History of Samba
Brazil could not exist without Africa. From the African influence on the Portuguese spoken in Brazil, to the country’s cuisine, music, dance, religious traditions, and ways of life, African cultural legacies have made an immeasurable and ever-evolving contribution to Latin America’s largest state.
Many scholars believe the origin of the word “samba” to be semba, a term in the Kimbundu language of Angola
that refers to a choreographic move in which two people touch bellies as an invitation to dance
(known in Portuguese as umbigada, from umbigo, meaning “navel”). The semba was a key trait of many dances
brought to Northeast Brazil by enslaved Bantu people from the Kongo-Angola region of Africa. One of these
The Portuguese colonizers referred to these dances accompanied by percussion, handclapping,
and singing generically as batuque. By the early 20th Century, “samba” replaced batuque as an umbrella term for such dances.
Samba de roda (a circle gathering where enslaved Afro-Brazilians sang, dance and played music) and
partido alto (a kind of samba in the form of a “duel” between two or more singers) were two early northeastern forms
of the genre that arrived in Rio with migrants from Bahia State in the latter half of the 19th Century. The lundu, modinha,
maxixe, choro, and marcha are five other influential antecedents to the samba carioca (Rio samba).
Of these, the lundu and maxixe are the most direct precursors to modern Samba music.
The modern Samba no Pe (Samba on the foot) dance form known worldwide is deeply rooted in Samba de Roda.
The lundu pioneered the introduction of African musical traits in urban Brazilian music. First referenced in writing in 1780,
the lundu was an Afro-Brazilian dance and music style that featured the semba maneuver. Considered the first black
music to be accepted by Brazilian society, the lundu entered the Portuguese court by the end of the 18th Century as an elite style with guitar or piano accompaniment. The salon and street versions of the lundu both continued to be popular in Brazil until
the early 20th Century. The first record made in Brazil was of a lundu called “Isto É Bom” (This Is Good),
released in 1902. The song was composed by Xisto Bahia and performed by the singer Baiano for the Casa Edison record company.
The maxixe couple dance emerged in Rio around 1880 as a blend of the lundu with the European polka and Cuban habanera.
Disparaged by some for its sensual moves, the maxixe soon replaced the lundu as Brazil’s most popular urban social dance and even made it to Europe in the early 20th Century. Many of the earliest recorded samba songs, released around that same time in Brazil,
are rhythmically based on the maxixe.
In the late 19th Century, leading up to the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, large contingents of people of African descent
migrated south from Bahia State to the then capital of the country, Rio de Janeiro. There in the center of the City,
Bahians established their own community — an area that came to be known as A Pequena África no Rio de Janeiro, or
“Little Africa in Rio.” At the forefront of this community were black matriarchs known as tias, or “aunts,” who were leaders in the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomblé, makers of sweets, and party hostesses who played an essential role in the development of the
samba carioca (Rio de Janeiro samba). Tia Ciata (Hilária Batista de Almeida, 1854-1924), who migrated from Bahia to Rio
in 1876 at the age of 22, became a legendary figure in whose home some of the early samba pioneers in Rio gathered
and made music. The song “Pelo Telefone” (Donga - Ernesto Joaquim Maria dos Santos, 1891-1974/Mauro de Almeida),
created at Tia Ciata's house, was the first song to be registered as a samba, in 1916. Additional samba pioneers
who forged the earliest incarnations of samba in Rio included Pixinguinha (Alfredo da Rocha Vianna, Jr., 1898-1973),
Donga (Ernesto Joaquim Maria dos Santos, 1891-1974), João da Baiana (João Machado Guedes, 1887-1974),
Heitor dos Prazeres (1898-1966), and Sinhô (José Barbosa da Silva, 1888-1930).
Brasil Brasil, BBC 4-part documentary on samba culture
(from slavery to first Black musicians of Brazilian music, form samba to bossa, historical, social, political, and cultural perspectives)
