Tuning the Rabeca: Highs and Lows in Pernambucano Folk Culture
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RS-10 • BRAZIL• September 2008 ICWA Letters I NST I TUTE OF C URRENT W ORLD A FFai RS Tuning the Rabeca: Highs and Lows in Pernambucano Folk Culture By Raphael Soifer Raphi Soifer is a Donors’ Fellow study- , my first rabeca teacher, saw me basi- ing, as a participant cally as an ATM with a foreign accent. and observer, the JTo him, I was just another gringo with relationship between an interest in traditional Pernambucano the arts and social music and a pocketbook. Beginning change in communities shortly after Carnaval, we would meet in throughout Brazil. An the park at the entrance of Olinda’s high actor, director, play- city twice a week to practice. There, I’d wright, musician and try to memorize complicated finger pat- theatre educator, he has terns and fast-paced bowing techniques worked in the United while wilting in the afternoon sun, under States and Brazil, and attack from all sides by mourissocas, vi- has taught perfor- cious little mosquitoes. After a while, we mance to prisoners began to attract small audiences: home- and underprivileged less breadfruit vendors, yellow-shirted youth through People’s ACNO guides (RS-7) winding down Palace Projects in Rio from a day of leading tourists around de Janeiro and Com- the high city or chasing after cabs, and A rabeca in action. (photo by Liz Hardwick) munity Works in San grandmothers bringing toddlers to and Francisco. He holds from the playground. They’d stop and listen as — usually built by master craftsmen out of native a bachelor’s degree in I screeched my way, sweaty-fingered, through wood — produce rougher, less ethereal notes. Theatre Studies and tunes that J presented to me as the very soul of Anthropology from Pernambuco. Usually, our local audience mem- When I first heard a rabeca in January, I was Yale University. bers would wait until I’d finished a run-through struck by its earthiness, and by its unexpected to ask: “What kind of instrument is that?” harmonies. The mournful sounds of ciranda, Institute of Current a circle dance often accompanied by rabeca, World Affairs The rabeca (pronounced ha-BEH-ca) is a seemed to have more in common with Middle four-stringed fiddle, originally from North Af- The Crane-Rogers Foundation Eastern musical scales than with samba. The in- rica, that made its way to Brazil via the Iberian strument called to mind Northeastern Brazilian 4545 42nd St. NW, Ste 311 th Washington, D.C. 20016 Peninsula sometime in the 16 century. Though scenes that I’d only read about, or at most, seen the instrument looks virtually the same as a through a bus window, like the sun rising over Tel: 202-364-4068 violin, rabequeiros and music scholars are quick Fax: 202-364-0498 dusty earth and scraggly cacti in the sertão (the E-mail: [email protected] to distinguish between the two. The rabeca is semi-arid interior region). I’d never heard of the Web: www.icwa.org fundamentally a folk instrument, made by the rabeca before I made it to Olinda, and I resolved people and for the people, while the violin — a to give it a try. It struck me as a visceral route The Information later invention — was designed for an aristocrat- to understanding more about the Northeast by contained in this ic audience. While violinists hold their instru- familiarizing my fingers, wrists, and ears with publication may not ment under their chins, rabequeiros hold theirs its sounds and rhythms. be reprinted or re- against their chest, which limits somewhat the published without the range of their fingers (although it makes bowing I wasn’t alone in seeking out the rabeca as express written con- slightly easier). Violins, based on more advanced a key to the region. Plenty of Northeasterners, sent of the Institute of Renaissance technologies, are engineered for a especially middle-class urban hipsters, are doing Current World Affairs. higher timbre and a fine, clean sound. Rabecas the same thing. In Olinda and Recife, where the ©2008 Institute of Current World Affairs, The Crane-Rogers Foundation instrument never had much of a tradition, the rabeca has of locals’ efforts to rip off the gringos. If folk culture is to experienced a revival in the past decade as musicians and continue as the base of Olinda’s economy, I hoped at least audiences seek out regional folklore. Rabecas aren’t nearly that my reais didn’t just go to tour operators, hotel owners, as ubiquitous as the deep alfaia drums that form the base of and hyper-capitalist landladies. But J’s shamelessness in maracatu percussion groups (RS-7), but they’re not hard to trying to sell me an idea of “authenticity” for the highest find, either. Like thealfaia, the rabeca has become a symbol possible price started to wear me out. Once, even though of regional pride and a crossover instrument, showing up in I’d just paid him 50 reais for a two-hour lesson, he somehow places as diverse as literary salons and rock-fusion concerts. coerced me into paying his 5 real admission for the Wednes- Rabeca lessons aren’t necessarily easy to find — certainly day night forró. not when compared to the maracatu mini-courses that draw in tourists by the dozen — but they’re far more popular than J may have seen me as little more than a meal ticket, but J led me to believe when I began training with him. he seemed to see the rabeca the same way. J is a self-styled multi-instrumentalist who studies at Pernambuco’s most For all of its crossover success, though, the rabeca is prestigious public university. He began playing the rabeca in danger of losing ground in its traditional venues. While when he participated in a public literacy initiative during urban rabequeiros can count on small but dedicated audi- which he lived in the interior for several months, teaching ences paying for shows, master musicians in the interior government-designated masters of folk culture — mostly have to look to the outside — specifically, to the government middle-aged men — how to read. During the course, he — to receive financial support. Preserving and valorizing picked up the basics of the instrument, and since then, he endangered traditional arts has become a hallmark of cul- didn’t seem to have learned much. He practices from time tural policy under Lula. The federal government’s current to time, but he’s more interested in making it as a musician strategy is to grant official recognition to folk traditions in Europe than in kicking around backcountry Pernambuco, while working to eradicate many of the circumstances trying to glean the instrument’s secrets by watching the — especially poverty and illiteracy — that played a role in masters play. their creation. The recognition is long overdue, but it also creates a new set of problems. To what extent can outside During our first lesson, J told me what he considered to funding help maintain traditions that have always relied be the secret of the rabeca. Maybe I looked a little anxious. It on and existed for their community alone? And what will was at least 90 degrees in the park, and the bugs were fierce. “professionalization” do to a tradition where, historically, We already were about 30 minutes into the lesson, and J still many practitioners have been illiterate? hadn’t let me try to play a single note on the damn thing. He had brought two rabecas with him, along with brochures The rabeca is a living instrument, and its new and and magazines about the instrument and its history, and he traditional practices blur constantly. This blurring is on was waxing eloquent about the importance of the rabeca to display every Wednesday, when a bar at the foot of Olinda’s Pernambuco’s identity. Finally, as he got ready to hand me high city highlights forró, the Northeast’s most celebrated his “reserve” instrument, J decided to let me in on the first popular music. Forró is high-octane dance music, driven of the rabeca’s great mysteries. “Someone asked a master by beats from a zabumba bass drum and a steel triangle the rabequeiro what the difference is between a rabeca and a size of a coat hanger. Usually, forró is based around an ac- violin,” J told me, “and he said that all violins are the same, cordion, and it’s increasingly commercialized to include but that each rabeca sounds like itself.” synthesizers, drum sets, and electric guitars. On Wednesday nights in Olinda, though, Cláudio Rabeca (his stage name), I doubt that Itzhak Perlman would agree. I understand a local rabequeiro, leads the band, playing pé-de-serra tunes. J’s “secret,” though, especially since it came via a master (Pé-de-serra — literally, “foot of the hills” — refers to rustic, rabequeiro. The violin comes from an erudite European old-time forró). What seems like the entire population of the tradition. It conjures images of written sheet music, of high city comes out for forró nights, where the gringos try to elegant symphonies in gilded concert halls. To traditional master basic steps, locals twirl around the dance floor, and rabequeiros from the interior of Pernambuco, violin music is everyone hits on each other shamelessly. Cláudio’s forró is strange. The wealthy, Europe-imitating society it represents a crowd-pleaser for a primarily young audience, but his is out of reach, and historically, has kept locals poor and technique is grounded in rabeca tradition, and most of his subservient. tunes are several decades old.