It's really quite rare that you get to hear a whole new style of music, well it is for me at least. Just when you think that you've heard every sound under the sun, people do what they do and make something new. In the case of the Brazilian style known as Siriá, it's really more a case that the light has finally pierced the veil and we are illumined to the existence of what has already been. Siriá is a cross pollination between Africa and the Indians of the Amazon. It's what happened when the music of Africans who had escaped their peonage on Brazil's massive sugar plantation system joined with that of the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest.
The precise birthplace is a little town in the Amazon region called Cametá; from here, the pulsing, emphatically irresistable beat of Siriá was born when a cat named Mestre Cupijó, updated the unique yet traditional sound established by that bygone Afro-Indian origin. Apparently, Mestre Cupijó, has been igniting street parties and traditional festivals across the state of Pará in Northern Brazil for decades, and is enjoying a particular rennaissance these days. Enough so that the cats over at Analog Africa Records are planning a small release of some hot material culled from Cupijo's catalog and will be releasing it on April 1st.
