Chula is a dance and music genre which originated in Portugal, dating at least from the eighteenth century. [1]
The traditional Portuguese Chula folkdance has a tempo and rhythm marked by a bass drum, a triangle and cymbals, and is native to the Upper Douro. It incorporates singing accompanied by violins, violas, accordions and percussion. The Portuguese Chula was an important influence on the emergence of samba rhythms and Rio Grande do Sul Gaucho dance in Brazil.
Chula in Bahia, Brazil, Santo Amaro da Purificação and surrounding areas, is an expression of the African-Brazilian culture. It is a style of samba practiced during dance festivals and involves short steps and cyclical movements typical of samba. The music features strong drum rhythms and call-and-response guitar or viola playing. [2]
The chula, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, takes the form of a challenge, in which only men are allowed to contest. A four-foot wooden stick, commonly called spear, is placed on the floor. At the sound of accordions, the contesting dancers perform different tapping steps back and forth across the spear. After a sequence is performed by a dancer, the following one must at least repeat it, preferably also increasing the complexity of the movements. One will lose the challenge if unable to repeat the movements played by the challenging dancer, or if one touches the spear while dancing. Nowadays, the Chula is performed mostly in folk music festivals and rodeos.
Samba is a name or prefix used for several rhythmic variants, such as samba urbano carioca, samba de roda, amongst many other forms of samba, mostly originated in the Rio de Janeiro and Bahia states. Samba is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, having continued its development on the communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Having its roots in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé, as well as other Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous folk traditions, such as the traditional Samba de Caboclo, it is considered one of the most important cultural phenomena in Brazil and one of the country's symbols. Present in the Portuguese language at least since the 19th century, the word "samba" was originally used to designate a "popular dance". Over time, its meaning has been extended to a "batuque-like circle dance", a dance style, and also to a "music genre". This process of establishing itself as a musical genre began in the 1910s and it had its inaugural landmark in the song "Pelo Telefone", launched in 1917. Despite being identified by its creators, the public, and the Brazilian music industry as "samba", this pioneering style was much more connected from the rhythmic and instrumental point of view to maxixe than to samba itself.
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter and politician, known for both his musical innovation and political activism. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Brazil's Minister of Culture in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Gil's musical style incorporates an eclectic range of influences, including rock, Brazilian genres including samba, African music, and reggae.
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 forró, repente, coco de roda, axé, sertanejo, samba, bossa nova, MPB, gaucho music, pagode, tropicália, choro, maracatu, embolada, frevo, brega, modinha and Brazilian versions of foreign musical styles, such as rock, pop music, soul, hip-hop, disco music, country music, ambient, industrial and psychedelic music, rap, classical music, fado, and gospel.
Bossa nova is a relaxed style of samba developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is mainly characterized by a calm syncopated rhythm with chords and fingerstyle mimicking the beat of a samba groove, as if it was a simplification and stylization on the guitar of the rhythm produced by a samba school band. Another defining characteristic of the style is the use of unconventional chords in some cases with complex progressions and "ambiguous" harmonies. A common misconception is that these complex chords and harmonies were derived from jazz, but samba guitar players have been using similar arrangement structures since the early 1920s, indicating a case of parallel evolution of styles rather than a simple transference from jazz to bossa nova. Nevertheless, bossa nova was influenced by jazz, both in the harmonies used and also by the instrumentation of songs, and today many bossa nova songs are considered jazz standards. The popularity of bossa nova has helped to renew samba and contributed to the modernization of Brazilian music in general.
Milonga is a musical genre that originated in the Río de la Plata areas of Argentina, Uruguay, and the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is considered a precursor of the tango.
Lambada is a dance from the state of Pará in Brazil. The dance briefly became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in the Philippines, Latin America and Caribbean countries. It has adopted aspects of dances such as maxixe, carimbó, forró, salsa and merengue.
Samba is a lively dance of Afro-Brazilian origin in 2/4(2 by 4) time danced to samba music.
The berimbau is a traditional Angolan musical bow that is commonly used in Brazil. It is also known as sekitulege among the Baganda and Busoga.
Capoeira music is the traditional musical accompaniment used in Afro-Brazilian art capoeira, featuring instruments like berimbau, pandeiro, atabaque, agogô, and reco-reco. The music plays a crucial role in capoeira roda, setting the style the energy of a game.
The Carnival of Brazil is an annual festival held the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. During Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival", from carnelevare, "to remove meat."
The term forró refers to a musical genre, a rhythm, a dance and the event itself where forró music is played and danced. Forró is an important part of the culture of the Northeastern Region of Brazil. It encompasses various dance types as well as a number of different musical genres. Their music genres and dances have gained widespread popularity in all regions of Brazil, especially during the Brazilian June Festivals. Forró has also become increasingly popular all over the world, with a well-established forró scene in Europe.
Batucada is a substyle of samba and refers to a percussive style, usually performed by an ensemble, known as a bateria. Batucada music is characterized by its syncopated style and fast pace with a marked rhythm.
A samba school is a dancing, marching, and drumming club. They practice and often perform in a huge square-compounds and are devoted to practicing and exhibiting samba, an Afro-Brazilian dance and drumming style. Although the word "school" is in the name, samba schools do not offer instruction in a formal setting. Samba schools have a strong community basis and are traditionally associated with a particular neighborhood. They are often seen to affirm the cultural validity of the Afro-Brazilian heritage in contrast to the mainstream education system, and have evolved often in contrast to authoritarian development. The phrase "escola de samba" is popularly held to derive from the schoolyard location of the first group's early rehearsals. In Rio de Janeiro especially, they are mostly associated with poor neighborhoods ("favelas"). Samba and the samba school can be deeply interwoven with the daily lives of the shanty-town dwellers. Throughout the year the samba schools have various happenings and events, most important of which are rehearsals for the main event which is the yearly carnival parade. Each of the main schools spend many months each year designing the theme, holding a competition for their song, building the floats and rehearsing. It is overseen by a carnavalesco or carnival director. From 2005, some fourteen of the top samba schools in Rio have used a specially designed warehouse complex, the size of ten football pitches, called Samba City to build and house the elaborate floats. Each school's parade may consist of about 3,000 performers or more, and the preparations, especially producing the many different costumes, provide work for thousands of the poorest in Brazilian society. The resulting competition is a major economic and media event, with tens of thousands in the live audience and screened live to millions across South America.
Funk carioca, also known as favela funk, in other parts of the world as baile funk and Brazilian funk, or even simply funk, is a Brazilian hip hop-influenced music genre from Rio de Janeiro, taking influences from musical styles such as Miami bass and freestyle.
Samba-reggae is a music genre from Bahia, Brazil. Samba reggae, as its name suggests, was originally derived as a blend of Brazilian samba with Jamaican reggae as typified by Bob Marley.
Tchê music or chê music is a variation of the traditional music style from the most southern state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. It incorporates elements from Bahian music (north-east), of the Chorinho, the Pagode, the Samba itself is also used, folk and dance music, to the most common musical rhythms of Rio Grande do Sul, like the Chamamé, Vaneira and Xote.
Chamarrita can refer to two different types of music and dance, one from the Azores in Portugal and one from the Rio de la Plata littoral region in northern Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil.
The rabeca or rabeca chuleira is a fiddle originating in Portugal, commonly used in Portugal, Northeastern Brazil, where it is most commonly used in Brazilian forró music, and Cape Verde. It is descended from the medieval rebec.
Brazilian gaucho music denotes the traditional music of Río Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná states, whose population has a strong ancestry of European countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany. The word gaucho refers to the countryside and farm people.
Afro-Brazilian music consists of a mixture of musical and cultural influences from Sub-Saharan Africa, Portugal, and on a smaller scale, Amerindian music, creating a large variety of styles. Lyrics, instruments, and even melodies often have connections to African culture and even influence culture and music in other countries today. It is strongly influenced by African rhythms. The most well known sub-genres of Afro-Brazilian musical genres are samba, marabaixo, maracatu, ijexá, coco, jongo, carimbó, lambada, maxixe, and maculelê.