MPB

MPB — Música Popular Brasileira, "Brazilian popular music" — is the songwriter-led popular music that grew out of bossa nova in Brazil in the mid-1960s. It combines sophisticated harmony and poetic Portuguese lyrics with the rhythms of samba, the music of Brazil's Northeast and, increasingly, rock, soul and jazz. MPB is less a single sound than a tradition of serious, literate song.

This guide covers how the label was born in the TV song festivals, how Tropicália blew it open, how its artists wrote under military censorship, what an MPB record typically sounds like, the artists and albums to start with, and how it differs from bossa nova, samba and Brazilian funk (covered in our post what is Brazilian funk). To see where a classifier places a Brazilian song, run a clip through our free AI music genre detector.

Taken literally, "Brazilian popular music" could mean anything recorded in Brazil. In practice the abbreviation MPB names a specific current: urban, middle-class, songwriter-centred music that emerged after bossa nova and became, from the late 1960s on, the prestige tier of Brazilian pop. It is the music of composers whose lyrics are studied as poetry, and of interpreters — singers such as Elis Regina, Gal Costa and Maria Bethânia — who built careers on choosing and transforming other people's songs.

Three things define it:

• Song first. The melody, harmony and lyric matter more than the beat or the production. Most MPB songs work with nothing more than a voice and a nylon-string guitar (violão).
• Brazilian roots, open borders. Samba, bossa nova, the baião of Luiz Gonzaga, frevo, maracatu and choro are always somewhere underneath, but MPB absorbs rock, soul, jazz, pop and psychedelia freely.
• Words that matter. Lyrics address love and everyday life but also politics, social inequality and Brazilian identity — often obliquely, a habit learned under censorship.

Because the label is broad, it is frequently used as a marketing category for adult-oriented Brazilian pop. Sertanejo, pagode, axé and funk carioca are usually treated as separate genres, even when they top the charts.

From bossa nova to "MPB", mid-1960s. After the 1964 military coup, a younger generation of songwriters began to feel that bossa nova's cool, intimate style was too detached from the rest of Brazil. They drew on regional folk, samba from the hills and protest song to write music that was still harmonically refined but more direct. The label MPB came into use for this post-bossa music around 1965–1966.

The TV festivals, 1965–1968. The new music found its stage in televised song competitions. At TV Excelsior's 1965 festival Elis Regina won with "Arrastão" by Edu Lobo and Vinicius de Moraes, and soon co-hosted TV Record's show O Fino da Bossa. At TV Record's 1966 festival, Chico Buarque's "A Banda" shared first prize with Geraldo Vandré's "Disparada". Audiences cheered and booed like football crowds, and the festivals launched most of the generation that defines MPB.

Tropicália, 1967–1968. At the 1967 TV Record festival, Caetano Veloso ("Alegria, Alegria") and Gilberto Gil ("Domingo no Parque", performed with Os Mutantes) appeared with electric guitars, angering nationalist purists who saw rock as foreign. The movement they led, Tropicália, mixed bossa nova, Brazilian folk, the Beatles, psychedelia, avant-garde poetry and kitsch. Its manifesto album, Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis (1968), brought together Caetano, Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes, Tom Zé and Nara Leão, with arrangements by Rogério Duprat.

Under the dictatorship. In December 1968 the regime issued Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5), suspending civil liberties. Caetano and Gil were arrested and then lived in exile in London until 1972; Chico Buarque spent time in Italy. Songs were routinely censored, and songwriters learned to hide meaning in double meanings: Chico's "Apesar de Você" (1970) passed the censors before being banned, and "Cálice", written with Gil, plays on cálice (chalice) and cale-se (shut up).

The 1970s golden decade. Freed from the festival format, MPB flourished on albums. In Minas Gerais, Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges led the Clube da Esquina collective, whose 1972 double album blended Beatles-era rock, church harmony and regional music. Jorge Ben, Novos Baianos, Gal Costa, Maria Bethânia, Ivan Lins, João Bosco and Aldir Blanc, Djavan and the singers of the Northeast such as Belchior and Fagner all made key records. Elis Regina and Tom Jobim recorded Elis & Tom (1974), and Elis's "O Bêbado e a Equilibrista" (1979) became an anthem of the political amnesty.

After 1985. With democracy restored, MPB became the established tier of Brazilian music. New songwriters such as Marisa Monte (debut 1989), Adriana Calcanhotto and Lenine carried the tradition forward, Gilberto Gil served as Brazil's Minister of Culture (2003–2008), and a "nova MPB" generation in the 2000s and 2010s — Céu, Seu Jorge, Tim Bernardes, Liniker and others — reconnected it with indie, soul and electronic production.

MPB has no fixed tempo, beat or instrumentation, but most records share recognisable traits:

• Harmony from bossa nova: extended chords (sevenths, ninths, altered dominants) and smooth voice-leading, played on the nylon-string guitar or piano.
• Brazilian rhythms underneath: samba and partido-alto patterns, the syncopated baião, the fast frevo, ijexá from Afro-Bahian tradition, and the gentle bossa groove.
• Exposed, conversational vocals: lyrics are sung clearly, often softly, with little vibrato, so every word can be followed.
• Mixed ensembles: violão, piano, bass, drum kit, Brazilian percussion (pandeiro, surdo, cuíca, agogô), strings or horns, and from Tropicália onward electric guitars and synthesizers.
• Wide tempo range: from slow ballads around 60–80 BPM to samba- and frevo-based songs well above 120 BPM.

The table below shows how the main strands differ:

• Chico Buarque — the most literary of MPB songwriters; start with Construção (1971), whose title track is built from lines that all end in proparoxytone words.
• Caetano Veloso — the restless intellectual of the movement; Caetano Veloso (1968) and the London-made Transa (1972).
• Gilberto Gil — guitarist, songwriter and later minister; Expresso 2222 (1972) and Refazenda (1975).
• Elis Regina — the defining interpreter; Elis & Tom (1974) with Tom Jobim.
• Milton Nascimento — soaring voice and the Clube da Esquina album (1972) with Lô Borges.
• Gal Costa — Tropicália's voice, from Gal Costa (1969) to Fa-Tal (1971).
• Jorge Ben — samba-rock and soul; A Tábua de Esmeralda (1974).
• Os Mutantes — Tropicália's psychedelic rock band, with Rita Lee.
• Novos Baianos — Acabou Chorare (1972), mixing samba, choro and rock.
• Marisa Monte — the leading figure of post-1980s MPB and member of Tribalistas with Arnaldo Antunes and Carlinhos Brown.

Because MPB absorbed so much, the boundaries are worth spelling out:

MPB reached international listeners in waves. Jorge Ben's "Mas que Nada" (1963) became a worldwide standard through Sérgio Mendes. In the late 1980s and 1990s, David Byrne's Luaka Bop label and compilations of Brazilian music introduced Tropicália and Tom Zé to indie audiences, and Beck named a 1998 song "Tropicalia" in tribute to the movement. Milton Nascimento recorded with Wayne Shorter on Native Dancer (1975), opening a lasting bridge to jazz.

Today, crate-diggers and samplers prize 1970s MPB and samba-soul records, and hip-hop and R&B producers regularly sample their warm, chord-rich textures. Tropicália in particular is a recurring reference point for psychedelic rock revival bands.

MPB is one of the hardest Brazilian styles for an audio model, because its identity lives in the songwriting and the lyrics, not in a fixed beat or timbre. What the model can hear are the Brazilian percussion patterns, the nylon-string guitar, extended jazz chords and Portuguese vocals. A samba-based MPB song gives the clearest signal; a slow piano ballad or a Tropicália rock track gives very little that is specifically Brazilian.

Try a few seconds in the Genre AI music genre detector and compare a bossa-flavoured song with a rock-flavoured one — the results show how much a label depends on arrangement. Our guide on why songs have multiple genres explains why MPB is a classic case.

What does MPB stand for?

What is the difference between MPB and bossa nova?

Is Tropicália part of MPB?

Who are the most important MPB artists?

Is Brazilian funk the same as MPB?

Why was MPB censored in Brazil?