Brazil's 20th century choro ensembles

Article written for Soundboard Magazine that depicts Brazil's 20th Century Choro Ensembles and their historical and musical trajectory as documented on recordings.

In the second half of the 19th century, the city of Rio de Janeiro experienced a period of cultural expansion: the emergence of musical societies, the establishment of formal musical education through the creation of the Conservatory, and consolidation of an international agenda of concerts with artists from different backgrounds, along with opera and dance companies. It was a period of great internationalization in which novelties brought from Europe were incorporated and transformed by local features.

Foreign dances were brought to Brazil by European artists, imported scores, theatrical companies, and piano and dance instructors. Square dances, waltzes, mazurkas, tangos, habaneras, schottisches, and polkas took over stages, court ballrooms, and coffee barons’ palaces in the upper-class neighborhoods of Catete and Botafogo. All these dances, introduced by the social elite, were soon imitated by the people and slowly fused with old colonial forms—cateretês, batuques, lundus, fofas, and fados. As Renato Almeida (1895–1981), a Brazilian music historian from the old generation, pointed out, all or almost all dances were adapted to the new environment, especially their musical component, generating new forms. Imported dances, particularly polkas,
became more Brazilian.

Such adaptation developed as popular musicians learned the music by ear, using instruments they had been playing to accompany genres such as modinhas, lundus, and cançonetas. By this route, the most original small group blossomed in Brazil: the choro ensemble. From the beginning, the medium featured a soloist accompanied by guitar and cavaquinho. Typically, only one of its members could read music while the others improvised an accompaniment. This is the context that allowed the creation of choro, a genre of instrumental music that began in Rio de Janeiro, spread far and wide from the end of the 19th century to the present day, and still thrives.