Dancing Tangará

When we left the north

It was to show the world

How it sings here in this land

A flock of tanagers

— Feats of the flock (Let's talk about the north), by Almirante, sung by Almirante with the Flock of Tanagers.

In the forest, this dance is collective. The male of the dancing tanager (Chiroxiphia caudata) has blue and black plumage and a red crown. Two or more males gather on a perch and make small, coordinated flights, passing one after the other in front of the female. The movements are accompanied by vocalizations and the alternation of the participants. There are also individual performances, which may take place after the group dance.

But why do these birds dance so much? In Guaraqueçaba, on the coast of Paraná, it is said that the tanagers were the children of Chico Santos. In the version that Câmara Cascudo presents in Geography of Brazilian Myths, the one who tells the story to a traveler is a canoeist. Chico Santos' children liked a fandango so much that even in the fields, in the middle of work, they found a way to dance. But there was a time to play and a time to retire. For it was precisely during Holy Week that the lads decided to dance until morning.

This time, the canoeist recounts, came the punishment. Chico Santos' children got smallpox, as it was called. And each one, upon dying, turned into a little bird.

The transformation does not end the punishment: Chico Santos' children continue dancing and repeating the same tune, waiting for Our Lord to take pity on them and take them to heaven. The book also includes a version written by Ofir Leite, sent to the folklorist by his father, Francisco Leite.

And what kind of tanager was that dancing before Fernão Cardim's eyes? The Jesuit describes a small black bird with a yellow-orange head. The crown is a different color, but what also catches his attention is the dance. In the "Treatises on the Land and People of Brazil," Cardim describes a "graceful dance" in which one bird seemed dead while the others jumped around it, until it stood up, whistled, and they all left. The Jesuit compared these movements to "coral gout," the old name for epilepsy, and recorded that the indigenous people did not eat the bird for fear of contracting the disease.

In 1929, the dance of the little birds gave its name to a group from Rio de Janeiro. Braguinha recounts that he knew a legend in which tanagers gathered in a circle to sing and dance in the woods. Now, if he and his companions also used to get together to sing, why not call the group the Bando de Tangarás (Band of Tangaras)? The group included among its members those who would become great names in Brazilian popular music, such as Almirante, Braguinha (João de Barro), and Noel Rosa.

The group's relationship with birds went beyond the name. In 1930, the Bando de Tangarás recorded the instrumental waltz "Lenda dos Tangarás" (Legend of the Tangaras), composed by Braguinha, with a whistling solo. The inspiration from the birds thus gained a musical expression in the group's own repertoire.