Portuguese through music | SheCodes Project

A riqueza da música brasileira - The joys of brazilian music

Brazilian music, just like the Brazilian people, is a wide spectrum. It's full of different sounds, accents, and intersections. It's inevitably influenced, and sometimes deliberately fused with, international genres as well. But at its core, Brazilian music has its own unique colours, displayed in a vast array of locally crafted genres.

The richness of Brazilian music comes from mixing tradition and modernity and tapping into both national and regional traditions – it's constantly evolving. The music of Brazil encompasses various regional musical styles influenced by European, American, African and Amerindian forms.

Samba has become the most known form of Brazilian music worldwide, especially because of the country's carnival, although Bossa Nova has received much attention abroad since the 1950s. There is also a wide away of unique regional styles, like Forró , Axé and Sertanejo ; as well as national versions of foreign musical styles, such as Rap Nacional and Jazz Brasileiro , among many more.

How will music help me learn Portuguese?

Many linguists swear by studying for an array of reasons. Firstly, when listening to music, following the lyrics, melody, rhythm and beat utilizes both sides of the brain. Thus, music helps us retain words and expressions much more effectively, creating emotional connections and functioning as a mnemonic device.

The rhythm of the music, as well as the repetitive patterns within the song, fascilitate our ability to memorize new words. Even if most of the words are unfamiliar at first, mimicking the words in a song can help you practice producing sounds in the new language. Eventually the sounds give way to actual understanding as the song is practiced over and over again.

Also, listening to songs in your target language gives you something that no vocabulary list can: a context for the words. You get to hear how words are used in real life. When you learn complete sentences along with their English translation, you're learning how to use complex grammar without the need to memorise all the rules behind it. This means that you'll be understanding and speaking your target language more like native speakers in less time than you would with some other study methods.

Of course, listening to a playlist helps your ear get accustomed to hearing the new language, in the same way that singing songs helps you practice your pronunciation. It is effortless to do, can be done from anywhere and more importantly it's FUN!

Welcome to Lições em Português | Learn Portuguese through music

Welcome to Lições em Português | Learn Portuguese through music

Not sure where to begin?

...or check out this Spotify playlist!