SAMBA AND YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY (as submitted to Planetary Magazine)

Submitted by Luciana Pimentel on Wednesday, October 20, 2004 at 10:43:06 AM EST.

Samba became a very important Brazilian symbol all over the world. It was officially created in 1917, when the first samba was recorded by Donga, "Pelo Telefone". From the 40's to the 60's it has received lots of influences and new samba styles were created, like Bossa Nova (influenced by jazz) and Sambalaço (influenced by the American music in general).
The rhythm used to be very popular also in the 70's, when singers like Paulinho da Viola and Chico Buarque started to compose Sambas like the old ones, without the new influences, and started to use their songs as a way to express their feelings and thoughts against the country political situation.
But people who were young in the 70's aren't young people anymore. And from the 90's on, teenagers started to see Samba with a lot of prejudice, as something tacky and old fashioned, that only their parents and grandparents could like. This situation together with the popularization of the American music, the globalization and the following devaluation of our popular culture, brought a tragic prediction: in a few generations samba would disappear!
Fortunately, things are changing nowadays. Against this extreme valorization of the foreign things, many people and professionals started giving a bigger importance to native elements. Designers and architects began to use handicrafts in their projects, for example. Similar things also happened with arts, dance, fashion and music. And with the good Brazilian popular music, composers returned to the radio and TV, and are selling CDs again (Paulinho da Viola, Zeca Pagodinhjo, Jorge Ben Jor, etc). MPB, Samba, Chorinho and folkloric rhythms are revalued. Brazil is fashionable again.
In Rio, Lapa became the center of this new samba generation with a lot of saloons where Samba concerts happens almost every day. Dama da Noite, Clube dos Democráticos and Carioca da Gema are the most famous and are always crowded with adolescents. There are also bands formed by young people, like Tira Poeira and Anjos da Lua, playing Samba and Chorinho.
The American influence over teenagers is still very big, because of the movies, the cable TV and pop music, but something is already being done to preserve our heritage and cultural identity.

Class P22
Felipe Rios Correa
Marina Peregrino Piquet Gonçalves
Michael Edward Zajdenwerg Rothman

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