Baianá
Barbatuques

This one’s a bit different.  Listen to this first (better audio) then watch the video to see how they perform it.

I stumbled across this track in 2006 on a mix of samba music in a podcast called Samba do Crioulo Doido.  The podcast didn’t have any information about the tracks and after a few months the podcast didn’t exist any more.  For years, with only the audio to run on, I periodically scoured the web for hints of who had recorded the track.  I played it for audiophile friends and even tried using shazam to recognize it when the app first launched.  No bones.

For obvious reasons, this song is permanently ensconced in my mind’s list of the top 5 most danceable tracks.  When I started assembling the list of reasons to dance, it was one of the first I wrote down, but I wasn’t sure how to share it.  At first, I sliced out the bit from the podcast mix and uploaded it to grooveshark, but then I figured it was worth giving Shazam another try.  After all, their catalog has improved over the years.  I played the track, pointed my phone at it, and to my disbelief some track details came up.  The group is called Barbatuques.  Ah!  After nearly 6 years, I finally knew the name of one of my favorite bands.