Music, the pulse of a people

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1986 by Tarik De Souza

An equally fundamental feature of thestructure of Brazilian popular orchestration is the percussion accompaniment which came to be added to the ensembles of violins, cellos and violas in the shape of small drums improvised from all kinds of kitchen utensils and metal tools. The most famous example of this is the arrangement for Brazilian Watercolour.

Although this important musicl currenthas branched out in countless directions, it has also been enriched by contributions from different regions, such as the church music composed by slaves and transcribed by Milton Nascimento, who was born in Rio but received his musical education in the religious processions of Minas Gerais, or the rescoring of the northeastern coco of Jackson do Pandeiro in the electronic style of contemporary rock. Songs composed in Brazil respond to the clash of stimuli between the country's oral and choreographic traditions and the worldwide community. Thus, with such an open-minded outlook, mambo and rock turn up in the music of the quintessentially Brazilian Chico Buarque just as bossa nova rhythms appear in the numbers of such British groups as Style Council and Everything But a Girl, and some European brass bands include A Banda, again by Buarque, in their conventional repertoires.

The litany intoned by the Portuguesepriests as they taught the catechism could be combined with the Indian choirs to produce a number of Sertao viola pieces, but there are other even more eloquent examples of borrowing from this Third World songbook. Frank Sinatra has sung Tom Jobim's The Girl from Ipanema and One Note Samba; the Modern Jazz Quartet has recorded Bachiana No. 5 by Villa-Lobos; La Casa, music written by Vinicius de Moraes for Brazilian children, is a success in Italy, just as Rita Lee's Brazilian-style rock is popular in France. Indeed, as Caetano Veloso thunders in one of his latest hits, written in the "rap" style of the Blacks of Brooklyn: "E deixa os portugais morrerem a mingua/ minha patria e minha lingua" ("And let the 'Portugals' die in destitution/my country is my language").