Carangolo by Mestre Silvinho & FICA Seattle

This album is a collaboration between FICA Seattle and Sage Arts Recording Studio. It features two separate recording sessions with Mestre Silvinho’s Capoeira students and the Berimbau Orchestra, an offshoot project with his students led by Leika Suzumura and Contra-mestre Caxambu. The first session took place at Sage Arts Studios in Arlington, WA, with engineer Jordan Cunningham. During that day, we recorded new and traditional corridos and ladainhas. We also recorded a number of tracks performed by the berimbau orchestra to celebrate the musical dimension of capoeira and the creative aspects of the ensemble. We sought out a studio recording for these songs in order to fully capture the rich sound of the berimbau while balancing the full range of frequencies within the entire bateria. In addition, we chose to have minimal and unobtrusive studio processing.

The second recording session took place during a live roda at the Union Cultural Center, our capoeira home, in the heart of the International district in Seattle, WA. In this recording, we sought to honor the deep conversation between music, movement, and philosophy within capoeira angola.

This project emerged through a partnership between Mestre Silvinho and Emily Silks, a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, whose work realizes recording projects and music archives as community arts resources.

Silvio Dos Reis, known to his students as Mestre Silvinho, has dedicated over 30 years of his life to Capoeira Angola. Since 2004 he has been leading the International Capoeira Angola Foundation, ICAF Seattle, founded in 1997 by Mestre Jurandir. He also oversees the activities of groups in Bellingham (WA), Portland (OR), and Hawaii.