Verequete & Grupo Uirapuru

Carimbó: Dance Music from Pará, Amazonia is the first album to make the music of Verequete available internationally. Augusto Gomes Rodrigues, known as Verequete, is regarded as the grand old master of carimbó, the local dance music of the region east of the Amazon. Sixteen songs, recorded live in the studio, present him at work with his band.

In the 1960s Verequete brought carimbó, a traditional style with African features, out of the backwoods and into the city of Belém, and modernised it. The label notes the irony of his career: hailed as an innovator in his youth, he is seen as a traditionalist in old age. He sings lead with Grupo Uirapuru: Manezinho on saxophone, Lopes on clarinet, Curica on banjo, Oliveira da Rabeca on violin, Cancan on the chocalho rattle, and Augusto Carlos and João Batista on the curimbó drums, with a chorus of Augusto Carlos, Nana de Paula and Oliveira da Rabeca. The recordings were made on 29 and 30 January 2000 at the Estúdio Edgar Proença of Funtelpa, the Pará state broadcaster, in Belém. The ethnomusicologist Tiago de Oliveira Pinto produced them, took the photographs and wrote the notes; Nana de Paula was executive producer in Brazil, and the album is a coproduction of Sender Freies Berlin and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

The line-up sets a lead voice and chorus over curimbó drums and rattle, with saxophone, clarinet, banjo and fiddle on the melodies. The set opens with Chama Verequete and O carimbó do Pará, and many titles look at the river and the land: A sereia do mar, Ilha de Marajó, Ai como é bom pescar, Ponta de pedra. Others point to related dances, a Quadrilha, a Retumbão, a Lundum and a xote, Corre garotinho.

The record catches a regional style in the hands of the musician who first carried it to the city, still leading his group decades later.

A CD of 59 minutes in Wergo's Music of World Cultures series, catalogue SM 1535 2, released in 2002 with a 20-page booklet.