Choro September 11, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : agua de moringa, brazil, brazilian, chorinho, choro , add a comment
Água de Moringa. Saracoteando (Strolling) - CD 8021
This charming disc, a personal favorite, is as good an introduction as any to the Brazilian genre of music known as choro, just as deeply part of Brazilian music as samba, but not very well-known outside the country’s borders. Choro (or chorinho, as it is sometimes known, with a playful and affectionate diminutive) is perhaps what ragtime might have been in the USA had it not been extinguished by jazz based on blues and the 32-bar popular song. Choro is an instrumental music based on origins in popular dance (waltz, mazurka, polka, schottische, tango), and thus has a three-part form (think of the alternating strains in the Maple Leaf Rag), and sophisticated melodies and harmonies. Its origins are in the groups of players (flute, guitar, ukulele) that would stroll the streets of Rio de Janeiro playing their adaptations of the latest dance music in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the tradition continues unbroken from that day to this. The last decade has seen choro gain widespread popularity among musicians and listeners in their twenties and thirties, so it’s not unusual to see fans at crowded downtown bars enjoying tunes written before their parents were born.
Duke’s own graduate student Thomas Garcia produced a dissertation on choro (find it via the linked list to Duke dissertations on the Music Library webpage), and he has since collaborated on an excellent book on the subject with Tamara Elena Livingston-Isenhour, Choro: a social history of a Brazilian popular music (Indiana University Press) - ML3487 .L58 2005
