Coco

Coco is an Afro-Brazilian song and dance of Brazil's Northeast coast, performed in a circle (roda) to hand percussion — ganzá, pandeiro, bombo and clapping — with a soloist improvising verses that the group answers in refrain. Dancers stamp and turn in the roda, a format inherited from African, Indigenous and Iberian festa culture in Pernambuco and Paraíba; the embolada variant turns the singing into a rapid-fire improvised duel. *Jackson do Pandeiro* carried coco nationwide on radio in the 1950s, and the mangue beat generation of *Chico Science* revived its grooves for rock and electronic fusion.