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Faroeste Caboclo

"Faroeste Caboclo"
LegUrb-FarCab.jpg
Single by Legião Urbana
from the album Que País É Este
Released 1987
Format 12"
Genre Folk rock, hard rock
Length 9:03
Label EMI-Odeon
Songwriter(s) Renato Russo
Producer(s) Mayrton Bahia
Legião Urbana singles chronology
"Faroeste Caboclo"
(1987)
"Eu Sei"
(1987)
"Faroeste Caboclo"
(1987)
"Eu Sei"
(1987)

"Faroeste Caboclo" (English: Caboclo western) is a song composed by Renato Russo and recorded by Brazilian rock band Legião Urbana. Written in 1979, the song was released in 1987 in the album Que País É Este.

The song is a lengthy ballad, in the vein of Bob Dylan, that tells the story of João de Santo Cristo, a poor man from the Brazilian Northeast who moves to Brasília in search of a better life, gets involved in drug trafficking, briefly abandons the life of crime for the love of a woman and is finally murdered by a rival.

Despite its unusual characteristics for a folk song (168 different lines, no chorus and 9 minutes of playing time), "Faroeste Caboclo" was a smash hit.

It is widely regarded as a Brazilian rock classic. A film adaptation was released in 2013.

The music starts with the introduction of João do Santo Cristo and his twisted childhood. João lost his father, murdered by a soldier (it is unclear if it was the Military Police or the Brazilian Army, since the music was written during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship) and, while growing up, he got himself flirting with the criminal life, stealing the "donation money" of the church, having sex with all the girls of the city and, when he was 15 years old, he was sent to a correctional facility, where he started to think about the discrimination against his social condition and his skin color.

João's main history starts when he is released of the correction facility and decides to leave his city, searching for a better life. He bought a ticket to Salvador, Bahia and there, he sat in a coffee shop and met a rancher, who gives him a bus ticket to Brasília, DF because he (the rancher) needed to visit his daughter and therefore, he would lose his trip. João readily accepted the ticket and entered in the bus to the city. When arriving, he got really impressed with all the Christmas' lights and decided to get a job around the "New Year's Eve". He started working as a carpenter in Taguatinga, DF and spent all his money partying around the city. In one of these parties, he met his "" cousin - a Peruvian man named Pablo who lived in Bolivia - who was planning to start a business.


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