🇬🇧 Welcome to ForróLetters!
ForroLetter #4
🇧🇷 A versão em português pode ser encontrada aqui.
As forró spreads far and wide across Europe, we want everyone to be up to date on all the news, history, music and culture surrounding forró!
In this edition we’ll talk about
the forró community in Istanbul including what it is like to dance forró in a muslim country, during COVID and the crises of War in the Ukraine.
In the Federations updates we will give you a short summary of the Federations’ last General Assembly.
And in the end, comes our list of upcoming Forró events in Europe.
Before we start, are you already a subscriber of Forróletters? No? This is your chance!
Community
A forró community created from scratch
For more information about Forró in Istanbul: @forroistanbul and @forroalaturca and on Facebook.
What about you? Have you already danced in Turkey? Share your experience in the comments! We love to hear from you!
FoFed and community updates
General Assembly 2022
On January 9th 2022, the Federation held its second general assembly! We had 29 continuing organisation members present including our two new members Forró Stockholm and Forró Coladinho! Welcome!
Our main goal for the coming year is to: grow our federation, become more visible, improve contact and communication and find a way to involve musicians who are not yet represented in the federation. Soon after the general assembly Forró de KA joined our federation and is now acting as the musical representative within our organisation! We are so happy to welcome them and we hope that their enthusiasm for the federation will inspire more musicians to join us!
Included in our activities for the coming year are: slowly bringing back the discussion groups and starting groups with the wider community (until now we have started by making discussion groups specifically for forró professionals); funding innovative forró projects from members and nonmembers alike by offering 1500 euros to applicants (members do receive an advantage during the selection process and we will tell you more about this when we are farther in the organisation process); We are also going to make a Europewide forró promotional video and a European Forró Survey to get to know our scene and communities better; and last but not least we are hoping to organise a European forró conference with content to improve our practical skills related to organising forró in Europe.
We are happy to announce that the board of administration for the coming year of the European Forro Federation 2022 is: Sonja Graf from the Social Dance Research Alliance gUG (Germany), Leonie Schmidtmer from the Social Dance Research Alliance gUG (France), Marília Cervi from Forró em Lyon (France), Sofia Ramos from PD London Ltd (UK), Matheus Antunes teaching in Berlin (Germany), Talha Bolat from Forró Istanbul (Turkey) and Daniel Rolfs from Weloveforró (Germany)
And representing other countries which are not already represented in the board of administration we have the enlarged board: Sarah Collings (Belgium), Camila Alves (Portugal), Marcus Waldvogel (Switzerland), Raul Ortega Moral (full name) (Spain), and Andrea Strandberg(Sweden).
This means that within our board and enlarged board we represent NINE countries dedicated to the growth of forró culture across Europe!
We are thrilled to continue our work to promote and popularise forró in Europe in 2022 and we look forward to your participation in this effort!
How can YOU get involved in the Federation?
We are looking for passionate volunteers to write for this newsletter! As you can see, each month we have different pieces from different contributors, and you can be one of them! Do you have an opinion, a story or an idea about forró or Brazilian culture that you think the community needs to know about? This is your place! Get in touch by sending us an email- forroletters@gmail.com!
If you have other specialised skills and want to volunteer in other ways, we’d love to have you contribute to our federation! You can email us at forrofederation@gmail.com, and in the next month's issue we intend to post a list of other volunteers needed.
International Festivals and events happening in the next months
Please note that this list is not exhaustive. You want to be named in this newsletter with your event? Send us an email!
Forró London Festival, 31/03 to 4/4, London, UK
Forró de Nice Marathon, 8/4 to 10/4, Nice, France
Forró de Páscoa, 15/04 to 18/04, near Paris, France
Roma Roots, 22/04 to 24/04, Rome, Italy
Chamego, 29/04 to 02/05, Brighton, UK
Forró de Lyon Marathon, 5/5 to 8/5, Lyon, France
Turin Turin Forró Fest, 20/05 to 22/05, Torino, Italy
Festivalzinho em Frankfurt, 26/06 to 30/06, Frankfurt, Germany
Forró Sailing Week – 3rd edition, 20/05 to 4/06, Sardegna, Italy
Forró com Coração, 03/06 to 05/06, Aachen, Germany
Baião Vai, 24/6 to 26/06, Lisbon, Portugal
Cologne Samba de Gafieira & Forró Festival, 27/6 to 29/6, Cologne, Germany
1er Festival Forró de Montpellier, 01/07 to 03/07, Montpellier, France
Alegria do Norte Festival, 15/07 to 17/07, Stockholm, Sweden
ForróCamp, 31/07 to 07/08, Rügen, Germany
Bordeaux Forró Festival, 4/8 to 8/8, Bordeaux, France
O fole roncou, 11/08 to 16/08, Valencia, Spain
Miudinho Festival, 12/08 to 14/08, Berlin, Germany
Hamburger Forró-Tage, 26/08 to 28/08, Hamburg, Germany
Barcelona Forró Festival Pisa Na Fulô 8, 01/09 to 05/09, Barcelona, Spain
This was our latest ForróLetter!
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This months content contributors to ForróLetters are: Charlotte Lebouvier, Leonie Schmidtmer, Sonja Graf, and Vítor Diniz for the translations.
I was in Tel Aviv last month. I would have loved to dance forro there. Could I contact next time ? Is there Facebook group ?
Hi my name is Marco Fagioli and I live in Firenze where I started dancing Forró 5 years ago. Now I am a dj of Forró and I organize every other week AperiForró in a Bar in the city center. I have been in Istanbul before I started dancing Forró. I was there 3 weeks as a tourist and loved it. I would be very happy to do a Dj set in Istanbul! Here is my Forró Playlist on YouTube: Forró FakeDj. Ciao