BRAZIL

     

When people think of Brazilian music, they inevitably think of the Carnaval—the annual pre-Lenten festival held in Rio de Janeiro, with its noisy, joyous street parade of colourful floats and flamboyant dancers moving to the irrepressible rhythm of the samba. But Brazil’s contribution to the world’s music has been far greater than this single image might imply. The country’s enormous size, varied landscape, complex history, and extraordinary racial mixture have created an unparalleled musical wealth, much of which has yet to be discovered by the rest of the world.

The colonisation of Brazil began with the arrival of Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabrai in 1500. The colonists, the Indians, and the slaves who were later imported from central and western Africa produced a potent cultural cocktail. The cross-fertilisation of Jesuit church music, traditional Portuguese ballad forms, and intricate African rhythms, dances, and chants eventually gave birth to the Brazilian dances that are colonising the world today—the samba, the lambada, and the choro among them. Likewise, African instruments such as the agogo (double cowbell) and the cuica (a small friction drum that can sound like birdsong or monkey chatter) were joined by the European triangle and the tambourine, and these married particularly well with Portuguese instruments, such as the guitar, its smaller cousin the cavaquinho, the flute, and the clarinet.

Choro (which may have got its name from the Portuguese for “crying” or “sobbing”) is the oldest of the modern dance forms—an overlaying of the 19th-century European polkas and waltzes with a tropical Afro-Brazilian syncopation—and was in fact the original music of the Carnaval It was much more restrained than the samba that replaced it, with its spectacularly loud drums and shouted lyrics.

In the late 1950s, samba and associated song forms evolved toward a quieter, jazz-influenced form called bossa nova, which roughly translates as “new style.” Its chief creators, especially Carlos JOBIM, received attention outside their country because of their involvement with the soundtrack for the film Black Orpheus (1959), and through recordings of their songs by American jazz players such as saxophonist Stan GETZ, guitarist Charlie Byrd, and flautist Herbie Mann, as well as by the sublime Brazilian guitarist and singer João Gilberto and his vocalist wife, Astrud. “The Girl from Ipanema,” a sexy, lilting 1962 single written by Jobim and recorded by Getz and the Gilbertos, was a huge hit. It crossed over from Brazil to the U.S. and from jazz to rock stations, and set the tone in the clubs of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

In the state of Bahia, further to the north, the traditional music has always been closer to the rhythms and drumming sounds of Africa. Black consciousness groups, called “blocos afros” brought these forms to the attention of people throughout Brazil.

Brazil’s dry, poor, and mostly white northeastern region gave rise to a form of cantering, accordion-driven song known as foró, which was related to the older baião. Further to the northwest and closer to the equator, radio brought music from the Caribbean, giving rise to the reggae-influenced lambada.

Much regional material filtered into the national song festivals of the late 1960s and 1970s, often including implied musical protests against the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for 21 years. Some of the songwriters, including the now-famous Caetano VELOSO, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Milton Nascimento, also incorporated rock elements and electrical instrumentation, resulting in hybrids that were as mind-bending as some of the poetic lyrics. Collectively, this younger generation’s contribution, honouring samba while exploring different territory, became known as MPB (música popular brasileird).

Jeff Kaliss

SEE ALSO:

AFRICA; DANCE MUSIC; LATIN AMERICA; REGGAE.

FURTHER READING

Appleby, D. The Music of Brazil
(Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1989);

McGowan, C., and R. Pessanha. The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997).

SUGGESTED LISTENING

Forró: Brazil Classics 3: Music of the Brazilian Northeast; Tropicália 2
(featuring Caetano Veloso and Gilbert Gil);

Samba: Black Orpheus; Brazil Classics 2: O Samba.