One more Parintins Festival starts this Thursday (25th), the public heads to the Bumbódromo in the city of Parintins, in Amazonas. The fans of Boi Garantido and Boi Caprichoso are ready to rock the arena in the three days of presentations.
Once again, the “Boi do Povão”, the Garantido, which is one of the hymns that represent his ox. But the song crossed the Atlantic Ocean and won over Europeans and even a football team, Sport Lisboa e Benfica.
The song was composed by Chico da Silva and originally released in 1966, quickly winning over Boi Vermelho fans and a captive space at the festival. In 1996, the singer Fafá de Belém, of Portuguese-Brazilian origin, re-recorded the track on her album “Pássaro Sonhador”, further surpassing the borders of Amazonian music. In the version, she invites David Assayag, who at the time was the ringleader for Garantido.
who is a Benfica fan in Portugal, said during a participation in the “Encontro com Fátima Bernardes” that the song was embraced by the Portuguese fans as their team’s anthem. “It wasn’t anyone who imposed it, it was a whole people who were already singing ‘Red’ and adopted it as an anthem. It was empathy, complicity”, she reflected in the interview and added that she was invited by the team to perform the song at the stadium.
She recalled that, ten days after her father’s death in 1997, she went to Portugal for work and her driver took a different route when leaving the airport. In the car, she found a group of fans on the street who were singing the song. She questioned the driver, who replied: “Girl, we know you are in the middle of immense pain and Glorioso came to hug you.”
Listen to the tracks from the album “Parintins: Portal do Encantamento”
