Click on the links in the text to hear associated sound files. The Brazilian music scene has always been a lively mix.
Brazil is above all a melting pot.
Not a melting pot like we call ourselves in the US, but a real melting pot. While it would certainly not be accurate to suggest that racial discrimination doesn't exist in Brazil, its basis is different from the experience of North America, tending to be more class-oriented than biological. The melting starts with the Portuguese colonists, who brought their Euro-Iberian sensiblity to their life there. The slaves were brought from western and southwestern Africa, mainly for work on coffee and sugar plantations. The Portuguese were dealing with Africans in commmerce and colonization long before they got to Brazil, and perhaps because of that familiarity they were more willing than their British and French counterparts in North America to let the culture of the African slaves breathe.