Abstract (eng)
The maracatus-nação of Recife, capital of the Northeast Brazilian state of Pernambuco, have experienced a period of rapidly increasing popularity during the past two decades, in Recife, but also throughout the world. Considerably contributed to this development have the large percussion ensembles that are part of these groups and which play highly infectious music. But what exactly constitutes the heavy suingue, or ‘groove’, of this music?
Caixas, a sort of snare drums, are often taken to belong to the instruments that contribute most strongly the specific suingue of the maracatus-nação. In this thesis, I analyze several caixa recordings of maracatu musicians from Recife microrhythmically, and point out tendencies concerning the sub-syntactic timing structure. Special emphasis is laid on the flexibility of the timing, as I felt that a large part of the microrhythmic literature, in a somewhat static approach, focusses too strongly on patterned repetition, not accounting accurately for the processual aspects of rhythm. These issues are also discussed theoretically in the context of categorical perception and the misleading conception of timing ‘norms’.
To facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the microrhythmic interpretations I undertook, a CD-ROM is included, containing the analyzed recording excerpts, as well as the annotated note onset data and spreadsheets with the statistic calculations I performed.
As the available literature on the maracatus-nação in languages other than Portuguese is still very limited, I provide a general introduction to them, particularly focussing to their music. The findings are based on my observations from participatory field work and interviews I conducted in Recife, as well as a thorough literature research. Moreover, a comprehensive review of the non-lusophone literature is given, in order to open up possibilities for the interested reader to delve deeper into a topic that has been hugely neglected so far.