Samba rock

Samba rock (also known as samba soul or confused with samba funk and sambalanço) is a Brazilian dance culture and music genre that fuses samba with rock, soul, and funk. It emerged from the dance parties of São Paulo's lower-class black communities after they had been exposed to rock and roll and African-American music in the late 1950s.

As a development of 1960s música popular brasileira, the genre was pioneered by recording acts such as Jorge Ben, Tim Maia, and Trio Mocotó. It gained a wider popularity in the following decades after breaking through into discotheques. By the 2000s, samba rock had grown into a broader cultural movement involving dancers, disc jockeys, scholars, and musicians, who reinvented the genre in a modernized form.

Samba rock's origins lie in the predominantly black favelas of São Paulo during the late 1950s, when Brazilian radio and dance halls were reached by the global spread of American rock and roll and related African-American music such as blues and jazz. Its first incarnation was as a dance phenomenon at community block parties that began to play these styles alongside traditional samba and bolero music. These parties eventually moved to larger venues hosted by disc jockeys.

The first known samba-rock deejay Osvaldo Pereira—known by his stage name "Orquestra Invisível (Invisible Orchestra) Let’s Dance"—debuted in 1958 in downtown São Paulo. "The parties started to get crowded, and the rooms for the parties started to get larger", Pereira recounted. "Then, I thought of building my own equipment, which had to be powerful, and faithful to the sound of the live orchestras." His early equipment included a 100-watt sound system featuring a rudimentary version of a crossover, which allowed Pereira to control the frequencies of the music.

In the earliest samba-rock parties, deejays played music from a number of genres, including Partido Alto sambas and Italian rock, while attendees joined in pairs and engaged in rock and roll (Lindy Hop, Rockabilly) and samba dances (Samba de Gafieira). In 1957, Brazilian pianist Waldir Calmon recorded a samba version of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", which was a turning point for the events; according to Brazilian journalist Beatriz Miranda, "gradually, partygoers turned all the rock and samba moves into one single dance style, later named samba rock."

The dances of samba rock honor an exchange between the original music and a variety of other styles, according to Mestre Ataliba, one of São Paulo's first samba-rock dance instructors. "Dance wise, samba rock is about relaxation and concentration, all at once", he said. "It blends the African 'ginga' (body flow from Capoeira), which is present at the feet and the hips, and the European reference of the ballroom etiquette. We can dance it to the sound of Rita Pavone, samba pagode, reggae, R&B. It really embraces every music culture".

The samba-rock genre developed during the 1960s with popular Brazilian recording musicians who fused samba with American rock, soul, and funk influences. This development occurred alongside the Tropicália artistic movement within mid-1960s música popular brasileira (MPB), which itself had modernized traditional bossa nova rhythms with influences from other Brazilian and international pop rock sounds. Originators of samba rock included Trio Mocotó, Tim Maia, and Jorge Ben, who has been considered the "father of samba rock".

Ben's early music contributed significantly to the genre's rhythmic identity. Departing from bossa nova's European musical influences, the singer drew on African-American styles—such as jazz, rhythm and blues, and eventually soul, funk, and rock music—to develop a unique rhythm, which he called "sacundim sacundem". Stylistically, Ben combined samba with instruments and features from rock and roll, including the electric guitar, drum kit, and reverberation. According to Impose magazine's Jacob McKean, "the horn-heavy big band sound" on the song "Take It Easy My Brother Charles" (from Ben's 1969 self-titled album) is a key element of the genre. His 1970 album Fôrça Bruta, recorded with Trio Mocotó, was also pioneering of samba rock in its fusion of the band's groove-based accompaniment and the more rockish rhythms of Ben's guitar. Their instrumental set-ups during the 1970s often featured guitar, the pandeiro, and the timbau, a traditional drum.