MPB, loosely understood as a "style", debuted in the mid-1960s, with the
acronym being applied to types of non-electric music that emerged following the beginning, rise and evolution of bossa nova. MPB artists and audiences were largely connected to the intellectual and student population, causing later MPB to be known as "university music." Over time, the definition of MPB expanded to include a wider variety of music that was popular in Brazil, including rock music, which was not initially under the umbrella due to its foreign origins.
Initial success Like bossa nova, MPB was an attempt to produce a "national" Brazilian music that drew from traditional styles. MPB made a considerable impact in the 1960s, thanks largely to several televised music festivals. The beginning of MPB is often associated with
Elis Regina's interpretation of
Vinícius de Moraes and
Edu Lobo's "Arrastão." In 1965, one month after celebrating her 20th birthday, Elis appeared on the nationally
broadcast Festival de Música Popular Brasileira and performed the song. Elis recorded "Arrastão" and released the song as a single, which became the biggest-selling single in Brazilian music history at that time and catapulted her to stardom. This brought MPB to a national Brazilian audience and many artists have since performed in the style over the years. Thanks to an economic boom in Brazil through the 1960s and 1970s, an expanding working and middle class had greater access to television, which became a substantial vehicle for the consumption and spread of MPB. Musical showcases such as
Festival de Música Popular Brasileira turned out to be a massive success, and the stations
TV-Record and
FIC most notably competed in a ratings battle that resulted in greatly expanding the audience of Brazilian Popular Music. In particular, the shows
O Fino da Bossa and
Jovem Guarda achieved a great deal of media attention and praise, with the former being attributed to taking part in the creation of MPB. The successes of both prompted the live broadcasting of more vibrant music festivals. These events were more like competitions, and artists first had to go through a lengthy submission process before being given the chance to perform in front of a panel of judges as well as a live audience. The music festivals further expanded viewership while also increasing the competition between artists for
airtime and stations for better ratings.
MPB after the 1960s In the wake of increased government
censorship on art forms such as music in the early 1970s, artists became much more limited in the music they could produce, and those who refused to conform to the standards set by the law risked
exile. As a result, the number of innovative artists and songs that were broadcast dropped, and likewise, the program ratings. However, efforts by
television stations as well as record companies for music that met the standard set by the music festivals of the 1960s continued, with the television festival
Abertura being one such example. While
Abertura featured many up-and-coming artists, press commentary rarely considered them to be as good as MPB from the 1960s. From this emerged a debate about the role of television in broadcasting song and performance. On one side, some television producers attached a duty to revitalizing the creativity within the Brazilian popular music scene. Critics of this argued that the best of the current creative pool had already been exhausted by the music festivals and that the continuous output of MPB served more as a detriment to the industry than a benefit. Despite this, attempts by television and record companies at recreating the music festivals of the 1960s continued with various programs into the 1980s, which was met with only modest success. In the early 2000s, the company
IBM organized some Internet-based festivals with votes cast online by the audience rather than by a jury. This fared better than the television attempts two decades before, but did not achieve the sweeping success of programs from the 1960s. == See also ==