Samba funk is a musical subgenre that fuses Brazilian
samba and American
funk. It originated in the late 1960s by pianist
Dom Salvador and the Brazilian band Grupo Abolição (which later gave rise to Banda Black Rio) and based on a blend of the binary measures of samba and the quaternary measures of funk, which had recently arrived on the Brazilian music market.
Brazilian singers and bands such as Tim Maia, Jorge Ben and Banda Black Rio have also pioneered into the genre.
Characteristics
Samba funk is a hybrid musical subgenre that combines elements of Brazilian
samba with American
funk, its rhythm mostly composed by keyboards,
electric guitar,
bass guitar,
Drum and percussion, creating a hybrid and contagious sound. The bass, drums and guitar lines transition between the two styles. Samba funk uses instrumentation, timbres, and effects common in 1970s American funk bands, such as the Rhodes electric piano,
clavinet, and
Moog synthesizer and Oberheim analog synthesizers. Musical effects such as the wah-wah on the guitar also contribute to the genre's sound.
History
From the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, the country lived under a repressive military dictatorship, which was accompanied by a strong countercultural reaction.
Dom Salvador was an instrumentalist, arranger and composer who took part in the musical effervescence of Rio de Janeiro after the emergence of
bossa nova, and combined Brazilian
samba with American
jazz, participating in the creation of
Samba-jazz.
In 1969, Dom Salvador's producer at CBS returned from a trip to the USA with a number of funk and Soul music records, including Kool & the Gang, Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown. He suggested that Salvador do something similar, but Salvador refused to simply copy. He created a major departure from jazz, interpreting funk through the prism of samba with his band Grupo Abolição, with whom they also played samba funk and samba soul. Grupo Abolição's work in blending samba and funk influenced the formation of Banda Black Rio in 1976, which was named after the 1970s counterculture Black Rio.
Ballroom dance
Based on this genre, a
ballroom dance rhythm emerged thanks to dance teacher Jimmy de Oliveira called
samba-funkeado, a style that mixes samba de gafieira with charme (which has their origins in
hip-hop), distinguished by the funkeado body movement; a broken dance, influenced by hip-hop and soul, which works on breaks in dance and body movements, as well as on temporal pauses in the music, which at many points resemble photographs.
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