page_title: Samba
section_title: Samba-enredo
hierarchical_section_title: Samba / Etymology / Samba-enredo
context_page_description: Samba is a Brazilian music genre and dance style, with its roots in Africa via the Central African slave trade and African religious traditions, particularly of Congo, through the samba de roda genre of the northeastern Brazilian state, from which it derived. Although there were various forms of samba in Brazil with popular rhythms originated from African drumming and the African structures of polyrhythm of Beat and Off-Beat, Time-Line-Pattern and the elementary pulse, that are performed by different instruments of the bateria of the samba schools of the famous Samba-Enredo, that has its origins in Rio de Janeiro.
  Samba is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival. Considered one of the most popular Brazilian cultural expressions, the samba has become an icon of Brazilian national identity.
  The Bahian Samba de Roda, was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2005. It is the main root of the samba carioca, the samba that is played and danced in Rio de Janeiro.
context_section_description: Samba-enredo or samba de enredo is a subgenre of samba, performed by a samba school (or escola de samba) for the festivities of Brazilian Carnival. "Samba-enredo" translates literally in Portuguese a samba-song, which is thematically bonded to the selected special theme (Enredo) of its samba school and narrates the story, which it told by the samba schools, in a lyrical form. Each samba school performs one song in the Carnaval parade. A new song must be written each year for each school; they must be on Brazilian topics. The Carnaval parade is among other things a samba competition, with judges, who rank the new sambas according to their perceived merit.
  Being by definition topical, sambas-enredo are seldom performed outside of the Carnaval environment.
  For each samba school, choosing the following year's samba-enredo is a long process. Well in advance of the Carnaval parade, each samba school holds a contest for writing the song. The song is written by samba composers from within the school itself ("Ala dos Compositores"), or sometimes from outside composers, normally in "parcerias" (partnerships). Each school receives many—sometimes hundreds—songs, sometimes hundreds of them, each hoping to be the next samba-enredo for that year. The samba-enredo is written by these numerous composers mentioned above only after the Carnival Art Director, or "Carnavalesco", officially publishes the samba school's parade theme synopsis for the year. After a careful explanation of the parade-theme, many times done by the Carnival Art Director himself, composers may ask questions in order to clarify the synopsis, so they can start writing the samba-enredos.
  The schools select their Samba Campeão within a long process of elimination, called concurso de Samba-Enredo, Eliminatórias or also Disputa de Samba. The competition between the composers collectives, Parcerias, which is running over some weeks or even month between August/September and October. It ends up after with somewhere between three and four sambas, which are competing in the great Final do Samba. The winner finally becomes the samba schools hymn of the year. Around this time, the finalist sambas-enredo are played with music and are voted on by the leaders of the samba school and the Carnavalesco—the artistic director of the school for Carnaval. After months of deliberation, the new samba-enredo is chosen and becomes the voice of the samba school for the next year's Carnaval. The most important night in this process, is called the "final de samba", or samba final, when the samba school decides between two or three samba-enredos. At the end of the process, the winning samba-enredo is selected, and it is this song that is sung during the school's parade in the sambadrome. This process normally happens in Brazil from August until November, and today is highly professionalized, with samba-composers hiring fans, producing CDs, banners, and throwing parties to promote their samba-enredo. The final chosen song, today, is also uploaded on the school's YouTube and Facebook pages to reach even more fans.
  It is important to note that the samba-enredo is one of the criteria used by the Judging committee to decide who is the winner of the Carnaval parade competition. The samba-enredo must be well sung by the samba school's puxador (or singer) or the school will lose points. While the puxador sings, everyone marching in the Carnaval parade sings the samba-enredo along with him, and harmony is another judging criterion.
caption: Samba dancer
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