Music Of Brazil example essay topic

The music of Brazil is characterized by two basic historical and cultural elements, namely the African (Congo, Angola) and the European (Portuguese) and their fusion. Types of neo-African music contained in Brazilian cult rituals such as candomble are examples of such mixing. Aside the music from the native populations mostly dislocated in the Amazon basin, Brazil offers regional styles such as the Northeastern, which in turn features important sub genres like the for ro or the martial dance of Angolan descent known as capoeira. Brazil, however, is mostly known for the samba and the bossa nova, two genres that have crossed over to the US during the 1960's. The samba is originally a street dance coming from the dramatic hillside slums of Rio de Janeiro, the fave las. The samba continues to be a dance although it has become a self-contained musical genre counting thousands of compositions, the so called samba cancao, or song samba.

The samba is particularly celebrated each year all over Brazil during carnival time, a week-long festivity functioning as a "steam valve", a powerful tension release with four core days during which everything is fun, dance, music, but also intoxication and general craziness. The samba is danced in the streets 24 hours a day by itinerant bands but also in well organized spectacles such as the world famous parade of Rio De Janeiro, in which the best schools of samba compete with one another in a whirlwind of dazzling costumes, elaborate floats, spectacular choreograph ies, all accompanied by band as or bate rias of amazing percussionists. The bossa nova was a style that rose to fame in 1960 with the recordings by Joao and Astrid Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinic ius De Moraes, and Baden Powell, among others. An interesting aspect of bossa nova was its samba origins affiliated with jazz. In fact, an early type of bossa nova was considered a continuation of the samba cancao. The new style, however, incorporated far more sophistication and unusual chord progressions that nevertheless maintained a high level of melodic character.

The bossa nova was highly praised for its intimate character, warmth, sweetness and high level of musicality. On the other hand, it was criticized for being elitist oriented, too refined, commercial, and soon labeled as "cocktail" music. The late 1960's and 1970's saw the birth of another musical current, such as tropicalismo, which steered away from the previous traditions and paved the way for much of contemporary, latest styles we can listen to today. Tropicalismo was a movement inspired by a group of great artists still active today such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and a bit later, Milton Nascimento. These musicians broke away from the complacent ways of previous artists, concentrating much of their texts on actual socio-political issues. Even if tropicalismo no longer exists as a movement, the artistic direction was clearly indicated for new artists to follow.

Brazil's popular music continues to these days to discover new talents indicating a healthy and powerful reserve of sources and inspirations. We like to suggest fifteen recordings from the great musical variety of Brazil. As always, we do not consider these as the absolute best, rather the type of recordings that better illustrate the variety and the spirit of the great music of this fascinating Latin American country.