into focus: all of these songs have a vocal delivery that is much more akin to pop-rock, particularly anglophone pop-rock, than to traditional forró. 

SW: Ah, you’re right.

JCV: Which goes to show that even if the genre is ostensibly built around a desire to return to one’s roots, the reality is that it’s not a faithful recreation of the style that Luiz Gonzaga pioneered. 

SW: No. Though you can still hear that kind of forró pé-de-serra at festas juninas every year.

JCV: For sure. But forró universitário isn’t that. It’s music that is informed by the contact that its practitioners had both with the forró of Luiz Gonzaga and the pop-rock of the 1990s.

Dancing

SW: So, there’s one other major differentiating factor with forró universitário that we should mention, even if we can’t exactly show it in the podcast.

JCV: What’s that?

SW: Well, I believe that universitário is danced differently from other forms of forró, right?

JCV: Yes, oh yes. It’s actually quite distinct.

SW: So, let’s talk about the differences, then. What is traditional forró like? What is the dance like?

JCV: So, in forró pé-de-serra, it’s a couples dance, but it’s pretty informal. The idea is that everyone can dance, too. You know, jump in and dance, too. So, you would go—I don’t know—to the right, and then to the right again, and then to the left, and to the left. The dance steps are not super complicated, so that people can join in and dance.

SW: Okay, so we’re heard about that a little bit in our xote episode. You can hear Mariana Aydar talk about “two to the left, two to the right.” That’s similar to what you’re talking about. She’s talking about this traditional dance style, right?

JCV: Yes.

SW: What is the forró universitário dance like?

JCV: In a forró universitário setting, you have a more elaborate dance. It even looks like, you know salsa dancing a little bit, with spins and turns that forró pé-de-serra wouldn’t have. And it’s a marker of who’s dancing. And who taught that dance. Because forró pé-de-serra doesn’t necessarily need to be taught.

SW: Oh, so in forró universitário there is this system of classes and people sort of learning and progressing and becoming professionalized and showy. And it’s a little bit more of a performative form than a participatory one.

JCV: Yes, absolutely.

SW: Ah ok. Anything else about dance that we need to talk about?

JCV: Well, there are classes—forró classes—everywhere in the U.S., from, you know, from Seattle to New York City and Boston. I’m sure Boston has a forró dance class. And when you walk in, guess what you hear?

SW: Forró universitário? Falamansa? “Xote da Alegria”?

JCV: Absolutely: forró universitário, Falamansa, “Xote da Alegria.” And northeasterners usually don’t feel comfortable in those classes.

SW: Right. I mean, this is what we’re talking about: how these genres can create opportunities for identification, but also opportunities for differentiation, which isn’t always super inclusive.

JCV: Yeah. And they can both co-exist.

SW: They can. So, let’s recap.

JCV: Ok. Forró universitário is named for its initial makers and consumers: university students in the Southeast of Brazil, especially the city of São Paulo. Some of the practitioners seized on forró as a way to connect to an imagined past or a representative of an imagined roots of the country.

SW: It takes a lot of its musical cues from the more traditional forró pé-de-serra, including the rhythms and the basic ensemble, but it combines them with melodic and harmonic ideas more common to pop-rock, both in Brazil and in the anglophone world. The vocalists also seem inspired by these genres.

JCV: And the genre is danced differently from other forró genres.

SW: So all of these things together showcase a genre that is distinct in terms of class and distinct in terms of listenership and co-exists alongside the more traditional genre, but maybe is enjoyed by and performed by people from different backgrounds.

JCV: Yeah. Just to show that many of these characteristics are true beyond Falamansa, let’s show one more example.

SW: Okay.

JCV: This is another São Paulo band that formed at the end of the 1990s, Rastapé.

SW: The name seems to be derived from the dance genre arrasta-pé that we discussed in our festas juninas episode.

JCV: For sure. They are definitely recalling one of the classic forró subgenres with their name.

SW: The song is called  “Colo de Menina.”  Listen for some of those qualities that we pointed out in the Falamansa example.

JCV: Like the chimes!

SW: Like the chimes...

Audio: Rastapé, “Colo de Menina” (Spotify) (Youtube)

JCV: So this is another xote.

SW: You hear a lot of xotes in forró universitário.

JCV: That dance form lends itself to the kinds of dancing we discussed before. And you can really hear that offbeat guitar that’s associated with reggae.

SW: This is basically the same ensemble as in the Falamansa example. 

JCV: And, um, the first few chords of this song are exactly the same as “Xote da Alegria” too.

SW: Wow. Very similar indeed. What about the lyrics?

JCV: Well, it’s a love song.

SW: Let’s see. “When the moon shines, I speak of love / In the swaying of this xote I feel your heart / Awake at night, I dream of you,” etc. 

JCV: In the chorus, he sings, “I don’t want my mother’s embrace. I just want the girl’s embrace and to, little by little, conquer your heart.”

SW: Okay then. Both of these songs have a kind of youthful innocence.

JCV: They do.

SW: They don’t remind me at all of the Clemilda songs we heard a couple of episodes ago.

JCV: Not at all. These seem more to reflect a romantic relationship ideal, rather than the more explicit or more complex adult relationships that her songs do.

SW: But that’s not the whole story with forró.

JCV: No. Contemporaneous to the development of forró universitário is another forró subgenre called forró eletrônico. It’s one that’s more popular among working class folks

SW: As well as more popular, on the whole, in the Northeast.

JCV: Yep. And one that has lyrics that aren’t always, shall we say, PG.

SW: But we’re going to talk about that next time. So stay tuned for—and we really mean it this time—one more forró episode. 

JCV: Yes. Then, we’re going to take a little break while we write and record some new episodes, but just for a couple of extra weeks. We’ll update you on our Instagram and Twitter counts. Just search for @essefoimassa or click the link in the episode description. But for now, thanks Schuyler!

SW: Thanks Juliana. It’s been great, as always!

JCV: This one was extra special, to do it in person.

SW: Yes.

JCV: Esse foi massa.

Credits

Audio: Sammy Bananas, “Transcontinental Baião (Carioca Remix)”

SW: Massa is written, produced and edited by Juliana Cantarelli Vita and me, Schuyler Whelden. 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 next time as we really, truly—I mean it this time—wrap up our forró series with a discussion of forró eletrônico. Until then, esse foi Massa.