Frevo

Frevo is the carnival music of Recife and Olinda: a fast 2/4 march for brass band, descended from military marches and polkas with capoeira in its feet. The accompaniment is the marcha cell, dotted-eighth plus sixteenth on every beat, so the chords land on the beat and on the last sixteenth before the next one; that late sixteenth is what makes the dancers jump. The bass walks root and fifth in quarters, the caixa snare rolls through every sixteenth, and the surdo marks beat 2 with a pickup on the and-of-1. Everything is short and bright; nothing sustains. Play it slow and it is a polka, bring it to tempo and it is frevo.