SAMBA REGGAE
   

"Samba-reggae arose in the context of the black pride movement that occurred in the city of Salvador, Bahia, around the 1970s, and it still carries connotations of ethnic identity and pride for Afro-Brazilians today. Bahia's population has a large proportion of dark-skinned Brazilians who are descendents of African slaves who were brought to Brazil by the Portuguese in the 1700s and 1800s. These Afro-Brazilians played a major role in the early development of samba, which first took form in a Bahian style of dance and music called "samba de roda", probably in the late 1800s. Samba de roda was brought to Rio de Janeiro by Bahian immigrants around 1900, where it was combined with harmonic and rhythmic elements from European influences (such as chorinho and military marches). By the 1930s, samba de roda had developed into the faster, more harmonically complex Rio-style samba that is now played in Rio's Carnival. Through the middle of the 20th century this new Rio-style samba spread throughout Brazil. Especially in the 1970's it became "closely associated with a Bahian black political cultural movement of vindication and recognition, and resulted not so much in what has been called uncritically a “reafricanization” of Bahian carnival music, but in a deliberate and new valorization of Afro-Bahian cultural roots (hence more of an “Afro-Bahianization” process)."

 

The paradoxical result was that samba was brought back to Bahia from Rio, but now in a highly altered form, and no longer associated with Afro-Brazilians. Thus, in the mid-20th century, the city of Salvador had many samba schools that were modeled on the samba schools of Rio, as well as blocos (informal street percussion groups), both of which performed Rio-style samba in Carnival parades every year. Yet, ironically, black Brazilians did not participate in these Carnival parades or in the blocos.

 

Samba-reggae represents an effort by black Brazilians to develop a Carnival parade music that they could call their own, and to form all-black or mostly-black blocos with which they could parade during Carnival. The afro bloco music was very different because they aimed to recreate and strengthen their community through their music."