Born in Brazil's black communities, the samba has long been embraced by the country's more affluent, lighter-skinned classes. In the 1930s, gentrification compelled many Afro-Brazilians to leave the Praça Onze area in the center of Rio and relocate to working-class suburbs or shantytown slums (favelas) on hillsides (morros) around the City. Coinciding with this development was the growth in popularity until the 1950s of the samba-canção (song samba), a more sentimental variety of the genre strongly associated with the middle class.

Meanwhile, the classic black form of the genre that had emerged from the Estácio neighborhood — home to the first samba school — continued its own evolution in Rio’s favelas. Then in the mid-1960s, sambistas from the favelas, absent from the limelight for decades, made a major comeback. One of the catalysts for the revival was the musical revue "Rosa de Ouro," produced by Hermínio Bello de Carvalho in 1965 and featuring such samba giants as Clementina de Jesus, Paulinho da Viola, Elton Medeiros, Nelson Sargento, and Jair do Cavaquinho. The year before, the show Opinião helped revitalize the career of prolific sambista Zé Keti. Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho, Monsueto, Silas de Oliveira, Mano Décio da Viola, and Dona Ivone Lara were other major sambistas who gained prominence at this time.

A host of other samba legends emerged as a part of this renaissance of roots samba that began in the 1960s and ‘70s and has continued to evolve. These artists include: Candeia, Martinho da Vila, Clara Nunes, Beth Carvalho, João Nogueira, Roberto Ribeiro, Wilson Moreira, Nei Lopes, Alcione, Leci Brandão, Bezerra da Silva, Grupo Fundo de Quintal, Zeca Pagodinho, Almir Guinéto, Jorge Aragão, Arlindo Cruz, Sombrinha, and Jovelina Pérola Negra — among countless others.

In the mid-1970s and ‘80s, there was a major roots revival of communal samba gatherings, known as pagodes, throughout Rio and the rest of Brazil. The pagode movement started in 1974 at the headquarters of the Cacique de Ramos Carnaval group (bloco) in the working-class suburbs of Rio. There, a young cohort of talented samba composers gathered weekly around a table with food and drink to show each other their songs. Chronicling the lives of Rio’s poor and working classes in their lyrics, the Cacique musicians simultaneously brought the samba back to its roots while modernizing its sound. Besides introducing a new instrumentation into the samba that included the Brazilian banjo and tantan and repique de mão drums, they revitalized older forms of the genre such as the partido-alto, popularizing them among Brazilian youth. In 1978 and ‘79, some of the Cacique musicians toured and recorded with singer Beth Carvalho, later cutting their debut album under the name Grupo Fundo de Quintal (The Backyard Group) in 1980. The name was evocative of the vibe of this new samba movement — informal, rootsy, and community-based. Fundo de Quintal was the pioneering band in one of the most influential trends in Brazilian popular music of the 1980s and beyond — a tendency that has remained strong to this day.

Here is just a sampling of some of the most revered and influential traditional samba composers and performers who got their start in the 1960s and ‘70s. With the exception of Clara Nunes, who died tragically in 1983, all of them are still active today. Our next website project: Part Two Rio: Samba Strikes Back: A Resource Guide will highlight some of the other paths that Brazil’s most characteristic genre has taken from the 1960s up to the present day, so stay tuned!