The Brasil Summerfest schedule is up. All items are in the Google calendar (see the links at right) and, just in case there's any doubt, there's way too much to see and hear, even if you could be in two places at once.
I am curious about Quarteto Olinda. Forró, or country music from Northeast Brazil, has captured the imaginations of a small but growing group of New Yorkers. I must confess it has not, until now, held a strong fascination for me. But when I heard this band features a rabeca -- a Brazilian fiddle -- I was immediately curious. It's intriguing to me not only because this is another instrument and tradition I'd never heard of, but because the rabeca is connected, both linguistically and instrumentally, with the rebec, a medieval bowed, stringed instrument that was used in popular dances of the Middle Ages, which in my old music textbooks was condesendingly described as an "ancestor" of the violin. Too bad they failed to mention the many living traditions containing various permutations of this instrument that still exist, -- not just in Brazil, but really anywhere in the world where European folk traditions were spread. So when you hear this fiddler play, you'll be experiencing a tradition that goes back hundreds of years, probably before written music even existed.
I am curious about Quarteto Olinda. Forró, or country music from Northeast Brazil, has captured the imaginations of a small but growing group of New Yorkers. I must confess it has not, until now, held a strong fascination for me. But when I heard this band features a rabeca -- a Brazilian fiddle -- I was immediately curious. It's intriguing to me not only because this is another instrument and tradition I'd never heard of, but because the rabeca is connected, both linguistically and instrumentally, with the rebec, a medieval bowed, stringed instrument that was used in popular dances of the Middle Ages, which in my old music textbooks was condesendingly described as an "ancestor" of the violin. Too bad they failed to mention the many living traditions containing various permutations of this instrument that still exist, -- not just in Brazil, but really anywhere in the world where European folk traditions were spread. So when you hear this fiddler play, you'll be experiencing a tradition that goes back hundreds of years, probably before written music even existed.
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