Balseiros do Rio Uruguai is a chamamé composition by Barbosa Lessa. It was first recorded by Noel Guarany on the album Sem Fronteira in 1975. It is one of the greatest classics of gaucho music. -- 💡 𝑨𝒏𝒖𝒏𝒄𝒊𝒆 → [email protected] 🔔 Social Networks: ✓ Instagram → @linhacampeiraoficial ✓ Facebook → @linhacampeira​ 💡Linha Campeira Playlists ✓ Videos about Pilchas: http://bit.ly/3bYGnEP​ ✓ Videos Explaining the Lyrics: https://bit.ly/3s4rQNl ✓ Videos about Artists, Singers and Poets: https://bit.ly/3c1k7tR ♬ 𝘔𝘶́𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘴: ✓ Background Track: Photosynthesis by Ricardo Martins. -- It was first recorded by Noel Guarany on the album Sem Fronteira in 1975, and is the 4th song on side A. Later, Cenair Maicá also recorded it on the album Rio de minha infância in 1978, and on this LP it is the 3rd song on side B. It is believed that Barbosa Lessa wrote this song around the 50s and 60s, when he visited the region of Chapecó and Goiás. So he arrived on the Rio Grande do Sul side and crossed the Uruguay River by boat to the Santa Catarina band. It is worth remembering that the boat is the one pulled by a cable, which made this crossing. Many people call it a ferry, but culturally this is wrong, because ferries are the ones that raftsmen used. So Lessa wanted to go to the city of Chapecó to continue his journey, but he ended up getting stuck on the access mountain, which at the time was a dirt road. Then he had to spend about 3 days living with the people on the banks of the Uruguay River, listening to the stories of the raftsmen and learning about that noble craft. The song begins with the chorus and here it tells a lot about the essence of the raftsmen. They celebrate that the flood, that the floods, came because it was time to put the rafts on the river. That way, they were able to go down the Uruguay River from its highest point, in Chapecó, to the lowest point, in Uruguaiana. My wife always asked me how they were going to see wonders that no one else had discovered? That's because only the raftsmen had access to the beauties and also the dangers of the route, since they were the only ones who traveled the river in those conditions. So they would go back home and tell us about the wonders they saw and saw again on their trips. During the flood, it was necessary to wait for the river to rise before releasing the raft. Ideally, the river would be about three meters above normal level, which was called the 'raft point', because if the river was low, the logs would get tangled during the journey. You may have seen photos of the rafts, but you have no idea how big they were. These rafts were about 200 meters long and 15 meters wide. In front of the raft, about 100 meters away, there was a speedboat, or even more depending on the purchasing power of the owner of the timber. It was this speedboat that steered the raft in the right direction, to prevent it from hitting the banks or rocks. A raft carried about 250 logs and they were tied together with vines. It was common to paint or mark the property on the logs so that in case the raft broke apart, it would be easier to identify the owner of the cargo. The raft trips crossed the entire western border, going down the Uruguay River. This trip took about 12 days and the rafts never stopped for a minute. There was no stopping to rest. Everything was done on the rafts. Some of the wood that went on the rafts – cedar, angico, canjerana and also a lot of pine – went down the Uruguay. There was a time when some types of wood were prohibited from being sold, hence the term 'hardwood'. The lyrics say that the raftsmen were heading to Uruguaiana, arriving in São Borja and crossing the border for a night of chamamé in Santo Tome. There they would go to see the correntinas, who are the women from the Corrientes region. It is important to remember that the raftsmen only got paid when they delivered the cargo. Generally, when the raftsmen were not sold in São Borja, they would continue their journey downriver to Itaqui, Uruguaiana and Barra do Quaraí. Oh… as I said, the trip was direct, so on top of the rafts there was a little house, covered, with a place to sleep and also eat. The raftsmen even made fires on the rafts. It was a wooden box filled with earth and then the fire was on the earth. And there the buoy was made to provide support for the journey. The Salto Grande was the name given to the Salto Yacumã, which is located in the Turvo State Park, in Derrubadas. It is the largest longitudinal waterfall in the world, measuring 1,800 meters long. In its normal course, the river at this point has places with drops of almost 20 meters. But during times of flooding, the river would level off and the waterfall would practically disappear. Even so, this stretch was the most dangerous, because many rafts would break there when they were hit. That's why the song says that whoever escapes will arrive safely in Argentina, because from there the raft would get rocked and only stop further on. But they won't escape the gaze of the women of Correntina. That's because the job of raftsman was very dangerous and whoever did it was considered very brave.