From left to right: a Cajón, triangle, Agogo bells, stick, shaker (also called Ganza or Xique-Xique) and Bendir (also called Tar)

When one thinks of Brazilian music the fervent samba drum beats of Carnival or the smooth sounds of bossa nova may come to mind. Whatever the style, one may not think of NOVA music major Mark Sawasky. Don’t let his Dearborn, Mich. roots fool you though. He plays as passionately and soulfully as any world musician. He is a true artist.

Sawasky got his start in a rock band in his hometown. When a two-stringed Albanian Lute musician wanted to record with the band, they took their music to the recording studio. From there, the band formed an ethnic world-music style. It was love at first sound. The group has been together for 15 years now.

A musician his whole life, Sawasky became a professional after he moved to Detroit, Mich. In Detroit the town reverberated with the sounds of eastern European, Middle Eastern and African music. Eventually, Sawasky discovered Brazilian music as well.

The Angolan word “semba” means circle. The Brazilian music known as samba comes from a tradition when African slaves made a circle to train and practice fighting so that they could strengthen themselves against their masters.

The fighting consisted of mainly rapid kicks delivered in a circling motion and with acrobatic maneuvers such as one armed half-cartwheels. There is also back and forth side to side foot movements done in a crouched position. The idea is to get the other fighter into one’s own rhythm in order to deliver a blow with a follow up kick.

The slaves disguised this training as a dance and put music to it. Quickly the slaves realized that this dance, which became capoeira, was a wonderful outlet for their aggressions. The slave masters noticed too, and allowed them to do their capoeira dances. The dances were performed to samba music, and it became an art form.

Samba music was most affiliated with Salvador, Bahia in Brazil. There, samba de roda, the circle of dances, took form. After slavery was abolished, many freed slaves moved to Rio de Janeiro and took their dances with them. To this day Rio de Janeiro is the principal center of samba in Brazil. The African rhythms were mixed with European rhythms, and the samba schools were born.

At one point samba was outlawed until President Getúlio Dornelles Vargas became the president from 1930 to1945 and again from 1951 to 1954.
“Vargas made samba huge and wanted it to be part of the culture,” Sawasky commented.

When Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira became president in 1956, samba became even more widely accepted. Kubischek’s motto was “50 years of progress in five years.” He built Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil, but music was changing also.

Jazz music which originated in New Orleans, La. was hugely popular in the 1950s. It heavily influenced music, and that was when bossa nova came along. Antonio Carlos Jobim, popularly known as Tom Jobim, wrote “The Girl from Ipanema.” The song was written in the 1960’s, the same time bossa nova exploded onto the music scene.

Bossa means flair in Portuguese, and nova means new. Sawasky described the term as encompassing more than music.

“It implies that you have an innate ability to make something yours and that you have natural ability for something,” Sawasky told his intimate audience at a speaking event on the Alexandria campus.

He demonstrated the tools of his trade which included a tar or bandir, one of the oldest hand-held drums of Africa. The Nigerian cow bell adds a muted clicking percussive sound. The birimbau is a stick which resembles a six foot bow. It has a stone which is used against a little basket with seeds attached to the large stick. The birimbau musician uses various rhythms to imply which dance the capoeira performers should do. As musicians watch and chant, then the performers chant back. This interaction builds to an almost spiritual crescendo.

The pandeiro was developed from the bandir, and it looks like a tambourine but sounds deeper, resembling the drum sound of the bandir. A gourd compliments all of the percussion instruments, and it is made of the wood of a Bariba fruit tree. The caxixi is a covered basket with a handle, and it makes a type of rattle sound.

Sawasky commented that there are paintings that are 8000 years old in Turkey that show these same instruments being used in Middle Eastern music performances.

“That’s what is great about music – you can do anything you want with it,” Sawasky said. “There are no boundaries, no race. Anyone can play any culture’s music.”

By: Annie Ryan

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