By the 2000s, samba rock had grown into a broader cultural movement involving dancers, disc jockeys, scholars, and musicians, who reinvented the genre in a modernized form.
[1] The samba-rock genre developed during the 1960s with popular Brazilian recording musicians who fused samba with American rock, soul, and funk influences.
[2] This development occurred alongside the Tropicália artistic movement within mid-1960s música popular brasileira (MPB), which itself had modernized traditional bossa nova rhythms with influences from other Brazilian and international pop rock sounds.
[5] Stylistically, Ben combined samba with instruments and features from rock and roll, including the electric guitar, drum kit, and reverberation.
[6] According to Impose magazine's Jacob McKean, "the horn-heavy big band sound" on the song "Take It Easy My Brother Charles" (from Ben's 1969 self-titled album) is a key element of the genre.
[7] His 1970 album Fôrça Bruta, recorded with Trio Mocotó, was also pioneering of samba rock in its fusion of the band's groove-based accompaniment and the more rockish rhythms of Ben's guitar.
[9] The genre became defined by the drum kit, bass guitar, keyboard, brass instruments, a strong groove, and "tumxicutumxicutum", an onomatopoeia referring to samba rock's distinctive rhythm.
In subsequent years, samba rock developed from a dance phenomenon and music style into a complex cultural movement, involving musicians, producers, DJs, dancers, visual artists, and scholars.
[1] In the early 2000s, the genre was refashioned in a more modernized form featuring electronic samples, departing from the traditional set-up of Ben and Trio Mocotó's 1970s music.
[1] In 2010, three figures associated with the samba-rock movement—dancer Jorge Yoshida, musician Marco Mattoli, and producer Nego Júnior—started a grassroots campaign to have samba rock registered as a cultural heritage of São Paulo.