Traditional music and dance
It's impossible to talk about Brazilian musical traditions without introducing carnival. A gigantic and iconic festival, Brazilian Carnival is heir to the tradition of a historic Portuguese parade called entrudo, to which African influences have been added, particularly in terms of dance. A unique, singular celebration, without which Brazil wouldn't really be the same. Naturally, every major city has its own, each presenting a wide range of the country's music in its own way. One traditional genre particularly associated with carnival is frevo. Introduced at the end of the 19th century, this fiery rhythm played by a brass orchestra accompanied by a few percussion instruments( mainlysurdo and snare drum) is the musical and choreographic tradition par excellence in Pernambuco. Close to capoeira in its movements, frevo sees the dancers dressed in colorful clothes and carrying a small parasol rehearse an agile choreography. A treasure trove of Brazilian culture, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012.
Another very common traditional Brazilian expression, forró is the typical Nordeste genre. Typically played on the accordion and percussion instruments such as the zabumba (a bass drum), forró is based on Africanized European dances and comes in a number of genres, some more rhythmic than others. Also the name of the dance that accompanies it, forró is always performed in pairs, rather like a lambada. The genre has travelled a long way over the years, and a few groups can be found in Europe.
Also native to the state of Pernambuco, maracatu is an Afro-Brazilian cultural event whose origins date back to the 17th century. A ritual celebration, maracatu has been practiced since the beginning of colonization, inherited from the history of the slaves. Always accompanied by percussion instruments, this colorful folkloric dance procession represents the coronation ceremonies of the "King of Congo", a practice permitted during slavery. Declared "decadent" during the 20th century, the practice was revived in the 1990s with the rise of the black movement and mango beat (or "swamp rhythm").
There's also the repente (or cantoria), a sung verse improvisation challenge, based on a theme and often accompanied by the pandeiro (tambourine) or violão (guitar). Competitions are often organized.
Traditional music abounds in instruments typical of the country, such as the berimbau, a bow attached to a calabash with a jew's-harp sound that magically sets the rhythm for capoeira battles; the cavaquinho, a small four-string guitar; and the cuica, a drum scraped from the inside with a stick. It's the latter that produces the "laugh" typical of Brazilian music.
In addition to Carnival, the country offers many other opportunities to sample its musical traditions. For example, the Festa Do Divino, a particularly spectacular religious celebration in Paraty and Diamantina, is interspersed with dance and folklore events. There's also plenty of music and dance at the Festival de Parintins, the second-largest folk festival after Carnival, or at the Festas Juninas or São João, major celebrations of Saint Anthony (23), Saint John (24) and Saint Peter (29), featuring traditional music, games, dance and local food. A number of venues around the country offer folklore shows, such as Rio's Club Finlândia or Recife's Galo da Madrugada , which hosts frevo, maracatu and regional folklore groups every Thursday.
Popular music
What music is more emblematic of Brazil's national identity than samba? Yes, THE samba - here, the word is masculine. Dating back to the turn of the century, the genre was born in the port of Rio, among the freed slaves from the Nordeste who came to the capital in search of work. Its music is characterized by an exceptional wealth of percussion, collective singing and luminous gaiety, while its particularly lively and contagious dancing guides carnivals all over the country. An excellent place to listen to samba in Rio is the Carioca da Gema, which hosts numerous local groups in a traditional atmosphere. Also worth mentioning is Pedra do Sal or Cachaçaria Mangue Seco, a samba club as famous for its incredible bar as for the quality of its samba and choro ao vivo concerts.
Samba has spawned many other genres, such as pagode and bossa nova. Bossa nova has become one of the country's cornerstones. Born at the end of the 1950s, bossa nova is basically a more intimate and sophisticated version of samba, full of jazzy influences. It is often said - and rightly so - that the first album by Bahian João Gilberto, Chega de Saudade, marked the birth of bossa nova. A pivotal work for Brazilian music, it confers a special status on its author. An introverted, solitary poet, João Gilberto (1931-2019) is one of the colossuses of Brazilian music. With its superb voice and sublime arrangements, the bittersweet lightness of João Gilberto's music will always linger in the Brazilian air, and it's highly advisable to familiarize yourself with his work before visiting the country.
If Chega de Saudade is such an important album, it's undoubtedly also because several great musical minds intersect here, including the two cadors Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes. The former, also known as Tom Jobim (1927-1994), was a composer, pianist, flautist and one of the progenitors of bossa nova. Although he composed some 500 songs, Jobim remains particularly associated with one of them, The Girl from Ipanema, written in 1964. A jewel that took bossa nova around the world, with lyrics by... Vinicius de Moraes (no coincidence there). A cheerful, generous and poetic figure, Vinicius de Moraes (1913-1980) played a major role in making Brazilian music what it is today. A prolific composer, collaborator and lyricist of bossa nova, there was a time when not a masterpiece was composed without de Moraes' close or distant involvement. Vinicius remains a legendary bossa nova artist and, unsurprisingly, the institution of the genre in Rio bears his name. The Vinicius Bar - located on the street that also bears the artist's name, opposite the Garota da Ipanema bar - is undoubtedly one of the best addresses in town for a bossa concert, its mythical stage having seen the crème de la crème of the genre: Baden Powel, Wanda Sa, Dori Caymmi... Further on, on the same street, you'll find the Toca Do Vinicius, a store that, under its bookshop exterior, hides a veritable bossa nova cultural center. Anyone looking for a good bossa concert in Belo Horizonte should head to Cafe com Letras, a chic literary café hosting jazz, bossa and DJ concerts practically every evening.
Born in the wake of bossa nova, musica popular brasileira - "Brazilian popular music" or "MPB" - with its sophisticated melodies, is not a style in the strict sense of the word, but rather a protest movement, seeking to blend musical traditions (regional music), protest lyrics and samba, bossa, jazz, rock and so on. The genre emerged with some of the greatest names in Brazilian music, including Chico Buarque (1944), a Carioca composer, singer and writer, figurehead of the movement and author of numerous Brazilian standards, and Baden Powel (1937-2000), guitar virtuoso and composer of sumptuous, unexpected, warm and luminous music. Less popular today than pagode or axé, MPB enjoyed a revival in the 2000s with a group of artists who often bear surnames already familiar to the general public, such as Moreno Veloso (son of Caetano), Leo Maia (son of Tim Maia), Maria Rita (daughter of Elis Regina) or Jairzinho and Luciana Mello (sons of Jair Rodrigues).
Another very popular genre,axé is characteristic of Bahia and Salvador carnival. Born in the 1980s, its roots lie in African, Caribbean and Brazilian music, drawing inspiration from reggae, calypso and marcha, among others. Famous artists in the genre include Ivete Sangalo, Chiclete com Banana and, above all, the now superstar Claudia Leite. Much less well known, but absolutely charming, choro is also worth a mention. This enchanting genre of instrumental music was developed in Rio de Janeiro in the 19th century, influenced by various African rhythms. The great artist of the genre was Pixinguinha, a flautist, saxophonist and composer whose swing tasted of paradise.
The Fundição Progresso de Rio, a magical venue that can accommodate over 5,000 people, is a place of note, where the great names of popular music meet new talent.
Classical music
It was during the second half of the 18th century that the first Brazilian composers of art music really appeared. At the time, the Minas Gerais region was riddled with colonial gold and diamond mines, attracting a large population. Numerous composers were active at the time, some of whom have gone down in history, such as Lobo de Mesquita, Francisco Gomes da Rocha and Marcos Coelho Neto, who wrote mainly sacred music. With the impoverishment of the mines at the end of the century, musical activity shifted to major centers such as Rio and São Paulo. Rio in particular, since the Portuguese royal family moved there in 1808, ordering Portuguese composers and musicians to join them. This was particularly true of Marcos Portugal (1762-1830), a prolific opera composer who would greatly influence future Brazilian composition. José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830), the first of Brazil's great composers, appeared at this time. A proud representative of classicism in the Americas, he was the most prolific Brazilian composer of his time, notably influenced by Viennese composers of the time such as Mozart and Haydn. A disciple of Nunes Garcia, Francisco Manuel da Silva (1795-1865) wrote the melody for the Brazilian national anthem, and through his work embodies the transition to Romanticism. It was also during this period that Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836-1896) made his name. A contemporary of Verdi and Puccini, he composed Italian-style operas with Brazilian national themes, such as Il Guarany and Lo Schiavo - which were performed at La Scala - and remains forever the only non-European composer to enjoy success in Italy during the golden age of opera. In Brazil, too, opera enjoyed a golden age, remaining very popular until the mid-twentieth century. It was during this period that many opera houses were built, such as the Théâtre Municipal de São Paulo or the magnificent Théâtre Municipal de Rio de Janeiro, inspired by Garnier and home to the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra (one of the country's leading orchestras).
At the beginning of the 20th century, as in many other parts of the world, the desire arose to establish a national, authentically Brazilian music, free from European influences and steeped in folkloric inspirations. Although Alberto Nepomuceno (1864-1920) is considered the father of this musical nationalism, it was Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) who was its great herald. An illustrious Brazilian composer, he brilliantly blended the classicism of his masters (Bach first and foremost) with traditional Brazilian sounds. After eight years of traveling to the remotest parts of the country, the artist criss-crossed the Amazon and researched the country's folklore in order to create his singular work. Some would agree that Bachianas Brasileiras is his masterpiece, a series of nine suites and the apotheosis of the fusion between folklore and Bachian style.
In reaction to the nationalist school, the Música Viva ("living music") movement emerged in the late 1930s, led by Hans Joachim Koellreutter and Egídio de Castro e Silva, advocating an aesthetic derived from dodecaphony and the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg. In the 1960s, the Brazilian avant-garde was revitalized by a new wave - known as Música Nova ("new music") - which took an interest in serial, concrete and electronic music. The musical grammar was completely renewed, notably under the impetus of artists such as Gilberto Mendes (a pupil of Boulez and Stockhausen) and Willy Corrêa de Oliveira. Since then, Brazilian art music has maintained this avant-garde lineage in the hands of composers such as Sílvio Ferraz, Marcos Balter, Edson Zampronha, Jorge Antunes and Caio Facó.
In addition to composition, Brazil has also made a name for itself thanks to its performers, particularly such international greats as pianists Roberto Szidon (1941-2011), Franco-Brazilian Magda Tagliaferro (1893-1986) and above all the revered Nelson Freire, or the much-admired cellist Antônio Meneses. There are also two great sopranos, Bidu Sayão (1902-1999), once a star of the Metropolitan Opera, and Eliane Coelho, who shone on the stages of the Frankfurt Opera and the Vienna Staatsoper. The country boasts a number of major philharmonic ensembles, the most famous being the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, formerly conducted by Marin Aslop before being replaced by Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer (since 2020). The country also boasts some relatively famous conductors, such as Roberto Minczuk, director of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, John Neschling, formerly director of the Orchestre national Bordeaux Aquitaine, and Isaac Karabtchevsky, at the helm of the Petrobras Symphony.
The rock
A lesser-known aspect of the country, Brazil has had a long friendship with rock. It all began in the 1960s, shortly before the birth of the MPB (mentioned above), when an avant-garde movement was born in reaction to military repression: tropicalism. Blending heavy Anglo-American influences - pop, rock and psychedelia - with local specialties such as samba and bossa nova, the movement kicked off with the album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis, a fabulous collaborative work bringing together a bunch of names that were to become essential to Brazilian music: Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Zé, Os Mutantes and Gal Costa. The former, Gilberto Gil, is perhaps one of the country's most eclectic and committed musicians (he was also Minister of Culture between 2003 and 2008), the latter, Caetano Veloso, is one of the best-known and most emblematic, while the group Os Mutantes, remains a cult for several generations of rock fans. Ever since these pioneers laid the foundations for the Brazilian rock scene, it has been never-ending. The 1970s saw the emergence of quiet forces like Milton Nascimento and revolutionary bands like Novos Baianos; the 1980s saw the emergence of indestructible bands like Titãs, still active today; the 1990s saw Sepultura show that Brazil knows how to make metal better than anyone else; and the 2000s saw the electro-rock of CSS move millions of heads around the world.
Electronic music
In recent years, if there's one style that has put Brazil on the world map, it's baile funk. In fact, if it's called that outside the country, it's usually referred to as carioca funk in Brazil, or even just funk in Rio. And don't let the name fool you, this electronic music has little to do with James Brown or George Clinton. Dating back to the 1980s and drawing its inspiration from Miami Bass (a danceable variant of hip-hop), carioca funk is characterized by its minimalism, coldness, harshness and savagery, and can be seen as a Brazilian cousin of rap. It is the most popular music of the country's youth, driven by stars such as singer Anitta, nicknamed the " Beyoncé do Brasil ", MC Kevinho or MC Fioti (who has had a small success in France).
