Camarão Plays Forró: Dance Music From Northeastern Brazil

This is fabulous music from northeastern Brazil with emphasis on virtuoso accordion playing by Reginaldo Alves Ferreira, known as Camarão (shrimp in Poruguese because of a sunburn he once sported in the studio), who gets billing and a few pieces by Arlindo Dos Oito Baixos, whose work with the eight-bass button accordion is featured on four pieces.

Released in 1998 on the great British label Nimbus, which has issued so many remarkable recordings of world music, this album's music employs several styles including forró, baião, xote, arrastapé and chachado, which are basically unknown to most foreign listeners who identify Brazilian music with the samba and bossa nova.

This is also more country music, though migrants seeking work and better opportunities have brought the music of the northeast to the large cities of the south.  Accompanying the accordions on these pieces are light percussion on the triangle, cow bells and bass drum, while some guitar and vocals are interspersed, giving the tunes additional variety.

Camarão was quoted in the liner notes about the importance of not "modernizing too much" and keeping tradition in a way that was "essentially simple and direct," while he strives to "play music that smells of the land" in his native Pernambuco town of Caruarú.

In America, we think of dance music as often very beat heavy, whereas this music is light and airy, with the mastery of the accordion sensitively complemented by the other instruments and the vocals also treading softly but with much melodic emphasis.  This is a gorgeous recording not often heard here and a welcome addition to the fine collection of world music offered by Nimbus.