Samba in Brazil

Jordan Franklin

Samba is a Brazilian dance that is very lively and rhythmic making it perfect for carnivals. Samba isn’t that old of a dance yet it is highly popular throughout Brazil. The dance developed into many different versions of it and was adapted by Brazil. Samba is a very fascinating yet difficult dance.

Samba was born and developed in Rio de Janeiro in 1917. It was practiced by former slaves that had migrated to Rio de Janeiro from Bahia. They incorporated dances like polka, the maxxie, the lundu, and the xote to come up with samba. The samba started off as a solo dance but in the 1930’s the ballroom style of samba was introduced to Brazil. Many styles of partner dances were also created before the birth of the ballroom style.

Although Brazil adopted the ballroom style of samba, the solo samba style is still more popular and mostly used in the Rio carnivals. The primary characteristics of the samba are rapid steps taken on quarter beats and the dancers move in a rocking, swaying motion. The basic footwork of the Samba includes swift, three-step weight changes with a small knee lift, led with alternating feet. The basic rhythm is "quick, quick, slow.”

Samba music has a distinctive rhythm and is accentuated by original Brazilian musical instruments, including the Tambo rim, chocalho, reco-reco and cabaca. Samba is danced to music with a tempo of about 100 beats per minute. The fast and energetic rhythm of Samba music encourages spontaneous dancing. This is all you see whenever you got to their Rio carnival is the mod is just bright and great.

Samba is a warm Brazilian dance. Very energetic and with keep you in shape in you do it on a regular bases and will also keep you out of breath. I think it takes quite some training to perfect the swift movement of the dance. Everyone has their style such as the ballroom samba and many other different partner style samba dances but the Carioca prefers their solo style samba for when they...