Na Pancada Desvairada

Na Pancada Desvairada (2026) by Grupo Anima is an album featuring compositions and arrangements based on melodies documented by Mário de Andrade during his ethnographic journey through northeastern Brazil (1928–1929), along with two pieces derived from the Folklore Research Mission organized by the author in 1938. The record is accompanied by a 120-page bilingual publication containing the group’s extensive research on the material.

The project’s visual identity by Flora Milanez emerged from a graphic-literary investigation, beginning with the diamond shape on the cover, repeated as a triptych across the back cover and inner flap. In addition to alluding to the symbol of the Brazilian flag—in the same orientation as it appears on the cover of Oswald de Andrade’s book Pau Brasil (1925)—it references the harlequin’s diamond-patterned costume, an image that features prominently in Mário de Andrade’s Pauliceia Desvairada (1922), both in its poems and on the cover of its first edition.

The ember-red color was also brought into dialogue with the research that guided the project. In the coco tradition of Rio Grande do Norte, the instruments zambê and chama are tuned over fire around a bonfire. The fiery red hue—the color of the Pau Brasil tree from which the country name derives—evokes the flames of the bonfire and takes center stage on the album-book cover. It also symbolizes a crimson/incarnated flag ("bandeira encarnada"), a term introduced by Mário de Andrade in his book Os Cocos (1984).

By articulating these symbols, the art direction sought to create a contemporary graphic expression drawn from the constellation of references connecting the work of the modernist writer Mário de Andrade and the Brazilian popular musical culture he studied.

Na Pancada Desvairada

Publisher: Grupo Anima
Editors: Grupo Anima
Design: Flora Milanez
Release: 2026
Volume: 120 pages
Language: Portuguese / English

More information can be found here.