Traditional music and dance
If you add Rio plus "traditions", you will get as a result "Carnival". There's no doubt about it, the most famous Carioca event, as popular (it attracted 6.5 million people in 2018!) as it is iconic, is a pillar of the city's culture. Descended from the entrudo, a historical Portuguese parade, with African influences added, this unique and important festival is a true gallery of traditional aesthetics and practices. Starting with the frevo. Born at the end of the 19th century in Pernambuco, this feverish rhythm, all brass and percussion, is similar in its movements to a cousin of capoeira, also full of agility and color.
Also originating from the Nordeste, let's mention the forró, a music famous throughout the country, played on the accordion and based on Africanized European dances, as well as the maracatu, an Afro-Brazilian expression practiced since the beginning of the colonization.
Among the gallery of traditional Brazilian instruments, the most common are undoubtedly the berimbau, a bow connected to a calabash, which is usually used during capoeira fights; the cavaquinho, a small four-stringed guitar; and the cuica, a drum that is rubbed from the inside with a stick and emits the typical "laugh" of Brazilian music.
Apart from the carnival, Paraty's events such as the Festa Do Divino, ten days of processions or the Festival Da Pinga honoring the local cachaça, present a good number of folkloric practices. Year round, the Finlândia Club of Rio offers traditional folkloric dances in costume.
Popular music
What music is more emblematic of the Rio carnival than the samba? Yes, you read well: the samba, in Brazil, the word is masculine. A carioca genre par excellence, the samba was born at the beginning of the 20th century in the port of Rio, among the freed slaves of the Nordeste who came to look for work in the capital. Characterized by its infinitely abundant percussion, its choral songs and its radiant joie de vivre, the samba is also a dance that is as catchy as it is contagious, and is always at the heart of all the country's carnivals. Very popular, therefore very played, the genre has known its letters of nobility in the hands of mestre Cartola, founder of Mangueira, the most famous school of samba, Beth Carvalho, Paulinho da Viola or Zeca Pagodinho.
An excellent place to listen to samba music in Rio is the Carioca da Gema, a typical place where many local groups play. Also worth mentioning is Cahaçaria Mangue Seco, a samba club as famous for its incredible bar as for the quality of its concerts.
Immediate heir of the samba, bossa nova has become with time one of the faces of the country. Born at the end of the 1950s, it is, very roughly speaking, a form of samba that is more intimate and full of jazz. The birth of the genre is often marked with Chega de Saudade, the first album by Bahian João Gilberto (1931-2019), one of the colossus of Brazilian music with an angelic voice and a bittersweet lightness. If this album is so important, it is probably also because it is a crossroads where several great minds of Brazilian music intersect, including the two Carioca cadors Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes.
The former, better known as Tom Jobim (1927-1994), was a composer, pianist, flutist and is still considered one of the fathers of bossa nova. Author of some 500 songs, Jobim is forever linked to Girl from Ipanema, written in 1964, a real gem that exported bossa nova around the world. The lyrics were written by... Vinicius de Moraes (no coincidence). If Brazilian music has reached such a degree of popularity, it is largely thanks to this generous personality, as poetic as he was radiant. A prolific composer and lyricist of bossa nova, Vinicius de Moraes (1913-1980) is associated in one way or another with a number of great national hits. A legendary artist if ever there was one. Moreover, without surprise, the institution of the genre in Rio bears his name: the Vinicius Bar. Installed in the street also eponymous, the place is by far one of the best addresses in town for a bossa concert, its mythical scene having welcomed the luminaries of the genre: Baden Powel, Wanda Sa, Dori Caymmi... In the same street, a little further on, you can also find the Toca Do Vinicius, a bookshop and (above all) a real cultural center of bossa nova.
An extension of bossa nova, musica popular brasileira - literally meaning "Brazilian popular music" and often referred to by its acronym "MPB" - marks a turning point in national music. Not a codified aesthetic per se, MPB is rather a protest movement that combines sophisticated melodies, traditional influences, protest lyrics, and samba, bossa, jazz, and rock in a single movement. The genre came to life under the impulse of two of Rio's greatest musicians: Chico Buarque (1944), composer, singer and writer, author of numerous Brazilian standards, and Baden Powel (1937-2000), guitar virtuoso and composer of instinctive, luminous, sometimes surprising, always warm and tender music. His album Os Afro, composed in collaboration with Vinicius, is widely considered a pillar of the genre.
Less popular now, MPB had a second youth in the 2000s with a group of artists who, for the most part, had family names already known by the general public: 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).
Classical music
During the second half of the 18th century, the region of Minas Gerais attracted a large number of colonial gold and diamond mines, bringing with it a large population. Numerous composers were active at that time, some of whom have remained in posterity, such as Lobo de Mesquita, Francisco Gomes da Rocha or Marcos Coelho Neto, authors mainly of sacred music. With the impoverishment of the mines at the end of the century, musical activity shifted to Rio, the city having become the place of residence of the Portuguese royal family since 1808 - and the latter ordering Portuguese composers and musicians to join it. It was at this time that some important Brazilian composers appeared: José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830), who was greatly influenced by Mozart and Haydn, and Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836-1896), a composer of operas with Italian codes but imbued with Brazilian national themes. This is notably the case of Il Guarany and Lo Schiavo, two of his greatest works that were both performed at La Scala. In Brazil, too, opera was in its golden age, and it was during this period that many important buildings were constructed, such as the stunning Theatro Municipal do Rio De Janeiro, a direct inspiration from Garnier and home to the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra (one of the country's leading orchestras).
As in many places in the world, the desire to establish a national music appeared here at the beginning of the 20th century. Authenticly Brazilian, this music must free itself from European influences and be steeped in the country's folklore. If Alberto Nepomuceno (1864-1920) is considered the initiator of this musical nationalism, it is indeed the man from Rio, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) who is the great herald. The most famous composer in Brazil, he brilliantly combined the classicism of his masters (Bach first) with the traditional sounds of the country. After eight years of ethno-musical investigation in the most remote regions of the country, the artist was able to elaborate a singular and deeply Brazilian work. His masterpiece is Bachianas Brasileiras, a true apotheosis of the fusion between folklore and Bach's influences.
Lovers of his music should not miss the Museu Villa-Lobos in the Botafogo neighborhood. This small house from the end of the 19th century houses a collection of personal objects that belonged to the famous Brazilian composer, including scores, correspondence, photographs, videos and some instruments, including his Gaveau grand piano.
And speaking of pianos, it is impossible not to mention here one of the greatest pianists of the second half of the 20th century: Nelson Freire (1944-2021). Originally from Boa Esperança in Minas Gerais, this close friend of Martha Argerich is remembered as an interpreter of rare sensitivity and expressiveness.
Electronic music
In recent years, a style originating from Rio has made Brazil shine on the world electronic scene: baile funk. In fact, if it is called that outside the country, it is generally referred to as carioca funk in Brazil or simply as funk in Rio. But don't be fooled by its name, this purely electronic music has very little relation to James Brown, Stevie Wonder or Georges Clinton. Dating back to the 1980s and drawing its inspiration from Miami Bass (a danceable and very licentious variant of hip-hop), carioca funk differs from rap in its minimalist and mechanical coldness, its harshness and its savagery. It is, generation after generation, the most popular music of the country's youth, carried by stars like the singer Anitta, nicknamed the "Beyoncé do Brasil", MC Kevinho or MC Fioti (who had a small success in France).
