The rabeca or rabeca chuleira is a

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

originating in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, commonly used in Portugal,

Northeastern Brazil The Northeast Region of Brazil ( pt, Região Nordeste do Brasil; ) is one of the five official and political regions of Brazil, regions of the country according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Of Brazil's twenty-six state ...

, where it is most commonly used in Brazilian

forró The term forró (*) refers to a musical genre, a rhythm, a dance and the event itself where forró music is played and danced. Forró is an important part of the culture of the Northeastern Region of Brazil. It encompasses various dance type ...

music, and Cape Verde. It is descended from the medieval

rebec The rebec (sometimes rebecha, rebeckha, and other spellings, pronounced or ) is a bowed stringed instrument of the Medieval era and the early Renaissance. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and one to five strings. Origi ...

History

The rabeca is thought to have originated in the

Entre-Douro-e-Minho Entre Douro e Minho () is one of the historical provinces of Portugal which encompassed the country's northern Atlantic seaboard between the Douro and Minho rivers. Contemporaries often referred to the province as simply "Minho". It was one of ...

region of northern Portugal, especially in the areas around Amarante during the 18th century. Rabeca have also

sephardic Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), ...

origins. In the Portuguese tradition, the ''rabeca chuleira'' is a short-scale variation played in village bands alongside

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

s or ''

viola braguesa Viola braguesa is a stringed instrument from Braga, north-western Portugal. It has 10 strings in 5 courses. The strings are made of steel. It is tuned C4/C3–G4/G3–A4/A3–D4/D4–G4/G4. The scale length is about . Requinta Many , such as t ...

'',

drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...

triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

and, now occasionally, the ''

gaita transmontana The gaita transmontana or gaita de foles mirandesa is a type of bagpipe native to the Trás-os-Montes region of Portugal. History The most ancient records of this instrument date from the 18th century, mostly written. Its culture has been pas ...

'' or the

galician bagpipe The Galician gaita ( gl, Gaita galega, pt, Gaita galega, es, Gaita gallega) is the traditional instrument of Galicia and northern Portugal. The word is used across northern Spain as a generic term for "bagpipe", although in the south of Spain ...

. The repertoire consists of the 2/2 '' chula'' and 3/4 ''

chamarrita ''Chamarrita'' can refer to two different types of music and dance, one from the Azores in Portugal and one from the Rio de la Plata littoral region in northern Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. Azorean ''Chamarrita'' The ''chamarrita'' fro ...

''. In Portugal, the ''rabeca chuleira'' (also known as ''rabeca rabela'', ''chula de Amarante'', ''chula de Penafiel'' or ''ramaldeira'' depending on the region it is played with very little variation) is still widely associated with the people of Minho,

Douro Litoral Douro Litoral () is a historical province of Portugal. It is centered on the city of Porto, now the capital of the Norte Region. Other important cities in the province are Vila Nova de Gaia, Matosinhos, Maia, Póvoa de Varzim, and the historic ...

and, to some extent, Beira Litoral. However, it doesn't have an important popularity in the rest of the country and it has been slowly replaced by the violin in Portuguese folklore. In the Brazilian tradition, the ''rabeca chuleira'' is simply called ''rabeca'' and is not a short-scale instrument unlike its Portuguese cousin. The Portuguese ''viola braguesa'' finds a counterpart in its Brazilian cousin, the ''

viola caipira The ''viola caipira'', often simply ''viola'', ( Portuguese for ''country guitar'') is a Brazilian ten-string guitar with five courses of strings arranged in pairs. It was introduced in the state of São Paulo, where it is widely played as the ...

''. In forró music, the rabeca is typically accompanied by

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

zabumba A zabumba () is a type of bass drum used in Brazilian music. The player wears the drum while standing up and uses both hands while playing. The zabumba generally ranges in diameter from 16 to 22 inches, and is 5 to 8 inches tall. The shell is mad ...

drum, and triangle. The three primary dance rhythms of forró are the 4/4 ''

xote Xote (, ) is a Brazilian music genre and dance with a binary or quaternary rhythm. It is the local equivalent of the German schottische. Xote is a common type of forró dancing. The word ''xote'' is a corruption of the German word ''schottisch'' me ...

'', '' baião'', and ''arrasta-pé''.

Tuning

The short-scale rabeca chuleira from Portugal is tuned an octave above the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

. The Brazilian rabeca, on the other hand, plays in the same range as a violin, but may be tuned in fourths or fifths.

References

{{reflist Bowed string instruments Brazilian musical instruments

History

Tuning

See also

References