of a made-up word was inspired by a samba de coco dancer’s steps, serve two purposes: (1) to prevent lawsuits in Arcoverde’s volatile environment by acknowledging the band’s sources and (2) to prove the band’s uniqueness in the musical marketplace by linking it to the interior region in a way no coastal Recife band can claim.
In addition to the shrinking of the folkloric medleys, the structure of the performances shifted during Cordel’s second phase, when the band members were living in Recife. While Cordel was starting out in Arcoverde the mood on stage would vary from one skitlike segment to the next. Following a poem about an indigenous prophecy, Lirinha would tell a funny story about a bumbling rural man trying to navigate the urban environment. Humorous poems followed solemn moments. After moving away from Arcoverde, however, the mood of a few moments in the first performance, in which Lirinha portrayed the charismatic power of the prophets and the bandits, became standard throughout the entire show. Humor was almost completely absent, and the majority of the words were spoken as an incantation, or “a heavy church mass” as the band described it in its lyrics. An aura of ecstatic religion was invoked through the use of candomblé drumming patterns in 12/8 time, folk Catholic pilgrim’s songs, and the impassioned vocal cadence of a millenarian fire and brimstone preacher.
The last scene of the band’s music video for “Chover (ou invocação para um dia liquido)” (Rain [Invocation for a liquid day]), which enjoyed MTV Brasil airplay, was filmed under the cross of the Alto do Cruzeiro. The clip featured Cordel and the Calixto family dancing coco and playing music together. This image of harmony and celebration belied the instability of their relationship at that time, as each group was finding a way through distinct but tethered predicaments surrounding their emerging commodification. The musicians in Coco Raízes were working to realize their dreams of appearing on television and performing all over Brazil. As they worked toward these goals, they were aware that they were performing music with premodern roots within a place-based project. In the words of their stage manager, Carlinhos, Coco Raízes had to remain careful not to “get off track” by revealing their ambitions and risk being seen as just another pop band. The members of Coco Raízes maintained their floral print, old-fashioned outfits for performing and reluctantly heeded their manager’s warning not to abandon Arcoverde as their home base. Meanwhile, Cordel faced a transition from folklore revue to mutationist pop band and, in percussionist Emerson Calado’s words, eased away from reproducing the work of others, toward producing original work of its own. Authorship copyright conflicts only accelerated the movement of both groups away from drawing inspiration from songs considered part of the public domain.
CHAPTER TWO
Museums
When Lula Calixto died on November 15, 1999, his death triggered a social earthquake, shifting the tectonic plates of the samba de coco families in Arcoverde. Almost immediately friction emerged between the Calixto and Gomes families on one side and the Lopes sisters on the other.
Lula Calixto’s Death and a Feud Fought through Museums
The strain on the relationship among the three families was evident as early as Lula’s funeral. Assis lent me a videotape of the memorial service, which took place at the gymnasium of the SESC. In the middle of the gym floor, the casket was open, and Lula’s body was completely covered by a layer of daisies. Only his face was visible, and his trademark leather hat was placed on the flowers. Padim Batista’s pífano band stood around the coffin and played mournful waltzes on fife and percussion. Mayor Rosa Barros, Lirinha and Clayton from Cordel, union leaders, people holding flags from the MST, teachers, and students came to pay their respects. Up above on a balcony stood students holding a banner, which read: “The Carlos Rios school mourns their good friend ‘Lula Calixto,’ even knowing that the artist doesn’t die.” Down below union members held a banner that read: “Lula Calixto. Symbol of struggle and resistance for his roots. Sintepe [the union’s name].” Onlookers stepped back as clowns on stilts paid tribute to Lula by precariously circling the open coffin. A priest led prayers and songs, the mayor spoke, and around Lula’s body the samba de coco group, dressed to perform, did a somber rendition of the normally ebullient dance.
All thirty or so members of the group at the time were dressed to perform in matching floral print shirts and dresses. All members except Se verina Lopes, that is, who came to the funeral not in a floral dress, but in a plaid vest and pants. Damião Calixto interpreted this choice as an act of defiance, which triggered the ensuing power struggle. To members of the Calixto family, Severina setting herself apart from the rest of the group and wearing a vest—one of Lula’s trademark clothing choices—was her signal to the rest of the group that she was claiming control of the group, which at the time bore her brother Ivo Lopes’s name.1
Severina remembered the sequence of events differently. To her, the first indication that the group would splinter surfaced a few days later, at a live interview on a local radio station regarding Lula’s legacy and the future of the group. In her version of the story, Damião Calixto asserted his power in response to the DJ’s question about what would happen to samba de coco in Arcoverde after Lula’s death. Damião said: “The coco now is mine. It belongs to my daughter [Iram], to my wife [Dona Lourdes] and to my brother [Assis].” Severina kept a cassette copy of the broadcast as evidence. It was devastating to her, she explained, not only because of this declaration, but because he went on to say, on the radio, that he was taking over the coco because he claimed the sisters weren’t strong singers and dancers.
Lula’s death was followed by a surge of media coverage in Arcoverde and Recife, depicting him as a beloved hero of popular culture. Lula’s status vaulted from town eccentric and street vendor to artist and local figure of cultural resistance. His family, who had previously been ambivalent about his passion for samba de coco, perceived that both the music and the Calixto name were valuable currencies.
Soon after Lula’s death a van paid for by the municipal government came to pick up the musicians and take them to a recording studio. According to Severina’s version of events, there was space in the van for ten people, but thirteen people were present. Damião rebuffed the Lopes sisters by ushering some of his younger children into the van and then telling the sisters that there were no seats left. Being shut out of the recording process was the breaking point that formalized the rift between the Lopes and Calixto families. The Gomes family, who had played samba de coco with the Lopes family since the early 1960s, were caught in the middle and ended up siding with the Calixtos.
Damião’s harsh assessment of the Lopes sisters’ musical abilities offers an entry into a cluster of issues regarding musical professionalism, cultural patrimony, and authorship rights that converged around Lula’s death. The conflict between the families centered on claims to the title of Arcoverde’s samba de coco tradition. The clash over these competing claims to tradition and authenticity was also a conflict over the criteria used to judge which family deserved its crown. The Calixto and Gomes families, committed to professionalizing, insisted on frequent rehearsals to hone their vocal harmonies, choreography, and percussion skills. The Lopes sisters balked at so much rehearsal, arguing that they knew the repertoire because they had been playing it for years in their late brother Ivo Lopes’s group. For the Lopes sisters, their claim to the title was based on the fact that their brother had been playing samba de coco in Arcoverde since the early 1950s. They considered the honor to be a patrimony of their family, and believed that no amount of rehearsal could change that immutable truth.
The Calixto family could stake their claim on the fact that they had danced samba de coco privately at family gatherings and had attended events throughout their lives. They did not, however, have a samba de coco group with a long history of public performances as Ivo Lopes had. Despite this lack, a curious thing happened: the increased attention
