Slavery was legal in Brazil for almost 400 years. From the early 1500s until the practice was abolished there in 1888, some 4.5 million African men and women were shipped across the Atlantic to Portuguese settlements in the Amazon, where they toiled in sugar mills and gold mines under barbarous conditions. But while many ended up dying of abuse, disease and starvation, some managed to break from their bonds and escape into the rainforests, where they set up quilombos, settlements founded by ex-slaves, some of which still exist to this day. And that’s where the music of Siriá takes root.
The latest release from Analog Africa, Siriá is a delightful album that compiles the trademark tunes of Brazilian songwriter and bandleader Mestre Cupijó. The disc takes its title from a regional folk style founded in the northern state of Pará—a “cross pollination,” as Analog Africa puts it, between the inhabitants of the quilombos and the indigenous Indians living in the Amazon. Cupijó was heavily influenced by this sound, and it shows up frequently on these 14 tracks, usually in the form of a heady, circular tribal rhythm that just so happens to go nicely with Cupijó’s infectious alto sax melodies.
Cupijó was born in 1936 and passed away in 2012, and he doesn’t have a lot of name recognition outside of Brazil. But he was an influential artist in Pará—the sort of elder who gets featured on local TV programs about homegrown music history.
