Violao

Brazil · 1900s

Romantic Chill Sentimental Happy Dreamy

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Description

Violão refers to the Brazilian nylon‑string guitar idiom and its solo and accompaniment traditions. It centers on fingerstyle technique, syncopated rhythms, and flowing contrapuntal bass runs (baixarias) drawn from choro, samba, and salon repertoires.

Typical performance blends classical right‑hand control with popular Brazilian grooves, producing rich harmonic colors (6/9 chords, altered dominants) and rhythmic elasticity. Both six‑string and seven‑string (violão de sete cordas) variants are used, the latter expanding bass counterpoint in choro and samba contexts. Although often instrumental, the style also functions as a refined accompaniment practice for modinha, seresta, and MPB singers.

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Influenced by

Choro

Choro is an urban Brazilian instrumental genre that arose in Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century. It blends European dance forms (polka, schottische, waltz, mazurka) with Afro-Brazilian rhythmic sensibilities from styles like lundu and early maxixe, producing a supple, highly syncopated groove. Typical choro ensembles (regionais) feature a lead melodic instrument—often flute, clarinet, or bandolim (mandolin)—supported by cavaquinho and 6-string guitar for harmony, a 7‑string guitar providing counter-melodic bass lines (baixarias), and pandeiro for light percussion. Pieces commonly use multi-strain forms (e.g., AABBACCA), incorporate modulations, and encourage melodic variations and counterpoint rather than long harmonic solos. The result is music that is both virtuosic and lyrical, at once salon-refined and street-savvy.

Modinha

Modinha is a sentimental art song that took shape in late-18th‑century Portugal and flourished in Brazil during the 19th century. It is typically an intimate, lyrical piece for solo voice accompanied by guitar (violão) or keyboard, featuring graceful, cantabile melodies, expressive rubato, and ornamental turns derived from Italianate vocal style. Texts dwell on love, longing, jealousy, and refined melancholy, often crafted by poet–musicians for salon performance and twilight serenades. Stylistically, modinha sits between European chamber song and local popular practice, absorbing Portuguese courtly taste, Italian opera influence, and Afro‑Brazilian color through contact with lundu.

Lundu

Lundu is an Afro‑Brazilian dance‑song that emerged in colonial Brazil, blending Bantu‑derived rhythms with Portuguese melodic and harmonic practices. Typically set in 2/4 with marked syncopation and a swaying groove, it was both a circle dance (often featuring the playful umbigada gesture) and a sung genre accompanied by guitar and hand percussion. In its urbanized, salon form of the late 18th and 19th centuries, lundu became a fashionable entertainment in Brazil and Portugal, sharing space with the modinha. Its music commonly features strophic verses with a recurring refrain, call‑and‑response, and light, flirtatious texts. Instrumentation ranges from voice and violão (6‑ or 7‑string guitar) or cavaquinho to pandeiro, atabaque, and handclaps.

Seresta

Seresta is a Brazilian tradition of nocturnal, romantic serenade-songs, typically performed by small groups beneath windows, on quiet streets, or in backyard gatherings. It blends the refined, sentimental poetics of the modinha with the lyrical sweep of waltzes and the instrumental lyricism of choro, favoring expressive vocals, rubato phrasing, and intimate acoustic accompaniment. The repertoire is slow to medium in tempo, often in 3/4 or gentle 2/4, and centers on themes of love, longing, moonlit nights, and saudade. Hallmark instruments include the violão (acoustic guitar), bandolim (mandolin), cavaquinho, flute, and light percussion, supporting a crooning vocal style that predates and foreshadows later romantic currents in Brazilian popular music.

Classical

Classical music is the notated art-music tradition of Europe and its global descendants, characterized by durable forms, carefully codified harmony and counterpoint, and a literate score-based practice. The term “classical” can refer broadly to the entire Western art-music lineage from the Medieval era to today, not just the Classical period (c. 1750s–1820s). It privileges long-form structures (such as symphonies, sonatas, concertos, masses, and operas), functional or modal harmony, thematic development, and timbral nuance across ensembles ranging from solo instruments to full orchestras and choirs. Across centuries, the style evolved from chant and modal polyphony to tonal harmony, and later to post-tonal idioms, while maintaining a shared emphasis on written notation, performance practice, and craft.

Maxixe

Maxixe (pronounced ma-SHEE-shee) is a Brazilian urban dance-music style that crystallized in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the 19th century. Often nicknamed the "Brazilian tango," it blends Afro-Brazilian rhythmic drive with European ballroom forms. Typically notated in 2/4 and propelled by a syncopated habanera/tresillo feel, maxixe favors bright tempos, off‑beat accents, and elegant yet playful melodies. It thrived in salons, theatrical revues, wind bands, choro ensembles, and on solo piano, where left‑hand habanera patterns support harmonically mobile, ornamented tunes. The style was once considered risqué, but it became a fashionable symbol of modern Brazilian cosmopolitan life in the early 20th century, spreading to Europe and the United States.

Waltz

Waltz is a dance-music genre in triple meter, most commonly in 3/4 time, marked by a strong accent on the first beat and the characteristic “oom–pah–pah” accompaniment (bass note followed by two chords). Emerging from Central European folk dances and adopted by urban salons, the waltz spans both functional dance repertoire and concert pieces for piano or orchestra. Tempos vary by style: the Viennese waltz is fast and flowing, while the slow/English waltz is measured and lyrical. Melodies are typically long-breathed and cantabile, with 8- or 16-bar phrases and frequent modulations to closely related keys. The genre is culturally tied to Vienna and the Habsburg lands, where composers such as the Strausses and Lanner helped codify its form, but it has since permeated ballroom traditions, art music, folk repertoires, film, and popular music worldwide.

Samba

Samba is an Afro‑Brazilian musical and dance tradition that crystallized in Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century, rooted in the rhythms, rituals, and communal celebrations of the Afro‑diasporic population. It is typically in 2/4 meter with characteristic syncopations, off‑beat accents, and call‑and‑response refrains. The groove is carried by a bateria (percussion ensemble) featuring surdo, pandeiro, tamborim, cuíca, agogô, reco‑reco, and repinique, while chordal instruments such as violão (6‑ and 7‑string guitars) and cavaquinho provide rich, swinging harmonies. Melodies often draw on Portuguese lyric traditions, African rhythmic phrasing, and the expressive poetics of everyday urban life—love, neighborhood pride, carnival, devotion, and saudade. Across the 20th century, samba diversified into many substyles (samba‑canção, samba‑enredo, partido‑alto, samba de roda, samba de gafieira), and later catalyzed entire currents like bossa nova, MPB, and samba‑rock, remaining Brazil’s most globally recognizable sound.

Has influenced

Bossa Nova

Bossa nova is a Brazilian popular music style that emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s, blending samba’s syncopated pulse with the harmonic sophistication and understated cool of jazz. It is characterized by intimate, almost whispered vocals; a nylon‑string guitar playing the distinctive batida (a gently syncopated, two-beat accompaniment); subtle, brushed percussion; and lush, extended jazz harmonies. The mood is relaxed, refined, and full of saudade—a bittersweet sense of longing—often evoking images of Rio’s beaches, nightclubs, and urban modernity.

Mpb

Brazilian Jazz

Brazilian jazz is the meeting point of Brazilian popular music and North American jazz, blending samba and bossa nova rhythms with jazz harmony, improvisation, and ensemble interaction. The style typically features syncopated Brazilian grooves (samba, bossa, partido‑alto) under extended jazz chord voicings and lyrical melodies. Acoustic guitar or piano often supplies a gently propulsive, off‑beat rhythmic bed, while bass and drums translate samba’s surdo and pandeiro patterns to the jazz rhythm section. Timbres range from intimate (nylon‑string guitar, brushed drum kit, flute) to expansive (full percussion batteries, horns, and electric keys). The overall feel can be both laid‑back and danceable—romantic yet harmonically sophisticated.

Samba-Jazz

Samba‑jazz is a Brazilian small‑combo style that fuses the propulsive, syncopated rhythms of samba with the harmony, form, and improvisational language of modern jazz (especially hard bop and cool jazz). It is typically more energetic and instrumental than bossa nova, emphasizing virtuosic interaction in piano‑trio and quartet/quintet settings. The drumming concept—pioneered by Edison Machado and others—moves the samba pulse to the ride cymbal and hi‑hat ("samba no prato"), while the bass suggests surdo patterns and the piano/guitar supplies rich jazz voicings. Heads are often concise, followed by swinging, straight‑eighth samba grooves under extended improvisations, and a tight return to the theme.

Nova Mpb

Nova MPB ("new Música Popular Brasileira") is a contemporary wave of Brazilian popular music that renews the classic MPB ethos with indie, electronic, neo‑soul, and modern pop production. Artists in this scene preserve the melodic richness, poetic lyricism, and rhythmic DNA of bossa nova and samba while embracing lo‑fi textures, synth pads, and intimate, close‑mic vocals. Compared to classic MPB, nova MPB tends to be more minimalist and bedroom‑studio friendly, favoring warm, analog‑leaning timbres and restrained grooves. Lyrics often blend romantic and introspective themes with snapshots of urban life, identity, and the everyday, delivered in Portuguese with a natural, conversational flow.

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