Many scholars believe the origin of the word “samba” to be semba, a term in the Kimbundu language of Angola that refers to a choreographic move in which two people touch bellies as an invitation to dance (known in Portuguese as umbigada, from umbigo, meaning “navel”). The semba was a key trait of many dances brought to Northeast Brazil by enslaved Bantu people from the Kongo-Angola region of Africa. The Portuguese colonizers referred to these dances accompanied by percussion, handclapping, and singing generically as batuque. By the early 20th Century, “samba” replaced batuque as an umbrella term for such dances.

Samba de roda (“circle samba”) and partido alto (a kind of samba in the form of a “duel” between two or more singers) were two early northeastern forms of the genre that arrived in Rio with migrants from Bahia State in the latter half of the 19th Century. The lundu, modinha, maxixe, choro, and marcha are five other influential antecedents to the samba carioca (Rio samba). Of these, the lundu and maxixe are the most direct precursors to the modern samba.

The lundu pioneered the introduction of African musical traits in urban Brazilian music. First referenced in writing in 1780, the lundu was an Afro-Brazilian dance and music style that featured the semba maneuver. Considered the first black music to be accepted by Brazilian society, the lundu entered the Portuguese court by the end of the 18th Century as an elite style with guitar or piano accompaniment. The salon and street versions of the lundu both continued to be popular in Brazil until the early 20th Century. The first record made in Brazil was of a lundu called “Isto É Bom” (This Is Good), released in 1902. The song was composed by Xisto Bahia and performed by the singer Baiano for the Casa Edison record company.

The maxixe couple dance emerged in Rio around 1880 as a blend of the lundu with the European polka and Cuban habanera. Disparaged by some for its sensual moves, the maxixe soon replaced the lundu as Brazil’s most popular urban social dance and even made it to Europe in the early 20th Century. Many of the earliest recorded samba songs, released around that same time in Brazil, are rhythmically based on the maxixe.