the instruments and the dance
The music: brinquinho, rajão and the Bailinho da Madeira
What's actually being played when the folk group takes over the room, instrument by instrument.
Check availability ↗The instruments, in brief
| Instrument | What it does |
|---|---|
| Machete / cavaquinho | Small plucked guitars carrying the melody |
| Rajao | A five-string, 70cm guitar, reentrant-tuned |
| Brinquinho | A cane pole of costumed dolls holding castanets, clicked by a pulled wire |
A family of small guitars
Madeiran folk music leans on a set of small plucked stringed instruments — the machete, the cavaquinho and the rajao — rather than a single lead guitar. The rajao specifically is a five-string instrument around 70cm long, using a reentrant tuning where the strings don't run simply low to high, which gives Madeiran folk music part of its distinct, bright top end.
An unlikely export to Hawaii
In the 1880s, Madeiran cabinet-makers working in Hawaii — Manuel Nunes, Jose do Espirito Santo and Augusto Dias among them — are credited as the first makers of the ukulele, built from the small guitar-like instruments, including the rajao, that they'd brought with them from the island. It's a genuinely documented piece of musical history, not a claim we're inflating for the story.
The brinquinho's click and clatter
The brinquinho is Madeira's own percussion instrument: a pole of Arundo donax cane carrying tiers of small dressed dolls, each holding a castanet, that click together when a wire running through the pole is pulled from below. It likely dates to the 19th century and still turns up in folklore performances today, doing double duty as an instrument and a genuinely eye-catching prop.
The bailinho da Madeira
All of this serves the bailinho da Madeira, the island's signature folk dance — quick, sociable, and built around a group rather than a soloist on a stage. It's the dance this ticket's evening takes its structure from, verse by verse, if the folk group rather than the fado option is the one running on your date.
Or fado, on the nights it runs instead
This ticket's own description names a fado concert as the alternative to the folk group, without specifying how the choice is made for a given date. Fado itself is usually associated with Lisbon rather than Madeira, so on a night it appears here, it's the exception to the island's own folk tradition rather than the evening's main character.