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The mangue bit or manguebeat movement is a cultural movement created circa 1991 in the city of Recife in Northeast Brazil in reaction to the cultural and economic stagnation of the city. The movement largely focuses on music, but it has its own fashion and slang, and encompasses aspects of visual art. It mixes regional rhythms of Brazilian Northeast, such as maracatu, frevo, coco and forró, with Rock music, Soul music, , hip hop, funk and electronic music.
Mangue bit can be divided into two distinct waves: the first in the early 1990s led by the music groups Chico Science & Nação Zumbi (Zumbi's Nation) and Mundo Livre S/A (Free World Inc.), and the second in the early 2000s led by Re:Combo (a copyleft movement that uploads half-sampled music for download) and Cordel do Fogo Encantado (a music group that started as a roving theatre troupe with roots in a form of literature known as literatura de cordel ("twine literature")).
The original movement named itself mangue bit, mangue referring to Recife's mangroves and bit to the computer bit central to the movement's electronic music influences. Since then, mangue bit has commonly, albeit mistakenly, been referred as mangue beat.
Despite being both being cited as founders for the Mangue movement, Chico Science and Nação Zumbi (CSNZ), and Mundo Livre S/A have different influences and backgrounds. Chico Science was born to a lower-middle-class family in the neighborhood of Rio Doce in the city of Olinda. His influences came from music he heard while attending baile funk parties as a youth and included early Rapping, hip-hop, Rock music and Soul music such as, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Funkadelic, Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, and Grand Master Flash. Having grown up being surrounded by regional folk music he also was heavily influenced by music of Recife such as maracatu, ciranda, embolada, and côco. Chico with his friend, Jorge du Peixe, joined several groups; Legião Hip Hop, Chico Science, before finding and meeting members of Lamento Negro, a bloco afro specializing in Samba reggae, in 1990 and forming what would be CSNZ.
Mundo Livre S/A was based in the neighborhood of Candeias, a wealthy area of Olinda. While the band members themselves weren't wealthy, they were all firmly middle class as opposed to Chico Science and members of Nação Zumbi. Lead singer Fred 04, described the idea for the band as "a fusion, a bridge between Johnny Rotten of and Jorge Ben a and Moreira da Silva a, understand? .... It would be a type of new wave but very Brazilian, really very Brazilian, that would be identified neither as rock nor as MPB an".
When first hearing Chico Science in a mashup performance of Loustal and Lamento Negro, he thought the combination of the local/global juxtaposition, as well as the difference in geographical location, could launch what would become the Mangue movement into something that would highlight Recife's diversity.
"a label that we used for a type of cultural cooperative . . . that united some bands particularly, some visual artists, some journalists, some unemployed. And the idea, the label mangue emerged because Recife is a city that is constructed on top of the manguezais "mangrove. Our idea at the time in was to try to create a cultural scene here in Recife that was as rich and diversified as the mangue swamps, because the swamps are perhaps the ecosystem that has the greatest biodiversity of the planet. So the idea was to create a cultural scene . . . that had the same diversity, that wasn’t tied down to a single rhythm, a single style, or single fashion".That diversity is emphasized in the Mangue manifesto. It is divided into three parts: "Mangue - the Concept", which talks about the biodiversity of the mangue swamps and its importance as an ecosystem to the people of Recife, "Manguetown-The City", which describes a bit of Recife's history and economic situation as being rated one of the worst cities in the world to live in, with a high rate of unemployment and a high rate of people living in slums, and "Mangue-The Scene", which introduces the Mangue movement as a way to inject energy back into the city of Recife and connect it to the circulation of music on a global scale. The named symbol for the movement is "a parabolic antenna put in the mud. Or a caranguejo crab remixing ANTHENA by Kraftwerk a on the computer." The idea of the manifesto was to parallel the biodiversity of the mangue to the cultural diversity within Recife and to resuscitate the music and cultural scene, by mixing elements of globally circulating music with elements of regional music.
As a result of the manifesto being published, in 1992 MTV visited Recife to interview both Chico Science and Fred 04. The resulting footage played on MTV in Brazil, in January 1993, causing Mangue to gain traction in the south of Brazil. That same year, Paulo Andre Pires launched the first Abril pro Rock festival in Recife featuring CSNZ and Mundo Livre S/A as well as Nacão Pernambuco, a maracatu band that was gaining attention and growing quickly in popularity. The festival had a total audience of 1,500 people. CSNZ and Mundo Livre quickly found success in the music industry after the festival. Both bands toured in São Paulo and Minas Gerais and were picked up by record labels; CSNZ by Sony music, and Mundo Livre by Banguela, which was also the label that was producing music for band Titãs, and both bands produced their first CDs by 1994.
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