From the beiradões to Beiradão: the claim for a musical genre
by Igor Marques |Translation: Felipe André Silva
In the first article about Beiradão, we showed how the festivities that moved the interiors of Amazonas shaped new meanings for the state’s sound. We’ve approached these stories from the middle of the rubber cycle until the rise of names like Teixeira de Manaus, Chico Caju, Oseas and his Wonderful Guitar and André Amazonas, some of the first artists to record this musicality in the record companies. Now we are going to understand how the musical formatting established in the 1980s by these artists from the beiradões is still reflected in Amazonian culture, even though it went through a process of erasure between the 1990s and 2000s.
Who played a seminal role in the formation of the musicality of the beiradões was Pinduca, from Pará state. As we have already seen, he was the one who took Oseas and Teixeira to the record label Copacabana and also encouraged, in the 70s, the entrepreneur Carlos Santos to set up Gravasom, where Chico Caju, Agnaldo do Amazonas and Magalhães recorded their first albums.
This move made by Pinduca happens at a very opportune moment. Lambada was on the rise and he, as one of the pioneers, was interested in promoting the genre, either by encouraging the creation of Gravasom in Belém, or by dialoguing with Copacabana in São Bernardo do Campo. In the case of Copacabana, researcher Rafael Branquinho Abdala Norberto also highlights that in the same period the label formed a catalog with a regional-cosmopolitan appeal that in a way spoke with the lambada’s proposal: “Copacabana recorded Raul Seixas, but bringing this regional thing, from Bahia playing Rock ’n’ Roll. To show something kind of the exotic … Chitãozinho and Xororó play the country music, but it is not that roots country, it is the urban version… They had something in that sense, to build characters ”, he explains.
“I was going to the studio to do their record production, I was doing production and the arrangements for them to record” (Pinduca)
Pinduca himself told us what this relationship with the label was like. “The owner of Copacabana (Rosvaldo Curi), since the first record I recorded, gave me credit, whoever I thought was capable and able to take it to Copacabana, the door was open”, he remembers. More than a scout, in this wave Pinduca also ended up producing the records together with the musicians of his band. “I was going to the studio to do their record production, I was doing production and the arrangements for them to record,” said the paraense in an interview via Whatsapp.
SUCCESS, MONEY AND ERASURE
The starting point for understanding how this music reverberates today is to understand how these musicians achieved a wider reach in Brazil and abroad even in the 1980s. In 1986, for example, guitarist Magalhães was “forcibly taken” to make a private show for drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. The event took place while the guitarist was touring Colombia, as Debora, daughter of the musician — already deceased, told us. “I couldn’t wait for it to end, that man, he is crazy”, Magalhães would have said to the family, after arriving home with a pack of dollars, paid for by Pablo Escobar.
Also a guitarist, André Amazonas had to stop playing when he saw his military retirement at risk. “The army threatened to take his retirement, for him to choose either records or the army. Because they thought he was making a lot of money, ” say Emanuel Ferreira and Raimundo Nonato, André’s nephews, in an interview with the web series A Poética dos Beiradões.
In order for these artists to move around in and out of Amazonas with such success, it is important to reinforce the role of broadcasters like Zé Milton and F. Cavalcante. The announcers played the repertoire of these musicians in their programs, produced events with them and wrote some of the small choruses of the recorded songs. In addition, they were also responsible for introducing some of these artists to their respective record labels.
“Agnaldo starved to death, man ” (Rafael Norberto)
However, there is evidence that these broadcasters acted in bad faith as career managers. According to information by Rafael Norberto, who interviewed musicians, broadcasters and producers in very different social realities for his master’s dissertation on the songs of the beiradões, most of the money gained by the artists was accumulated between the record companies and the managers. “Those guys got it good! Look at where they live today and where Chico Caju lives, or where Agnaldo do Amazonas lived. Agnaldo starved to death, man ”, reveals Rafael.
In addition to not receiving fair payment for their work, musicians of the generation of Chico Caju, Toinho, André Amazonas and Magalhães also had to face the dismantling of the National Council of Copyright (CNDA), in 1990, by then President Fernando Collor. The agency had been responsible for the regulation of copyright in Brazil since the 1970s. According to Hildebrando Pontes, former president of CNDA, the extinction occurred as a revenge on the artistic class that did not support Collor at the time.
Soon, Amazonian musicians who had nothing to do with the political game, ended up losing their little money and also the space on the market, as revealed by Rafael Norberto: “Chico Caju’s last LP started selling a lot and suddenly he was shelved in record companies because of the Collor plan, without being able to sell. That’s when all these musicians who made some money over the years, saw their career fall apart and never recovered”.
In addition to this difficult phase for the songs of the beiradões, in the 90’s the Banda Carrapicho released its version for “Tic tic tac” and Fafá de Belém recorded a version of “Vermelho”, original songs from Boi-Bumbá Garantido, from Parintins. The festival that had been growing exponentially since 1988, when the Bumbódromo was inaugurated, gained international popularity and caused tourists and Amazonians to wake up to a new niche in the phonographic market that was beginning to form: the Toadas de boi.
As a result, the musicians from the beiradões were gradually made invisible from the phonographic market, restricting their areas of activity even more to the beiradões, outside of the attention of traditional media outlets. In this period that lasted until the beginning of the decade of 2010, the music of the beiradões fell into ostracism for many people, but remained productive inland, although on a smaller scale.
FROM THE BEIRADÕES TO THE BEIRADÃO
The scenario starts to change later, when the idea of Beiradão arises, a musical genre with a capital “B” and without the preposition that related music to the geographies of the beiradões. First generation musicians to join the circuit of record labels such as Chico Caju, Toinho and his Animals, Oseas, Magalhães, Gilson, André Amazonas and, above all, Teixeira de Manaus, came to be considered the founders of this musical genre. However, those artists never took Beiradão as such, as in their concept what they played was forró, lambada, frevo, samba, waltz, choro…
This notion of Beiradão as a genre may have started to take form around 2012, when journalist Kátia Brasil attributes to Teixeira de Manaus the creation of Beiradão, which according to her is “an instrumental style of Amazonian music, which mixes jazz, forró and Caribbean rhythms with small choruses”. On the occasion, Teixeira said goodbye to the stage in great style at the Amazonas Jazz Festival, at Teatro Amazonas (video below). A year later, in 2013, this notion of Beiradão begins to crystallize, especially among the manauaras; a strong indication is the formation of the Beiradão do Amazonas Orchestra (OBA).
With this phenomenon of rediscovery of the music of the eaves by the manauaras, Beiradão begins to be welcomed in institutionalized music spaces, such as theaters and more central venues, and is also assimilated by the cultural notices. Rafael Norberto draws attention to the importance of OBA in the context of reviving Beiradão in the musical circuit. “It makes other generations start listening to Teixeira de Manaus, Chico Caju… Things that younger generations had never heard, sometimes they didn’t even know existed”, he explains.
However, it is important to note that manauara musicians are the first to claim Beiradão as a musical genre, such artists of a younger generation, unfamiliar with the festivities in the inlands and with the musicians from the beiradões. On the countercurrent of this distance, guitarist Rosivaldo Cordeiro who recorded with André Amazonas and Magalhães da Guitarra on his album “Guitarreiros do Amazonas” (2013) and musician Eliberto Barroncas on his album “Pela margin”, recorded in the 1990s with compositions by musicians from the beiradões. Despite not being from Manaus, Barroncas also brings Beiradão to the environment of institutionalized music.
Another point to understand this first moment of claiming Beiradão as a musical genre from Amazonas, is to associate it with the arrival of the World Cup in Brazil, in 2014. Manaus was one of the host cities of the competition and the Manaus musicians were looking for an Amazonian identity to present to the tourists. “The groups wanting to make this kind of sound, affirming the regional identity issue, which is ours, which is Amazonian, which is from the north, which is Manauara, you know? Amazonian, but like that, pulling to Manaus, in a way ”, reveals Rafael Norberto, pointing out that several Beiradão bands appeared at the time.
“There’s no reason to rescue the beiradão, because it is a musical culture that never ceased to exist” (Rafael Norberto)
That is, along with this take of Beiradão as a genre, an idea arises to rescue an era, to rescue a forgotten genre, which refers to the roots of Amazonian music. Perhaps these are the most sensitive points, because the songs of the beiradões have never been restricted to a single era, and more than that, they remain active and inventive. “There’s no reason to rescue the beiradão, because it is a musical culture that never ceased to exist”, comments Rafael.
In addition to being alive, the music of the beiradões is updated. “It reinvented itself and today it is stronger than ever. With new styles emerging, like that of Hadail and so many other bands from the inland that bring another style, that is no longer that of the recordings of the 80s ″, exemplifies the researcher.
The fact is that, over the decades, the musicians of the interiors have formed an accent that belongs to Amazonas, a different language to play and compose genres born in other states. Lambada amazonense, for example, is faster than paraense and predominantly instrumental. The forró made in Amazonas is perhaps a pioneer in incorporating the brass metals and delegating a certain role to them, just as it did with the electric guitar. And in addition to the aesthetic dimension of the sound, the songs of the beiradões remind us of a whole context of sociability of the riverside cultures.
CRAZY ABOUT BEIRADON
When these characteristics are reprocessed as a musical genre and reach the musicians of the beiradões, it is Hadail Mesquita who becomes the main defender of the genre. At Portal do Beiradão, he starts to mix his own content with songs and interviews of other artists of different generations. The videos reaffirm Beiradão in the title, in the cover image (thumbnail) and also in the caption. It is also Hadail who produces and presents TV Beiradão and the Beiradão Festival, in addition to chanting the slogans of partner musicians, such as Nayan Ferraz, who was named the “King of the Beiradão Guitar”; Chicão do Sax, which became the “DNA of Beiradão”; and Lean Anselmo — the “Beast of the Beiradão”, in this case Hadail called him “King of the Beiradão”.
If on one hand Portal do Beiradão seems to abuse such label, on the other hand, this reaffirmation of identity, more than legitimate, is the result of the absence of spaces for these musicians. Whether on the party circuit in the state capital, where forró and the bois-bumbás songs are hegemonic markets, or on cultural funds, which continue to be occupied by musicians who are not from the beiradões and have little dialogue with the musicians on that circuit.
“They themselves (the musicians of the beiradõe) did not want to play with instruments made with capybara skin” (Rafael Norberto)
Other than that, it is noticeable that the younger generation, when using the arranger keyboard as a protagonist instrument, has been shunned off of the genre, as if the legitimate Beiradão was only the one of the 80s. A creation myth that besides being essentialist is false, given that, even in the 1920s, the musicians from the beiradões spoke with varied influences and incorporated modern instruments. “It is an incredible thing, because some younger musicians have this notion of ‘we have to preserve the beiradão, that root music … But they themselves (the musicians of the beiradõe) did not want to play with instruments made with capybara skin”, scores Rafael Norberto.
In this sense, forging a ‘Beiradão scene’, as proposed by the Hadail channel, is more than a matter of reaffirming identity, it is also a matter of survival for these musicians to publicize their work. Nayan Ferraz, born in Alenquer (PA) and one of few active solo guitarists, recognizes Hadail’s role. “I think he is a leader, a very creative guy, very intelligent, different, has a very broad vision (…) He is the guy who rolled up his sleeves defending this genre, which is Beiradão”, he points out.
Nayan went through some bands before pursuing a solo career, between those is Pinta Cuia — an icon of brega pop in the 90s. In 2017, he released an album as “Banda Tornado A Mil”, distributed only to some close friends. One day he was surprised to find the album with over 10,000 views on YouTube, then he wondered who had uploaded the work on the platform. “A year later the phone rang and it was Hadail Mesquita, then he said: ‘Boy, I am Hadail, it was me who put your work on the Portal do Beiradão channel’ … and then our approach began”, he recalls.
THIS RIVER IS MY ROAD
The partnership between Hadail and Nayan is an important point for us to think about a decentralization of the music of the beiradões. Between the 80s and 90s, meetings like these were practically impossible, because in addition to the lack of internet, independent artists were often unable to record their work, while very few musicians had the opportunity, through out-of-state record labels. Today, “maestro” Dan Beiradão is able to record live shows without the need for huge investments, just like the Banda Sensação do Forró, from Novo Aripuanã, or the musician Américo Show, from Humaitá.
It is also with the possibility of low-budget productions that artists from the upper Rio Negro region, in the northwest of the state, started to claim another language from the beiradões. Names like Beto da Guitarra, Negão dos Teclados, Arivaldo Bueno and the bands Tainá Rukena and Neyara Som are strong exponents of Kuximawara (the spelling may also vary for Cuximawara, Kurimawara or Curimawara), a stylistic aspect that resembles the Beiradão of the scene of artists led by Hadail, but with their own characteristics. In the town of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, for example, the band Tainá Rukena mixes Brazilian Portuguese with nheengatu.
Too rich to be just a topic in the history of Beiradão, we recognize that Kurimawara music deserves further analysis later. Coming from a distant region of Manaus, about 3 days of travel, the approximations between Curimawara and Beiradão reinforce a tonic present in all this matter, albeit implicitly: the centrality of rivers as part of history. After all, we are talking about what happens at the riverside.
If in other regions of Brazil the waterways were gradually replaced by railways and highways, in Amazonas rivers are still the most common routes between the different regions of the state, being even the only possible options to reach in many locations. To get the idea, the state of Amazonas alone circumscribes approximately 35% of the Amazon River hydrographic basin in the country, with at least 17,000 navigable km.
Thus, Beiradão announces Amazonian rivers as participants in the culture, alive, pulsating and not just transit routes or means of survival. In them, the traffic of people and goods causes banzeiros who cradle not only the waters, but also increase the flow of sensitivities of and in the beiradões. From here, we who never had the opportunity to navigate these waters, feel the bars of the banzeiros and that says a lot about the narratives that sounds can tell.
