By Shirley Vieira
Brazilians are descendants of a mixture of races, beginning with the Portuguese, the native Indians and African slaves with the majority of the those slaves coming from Yoruba and Quimbundu tribes habitants of Nigeria, Benin and Angola and the French and the Hollandaise which established themselves most in the northeast area of Brazil. In the 20th century, masses of immigrants from Germany, Italy, Poland and Japan, and many others in smaller proportions added new elements in this mixture making the Brazilian people one of the most mixed race in the world.
Samba
As Brazilian most popular music style, the origins of samba can be found in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, It begun in the houses of "aunts" from Bahia who migrated and settled in downtown Rio, descendants of lundu, it begun in their religious ceremonies and capoeira meetings, under tambourine and clap beats. The area where they lived was known as "Little Africa". Although previous recordings have been registered as samba, the song "Pelo Telefone", recorded in 1917, is credited as being the style’s milestone.
Urban concentration areas fomented the appearance of popular nightclubs, called gafieiras, which produced their own style of samba- the samba-choro or gafieira samba, in the 30s, the samba de breque came around – with pauses (Breaks) in the song filled in with rap-like speeches –, helping crystallize the gangster persona ( O Malandro) created by Moreira da Silva, as well as the sub-genre samba-canção, or samba-tune. In São Paulo and other cities the samba also received their regions own caracters
After the second world war, the influence of the American jazz was felted on the new style of samba: the bossa nova, richer harmonies and slow and soft tempo, conceived by João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, Johnny Alf, João Donato, Luís Bonfá and Garoto, just to say a few was embraced by greats like Charlie byrd, Stan Getz and Herbie Mann to become the most world recognized Brazilian style.
Drifted away from the spotlight during the festival era (the 60s), samba would have its revenge in the late 60s, with Martinho Da Vila that besides popularizing the sub-genre partido-alto, the guy from Rio also did it to the samba-enredo, the samba made to represent a Escola de samba in the carnaval parade, magnifying its commercial potential. In the early 70s, this new revitalization produced three big seller divas, Alcione, Beth Carvalho and Clara Nunes, as well as singer Roberto Ribeiro and songwriters João Nogueira, Nei Lopes and Wilson Moreira. Heir to Gilberto Gil, Baden Powell and Dorival Caymmi’s guitar styles, João Bosco and poet Aldir Blanc innovated the traditional samba – Aldir kept writing through the 90s with composers Guinga and Moacyr Luz and by the late 70s, Beth Carvalho have become the regular at samba meetings, where she would discover the (then) new samba trend, pagode, explored in her 1978 album De Pé no Chão
Frevo
The name comes from boiling, agitation, confusion, shaking, small spaces in big popular events, coming and going in opposite direction. It was first called frevo on 1908 and originated in Recife.
A characteristic of the frevo dance is to have a small size umbrella (sombrinha) in the dancer's hand, It gives to the dancer the equilibrium needed to make the acrobatic steps, however it is important to mention that the Capoeristas (Brazilian Martial Artist) were not allowed to practice their craft so they used the umbrella as a way to mask their practice as a dance which later became part of the frevo.
Axé Music
This is not exactly a style or musical movement, but rather a useful name given to this new wave from Salvador (Bahia) and part of the northeast area, it is a mix of Caribbean and African rhythms with a pop-rock twist, that took over the Brazilian hit parades since 1992. Axé is a ritual greeting used in Candomblé and Umbanda (African-Brazilian religions), and means "good vibration". A journalist who intended to create a derogatory term for the pretentious dance-driven style helped to put Axe in the world music business.
The origins
of Axé can be found in the 50s, when Dodô and Osmar started playing the frevo
from Pernambuco using rustic electric guitars (guitarra baiana = guitar from
Bahia) on top of a 1929 Ford. That was the prototype of a trio elétrico.
It was only in the 70s, though, that someone (Novos Baianos vocalist Moraes
Moreira) had the idea to go up the Trio and sing with the band – it was the
debut of Axé.
Along with the Trio movements, Afro-Brazilian blocos (block) (a gathering of
percussionists that parade during Carnival) blossomed: Filhos de Gandhi, Badauê,
Ilê Ayê, Muzenza, Araketu and Olodum. They would play African rhythms like
ijexá, Brazilian rhythms like maracatu and samba (with the
same instruments used at samba schools in Rio) and Caribbean styles like
merengue
Forró
The name forró comes from the word forrobodó, "pagode entertainment", according to folklore scholar Câmara Cascudo. Both pagode (contemporary name for samba) and forró are original celebrations or festivities turned into musical styles. The forrobodó - "informal ball" - is also known as arrasta-pé (foot-dragger), bate-chinela (flop-banger) or fobó (a contraction of forrobodó), and fueled by a variety of northeastern styles (baião, coco, rojão, quadrilha, xaxado, xote) played on the pé de bode (goat foot), an 8-bass accordion. A fancier version of the name’s origins claims that forró was the Brazilian attempt to reproduce the sound of "for all", which were ball parties held by the British engineers of the Great Western railway for their employees.
Pagode
It’s on the dictionary (look up pagoda): Asian pagan temple. But in Brazil, the word pagode is also used to describe a type of party "with food and drinks and an air of intimacy". In any good party, though, uplifting music is a must and samba a natural choice, the samba transformed the pagode into one of the strongest traditions in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, a backyard with a few trees to provide the shade, some packs of beer, knickknacks, a cavaquinho (a tiny, four-string acoustic guitar), tables to beat on... and there is the set for singers and instrumentalists to show off their skills, for passers-by to do the samba and let the afternoon go into the evening and the evening into the night. In the 70s, when emerging samba musicians were facing radio and samba school exile (due to a commerce-driven carnaval), the pagodes became the best option to have their songs heard and promoted.