Dorival Caymmi

If one were to look for a geographical region in Brazil that resembles the Mississippi Delta in terms of producing a lion's share of influential performers, a good case could be made for the region of Bahia in Brazil's northeast. The list of Bahian performers is formidable: Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Maria Bethania, etc. What links all of these people is the influence of Dorival Caymmi perhaps the single most important composer to come from this region. Born in 1914, Cammyi composed popular songs that echoed the nation's indigenous songforms: sambas, toadas (mel...