Samba

Samba is in 2/4 at 90-110 BPM, with a syncopated pattern that emphasizes the second sixteenth of each beat — the genre's characteristic forward lean. A samba batucada percussion section layers surdo (large bass drum, marking the second beat), repinique, caixa (snare), tamborim, agogô (double bell), cuíca (a friction drum that squeals), and pandeiro (frame drum). In the song format, a cavaquinho (small four-string guitar) and a seven-string acoustic guitar carry the harmonic and bass roles. Vocals are open and often improvised against a fixed chorus. Subgenres include samba de roda (the rural Bahian source form), samba-canção (slower, sung), pagode (1980s small-ensemble style), samba-enredo (large-scale Carnival school anthem), and bossa nova (its chamber-music descendant).

Samba coalesced in Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century, brought by migrants from Bahia — particularly the Afro-Brazilian community around the Praça Onze and the Tia Ciata circle. The 1917 recording "Pelo Telefone" is conventionally dated as the first samba on disc. The 1928 founding of Deixa Falar, Rio's first official samba school, formalized samba's role in Carnival, and by the 1930s the samba-enredo (theme-samba) had become a competitive form between rival schools (Mangueira, Portela, Salgueiro). Bossa nova in the late 1950s and the MPB movement in the 1960s built directly on the samba framework. Pagode in the 1980s (Zeca Pagodinho, Beth Carvalho) returned the music to small backyard ensembles.

Count the 2/4 and notice that the rhythmic accents are not on the beat — they fall on the "and" of each beat and on the second sixteenth. The surdo's deep "boom" on beat 2 is what defines samba's swing. The tamborim plays a short, complex rhythmic figure that's the same across most sambas; once you can hear it, you can hear it everywhere. Cuíca squeals function as a kind of vocal punctuation.

Cartola's "As Rosas Não Falam" (1976) is one of samba-canção's most loved recordings; for samba-enredo, any Mangueira or Portela Carnival anthem from the 1970s. For an album, Beth Carvalho's De Pé No Chão (1978) is a strong gateway.

Rio's samba schools (escolas de samba) are not music schools in any conventional sense — they are neighborhood Carnival organizations, often founded in working-class hillside communities (favelas) in the 1920s-30s, that spend the entire year preparing a single theme-samba and choreographed parade for one judged performance.