Episode 41: Land Without Water

Most of the Brazilian music played on this show is happy sounds, like samba and funk, or perhaps cool bossa nova. We may need a big dose of happiness in the future, but today that is not my path. There is one type of music from Brazil that does often speak to hardships in life, like we are facing now. This is the music of Northeastern Brazil, the hot and dry region extending from the country’s Atlantic seaboard West to the edges of the Amazon rainforest. There is a thin strip of land along the coast that does receive rain; this was the first land colonized by the Portuguese in the 16th Century. Enslaved peoples from Africa were brought here to work on sugar plantations, while native peoples in this area were displaced to the less desirable land to the West. The capital cities of all northeastern states are all on the coast, where there is a mix of European, African, and native cultures; as you pass to the West, however, the population is almost entirely native americans, although historically some escaped slaves also formed outlaw communities here. This dry region is today known in Brazil as “sertao,” or backlands. It is the poorest and least populated land in the country.  

Today I am playing music from this remote and empty land in Brazil.