House Music

Comments (0) By Dan Strachota Wednesday, Nov 11 2009

Jimmy Carter would love forró. According to Forró in the Dark's Mauro Refosco, the Brazilian musical style was created when townsfolk would gather to tamp down the floors of their neighbors' new huts — and then stay all night, stomping and clapping in rhythm. While the musical style has continued as party music, forró (pronounced "foe-hoe") bands have evolved over the years, taking up accordion, flute, and a bass drum called a zabumba. On Forró in the Dark's new disc, Light a Candle, the New York–based Brazil-born quartet pushes the genre even further, adding fuzzed-out guitar riffage, turntable scratchery, and breathy, honking sax. The songs were workshopped during the quartet’s long-standing residency at New York City’s hipster world-music club, Nublu, and recorded live with only minimal overdubs, giving them a rushing vibrancy. Forró is meant to be dance music, and while Forró in the Dark occasionally offers a slower number — check the sultry "Silence Is Golden," featuring the Weimar cabaret vocals of Brazilian Girls chanteuse Sabina Sciubba — the band's tunes shudder and shake like an epileptic belly dancer. Someone call Jimmy and tell him Forró in the Dark's music would be the perfect soundtrack to Habitat for Humanity's next house-building bash.