CS Knowledge Base

"Pagode Russo" is a forró song composed in 1946 by Luiz Gonzaga and João Silva, and released on the album Danado de Bom in 1984. It is a song that pays homage to the Cossacks and plays with the East Slavic trepak rhythm within the time signature of a Brazilian baião.^[1]

In an interview for the 2012 documentary Hoje É Dia de Luiz, João Silva said that he and Luiz Gonzaga came up with the idea for the song when they saw two "Europeans" wearing "little skirts and bagpipes" on a beach.^[2][3] Some theorize that Silva and Gonzaga mistook them for Cossacks, a people from Eastern Europe, as it is more likely that the two individuals were wearing traditional Scottish attire.^[4] In the song, the singer says that he dreamed he was at the fictional nightclub Cossacou in Moscow, where he started dancing a 'Russian pagode' (the trepak) and compares the dance to Pernambuco's frevo.^[5]

The song was originally released in 1947 as an instrumental, however, it only became a hit in Brazil in 1984, when it was rerecorded with lyrics by Luiz Gonzaga and João Silva on the album Danado de Bom.^[2] According to a survey by the Central Collection and Distribution Office of Paraíba, published in 2010, the song 'Pagode Russo' is one of the most played songs at Festas Juninas in Brazil.^[6]

The song was rerecorded by several Brazilian artists, such as Zeca Baleiro on his album Vô Imbolá (1999),^[7] and Lenine and Frejat on the live album Casa do Forró (1998).^[8] These artists mixed the baião rhythm with Brazilian rock. The electronic forró band Mastruz com Leite also recorded a version of this song in 1996 on their album No Forró do Gonzagão.^[9]