MPB — Música Popular Brasileira
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The sophisticated songwriter tradition that became Brazil's cultured pop mainstream: rich harmony inherited from bossa nova and samba, married to poetic, socially aware Portuguese lyrics and a broad instrumental palette of nylon-guitar, piano, orchestration and Brazilian percussion. Tempos and forms range from intimate ballads to samba-inflected mid-tempos and grand orchestral pieces; the singing prizes nuance, phrasing and lyricism over spectacle. MPB is defined by craft — melodic subtlety, harmonic depth and literate wordplay, often carrying political subtext through the years of dictatorship.
History
MPB coalesced in the mid-1960s out of bossa nova, samba and the televised song festivals, as a generation of composer-performers — Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento and Elis Regina foremost among them — forged a self-consciously Brazilian, artful popular music. It absorbed the shock of Tropicália, weathered censorship under the military regime (Chico's 'Construção' and 'Cálice' becoming emblems of resistance), and drew in the Clube da Esquina circle around Milton in Minas Gerais and virtuoso songwriters like Djavan and Ivan Lins. MPB remains the prestige lane of Brazilian song, continually renewed while its 1970s catalog endures as a national canon.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Chris McGowan & Ricardo Pessanha, 'The Brazilian Sound'
- Charles A. Perrone, 'Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song'
- Britannica, 'Música popular brasileira (MPB)'