João Eloy

Música mato-grossense is the umbrella term for the popular and folk music made in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. It blends riverine Pantanal folk poetics, indigenous and Afro-Brazilian roots, and borderland dance rhythms with Brazilian rural pop and urban dance-floor sensibilities. Core local styles include rasqueado cuiabano (a lively guitar- and accordion-led dance form), the devotional-and-dance pair siriri and cururu, and the more recent club-driven lambadão that rose from the peripheries of Cuiabá and Várzea Grande. Typical timbres range from the regional viola-de-cocho and hand percussion to accordion and violão, and—more recently—drum machines, synth basses, and keyboards. Lyrically, songs often depict the Pantanal landscape, rivers, fishing, festas, faith, love, and everyday humor delivered with regional slang (cuiabanês), creating a strong sense of place and identity.

Rasqueado cuiabano is a lively, dance-oriented popular style from the city of Cuiabá, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. It blends the two-beat drive of regional polka-based dances with a distinctive, percussive guitar/viola caipira strumming technique known locally as the “rasqueado.” Typical ensembles feature accordion (sanfona) carrying the melody, steel- or nylon‑string guitar and/or viola caipira executing vigorous strums and syncopations, bass outlining an “oom‑pah” pulse, and light hand percussion such as pandeiro, ganzá and reco‑reco. Songs often celebrate local life—Pantanal imagery, rivers like the Cuiabá and Coxipó, festas, heat, food, and humor—delivered in a convivial, call‑and‑response manner. Harmonically it is simple and direct (I–IV–V with occasional borrowed chords), rhythmically buoyant (2/4 feel with off‑beat accents and anticipations), and designed for social dancing in community bailes.

Traditional folk is a broad umbrella for orally transmitted songs and dance tunes that circulated in rural and working-class communities before the age of mass recording. Repertoires include narrative ballads, laments, love songs, work songs, lullabies, and instrumental dance sets such as reels, jigs, hornpipes, and marches. Stylistically, traditional folk favors strophic forms, pentatonic or modal melodies (often Dorian and Mixolydian), limited harmonic movement, and strong, memorable tunes designed for communal singing and dancing. Performances range from unaccompanied solo voice to small ensembles built around fiddle, flute/whistle, pipes, concertina/accordion, guitar, banjo, and frame drum. Ornamentation, variation by verse, and flexible tempo are integral, reflecting an oral tradition where songs live through continual reinterpretation. Although it is pan‑regional, the modern idea of “traditional folk” coalesced in the 19th century through collectors and revivalists who documented vernacular music and framed it as cultural heritage.