As is the way with this kind of stuff, I was trying to think of the name of ... Dorival Caymmi to seed my newest Last.fm exploration.  Except I couldn't remember his name, and in the search for traditional nordeste music, I came across this New York Times article (from 2007) of a massive release of traditional Brazilian music recordings made in the 30s called Musica Tradicional do Norte e Nordeste 1938.  (The organiztion that put this CD series out has a nice site too - but neither actually point you to any place ot buy the damn things...)

I've heard a lot of this music because I have the two (out of print) albums from the Rykodisc / US Library of Congress that cherry-picked this collection.  And man, this collection is a deep, amazing collection.  It took me a while to get into - in fact had I not loaded up my iPod with these CDs, I probably would never have given them the attention they deserve.  It's tough in our day and age to listen to recordings that are not perfect - but after over a year of having these tunes on rotation in my iPod (and to be honest, skipping them a lot on shuffle), I admit there is treausre here.  There are tunes I sing along to, tunes that get my groove on, tunes that I listen to to expand my understanding of the roots of samba.

It looks like it's about $170 at Amazon, but it's a trunkload of music.  The NY Times article (linked above) will give you a hint of what to expect.

Also, another Library of Congress album that was deep in the same vein was the The Spirit Cries.  There is a tune on there (Aleke, I think) that was a staple of my DJ Billinglsely's World of Peace college radio show - an awesome, syncopated drum and chant tune that rocks.  (If you 're in the US, you might want to try this link for song previews).

There's another album from that Rykodisc collection I've had my eye on (Orishas Across the Ocean), but it's also out of print.  It's nice to see that the value of these CDs is going up ($25 at Amazon) instead of ending up in the discount bin.