The Berimbau: Soul of Brazilian Music

4. The “One Note Samba” Starts to Jam

93 ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ Chapter 4 The “One Note Samba” Starts to Jam1 The berimbau emerged as a solo instrument in several genres of Brazilian popular music from the early 1970s to the present through the work of three berimbau artists: Naná Vasconcelos, Dinho Nascimento, and Ramiro Musotto. Each of these musicians relates to Brazilian national identity and the berimbau in a manner different from Baden Powell and Gilberto Gil. One principal point of distinction is that there were less cultural restrictions imposed on the berimbau by the capoeira tradition, and as a result they incorporated the berimbau into new musical contexts . Although many prominent Brazilian percussionists such as Airto Moreira, Papete, Dom um Romão, Guilherme Franco, Paulinho da Costa, Djalma Corêa and many others have recorded extensively with the berimbau, their recordings tend to remain framed within a narrowly defined vision of capoeira toques. In contrast, Vasconcelos, Nascimento and Musotto each present creative instrumental approaches that propel the berimbau’s movement into featured, as opposed to supporting, performance roles. Naná Vasconcelos is an internationally renowned berimbau musician from Recife, Pernambuco. His musical endeavors have been the source of documentary films by Toby Talbot and Didier Grosset.2 While Vasconcelos has become internationally recognized as a berimbau musician , he has approached the berimbau as an outsider to the capoeira tradition, which is clearly visible through observation of his presentation of capoeira songs and berimbau toques in Talbot’s documentary film. Had Vasconcelos been immersed in traditional capoeira performance practices, he might not have developed his unique styles of berimbau improvisations. ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ 94 The “One Note Samba” Starts to Jam Dinho Nascimento is a musician and capoeira practitioner from Salvador , Bahia. He has developed alternative techniques for playing the berimbau, most notably the “blues berimbau,” which is a combination of berimbau tradition and Nascimento’s interpretation of North American blues music. In contrast to Vasconcelos’s background, Nascimento developed his musical style as an individual who informally learned capoeira on the streets of Salvador, and has created innovative musical techniques and ideas that have challenged both capoeira practitioners and record producers. Ramiro Musotto is a percussionist from Bahia Blanca, Argentina. Initially inspired by Vasconcelos’s recordings, Musotto moved to Brazil in the early 1980s to formally study the berimbau. He has since become established as a formidable berimbau musician who is well known for creating multiple layered berimbau arrangements and experimenting with electronic sampling and sequencing in a broad range of Brazilian popular music contexts. During Musotto’s berimbau apprenticeship, he moved to the heart of Salvador, Bahia, where he learned fundamental aspects of berimbau performance practices within the capoeira tradition. Therefore , his progressive multiple-berimbau popular music arrangements are steeped in fundamentals derived from musical aesthetics of capoeira. Vasconcelos represents the pioneering generation of virtuoso berimbau soloists in popular music; while Nascimento and Musotto have both been influenced by Vasconcelos, they produce unique contributions derived from their own personal experiences and musicality. As the berimbau has moved farther into global popular musics, new performance techniques and organological development have affected the berimbau’s physical presence as well as timbral and melodic characteristics. Vasconcelos and other Brazilian berimbau musicians traveled to various parts of the world in the 1970s, thus influencing a broad range of percussionists in Turkey, Japan, and Italy, who in turn have freely developed innovations in berimbau performance practice without knowledge of cultural aesthetics from capoeira’s musical traditions.3 Naná Vasconcelos Naná Vasconcelos (b. 1944) has earned respect throughout the world as an innovative musician. He is perhaps best known for his use of the ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ ▶ 95 The “One Note Samba” Starts to Jam berimbau, prominently featured in a contrasting variety of musical genres. One of Vasconcelos’s main achievements was to gain popularity through his use of the berimbau as a solo instrument, in international jazz contexts—thus distancing it from the capoeira tradition. Vasconcelos ’s berimbau work has been acknowledged in numerous individual entries in popular music encyclopedias and interviews in newspapers and music publications.4 Vasconcelos began performing at age twelve, as a percussionist in the city of Recife’s military band, in northeastern Brazil. He later became a regular participant of Sítio Novo, a neighborhood escola de samba, where he was able to compare and contrast snare drum technique and musicality with the military band. He was also a drumset musician for the band Bossanorte, in which he explored a vast array of...