Cast
Gilberto Gil
Teresa Cristina
Pedro Miranda
Sururu na Roda
Tia Surica
Portela music school
Program notes
"The music of samba is even more powerful than the flag of Brazil."
In fact, in Brazil you can listen to samba rhythms anywhere you go, from small cafes in poor areas, to the hype places in Copacabana beach, and always accompanied by Brazilian bodies dancing to its sound, making it even more phantasmagoric.Samba has influenced all the succeeding musical genres that have emerged in Brazil with Rio de Janeiro being its birth place. As Gilberto Gil says in his interview, Samba is one of the two national musical genres, along with Pagode.
As with the whole country, samba music has been the result of a great mixture, that of white Europeans, African blacks and native Indians and it is due to this mixture that Brazil is what it is and its music is so unique.
This documentary explores the magic of samba and its history, not from an academic point of view, but through the native musicians' perspective and through the music they produce. The samba of the "botiquinhas" (small cafes) in the area of Lapa in Rio de Janeiro, the samba of Teresa Cristina, Pedro Miranda, Sururu na Roda, Tia Surica and the sound of Portela music school, the samba of the great musician Gilberto Gil.