What I love about Brazil has to be all the flavors in the music. Every genre has such a favorable, uniquely Brazilian sound which mixes the indigenous Brazilians with the africans and the Portuguese. Pretty much for many music listeners, if you wanna know about brazils history, just look to its music.
A BIT OF HISTORY: SAMBA
Brazil has the largest African population outside of africa due to slavery. As with many Nations who were on the Atlantic slave route, Africans brought their culture with them everywhere they ended up, and this is especially the case in Brazil.
Salvador, Bahia was the first capital of brazil and for 300 years, 400 Million africans was brought through there. This is important because its the musical birthplace for Brazil's many genres. One of those genres happens to be Samba. The roots of samba are traced to Angola and the Congo through Candomble . When Brazil's political situation changed they forbid and banned Africans from practicing so they hid their religion with Catholicism but kept the rhythms. So Samba survived and flourished through slavery, migration to Rio (the new capital), and additional migration from the Portuguese.
Now samba is one of the nations biggest showcases of cultural heritage all over the world. You can thank Getùlio Vargas for that. He wanted the world to know the cultural identity of brazil, and made Carnival an official event. Now there are Samba schools and everything!
You can learn about the history in this beautiful documentary done by BBC- they go from the history of Samba to Bossa Novas- this is part 1 but there are 4 parts.
Playlist:
When deciding to start this playlist series, I knew two things:
I wanted a Nation that had a lot of genres.
2. I wanted a Nation where the music genres directly impacted its Nation. Whether it be politically or socially.
Brazil had both. I also wanted to showcase the beauty of the language (this is something I want to focus on in all my playlist.)
So we start out nice and slow with so singer songwriter /lofi music. I like the grooviness of Linker e os caramelowes. I had actually discovered Linker while watching a tv show a couple years ago and shazamed it. The next group is Tuyo which I actually found out on Spotify's similar artist to Linker. Beautiful vocals and melodies. A lot of people told me that they especially liked "Solamento."
Now when we get to the lit songs (pop) on the playlist the women take that. IZA , has some fun, kitschy songs (pop/rnb). Anitta is a fav of mine because the songs she ends up featured on are so lit and danceable. My favorite actually became a hit : "Você partiu meu Coração."
Then we get into some sertanejo! We couldn't start introducing this genre without "Ai se eu te pego." which has its own dance moves that you don't even need to understand Portuguese for you to understand what the songs saying :)
And lastly there would not be a Brazilian playlist without the works of Sergio Mendes and Jobim. I hope you enjoyed the first World Playlist. (It gets added to weekly) click here to listen to playlist
Pinterest:
In this pinterest, you can find out more history of brazils music, airbnb musical experiences such as learning capoeira or samba. As well as learning the black history of brazil during your stay and checking out the best street art. click here
I hope you enjoyed your trip to BRAZIL!