Mangue Bit

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The mangue bit (also called mangue beat) movement was a cultural movement created circa 1991 in the city of Recife in Northeast Brazil in reaction to the cultural and economical stagnation of the city. The movement largely focuses on music, with the result being a mixture of local traditional styles such as maracatu and ciranda) with the imported culture of the MTV generation (rock, rap and hip-hop).

The movement has its own manifesto, Caranguejos com Cérebro (or "Crabs with Brains" in English), written in 1992 by singer Fred 04 and DJ Renato L. Its title refers to Recife's inhabitants as crabs living in Recife's swamp and mangrove environment. A major symbol associated with mangue bit is that of an antenna stuck in the mud receiving signals from all over the world.

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 SA (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 far more commonly, albeit mistakenly, been referred as mangue beat.