Choro Nights: Rio’s Acoustic Roots

Decades before samba commanded the parade grounds or bossa nova emerged from beachfront living rooms, Rio de Janeiro invented its own urban chamber music: choro. Emerging in the late 1870s in the working-class quarters of Cidade Nova, this intricate instrumental genre fused European dance forms—polkas, waltzes, and schottisches—with the syncopated counter-rhythms of Afro-Brazilian percussion and cadence.