Music of Brazil

The music of Brazil encompasses various regional musical styles influenced by European, American, African and Amerindian forms. Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles such as

Origins#

Little is known of the music of Brazil before the area’s first encounter with Portuguese explorers on 22 April 1500. During the colonial period, documents detail the musical activities of the major Roman Catholic cathedrals and the parlors of the upper classes, but data about musical life outside these domains are sparse. Some information is available in writings left by such travellers as Jean de Léry, who lived in Brazil from 1557 to 1558 and produced the first known transcriptions of native American music: two chants of the Tupinambá, near Rio de Janeiro. Further registration of musical activity in Brazil came from the activities of two Jesuit priests in 1549. Ten years later, they had already founded settlements for indigenous people (the Reduções), with a musical-educational structure. One century later, the Reduções of the southern Brazil, which were founded by Spaniard Jesuits, had a strong cultural development, where some music schools were founded. Some of the reports of that time show the fascination of the indigenous people for European music. The indigenous people also took part in the music, with both the construction of musical instruments and practice of vocal and instrumental performance.

The 18th-century school#

In the 18th century, there was intense musical activity in all the more developed regions of Brazil, with their moderately stable institutional and educational structures. The previously few private orchestras became more common and the churches presented a great variety of music. In the first half of this century, the most outstanding works were composed by Luís Álvares Pinto, Caetano de Mello de Jesus and Antônio José da Silva (“the Jew”), who became successful in Lisbon writing librettos for comedies, which were performed also in Brazil with music by António Teixeira. In the second part of the 18th century, there was a great flourishing in Minas Gerais, mostly in the regions of Vila Rica (currently Ouro Preto), Mariana and Arraial do Tejuco (currently Diamantina), where the mining of gold and diamonds for the Portuguese metropolis attracted a sizable population. At this time, the first outstanding Brazilian composers were revealed, most of them mulattoes. The musical pieces were mostly sacred music. Some of the noteworthy composers of this period were Lobo de Mesquita, Manoel Dias de Oliveira, Francisco Gomes da Rocha, Marcos Coelho Neto and Marcos Coelho Neto Filho. All of them were very active, but in many cases few pieces have survived until the present day. Some of the most famous pieces of this period are the Magnificat by Manoel Dias de Oliveira and the Our Lady’s Antiphon by Lobo de Mesquita. In the city of Arraial do Tejuco, nowadays Diamantina, there were ten conductors in activity. In Ouro Preto about 250 musicians were active, and in all of the territory of Minas Gerais almost a thousand musicians were active. With the impoverishment of the mines at the end of the century, the focus of the musical activity changed to other centers, specially Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where André da Silva Gomes, a composer of Portuguese origin, released a great number of works and dynamized the musical life of the city. Also, the oldest Orchestra of all Americas is situated in São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais, called Lira Sanjoanense, conducted, today, by Modesto Flávio Fonseca.

The Classical period#

A crucial factor for the changes in the musical life was the arrival of the Portuguese Royal family to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Until then, Rio de Janeiro was musically similar to other cultural centers of Brazil but was even less important than Minas Gerais. The presence of the Portuguese Royal family, in exile, radically changed this situation, as the Capela Real of Rio de Janeiro was established. The king John VI of Portugal brought with him to Brazil the great musical library from the House of Bragança, one of the best of Europe at that time, and ordered the arrival of musicians from Lisbon and the castrati from Italy, re-ordering the Royal Chapel. Later, John VI ordered the construction of a sumptuous theater, called the Royal Theater of São João. The secular music had the presence of Marcos Portugal, who was designated as the official composer of the household, and of Sigismund von Neukomm, who contributed with his own work and brought the works of the Austrian composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn. The works of these composers strongly influenced the Brazilian music of this time. José Maurício Nunes Garcia, the first of the great Brazilian composers, emerged at this time. With a large culture for his origin – he was poor and mulatto – he was one of the founders of the Irmandade de Santa Cecília, in Rio de Janeiro, teacher and mestre de capela of the Royal Chapel during the presence of John VI in Brazil. Nunes Garcia was the most prolific Brazilian composer of this time. He also composed the first opera written in Brazil, Le Due Gemelle (The Two Twins), with text in Italian, but the music is now lost. Other important composers of this period are Gabriel Fernandes da Trindade, who composed the only Brazilian chamber music from the 19th century which has survived to the present times, and João de Deus de Castro Lobo, who lived in the cities of Mariana and Ouro Preto, which were decadent at this time. This period, however, was brief. In 1821, John VI went back to Lisbon, taking with him the household, and the cultural life in Rio de Janeiro became empty. And, despite the love of Peter I of Brazil for the music – he was also author of some musical pieces like the Brazilian Independence Anthem – the difficult financial situation did not allow many luxuries. The conflagration of the Royal Theater in 1824 was another symbol of decadence, which reached the most critical point when Peter I renounced the throne, going back to Portugal.

The Romantic period#

The only composer who had a relevant work in this period was Francisco Manuel da Silva, disciple of Nunes Garcia, who succeeded him as kapellmeister. In spite of his few resources, he founded the Musical Conservatory of Rio de Janeiro. He was the author of the Brazilian National Anthem’s melody. His work reflected the musical transition for the Romanticism, when the interest of the national composers was focused in the opera. The most outstanding Brazilian composer of this period was Antônio Carlos Gomes, who composed Italian-styled operas with national themes, such as Il Guarany (based on José de Alencar’s novel O Guarani) and Lo Schiavo. These operas were very successful in European theaters, like the Teatro alla Scala, in Milan. Other important composer of this time is Elias Álvares Lobo, who wrote the opera A Noite de São João, the first Brazilian opera with text in Portuguese. The opera in Brazil was very popular until the middle of the 20th century, and many opera houses were built at this time, like Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro, Municipal Theater of São Paulo, and many others. At the end of the 19th century, the greatest composers for the symphonic music were revealed. One of the most outstanding name of this period was Leopoldo Miguez, who followed the Wagnerian style and Henrique Oswald, who incorporated elements of the French Impressionism.

Nationalism#

In the beginning of the 20th century, there was a movement for creating an authentically Brazilian music, with less influences of the European culture. In this sense, the folklore was the major font of inspiration for the composers. Some composers like Brasílio Itiberê da Cunha, Luciano Gallet and Alexandre Levy, despite having a European formation, included some typically Brazilian elements in their works. This trend reached the highest point with Alberto Nepomuceno, who used largely the rhythms and melodies from the Brazilian folklore. There were local cultural movements to consolidate regional identities through music as for example, José Brazilício de Souza, who wrote the state anthem of Santa Catarina and his son Álvaro Sousa, who was a noticeable musician, music educator, and composer there. An important event, later, was the Modern Art Week, in 1922, which had a large impact on concepts of national art. In this event the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, regarded as the most outstanding name of the Brazilian nationalism, was revealed. Villa-Lobos did researches about the musical folklore of Brazil, and mixed elements both from classical and popular music. He explored many musical genres such as concertos, symphonies, modinhas, Fados, and other symphonic, vocal and chamber music. Some of his masterworks are the ballet Uirapuru and the two series of Chôros and Bachianas Brasileiras. Other composers of Brazilian national music of this era include Oscar Lorenzo Fernández, Radamés Gnattali, Camargo Guarnieri, Osvaldo Lacerda, Francisco Mignone, and Ernesto Nazareth.

The avant-garde movement#

As a reaction against the nationalist school, who was identified as “servile” to the centralizing politics of Getúlio Vargas, in 1939 the Movimento Música Viva (Living Music Movement) appeared, led by Hans Joachim Koellreutter and by Egídio de Castro e Silva, defending the adoption of an international style, derived from the dodecaphonism of Arnold Schoenberg. This group was integrated by composers like Cláudio Santoro, César Guerra-Peixe, Eunice Catunda and Edino Krieger. Koellreutter adopted revolutionary methodes, in respect to the individuality of each student and giving to the students the freedom of creativity before the knowledge of the traditional rules for composition. The movement edited a magazine and presented a series of radio programs showing their fundaments and works of contemporary music. Later, Guerra-Peixe and Santoro followed an independent way, centered in the regional music. Other composers, who used freely the previous styles were Marlos Nobre, Almeida Prado, and Armando Albuquerque, who created their own styles. After 1960, the Brazilian avant-garde movement received a new wave, focusing on serial music, microtonal music, concrete music and electronic music, employing a completely new language. This movement was called Música Nova (New Music) and was led by Gilberto Mendes and Willy Corrêa de Oliveira. An important fact was the introduction of electronic music in Brazil, with the pioneering works of the carioca Jorge Antunes in 1961.

Brazilian Opera#

Carlos Gomes was the first composer on non-European origin to achieve wide recognition in the classical music environment of the Golden age of Opera in Italy. Bossa Nova was created as anti-opera in a time when opera seemed to represent the art-form of the elite. 5 In recent years the style has been revived with works by Jorge Antunes, Flo Menezes, and others. Since 2014 the International Brazilian Opera (IBOC) has been producing new works, most notably by its artistic director and resident composer Joao MacDowell.

Contemporary#

Nowadays, Brazilian music follows the guidelines of both experimentalism and traditional music. Some of the contemporary Brazilian composers are Amaral Vieira, Sílvio Ferraz, Guilherme Bauer, Ronaldo Miranda, David Koenchendler, Nestor de Hollanda Cavalcanti, Ernani Aguiar, Flo Menezes, Marcos Balter, Alexandre Lunsqui, Rodolfo Caesar, Felipe Lara, Edson Zampronha, Marcus Siqueira, Rodrigo Lima, Jorge Antunes, Roberto Victorio and João MacDowell. From the new generation of Brazilian composers, Caio Facó has achieved international recognition for his work. Brazil has a large number of internationally recognized orchestras and performers, despite the relatively low support of the government. The most famous Brazilian orchestra is probably the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, currently under conductor Thierry Fischer. Other Brazilian orchestras worthy of note are the São Paulo University Symphony, the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais and the Petrobras Sinfônica, supported by the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras. There are also regular operas scheduled every year in cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The state of São Paulo also hosts the Winter Festival in the city of Campos do Jordão. Some of the most famous Brazilian conductors are Roberto Minczuk, John Neschling and Isaac Karabtchevsky. The instrumentalists include, among others: Roberto Szidon, Antonio Meneses, Cussy de Almeida, Gilberto Tinetti, Arnaldo Cohen, Nelson Freire, Eudóxia de Barros, Guiomar Novaes and Magda Tagliaferro. And some of the most famous Brazilian singers were, historically, Zola Amaro, Constantina Araújo and Bidu Sayão; living singers include Eliane Coelho, Kismara Pessatti, Maria Lúcia Godoy, Sebastião Teixeira, and others. In the 1980s, a wave of Brazilian heavy metal bands gained public attention. The most commercially successful of these was Sepultura, founded in São Paulo in 1983, preceded by Dorsal Atlantica and followed by Sarcófago. The intrusion of alien elements into Brazil’s cultural system is not a destructive process. The return of a democratic government allowed for freedom of expression. The Brazilian music industry opened up to international styles and this has allowed for both foreign and local genres to co-exist and identify people. Each different style relates to the people socially, politically, and economically. “Brazil is a regionally divided country with a rich cultural and musical diversity among states. As such, musicians in the country choose to define their local heritage differently depending on where they come from.” This shows how globalization has not robbed Brazil of its identity but instead given it the ability to represent its people both in Brazil and the rest of the world. In recent years Brazilian artists have become more interested in Africa, the Caribbean and their own indigenous and folk music. While there are some artists who continue to perform rock and Western pop, there are now just as many contemporaries playing a fusion of African and European influences with those from across The Americas. Some artists have even become influenced by Asian music, noticing some parallels between music from the Northeast of Brazil and music from India.

Indigenous and folk music#

The native peoples of the Brazilian rainforest play instruments including whistles, flutes, horns, drums and rattles. Much of the area’s folk music imitates the sounds of the Amazon rainforest. When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, the first natives they met played an array of reed flutes and other wind and percussion instruments. The Jesuit missionaries introduced songs which used the Tupi language with Christian lyrics, an attempt to convert the people to Christianity, and also introduced Gregorian chant and the flute, bow, and the clavichord.

Capoeira music#

The Afro-Brazilian sport of capoeira is never played without its own music, which is usually considered to be a call-and-response type of folk music. The main instruments of capoeira music include the berimbau, the atabaque and the pandeiro. Capoeira songs may be improvised on the spot, or they may be popular songs written by older, and ancient mestres (teachers), and often include accounts of the history of capoeira, or the doings of great mestres.

Maracatu#

This type of music is played primarily in the Recife and Olinda regions during Carnaval. It is an Afro-Brazilian tradition. The music serves as the backdrop for parade groups that evolved out of ceremonies conducted during colonial times in honour of the Kings of Congo, who were African slaves occupying symbolic leadership positions among the slave population. The music is played on large alfaia drums, large metal gonguê bells, snare drums and shakers. An important variant is found in and around Fortaleza, Ceará (called maracatu cearense), which is different from the Recife/Olinda tradition in many respects: triangles are used instead of gonguês, surdos or zabumbas instead of alfaias. Also, important female characters are performed by cross-dressed male performers, and all African and Afrobrazilian personages are performed using blackface makeup.

Afoxé#

Afoxé is the name given to a group dedicated to playing ijexá, which is a kind of religious music, part of the Candomblé tradition. In 1949, a group called Filhos de Gandhi began playing afoxé during carnaval parades in Salvador; their name translates as Sons of Gandhi, associating black Brazilian activism with Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian independence movement. The Filhos de Gandhi’s 1949 appearance was also revolutionary because, until then, the Carnaval parades in Salvador were meant only for light-skinned people.

Repente#

Northeastern Brazil is known for a distinctive form of literature called literatura de cordel, which are a type of ballads that include elements incorporated into music as “repentismo”, an improvised lyrical contest on themes suggested by the audience. Similar to Repentismo, appears among the Caipira culture a musical form derived from viola caipira, which is called cururu. It’s also important to note that Brazil has the largest Black population outside of Africa, which is a major reason why African heritage is one of the central driving forces behind Brazilian music.

Choro#

Choro (literally “cry” in Portuguese, but in context a more appropriate translation would be “lament”), traditionally called chorinho (“little cry” or “little lament”). Instrumental, its origins are in 19th century Rio de Janeiro. Choro was the first Brazilian national musical style to develop in Rio de Janeiro around 1870 and spread to the country with the invention of disco in 1888. Before choro, the most popular rhythms were modinha and lundu, but modinha was a rhythm originally from Portugal and lundu was a rhythm originating from Angola. It emerged from the fusion of popular European dance music, such as polka, waltz, mazurka, xote and quadrilhas, with Afro-Brazilian music, for example, lundu. After the proclamation of the Republic of Brazil in 1889, military and metal bands included choros in their repertoire. It was played and danced mainly by the lower middle class. It had its peak between 1870 and 1920. Originally choro was played by a trio of flute, guitar and cavaquinho (a small chordophone with four strings). The young pianist Ernesto Nazareth published his first choro (Não Caio Noutra) in 1878 at the age of 14. Nazareth’s choros are often listed as polkas; he also composed waltzes, schottisches, milongas and Brazilian Tangos. (He resisted the popular term maxixe to represent Brazilian tango.) Chiquinha Gonzaga was another important composer of choros and started shortly after Nazareth. Chiquinha Gonzaga composed her first success, the polka-choro “Atraente”, in 1877. In the beginning, the success of choro came from informal groups of friends which played in parties, pubs (botecos), streets, home balls (forrobodós), and also the musical scores published by print houses. By the 1910s, much of the Brazilian first phonograph records are choros. The mainstream success of this style of music (By the 1930s) came from the early days of radio, when bands performed live on the air. By the 1950s and 1960s it was replaced by samba and Bossa Nova and other styles of Brazilian popular music, but was still alive in amateur circles called “rodas de choro” (informal choro gatherings in residences and botecos). However, in the late 1970s there was a successful effort to revitalize the genre carried out by some famous artists: Pixinguinha, Waldir Azevedo and Jacob do Bandolim.

Samba#

Samba as a musical genre emerged in the early 20th century in Rio de Janeiro, although the term had already been used since at least 1830 to designate manifestations originating from batuque, such as the coco circle. It received influences from samba de roda, modinha, maxixe, and lundu. Batuque was a dance that developed from Afro-Brazilian predecessors such as jongo, semba de Angola, and lundu. These dances were accompanied by drums. The term samba probably dates back to semba (an Angolan musical rhythm). Initially, it was a type of music identified with people from the humblest strata and had its main center in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Estácio de Sá, but it soon left the improvisational circles and joint creations of the Rio de Janeiro hills and was elevated to the status of a more “typically” Brazilian musical genre. Contributing to this was the first recording of a samba, “Pelo Telefone,” released in 1917, which was a national success. In 1929, prompted by the opening of the first radio station in Rio de Janeiro, the so-called radio era began spreading songs – especially the novelty Samba in its current format – to larger masses. This period was dominated by few male interpreters – notably Almirante, Braguinha, Mário Reis, Sílvio Caldas, Francisco Alves and singer/composer Noel Rosa and even fewer chanteuses such as Aracy de Almeida and sisters Aurora Miranda and Carmen Miranda, who eventually came to Hollywood becoming a movie star. Samba reached middle-class circles. Samba-canção emphasized melody more, had a much slower tempo, and more refined lyrics. With the advent of radio, samba spread very quickly and became the musical pulse of the country in the 1930s. Popular music included instruments like cuicas, tambourines, frying pans (‘played’ with a metal stick), flutes and guitars. Noteworthy Samba composers at this early stage included said Noel Rosa plus Lamartine Babo and, around World War II time, Ary Barroso. From World War II to the mid-1960s it was developed the samba-canção subgenre, with male singers such as Orlando Silva, Nelson Gonçalves, Jamelão, Ataulfo Alves, Ismael Silva, Miltinho and female singers started to mushroom: Nora Ney, Dolores Duran, Ângela Maria, Emilinha Borba, Marlene, Dalva de Oliveira, Maysa Matarazzo, sisters Linda Batista and Dircinha Batista, among others. In the late 1970s, the pagode subgenre emerged, which is played in small groups.

MPB (Brazilian popular music)#

Música Popular Brasileira, or MPB, is a musical genre that emerged in Brazil in the mid-1960s. MPB emerged from 1966 onwards in the city of Rio de Janeiro with the second generation of bossa nova, but with a strong influence from Brazilian folklore that had already been present since 1932. In practice, the acronym MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) announced a fusion of two musical movements that had previously diverged: bossa nova and the folkloric engagement of the Popular Culture Centers of the National Union of Students. The former advocated musical sophistication, while the latter championed fidelity to traditional Brazilian music. Their purposes merged, and with the 1964 Brazilian coup d’état, the two movements became a broad cultural front against the military dictatorship, adopting the acronym MPB as their banner of struggle. Jovem Guarda and Tropicália are musical movements that are part of MPB (Brazilian Popular Music), but Tropicália identified more with MPB than Jovem Guarda due to its mixture of national and international rhythms. MPB began with a markedly nationalist profile, but it changed and incorporated elements from various origins, partly due to the musicians’ lack of resistance to mixing musical genres. Since the term MPB emerged in the late 1960s, this style has incorporated not only the country’s regional musical styles, but also North American, Caribbean and European influences, such as blues, jazz, reggae, rock and pop. A characteristic of MPB is that regional styles develop in urban centers into a music of national character. Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, in particular, assumed the role of catalysts since the 1960s and 1970s. However, with the increase in recording studios, record labels, radio and television stations since the 1980s, both cities lost influence. Salvador, for example, produced a particularly large number of creative musicians. MPB is listened by people of all ages. This results in a greater historical awareness, and reinterpretations of old classics are common practices in MPB. Not only the performers, but also the composers and lyricists of the songs receive special appreciation. Singers like Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso are also considered important poets in Brazil. The lyrics are not subordinate to the melodies, but rather superior to them. Well-known MPB artists include, among many others, singers such as Gal Costa, Nara Leão, Zé Ramalho, Marina Lima, Simone, Elis Regina, Guilherme Arantes, Roberto Carlos, Jorge Ben Jor, Milton Nascimento, João Bosco, Belchior, Ivan Lins, Djavan.

Bossa nova#

In the late 1950s, elements of bolero, foxtrot, and cha-cha-cha increasingly permeated samba, which gradually lost its typical characteristics during this period. This decline triggered a musical revolution: Bossa Nova. Unlike street samba, bossa nova emerged in the urban middle class, within the environment of bourgeois intellectuals. João Gilberto was particularly influential in shaping the style, both for his smooth singing and his guitar playing. His restrained singing reversed the bel canto style, the operetta style, that prevailed in samba in the 1950s. The first bossa nova records by João Gilberto, in the last years of the 1950s, quickly became huge hits in Brazil. Antonio Carlos Jobim and other composers helped further develop this smoother, often slower, samba beat, which developed at the beach neighborhoods of Ipanema and, later, the Copacabana nightclubs. Bossa nova was introduced to the rest of the world by American jazz musicians in the early 1960s, and the song “The Girl from Ipanema” remains probably the best known Brazilian musical export, eventually becoming a jazz standard.