Cabruêra ||| Portrait

Cabruêra

Cultural anthropologist student Arthur Pessoa never imagined that the meeting with a Brazilian Tupi oracle back in the late Nineties would change his life. According to legend, the oracle advised him to start a band called Cabruêra, named after the “cabras” goat herds known for the hardiness. Pessoa turned to five fellow nordestinos whose music was also rooted in modern music and created a group in the northeastern city of Campina Grande, Paraiba. They allied their rock sounds culled from the likes of Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd, with the forro, coco, maracatu and syncopated samba beats they grew up with.

The cocktail of rhythms they concocted was enhanced by a remarkable invention by Pessoa: by rubbing the strings of his acoustic guitar with a ballpoint pen, he noticed that he created a sound somewhere between the capoeira berimbau instrument, and the cello. Critics claim it is also close to the music from the indigenous Guarani Mbya repertoire.

The arid landscape of Brazil’s northeast region has often given birth to outstanding artists, responding to the harshness of their physical environment with remarkably diverse sounds. Cabruêra’s music is a far cry from the cool bossa nova that could reflect the region’s tropical coastline but not the rest of a countryside devastated by centuries of growing too much suger. The sextet combines rural forro party music with the rock sounds the musicians grew up with. The call-and-response style called coco is enhanced with poetic wordplay that reflect the artists’ cultivated backgrounds.

“Our music is a mix like the Brazilian culture,” explained Pessoa in a recent interview. “The idea is to use various different sources producing a worldly sound with local accent and vice-versa.” The band brought out their first eponymous CD in 2001 and, two years later, they embarked on a baptismal tour of Europe. It coincided with the recording of their second album “O Samba da Minha Terra.” This was then released internationally with the name “Proibido Cochilar – Sambas for Sleepless Nights”.

This album adds drum ‘n’ bass, reggae, rap and funk to their earlier alchemy. The title (“Sleeping is Forbidden”) refers to that first meeting with the wise local sage who warned them about lapsing into sleep when rigour and vigilance was required. The record provoked this response from a critic in Folktrax: "The next generation of Sambas! Inspired by the Mangue Beat movement led by the late great Chico Science, Cabruêra from the Northeast of Brazil spice up the Forró party roots of their rural formative years with all the urban styles you love to groove to.”

September 2006

Daniel Brown