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rasqueado

Rasqueado

Brazil · 1950s
DancingHappySentimentalRomanticChill
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Description

Rasqueado is a lively, strummed song-and-dance tradition from Brazil’s Pantanal region (especially around Cuiabá, in the state of Mato Grosso). It blends the fast, percussive strumming of guitars and regional violas with polka-derived rhythms and accordion counter-melodies.

The style typically moves in an upbeat 2/4 feel with syncopated off‑beats and “scratchy” right‑hand patterns (hence the name, from rascar/raspar, to scrape). Lyrics are often in colloquial Portuguese and celebrate rivers, boats, festas, fishing, and everyday life in the Pantanal. The core sound couples bright, major‑key harmonies with driving strums that invite social dancing.

History
Origins (mid-20th century)

Rasqueado took shape in the 1950s in and around Cuiabá (Mato Grosso), in Brazil’s Pantanal. Borderland exchanges with Paraguay and northern Argentina brought polka paraguaya, chamamé, and guarânia into local musical life. These blended with caipira practices (moda de viola) and the regional sung-poetry traditions of siriri and cururu, giving rise to a brisk, danceable strum style locals called rasqueado.

Consolidation in urban bailes

By the 1960s–1970s, rasqueado had a firm place in neighborhood parties and dance halls (bailes). Acoustic guitar or viola (often the local viola de cocho), accordion, bass, and light percussion shaped the sound, while singers used call‑and‑response hooks and story‑telling verses about Pantanal landscapes and livelihoods. Radio shows and regional labels helped circulate the music within the Centro‑Oeste.

Wider recognition and the “Pantanal sound”

From the 1980s onward, artists associated with the “música pantaneira” brought rasqueado flavors to national audiences, alongside polka, chamamé, and guarânia. The style’s signature strumming patterns influenced local strands of sertanejo while remaining a distinct, hometown dance music in Cuiabá and environs.

Today

Rasqueado thrives at regional festivals and cultural projects that also celebrate siriri and cururu. Contemporary artists keep the traditional instrumentation and strumming patterns, while some incorporate modern production and stage formats to present the Pantanal identity to broader audiences.

How to make a track in this genre
Instrumentation
•   Primary rhythm carriers: acoustic guitar or viola caipira (in the region, also the viola de cocho where available). •   Melody/harmony: accordion (sanfona), second guitar/viola, and bass (upright or electric). •   Percussion: ganzá, reco‑reco, light caixa, and handclaps—used to highlight off‑beats.
Rhythm and groove
•   Meter: typically 2/4 with a polka‑like, forward‑pushing drive. •   Strumming: use rapid, percussive right‑hand patterns—alternating downstrokes and upstrokes with muted “scrape” accents. Keep off‑beats crisp to invite dancing. •   Tempo: medium‑to‑fast (roughly 110–140 BPM), maintaining a buoyant, steady pulse.
Harmony and melody
•   Favor bright major keys (G, D, A) with I–IV–V progressions; occasional relative‑minor turns for contrast. •   Accordion often carries lyrical countermelodies and fills between vocal lines. •   Cadences resolve clearly to the tonic to support dance phrasing and sing‑along refrains.
Form and lyrics
•   Verses tell local stories (rivers, boats, festas, nature), choruses use short, memorable hooks. •   Call‑and‑response between lead and group vocals works well in party settings. •   Use colloquial Portuguese and regional expressions to convey place and identity.
Arrangement tips
•   Start with guitar/viola establishing the rasqueado groove; bring in accordion lines after the first verse. •   Layer light percussion to reinforce off‑beats without masking the strum texture. •   Keep mixes open and mid‑focused so strums and vocal storytelling remain front and center.
Top albums
Vaqueiro alegre
Bob Nelson e seus Rancheiros
A Noite do Rasqueado
João Eloy
Main artists
Influenced by
Polka Peruana
Polka peruana (Peruvian polka) is the local, criollo adaptation of the European polka that took root in coastal Peru—especially Lima—during the 19th century. It keeps the brisk 2/4 dance pulse of the polka but blends it with Afro‑Peruvian percussion, guitar-centric accompaniments, and a witty, street-wise lyrical sensibility associated with música criolla. Performed in peñas and family gatherings as much as on stage, it is lively, humorous, and socially observant, often celebrating Limeño neighborhoods, everyday romance, and playful banter. While closely related to other criollo forms like the vals peruano and marinera in performance context and repertoire, polka peruana is distinguished by its faster duple meter, driving cajón patterns, and buoyant, sing-along refrains.
Chamamé
Chamamé is a traditional dance-music style from Argentina’s Litoral region (especially the province of Corrientes) characterized by a flowing 6/8–3/4 sesquiáltera feel, expressive accordion or bandoneón melodies, and guitars providing rhythmic and harmonic support. It is music for dancing in couples, with a swaying, gliding motion that mirrors the riverine landscapes of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers. The genre blends European social-dance influences (polka, schottische, mazurka, waltz) with Indigenous Guaraní aesthetics and language, often featuring the sapukai—a celebratory shout—within performances. Lyrically, chamamé is typically nostalgic and pastoral, evoking love, family, migration, and the natural environment, and it frequently mixes Spanish with Guaraní vocabulary.
Guarania
Guarania is a Paraguayan song form created in the late 1920s by composer José Asunción Flores to give a lyrical, urban-poetic voice to the Guaraní people. It is characterized by slow to moderate tempos, cantabile melodies, and a gently swaying compound meter (often 6/8, sometimes felt in 3/4), which together create an intimate, reflective mood. Typical instrumentation centers on voice accompanied by Paraguayan harp and guitars, with optional violin, piano, or accordion; arrangements often feature arpeggiated harp figures and soft guitar pulses. Harmonies draw from European Romanticism but remain diatonic and songful, frequently in minor keys, highlighting bittersweet themes of love, homeland, and longing. Lyrics commonly mix Spanish and Guaraní, reinforcing the genre’s cultural identity and emotional depth.
Moda De Viola
Moda de viola is a traditional Brazilian rural song style centered on the viola caipira, a 10‑string double‑coursed guitar. It is typically performed by vocal duos (duplas), singing in close parallel harmony—often in thirds—over arpeggiated or gently strummed viola accompaniments. The songs are narrative and reflective, evoking countryside life, devotion, love, longing (saudade), and moral tales. Tempos are generally slow to medium, with 2/4, 3/4, or 6/8 feels, and harmonies remain largely diatonic, prioritizing expressive melody and storytelling over harmonic complexity. While it overlaps with broader sertanejo traditions, moda de viola preserves an older, acoustic, and pastoral aesthetic tied to Brazil’s interior.
Sertanejo Raiz
Sertanejo raiz (also called música caipira) is the traditional, rural form of Brazilian country music that crystallized in the countryside of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, and neighboring states. It is typically performed by vocal duos singing in parallel thirds (as chamadas "terças caipiras") accompanied by viola caipira (a 10‑string, 5‑course guitar) and violão (6‑string acoustic guitar), with occasional accordion and handclaps. Its core song types include moda de viola (narrative ballads), toada, cururu, cateretê/catira (with foot‑stomping and clapping), and xote/schottische, reflecting Iberian and European dance roots blended with Brazilian rural poetics. Harmonies are simple (mostly I–IV–V with few extensions), melodies are singable and diatonic, and the lyrics dwell on nature, faith, love, friendship, roads and cattle‑drives, and especially saudade (nostalgic longing) for the countryside.
Brazilian Folk Music
Brazilian folk music is an umbrella term for the country’s regional and traditional musics that grew from the encounter of Indigenous, African (mainly West and Central African), and Iberian (especially Portuguese) cultures. It encompasses rural song, dance, and ritual genres such as baião and forró in the Northeast, viola-caipira traditions in the Southeast and Center-West, Afro-Brazilian drumming and chant in maracatu and jongo, circle-dance genres like ciranda and coco, and many others associated with religious festivals, work songs, and oral poetry. Marked by call-and-response vocals, propulsive percussion, syncopated grooves, and narrative lyrics, Brazilian folk music remains a living tradition that informs Brazilian popular music while preserving local identity and heritage.
Has influenced
Rasqueado Cuiabano
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.
Sertanejo
Sertanejo is Brazil’s homegrown counterpart to country music, rooted in the rural song traditions of the country’s interior (música caipira) and later modernized for urban radio and arenas. Its core sound revolves around close-harmony duos, storytelling lyrics about love, longing, and countryside life, and the distinctive timbre of the viola caipira (10‑string Brazilian guitar) alongside acoustic guitar, accordion, and, in contemporary productions, full rhythm sections and pop‑leaning arrangements. Across a century, sertanejo evolved through several waves: the narrative, acoustic sertanejo raiz; the polished, romantic duos that conquered national television and FM radio; and the 2000s/2010s universitário movement that fused pop, rock, and electronic textures. Today it is one of Brazil’s most commercially dominant genres, spawning numerous substyles and crossovers while retaining its identity of heartfelt vocal harmonies and sing‑along choruses.
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