Beirut/Caetano Veloso – O Leaozinho (Chords)

I would have put have put good money on Beirut cropping up on the new Tribute to Caetano Veloso album alongside Beck, Devendra Banhart and Seu Jorge.

But we still have their cavaquinho cover of Veloso’s O Leãozinho. I based the chords on the Beirut version but the original is pretty much identical.

The cavaquinho is tuned DGBD (higher than the ukulele). So to put it in the same range I’ve written the chords for use with a capo at the 7th fret.

Without a Capo

It gets fiddly playing the chords with a capo at the 7th fret. So here are the open chords if you don’t want the faff.

Suggested Strumming

For a simple strum you can use this twice for each chord:

d – d u – u

The only place that doesn’t work is with the F – Fmaj7 change. If you want to keep things simple you can just play the pattern once for each of those. Or you can do something similar to the way Beirut play it:

Which sounds like this (slow then up to speed):

Strum

Buy the Caetano Veloso version.
Buy the Beirut version.

Loads more Beirut tabs and chords.