The eminent Brazilian folklorist, Edison Carneiro says there was a time when the word samba was used to designate several types of music and dance introduced by African blacks in different regions of Brazil, from Maranhão, to the north, and São Paulo, to the south. The following music was called samba: "tambor de mina" in Maranhão; " milindô" in Piauí; " bambelô " in en Rio Grande do Norte; "coco, samba de roda e bate-baú" in Zona da Mata do Nordeste and Bahia; " jongo " in the areas of Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. He goes on to say that although there was a time when Samba as a word described different types of music and celebration found throughout Brazil, after "Pelo Telefone" was recorded, Samba became identified as belonging to Rio de Janeiro.

Many writers over emphasise Fred Astaire's and Carmen Miranda's contribution to the growth in popularity of Samba within the USA and Europe. The Samba was introduced to the Dance Masters Association of New York as early as 1929 and had a general introduction to movie audiences in 1933 when Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers danced the Samba-Carioca in Flying Down to Rio. A Samba exhibition was given at the November 1938 meeting of the New York Society of Teachers of Dancing and general interest in the Samba was stimulated at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, where Samba music was played at the Brazilian Pavilion. In the 1940s Carmen Miranda made fourteen movies in the US but Fox and the other studios invested solely in her comic talents rather than her vocal and dramatic potential. Her very performances were a documented embarrassment to Brazil. Still, she became an ambassador of Brazilian music and her home became the embassy for Brazilian musicians visiting the US.

Truth be known, outside of Brazil, the popularity of Samba and other Latino music grew in the 1940s because of the greed of the US music performance rights organization - ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). ASCAP charged radio stations fees for playing copyrighted material. Through the 1930s the fees were getting ridiculous. So, in 1939 when ASCAP announced yet another large increase, broadcasters took action and by the following year had established their own licensing organization, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). On 1 January 1941, as BMI labored to build a catalog, most stations stopped paying their ASCAP fees and restricted themselves to the airing of songs with expired copyrights and non-ASCAP music.

To ASCAP's chagrin, no groundswell of indignation arose from the radio audience. Further, singers and instrumentalists replaced much of their repertoire with non-ASCAP material in order to keep their lucrative and visibility enhancing radio bookings. Many performers switched from playing tunes by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin, to using non-ASCAP music from South America!"

This gave Brazilian music a platform to demonstrate its vitality. Particularly, in regard to the range of samba styles it had available to entertain the diverse needs of the American public.

It needs to be remembered that in 1941 to 1945, World War 2 was in full swing in Europe and the Pacific and worldwide, all things American pervaded western culture. After the war Europe was in desolation! Worldwide, American movies, music and tastes dominated over local cultures. The result of BMI's war with ASCAP was the spread of the popularity of Latin music throughout the world!

Since the 1930s, the list of Samba and Samba based styles continue to grow! To name but a few: Samba Breque, Samba Gafeira, Samba Morro, Samba Batucada, Samba Choro, Samba Cancao, Samba Moderno, Samba Rock, Samba Funk, Samba Ragae, Bossa Nova, Partido Alto, Toada, Rasta Pe, Xote, Afoxe, Maracatu, Marcha, Marcha Rancho, Baiao, Caterete, Xaxado and of course the Samba that defines the Carnivale in Rio de Janeiro - Samba Enredo.

The samba rhythm permeates many styles of Brazilian music and as in the past, these days Samba can mean a lot of things in Brazil. There are the sambas de enredo, the theme songs of Rio's Carnival parades which feature the large percussion sections or batucadas marching with hundreds of singers and dancers in escolas de samba. However, most recordings feature the samba-cancão, best represented by prominent singers from the samba schools like Martinho Da Vila, Beth Carvalho, Paulinho da Viola, Clara Nunes and others, who record in the studio with the same percussion instruments (but fewer!) and add other instrumentation like a seven-string guitar, cavaquinho and employ more sophisticated arrangements.

In the 1950s Brazilian musicians heard the "cool jazz" of the US and adapted it to a gentler samba rhythm syncopated on the guitar. The result was the reflective, romantic music called Bossa Nova. The collaboration between Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz along with Astrud Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim yielded the 1964 album Getz/Gilberto (with its hit single "Girl From Ipanema") that spread Bossa Nova throughout the world. Sergio Mendes continued that spread through the sixties with Brasil '66 and has re-emerged again in the nineties with recordings that have gone beyond Bossa Nova.

In the late 1960s musical influences outside of Brazil like Rock were having their influence upon Brazilian music and musicians, who, while remaining faithful to Brazilian rhythms and styles, were happy to experiment with new styles and instrumentation. So Brazilian popular music began to develop into a wonderful hybrid of Samba, Bossa Nova, Jazz, Rock and regional traditional musics. The term used to encapsulate all these styles became MPB, an acronym for Musica Popular Brasileira.

Since his first Album in 1968 through to the present, singer Milton Nascimento introduces yet another distinctive style influenced partly by the region where he grew up, the state of Minas Geraes. Nascimento's sound is always evolving. He combines elements of pop, samba and jazz. Other artists like Jorge Ben and particularly Gilberto Gil have a lot of African elements in their music.

In northeastern Brazil is the state of Bahia, cradle to many of the African traditions of Brazil including music. The most prominent styles in Bahia grew out of the Bahian carnival:bloco afro (drums and voices like the group Olodum) and afoxe; and a musical hybrid that grew out of those two styles called samba-reggae. Since a lot of artists from Bahia (Margareth Menezes, Timbalada, Daniela Mercury, Carlinhos Brown) mix these styles into their recordings all of this music is usually categorised as Bahia.

And we shouldn’t forget to mention Samba-Choro that was born in the 1920s, lost popularity in the 1950s, had a rebirth in the 1970s and has started to regain popularity since the 1990s. This spawned another hybrid the Pagode which has features of the Samba-Choro and because it is easy to dance became a commercial phenomenon in the 1990s.

Many years ago the elders of Samba, Ismail Silva and Donga argued what was Samba!

So, what is a samba? You tell me!