The Music of Brazil
The Music of Brazil has always been characterized by great diversity and, shaped by musical influences from three continents, is still developing new and original forms. The samba, which reached the height of popularity in the 1930s, is a mixture of Spanish bolero with the cadences and rhythms of African music.
Its most famous exponent was probably Carmen Miranda, known for her fiery temperament and extravagant headdresses. (But there was also the remarkable Bidu Sayao, representing artists in classical music and Brazilian traditional folk songs). The more subdued bossa nova, popular in the 1950s and characterized by songs such as 'The Girl from Ipanema', was influenced by North American jazz. Tropicalismo is a mix of musical influences that arrived in Brazil in the 1960s and led a more electric samba. More recently, the lambada, influenced by Caribbean rhythms, became internationally popular in the 1980s. How it developed Music in Brazil has clearly developed through two distinct movements: the written tradition (transposed from European music), also called "learned" or "concert", and the non-written tradition (resulting from the mixing of European, indigenous and African music). Both have developed in their own way and, as has also happened in many other countries, they have converged at certain points. In Brazil, those encounters between the popular and learned traditions have a specific importance because there is no doubt that therein lies one of the extraordinary features of Brazilian musical production.
The Brazilian Sound:
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