Guide · Brazilian samba

Samba is an Afro-Brazilian music and dance born in Rio de Janeiro at the start of the twentieth century, out of traditions that came from Bahia. It is played in two-beat time, it rests on syncopation — the accent falls where you don’t expect it — and as a dance it covers very different forms: danced alone, in a couple, or in a circle, depending on which one you mean.

That is the short answer. What follows is what a definition leaves out: where it really came from, why it sounds the way it does, how many sambas there are, and — if you are searching from Argentina — how to tell it apart from zamba, which is something else entirely and which Google will mix in without warning you.

First of all

There are four different things spelled almost the same, and in Argentina they get mixed up constantly — including in Google’s results.

That is why across this whole site you will read Brazilian samba and not just “samba”: it isn’t redundancy, it is making sure you don’t end up in a folk dance class when you wanted something else.

Where it comes from

“O samba”: a masculine word in Portuguese The Portuguese form is masculine — o samba — and that is how it is used in Brazil and in writing about Brazil. English assigns the word no gender at all, so here it is simply samba.

The word probably comes from the Kimbundu semba, which names the navel bump — the umbigada — with which one dancer called the next into the centre of the circle. That gesture still exists today in the samba de roda of the Recôncavo, in Bahia.

Samba was not born in Rio: it arrived in Rio. At the end of the nineteenth century, after abolition, thousands of Black Bahian people migrated to the capital and settled in the port district. In the houses of the tias bahianas — the best known being Tia Ciata’s, on Praça Onze — people played, cooked and practised candomblé, and that is where those Bahian circles met the urban music of Rio.

Out of those gatherings came, in 1917, Pelo Telefone, registered under Donga’s name: the first track officially recorded as a samba. It still sounded a good deal like maxixe.

The samba we recognise today finished taking shape a decade later, in the Estácio neighbourhood. That generation — Ismael Silva among them — lengthened the phrases and rearranged the accents so the rhythm could be caminar: they needed music you could parade to. In 1928 they founded Deixa Falar, considered the first escola de samba.

From there the story is well known: in the 1930s the State turned samba into a national symbol, the Rio Carnival organised itself around the escolas, and what had been persecuted music became the country’s calling card.

How it sounds

Samba is written in 2/4: two beats to the bar. But if you count “one, two” and expect the hits to land there, you will understand nothing, because what defines samba is exactly what happens entre the beats.

The surdo — the bass drum — marks the second beat more heavily than the first. That inversion of the expected is the engine of the rhythm, and it is why the body moves downwards when the music seems to go up.

The instruments of an escola’s bateria are roughly these:

To dance you need to know none of this. You need one thing only: to hear the surdo. Whoever finds the surdo finds the step.

What a batucada is and which instruments make it up →

There is no single samba

“Samba” names a family, not a single genre. These are the ones you will hear named most often, and they are worth keeping apart.

Bahia · the oldest

In a circle: the group sings and drums, and the dancers step into the centre one at a time. It is the direct ancestor of everything else and is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.

Rio de Janeiro · danced alone

The Carnival one, the samba of the passistas on the avenue. Danced alone and almost on the spot, with three supports per beat and the weight on the front of the foot. How it is danced, step by step →

Rio de Janeiro · danced as a couple

Rio’s ballroom samba, from the old popular dance halls called gafieiras. In hold, with long travelling steps, turns and improvised figures.

Escolas de samba · for parading

The samba composed each year to tell the theme — the enredo — that an escola takes to the Sambódromo. It exists to be sung by thousands of people while walking.

Rio · of the circle and the backyard

The samba of the gathering: a table, beer, acoustic instruments and verses improvised in turn. The pagode of the 1980s is the version that went mainstream.

The slow branches

Samba-canção slowed the tempo and gave the lyrics the lead. From that branch, crossed with jazz harmony, came bossa nova in the 1950s — which is, technically, a daughter of samba.

From the ear to the foot

It depends which one. But there is something they share: Brazilian samba is not danced by “marking” the beat with the foot, it is danced by respondiendo to the beat with the body.

In samba no pé the basic step has three supports per musical beat, with the weight on the front of the foot and a knee that never fully locks. It looks fast because it is, but what makes it hard is not the speed: it is the precision of the weight change. It is a small step done exactly, not a big step done energetically.

And it does not start with the feet. It starts with hearing the pulse and finding where the second beat is. Almost everyone who says “samba doesn’t come to me” does not have a foot problem: they have a listening problem nobody has taught them to solve yet.

And if you want to dance it

I teach Brazilian samba online, from the foundations, to women who have never danced. We start with the pulse — which is exactly where almost everyone gets stuck — and then with the feet.

How to dance samba no pé from scratch  ·  The traditional dances of Brazil  ·  The Rio Carnival from the inside