No matter what I try these days, I can’t find any new music that can take my mind off vintage Brasilian music. Our latest radioshows have been going in that direction and my daily music intake is increasingly dominated as well. There are so many names with incredible back catalogues, yesterday we decided with error101 that Brasil must be the country with the best national music, and the only country to ever have an internationally acclaimed artist as a culture minister (he’s resigned in July 2008 though.)

So today after thinking on what to write about I decided it’s better stop holding back and start a new series that will select some irresistable tunes from the archive. Starting up with a OOP 1956 release munched off Loronix with only piano and drums and all original compositions and ending with a classic by the Luiz Bonfá from the soundtrack of Black Orpheus / Orfeu Negro from 1959.

PS : If you have the time, do read about the origins and types of Samba on wikipedia.

Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world and is the birth place of the Samba. Much of the music in the heavily populated coastal areas shows a remarkable combination of African, Native Indian, and Iberian influences.< Modern Samba was developed from an earlier Brazilian musical style called Choro. Both Samba the dance and music can take many forms, from the vivacious call response of samba de enredo, the music of Carnaval to samba-canção or song samba, a more relaxed guitar and rhythm variant. Bossa Nova, which translates to New Wave, hit America big time in the Sixties with "The Girl From Ipanema". This song by the legendary composer Antonio Carlos Jobim became a classic in jazz and elevator music. In the 16th century, the Portuguese discovered on the east coast of South America, a place they called the January River (Rio de Janeiro). Colonists soon settled and as the colony prospered, slaves were brought from south-west Africa to work in the plantations of Bahia, in the north-east of what became Brazil.