shores, coasts, and then hinterlands of Brazil were filled with African slaves, a new culture took hold, invoking memories of the past and sustaining a culture for the future. The slaves, who had been surrounded by Europeans for years of their own lives and centuries of a history, carried with them a motley version of the Western African Bantu language. One of its many soulful, multi-faceted words was semba, which captured many ideas with one word: invocation of the spirits, reliance on ancestors, prayers to Gods of the African pantheon; it even meant a complaint, a cry for something, and a feeling of the disillusioned discomfort today known as 'the blues.'

Semba, pronounced samba, was also used to name a ceremony traditional to the early African slaves in Brazil, in which they danced to the rhythmic choreography of butacar, a native African dance.

Samba originated as an early form of...
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