Description:

Paolo Mari: How to play Brazilian guitar Language: English Media: Video on line Pages: 84 This book is aimed at helping guitarists to improve their knowledge of the fascinating world of the Brazilian guitar. Both experienced musicians who want to go deeper into the style and beginners who approach this topic for the first time will find reasons of interest. Talking or writing about Brazilian guitar is not easy, the theme is immense and just one book could never be exhaustive. Brazil is geographically huge, consists of many states, and each of these has its traditions, its culture, its music. There are at least five fundamental ethnic roots, which have resulted in this great human and cultural mixture: - Indios, that is, the people who lived in Brazil before the arrival of Europeans, with their music and dances and rituals; - Caribbean populations, who, especially in the North and Northeast of Brazil, have significantly influenced the music and culture of those regions; - Europeans, with their military marches, folk songs and tunes of Catholic functions; the main influence was Portuguese, but the Italian and German immigration is also important, especially in the Centre and South; moreover, composers such as Antonio Carlos Jobim were inspired by great European classical musicians, such as Claude Debussy; - Africans: it is estimated that in the three centuries of slavery almost three million people were deported by force to Brazil; these men and women did not own anything but their music, and this gave birth to the world’s most famous Brazilian style, samba; - North Americans: in the 1950s, samba and jazz started to mingle and, according to many musicologists, bossa nova, one of the most important musical styles in the last decades, was born from the fusion of samba rhythms with jazz harmonies. Within this great mix of cultures, the most interesting style for us guitarists is actually the bossa nova; it is here that the guitar becomes the absolute protagonist, managing to be self-sufficient, in a melodic, rhythmic and harmonic sense. For this reason, most of the manual will be devoted to analyzing the rhythmic and harmonic forms of this style. The rhythmic patterns of samba and bossa nova are similar, often identical; the difference lies in the harmony (in the bossa nova it is more evolved and processed) and in the interpretation (samba is played more staccato, and faster).

Categories: