Samba is one of the most popular forms of music in Brazil. It is widely viewed as Brazil's national musical style. (This is not to be confused with the Zamba. The Zamba is a style of Argentine music, and an associated dance, very different from its homophone, the Samba)

History

Samba's roots come from Africa, mainly Angola, where the dance semba was a predecessor of samba, and as importantly from Portugal and Europe, which made it possible for the relatively intricate harmonies found in samba to be developed out of European tradition.

Samba developed as a distinctive kind of music at the beginning of the 20th century in Rio de Janeiro (then the capital of Brazil) under the strong influence of immigrant black people from the Brazilian state of Bahia. The title "samba school" ("escola de samba") originates from samba's formative years. The term was adopted by larger groups of samba performers in an attempt to lend acceptance of samba and its performance; local campuses were often the practice/performance grounds for these musicians and "escola" gave early performers a sense of legitimacy and organization to offset samba's somewhat controversial social atmosphere. Despite some similarities, samba is not an offshoot of jazz and has distinctively different origins and line of development - one of the factors which adds to this is that Brazilian slave owners allowed their slaves to continue their heritage of playing drums (unlike U.S. slave owners who feared use of the drum for communications).

"Pelo Telefone" (1917), by Donga and Mauro Almeida, is generally considered the first samba recording. Its great success carried the new genre outside the black favelas. Who created the music is uncertain, but it was most probably the work of the group around Tia Ciata, among them Pixinguinha and JoÃ£o da Bahiana.

In the 1930s, a group of musicians led by Ismael Silva founded the first Samba School, Deixa Falar, in the neighborhood of EstÃ¡cio de SÃ¡. They transformed the musical genre to make it fit better the carnival parade. In this decade, the radio spread the genre's popularity all around the country, and with the support of the nationalist dictatorship of GetÃºlio Vargas, samba became Brazil's "official music".

In the following years samba music developed in several directions, from the gentle samba-canÃ§Ã£o to the drum orchestras which accompany the carnival parade. One of these new styles was the bossa nova, made primarily by middle class white people. Bossa nova gained worldwide popularity through the works of JoÃ£o Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, among others, and arrived in North America via Gilberto's albums with American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz, and Jobim's soundtrack to the 1959 film Black Orpheus.

In the 1960s, Brazil became politically divided with the arrival of a military dictatorship, and the leftist musicians of bossa nova started to gather attention to the music made in the favelas. Many popular artists were discovered at this time. Names like Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho & Guilherme de Brito, Velha Guarda da Portela, ZÃ© Keti, and Clementina de Jesus recorded their first albums.

In the 1970s, samba returned strongly to the air waves with composers and singers like Paulinho da Viola, Martinho da Vila, Clara Nunes, and Beth Carvalho dominating the hit parade. Great samba lyricists like Paulo CÃ©sar Pinheiro (especially in the praised partnership with JoÃ£o Nogueira) and Aldir Blanc started to appear around that time.

In the early 1980s, after having been eclipsed by the popularity of disco and Brazilian rock, Samba reappeared in the media with a musical movement created in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. It was the pagode, a renewed samba, with new instruments - like the banjo and the tan-tan - and a new language that reflected the way that many people actually spoke with the inclusion of heavy gÃria (slang). The most popular artists were Zeca Pagodinho, Almir Guineto, Grupo Fundo de Quintal, Jorge AragÃ£o, and Jovelina PÃ©rola Negra.

Samba is extremely popular in Japan, especially in its more traditional forms; so much that some sambistas like Nelson Sargento, Monarco, and Wilson Moreira have recorded specifically for the Japanese market and frequently tour the country.

Today, samba is still one of the most popular musical genres in Brazil.

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