Raymundo Sodré in a Matrix of Fabulous Discoveries

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Artist & Where

Name: Raymundo Sodré
City/Place: Salvador, Bahia
Country: Brazil
Hometown: Ipirá, Bahia

Life & Work

Bio: Raymundo Sodré (the last name is pronounced “saw-DREY”) is one of the most fundamentally important musicians in Bahia...at the forefront of a handful of people who play a very African style of samba which predates and is a precursor to Rio-style samba, a style which could be said to be analogous to the blues in the United States (although far more rhythmic).

Bahian samba is "chula" (a Portuguese-language word meaning something of no value, now transmuted into a term of pride) and "samba-de-roda" (roda is “circle”) ... dating back to when enslaved Bantus/their descendents on Bahia's sugarcane plantations would gather into circles, clapping and singing, dancer/dancers inside the circle.

Raymundo is also heir to Luiz Gonzaga and Jackson do Pandeiro, last in a great triumvirate of masters of the moving music of the sertão), the hardscrabble backlands of Brazil's Nordeste, Northeast).

And interestingly, and in an essential and almost ironic way, Raymundo Sodré mirrors the history of the Nordeste. This is a man who has suffered at the hands of the influential (his career was kicked out from under him due to his criticism of a powerful government official during Brazil's dictatorship) and who is yet possessed of a soul which they haven't been able to grind into the backland's dusty red clay and destroy (in "A Massa" -- a song which swept Brazil -- he sings in the voice of those who work the earth (as a challenge and not as a lament): "...no cabo da minha enxada não conheço coroné (...at the handle of my hoe, the powerful are unknown to me").

Raymundo Sodré is the very definition of a soul survivor. If Bahia has anything like greatness it is because it is such fertile ground for producing people capable of weaving poetry out of poverty.