LITTLE AFRICAS

The first recordings of “Pelo telefone” [Over the Telephone] circulated a musical genre, samba, whose origin is disputed to this day, on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Although several previous phonographic records included “samba” in their title or as a genre, the 78 RPM records released by Odeon in 1917 go down in history as the crucial moment of the coming together of terreiros and studios. In the following decade, radio would boost the spread of urban samba as a Carioca invention, and turn sambista into a profession.