Music of Brazil

Choro

Choro (literally "cry" in Portuguese, but in context a more appropriate translation would be "lament"), traditionally called chorinho ("little cry" or "little lament"). Its origins are in 19th century Rio de Janeiro. Originally chôro was played by a trio of flute, guitar and cavaquinho (a small chordophone with four strings). The young pianist Ernesto Nazareth published his first chôro (Não Caio Noutra) in 1878 at the age of 14. Nazareth's chôros are often listed as polkas; he also composed waltzes, schottisches, milongas and Brazilian Tangos. (He resisted the popular term maxixe to represent Brazilian tango.) Much of the success of the chôro style of music came from the early days of radio, when bands performed live on the air. By the 1960s, it had all but disappeared, being displaced by Bossa Nova and other styles of Brazilian popular music. However, in the late 1970s there was a successful effort to revitalize the genre carried out by some famous artists: Pixinguinha and Waldir Azevedo.

Musica Popular Brasileira

Tropicalia eventually morphed into a more popular form, MPB (Música Popular Brasileira), which now refers to any Brazilian pop music. Well-known MPB artists include chanteuses Nara Leão, Gal Costa, Maria Bethânia, Rita Lee, Simone and Elis Regina and singer/songwriters Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Ivan Lins, Djavan, João Bosco, Aderbal Duarte, and others.

Bossa nova

Antonio Carlos Jobim and other 1950s composers helped develop a fusion of jazz harmonies and a smoother, often slower, samba beat called bossa nova, which developed at the beach neighborhoods of Ipanema and, later, the Copacabana nightclubs. The first bossa nova records by João Gilberto quickly became huge hits in Brazil. Bossa nova was introduced to the rest of the world by American jazz musicians in the early 1960s, and songs like "The Girl from Ipanema", which remains the biggest Brazilian international hit, eventually became jazz standards.

Musica nordestina

Musica nordestina is a generic term for any popular music from the large region of Northeastern Brazil, including both coastal and inland areas. Rhythms are slow and plodding, and are derived from accordions and guitars instead of percussion instruments like in the rest of Brazil—in this region, African rhythms and Portuguese melodies combined to form maracatu and dance music called baião has become popular. Most influentially, however, the area around the state of Pernambuco, the home of forró.

Musica gaúcha

Musica gaúcha is a general term used for the music originally from Rio Grande do Sul state, in Southern Brazil. It is somewhat of a mixture between Argentinian-Uruguayan styles with Portuguese melodies and aboriginal rhythms. The most famous musicians of this genre are Renato Borghetti, Yamandú Costa, Jayme Caetano Braun and Luiz Marenco.

Frevo

Frevo is a style of music from Olinda and Recife. Frevo bands began playing during the Carnival, the most popular event of Brazil.

Forró

Forró is played by a trio consisting of a drum and a triangle and led by an accordion. Forró is rapid and eminently danceable, and became one of the foundations for lambada in the 1980s. Luiz Gonzaga was the preeminent early forró musician who popularized the genre in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the 1940s with songs like "Asa Branca".

Funk Carioca and rap

Funk Carioca is a type of dance music from Rio de Janeiro, derived from and superficially similar to Miami Bass. In Rio it is most often simply known as Funk, although it is very different musically from what Funk means in most other places and contexts. It's usually seen as party music and high and medium class people are usually reluctant to admit they listen to it, since music from this genre usually contains sexually explicit lyrics and is attributed to poor people derived from the Favela. Funk Carioca, like other types of hip-hop lifts heavily from samples such as international rips or from previous funk music. Many popular funk songs sampled music from the movie Rocky.

Funk as well as rap was introduced to Brazil in a systematic way in the 1980s. These types of music were heavily supported in big cities by people—usually teenagers—of lower socioeconomic status. Many funk artists have openly associated themselves with black movements and often in the lyrics of their songs, comment on race relations and openly express black pride.

In Sao Paulo and other places in the south of Brazil, in more urban areas, rap is more prevalent than funk. The lower class, mostly nonwhite rappers are referred to as "Rapeiros". They dress similarly to American rappers that they have seen on television. Early Brazilian rap was based upon rhyming speeches delivered over dance bases sampled from funk albums, with occasional scratches. Sao Paulo has gained a strong, underground Brazilian rap scene since it's emergence in the late 1980s with many independent labels forming for young rappers to establish themselves on.