Samba
The 8 Best Samba
Tracks of All Time
Rio de Janeiro's national music, out of the Bahian communities of the Praça Onze district and onto record in 1917. Built from interlocking percussion and a syncopation that lands everywhere except where a European ear expects it.
- Origin
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1917
- Tempo
- 90–140 BPM
- Also known as
- samba carioca, samba de roda, pagode, samba-canção
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-30
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Number 1: Ary Barroso / Aquarela do Brasil
1939
The samba-exaltação, written in one night during a rainstorm, and the tune the rest of the world means when it says Brazil. Grandiose, and it earns it.
Number 2: Donga / Pelo Telefone
1917
The first record registered as a samba, and its authorship was disputed immediately by everyone who had been in the room. A fair beginning for a collective music.
Number 3: Pixinguinha / Carinhoso
1937
Choro rather than strict samba, by the greatest Brazilian musician of the century, and the most loved melody in the country. Booed as too American when it appeared.
Number 4: Zé Kéti / A Voz do Morro
1955
"I am samba" — a song that argues the music belongs to the hillside favelas rather than to the studios below. It won the argument.
Number 5: Elizeth Cardoso / Coisa Mais Linda
1959
Cardoso is the bridge from samba-canção to what came next; her 1958 sessions with João Gilberto are usually called the first bossa nova record. This is the older art at its most refined.
Number 6: Zeca Pagodinho / Deixa a Vida Me Levar
2002 · Universal
Pagode, the backyard variety, sung by a man with no interest in appearing to try. Proof the tradition kept producing standards long after the tourists moved on.
Number 7: Baden Powell / Canto de Ossanha
1966
Afro-sambas — Powell and Vinicius de Moraes going to the candomblé terreiros for melodies and coming back with something darker than bossa allowed.
Number 8: Adoniran Barbosa / Trem das Onze
1964
São Paulo, not Rio, and a man explaining he cannot stay because his mother will worry and he must catch the eleven o'clock train. Comic, sad and perfectly built.