Chico César

On his new album francisco forró y frevo, chico césar is diving deep into the culture of northeastern Brazil featuring its most popular rhythms: forró and frevo.

Forró is a dance, as well as a word used to denote the different genres of music which accompanies the dance. Both are much in evidence during the annual Festa Junina (June Festival), a part of Brazilian traditional culture which celebrates some of the saints of the Catholic religion. The most celebrated day of the festival is known as the Saint John's (São João) day.

For Chico, forró is "a demonstration of joy. It describes the moment of rest for a man who lives a hard life under a semi-slave regime. He works on other people´s land to feed his family or is crammed into miserable city suburbs facing unemployment. Forró is the moment when this man parties, when he celebrates the fact that he is his own man and has his own culture. It is the moment when he dances and has fun, the moment when he flirts and picks up women, when a love story begins or ends. Forró is about all this."

A theory often heard popularly in Brazil is that the word forró is a derivative of the English expression "for all" and that it originated in the early 1900s. English engineers on the Great Western Railroad would throw balls on weekends and classify them as either only for railroad personnel or for the general populace ("for all").

Jackson do Pandeiro and Luiz Gonzaga are two of the most traditional forró composers and have always been of great importance to chico who defines himself highly influenced by them.

Frevo describes is a wide range of musical styles originating from Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, all of which are traditionally associated with Brazilian Carnival. The word "frevo" is said to come form frever, a working class dialectal way of pronouncing the Portuguese word ferver (to boil).

Frevo-de-Rua, the most common meaning of the word "frevo", is an instrumental style, played in a fiery fast tempo with brass instruments, namely trumpets, trombones, saxophones and tuba, frequently perceived as resembling Polka.

Frevo dancers, called passistas, usually wear bright, shiny, multi-coloured costumes and carry small umbrellas. The dancing itself features very high jumps. The image of the passista is one of the most prominent icons of the carnaval of Pernambuco.

chico not only features the rhythms but mixes them up with an universal tunes like reggae and ska. he also uses the bahia guitars of the 70ies together with brass sections from pernambuco creating his very own sound.

the album was produced by BiD (who also produced albums for Chico Science e Nação Zumbi and Da Weasel, among others), and mixed by Mário Caldato (who produced several albums for the Beastie Boys). special appearances are made on the album by forró master Dominguinhos on Deus me Proteja and Seu Jorge on Dentro.

let the party begin.