Artist: Manuel Luis da Silva
Author: traditional
Label: L.o.C.
Year: 1938

From the Library of Congress Discoteca Collection. Recorded in Pator, Paraiba (Brasil).

There's a link between Frenchman Claude Sicre and the Brazilian Nordeste province. As a researcher at the university of Toulouse he studied Langue d'Oc. Occitan language, once spoken in 33 French departments, banned by centralistic reflexes in Paris. Almost eradicated, except for some die-hard rural pockets on certain 'marchés de Provence' and for song collections dating back to the Middle Ages, holding the canon of rambling Troubadours. Sicre who combined his academic work with a sideline as folk musician, sang in Occitan on said markets, for a shrinking audience of amused vieillards who at least managed to understand a word here and there. That particular day a young man was interested as well, not so much in what Sicre was singing but in the way he sang and played it. Sicre used a north african tambourine to liven up his lyrics, while the speed he delivered them with sounded a lot like rap or hiphop. Sicre at that time didn't know anything about rap or hiphop, but since these youngsters seemed to like it, he soon learned to know it, master it and used it in his act. Seemed such a natural thing for him to do, as an academic, soon developping this theory rap and hiphop might just as well root in Medieval troubadour repertoire as in Jamaican toasting or streetcorner gatherings in the Bronx! Percussion was the devil's music of the Middle Ages, banned by the Roman Catholic church, excommunicated like most of these free spirited Troubadours. Percussion reached southern France as an outpost of Moorish culture seeping in from the south of Spain. Percussion was like a Muslim thing for Rome. Black African percussion of course reached American coasts through centuries of slave trade. According to Sicre, Moorish percussion also hit the other side of the ocean, sidelined through southern Europe, along with the word games of these performing Troubadours. Sicre claims the Occitan troubadour idiom he recreated, also migrated to the New World in the slipstream of Columbus, Cabral and Magalhaes. Spanish and Portuguese shipping companies, always in need of fresh sailing personnel, risky trade to say the least, and where they didn't find enough free willing patrons, prisons were emptied to fill up the ranks. Prosecuted Christians (like foul-mouthed Troubadours) and (tambourine toting) Moors, hit South American shores, ending up in places like Haïti and Brasil. Fact is, the Library of Congress investigating coastal Brazilian culture, found samples of a strikingly similar nature as Sicre's revived Middle Aged syncopated Troubadour stuff, alive and kicking in the Nordeste province. This similarity led to some sort of cross-polination: Sicre touring overseas with his own band Fabulous Trobadors and Brazilians animating Mardi Gras festivities at the carnival of Toulouse.