An immense part of the Indians was indeed decimated by the diseases arrived with the occupants. Then since 1542 the triangular traffic between Portugal, Africa and Brazil were organised, which will cause the deportation of slaves on board the vessels slave traders (tumbeiros) through the Portuguese colonial empire.
Families, tribes and ethnos groups thus will be dispersed. In spite of a total destitution and the ill treatments inflicted by the white Masters, the wire of the tradition will not be broken.
Facing prohibition to meet and practise the music, African preserves their beliefs and their rites. Those are disguised not to wake up the mistrust of the foremen.
Thus the African gods will take the name of catholic saints (Santo Francisco for Omulu, god of health...) and the Capoeira, a very old fighting art, will be disguised in flexible dance with attractive esthetics.
The rhythms, the songs and the dances thus remained long-lived in the collective memory of the black people and the religious beliefs kept their place in the center of the concerns of the slaves. The caribbeen poet Edouard Glissant evokes "a memory which never ceased haunting the spirit of the black slaves".
Very early, the owners of slaves had to repress many initiatives : riots, escapes (the "marronnage"), refusal to work.
They had then the idea to authorize
the meetings of slaves by ethnos groups in order to control them more easily
while arousing the competitions between groups and to prevent mass movements.
These groups were called Batuques, from the name of an old angola rhythm, ancestor of the Samba. The batuque then will become place of meeting, plays, religious practice and safeguarding of the African culture.
However the rebellions and the escapes of slaves continued to hustle the history of the colony. Escaped Blacks created Quilombos, true black states inside the country, organized and ready to fight for their freedom. Most famous of them is Quilombo de Palmarès, which resisted many years during the 17th century the Portuguese army, before being destroyed in a bloody repression.
New industries of the 19th century will cause the concentration of primarily black populations to the areas around the cities.
The rites like Candomblé
or Macumba then proceeded clandestinely in Terreiros, places
of worship and communion with the gods.
Another surge of population will enrich the cultural and human brazilian melting
pot : they are Italians, Germans, Portuguese and, later, Japanese who also
settled in the cities.
Lastly, after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, another wave of migrants in search of work still enlarged the human flood towards the southern agglomerations of the country, generally Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo.
Little by little the rites left clandestinity and the musics mixed for example through the Carnival, european tradition
The afro-Brazilian percussions draw today their force in this unsoundable inheritance. They are present in all the styles of the Brazilian music, from Bossa Nova (influenced by the Jazz) to Blocos afros in Salvador de Bahia, from Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) to the Samba of Rio, without forgetting the rites, which are still very enduring.
The influences, in particular from the United States since around fifty years, are numerous, but the Brazilian music is always recognizable thanks to the ancestral fire, which is incarnated by the percussions, guardians of rhythm, memory and sacred.
Europe as for it contributed an
important share through its instruments (snaredrum, guitar...), its dances
(waltz, polka...) and its melodies.
But the base of the music and the afro-Brazilian percussions is related to
the tragic fate of million blacks people deported from Africa towards the
colonies of Americas.
In 1500, Pedro Alvarez Cabral accosts on a paradisiac ground, inhabited by local tribes.