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Radio era and popularization of samba

The 1930s in Brazilian music marked the rise of Estácio's samba as a musical genre to the detriment of maxixe-style samba. If the samba schools were crucial to delimit, publicize and legitimize the new Estaciano samba as the authentic expression of the Rio's urban samba, the radio also played a decisive role in popularizing it nationwide.

Although broadcasting in Brazil was officially inaugurated in 1922, it was still an incipient and technical, experimental and restricted telecommunication medium. In the 1920s, Rio de Janeiro was home to only two short-range radio stations whose programming was basically limited to broadcast educational content or classical music. This panorama changed radically in the 1930s, with the political rise of Getúlio Vargas, who identified the media as a tool of public interest for economic, educational, cultural or political purposes, as well as for the national integration of the country.

A 1932 Vargas decree regulating radio advertising was crucial to the commercial, professional and popular transformation of Brazilian broadcasting. With the authorization that ads could occupy 20% (and then 25%) of the programming, the radio became more attractive and safe for advertisers and – added to the increase in sales of radio sets in the period – transformed this telecommunication medium of its function once educational for an entertainment powerhouse. With the contribution of financial resources from advertising, the broadcasters began to invest in musical programming, turning the radio into the great popularizer of popular music in the Brazil – whether phonograph record or live recordings directly from the stations' auditoriums and studios. With samba as a great attraction, the radio gave space to the genre with the "sambas de carnaval", released for the carnival celebrations, and the "sambas de meio de ano" ("mid-year sambas"), launched throughout the year.

This expansion of radio as a medium of mass communication enabled the formation of professional technicians linked to sound activities, as well as for singers, arrangers and composers. From this scenario, broadcasters Ademar Casé (in Rio) and César Ladeira (in São Paulo) stood out as pioneers in the establishment of exclusive contracts with singers for presentation in live programs. That is, instead of receiving only one fee per presentation, the monthly remuneration was fixed to pay the artists, a model that triggered a fierce dispute between radio stations to form its professional and exclusive casts with popular stars of Brazilian music and also philharmonic orchestras. The most important samba singers, such as Carmen Miranda, started signing advantageous contracts to work exclusively with a certain radio station. The institution of auditorium programs created the need to set up big radio orchestras, conducted by arranging conductors, which gave a more sophisticated look to Brazilian popular music. One of the most notorious orchestral formations on the radio was the Orquestra Brasileira – under the command of conductor Radamés Gnatalli and with a team of musicians such as the sambistas João da Baiana, Bide and Heitor dos Prazeres in percussion -, which combined standards of the international song at that time with popular instruments in Brazilian music, such as the cavaquinho. The Orquestra Brasileira was notable for the success of the program Um milhão de melodias (One million melodies), by Rádio Nacional, one of the most popular in the history of Brazilian radio.

In this golden age of radio broadcasting in Brazil, a new generation of composers from the middle class emerged, such as Ary Barroso, Ataulfo Alves, Braguinha, Lamartine Babo and Noel Rosa, who have built successful careers in this media. Grown up in the Vila Isabel middle-class neighborhood, Noel Rosa was instrumental in destigmatizing the samba do Estácio. Although he started his musical trajectory by composing Northeastern emboladas and similar Brazilian rural music genres, the composer changed his style by having contact with the samba made and sung by the sambistas from Estácio and others hills of Rio. This meeting resulted in friendships and partnerships between Noel and names as Ismael Silva and Cartola. Among singers, in addition to Noel himself, a new generation of performers broke out, such as Jonjoca, Castro Barbosa, Luís Barbosa, Cyro Monteiro, Dilermando Pinheiro, Aracy de Almeida, Marília Batista. Another highlight was the singer Carmen Miranda, the greatest star of Brazilian popular music at that time and the first artist to promote samba internationally. Renowned in Brazil, Carmen continued her successful artistic career in the United States, where she worked in musicals in New York City and, later, in Hollywood cinema. Her popularity was such that she even performed at the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The consolidation of samba as the flagship of the radio programming of Rio de Janeiro was characterized by the association of the musical genre with the image of white artists, who, even when proletarianized, were more palatable to the preference of the public, while the poor black sambistas remained normally on the sidelines of this process as a mere supplier of compositions for the white performers or as instrumentalists accompanying them. This strong presence of white singers and composers was also decisive for the acceptance and appreciation of samba by the economic and cultural elites of Brazil. From this, the middle class started to recognize the value of the rhythm invented by black Brazilians. The Municipal Theater of Rio became the stage for elegant carnival balls attended by the high society. Having contact with the popular genre through samba and choro circles meetings, the renowned conductor Heitor Villa-Lobos promoted a musical meeting between the American maestro Leopold Stokowski with the sambistas Cartola, Zé da Zilda, Zé Espinguela, Donga, João da Baiana and others. The recording results were edited in the United States on several 78 rpm discs. Another privileged space for the white, rich elite in the Brazilian society was the casinos, which peaked in Brazil during the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to working with games of chance, these elegant amusement houses offered restaurant and bar services and were the stage for shows – among which samba also featured prominently. Thus, the casinos signed exclusive contracts with major artists, as was the case with Carmen Miranda as a big star at Cassino da Urca. In an unusual event for the universe of sambistas on the hill, composer Cartola performed for a month at the luxurious Casino Atlântico, in Copacabana, in 1940.

The consolidation of samba among Brazilian elites was also influenced by the valorization of the ideology of miscegenation in vogue with the construction of nationalism under the Getulio Vargas regime. From an image of a symbol of national backwardness, the mestizo became a representative of Brazilian singularities, and samba, with its mestizo origin, ended up linked to the construction of national identity. Having acted decisively for the growth of radio in Brazil, the Vargas government perceived samba as a vital element in the construction of this idea of miscegenation. Samba's triumph over the airwaves allowed it to penetrate all sectors of Brazilian society. Especially under the Estado Novo, whose ideological cultural policy of reconceptualizing the popular and extolling everything that was considered an authentic national expression, samba was elevated to the position of major national symbol of the country and the official pace of the country. However, one of the concerns of the Vargas regime was to interfere in music production to promote samba as a means of "pedagogical" socialization, that is, by banning compositions that confront the regime's ethics. In this quest to "civilize" samba, political bodies such as the Department of Press and Propaganda (DIP, Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda) took action to order sambas that would exalt the work and censor lyrics that addressed bohemia and malandragem, two of the most common themes in the tradition of the urban Carioca samba. Musical contests were also instituted through which public opinion elected its favorite composers and performers.

Under Vargas, samba had an expressive weight in the construction of an image of Brazil abroad and was an important means of cultural and tourist dissemination of the country. In an attempt to reinforce a positive national image, the presence of renowned singers of the kind in presidential committees to Latin American countries has become frequent. At the end of 1937, the sambistas Paulo da Portela and Heitor dos Prazeres participated in a caravan of Brazilian artists to Montevideo that performed at the Gran Exposición Feria Internacional del Uruguay. The Brazilian government also financed an information and popular music program called "Uma Hora do Brasil", produced and broadcast by Radio El Mundo, from Buenos Aires, which had at least one broadcast to Nazi Germany. When the Vargas regime approached the United States, DIP made an agreement to broadcast Brazilian radio programs on hundreds of CBS radio network. Under this context, the samba " Aquarela do Brasil " (by Ary Barroso) was released in the United States market, becoming the first Brazilian song that was very successful abroad and one of the most popular works of the Brazilian popular songbook. In the midst of the good neighborhood policy, the animator Walt Disney visited Portela samba school during his visit to Brazil in 1941, from which he hypothesized that Zé Carioca, a character created by the cartoonist to express the Brazilian way, would have been inspired by the figure of the sambista Paulo da Portela.

The rise of samba as a popular musical genre in Brazil also relied on its dissemination in Brazilian cinema, especially in musical comedies, being an integral part of the soundtrack, the plot or even the main theme of the cinematographic work. The good public acceptance of the short film "A Voz do Carnaval" (by Adhemar Gonzaga) paved the way for several other cinematographic works related to rhythm, many of which had a strong presence of radio idol singers in the cast, such as "Alô, Alô, Brasil! ", which had sisters Carmen and Aurora Miranda, Francisco Alves, Mário Reis, Dircinha Batista, Bando da Lua, Almirante, Lamartine Babo, among others. The advent of the popular chanchada films made Brazilian cinema one of the biggest promoters of carnival music. In one of the rare moments when sambistas from the hill starred in radio programs, Paulo da Portela, Heitor dos Prazeres and Cartola led the program "A Voz do Morro", at Rádio Cruzeiro do Sul, in 1941. There, they presented unpublished sambas whose titles were given by listeners. However, over the course of the decade, the samba made by these genuine sambistas was losing space on Brazilian radio to new sub-genres that were being formed, while figures such as Cartola and Ismael Silva were ostracized until they left the music scene in the late 1940s.