The "Vanguarda" was responsible for launching many new talents and establishing a foundation for autonomous, self-sufficient music production (and subsequent release) by artists such as Arrigo Barnabé and Grupo Rumo.

Assumpção was black; a great-grandson of enslaved Angolans and grew up listening to the drums of umbanda (a kind of voodoo tradition also based upon Christianism) in the backyard patio of his home.

Assumpção actually grew up in Arapongas, a municipality of the Brazilian state, Paraná, the area he moved to at the age of 12 after his birthplace of São Paulo.

[citation needed] In 1973, he returned to São Paulo to devote himself to music and was performing on the Lira Paulistana stage soon after his arrival in the city.

[citation needed] The prominent figures of the movement - Assumpção, Barnabé, Grupo Rumo, Premê (Premeditando o Breque), Le Dantas Cordeiro and others - soon earned the nickname of "Damned", with the reason behind this title unclear at the present time (it may have had to do with the reduced financial potential of their musical output due to their position outside of the Brazilian music industry, an observation that gained substance when the movement eventually dismantled due, in part, to a lack of commercial success[1]).