Brazil Culture

Music

This is the samba. It can be slow, song dressed in a voice still hot, then samba Canção, or hymn to the rhythm rolling and jerky carnival parade, samba enredo, or even walk leading to the collective enthusiasm, walked ranch ... She is always composed at the turn of a play on words, a desire, the memory of a past love. Above all popular music, it runs the district, city, radio waves. Samba saw its heyday during the carnival, but it fills the life of every Brazilian, especially in Rio, with multiple schools. Competition is severe and each year we compete in talent to create the most beautiful parade, call the samba and choose who will become a tube, prepare costumes, rehearse with the musicians and dancers ...

Brazilian music also captures the many influences from the world, especially Africa, but also Latin and Western styles that mix to reinvent between pop, jazz and African rhythms. Often with the feeling of indescribable saudade (nostalgia, melancholy), which is perhaps the secret of the music found in Cuba, Angola and Cape Verde. Saudade is also reflected perfectly in the bossa nova, born of a merger between the acoustic guitar and the sweet life of Bahia beaches.

In Minas Gerais, the voice of Milton Nascimento lives in the tropical mountains, and in a different genre, hard rock group Sepultura, adored by another audience in Europe and the United States ...

Assert new trends. Like rap, that Brazil digests its way, with a return to reality "naked and raw," and yet festive swing. And all the music derived from the carnival-like focus to music or Chiclete Daniela Mercury, which attract all the young Bahia, or pagoda, a popular Rio to Salvador, a sort of samba reduced training, sung by the particular Zeca Pagodinho Carioca. And Afro blocks carnival in Salvador da Bahia.

And then there's the music of the Northeast: the forró warm to energy, with its syncopated rhythms of accordion brega the area of ​​Belém and Marajó Island, which means "corny" and attracts couples dancers applied to the ball Friday night, or the languor Sertaneja frevo and Recife.

Not to mention the famous MPB Musica Popular do Brazil, you meet all street corners and in many bars and restaurants. A kind of bossa nova revisited in the 1960s by the great of the time.

Museums, sites and monuments

Museums and churches are generally closed during the carnival, and sometimes between Christmas and New Year's Day. Except for major museums, opening hours are often variable, depending on the weather or the mood of the guard ... Discounts (or free) are often granted with the international student card. Reminder: to visit most of the religious buildings, proper attire (legs and shoulders covered) are required!