Forecast: You're in Brazil now...heavy weather ahead...

Sorry, the radio will return as soon as suitable arrangements have been made with our hosting company!

In the meantime, there is a lot of great Bahian and Brazilian music on The MusiCodex, along with great music from Salvador's brother city New Orleans and other places. A good place to start is with Raimundo Sodré, and then move on to the musicians he recommends on his Open To tab, and then on and on!

Anybody wanting to start at the beginning, so to speak, can start here.

And when you're in Salvador, don't forget to stop by Cana Brava Records (on a little side street in Pelourinho, Salvador's Old Town). We are not breezy bossa nova. We are samba, the soul music of Brazil!

Radio Cana Brava...internet radio from Salvador da Bahia...is an aural rainbow stretching from Bahia's sweet fields of sugarcane in the land where samba was born (in the hands, mouths, hips and hearts of the Bantus), to the hills of Rio de Janeiro where samba-de-morro was composed for radio stars by wonderfully talented men who themselves were relegated to living in the favelas.

The rainbow arcs over Rio's district of Lapa, haunt of such slight giants as Cartola and Noel Rosa...over Praça Onze where Pixinguinha and Donga and friends gathered in the house of Tia Ciata for their choros while the candomblés and sambas-de-roda were conducted out back, away from the eyes of the police. It arcs over Maranhão in the north, Paraíba and Pernambuco, Minas Gerais to the south, over São Paulo's Praça da Independência where samba is tapped out by shoeshiners on shoe polish can lids (samba professors to wonderful Germano Mathias), over the jongeiros of the Vale do Paraíba...

The rainbow is hued with the dust of the sertão (backlands) and imbued with the sophisticated dance moves of the gafieiras, Rio dance halls of the 1930s. It resonates with the agogô, the bandolim (mandolin), and the seven-stringed guitar utilized in samba and choro...

We are not smooth jazz. We are not easy-listening bossa nova. We are not psychedelia-influenced tropicália (too much hippie-dippie "freedom" being the antithesis of preternaturally tight -- and paradoxically -- controlledly loose, Brazilian percussion). We are not Bahia Carnival-frothpop (in spite of living right in the middle of it). We are not fake Bahia tribal roots (which for some reason seems to attract so much attention from foreign journalists).

This is the rich soaring sound of the real Brasil.

Cana Brava Records