Leonardo Lucini is a Brazilian teacher and musician who has been studying and conducting research into Brazilian folklore. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Lucini plays electric and double bass with his own band Origem, a Washington DC-based group that plays original Brazilian jazz. In Brazil, he performed with well-known groups such as Nó Em Pingo D'Agua, saxophonist Paulo Moura and the Orquesta de Música Brasileira. Lucini is currently completing a Master's degree program in music at Howard University in Washington, DC.

Recently we participated in a musical workshop conducted by Lucini, in which he explained many of the rhythms of Northeastern Brazil, particularly the baião, and its influence over better known Brazilian rhythms such as forró.

Clave: What is the baião and where does it originate?

L: The baião is a rhythm that although is not very well known outside Brazil, has enormous influence over much of modern Brazilian music. The traditional instrumental baião is a musical form based on an ancient figure dance or ballroom dance of European origin. We can use Ceará, a Northeastern state in Brazil, as point of reference for the origin of this form, although it developed through most of the Northeast. In the Northeast region of Brazil this form was played by local bands that performed in salons and in private parties and at different celebrations. The original instrumentation of these was one or two lead pífanos, -small hand-carved bamboo flutes- a zabumba -a large bass drum-, and other minor percussion instruments. This instrumentation became standard in the performance of traditional instrumental baião, for which these bands got to be known as “Bandas de Pífanos.”

Clave: What are main rhythmic, melodic and harmonic characteristics of the baião?

L: The rhythmic pattern is defined by the zabumba drum. The zabumba has skin on both sides. It is played with a mallet on one side to produce an open bass tone, and with a stick on the other side to produce a higher pitched sound. The stick is played on the rim. The result is a syncopated 2-4 rhythm.

The traditional baião melodies are based on a Lydian flat 7th scale, a scale derived from the tuning of the pífano flute, which has a raised 4th and flattened 7th. The chord structure is based on a Dominant 7th chord. In the 1930s and 1940s, tunes like "O Baião" by Luiz Gonzaga made these chords a standard in baião music.

Clave : When were the first baião songs composed?

L: As it happened in most Latin American countries, the development of popular and folkloric music is marked by the presence of the radio in the 1940s. Therefore, we can talk about two different phases of baião -before and after the radio. Before the radio, the baião was mainly traditional and instrumental, and very local. Radio brought first the urbanization and then the commercialization of the baião, as it became popular in the whole country for the first time.

Clave : Who were the performers who made baião popular?

L: Luiz Gonzaga is credited with being the inventor of modern baião as we know it today. Luiz Gonzaga was a musician from the northeastern sertão who played the accordion and composed many beautiful tunes. During the 1940s he got into a radio program in which he played baião with the accordion, accompanied by an orchestra with chorinho instrumentation -guitar and cavaquinho- and some minor percussion. They also incorporated wood blocks (taken from the American Westerns) and later the triangle for a fast polyrythmic music good for dancing typical lively Brazilian music. That was a big hit.

Gonzaga recorded several singles and his success continued until the early 1950s. There were many other important musicians who played baião; some of the best known are Jackson do Pandeiro and Valdir Azevedo, who was a very good cavaquinho player. Azevedo recorded "Delicado," the first instrumental baião recorded outside Brazil, which became a big hit in Europe and made baião popular outside Brazil. Then by the mid 1950s, the baião became out of style as the influence of jazz and American music increased in Brazil. The urban population fell for American and other foreign music which was being heavily promoted by the radio and by the big recording companies. However, during the 1970s, Gonzaga's baião was revived when Tropicália movement artists such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil praised Gonzaga's artistry. Caetano even recorded the famous baião tune "Asa Branca," as an homage to Gonzaga.

Clave : What would you say is the status of the baião today?

L: Nowadays baião is more popular in the Northeast of Brazil than in Southern cities such as Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo where samba is more prominent. However, in the past few years, lots of people from the Northeast have migrated to urban centers such as Rio and São Paulo looking for better jobs. They bring with them their musical traditions, for which nowadays it is not uncommon to find small baião combos (zabumba, accordion, vocals and sometimes bass) performing on weekends in public places such as the Feira de São Critovão in Rio or Praça da Sé in São Paulo, or even in night clubs between sets of a “top forty” orchestra or on a DJ's break.

Baião is also a popular feature in contemporary instrumental music in Brazil and the U.S., with artists such as Joe Henderson, Chick Corea and Hermeto Pascoal using this exciting Brazilian rhythm in their compositions and recordings. Baião is alive and is an important part of our music.

Leonardo Lucini is currently playing with Origem at several area clubs in Washington, DC. Origem has just recorded its first album, which has all original Brazilian jazz compositions and arrangements. For more information, call (301) 434-4104 or by e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

As it is the case with the music of El Salvador, little is known in the U.S. about the visual and graphic arts of this small Central American country. The lack of funding for culture, the lack of adequate local art institutions, and poverty have contributed to the little exposure given abroad to Salvadoran art. In this regard, the recently opened exhibition, Two Visions of El Salvador, at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC, is a welcome recognition of the cultural traditions of this fascinating country.

The history of El Salvador has been characterized by poverty and social injustice, dictatorships, political repression, and civil wars. This history, along with the development of an oligarchy of coffee growers —EL Salvador's famous 14 families— has deeply influenced El Salvador’s cultural developments. In the 19th Century, artists supported by this oligarchy looked to Europe for cultural direction, favoring traditional portraits, religious images, and genre paintings. The institutional beginning of Salvadoran art was marked by the return from Europe, in the early 20th century, of important Salvadoran artists such as Pedro Ángel Espinoza (1899-1939), Miguel Ortiz Villacorta (1887-1963), and Carlos Alberto Imery (1879-1949). Imery, who studied art at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Rome on a government scholarship, returned to El Salvador to establish the country’s first art academy, the Escuela Nacional de Dibujo y Pintura, later renamed Escuela Nacional de Artes Gráficas. Espinoza became a chronicler of the country’s native people and countryside. Ortiz Villacorta was influenced by Impressionism, specifically Mexican Impressionism, and distinguished himself for his portraits and luminous realistic landscapes.

Many of Imery’s students showed a preference for indigenous themes and a desire to express a sense of national identity through art. Among Imery’s alumni are Luis Alfredo Cáceres (1908-52), known for his paintings of Salvadoran mestizo types; and José Mejía Vides (1903-93), who studied in México and became a promoter of plein-air landscape painting in his country. Other graduates of Imery’s school who went on to study in México were Mario Escobar (1915-82), Camilo Minero (1917), and Luis Ángel Salinas.

The 1930s were violent years in El Salvador, primarily remembered by the peasant uprising of 1932, a peasant-led rebellion to protest the abuses of the political class and the policies of the latifundia. The military responded by executing the leaders and killing thirty thousand people in a massacre that came to be known as La Matanza (The Slaughter). Despite this violence in the countryside, the art produced during this period did not reflect social upheaval; instead it has a marked nationalist theme and shows the influence of Mexican styles.

In 1935, the country’s second major art school was founded by Spanish painter Valero Lecha (1894-1976). For the next four decades Lecha was responsible for training many artists who would shape Salvadoran art. Also during these years the institution Amigos del Arte was founded by writer Salvador Salazar Arrue (Salarrué, 1899-1975) who independently became an active painter. Salarrué created a style combining black outlines, intense colors, and vernacular subjects with fantasy and a sense of mystery. Still, cultural isolation reigned and Salvadoran artists did not introduce modernist trends until the late 1940s. In 1947 a group of Imery’s students formed the Grupo de Pintores Independientes, an association committed to combining social causes with new aesthetic ideas. Their approach came into confrontation with the academic tradition followed at the time by Valero Lecha’s students, who called themselves the académicos. However, many of these students continued their studies abroad and returned to El Salvador to introduce new trends in the 1950s. Among these were the socially conscious Julia Díaz, Noé Canjura and Elías Reyes. Another outstanding woman painter from the Lecha school is Rosa Mena Valenzuela, who is well known for her Expressionist figures and her unique calligraphic strokes.

During the 1960s, Salvadoran painters sought an encounter with the international avant-garde. The Spanish-trained Carlos Cañas explored many styles as an artist and teacher, and became an important figure in the move toward contemporary trends. The greatest promoter of modern art was Julia Díaz, who founded Galería Forma in 1958 as the country’s first permanent exhibition space, which later became the Museo Forma, the only museum of 20^th Century painting and sculpture in El Salvador. Other modern versatile painters are writer Armando Solis and Benjamín Cañas, who is described as the most important painter of the fantastic in Latin America, with a style that includes abstractions, mixed media, distorted perspective, and classical technique.

In the 1970s, the poverty, landlessness, class divisions, military regimes, and political repression reached a peak, starting a period of civil unrest and later a violent civil war that lasted more than a decade. During this time thousands of Salvadorans, including many artists, fled the country.

Along with the academically trained, many contemporary Salvadoran artists have found their source of inspiration in El Salvador’s landscape, traditions, and society. This is the case with naïve painters José Nery Alfaro (1951) and Fernando Llort (1949), known as the founder of a popular arts workshop in La Palma, where artisans reproduce his folkloric designs.

El Salvador finally began negotiations for peace in the early 1990s. In spite of the country’s devastating experience, young Salvadoran artists have continued to develop new visions that incorporate the unique Salvadoran experience and universal art themes.