Another guest post by Wolfram Lange, co-founder of Kafundó Records, DJ, and blogger at the Soundgoods website. In this edition he gives us a little background on Zé Brown. His track “Eu Valorizo” appears on the Kafundó Vol. 1 Compilation:

Zé Brown from Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, is one of the founders of “As Faces do Subúrbio” which pioneered the Manguebeat movement together with Chico Science, Nação Zumbi and Mundo Livre S.A. in the nineties. Nowadays in his solo project he makes reference to different rhythms, sounds and traditions that influenced him during his career. The two main influences he shows are music from Northeastern popular traditions such as forró and côco and the culture of repente (“suddenly”). Repente is a folkloric tradition that comes from medieval troubadours and is actually a mixture of poetry and music where improvisation predominates and verses are created suddenly.

Repente is always accompanied by instruments, most often guitar or accordion, and when this is a pandeiro, the style is called côco de embolada:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/TrqT67pskeo[/youtube]

Repente is often practiced in a double where both singer duel as in a MC battle with rapid metric verses full of offensive content, but often in a kidding way. In his work he synthesizes these two worlds: the popular rural tradition of Repente from South America and the urban culture of rap, hip hop and soul from North America.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/WoFcJXZoBLI[/youtube]