According to some reports, samba de roda began in the colonization times, around 1860, linked to the cult of orixás and caboclos, to capoeira and foods made with palm oil. It is said that when slaves had time to rest, they danced in the fashion of their land. This dance is played by a set of tambourines, atabaque, berimbau, viola, ganzá, reco-reco and rattle, accompanied mainly by chants and clapping. It is a simple dance, but it requires some swaying with the feet or steps marked with the hand.
Such a rhythm was so contagious, that little by little he started to leave the slave quarters and enter the houses of the whites.
Originally from the state of Bahia, samba de roda is a mixture of dance, poetry and party. And it is in the Bahian Recôncavo that we find the most illustrious composers, such as Dorival Caymmi, João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso among many others.
This mixture of music, dance, poetry and party reveals itself in two characteristic ways, the samba chula and the samba corrido.
“The chula, a form of poetry, is recited by the soloist while the group listens attentively, only surrendering to the charms of the dance after the end of the pronouncement, when one participant at a time enters the middle of the circle to the sound of drumming conducted by clapping. In the corrido, the samba takes over the roda at the same time as two soloists and the choir take turns singing”.
Other examples are the miudinho, tied, bar-vento and tap dance. When the samba circle is formed, a samba singer places himself in the center and presents his ginga and dances for some time, then he calls a member of the circle with a sign such as the umbigada or a simple handshake, so that he takes over. its place in the center of the wheel.
Gradually, this rhythm spread to various parts of the country, especially Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro.
In Rio de Janeiro, samba took on such a proportion that it led the city to be known as the world capital of Brazilian samba, as it was there that samba evolved and gained artistic diversity and established in the urban area, as an agitation of evident social value, so that blacks could face police persecution and social rejection, seen through black cultural manifestations.
