Samba
Birth in a Bahian terreiro

A political and socio-cultural epicenter of Brazil, based on slavery, Rio de Janeiro was strongly influenced by African culture. In the middle of the 19th century, more than half the population of the city – then capital of the Brazilian Empire – was formed by black slaves. In the early 1890s, Rio had more than half a million inhabitants, of whom only half were born in the city, while the other part came from the old Brazilian imperial provinces, mainly from Bahia. In search of better living conditions, this influx of black Bahians to Rio lands increased considerably after the abolition of slavery in Brazil. Called "Pequena Africa" ("Little Africa") by Heitor dos Prazeres, this Afro-Bahian diaspora community in the country's capital settled in the vicinity of the Rio de Janeiro port area and, after the urban reforms of Mayor Pereira Passos, in the neighborhoods of Saúde and Cidade Nova. Through the action of black Bahians living in Rio, new habits, customs and values of Afro-Bahian matrixes were introduced that influenced the culture of Rio, especially in popular events such as the traditional Festa da Penha and Carnival. Black women from Salvador and Bahia's Recôncavo, the "Tias Baianas" ("Bahian aunts") founded the first Candomblé terreiros, introduced the cowrie-shell divination and disseminated the mysteries of the African-based religions of the Jeje-Nagô tradition in the city. In addition to candomblé, the residences or terreiros of the aunts of Bahia hosted various community activities, such as cooking and the pagodes, where urban Rio samba would develop.

Among the most well-known Bahian aunts in Rio, were the Tias Sadata, Bibiana, Fê, Rosa Olé, Amélia do Aragão, Veridiana, Mônica, Perciliana de Santo Amaro and Ciata. A place for meetings around religion, cuisine, dance and music, Tia Ciata 's home was frequented both by samba musicians and pais-de-santo as well as by influential intellectuals and politicians from Rio de Janeiro society. Among some of its members regulars were Sinhô, Pixinguinha, Heitor dos Prazeres, João da Baiana, Donga and Caninha, as well as some journalists and intellectuals, such as João do Rio, Manuel Bandeira, Mário de Andrade and Francisco Guimarães (popularly known as Vagalume). It was in this environment that Vagalume, then a columnist for Jornal do Brasil, witnessed the birth of "O Macaco É Outro" in October 1916. According to the journalist, this samba immediately won the support of the popular people who left singing the music in an animated block. Donga registered the work in sheet music and, on 27 November of that year, declared himself as its author in the National Library, where it was registered as "carnival samba" called " Pelo Telefone ". Shortly after, the score was used in three recordings at Casa Edison record label. One of them interpreted by Baiano with the accompaniment of classical guitar, cavaquinho and clarinet. Released in 78 rpm format on 19 January 1917, "Pelo Telefone" became a huge hit in that year's Rio carnival. Two instrumental versions were also released – recorded by Banda Odeon and Banda de 1º Battalion of the Police of Bahia – in 1917 and 1918 respectively.

The success of "Pelo Telefone" marked the official beginning of samba as a song genre. Its primacy as "the first samba in history" has, however, been questioned by some scholars, on the grounds that the work was only the first samba under this categorization to be successful. Before, "Em casa da baiana" was recorded by Alfredo Carlos Bricio, declared to the National Library as "samba de partido-alto" in 1913, "A viola está magoada", by Catulo da Paixão Cearense, released as "samba" by Baiano and Júlia the following year, and "Moleque vagabundo", "samba" by Lourival de Carvalho, also in 1914.

Another debate related to "Pelo Telefone" concerns Donga's exclusive authorship, which was soon contested by some of his contemporaries who accused him of appropriating a collective, anonymous creation, registering it as his own. The central part of the song would have been conceived in the traditional improvisations in meetings at Tia Ciata 's house. Sinhô claimed the authorship of the chorus "ai, se rolinha, sinhô, sinhô" and created another song lyrics in response to Donga. However, Sinhô himself, who would consolidate himself in the 1920s as the first important figure of samba, was accused of appropriating other people's songs or verses – to which he justified himself with the famous maxim that samba was "like a bird" in the air, it is "whoever gets it first". This defense is part of a period in which the figure of the popular composer was not that of the individual who composed or organized sounds, but the one who registered and disseminated the songs. In the era of mechanical recordings, musical compositions – under the pretext of ensuring that there was no plagiarism – did not belong to composers, but to publishers and, later, to record labels, a reality modified only with the advent of electrical recordings, when the right to intellectual property of the work became individual and inalienable to the composer. In any case, it was because "Pelo Telefone" that samba gained notoriety as a product in the Brazilian music industry. Gradually, the nascent urban samba was gaining popularity in Rio de Janeiro, especially at the Festa da Penha and Carnival. In October, the Festa da Penha became a great event for composers from Cidade Nova who wanted to publicize their compositions in the expectation that they would be released at the following carnival. Another promoter during this period was the Revue shows, a place that enshrined Aracy Cortes as one of the first successful singers of the new popular song genre.

The solidification of the electric recording system made it possible for the recording industry to launch new sambas by singers with less powerful voices, such as Carmen Miranda and Mário Reis, performers who became references when creating a new way of interpreting the most natural and spontaneous samba, without so many ornaments, as opposed to the tradition of belcanto style. These recordings followed an aesthetic pattern characterized by structural similarities to the lundu and, mainly, to the maxixe. Because of this, this type of samba is considered by scholars as "samba-maxixe" or "samba amaxixado". Although the samba practiced in the festivities of Bahian communities in Rio was an urban stylization of the ancestral "samba de roda" in Bahia, characterized by a high party samba with refrains sung to the marked rhythm of the palms and the plates shaved with knives, this samba it was also influenced by the maxixe. It was in the following decade that a new model of samba would be born, from the hills of Rio de Janeiro, quite distinct from that of the amaxixado style associated with the communities of Cidade Nova.
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