Brega pop

Brega was a term used pejoratively to designate popular romantic music of low quality and with dramatic exaggerations (love disappointments) or naivety;[1][2][3] with samba-canção, bolero and jovem-guarda linked to it.

On the one hand, a generation emerged from the university-educated middle classes that would consolidate, in the following decade, under the acronym MPB, no less than "Brazilian popular music".

[11] Although radio stations and major record labels began to ignore its existence, "brega" artists continued to produce and assimilate new influences.

Even with limited investment capital and technical support, these musicians maintained a significant audience in the urban peripheries of these regions, outside the cultural coverage of the hegemonic media.

Outside the scope of the national recording industry, the musical production of "calypso" from Pará was distributed directly by street vendors and camelôs, consolidating an alternative market.

In 1999, together with his wife at the time, the singer Joelma Mendes,[18] Ximbinha formed the greatest national exponent of the movement that become Banda Calypso.

Although it developed in the parallel market of the peripheries, in this decade "brega pop" has become an extremely lucrative business and has regained space in local media throughout the country, with a presence on the programming of the big commercial radio stations.

[21] With the popularization of the tecnobrega style (techno + brega), the result of the fusion of brega with electronic music styles, during the 2010s,[22] calypso ceased to be preferred by the state's bands, singers and artists, who preferred to record what was hot at the time, with calypso losing many of its representatives and losing much of the popularity it had enjoyed in the previous decade.