The samba is considered by many popular music critics, artists, historians and social scientists as the most original of the Brazilian musical genres or the typically Brazilian musical genre. Despite the centrality or not of samba as a national musical genre, its origin (or the history of its origin) brings us the record of an immense mixture of rhythms and traditions that cross the history of the country.
Samba originated from the ancient drumming brought by Africans who came as slaves to Brazil. These drums were generally associated with religious elements that established a kind of ritual communication among blacks through music and dance, percussion and body movements. The rhythms of the batuque gradually incorporated elements from other types of music, especially in the Rio de Janeiro scene of the 19th century.
From the 19th century onwards, the city of Rio de Janeiro, which had become the capital of the Empire, also began to host a wave of blacks from other regions of the country, especially from Bahia. It was in this context that the clusters around Yoruba religions were born in the central region of the city, mainly in the Praça Onze region, where mothers and fathers of saint worked. It was in this environment that the first samba circles appeared, mixing the elements of African drumming with polka and maxixe.
The word samba refers, properly, to fun and party. However, as time went by, it came to mean the battle between specialists in the genre, the battle between who would best improvise the verses in the samba circle. One of the segments of the samba carioca, the party high , was characterized by this. As researcher Marco Alvito said in reference to the history of the word:
“One of the possible origins, according to Nei Lopes, would be the Quioco ethnic group, in which samba it means to cavort, play, have fun like a kid. Some say it comes from the Bantu semba , as the meaning of navel or heart. It seemed to apply to Angolan nuptial dances characterized by the navel, in a kind of fertility ritual. In Bahia, the modality samba of wheel, in which men play and only women dance, one at a time. There are other versions, less rigid, in which a couple occupies the center of the wheel. (ALVITO, Marcos. Samba. In:Journal of History of the National Library. Year 9. nº 97. October, 2013. p 80). ”
As mentioned, this samba de roda determined the essence of typical carioca samba, that is, its collective character, with improvised verses and choruses sung in a group. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, samba was asserting itself as the dominant popular musical genre in the suburbs and, later, in the Carioca hills. Two sambistas became well known in this context:João da Baiana (1887-1974), son of Tia Perciliana, from Santo Amaro de Purificação, who recorded the samba “Batuque na Cozinha”, and Donga (Joaquim Maria dos Santos) (1890-1974). 1974), who recorded, on November 27, 1916, what became known as the first samba recorded on record companies:“PeloPhone”.
From the 1930s, samba gained great space in the music industry and was also used by the dictatorial policy of Getúlio Vargas at the time of the Estado Novo. One of the great scholars of the roots of samba was also a samba singer and was among the names that spread in Rio de Janeiro in the 1930s. His nickname was “Almirante”, his name was Henrique Foreis Domingues (1908 - 1980), which later became broadcaster. Almirante was part of the group “Bando dos Tangarás” with Noel Rosa in Vila Isabel. His work In the time of Noel Rosa searches for folkloric elements of urban samba developed in Rio and relates this genre to the various influences of other musical rhythms from various parts of Brazil. Names such as Wilson Batista, Noel Rosa, Cartola and Nelson Cavaquinho also became references of this period.
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* Image credits:Commons
By me. Claudio Fernandes