What it is
A maracá is a rattle, most often made from a small metal can, historically a condensed milk tin, filled with small metal balls and fitted to a wooden handle, though gourd, coconut, and wood versions exist as well. Within the doctrine as Mestre Irineu is remembered to have shaped it, the maracá was intended to be part of the farda, with every fardado carrying one, though in practice materials and construction are not fully standardized across communities.
Tradition holds that the maracá was the first instrument Mestre Irineu received in the course of the Santo Daime's founding, and elders describe him teaching it slowly and patiently, working with participants one by one over a period of months until the dancing, singing, and playing came together as he intended.
Keeping time in the works
The maracá's function in a work is to keep time: it is struck with a downward motion on the beat and answered with an upward roll, marking the pulse that the singing and dancing follow. Santo Daime hymns fall mostly into three meters, march, waltz, and mazurka, each carrying its own characteristic pattern of strikes and rolls, and in waltzes and mazurkas in particular the maracá's pulse crosses against the meter of the sung melody rather than simply doubling it.
An instrument without a fixed rulebook
Players and communities differ on points of technique, from how firmly the maracá should be struck to whether it should sound at a particular pitch, and these differences have been a longstanding subject of discussion among daimistas. Some claims about the instrument, such as a required number of steel balls inside it, are treated within the tradition itself as folk belief rather than settled doctrine; those who have written on the subject note that Mestre Irineu left no fixed specification for the maracá beyond encouraging that instruments sound together, in unison, during a work.