Videos

I sat in with Arlindo's band in May 2001.

Heleno dos Oito Baixos em casa em Caruaru, PE 26 de março 2001.

Zé Calixto plays my Hohner accordion at the Feira de Feira de São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro in July 2001.

Arlindo dos Oito Baixos at the Sala de Reboco in Recife on April 14, 2001

Interview with Arlindo dos Oito Baixos on March 27, 2001.

Forro do Arlindo dos Oito Baixos

A two-part video I recorded at the forró of Arlindo dos Oito Baixos on Jan. 21, 2001.

Mestre Batista's Banco de Cavalo Marinho

On May 19, 1991, Mestre Batista, master performer of cavalo-marinho, a Brazilian performance tradition that combines music, dance, drama, comedy, and costume, gathered the musicians of his cavalo-marinho group and some friends and neighbors for an afternoon of music-making. Batista was in the last year of his life, suffering from throat cancer; he is directing, with a white towel around his neck. I had interviewed him multiple times during my ethnomusicological field research. His full cavalo-marinho group was not performing. He suggested this music session so I could get a sense of the music his group played. We had done a similar, smaller session in March that I had recorded in audio and photos. This is how cavalo-marinho music sounded as played and sung by the best players and singers of the region at that time. The members of the banco (musical group) are Luiz Paixão, rabeca; Manoel Deodato, vocal and pandeiro; Biu Roque, vocal and bage (reco-reco), Mané Roque (Biu's son) bage; Sidrak, mineiro (ganzá). Inácio Lucindo da Silva is in the yellow shirt. The tall man in the white shirt who does the Mateus role and strikes a plastic bottle (a substitute for the inflated ox bladder or bexiga) against his thigh is Mané Jacó; his shorter colleague in the Sebastião role is Basu. I recorded this in Hi8 video and audio at Mestre Batista's farm, Sítio Chã de Camará, município de Aliança, Pernambuco, Brazil.

Maracatu rural at Mestre Batista's house at Chã de Camará, near Aliança, Pernambuco, in November, 1990. Mestre Juruti do Norte and Mestre Cigarra are the poet/singers.

Manoel Severino Martins (1930-2001), known as Mané Pitunga, played the rabeca and built rabecas that are prized for their tone and lightness. I recorded this video at his home in Ferreiros, Pernambuco, Brazil. As part of my ethnomusicological field research, I commissioned a rabeca and videoed him as he made it. The first two videos show him making it on Jan. 20 and Feb. 1, 1991. The third video shows him playing it on Feb. 8. The fourth video is an edited video I made called Mané Pitunga e a Fábrica das Rabecas (Mané Pitunga and the Rabeca Factory).

Patron saint festival in Condado, Pernambuco on Jan. 27-28, 1991

This video in two parts is a sampling of music and dance from a patron saint festival in Condado, Pernambuco, on Jan. 27-28, 1991. In part one there is ciranda, mamulengo, an MC Hammer song, a glimpse of a truck that carries a trío elétrico, and cavalo-marinho (Inácio Lucindo da Silva's group with Luiz Paixão on rabeca). In part two there is Maracatu Leão Cordoado from the town of Tupaoca (their improvised lyrics refer to being videoed for Rede Globo, but it was just me filming--or maybe there was aTV news crew there, because I rarely used artificial lighting) and more cavalo-marinho.