Forró Overview:
According to popular legend, the word forró was a mispronunciation of the English words "for all," dating back to colonial times when British landowners threw lavish parties and supposedly invited everyone (or all) who could attend. In fact, the word has ties to colonial era dance parties, but really is a generic term now used to represent the accordion-driven sound of Brazil's northeastern Ceará and Pernambuco states. Within the past several years, forró has been the music and dance craze that has swept across Brazil and into the United States, inspiring a new generation with good old-fashioned country music.
The origins of forró have more to do with the geography of Brazil's northeastern region, which comprises a lush coastal area of sugar and cocoa plantations, fertile farmlands further inland, and some one-and-a-half million square kilometers of hot, dry desert known as the sertão. It is this area which gave birth to a humble music and dance tradition dating back to the colonial period, when cowboys celebrated the brief rainy season with popularized dances, and bandits as well as heroes wandered the lands in search of opportunity (or adventure). The vast annual migrations of poor farmers from the sertão to southern city slums (called favelas) were often the subject matter for northeastern songs, as sertanejos (residents of the sertão) sang with nostalgia about the return of the rain so they could return home. The musical backdrop for these songs consisted of imported styles such as German polkas and waltzes as well as the Brazilian chamego, but the most popular style to emerge in the northeast was a new rhythm and dance called the baião, which had connections to African circle dances, and was often performed during poetic duels called desafios. Perhaps the most important figure in the evolution of this style was accordionist/singer Luiz Gonzaga (1912-1989), whose mid 1940s recordings of the baião propelled him to national fame.
Gonzaga's blend of rural country music within a more urban context helped to modernize the baião, and his collaboration with Humberto Teixeira prompted a new instrumentation of accordion, zabumba (bass drum) and triangle. They also expanded the form and introduced distinct melodic and harmonic elements which many scholars value as reminiscent of the African-derived blues sound, and the funky beat seemed to motivate dancers in a new way, blending in the influences of previous dances such as the xote, xaxado and coco. The term forró came to be used as the generic word for all northeastern music and dance, and while it fell out of favor by the 1960s (as bossa nova rose to the spotlight), the quaint and nostalgic genre has since returned with a fervor as young Brazilians rock and sway to the accordion-driven beat. —Rebeca Mauleon
