Take me to the river

When it comes to climate, culture, and couture, downtown Manhattan is about as far as you can get from northeastern Brazil's parched and lonely backlands. Distance of any sort, however, is no match for music's seductive pull, as an insinuating groove can careen across the globe and take root in the unlikeliest of locales.

So it shouldn't be too surprising that the infectiously bouncy Brazilian style known as forro suddenly blossomed in Nublu, a hip Lower East Side nightspot that has served as an incubator for several singular bands. Combining zydeco-like propulsion, the humor and earthy fatalism of the blues, and a particularly Brazilian sense of nostalgia, forro was born in the sertao, the poor, drought-plagued interior of northeastern states such as Bahia , Pernambuco , and Paraiba .

Originally created as fuel for rural all-night dance parties, the music has found a firm foothold in the United States through the efforts of Forro in the Dark, a band launched by percussionist Mauro Refosco and several Brazilian compatriots who have also settled in New York City (though guitarist Smokey Hormel , best known for his work with Johnny Cash, Beck, and Tom Waits, is an American ringer). After the release of the band's first US album, "Bonfires of Sao Joao," on the Nublu label last year, Forro in the Dark is spreading its jazz-inflected vision of forro across the globe. The band launches its first North American tour tomorrow as part of the 28th annual Cambridge River Festival.

"Forro is about the suffering of the people from the northeast, who have a hard time finding water to survive," Refosco said from Hamburg, Germany, where the band was in the midst of a European tour. "But it's also about how much fun they have when they find water." Refosco has been a vital New York session player since joining saxophonist John Lurie's Lounge Lizards in 1997. Over the past decade he's toured and recorded widely with artists such as Bebel Gilberto and David Byrne (who both contribute vocals to "Bonfires"), Vinicius Cantuaria, Stewart Copeland, and They Might Be Giants .

While he was frustrated with the limited range of Brazilian music performed in the United States, Refosco didn't intend to start a forro combo. But during a tour with Hormel's band Smokey & Miho (that's Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto ), he turned the guitarist onto classic forro stars of the 1940s and '50s, such as Jackson do Pandeiro and Luiz Gonzaga , who dressed in the elaborately stylized costumes of the sertao's cowboys and outlaws.

"I started giving Smokey some forro records, and right away he made a connection with American country music," Refosco said. "I explained to him that Luiz Gonzaga is to forro what Hank Williams is to country music. He started learning the songs on guitar, not because I asked him to, but because he naturally loved the songs."

Joined by Brazilian accordionist Rob Curto , Refosco and Hormel started playing forro tunes together informally. In October 2003, Refosco decided to celebrate his birthday at a friend's new club, Nublu, by inviting a bunch of musicians for a forro jam session. The response was so positive that the players decided to return in several weeks for another session, which soon became a regular event.

"I think it's the type of music that lets you become part of it," Refosco said. "It invites you to come in and join it, either by clapping your hands, dancing, or singing the little melodies. It's very welcoming, and I think people were a little bit thirsty for those kinds of things."

By 2005, the Nublu forro jam had turned into a weekly event that was drawing packed audiences. They developed a repertoire of original tunes and forro standards by Gonzaga and co-writer Humberto Teixeira. Rather than re-creating the traditional forro sound, the musicians incorporated various influences that preserved the driving rhythms while giving the music contemporary textures. Hormel's guitar often takes over the lead melodic role usually reserved for the accordion. But the band hasn't tampered with the essential forro rhythm section. The triangle and the small bass drum called zabumba are, in Refosco's words, "a perfect combination, the music's rice and beans."

"We live in New York City, not in the northeast of Brazil close to a mountain in the dry weather," Refosco said. "It's not the most traditional forro, because we bring in all these other elements, but we're still making people dance, and then it becomes a tradition of its own."

The most powerful piece on the album features David Byrne singing the first English-language version of the northeastern anthem "Asa Branca" (White Wing), which describes the plight of northeasterners who long to return to their land after being forced by devastating drought to relocate to urban centers. While the downtown scene is often associated with a cool, ironic stance, Forro in the Dark brings an emotional commitment to the music that allows no space for detachment.

"I don't think the band is being ironic," writes Byrne in an e-mail. In 1991 he helped introduce Americans to forro with his Luaka Bop compilation "Brazil Classics 3." "They are liberating the genre in the same way that Gram Parsons , Lucinda Williams , and others liberated country music. They aim to hijack the spirit and make it relevant and new."