The modern samba that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century is basically 2/4 tempo varied with the conscious use of chorus sung to the sound of palms and batucada rhythm, adding one or more parts or stanzas of declaratory verses. Traditionally, the samba is played by strings (cavaquinho and various types of guitar) and various percussion instruments such as tamborim. Influenced by American orchestras in vogue since the Second World War and the cultural impact of US music post-war, samba began to use trombones, trumpets, choros, flutes, and clarinets.
In addition to rhythm and bar, samba brings a whole historical culture of food, varied dances (miudinho, coco, samba de roda, and pernada), parties, clothes such as linen shirts, and the NAIF painting of established names such as Nelson Sargento, Guilherme de Brito, and Heitor dos Prazeres. Anonymous community artists, including painters, sculptors, designers, and stylists, make the clothes, costumes, carnival floats, and cars, opening the doors of schools of samba.
Samba is a root style in Southeastern Brazil and Northeast Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Salvador. Its importance as Brazil's national music transcends region, however; samba schools, samba musicians and carnival organizations centered around the performance of samba exist in every region of the country and, while regional musics prevail in other regions (for instance, in Southern Brazil, Center-West Brazil, and all of the Brazilian countryside, Sertanejo, or Brazilian country music, is extremely important), there is no single musical genre that Brazilians use with more regularity than samba to identify themselves as part of the same national culture.
History
Origins of the word samba
Although samba exists throughout Brazil—especially in the states of Bahia, Maranhão, Minas Gerais, and São Paulo—in the form of various popular rhythms and dances that originated from the regional batuque, a type of music and associated dance form from Cape Verde, the samba is most frequently identified as a musical expression of urban Rio de Janeiro, where it was born and developed between the end of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century. It was in Rio that the dance practiced by former slaves who migrated from Bahia came into contact with and incorporated other genres played in the city (such as the polka, the maxixe, the lundu, and the xote), acquiring a completely unique character and creating the samba carioca urbana (samba school) and carnavalesco (Carnaval school director).[3] Samba schools are large organizations of up to 5,000 people which compete annually in the Carnival with thematic floats, elaborate costumes, and original music.
During the first decade of the 20th century, some songs under the name of samba were recorded, but these recordings did not achieve great popularity. However, in 1917, "Pelo Telefone" ("By Phone") was recorded, and it is considered the first true samba. The song was claimed to be authored by Ernesto dos Santos, best known as Donga (musician) (pt/de), with co-composition attributed to Mauro de Almeida, a well-known Carnival columnist. Actually, "Pelo Telefone" was created by a collective of musicians who participated in celebrations at the house of Tia Ciata (Aunt Ciata). It was eventually registered by Donga and the Almeida National Library.
"Pelo Telefone" was the first composition to achieve great success with the style of samba and to contribute to the dissemination and popularization of the genre. From that moment on, samba started to spread across the country, initially associated with Carnival and then developing its own place in the music market. There were many composers, including Heitor dos Prazeres, João da Bahiana, Pixinguinha, and Sinhô, but the sambas of these composers were "amaxixados" (a mix of maxixe), known as sambas-maxixes.
he contours of the modern samba came only at the end of the 1920s, from the innovations of a group of composers of carnival blocks in the neighborhoods of Estácio de Sá and Osvaldo Cruz, and the hills of Mangueira, Salgueiro, and São Carlos. Since then, there have been many great names in samba, such as Ismael Silva, Cartola, Ary Barroso, Noel Rosa, Ataulfo Alves, Wilson Batista, Geraldo Pereira, Zé Kéti, Candeia, Ciro Monteiro, Nelson Cavaquinho, Elton Medeiros, Paulinho da Viola, Martinho da Vila, and many others.
As the samba consolidated as an urban and modern expression, it began to be played on radio stations, spreading across the hills and neighborhoods to the affluent southern areas of Rio de Janeiro. Initially viewed with prejudice and discrimination because it had black roots, the samba, because of its hypnotic rhythms and melodic intonations in addition to its playful lyrics, eventually conquered the white middle class as well. Other musical genres derived from samba, such as samba-canção, partido alto, samba-enredo, samba de gafieira, samba de breque, bossa nova, samba-rock, and pagode, have all earned names for themselves.
The samba is frequently associated abroad with football and Carnival. This history began with the international success of "Aquarela do Brasil", by Ary Barroso, followed by Carmen Miranda (supported by Getúlio Vargas government and the US Good Neighbor policy), which led samba to the United States. Bossa nova finally entered the country into the world of samba music. The success of the samba in Europe and Japan only confirms its ability to win fans, regardless of their language. Currently, there are hundreds of samba schools held on European soil and scattered among countries like Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. Already in Japan, the records invest heavily in the launch of former Sambista's set of discs, which eventually created a market comprised solely of catalogs of Japanese record labels.
There are several theories about the birth of the word samba. One of them claims that samba came from the word Zambra or Zamba, both coming from Arabic, having been born when the Moors invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century. Another theory says it originated from one of many African languages, possibly the Kimbundu, where sam means give and ba means receive or thing falls.
In Brazil, folklorists suggest that the word samba is a corruption of the Kikongo word Semba, translated as umbigada in Portuguese, meaning "a blow struck with the belly button".
One of the oldest records of the word samba appeared in Pernambuco magazine's O Carapuceiro, dated February 1838, when Father Miguel Lopes Gama of Sacramento wrote against what he called the samba d'almocreve - not referring to the future musical genre, but a kind of merriment (dance drama) popular for black people of that time. According to Hiram Araújo da Costa, over the centuries, the festival of dances of slaves in Bahia were called samba.
In the middle of the 19th century, the word samba defined different types of music made by African slaves when conducted by different types of Batuque, but it assumed its own characteristics in each Brazilian state, not only by the diversity of tribes for slaves, but also the peculiarity of each region in which they were settlers. Some of these popular dances were known: bate-baú, samba-corrido, samba-de-roda, samba-de-Chave and samba-de-barravento in Bahia; coco in Ceará; tambor-de-crioula (or ponga) in Maranhão; trocada, coco-de-parelha, samba de coco and soco-travado in Pernambuco; bambelô in Rio Grande do Norte; partido-alto, miudinho, jongo and caxambu in Rio de Janeiro; and samba-lenço, samba-rural, tiririca, miudinho, and jongo in São Paulo.