DENGO, by Raimundo Sodré, o Mago do Nordeste (The Wizard of the Northeast; Brazil's nordeste is the cradle of samba and any number of marvelous styles)...

Raimundo Sodré was raised in candomblé angola and learned to drum almost before he could walk. His mother played guitar and it was from her that he first heard the treasure trove which is the music of the Brazilian Northeast's folk memory. He rose to become famous overnight in 1980, placing third in Brazil's televised Festival of MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) that year (Raimundo was the popular favorite, winner Oswaldo Montenegro was booed), signing with PolyGram Records, and then shortly thereafter falling even faster than he'd risen after publicly criticising the wrong powerful politician during a show (someone who'd come in with the dictatorship). In his hit A Massa he sang "...no cabo da minha enxada não conheço coroné" (...at the handle of my hoe I don't recognize the colonel, the big man), and Raimundo is not a singer to protest because it is fashionable. He's walked the walk and suffered greatly for it, and (like an oyster protecting itself from a grain of sand) he's taken those hard times and produced pearls. Dengo is a brilliant record. Don't believe me?...

Bule-Bule (Antônio Ribeiro da Conceição), hailing from the tiny community of Antônio Cardoso -- where the Recôncavo gives way to the sertão -- was brought up in the repentista tradition wherein improvised rhymed verses having to do with everything from events of the day to fables of northeastern Brazil to jocular putdowns of competing repentistas are sung to the accompaniment of the viola caipira.  Bule-Bule also writes, expressing himself in a traditional literary form of the Northeast, the cordel.

And nonpareil he is a sambador rural, utilizing a style of samba -- styles really --not often heard outside of their territory stretching from the sugarcane producing region near the coast into the dry hinterlands of the Bahian interior...his music sonically entwining the history, tradition, and beauty of a select area of the planet. LICUTIXO -- named for an obscure style of samba native to his region -- is comprised of Bule-Bule's highly spirited recordings of this kind of music.

This is an indispensable collection of high-quality field recordings of thirteen traditional groups -- keepers of the flame -- from the Bahian Recôncavo (birthplace of Brazilian samba) made for the dossier for samba de roda's candidacy for official recognition by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Márcio Valverde is one more hidden gem tucked away in that unassuming town in the Bahian Recôncavo that produces so much wonderful samba. This is "just" a guy and his small-town friends, playing his own compositions. Amazing!