page_title: Music of Brazil
section_title: Indigenous and folk music
hierarchical_section_title: Music of Brazil / Indigenous and folk music
caption_attribution_description: English: Brazilian dance lunduPortuguês: Ambiente do Brasil-Colônia, a dança do lundu
context_page_description: The music of Brazil encompasses various regional musical styles influenced by African, European and Amerindian forms. Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles such as forró, repente, coco de roda, axé, sertanejo, samba, bossa nova, MPB, música nativista, pagode, tropicália, choro, maracatu, embolada, frevo, brega, modinha and Brazilian versions of foreign musical styles, such as rock, soul, hip-hop, disco music, country music, ambient, industrial and psychedelic music, rap, classical music, fado, and gospel.
  Samba has become the best known form of Brazilian music worldwide, especially because of the country's carnival, although bossa nova, which had Antônio Carlos Jobim as one of its most acclaimed composers and performers, have received much attention abroad since the 1950s, when the song "Desafinado", interpreted by João Gilberto, was first released.
  The first four winners of the Shell Brazilian Music prize have each left a legacy on Brazilian music and are among the representatives of Brazilian popular music: Pixinguinha, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Dorival Caymmi.
context_section_description: The native peoples of the Brazilian rainforest play instruments including whistles, flutes, horns, drums and rattles.  Much of the area's folk music imitates the sounds of the Amazon Rainforest.  When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, the first natives they met played an array of reed flutes and other wind and percussion instruments.  The Jesuit missionaries introduced songs which used the Tupi language with Christian lyrics, an attempt to convert the people to Christianity, and also introduced Gregorian chant and the flute, bow, and the clavichord.
  The earliest music in what is now Brazil must have been that of the native peoples of the area.  Little is known about their music, since no written records exist of this era.  With the arrival of Europeans, Brazilian culture began to take shape as a synthesis of native musical styles with Portuguese music and African music.
caption: Brazilian dance-song lundu, c. 1835
exif: {}