Carnival of Sounds E-Book

Maher Asaad Baker

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 87

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

"Carnival of Sounds" offers a wonderful gauntlet to step through the facetted kaleidoscope of musical Brazil. This work is a detailed study of Brazilian music and the folklore that developed from the indigenous Brazilian tribes' primitive beats all through to the modern world. Uncover the influence of African, Portuguese and Indigenous people as they contributed to developing scenarios of samba, bossa nova and Tropicalia music. Feel the grand spirit of Brazil through its Carnival which is not only a musical party but also a representation of the country's culture. From early simple folk songs' melodies to the revolutionary modern MPB – this books brings the reader through the history and importance of Brazil's music. Carnival of Sounds with the help of many examples and insightful observations gives readers a profound vision of how music contributed to the formation of Brazilian culture during centuries. Regardless of whether you're a music lover, a student of cultures, or a plain and simple explorer of Brazil's cultural trappings, this book is your starting point to a nation's pulse.

Leseprobe

Maher Asaad Baker

Carnival of Sounds

© 2024 Maher Asaad Baker

ISBN Softcover: 978-3-384-44217-8

ISBN Hardback: 978-3-384-44218-5

ISBN E-Book: 978-3-384-44219-2

This work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the contents. Any exploitation is prohibited.

Cover image designed by Freepik

Contents

Introduction

Indigenous Roots

The African Influence

Portuguese Heritage

Birth of Samba

Bossa Nova

Tropicalia

Carnival

MPB

Folk Traditions

Contemporary Trends

Disclaimer

About the Author

Introduction

Brazilian music is firmly believed to be one of the major components of the country’s cultural and national image. As a result of colonialism, dead-end slavery, immigration and miscegenation of Indians, Africans and Europeans, Brazil has developed a highly complex rhythmic music that is rather unparalleled to any other on this planet. The pulse of Brazilian music is unique and its direction provides an international influence and it is a culture and an opinion.

It can, therefore, be argued that popular music was born with the indigenous communities in the Amazon and other regions. The bare foundational features of vocalization, movement, pacing, and percussion, exclusive of chants, rituals, and confident drumming laid down the rhythmic and the spiritual bearings. It is such musical knowledge in the form of an oral tradition that was passed from one generation to another.

This means that musical elements from Angola, Congo or maybe Mozambique were transferred to colony-era Brazil when millions of Africans were forced to be taken. Such things as call-and-response vocal singing, poly rhythmic metering and specific drum residues and blended with native tropes. These African retentions are thus enduring in Brazilian music to date as peace in the samba, and capoeira dance among others.

Regarding music, it varied from region to region because of the origin of the settlers, the climate of the new land, geographic conditions and interaction with other countries. The Northeast, which had a largely black phase, rose in the anthemic band and rhythmic songs and dance music. Region amazonense formed dances such as carimbó and cururu in which Indigenous, black, and European loan words were assimilated. They were displaced and replaced other European and Argentine styles like polka and chamamé became to spread to the southern Brazilian states.

International Bestselling Books and Rising of Large Popular Genres

In the twentieth century, some musical genres in Brazil became culturally popular and are now associated with the country. These include:

- Samba: Samba originated from Rio de Janeiro and is a fusion of African percussion and rhythm with dance and Portuguese vocal harmony. Samba is still Brazil’s largest music export or the different rhythmic samba more especially that which is relatable to carnival.

- Bossa Nova: Developed in 1950, this is a refined mixture of the samba rhythm and the jazz harmony, which expresses the spirit of Rio de Janeiro in the best possible way. Some of the bossa nova hits included ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ which made it around the world-famous.

- Tropicália: Defined in the late 1960s by musicians such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, it assimilated Brazilian traditional music and Rock and Roll with politics.

- MPB: This is a generic term used to describe a myriad of styles of music from Brazil from the 1960s onwards to some extent, which sought out both regional and other global trends to achieve pop elegance.

This brief introduction shows how geography, demography, immigration, and cultural borrowing defined the sound of Brazil. In the following sections, we look at the ways through which music is used in society in aspects such as; as a means of expressing identity, passing on information and showcasing culture.

While it is impossible to overestimate the importance of the regional dialects that show where the dwellers of the country come from, several musics separate cultural areas in Brazil. The baião rhythm which is embedded in the music paints a picture of the Northeast as a region devoid of vegetation. Chamame which is a dance based on polka takes one to the rural gaucho area in the South. There is a connection between Samba carioca rhythm and Rio beach party feeling which is associated with the city. These regional musical identities exist side by side within the range of the Brazil sounds.

The music of Brazil could be dated back to the time of slavery which resulted in injustice and as a result, people came up with musical forms of protest. The songs the African slaves sang in sync on the sugar plantations of America, were the call-and-response work songs through which they passed coded messages to each other. People disguised their unlawful fighting style while they were doing Capoeira and that is what they did. At present, and hip hop/rap artists in Brazil sing from the favela, which is a shanty town and inform as well as entertain, people about the social realities.

About the cultural relay, music retains languages, religion, history and traditions that globalization wants to erase. The communities of cultural identity in Brazil are practiced by folk songs Festival music and dances Samba school proceedings and folia de reis, rural procession. This is the sort of musical continuity that assists considerably in avoiding the processes of cultural flattening.

The official engagement in cultural diplomacy in the annals of music started in the 1940s with Carmen Miranda and has grown up to today’s craze for Brazilian pop troupes. Samba dancers and bossa superstar João Gilberto are full of images that turn the exotic Rio into people’s lives beyond national borders. Samba and bossa nova, for example, made Brazilian music associated with glamour as related to sunshine, sensualities as well and sports. This ‘soft power’ export cancels the pictures that people have of problems with social justice, corruption and crime rates in Brazil.

The two most important musical rhythms illustrate a process of merging populations in the context of Brazil – samba and bossa nova. One must, therefore, be aware that behind the term ‘Brazilian music’ hides numerous local patrimonies and practices that are as ethno-geographical as the national context in which they originated, informed by migration, slavery or trade and other forms of transfer. Through Music, there is a passage in a vehicular manner to cross cultural boundaries, it provides voice and continuity for the suppressed in language as well as offers a constant continuation of one’s tradition from the ancient to the contemporary world. These numerous roles should provide clear evidence of the fact that music has a central position in the society of Brazilians. Other researchers repeatedly address how music does and shows class, race, sexual desire, history and other things in Brazil. This and other similar musical conversations will no doubt continue unabated throughout the years, decades and centuries to come and Brazil will continue to answer to their music through her stages, screens, recording studios and any corner that one might wish to turn a music eye to.

Indigenous Roots

We know almost nothing of the musical practices of the first people of Brazil, but their presence may still be faintly heard in the music of today’s Brazil. Captivity and destruction of native European civilization and African slavery which was the adoption of aborigines as slaves was an attempt to wipe out indigenous culture in the country. While such modern researchers are in the pursuit of Brazil’s early history, they are offered an opportunity to find out those first signs of music.

From the historical point of view, learning dates back to archeology, people inhabited the territory that is now Brazil about 12,000 years ago. These initial people migrated into the new world via Beringiam land bridge from Asia a region that saw them carry their music. This was a nomadic community that consisted of hunters and food gatherers who lived and traveled to regions depending on the availability of what is today referred to as foods in South America while carrying whatever little they possessed. There was also a need to ensure that musical instruments could easily be carried around, especially for those musicians who traveled a lot.

The indigenous Brazilian early music was drum and rattle percussion music. The first Brazilians fashioned drums from wood and animal hide for the strong bass beat which is so typical of most tribal dances. Small seed shakers and tubes have pebbles or hard seeds that produce other rhythms for dances and songs. Other common instruments were bear bones and wooden/animal bone/whistles and flutes and seashell horns that would serve as an amplification to loud vocal calls.

It would be logical to suggest that as early groups had been cultivating the plants by some 5000 BC and as they began to have denser and more settled in the village type of living then the musical diversification increased as well. Staple diet promoted the development of pottery and woodwind instruments which is a possibility with the sedentary groups rather than nomadic groups. Ceramic ocarinas and flutes have been uncovered in some archaeological sites of some ancient settlements; this means that settled life changed native music. Concerning the complex rattles and panpipes, the terracotta statuettes do as well. Consequently, the disparity in the instruments led to increased musical complexity adequate for documenting the changing aspects of cultures.

As in many indigenous cultures all over the world at that time, music had its place in the cultural, religious and even practical life of early Brazilians. Some of the songs and dances are very well synchronized with the feeling of the connected communities with their ideas and land. The culture was not built on the notion that music is a thing done in addition to everyday practice, but a way people interact with their world. It is essential to highlight that all these concepts ran through each stage of the ancient Brazilian societies and linked today’s indigenous peoples to over 10 thousand years of their history.

The tribes that existed in Brazil had a way of passing information between the human beings and gods which was done through music. It’s also possible to get familiar with the shaman’s drum beat, with two flutes playing a single chorus in the song of plant and animal spirits opening the doors between two realities. Every tribe individual was producing music believing that song and instruments could express and accomplish ventures with spirits.