Música popular brasileira (, ''Popular Brazilian Music'') or MPB is a trend in post- bossa nova urban popular music in Brazil that revisits typical Brazilian styles such as samba,

samba-canção Samba-canção () (literally 'samba song') is, in its most common acceptance or interpretation, the denomination for a kind of Brazilian popular songs with a slow-paced samba rhythm. History It appeared after the World War II, at the end of the ...

and baião and other Brazilian regional music, combining them with foreign influences, such as

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

and rock. This movement has produced and is represented by many Brazilian artists, such as

Jorge Ben Jor Jorge Duílio Lima Menezes (born March 22, 1939) is a Brazilian popular musician, performing under the stage name Jorge Ben Jor since the 1980s, though commonly known by his former stage name Jorge Ben (). His characteristic style fuses samba, ...

Ivan Lins Ivan Guimarães Lins (born June 16, 1945) is a Latin Grammy-winning Brazilian musician. He has been an active performer and songwriter of Brazilian popular music (MPB) and jazz for over thirty years. His first hit, "Madalena", was recorded by ...

, Novos Baianos, Belchior and Dominguinhos, whose individual styles generated their own trends within the genre. The term is often also used to describe any kind of music with Brazilian origins and "voice and guitar style" that arose in the late 1960s. Variations within MPB were the short-lived but influential artistic movement known as tropicália, and the music of

samba rock Samba rock (also known as samba soul, samba funk, and sambalanço) is a Brazilian dance culture and music genre that fuses samba with soul, rock, and funk. It emerged from the dance parties of São Paulo's lower-class black communities after the ...

. MPB songs are in part characterized by their harmonic complexity and their elaborate lyrics, which call back to a connection between Brazil’s popular music and

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

that has been culturally relevant since the 1920s. It also draws from themes from Brazil’s

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fo ...

music as a part of an effort to create a musical style that reflected true Brazilian culture. During the 1970s, these qualities gave the style an intellectual prestige that made it more popular for listening as an art form rather than being used as music for dancing, further distinguishing it from other popular music of the time. However, this was not always the case, as demonstrated by music by artists such as Jorge Ben Jor, many of whose songs fall into the category of dance music. Many of the albums on ''Rolling Stone Brazil''s list of the 100 greatest Brazilian albums fall under the MPB style.

History

MPB, loosely understood as a "style", debuted in the mid-1960s, with the

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

being applied to types of non-electric music that emerged following the beginning, rise and evolution of bossa nova. MPB artists and audiences were largely connected to the intellectual and student population, causing later MPB to be known as "university music."Performance da música indígena no Brasil
Over time, the definition of MPB expanded to include a wider variety of music that was popular in Brazil, including rock music, which was not initially under the umbrella due to its foreign origins.

Initial Success

Like bossa nova, MPB was an attempt to produce a "national" Brazilian music that drew from traditional styles. MPB made a considerable impact in the 1960s, thanks largely to several televised music festivals. The beginning of MPB is often associated with

Elis Regina Elis Regina Carvalho Costa (March 17, 1945 – January 19, 2002), known professionally as Elis Regina (), was a Brazilian singer of MPB and jazz music. She is also the mother of the singers Maria Rita and Pedro Mariano. She became national ...

's interpretation of

Vinícius de Moraes Marcus Vinícius da Cruz e Mello Moraes (19 October 1913 – 9 July 1980), better known as Vinícius de Moraes () and nicknamed O Poetinha ("The little poet"), was a Brazilian poet, diplomat, lyricist, essayist, musician, singer, and playwrigh ...

and

Edu Lobo Eduardo de Góes "Edu" Lobo (born August 29, 1943) is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and composer. In the 1960s he was part of the bossa nova movement. His compositions include ''Upa Neguinho'' (with Gianfrancesco Guarnieri), ''Pra Dizer Ad ...

's "Arrastão." In 1965, one month after celebrating her 20th birthday, Elis appeared on the nationally broadcast ''Festival de Música Popular Brasileira'' and performed the song. Elis recorded ''Arrastão'' and released the song as a single, which became the biggest selling single in Brazilian music history at that time and catapulted her to stardom. This brought MPB to a national Brazilian audience and many artists have since performed in the style over the years. Thanks to an economic boom in Brazil through the 1960s and '70s, an expanding working and middle class had greater access to television, which became a substantial vehicle for the consumption and spread of MPB. Musical showcases such as ''Festival de Música Popular Brasileira'' turned out to be a massive success, and the stations '' TV-Record'' and ''FIC'' most notably competed in a ratings battle that resulted in greatly expanding the audience of Brazilian Popular Music. In particular, the shows ''O Fino da Bossa'' and '' Jovem Guarda'' achieved a great deal of media attention and praise, with the former being attributed to taking part in the creation of MPB. The successes of both prompted the live broadcasting of more vibrant music festivals. These events were more like competitions, and artists first had to go through a lengthy submission process before being given the chance to perform in front of a panel of judges as well as a live audience. The music festivals further expanded viewership while also increasing the competition between artists for airtime and stations for better ratings.

MPB in Telenovelas

Brazilian

telenovelas A telenovela is a type of a television serial drama or soap opera produced primarily in Latin America. The word combines ''tele'' (for "television") and ''novela'' (meaning "novel"). Similar drama genres around the world include ''teleserye'' (P ...

in the early 1970s featured MPB hits by big-name artists of the time such as Elis Regina,

Gilberto Gil Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira (; born 26 June 1942), is a Brazilian singer-songwriter and politician, known for both his musical innovation and political activism. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Brazil's Minister of Culture in the administration ...

, and

Caetano Veloso Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso (; born 7 August 1942) is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo, which encomp ...

among others in the soundtracks of the shows. The telenovelas were huge commercial successes, with CDs of the soundtracks regularly topping sales charts. As time passed and MPB diversified, telenovela soundtracks followed suit, featuring MPB artists but also including newly popular songs considered outside the style, such as rock music and more mainstream pop. Despite concerns at the time about the telenovelas having too large of a role in shaping the Brazilian pop music that became mainstream, they have become one of the only public outlets that still continuously broadcast MPB up to the present day. Because the widespread success of Brazilian telenovelas enabled them to reach an international market, their soundtracks, many of which include MPB songs, have also been commercially successful abroad.

MPB after the 1960s

In the wake of increased government

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

on artforms such as music in the early 1970s, artists became much more limited in the music they could produce, and those who refused to conform to the standards set by the law risked exile. As a result, the number of innovative artists and songs that were broadcast dropped, and likewise, the program ratings. However, efforts by

television stations A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ear ...

as well as record companies for music that met the standard set by the music festivals of the '60s continued, with the television festival ''Abertura'' being one such example. While ''Abertura'' featured many up-and-coming artists, press commentary rarely considered them to be as good as MPB from the '60s. From this emerged a debate about the role of television in broadcasting song and performance. On one side, some television producers attached a duty to revitalizing the creativity within the Brazilian popular music scene. Critics of this argued that the best of the current creative pool had already been exhausted by the music festivals and that the continuous output of MPB served as a greater detriment to the industry than a benefit. Despite this, attempts by television and record companies at recreating the music festivals of the '60s continued with various programs into the '80s, which was met with only modest success. In the early 2000s, the company IBM organized some Internet-based festivals with votes cast online by the audience rather than by a jury. This fared better than the television attempts two decades before but did not achieve the sweeping success of programs from the 1960s.

References

External links