Brazilian Choro Composers

About Choro:

Rio (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) from the middle of the 19th Century was the place where the local culture, a mix principally of the influence of the colonizers who came from Europe with the culture brought by Africans from the time of slavery, abolished definitively in 1888, came to be the origin of a Brazilian musical style named Choro.

Choro, at the beginning, was baptized with different names, in general names of European dances, principally the Polka, but also Maxixe, Schottische, Habanera, Tango, and others. But the mixture with the African rhythms, notably the Afro-Brazilian Lundu, resulted in a unique style of its own.
A little later all of those European dances, mixed with the strong African influence, came to be called Choro.

At the same time Rio, the capital city of Brazil at the time, sheltered instruments brought from Europe, such as pianos, guitars of Portuguese origin, and many other types of instruments, as well as drums of African origin and those made by Afro-descendants.

The wide spread adoption of the piano by the middle class led to Rio being called “The City of Pianos”. Among some of the pianists, who mostly played classical music, the bolder ones began to put to use that mixture of European styles with the Lundu.