Forró

Statues of Forró musicians

Forró (Portuguese pronunciation: [fɔˈɦɔ]*) is a genre of Brazilian music that originated in Northeastern Brazil. It encompasses various dance styles as well as a number of different musical beats. This music genre has gained widespread popularity in all regions of Brazil. Forró is closely associated with Brazilian June Festivals, which celebrate a number of Christian saints. The most celebrated is Saint John's day.

Origin of the term

There are several theories on the origin of the name.

The main theory is that forró as a derivative of forrobodó, meaning "great party" or "commotion". This is the view held by Brazilian folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo, who studied the Brazilian Northeast through most of his life. Forrobodó is believed to come from the word forbodó (itself a corruption of fauxbourdon), which was used in the Portuguese court to define a dull party. The word forrobodó is itself very common in Portuguese popular conversation to describe a fun, but almost depraved and limitless party. This word was carried by Portuguese migration waves to Brazil, and lost the light negative meaning and was slowly simplified by their children.

Yet another theory often heard popularly in Brazil and elsewhere—for example, Gilberto Gil provides it in concerts—is that the word forró is a derivative of the English expression "for all" and that it originated in the early 1900s. English engineers on the Great Western Railway of Brazil near Recife would throw balls on weekends and classify them as either only for railroad personnel or for the general populace ("for all"). This belief was somewhat reinforced by a similar practice by USAF personnel stationed at the Natal Air Force Base during World War II, but it is unrelated because before the USAF went to Natal, the name "Forró" was already in use.

Popularity

The city of Embu das Artes, Brazil

Forró is the most popular genre of music and dance in Brazil's Northeast, to the extent that historically "going to the Forró" meant simply going to party or going out. Regarding the music, it is based on a combination of three instruments (accordion, zabumba and a metal triangle). The dance however becomes very different as you cross the borders of the Northeast into the Southeast. As part of the popular culture it is in constant change. The dance known as college forró is the most common style between the middle-class students of colleges and universities in the Southeast, having influences of other dances like salsa and samba-rock.

The traditional music used to dance the forró was brought to the Southeast from the Northeast by Luiz Gonzaga, who transformed the baião (a word originated from baiano and assigned a warm-up for artists to search for inspiration before playing) into a more sophisticated rhythm. In later years, forró achieved popularity throughout Brazil, in the form of a slower genre known as xote, that has been influenced by pop-rock music to become more acceptable by Brazilian youth of Southeast, South and Central regions.

Music

Valdir Santos plays Forró

Forró, referring to the music and not the dance, encompasses today various musical styles. The musical style, which is at the origin of, and from which have grown out most musical styles today denoted as Forró, is the Forró of Luiz Gonzaga (and others such as Jackson do Pandeiro and Marinês).

This musical style, commonly called also Forró Pé-de-Serra, is played by a trio combination of

This combination of instruments was defined as the base of Forró by Luiz Gonzaga. Before Gonzaga other combinations have been commonly used. The combination of triangle with accordion is a combination that has already existed in European folk music before and is also used in Cajun music in the United States. Forró thus conserves a format of a small ensemble with multiple (in this case two) percussionists, something that also used to be common in Europe and the United States before the era of the drum set.

This combination of instruments serves rather as a base and is not fixed, incorporating sometimes other instruments such as fiddle, flute, pandeiro, bass, cavaquinho and acoustic guitar.

The combination of zabumba and triangle is almost always part of the rhythm section of any Forró group. The accordion is always part of a Forró ensemble, apart from the sub-style of "Forró rabecado", where the accordion is replaced by a fiddle.

The triangle keeps an ongoing pulse on all the four times of the (4/4) beat, while accentuating the third beat. In this sense, the function can be compared to the rhythm guitar or the hi-hat of the drum set in rock music, although the triangle accentuates the third beat more strongly with its high pitched metallic sound, being damped to give a fainter and drier sound on the other beats. The zabumba, which is played on both sides, on one side giving a grave sound and on the other a sharp whip-like sound, plays the syncopated rhythms essential to Forró.

From the melodic and harmonic point of view, Forró makes heavy use of the Escala nordestina (literally North-eastern scale), which could be characterised as being a mixture of the Lydian and Mixo-lydian modes. The North-eastern scale represents the basis of a large part of the more traditional Forró and the Forro Pé-de-Serra, in similar way as the blues scale is the basis for the music of the Mississippi Delta. The Escala nordestina is most evident in pieces such as Vem Morena, Baião of Luiz Gonzaga. The accordion is the typical melody instrument used in Forró, and is sometimes called the "Soul of Forró" or the "Soul of the Sertão", referring the region where Forró has originated.

As Forró diversified away from its roots, it has incorporated other influences, and more significantly, diversified into quite distinct musical styles.

Lyrics and themes

Forró lyrics have changed with time and regarding the subgenre, as the music moved from being a purely North-Eastern music genre to being a genre popular all across Brazil.

Traditionally, lyrics were about life in the rural North-East (in particular the Sertão) and other North-Eastern themes, such as concerns about droughts, migration to look for work and thus about longing or homesickness (Saudade).

An example of this is the probably most emblematic (anonymous) song Asa Branca, made famous across all of Brazil in the 1940s by Luiz Gonzaga, sometimes also called the "Hymn of the Sertão" or "Hymn of the North-East". The lyrics are about leaving the rural home in the Sertão because of drought, and about hope to be able to return when the rain will fall again on the dry, barren land of the Sertão. The rain will be announced by the arrival of Asa branca, a certain white winged bird, which only flies there if it rains (there is a recent American version played by the group Forro in the Dark featuring David Byrne).

In the more recent genre of Forró Universitario, lyrics have a much more urban flavour and relate more to life of a young urbanized middle class, as lyrics found nowadays in rock music.

As in many other musical styles, lyrics are also often about love and romance, passion, jealousy, or reminiscing about an ex-lover.

Instruments

Today various musical instruments are used in the various styles of Forró (although always with a reference to the traditional combination of accordion, triangle and zabumba) :

Dance

Dancing styles

Aviões do Forró

There are three rhythms of forró: xote (a slower-paced rhythm), baião (the original forró) and arrasta-pé (the fastest of the three), and amongst these, many styles of dancing, which varies from region to region, and may be known by different names according to the location. Forró is danced in pairs, usually very close together, with the man's left hand holding the woman's right hand as in the Waltz, his right arm around her back and her left arm around his neck; Other styles may require to stay partially away, or in a considerable distance, only holding their hands up the shoulders. Influences from salsa and other Caribbean dances has given mobility to forró, with the woman - and occasionally the man - being spun in various ways, although it's not essential to spin at all, and more complex movements may prove impossible to be executed in the usually crowded dancing area of forrós. Follows below a list of the most popular styles of forró in Brazil:

Xote

Xote originally has its roots in the schottische dance.

Baião

Arrasta-pé

Miudinho and puladinho can also be danced to baião music and even to arrasta-pé, but in the latter the leg work is so intense that it's impracticable. Some people also like to include brega/calypso in the forró category, because this dance has suffered much influence of forró throughout the decades, but it's danced to its own rhythm (not to be mistaken with Calypso music).

Steps

Forro dancing styles are informally often grouped into two main "families", simply for practical reasons: The older Nordestino (North-eastern) type of Forro and the Universitário (University) Forro that developed later in the South.

Nordestino forro is danced with the couple much closer together, with their legs often inter-twined and a characteristic sideways shuffle movement. Because of the intimacy, there are not as many step variations in this style.

Universitário forro, with its origins in the big southern cities of Brazil, is the more popular style outside of the north-east. Its basic step is forward-backwards - slightly similar to traditional Bolero or Salsa. With more space between the pair, many more moves, steps and turns are possible than in Nordestino styles. The more common steps include:

Universitário forro supposedly evolved from (and is still very similar to) the pé-de-serra/baião styles, while Nordestino is used to refer to the styles more like the original xote.

Notes

*Guttural R, when spoken in the Central Northeastern Portuguese, is usually pronounced as a voiced or voiceless glottal fricative, in the beginning of words or "rr" digraph.

References

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    This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/25/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.