The forró scene in New York City: context and evolution
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jul 23, 2022
- 10 min read
Updated: 22 hours ago
Maybe you just moved to the city. Maybe you are visiting and hoping to dance while you are here. Maybe you already live in New York but still feel like you have not quite found your place in the forró scene.
Or maybe this is all new to you. Maybe you are curious about forró, wondering what it is, how it feels, and where to begin.
Whatever brings you here, this article explores how the forró scene in New York City has developed and how it functions.
The most active forró scene in the US
New York has one of the most active forró scenes in North America.
It brings together a consistent network of weekly activities, dedicated educators, live bands, and musicians who keep the culture alive in the city.
At the same time, it is important to keep things in perspective. Compared to many scenes in Europe - and especially in Brazil - the New York scene is still relatively small, which is only natural given the different cultural contexts.
And yet, within that scale, it plays a unique role. For many people across the United States and beyond, New York becomes a kind of oasis: a place where it is actually possible to dance forró regularly, find community, and stay connected to the music.
There is no venue fully dedicated to forró events yet. Instead, the scene moves across different spaces in the city. Multiple producers and venues have hosted forró events over the years, and some of them have offered weekly gatherings at different moments in time.
Alongside these regular events, the city also hosts festivals throughout the year, often aligned with the seasons, bringing together dancers, teachers, and musicians from different places.
Important venues over the years
To understand the forró scene in New York, it is also important to look at the spaces that helped shape it over time.
Some of these venues are no longer active in the scene today, but they played a central role in building the community and creating regular spaces for music and dance.
Nublu - a nightclub on the Lower East Side of Manhattan - hosted weekly forró nights on Wednesdays for several years. Since the pandemic, those events are no longer active in a regular format. The venue still hosts occasional forró events, but not on a weekly basis.
Miss Favela was another key space for the scene, known for its Sunday parties with live music over many years. It became an important meeting point for dancers and musicians alike. Unfortunately, the venue closed its doors in 2025.
Active spaces in the forró scene in New York
Beija-Flor is a Brazilian restaurant and cultural space that hosts consistent weekly live music nights with dancing, and has become one of the main regular venues for forró in the city. The space features live music and social dance as part of its weekly programming, and has been an important meeting point for dancers and musicians in the local scene.
Within the current landscape of forró in New York, Beija-Flor maintains a stable weekly environment for live music and dance, helping sustain regular activity for dancers and musicians in the city.
Over time, we have also collaborated with Beija-Flor in different moments, including periods in which we held recurring weekly classes at the venue, as well as through its inclusion in the programming of the Forró New York Weekend across multiple editions.
Occasional Events
Beyond these regular parties, there are many other one-time forró events hosted by different producers and venues throughout the city. These become especially frequent in June, during the season of festas juninas (traditional Brazilian June celebrations).
OPA! Festa Junina, produced by Group Dot BR, is one example of this type of event. It has a long-standing tradition in the city and has become one of the most established Festa Junina celebrations currently taking place in NYC.
In the 2025 edition of the event, we (Forró New York) collaborated with the organizers by hosting a dedicated forró room as part of the program. This space also served as one of the workshop locations during that year’s Forró New York Weekend.
As part of this collaboration, we also held an open group class that welcomed around 100 participants. This became one of the largest forró classes we have hosted within Forró New York, focused on introducing the fundamentals of the dance (see photo below from the warm-up - the space was nearly full due to the high participation).
The Forró New York Weekend (Festival)
The Forró New York Weekend is a recurring 3-day festival in the city’s forró calendar, taking place a few times per year and organized by Forró New York.
It brings together a full weekend of forró activities, with a schedule that varies from edition to edition and usually includes 3 nights of social dances and 2 afternoons of workshops.
Across its editions, the festival has consistently brought together a large and active group of forró dancers from within and outside the local scene.
Many of the regular participants from the local scene take part, alongside dancers who travel from different cities and countries to attend.
Watch below a dance demonstration video recorded at the end of a workshop during the 2023 Autumn Edition of the Forró New York Weekend, with guest instructors Victinho and Pamela, offering a glimpse of the festival format and the instructors involved.
Watch a montage of testimonials from participants sharing their experience during the 2024 Winter Edition:
A Brief History of Forró Festivals in New York
A brief history of forró festivals in New York shows a variety of initiatives over time, with different formats, durations, and levels of continuity.
The NY Forró Fest, held in 2018 and 2019, represents one of the earlier structured attempts at establishing a recurring festival format in the city.
There have also been other isolated initiatives and smaller-scale festival-style events over the years, each contributing in different ways to the development of the local scene.
More recently, the Forró New York Weekend has maintained a recurring format with multiple editions per year, focusing on a consistent cycle of workshops and social dance events.
There is also a dedicated article - "New York City Hosts its First Forró Festival (2018)" - that explores the 2018 edition in more detail. I was directly involved in that edition, contributing as an educational coordinator and instructor.
Weekly Classes and Workshops
Weekly classes have historically played an important role in connecting dancers in the city.
Forró New York has maintained a weekly class program in NYC since 2017, remaining active through different phases of the city’s forró scene, including the pre and post-pandemic periods.
I invite you to watch a vlog recorded in early 2018, just before we were about to celebrate one year of activities. You can also read the archival blog about the beginnings of our weekly classes in Manhattan.
Over the years, this ongoing activity has welcomed hundreds of students into the scene and has included workshops with guest forró instructors such as Milena Morais, Victor Maia, Pamela Barrón, Camila Alves, Alice Rodrigues, Daniel Marinho, Juzinha (Pé Descalço), Lukas Walesch, Hana Mossavati, among others.
I lead most of the weekly classes in Manhattan within the Forró New York program, supported by a team of teaching assistants who help sustain the structure of the classes and create a welcoming environment.
Educational ecosystem in the city
Over time, people who have passed through Forró New York - especially those who worked as teaching assistants or participated regularly in classes - have also developed their own initiatives, alongside other independent paths within the scene.
During different periods, local teachers have also contributed to the development of weekly and occasional classes in the region, each playing a role in expanding access to forró. Sabrina Evangelista is one example, especially active before the pandemic (2017-2019). Marizete Browne, through the Sambazina project, also offered forró classes before the Forró New York initiative existed and is currently more active in samba, outside the forró circuit.
At the same time, new educators have continued to join the scene and contribute to creating entry points for new dancers, including Davi, Dora, Graam, Thassyo, and James in New Jersey.
Today, the scene is in one of its most active periods, with multiple educators contributing to regular opportunities for learning and practice contributing to a more diverse and distributed forró ecosystem in the region.
Other organizers and producers in the city
There are several organizers contributing to the forró activity across NYC, each playing a role in the ongoing activity across different parts of the city.
Davi and Dora lead Forró Brooklyn, a forró dance school offering regular weekly classes since 2025. They also produce events with live music and maintain an event calendar on Instagram, Forró in NYC, sharing information about forró activities in the city.
In recent years, a group of local community members created Forró Lab Coletivo, a practice initiative that has developed a set of ongoing activities within the scene. As of this writing, Forró Lab Coletivo hosts biweekly parties called Forró do Povo, occasional workshops with guest instructors, and has also introduced a Forró Marathon initiative.
These are just two examples of initiatives with sustained activity over time in the city. There are also other smaller-scale or more recent efforts that appear intermittently or are still in earlier stages of development, each contributing in different ways to the broader ecosystem.
The forró music scene in New York
New York’s music scene is, by nature, one of the richest and most diverse in the world, and within this environment there is no shortage of highly skilled musicians. Forró, however, occupies a particular place within this landscape, as it is a genre with its own language, requiring familiarity with its rhythmic, stylistic, and cultural codes, as well as a very specific instrumentation - traditionally centered around the accordion, the zabumba, and the triangle.
Even within these specificities, the forró scene in the city is diverse and dynamic. There is a consistent presence of live performances, often integrated into weekly events, which helps sustain an active and ongoing musical practice and reinforces the connection between musicians, dancers, and the broader community.
The profile of the musicians is varied. There are professionals whose primary activity is music, performing across different contexts and styles, within which forró appears as part of a broader agenda - sometimes as a regular engagement, sometimes as part of specific projects. Alongside them, there are also dedicated amateur musicians, who maintain a deep connection with musical practice, even if it is not their main source of income, and who participate in the scene out of affinity, interest, and cultural engagement.
This diversity is also reflected in the backgrounds of the musicians. There are Brazilians who arrive in the city already fluent in this musical language, as well as musicians from a wide range of nationalities who, in different ways, develop an interest in forró. Some come into contact with it through dance, others through music itself, and many through broader cultural exposure. From there, musicians who are already active in their own instruments often deepen their involvement, studying the language and becoming part of projects within the scene, contributing to a plural environment shaped by different trajectories, levels of experience, and forms of engagement.
Over the years, there have been moments with more stable formations, including bands with greater continuity. However, a recurring characteristic of the city is flexibility in how groups are formed, and it is common for ensembles to take on different configurations, with rotating musicians depending on the event and each person’s availability. This model encourages constant circulation and creates a wide range of musical encounters within the scene.
Many relevant projects and initiatives could be mentioned, but in order to preserve a broader perspective and avoid omissions that might create discomfort, the choice here is to present a general overview, focusing on the characteristics and dynamics that shape the forró music scene in New York.
A case study: Forró Sem Palavras
One example that reflects this diversity and flexibility within the scene is the project Forró Sem Palavras.
Developed as an occasional project rather than a fixed group, it typically appears in selected contexts, such as larger events and festivals in the city. Its format brings together musicians from different backgrounds to explore original music rooted in forró, while incorporating elements from jazz, classical music, and broader Brazilian traditions.
The project reflects a dynamic often found in New York, where musicians with distinct artistic paths collaborate in specific contexts, creating work that does not necessarily fit into a single category. In this sense, it is less about establishing a stable ensemble and more about creating a space for musical dialogue shaped by the city’s diversity.
For a more detailed overview of the project, a separate article is available on this website.
An adjacent scene: New Jersey
It is impossible to talk about the forró scene in New York without acknowledging its close relationship with New Jersey.
The geographic proximity, combined with the daily flow of people between the two states, naturally creates a strong exchange between communities. Dancers, teachers, and musicians often move between New York and New Jersey, contributing to a shared and evolving scene.
In New Jersey, especially in cities like Newark, there is a large Brazilian community. Even so, forró as an active and consistent scene is still in its early stages.
Over the years, there have been different initiatives. Some individuals have offered classes, and more recently, there have been efforts to establish regular weekly lessons.
At different moments, Brazilian restaurants have also hosted forró nights, sometimes including live music. However, these initiatives have not yet reached the same level of consistency found in New York.
Still, the presence of a growing community and ongoing efforts points to something meaningful. There is clear potential in New Jersey, and the connection between both sides continues to strengthen the scene as a whole.
Collaboration between New York and New Jersey is not only natural, but essential for the continued growth of forró in the region.
Scope and perspective
This article is intended as a general guide to the forró scene in New York and its development over time. It is not meant to function as a continuously updated calendar of events. For that reason, activities are not described with time-sensitive details that may quickly become outdated. It also avoids including external links or embedded tags from third-party producers, in order to preserve the long-term reliability of the information presented.
The perspective reflected here is largely based on the period from 2017 to the present, corresponding to the development of the Forró New York project and my own experience living and working within the scene during that time. At the same time, forró activity in the city existed before this period, including bands, musicians, events, and educational initiatives that helped shape what exists today.
During the writing process, members of the community and organizers from different initiatives were invited to read and share feedback, and several adjustments were made based on those exchanges. Even so, this text does not aim to be exhaustive, and other perspectives or relevant details may not be fully represented.
The goal of this article is to offer a structured starting point for those looking to understand the forró scene in New York, while recognizing that it is part of a broader and evolving ecosystem.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is the Founder and Educational Director of Forró New York, as well as a Latin Grammy-nominated composer, arranger, and music director.
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