With its multitude of different cultural roots, Brazilian music encompasses an enormous variety of rhythms, with its different genres originating in a musical admixture of Indigenous, European, and African cultures. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the various music genres from the different eras all deal with the harsh reality of slavery and violence against Indigenous peoples. Diverse beliefs, rituals, and work activities are entangled with the different ways in which people celebrate. Music forms the counterpoint to all these tribulations, in addition to providing a means to overcome the threshold between the individual and collective experience, between affects and emotions, uprisings and new times. In 1916, Donga released the first samba song ever recorded in Brazil, Pelo telefone (Over the telephone), at the same time as composers Heitor Villa-Lobos and Pixinguinha were developing the choro genre of music further.

In the late 1910s and early 1920s, modernist Brazilian musicians and composers experimented with the historical repertoire and broke new musical ground. Genres such as choro, samba, coco, baião, and marchinha helped foster a sense of collectivity at parades and large parties like carnival. The popular Brazilian saying that translates as, “those who sing put their sorrows away” embodies the potential to embrace dancing and singing as a celebration of life, in spite of the difficulties one might be facing.

New ways of playing music and singing never ceased to flourish: in the late 1950s, for example, bossa nova ushered in a quiet revolution and became a worldwide musical hit. It evokes a particularly utopian era in Brazil’s history – one marked by the founding of the new federal capital, Brasília, which was designed by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.

And even in the darkest times, like under the military dictatorship of 1964–1985, Brazilians never stopped singing. With a plethora of new genres such as jovem guarda, tropicália, as well as protest and popular styles such as forró and carimbó, many artists expressed new sorrows, hopes, and joys. We kindly invite you to come sing and dance with us.

Echoes of the Colonial World: Lundu and Modinha

The musical forms of Brazil in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries registered deep marks left by the colonial experience. In the 19th century, some of these musical forms grew into genres such as lundu, which is more associated with the cultural realm of the African diaspora, and modinha, a lyric and romantic song form common in both Portugal and the Brazilian colonies.

The Origins of Urban Popular Music: Polka, Choro, and Maxixe

The polka, a type of salon dance from Central Europe, spread through the entire world in the 19th century, even being documented in Macau and Cuba. It was in fact the first modern case of music as urban entertainment in the nascent capitalist world. Beginning in 1870, the polka took on its own local flavour in Brazil, particularly by coming into contact with the cultures of the African diaspora, and became one of the foundations of urban popular music in the form of genres such as the maxixe and choro.

Between Modernism and Nationalism: Heitor Villa-Lobos and Mário de Andrade

In 1928, Mário de Andrade published Ensaio sobre a música brasileira (Essay on Brazilian Music) and laid in the role of an ethnographer the foundations for a programme for national composers, based on rural musical themes collected during his travels into the country’s interior. According to his plan, pieces were to be written using themes from Brazilian “folklore,” while also drawing technically on European concert music. This, he proposed, was the only way to achieve the “emancipation” of national music.

Meanwhile, Villa-Lobos appeared on the scene at the beginning of the 20th century, a unique composer searching for a national voice for Brazilian music. In a certain sense, the composer’s immense oeuvre realised Mário de Andrade’s project, but not in the prescriptive way he had had imagined.

My Brazilian Brazil: Samba

Beginning in 1920, urban popular music became more central in Brazil, a country with low literacy levels and deeply marked by the legacy of slavery. This music took on a cultural agency that was amplified by records and radio. Alongside the music, popular festivals developed into a full-fledged cultural form with carnival. Genres such as marcha and samba became so important in the 1930s and 1940s that the Brazilian state used this popular music as a political symbol of Brazilianness. The musical culture of samba has its origins in the urban and rural experiences of Black people, and is present in different forms throughout the country.

Northern Nights: Xote, Xaxado, and Baião

The country’s northern and north-eastern regions have always been a kind of storehouse of deep musical culture in Brazil. They bear the legacy of the country’s past of colonialism and slavery, while at the same time maintaining an original, local, and contemporary liveliness. Yet the commercial success of any given musical form has always necessitated its migration to the south-east, where the government is located and the entertainment industries are concentrated. In the 1950s, the baião genre, and its variants xote and xaxado, found “national” renown with the enormously successful works of Luiz Gonzaga, which influenced generations of artists.

The Promise of Happiness: Bossa Nova and the Internationalisation of Brazil

In the 1950s, Brazil underwent a period of industrialisation and relative prosperity under the government of President Juscelino Kubistchek. In Rio de Janeiro, young musicians and composers such as Tom Jobim and João Gilberto recreated the traditional samba of the preceding decades from a new rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic perspective. The cultured literature of the period moved closer to popular song with poet and diplomat Vinícius de Moraes’s migration from poetry to music. Once again, popular music became culturally central, but now with a sophisticated relationship between lyrics and music created by educated people from the country’s elite. It was in this context that bossa nova was developed and was internationalising Brazil through its modern and original perspective.

Entranced Song: Tropicália and Protest Songs

In the 1960s, Brazil again came to be ruled by a civil-military dictatorship that would last around 20 years. Despite the repression of progressive ideas and persecution of artists, there was a major cultural effervescence in the country that reflected the experiences of the youth culture of the time. Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé, and others created tropicália, a rich and complex cultural and musical movement which called into question the Brazilian experience of the preceding decades and projected new futures. A wave of protest songs against the dictatorship appeared within the student movements. Figures such as Maria Bethânia, Chico Buarque, and Jorge Ben Jor created music that drew on all aspects of the scene. It was undoubtedly a period of significant originality for popular and commercial music in Brazil.

Choro, also called chorinho, is a popular music style that emerged at the end of the 19th century. In choro, composer Pixinguinha merged European ballroom dances such as the polka and the waltz with African rhythms. Heitor Villa-Lobos composed his first choro in 1921 with the goal of achieving a synthesis of the stylistic forms and elements of Brazilian music.

Baião is a popular music style from Brazil’s North-east region that emerged in the early 20th century and was made popular in the 1940s by musicians like Luiz Gonzaga. The style is characterised by its distinctive syncopated rhythms and quick tempos. Typical instruments in baião are the accordion, the zabumba (drum), and the triangle. Baião lyrics often deal with the topics of rural life, nature, love, and social issues.

Forró is a popular music and dance style from Brazil’s Northeast that is closely tied to rural life and to the region’s cultural traditions. Like choro, it mixes European dance music with African rhythms. Forró has a distinctive syncopated rhythm, often produced by a combination of the zabumba (drum), triangle, and accordion. People dance to forró music in pairs, in a tight closed position with quick foot movements.

Donga released the first samba song, Pelo telefone (Over the telephone), in 1917. Samba evolved out of dance rituals like roda de samba and batuque de Angola. These were performed by formerly enslaved people in the neighbourhood around the plaza Praça Onze in Rio de Janeiro, which the painter and musician Heitor dos Prazeres referred to as “Pequenas Áfricas” (Little Africa). Candomblé, a religion combining various West African and Christian rituals, was the birthplace of samba. Since Afro-Brazilian traditions were often suppressed by the police, they were performed in terreiros (private houses with courtyards). Tia Ciata, who hosted samba gatherings, and the musicians Sinhô, Pixinguinha, Donga, and João da Baiana were all impor - tant figures in the development of samba.

The first competition between samba schools took place in 1932. It was marked by a parade in Rio de Janeiro, at which the Valença brothers and Lamartine Babo established a new musical genre with their carnival march O teu cabelo não nega (Your hair doesn’t deny it). The marchinha, the diminutive form of “march,” satirises the solemnity of military marches.

With the two songs Chega de Saudade and Bim Bom, João Gilberto brought the musical genre of bossa nova (the “new wave”) to the non-Brazilian world in 1958. Bossa nova’s elegant rhythms, combined with its tender melodies and lush harmonies, influenced jazz and other musical genres around the world.

Tropicália, also known as tropicalismo, is the term that came to refer to a modern Brazilian artistic movement characterised by the synthesis of Brazilian genres and international avant-garde styles. This movement gained renown particularly in and through music. It was a targeted response to the military dictatorship and the new, repressive constitution it enacted in 1967.