Musician criticizes hip-hop's impact on traditional Samba music from Brazil

By JC Domingo

Ricardo Dos Santos looks out in his San Jose neighborhood and hangs his head low while listening to Seu Jorge’s Tive Razao in the background.
Born in Rio do Janeiro, Brazil, Dos Santos moved to several different countries as a child but kept the musical influences with him and in his music writing.
“The Samba beat is an example of my heartbeat,” Dos Santos, 25, said as he puts down his guitar and lights his cigarette on the front porch of his house.
San Francisco’s Carnaval is around the corner—May 24-25 in the Mission District—and Dos Santos feels that the event is one of the only times that the music is celebrated in its traditional form. Every year the Mission holds the Carnaval San Francisco Festival.
“Carnaval is something that keeps the music traditional because they play different types of music,” Dos Santos said. “It focuses on Samba because it has this distinct sound.”

Learning to play and sing on his own Dos Santos plays at coffee shops all over downtown San Jose and has made four other CDs called “Chapter 1,” “Chapter 2,” “Eastside Trio Vol. 1,” and “Eastside Trio Vol. 2.” He is now focusing on his current project “Calioca.”

Dos Santos said that Samba, one of the many branches of Brazilian music, is the most celebrated form of music in Rio do Janeiro, and is influenced by the injustices of the Brazilian government, which was a dictatorship.
“Brazil used to be a dictatorship and many artists at the time [60s-70s] tried to express their feelings about the government, and consequently forced out of the country,” Dos Santos said.
“Musicians talked about the oppression but always left hope for the people. And that’s exactly what we need. We need musicians to uplift our spirits.”
Dos Santos says that many new music listeners are forgetting the roots of their music, losing the traditional values the original Samba musicians had. Today’s popular Samba musicians are influenced by rap.
“Nowadays, the change is bad,” Dos Santos said.
“A part of Brazilian music has been influenced by urban culture (hip-hop), which is deeply affecting the young generations…destroying the traditional culture.”
Many will fail to fully grasp the meaning of traditional Samba because of the other influences of music that surrounds the culture.
“The chord progressions are admired by some of the greatest musicians ever lived. Once you start learning traditional Brazilian music, you’ll realize that you have to be a true musician and really understand music to truly understand the beauty of the rhythm.”
The difference with the hip-hop that is influencing Brazilian music and traditional Samba is that a lot hip-hop is all gibberish, Dos Santos said.
“A lot of these rappers are ignorant,” Dos Santos said. “They lack culture. You never hear anything new from them…most of the time they never do anything positive with it. In Samba, you’ll hear the struggle they go through, and the majority of them end in a hopeful, positive note.”
But there’s a difference in hip-hop music. What people hear on the mainstream radio should not fully represent the art.
“I’m tired of hearing rappers talking about they have…this and that,” Dos Santos said. “We need more rappers like Common, who pushes important issues like AIDS, to educate young listeners about the real world around them.”