Music of Brazil
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Strong influences on the music of Brazil come from many parts of the world, but there are very popular regional music styles influenced by African and European forms. After 500 years of history the Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles like choro, sertanejo, brega, forró, frevo, samba, Bossa nova, MPB, Brazilian rock, axé and others. Samba is no doubt the best known form of Brazilian music worldwide, though Bossa nova and other genres have also received much attention abroad. Brazil also has a growing community of modern/experimental composition, including electroacoustic music. All genres of Brazilian music formed a solid tradition.
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[edit] Brazilian music history
[edit] Colonial music
The earliest known descriptions of music in Brazil date from 1578, when a French pastor, described the dances and transcribed the music of the Tupi people. In 1587, Gabriel Soares de Sousa wrote about the music of several native Brazilian ethnic groups.
Lundu was the first kind of African-influenced music to flourish in Brazil. Lundu, a style of comedic song and dance, was extremely popular.
[edit] Independent Brazil
Brazil became independent from Portugal in 1822, following the Brazilian War of Independence. Soon after, the African comic form 'lundu' spread from the poor black quarters to a broader, white middle-class audience.
Towards the end of the 18th century a form of comedic dance called bumba-meu-boi became very popular. It was a musical retelling of the story of a resurrected ox. These dances are led by a chamador, who introduces the various characters. Instruments used include the pandeiro, the tamborim, the accordion and the acoustic guitar.
[edit] Classical music
During the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, the classical music in Brazil was strongly influenced by the music style practiced in Europe, particularly the Viennese classical style. The first major Brazilian composer was José Maurício Nunes Garcia, a priest who composed several sacred pieces and some secular music. He wrote the opera Le Due Gemelle ("The two twins"), the first opera written in Brazil, but the music is nowadays lost. About 250 works written by him are known in the present days. Elias Álvares Lobo composed the first Brazilian opera with a libretto in Portuguese: "A Noite de São João" (Saint John's Party Night).
Near the end of the 19th century, Carlos Gomes went to Milan and produced a number of Italian-style operas, such as Il Guarany (based on a novel by José de Alencar). Brasílio Itiberê was another prominent classical composer, the first to use elements of Brazilian music in Western classical music, in his Sertaneja (1869).
In 1922, the Week of Modern Art revolutionized Brazilian literature, painting and music. Heitor Villa-Lobos led a new vanguard of composers who used Brazilian folk music in their compositions.
By the end of the 1930s, there were two schools of Brazilian composition. Camargo Guarnieri was the head of the Nationalist school, inspired by the writer Mário de Andrade. Other composers including Guerra Peixe, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez, Francisco Mignone, Luciano Gallet and Radamés Gnattali. Beginning in 1939, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, creator of the Live Music Group, founded another school, characterized by the use of dodecaphonism and atonalism. Other composers in this school included Edino Krieger, Cláudio Santoro and Eunice Catunda.
[edit] Folk music
The earliest music in what is now Brazil must have been that of the native peoples of the area. Little is known about their music, since no written records exist of this era. With the arrival of Europeans, Brazilian culture began to take shape as a synthesis of native musical styles with Portuguese music and African music.
[edit] Indigenous music
The native peoples of the Brazilian rainforest play instruments including whistles, flutes, horns, drums and rattles. Much of the area's folk music imitates the sound of the Amazon Rainforest. When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, the first natives they met played an array of reed flutes and other wind and percussion instruments. The Jesuit missionaries introduced songs which used the Tupi language with Christian lyrics, an attempt to convert the people to Christianity [1], and also introduced Gregorian chant and the flute, bow, and the clavichord.
[edit] Eastern Amazônia
Main articles: carimbó and lambada
Eastern Amazônia has long been dominated by carimbó music, which is centered around Belém. In the 1960s, carimbo was electrified and, in the next decade, DJs added elements from reggae, salsa and merengue. This new form became known as lambada and soon moved to Bahia, Salvador by the mid-1980s. Bahian lambada was synthesizer-based and light pop music. French record producers discovered the music there, and brought it back with them to France passing by Portugal, where a Bolivian group called Los K'jarkas saw their own composition launch an international dance craze. Soon, lambada had spread throughout the world and the term soon became meaninglessly attached to multiple varieties of unrelated Brazilian music, leading to purist scorn from Belém and also Bahia.
Another form of regional folk music, bumba-meu-boi, was popularized by the Carnival celebrations of Parintins and is now a major part of the Brazilian national scene.
[edit] Popular music
The field of Brazilian popular music can be traced back to the 1930s, when radio era spread songs across the country. This period also marks the beginning of a substantial predominance of women: from the divas of this radio era until our days, women sharply prevail as solo vocalists. By 2006, more than 100 discs of female interpreters were thrown. In the same period, there were only 34 from male interpreters [1]. Well-known radio era artists include chanteuses Nora Ney, Dolores Duran, Maysa Matarazzo, Ângela Maria. Along with Carmen Miranda, Chiquinha Gonzaga, they were the pioneers of this feminine profile of the Brazilian Music that remains until present days.
Popular music included instruments like cuicas, tambourines, frying pans, flutes, guitars and the piano. The most famous singer, Carmen Miranda, eventually became an internationally-renowned Hollywood film star. Her songwriter was Ary Barroso, one of the most successful songwriters in early Brazil, along with Lamartine Babo and Noel Rosa.
[edit] Choro
Choro (literally "cry" in Portuguese, but in context a more appropriate translation would be "lament"), traditionally called chorinho ("little cry" or "little lament"). Its origins are in 19th century Rio de Janeiro. Originally choro was played by a trio of flute, guitar and cavaquinho (a small chordophone with four strings). The young pianist Ernesto Nazareth published his first choro (Não Caio Noutra) in 1878 at the age of 14. [2] Nazareth's choros are often listed as polkas;[3] he also composed waltzes, schottisches, milongas and Brazilian Tangos. (He resisted the popular term maxixe to represent Brazilian tango.)[4] Much of the success of the choro style of music came from the early days of radio, when bands performed live on the air. By the 1960s, it had all but disappeared, being displaced by Bossa Nova and other styles of Brazilian popular music. However, in the late 1970s there was a successful effort to revitalize the genre carried out by some famous artists: Pixinguinha and Waldir Azevedo.
[edit] Música popular Brasileira
Tropicalia eventually morphed into a more popular form, MPB (música popular Brasileira), which now refers to any Brazilian pop music. Well-known MPB artists include chanteuses Gal Costa, Maria Bethânia, Rita Lee, Simone and Elis Regina and singer/songwriters Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Ivan Lins, Djavan, João Bosco, Aderbal Duarte, and others.
[edit] Bossa nova
Antonio Carlos Jobim and other 1950s composers helped develop a fusion of jazz harmonies and a smoother, often slower, samba beat called bossa nova, which developed at the beach neighborhoods of Ipanema and, later, the Copacabana nightclubs. The first bossa nova records by João Gilberto quickly became huge hits in Brazil. Bossa nova was introduced to the rest of the world by American jazz musicians in the early 1960s, and songs like "The Girl from Ipanema", which remains the biggest Brazilian international hit, eventually became jazz standards.
[edit] Música nordestina
Música nordestina is a generic term for any popular music from the large region of Northeastern Brazil, including both coastal and inland areas. Rhythms are slow and plodding, and are derived from accordions and guitars instead of percussion instruments like in the rest of Brazil - In this region, African rhythms and Portuguese melodies combined to form maracatu and dance music called baião has become popular. Most influentially, however, the area around the state of Pernambuco, the home of forró.
[edit] Música gaúcha
The música gaúcha is term used for any genres of music originally from the Rio Grande do Sul state. these genres are originefd from argentinian and uruguayan styles of music combined with Portuguese melodies and any types of aboriginal rhythms. The most famous musicians of this style are Renato Borghetti, Yamandú Costa, Jayme Caetano Braun and Luiz Marenco.
[edit] Repentismo
Northeastern Brazil is known for a distinctive form of literature called literatura de cordel, which are a type of ballads that include elements incorporated into music as repentismo, an improvised lyrical contest on themes suggested by the audience.
[edit] Frevo
Frevo is a style of music from Olinda and Recife. Frevo bands began playing during the Carnival, the most popular event of Brazil.
[edit] Forró
Forró is played by a trio consisting of a drum and a triangle and led by an accordion. Forró is rapid and eminently danceable, and became one of the foundations for lambada in the 1980s. Luiz Gonzaga was the preeminent early forró musician who popularized the genre in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the 1940s with songs like "Asa Branca".
[edit] Funk Carioca
Funk Carioca is a type of dance music from Rio de Janeiro, derived from and superficially similar to Miami Bass. In Rio it is most often simply known as Funk, although it is very different musically from what Funk means in most other places and contexts. It's usually seen as party music and high and medium class people are usually reluctant to admit they listen to it, since music from this genre usually contains sexually explicit lyrics and is attributed to poor people derived from the Favela.
[edit] Rock
The Brazilian rock n' roll exists since the "first rock song", "Rock Around the Clock", was covered (and also recorded in Portuguese), in 1954. The 1960's, young singers like Roberto Carlos and his Jovem Guarda were very popular. In the 1970's, there were many Progressive Rock bands in Brazil, such as O Terço and Bacamarte, which were very well-known in Europe and the US by progressive fans. Other bands of the period were more pop-influenced and tended for psychedelic rock'n'roll (Os Mutantes) or mixed the genre with traditional Brazilian music (Raul Seixas, Secos e Molhados). The real "boom" of Brazilian rock was in the 1980s, with many bands and artists like Barão Vermelho, Legião Urbana, Engenheiros do Hawaii, Ira!, Titãs, Lulu Santos, Kid Abelha, Paralamas do Sucesso and festivals like Rock in Rio and Hollywood Rock. From the 90s names like Mamonas Assassinas and Chico Science & Nação Zumbi are proeminent. See also Los Hermanos.
[edit] Brazilian Heavy Metal
The most famous Brazilian heavy metal bands are Sepultura, Angra, Krisiun, Dr. Sin and Shaaman. Nowadays Sepultura is considered one of the best metal bands all over the world and a big influence for many other bands from different countries. Other famous bands include Torture Squad, Eyes of Shiva, Tuatha de Danann, Andralls, Claustrofobia, Korzus, Sarcófago, Dorsal Atântica,etc.
[edit] Sertanejo
Música sertaneja or Sertenejo is a term for Brazilian country music. It originally referred to music from originating among Sertão and musica caipira(Caípira music appeared in the state of São Paulo and the regions of Minas Gerais, Paraná and Goiás. Musical rhythm very spread out in the Southeastern and south region of Brazil), but has since gained more influences from outside Brazil. In particular American country music, Mexican mariachi, and the Music of Paraguay. For several years it was a category at the Latin Grammy Awards.
[edit] Afro Brazilian music
[edit] Samba
By the beginning of the 20th century, samba had begun to evolve out of choro in Rio de Janeiro's neighborhood, inhabited mostly by poor blacks descended from slaves. Samba's popularity has grown through the 20th century, especially internationally, as awareness of samba de enredo (a type of samba played during Carnival) has grown. Other types of samba include:
- Samba de breque - reggaeish and choppy
- Samba-canção - typical variety of nightclubs.
- Samba pagode - modern popular variety.
[edit] Capoeira music
The Afro-Brazilian sport of capoeira is never played without its own music, which is usually considered to be a call-and-response type of folk music. The main instruments of capoeira music include the berimbau, the atabaque and the pandeiro. Capoeira songs may be improvised on the spot, or they may be popular songs written by older mestres (teachers), and often include accounts of the history of capoeira, or the doings of great mestres.
[edit] Maracatu
This type of music is played primarily in the Recife and Olinda regions during Carnaval. It is an Afro-Brazilian tradition. The music serves as the backdrop for parade groups that evolved out of ceremonies conducted during colonial times in honour of the Kings of Congo, who were African slaves occupying symbolic leadership positions among the slave population. The music is played on large alfaia drums, large metal gonguê bells, snare drums and shakers.
[edit] Afoxé
Afoxê is a kind of religious music, part of the Candomblé tradition. In 1949, a group called Filhos de Gandhi began playing afoxé during Carnaval parades in Salvador; their name translates as Sons of Gandhi, associating black Brazilian activism with Mahatma Gandhi's Indian independence movement. The Filhos de Gandhi's 1949 appearance was also revolutionary because, up until then, the Carnaval parades in Salvador were meant only for light-skinned people.
[edit] Samba-reggae
The band Olodum, from Pelourinho, are generally credited with the mid-1980s invention of samba-reggae, a fusion of Jamaican reggae with samba. Olodum retained the politically-charged lyrics of bands like Ilê Aiyê.
[edit] Music of Salvador: Late 60s to mid-70s
In the latter part of the 1960s, a group of black Bahians began dressing as Native Americans during the Salvadoran Carnaval, identifying with their shared struggles through history. These groups included Comanches do Pelô and Apaches de Tororó and were known for a forceful and powerful style of percussion, and frequent violent encounters with the police. Starting in 1974, a group of black Bahians called Ilê Aiyê became prominent, identifying with the Yoruba people and Igbo people of West Africa. Along with a policy of loosening restrictions by the Brazilian government, Ilê Aiyê's sound and message spread to groups like Grupo Cultural do Olodum, who established community centers and other philanthropic efforts.
[edit] Other Afro-Brazilian music genres
Afro-Brazilian music also include:
[edit] External links
- Musica Brasiliensis Articles on many aspects of Brazilian music.
- Street Performance Video from Brazil CompulsiveTraveler.tv
- Bahia Street Music Video CompulsiveTraveler.tv
- Capoeira Video CompulsiveTraveler.tv
- [2] Brief introduction to Brazilian electroacoustic music.
- [3]Sertanejo music
- Music in Bahia, Brazil
- Brazilian Music BrazilianMusicTV.com is a resource of free Brazil music videos.
- RadioFavela >>> The Sound of Rio a blog on music and its influence in the megacity of Rio de Janeiro.
- Documentary about Electronic music in Brazil at Jaman
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[edit] Notes
- ^ A nação das cantoras
- ^ http://www.bn.br/fbn/musica/enzinfa.htm
- ^ http://www.chiquinhagonzaga.com/nazareth/
- ^ http://www.bn.br/fbn/musica/enzpolca.htm
[edit] Further reading
- Castro, Ruy. "Bossa Nova: The Story Of The Brazilian Music That Seduced The World." 2000. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 1-55652-409-9
- McGowan, Chris and Pessanha, Ricardo. "The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova and the Popular Music of Brazil." 1998. 2nd edition. Temple University Press. ISBN 1-56639-545-3
- Neves, José Maria. Música Contemporânea Brasileira. São Paulo: Ricordi Brasileira, 1981.
- Veloso, Caetano "Tropical Truth: A Story Of Music & Revolution In Brazil." 1997, 2002. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40788-X
