T01 E02: FREVO | Esse Som é Massa

♪ Os Corações Futuristas, Bobos em Folia ♪ ♪ Pirilampos de Tejipió ♪ ♪ A Flor da Magnólia ♪ ♪ Lira do Charmion, Sem Rival ♪ ♪ Jacarandá, a Madeira da Fé ♪ ♪ Crisântemos Se Tem Bote e Um Dia de Carnaval ♪ ♪ Pavão Dourado, Camelo de Ouro e Bebé ♪ ♪ Os Queridos Batutas da Boa Vista ♪ ♪ E os Turunas de São José ♪ ♪ Príncipe dos Príncipes brilhou ♪ ♪ Lira da Noite também vibrou ♪ ♪ E o Bloco da Saudade, assim recorda tudo que passou ♪ [Mateus] It's very inspiring, easy and charming being the caricature of someone from the brazilian state of Pernambuco. Although, obviously, we're ironic and have a fixed notion of how folkloric it's to sell this particular and picturesque image to others, but especially to ourselves. In these lands, there's a tradition of the feeling of greatness.

Or maybe just greatness. A mix of pride and cluelessness finished with a certain reason is the special meaning of being Pernambucano. We respect the culture of all places with the certainty that we have ours.

We take pride in our virtues, but also our flaws. We want to be the best or the worst. It doesn't matter.

What matters is to be special. Who is not from here only has two options, to admire or to mock. If they mock, it also doesn't matter.

We know at heart that we're exaggerating, (Although you might call us "Lions of the North") And, again, it doesn't matter if we are exaggerating. Because we might interpret this pejorative fame more as a burden than as an object of admiration with no criticality. When we say that Capibaribe and Beberibe rivers join together to form the Atlantic Ocean, we summarize in the clearest way something that is a joke, but it's serious.

When we say that Recife and Olinda carnival is the best street carnival of the world, it's because of a unique experience with the street. And when we cross the words Recife, Olinda, Pernambuco, streets, carnival and memory, frevo will appear. If you're from Pernambuco, it's possible that frevo touches you in a special way and has a unique place in your subjectivity on what it's to be Pernambucano.

If you're not from here, it's worth checking out this work and learning how we can analyze the history of a cultural expression to understand the history of this place and of the people who make it. [Vanessa] Frevo is a very peculiar cultural expression in Pernambuco because unlike others that were spread throughout the state, it arose in Recife. It's very well located, geography-wise.

It's not very widespread. So we don't know when, but we know that frevo is a cultural expression that is eminently urban. So it's not possible to separate frevo from Recife, nor Recife from frevo.

[Rita] From the second half of the 19th century, but especially in 1870, we can date back to 1870 the appearance of the first signs of what would later be identified as frevo. But later, a lot later. But why am I saying that?

Because Recife is going through a series of changes as of this period, 1870. In 1888 slavery was abolished here in Brazil, which will also have an important meaning. Although, of course, we know the limits of this abolition.

We know that it didn't include a great portion of the population. The former enslaved people. But it has a great meaning in terms of law, economy and labor relations.

From then on, there's wage labor and not forced labor anymore. [Vanessa] It's interesting mentioning that for a long time the origin of frevo wasn't associated with Blackness. But today, looking at this history with different eyes, they can't be dissociated.

Because if we consider this context, the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, and if we connect the dots, we know that frevo and carnival were made by the workers. The manual workers of that historical and temporal context. Who were those workers?

They were the Black people, the "newly freed". [Rita] They got organized due to work issues. They worked in the same business and the same position, like the harbors and later in urban services, which were transportation workers, in trams, the ones who worked in factories, farmers.

[Vanessa] Hence the many traditional carnival clubs that are named after categories of workers. Then I'll specifically mention Clube das Pás, which is a good example because it still parades today. It still has its headquarters and was originally called Clube das Pás e dos Carvoeiros, which means the people who handled coal to make the ships move.

[Rita] So this change in rural areas had a great impact on the city because more factories were being built to supply these power plants with sacks and regarding cars, to serve the power plant. So factories start to emerge. And also issues about migration.

Because the power plants were kicking out workers and former enslaved people. They start migrating to the city. And Recife starts receiving this number of people that comes here seeking a better life.

Better life and work conditions. And they'll struggle because the city wasn't fit, and it won't be for a long time, to receive these people that keep on coming throughout all the 20th century. They start coming in greater numbers and it was never able to accommodate, because the factories, the commerce and the service of Recife can't accommodate these people that come from rural and drought areas and also people from here, who were born here.

[Mateus] For some time, especially in the early 20th century, a great optimism about the future was established. With the progress in globalization, means of communication and transport, it's possible to notice similarities between cities around the world. For many decades, the Industrial Revolution got consolidated all over the globe and capitalism was taking shape with new perspectives on productivity.

At the same time, there's also a striking increase in the world population, as it's shown by this graph. Notice how between 1600 and 1700, in a period of 100 years, only 2 million people more lived in cities in the world. But from this point on, the 18th century, the world population start to increase a lot and the cities, besides proliferating, start getting swarmed with people.

In the early 19th century, the world urban population was about 70 million people. A hundred years later, it reached almost 270 million. And if beyond the birth of frevo, we think about its popularity in the first decades here, we can see how the number of people is increased in the world.

This period right here on the graph is more or less when frevo was born. In 1950, there are already more than 700 million people living in cities all over the planet. If we look at this graph that shows the ratio between urban and rural population in Brazil during part of the 20th century, we can see that the number of people in cities is increasing a lot in relation to the people that live in rural areas.

In Recife, we can notice the same trend. Check out this third graph. According the documents analyzed by historian Marcos Carvalho, we can get close to the number of inhabitants of Recife in the year of 1828 through a census of that time.

Around 23 thousand people lived in the urban area. Less than 150 years later, in the census of 1970, more than 1 million people lived in this city, now much bigger. And some of these people were on the streets enjoying the frevo that was pumping up those carnivals.

Despite changes in the rural life and in the productivity of the agricultural sector, it's in the city that the changes, result of this industrialization, will happen in a much clear way. In the case of Recife, for example, this busy city took place in what we call today as Old Recife. At that time, just Recife, São José, Santo Antônio and Boa Vista.

Moreover, they were just rural regions with little villages, surrounded by farms, mills and sugar mills. It was right in these urban areas with the coming-and-going of the streets that frevo took shape and carnival started to get popular. [Rita] In 1907, but especially in 1908, it started appearing on the press the word "frevo", "There comes the frevo".

It's not referred to music like we understand today. The music genre, musical expression. It was that commotion, uproar, wave that was coming with power.

That body movement. Sweaty, Black, strong bodies with the dancing that evoked that strength of manual labor. The people who were used to carrying weight on a daily basis.

[Vanessa] And particularly here in the city, unlike what we know today, carnival happens, and I'm saying carnival but I'm referring to frevo, it very often takes place downtown. Today, as we know, the central hub of frevo, the regions of Avenida Guararapes, São José and Santo Antônio, is where frevo and carnival took place. I mean, it was very popular.

People used to come from communities, from the outskirts to downtown because that was indeed where things happened. Today we still see that it happens in some stages and in other shapes, but based on records that we find in newspaper articles and images, we can notice how this was fervent, making a word play with frevo. [Rita] While the cordão is performing, there's a following crowd that isn't part of the cordão.

The crowd and the dancing are unrehearsed, so they are more free to create their dance movements, their tricks, their mungangas. And from then on what is conventionally called passo started to emerge. Passo is the dance and frevo is the music, which will take a long time to be referred to as music.

So in the passos of frevo there's this element of 180 and 360 degrees because you always want to see what is happening all around. Because in case of any oversight, you can get kicked or even stabbed. So this was very common.

So much so that it was the reason why police tried to repress this activity on the pretext of violence. There was a lot of repression and we know this isn't the only reason. The repression happened because of the power that kept on coming and that nobody knew what it was.

The elites didn't know what it was, nor the police authority. What was that rising power present at carnival with such vitality and that each day and each year it attracted more people for the cordões and more clubs were emerging? So, what is this phenomenon?

During this period that we're talking about frevo like we know today still didn't exist with that strident music, orchestra, and the passos that are in our memory or even that we can see nowadays. It's a thing that was coming to existence, which was a mixture, an experience. So they went to the streets with series of influences they had, of references from the past or the present that they could see.

So the cordões had costumes, which were the members of the board or partners. They paraded wearing costumes and performed, which was influence from the military. That band parade that had performances.

They rehearsed for days. There was the singing and each club had their banner, which was a way of the group to have an identity. And emblems too.

[Broadcaster] The banner is the soul of a club. The banner of Vassourinhas represents more than a party of historical and artistic value. It's a banner rich in embroideries, frills and gold pendants.

[Carlos Ivan] The embroideries of carnival banners are all made like this. With this technique. Religious robes are like this too.

That's why I say that its origin comes from the church too. Because also the carnival banners are not from the clubs. The club carnival banners come from church banners.

The Catholic church. If you follow. .

. If we follow a frevo parade and a religious procession, they are the same thing. You don't feel the difference.

Because in blocos, there is a flabellum in the front, there are people in costumes forming that cordão, then a music band and then the people. In a procession first come the emblems, then the confraternities the andor and then the people on the back with an orchestra. It's the same, there's no difference.

There's no difference. [Rita] So there's the Vassourinhas with a little broom. Their emblem was a little broom.

There's also the Vasculhadores. The Abanadores paraded holding fans. The Espanadores paraded holding dusters.

So there's a lineage of clubs that are emerging from then on, especially in 1888 and 1889, the period of abolition and republic. They start to multiply. [Vanessa] It's also important to highlight the Black women in this history.

Because when we, for example, talk about the Verdureiras of São José, which is also a club from the late 19th century, it wasn't the white women who used to sell vegetables. So we can't dissociate from the history of frevo and the history of the city this matter of race and gender too. People are used to say, for example, that women became part of frevo due to the advent of lyrical blocos in the early 20th century.

But what women are we talking about? It was non-Black women, elite white women, who were shamed for being on the street due to the moralism of the time and who found in the choirs and inside the clubs, by clubs I mean an indoor space, a chance to have fun. To be with their husband, brothers, uncles and family.

I think the anthem of Vassourinhas is the best known frevo of all time. Because if you say "tananananananan", someone will sing along somewhere. And the lyrics of this song, I don't know if you know this, was written by a Black woman.

Her name is Joana Batista. The name Matias da Rocha, because he was a man, was the one that was saved for posterity. But knowing that the best known frevo of all time was written by a Black woman is also an amazing thing, right?

But the history of frevo in this sense, focused on the late 19th century, is indeed what we still have in Recife today, which is a diverse city, a mixed-race city, a city in which Blackness is a resonant symbol. And we can't dissociate them. We can't put this history under the veil of racial democracy nor the veil of miscegenation discourse.

[Mateus] The modernization process we mentioned in the episode about Maracatu also affects the frevo community. Changes in the city and in the space are made in the name of what is proposed as a civilization. A home downtown is denied to sizeable part of the working population.

Downtown will stay in memory as the place of old carnivals. [Rita] The matter of spatiality changes. In the 1930s, there's a big renovation in Santo Antônio neighborhood.

That whole area between Praça da República and Igreja de Santo Antônio, where there's Igreja do Paraíso and Largo do Paraíso, was all demolished. Like the streets around Pracinha do Diário, it was totally demolished. That place still is a big memory of carnival, a memory of frevo that passed through it.

Then this was lost. So what does it mean? A lot of the local population was evicted.

There was also a renovation. Besides the matter of modernization, of circulation of vehicles, people and goods, of beautification and so on, it happened on account of social cleansing. Also, the city was getting too expensive.

It wasn't affordable to live there anymore. So big part of the lower class population was evicted and occupied the hills. [Broadcaster] If Recife is the capital of Frevo, its headquarters is Praça da Independência.

The "Pracinha do Diário". In the square, every carnival, the traffic stops. They set up bleachers and professional speakers so an anonymous man can pass through Beberibe, Casa Amarela, Arruda, Casa Forte, Afogados, Madalena, Água Fria, Encruzilhada, Campo Grande.

The neighborhoods of Recife. And during three days, live in rhythm of frevo. [Rita] In Dantas Barreto, there's another renovation surge.

The continuation of the renovation from the 1930s, splitting São José neighborhood in half. I think five streets were removed. So it destroyed part of that sociability of São José that was responsible for the creation of so many clubs, blocos, frevos, and maracatus that passed through.

African culture with the aunts from Pátio do Terço. This is another very painful renovation. It directly affected the community that made carnival happen.

These people left there, a lot of blocos left there. Vassourinhas already did too. Between the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Vassourinhas goes to Afogados, Lenhadores goes to Mostardinha, Clube das Pás goes to Campo Grande, so they're spreading.

They are leaving that central neighborhood. But the street carnival dwindles a little. Then due to the military dictatorship in 1964, the middle class goes backwards again.

They are reduced and leave the streets because there's no freedom of speech. By the end of the 1970s, the dictatorship starts showing signs of rupture. What can we notice?

A certain movement of the middle class, of artists, intellectuals and students going to Olinda. Because Olinda maintained its carnival. This traditional carnival with blocos, which are clubs and troças.

They go to the streets without the runway. ♪ Marim, altiva e bela ♪ ♪ Vibrante na tradição ♪ ♪ Bem seis que és a eterna aquarela ♪ ♪ És também no frevo um mar de animação, pois é ♪ ♪ Descendo suas ladeiras ♪ ♪ Na folia sem igual ♪ ♪ Vem, a Turma da Pitombeira, vem! ♪ ♪ Fazer o seu carnaval ♪ ♪ Olinda (pararara) ♪ ♪ Tô de novo com você a orquestra pa pa pa pa ♪ ♪ Olinda na rima desta canção ♪ ♪ E a razão eu sei porque você vive no meu coração!

♪ [Hermes] We have a history of making carnival happen. Here we don't do it just for the sake of it. But because we like it.

We're born inside it, it's in our veins. This is not just about me and Pitombeira, but I think everybody who is in a club feel that way. There's no greater happiness than seeing your club on the street.

You see that the work was worth it. But seeing them parading and the people vibrating and singing the anthem of your club, seeing the crew satisfied, it's priceless. You feel lighter.

You say: "Man, I'm really making people happy. " [Rita] So the runway continues to be the street. When Elefante, Pitombeira, Marim dos Caetés and Vassourinhas paraded, we watched their parade from the sidewalk.

The runway was the streets and there was no stage. There was no official contest, official award. Everything in Olinda is a critique.

You see the "Midnight Man". It's the "Club of Critiques and Allegories Midnight Man. " Every club, Pitombeira and Elefante, create songs that have a critique.

Olinda had a liberation proposal, body liberation. Even the ones who aren't fighting for democracy, but are fighting for body freedom. They want more expression, right?

To express themselves, their body, their speech, their singing. Olinda is more like that, so it gains that huge strength. [Hermes] And nobody makes carnival like us from Olinda.

Not only us that are part of clubs, but the people who come here to party, from Pernambuco. And wearing a costume, people are ashamed of that. But when you come to Olinda, everybody wears a costume.

They are not ashamed of it. And nowhere in the world you see this. I was a party goer.

I used to go out early and come back only on the next day. I used to go out on a Saturday. .

. in the morning, then go to Ceroula, then Homem da Meia-Noite, then Cariri. I arrived at home at 8 a.

m. on a Sunday. And with a costume that I put on the day before.

I was a party goer. I miss that. Carnival is good because of that.

You have five days to do what you want. You're free! People say, right?

[Vanessa] And it's frevo that will bring this freedom of being on the streets in a way like. . .

you know? Very. .

. I can't find another word. I can only associate frevo to freedom.

There isn't another word. [Mateus] We're the ones who make the city. Sure there're various political influences greater than the common people.

But regardless it's still possible to be an important particle within a bigger body that is the culture of a people or a land. Because in the end who make this party and music are the people with their stories, bodies, experiences and influences. Whether or not, there's a collective memory and a collective space where frevo has been present for a long time.

The streets. It's the "party of the streets". Despite the constant attacks on freedom, frevo built a trench with fire.

A defense that shelters a few days of the year, yet days that are always present. [Rita] About all this carnival that we're referring here, it's important to mention, and I think it's implicit, that it's taking place on the public space of the city. So it's on the streets, around churches, in squares.

And so this has a very strong meaning, which is the appropriation of public space. The use of this public space that is for everybody. But who uses it?

How is it used? What meaning is given to its use? [Spok] From the moment that you, here in Pernambuco, start playing a wind instrument, especially saxophone, trumpet or trombone, you're already thrown onto the streets.

[Bel] So we take our happiness all over the world. The feeling of thrill, love, longing. And this makes us happy.

I'm talking about our members and those who follow us on the streets and at our parties too. Our parties are well frequented too. It's for those who can't go to a street carnival.

[Spok] I have always been in love with the street. If I see an orchestra on the street I want to join in and play. Because I need a soul there.

I need it. My body needs it, with no exaggeration. But after the work of our orchestra, we started playing in stages and theaters.

We started producing many songs and playing in festivals we'd never imagined to play. I mean it with no arrogance, but the orchestra has been all over Brazil and the world. We played in theaters, in instrumental music festivals.

However, today I can tell you. . .

that I don't know what I love more. If it's playing in a theater with total silence and listening to our music, frevo, on the stage of a theater, or on the street, you know? Bathing in cachaça poured by the people.

I love both. They're different flavors, but nowadays powerful ones for me. We also bring back some songs from Recife and Olinda.

And the song goes: ♪ Recife, cidade do Frevo ♪ ♪ De blocos afamados e maracatus ♪ ♪ Cidade que a todos encanta ♪ ♪ Tu és a Veneza do meu Brasil ♪ ♪ O teu Carnaval glorioso e sempre famoso é sensacional! ♪ ♪ Tem tradição, tem atração ♪ ♪ No mundo não há outro igual ♪ ♪ Tem tradição, tem atração ♪ ♪ No mundo não há outro igual ♪ [Mateus] The search for identity today makes us scavenge the past and search for which past it is. The past is built in the present.

And if we say that frevo is from Pernambuco, it's because we search for a tool to say we're unique. To talk about frevo is to talk about Recife, Olinda, Pernambuco. Talking about music particularly from Recife, Olinda and Pernambuco constantly falls on frevo.

Our identity, so plural, composed of so many different things, finds in frevo, without a doubt, one more element to call ours. We build this memory with statues, museums, songs that praise the city because we want to show that what we call frevo only happens here. [Vanessa] The lyrics of frevo, especially blocos, makes us reinforce this love for Recife.

Because you can see. . .

this even gives me goosebumps. You can see the city in such a beautiful way. You fall in love with Recife in such a way that you say: "Oh, my God.

Is the city in these songs the same one I see? " And then you turn this over, you say: "Wow, indeed. Recife is very beautiful.

" [Spok] But frevo is really like that, especially frevo de bloco. The manifestation of frevo de bloco, which has wooden and string instruments. Flutes and guitars that parade through the streets.

And the women are the ones who sing. For exemple: ♪ Madeira do Rosarinho ♪ Or: ♪ Felinto, Pedro Salgado. .

. ♪ [Vanessa] Look at the Recife that appears on frevo de bloco and tell me you won't fall in love with Recife. Do you get it?

It's impossible. Frevos de bloco bring this sensibility not only of Recife, not only of the city, but of the people with the city. [Rita] And although downtown is extremely degraded today, the neighborhoods of Santo Antônio, São José and even old Recife, there're attempts to recover it, but it's too unstable.

But during the week of carnival, for some reason, these neighborhoods are central again. Nobody parties in Casa Forte. Nobody parties in Torre during carnival.

You go back to downtown. I think this is an interesting phenomenon. People go to neighborhoods before carnival, but during carnival days you return to downtown, which is part of an important memory.

It's where everybody flows back. Everybody has something around here. You don't always go to neighborhoods, but downtown continues being the reference, even if it's in memory.

Not for nothing the word "frevo" has to do with fervent. Not only because its music is restless and fast, but because its image is related to our fire. It's related to our impulse to affirm ourselves as people from here, who live and allow a totally unique experience.

And despite being always played, it's collectively lived and worshiped on just a few days of the year. Right when we try to forget everything and dive in a sea of festivities. If there's a melancholic day for most of us, it's Ash Wednesday.

Because it represents the universe compassion, as it gives us a day to recover our energies and go back to an old-fashioned, regular, predictable, somber world. Without this fire that frevo brings. Without the freedom that frevo brings.

It's the rupture. There are ashes because before we had the fire to make us fervent. As the frevo composed by Luiz Bandeira says: Who is indeed a good Pernambucano waits a year and joins in the party, forgets everything when falling into frevo.

At the best moment, Wednesday comes. This year, 2021, we used different masks in carnival. A year in which we only had Ash Wednesday.

The Pandemics stole our celebration of life ritual. Carnival is without a doubt one of our most important tools to justify the rest of year and it didn't happen. Frevo stayed, as never before, inside the walls.

Not outside, where it has always belonged to. The street. For part of us, frevo and carnival are our ritual for the memory of the city.

It's our opportunity to fantasize about the past. Recife and Olinda from the past. Because in the end it's all we have, seeing that we don't have a time machine.

Perhaps at certain points this work seemed more about carnival than frevo. I apologize. It's two things I can't separate.

But at least I bet I'm not the only one. SUBTITLES: Vitória Rinaldi THIS EPISODE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF CARLOS IVAN, ONE OF OVER 350 THOUSAND VICTIMS OF THE COVID PANDEMICS IN BRAZIL Updated number: 600 thousand victims. THANK YOU, CARLOS IVAN, FOR CONTRIBUTING IN SUCH A SPECIAL WAY TO THE HISTORY OF PERNAMBUCO, BRAZIL AND THE WORLD.