A Dance holiday in Brazil

A group of my friends are going to take a special holiday to Brazil to experience the dancing, and no wonder. I believe a lot of folks are doing it – and though I can’t go before next year I’ve been having a look at the dances. Since the rebirth of the idea of ballroom dancing in the UK with the amazing popularity of celebrity dancing contests on the television, more and more people – and now younger ones, are recognising the pleasures of dancing.

Its not just that is healthy exercise –though it is, it is a powerful method of non-verbal communication signalling all kinds of intimacies and excitement, and giving a chance for two people to display to each other, and to an audience, their skills and joint synchronisation of movement and behaviours – things that can only benefit good relationships. It is no wonder that a country like Brazil, from Florianopolis to Rio, from Brasilia to Maceio – with that rich genetic influences of its people, this mix of Portuguese, Amerindian, African and Asian, should have music with such eclectic routes. Such music and dance is nowadays called Afro-Brazilian, but the roots go much deeper. Most people know about the Samba, but the story is much richer than the account of one dance.

The earliest known descriptions of music and dance in Brazil were from 1578 when a French Pastor described the dances and music of the indigenous Tupi people. In 1739 Barbosa wrote some modinhas that started Brazilian popular music and then other dances developed, and notably the dance and music called the lundu spread from the slaves to the white settlers. By 1870 choro music developed out of fado and European salon music and eventually by the beginning of the 20th century Samba began to evolve out of choro in Rio de Janeiro, among the poor blacks descended from slaves. Samba became more popular and morphed into many different types of samba including samba de enredo (played during the carnival) and Samba de cancao, Samba pagode and Samba reggae which is a mixture of various rhythms including Afoxe, Ijexa and Samba Duro with some Caribbean stuff in there. (Paul Simon made this music known to a wider audience). The Gafieria dance is the music and dance of the urban working class and developed in Rio de Janeiro, and it has a wide repertoire of styles which have come from other dances including the Lambada, the Lundu, Hanera, Maxixe, Xotis and even the Polka and Tango, but also the Partido Alto – all of these exotic and exciting names almost unknown internationally.

Music from Eastern Amazonia has been dominated by the Carimba – and it developed into lambada by the 1980s, the northeaster region is known for music developed from African rhythms and Portuguese tunes to form maracatu but more influentially is that the area around Recife is known for forro. Capoeira as far as I can gather is a martial art type dance with its own music, where songs are improvised and the dancers form a circle and different couples go into the centre to play an instrument or do the Capoeira dance with kicking and elbow snapping movements.