Bahians (even men) sing when they talk

Bahians sing their words, even the men.  I’ve heard that said about Italians, and it sort of gives you the gist of what the Italian voice sounds like, but here they really do sing, not just talk in a musical way.  It may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not.  It may even sound a bit effeminate on the part of the men, especially in the context of a machismo culture, and to us it definitely is.  But there are a lot of apparent contradictions regarding the machismo and what is and is not considered manly.

The difference between an English speaker like me and a Bahian (as distinguished from a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who doesn’t necessarily sing Portuguese) is that the allowed tonal range of the Bahian is much larger than the American’s.  When I speak (and I never noticed this until now) I keep the tonal or range of pitch pretty steady, meaning it doesn’t detract often from a certain pitch which people call my “voice”.  I may change the volume up or down depending on my mood – quiet for sad or tired and loud for laughing or yelling – but the pitch stays pretty even.  

Not so with Bahians.  I’ve noticed that when they get angry (I’m thinking of men here) or start making jokes, their voices get almost as high as if they were imitating the way a woman talked.  Not shrill, because that brings to mind a dissonant quality, and because it’s not necessarily unpleasant to hear, but it’s definitely high, much higher than any American or most European men would allow their voices to go.