REPENTISTAS

What are repentistas?

Repentistas are also called singers. They improvise their verses on other articles, present themselves in fairs and popular venues, stand alone or exchange verses with other singers in the so-called challenge.

The repengtista style is quite characteristic of Agreste Pernambuco. The first to start the repentant tradition were Agostinho Nunes da Costa and his sons Antônio Ugolino Nunes da Costa and Ugolino do Sabugi.

Before, all this tradition of the repentes was much simpler, where the rhymes used were the “quadras”, rhymes A - B - A - B or A - B - B - A. But in the last decades with the emergence of other singers like Ignatius Catingueira, the songs became more complex, and the sextilhas began to develop as well. And nowadays the singers assimilate several ways of rhymed verses, leaving aside the “quadras”. Some ways are: “as sextilhas, sete linhas ou sete pés, moirão, moirão de sete pés, moirão trocado, moirão trocado; moirão que você cai; moirão voltado; décima;martelo agalopado; galope à beira-mar; parcela; quadrões; quadrão trocado; gabinete; toada alagoana; meia quadra; gemedeira; ligeira.”

As is well known, many Northeasterners immigrated to São Paulo, that is, all this singing became known to Brazil. And it was in Sao Paulo that the repentes began to adopt a viola of ten strings created by the manufacturers of instruments Del Vecchio, well-known also like "dynamic viola".

Below are some examples of the work of the repentistas so that they may know them better: