Xote (forró)

Xote is the slow dance of forró, the accordion music of Brazil's northeast (Luiz Gonzaga): the schottische as it arrived in the sertão, in 2/4 and danced close. The trio is accordion, zabumba and triangle. The zabumba plays the bass drum on the beats and the bacalhau stick on the ands (kick / rim here), the triangle runs sixteenths with the open ring on the beat, and the accordion (the piano here) plays bass notes on the beats and chords on the ands, the classic um-pa with a little lean. The guitar does the same thing with a bass note and an upstroke. It is the plain two-feel that the baião syncopates: play this, then the baião, and the 3-3-2 jumps out.