Samba-enredo, also known as samba de enredo, is a sub-genre of modern

samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havin ...

made specifically by a

samba school A samba school ( pt, Escola de samba) is a dancing, marching, and drumming (Samba Enredo) club. They practice and often perform in a huge square-Compound (enclosure), compounds ("quadras de samba") and are devoted to practicing and exhibiting sam ...

for the festivities of

Brazilian Carnival The Carnival of Brazil ( pt, Carnaval do Brasil, ) is an annual Brazilian festival held the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. During Lent, Roman Catholics and so ...

. It is a samba style that consists of a lyric and a

melody A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...

created from a summary of the theme chosen as the plot of a samba school. The first sambas sung by the samba schools in their carnival presentations were freely created and generally were about of the samba itself or the reality of the samba musicians. The institution of contests between the

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

samba school from the 1930s onwards compelled them to commit themselves to presented themes, which began to narrate mainly episodes and exalt characters from the official Brazilian historiography.

Background

"Samba-enredo" translates literally in

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

a samba-theme, 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. 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" (the samba-enredo singer) sings, everyone marching in the Carnaval parade sings the samba-enredo along with him, and harmony is another judging criterion. 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.

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Samba-enredo Brazilian styles of music