Música popular brasileira

This movement has produced and is represented by many Brazilian artists, such as Jorge Ben Jor, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Djavan, Novos Baianos, Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Belchior and Elis Regina, whose individual styles generated their own trends within the genre. The term is often also used to describe any kind of music with Brazilian origins and "voice and guitar style" that arose in the late 1960s.


Variations within MPB were the short-lived but influential artistic movement known as tropicália, and the music of samba rock.^[1]


MPB songs are in part characterized by their harmonic complexity and their elaborate lyrics, which call back to a connection between Brazil's popular music and poetry that has been culturally relevant since the 1920s. It also draws from themes from Brazil's folk music as a part of an effort to create a musical style that reflected true Brazilian culture. During the 1970s, these qualities gave the style an intellectual prestige that made it more popular for listening as an art form rather than being used as music for dancing, further distinguishing it from other popular music of the time. However, this was not always the case, as demonstrated by music by artists such as Jorge Ben Jor, many of whose songs fall into the category of dance music.^[2][3]


Many of the albums on Rolling Stone Brazil's list of the 100 greatest Brazilian albums fall under the MPB style.^[4]