Samba

The best known of the many Afro-Brazilian music/dance forms is the samba. It is popular throughout the whole of Brazil; different regions foster their own variations, but all are of the samba family. The roots of samba, like those of the jongo and batuque, are in Angolan or Congolese round dance. An early version of the samba that was very common in Bahia, the samba-de-roda ("round samba"), featured many elements that are still typical of samba today, such as the 2/4 meter with the accent on beat 2, and layers of syncopated rhythms on top, played by an ensemble consisting of drums, tambourine and cowbells.

  Outside of Bahia where it was born, samba took hold most strongly in the favelas
  or morros (slums) of Rio de Janeiro. The favelas are mainly populated by poor
  blacks. In the early years of the 20th century, samba as played and danced in Rio
  began to be recognized as a form of its own, and was referred to as samba de
  morro ("samba of the morros") or samba batucada. It was already a major part of
  the street celebration of carnival in Rio when the first samba recordings was made
  in 1917. " Pelo Telefone" ("On the Telephone") by Ernesto dos Santos, known as
  Donga, became a big hit and samba grew into a national passion, thanks to the
  latest technology: radio. This was the start of what has since become a yearly
  ritual in Brazil of recording and promoting sambas composed especially for the
  carnival festivities. Each year brings a new batch of sambas de enredo, sambas
  composed for a samba group -- one of the many escolas de samba -- to play in
  the carnival parade/competition in Rio. These songs, which are often clever,
  pointed commentaries on social or political issues, are heard on the radio for
  weeks before carnival begins, and the "hit samba" for the year is chosen by
  popular approval.

It is interesting to note that "Pelo Telefone," though known as a
  Samba, was also very much influenced by the maxixe, which had been the popular dance style up to that point. The maxixe was an Afro-Brazilian "take" on European ballroom dances and is to have been first danced by a man named Maxixe at a carnaval ball in Rio in 1882. By 1915 it was an international craze, although polite society tended to frown on the maxixe as being loud, wild, and shockingly sexual.

The samba as played in Rio for carnival is marked by the absence of melody instruments. However, a single escola de samba ("samba school'" group that performs samba music and dance at carnival) may include hundreds of drummers and percussionists, known collectively as the bateria, as well as many dancers and marchers, and elaborately decorated floats.

Samba is the lifeblood of Brazilian popular music. It has flourished since the 1920's, accepting and integrating the influence of many other types of music, and producing along the way many notable singers, musicians and composers. Among the pioneers of samba were Ataulfo Alves and Noel Rosa, both brilliant songwriters of the 1930's; pianist Jose Barbosa da Silva, known as Sinho; Moreira da Silva, who performed in the style known as samba de breque ("break samba") in which phrases are "scatted" or spoken rapidly during breaks in the music; and composers Alfredo da Roche Viana, called Pixinguinha, and Ari Barroso, who wrote "Aquarela do Brasil". a famous samba. One of Brazil's important classical composers Heitor Villa-Lobos achieved success and recognition in Europe and the United States. Villa-Lobos influenced many great Brazilian musicians including Antonio Carlos Jobim. Ernesto Nazara was a classical musician that fell in love with the different forms of Brazilian popular music. He was the "bridge" between classical and popular music in Brazil, much in the same way that George Gershwin was in the United States.