Choro, Sources & Resources

During the past year I have devoted some time researching the Brazilian choro out of a personal interest and to provide info for this blogspot, originated by my friend and co-writer, Hans Koert. The Choro Music blog has now been up almost one year and has reached the magical number of 100 entries with this entry. A year ago I would not have realised it to be possible making entries on the subject on a regular basis, although we optimistically started the blog running with daily entries the first couple of weeks and later with weekly entries, a practise to be followed from August 2006 up till now. The number of visitors of the blog, however, has not been large and feed-back has been scarce regarding comments or suggestions. On the other hand, it seems that the blog has created a spot for a small community of regular visitors. I want to thanks those of you who have taken time for regular visits, this shows me that there is an interest in keeping choro alive and a forum of readers, who want to share the info we have been able to provide.

The problem of researching and informing on the Brazilian choro from my personal view of things has mainly been a linguistic problem, most sources and resources are in Portuguese - a language I do not master, unfortunately. However, luckily I have found help and a treasure of solid researched info in English in the book shown below.

This pioneering work in English, 'Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music' by Tamara Elena Livingston and Thomas George Caracas Garcia is highly recommended, if you want to have an in-dept view and knowledge of choro. The book has been published 2005 and is available from Indiana University Press

Info in English on Brazilian groups and individual choro musicians may be found at All Music Guide, where researcher Alvaro Neder has provided a lot of useful information, often quoted here at our blog.

Another resource regarding info is the AllBrazilianMusic website, both in Portuguese and English - an encoclydepia of Brazilian musicians and groups covering most of the Brazilian genres in music.

If you interested in researching the recorded sound of original and historic choro artists, the best resource is the website of Instituto Moreira Salles, highly recommended.

To buy choro recordings on compact disc I recommend a visit at specialist retailers, if you do not consult the online service of the Brazilian record companies. Good service and an impressing catalogue of choro recordings may be found at the online facility of Samba Store
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Among my first impressions of choro music was the impression of a vivid soundscape recreating
the sound of and longing for what I at first judged to be a bygone romatic era in music. In other words, my impression of choro was involving nostalgic feelings, not at all in a negative sense of the word 'nostalgic'. This feeling is still with me, and the positive meaning of the word comes through every time I listen to Jacob do Bandolim's 'Nostalgia'. Why not activate this feeling here to celebrate choro?

Jo