Berimbau

Until 1976, I had never seen or heard a berimbau. The first time I became aware of the instrument was from the first Brazil '65 album with Segio Mendes. One of the tunes they performed on the album was the song, "Berimbau" by guitarist-composer Baden Powell. On the liner notes, it stated that the berimbau was a single-string instrument from Bahia-----a state in the northeastern part of Brazil.

Eleven years later, I went to the El Matador, a club located on Broadway and Columbus in the heart of San Francisco's North Beach. I had gone to the club to hear the L.A. Four with Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida, bassist Ray Brown, Bud Shank on flute and alto sax, and my friend Shelly Manne on drums and percussion. Towards the end of the second set, Shelly got out from behind the drums and came to the front of the stage. In his right hand he was holding a thin little stick and a small shaker, and in his left hand, he was holding a small stone and an instrument that looked like a bow with a metal wire and a gourd attached to it. Holding the instrument up so that everyone in the audience could see it, Shelly then said, "This strange instrument you see in my hand is called a berimbau. It's native to Brazil--the northern part of Brazil----a part called Bahia. And this instrument is good for many uses, you can hunt with it, or, smoke it!" (To this day, that line still gets a good laugh.) From the very first note Shelly played, I was hooked and totally mesmerized by the sound of the Berimbau. There was something about the instrument that totally captivated me---its trance-like rhythms and sounds brought to mind Africa, the Samba, and the Mississippi Delta!!! I had to have one!

During the following week, I called numerous music stores and drum shops and got the same response. None of the stores had one, or for that matter, had never seen or heard of the instrument. A year later, my girl friend found one at Drum Land, and gave it to me on my thirty seventh birthday. Well, I was thrilled to finally own one, but after a couple of weeks, playing it became a very frustrating experience. That was because the only reference I had was an LP by the L.A. Four with Shelly playing the same tune I had heard him perform at the El Matador. At the time, as far as I knew, there was no one in the Bay Area that played or taught the berimbau. When I moved to my present location in 1978, the berimbau became a wall decoration in my practice studio. Finally, fourteen years later in 1992, I decided to play the instrument, and this time, I was determined to find a teacher. After making inquries, someone gave me percussionist Micheal Spiro's phone number. When I got a hold of him, I asked if he played and taught the instrument. He said that while he didn't, his friend Dennis Broughton played Brazilian percussion instruments, and he not only played it, but also taught students how to play the berimbau. Everything worked out and from April to August 1992, I took berimbau lessons from Dennis.

It was an eye-opening experience! Just learning to hold the instrument was a painful experience. That's because the weight of the bow (over three pounds) rests on your little finger. Ow! At first, I could only hold the bow for about ten to fifteen minutes----the pain was excruciating!!! I used to say to myself, "How the hell do the Brazilians play this thing without being in constant pain!" Gradually, after playing the berimbau everyday for about six months, the pain in my little finger finally went away. The pitch of the wire is changed by pushing a stone or large coin called a dobrao against the string.
When played in this manner, you only have two notes-----open or closed. Another variation of sound is created by holding the dobrao close enough to the wire so that it vibrates against it and creates a " buzzing" sound. When you combine the above-mentioned techniques, and include the use of the shaker or caxixi, you have an instrument that is capable of creating marvelous, and at times, complex polyrhythms.

According to some of my research on the berimbau, African slaves from the Yoruba tribe of West Africa brought the berimbau to Brazil. Then, about 100 years ago, the berimbau became an essential part of a Brazilian form of martial arts called Capoeira. The tempo and style of fighting that goes on in the circle or roda is determined by the rhythm played by the berimbau. Dennis taught me seven Capoeira rhythms and their variations. In the early nineties, with the exceptions of recordings by Airto and Nana Vasconcelos, none of the record stores in the area had any recordings of Capoeira music. Fortunately, Dennis traveled to Brazil quite often, and he had a wonderful collection of Capoeira records and the music of percussionist Papete. Dennis was quite generous with his time and energy. He not only taped many of his albums for me, but he also loaned me some of his LPs to take home and record them on my own equipment. Dennis Broughton was a teriffic teacher, a wonderful percussionist, and plays the berimbau beautifully. To this day, his humanity and musicianship continue to be an inspiration and influence on my life.

Over the last fourteen years to the present, through recordings, and a collection of Capoeira berimbau rhythms compiled by in 1977 by Kay Shaffer, I have taught myself about thirty Capoeira rhythms and their variations. What I discovered was that within all these various rhythms are the various techniques for playing the berimbau.

When I first started to play the instrument, a friend of mine had seen Nana Vasconcelos play the berimbau. He mentioned that one of the techniques Nana uses is to take the baqueta (stick), hit the wire, and then immediately, slide it along the wire. When he told me that, the first thing I thought of were the bottle neck guitarists from the Mississippi Delta-------the BLUES! Also, in the Delta, one of the things that people do is to take a wire and nail it to the wall of a house and anchor it. When that is done, they can play bottle neck blues on the wire. Over the years, through experimentation with different bows and sticks, I now have three different bows that are perfect for playing what I call "Delta" berimbau. I call those three bows my "singing" bows because of their ability to sustain notes for five seconds or more.

Lester Young once told a young Max Roach, "In order to join the throng, you have to write your own song." For the last fourteen years, what I've done is to take the rhythms of Capoeira, and combine them with my own musical experiences-----Jazz, Blues, Folk, Rock, and the second-line rhythms of New Orleans----to create my own unique American style of playing the berimbau. By combining sliding notes or glissandos, "bent" notes, and blue notes with a Capoeira rhythm such as Sao Bento Grande, I have come up with some very interesting rhythms of my own. In 2005, when my group Monk's Music Trio was recording its third CD with trombonists Roswell Rudd and Max Perkoff, I created a berimbau rhythm from the rhythmic structure of Thelonious Monk's composition, "Friday the 13th". The success of that recording has now opened the door to all sorts of musical possibilities.

The berimbau is an amazing instrument, and it seems that everytime I play it, I learn something new. It's a very, very seductive instrument, and there are times, when it literally steals my soul and puts me in a trance-like state of being. When that happens, everything drops away and disappears except for the mesmerizing sound of the berimbau.

The following musicians and Capoeira Masters have been very influential on my approach and style of playing the berimbau: Dennis Broughton, Bira Almeida (Mestre Accordeon), Mestre Suassuna, Silvio Acaraje, Nana Vasconcelos, Papete', Robert Johnson, Martin Simpson, Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Mississippi John Hurt, and Mose Allison.