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Rating: The cowbell worn by a skinny cow with an uncertain gait and the song of the "vaqueiro"* pierces the silence, exorcizes hunger, and calls for rain.
Drums lift dust, the only certainty, a constant presence, like thirst and faith.
Historical, lyrical, and mystical elements intertwine in the texts, recited by the declaimer "Lirinha". Symbols of a culture too remote and different to be conveyed in these meager lines.
A culture born of the "Sertão", a poor semi-arid area in the northeast of Brazil, rich in stories and strong religiosity that permeates all the poor regions of the earth, in need of dreams and hopes.
The "Sabia"** in the sertão
When it sings, it moves me
Spends three months singing
And in silence for nine
Because it has the duty
To sing only when it rains.
“Cordel do Fogo Encantado” started as a theatrical project and then developed in a more musical direction. Besides the raw and recitative singing of the aforementioned "Lirinha", the group consists of three percussionists and a guitarist. The sounds are strictly acoustic, and the instruments are all traditional. "Zabumbas", snare drums, "pandeiros", "congas", "surdos", triangles, "ganzas", and "bombos", skillfully and originally arranged, intertwining traditional Afro-Brazilian rhythms.
It is, nevertheless, an album of songs, beautiful songs, that surprised all of Brazil with its energy, its aesthetic completeness, its carefree drama, showing that the culture of the perhaps too despised northeast (as the south might be for us) is more alive than ever and can thus continually recreate and renew itself, without offering the usual clichés of MPB (Brazilian popular music), imprisoned by the legacy of "tropicalismo" that it struggles to surpass.
This is the first CD, released in 2001 and produced by Naná Vasconcelos.
Beautiful work. From a periphery of the world, from Arcoverde, Pernambuco, Brazil.
* It is the Brazilian cowboy, certainly much more real than the false American myths. Worn out by the sun, thirst, abuses of landowners, with skin dry and carved by the sun, and eyes raised to the sky, praying to God, for a little rain.
**A species of bird well known for its singing abilities.
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