Moda de viola
Moda de viola is the narrative song form at the heart of Brazilian m煤sica caipira, the rural music of S茫o Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goi谩s and Paran谩. A dupla, two singers harmonising in parallel thirds and sixths, performs long strophic ballads accompanied by the viola caipira, a ten-string steel-strung guitar played in open tunings with fingerpicked ponteados between verses. The texts recount cattle drives, drowned lovers, miracles, murders, lost farms and the hardships of country life in plain, formulaic verse. Codified on record from 1929 onward, the moda de viola is the foundational repertory of sertanejo de raiz, against which later commercial sertanejo defined itself.