visit: forrolpgringo.blogspot.com/ Rare Forró Documentary in English & Portuguese - Luiz Gonzaga, Azulão & Jackson Do Pandeiro They do a pretty good job capturing the setting and describing the meaning of forró to the people of the Northeast. Some of the details, however, deserve to be clarified. Siba compares Luiz Gonzaga to Bob Marley. I find this analogy problematic. One, Bob Marley was an international superstar who carried the sound of reggae to a mainstream audience in multiple countries. Although Gonzaga was a massive star and cultural icon in Brazil, forró has never reached an international mainstream audience. If anything, Carmen Miranda is more like Bob Marley. They both delivered the cleanest, poppiest versions of their artforms, reggae and samba, to the rest of the world. They both spoke English. Luiz Gonzaga did not. Two, Luiz Gonzaga is credited for creating the genres of baião and forró. Gonzaga invented the forró group combo. Bob Marley did not invent reggae or the type of band to play it. He only popularized it. That is not to diminish Marley's or Carmen Miranda's contributions, but Luiz Gonzaga almost single-handedly invented their genre of music that is still popular 70 years after he first appeared on the radio. Comparing Gonzaga to anyone is a challenge. The other piece that is missing from this documentary is how many other artists there are who have made recordings other than Gonzaga and Jackson. Azulão, for example, is an accomplished artist in his own right, with a stack of great records of his own. Since Gonzaga launched the revolution in the 1940s, there have been thousands of forró 78s, LPs, 10"s, compactos, CDs and tapes released in Brazil; perhaps more than 100,000.

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