Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Brazilian Music

Dear Dennis,

On one of your posts to Salejandra, you mentioned that you didn´t know anything about Brazilian music. So here it goes some thoughts on it by our group! If you get interested, let us know, for we can provide you with the best of our rhythm!

Carla and students






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Brazilian music has a great diversity of styles because of our extensive territory. We mix different kinds of music. Usually, people rate Brazilian music in many categories, such as Sertanejo, or Country Music, Funk, Forró, Samba, Frevo, Xaxado, Bossa Nova, Maracatu and other styles that are part of this rich culture. If you are interested in Brazilian music, you should choose one of those styles and deepen your knowledge in it, but if you want and have some free time, you should go over all of them.

In foreign countries, the most famous Brazilian styles are: Samba, Bossa Nova, MPB, and, nowadays, Funk. So I´m going to talk about these three. We could start with Samba, our traditional rhythm.

Samba started in Africa and was brought to Brazil by the slaves. This rhythm is very popular all over the world because of Carnival. If you want to really know the power of Samba, you have to got to Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.

Bossa Nova is another well-known music style in foreign countries. Tom Jobim is a brilliant Brazilian musician. He composed beautiful songs and made unique arrangements. You must listen to "Garota de Ipanema", an icon of this artistic movement.

MPB holds different definitions. The abbreviation MPB means Brazilian Popular Music, but, in general, people recognize MPB as a movement called Tropicália, which started in the sixties. You should listen to Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil to start to understand MPB. These singers, or rather, musicians, are considered the first to have started defining the Brazilian Popular Music.

Funk can be considered the genuine voice of the Brazilian people. This rhythm started in the poorest communities in Brazil. Its lyrics talk about the daily lives of those communities. Violence, sex, drugs, traffic, religion are frequent topics of the lyrics.

By Janaina

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I´m 47 years old, so I like the kind of music of the 70´s and 80´s. I like, mainly, Brazilian Popular Music. I think the lyrics are full of love.

I like Roberto Carlos, Vinicius de Moraes and Chico Buarque.

When I was younger, I used to memorize the lyrics I liked, so I know many songs.

My mother used to sing when I was cleaning the house. So I kept listening to her.

Today, I sing in a Choir. I sing MPB, but also sing the classical music. I´m still learning it, but I love it. I sing in English and Latin. It is fun.

When I have a record of my group, I´ll send it to you.

By Carmem

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To appreciate Brazilian music, you have to open your mind. This is necessary because there are several to appreciate Brazilian songs.There are many music styles here. To learn about them, you have to come to Brazil.

In the South, you can listen to "The Flamenco Guitar", style originated in old Spain. In Rio de Janeiro, you can listen to Samba. In the middle of Brazil, you can listen to Brazilian Country Music. In Bahia, you should liste to Axé Music. In the Northeast, you can also listen to Forró and Frevo. Finally, in the North of Brazil, you can listen to some "northern" styles.

These are only some styles that you can listen to here. There are many others. But it would be a topic for another text.

by Lísias

3 comments:

Dennis said...

Carla, Carmen, Janaine, Lisias,

What a pleasant surprise! I'm going to do some Googling and see if I can find some of the music you recommend. I'm especially interested because I love many different styles of music and because I lived and worked in West Africa for several years, and my first wife was from the West Indies. I've been thoroughly infected by African and West Indian (in orign, African) rhythms.

TWO TECHNICAL NOTES (Carla)

1. In your last posting there is a blank frame. Should it be a photo?
2. I'm not getting notification of new postings to the blog, although I subscribed to the program you told me about. Is there a way of doing RSS direct thhrough Blogger?

Sorry about that techno-babble the rest of you. :-)

Dennis said...

How could I have forgotten to say -
Your introductions were extremely well written. I can't see them from where I'm writing in Blogger, but I recall no serious errors at all.

Dennis said...

I don't know if you want language comments. It can be very off-putting to write something informative or beautiful or moving and then have a teacher turn up and write: "You mix your tenses and you need to work on your prepositions."

On the other hand, if a few comments would help you, just let me know.