Image: Wikimedia Commons

samba

Brazilian music genre

Also known as samba urbano carioca · samba carioca

Instance of: music genre
1
Sources
1.Stated in Rate Your Musicrateyourmusic.com/genre/Samba/
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Subclass of: music of Brazil
Founded: 1914

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Samba is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It is a name or prefix used for several rhythmic variants, such as samba urbano carioca, samba de roda, among many other forms of samba, mostly originated in the Rio de Janeiro and Bahia states. Having its roots in West African musical traditions, especially those linked to the primitive rural samba of the colonial and imperial periods, it is considered one of the most important cultural phenomena in Brazil and one of the country symbols. Present in the Portuguese language at least since the 19th century, the word "samba" was originally used to designate a "popular dance". Over time, its meaning has been extended to a "batuque-like circle dance", a dance style, and also to a "music genre". This process of establishing itself as a musical genre began in the 1910s and it had its inaugural landmark in the song "Pelo Telefone", launched in 1917. Despite being identified by its creators, the public, and the Brazilian music industry as "samba", this pioneering style was much more connected from the rhythmic and instrumental point of view to maxixe than to samba itself.

Overview

All data

40 statements · 28% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Country of origin: Brazil
Different from: samba
samba
Practiced by: sambista

On other databases

30 identifiers linking samba across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

28%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 9, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

Suggest a fact or correction

Links

Use this data

curl https://aidb.si/api/v1/entities/Q11403

API docs, limits & keys

Cite this page

AIDB. (2026). samba (Q11403). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/samba-Q11403