"Recife and Salvador were the cities with the biggest quantity of slaves in the past," Cabruęra's founder and lead singer, Arthur Pessoa, tells The Prague Post via e-mail while in transit between Recife and Berlin. "The Africans brought their culinary and musical culture, which nowadays are part of the everyday life of Recife, as in the [musical events] of Maracatu, the Cabloquinho and carnival. This musical information is mixed with the cosmopolitan character of the city."

Though many cultural threads are found in Brazil, Pessoa reminds, "It's the samba that is the origin of all Brazilian rhythms, derived from the African semba. You can consider it the mother of all Brazilian rhythms."

Cabruęra's call-and-response has found an enthusiastic audience on both sides of the Atlantic while embracing a few unexpected Amazonian pre-electronic forms. On the band's recent CD, Proibido Cochilar (released in English as Sambas for Sleepless Nights), several tracks leverage the orchestral textures of progressive rock with a hypnotic, otherworldly sound. Perroa says this haunting sound is "the influence of a music called cabacal, which is of Indian origin and probably the oldest music in Brazil."

To American ears, Cabruęra's use of cabacal sounds like what you might expect from a New York downtown avant-garde clarinet ensemble rather than a group of Peruvian pipe players, especially when transposed to electric guitars and other amplified instruments. This use of rarely heard indigenous forms extends an Afro-Brazilian sense of beautiful melodic dissonance into the world of electronic expression. "Our recent work is called Sons da Paraiba," explains Pessoa. "All songs are folkloric songs rearranged, newly adapted and transformed for the 21st century."