At the time short skirts for girls were in fashion and men wore long trousers, and the dance became especially associated with girls wearing short skirts. This form of Lambada was danced with arched legs, with the steps being from one side to the other, and never from front to back. It became a four-beat dancing style, which was distinctive from the original Carimbó. The Lambada spread along the coast until it reached Bahia (the elder Brazilian state) where it was influenced by the Forró, an old Brazilian style of dance which also had a strong beat.
This style started to be played throughout north-eastern Brazil (a place well known for its tourist approach), although this new Carimbó went with the name of Lambada. In the late 1980s, the fusion between the metallic and electronic music from Caribbean brought again a new face to the Carimbó. His first official disc, Lambada of Quebradas, was recorded in 1976 but officially launched two years later, in 1978. Some support the version that the guitarist and composer Master Vieira, the inventor of the guitarrada, would also be the creator of the Lambada music. It is the first Brazilian recording of a song under the label of Lambada. In 1976, he launched a song entitled Lambada (Sambão), track number 6 of the LP No embalo of carimbó and sirimbó vol. He is the singer and composer of the "King of Carimbó" (as it is affectionately known) and he created rhythms, such as: Sirimbó, Lári-Lári, Lambada and Lamgode. Pinduca is a musician and composer of mainly Carimbó. MusicĪurino Quirino Gonçalves, or simply Pinduca, is a Brazilian musician and singer in the north of Brazil (Amapá and Pará area), where it is strongly believed he is the true father of the lambada music. Two-beat dance styleĪround 1983, the Carimbó dance started again to be danced in couples, in a 2-beat style, something very close to Merengue, but with more spins. This flowing wave motion is reproduced by the dancers' bodies, and is one of the main elements that distinguish Lambada from other Latin dances. In Portuguese it may refer to the wave-like motion of a whip. However, as a dance form, lambada is of obscure etymology. The word lambada means "strong slap" or "hit" in Portuguese. The term "lambada" had a strong appeal and began to be associated with the new emerging face of an old dancing style. EtymologyĪfter a while, a local radio station from Belém (Pará's capital city) started to call this new type of music "the strong-beated rhythm" and "the rhythms of lambada". The music was mainly to the beat of drums made of trunks of wood, thinned by fire.Ĭarimbó involved only side to side movements and many spins and hip movement, which became the basis of the lambada. Carimbó was a loose and very sensual dance which involved many spins by the female dancer, who typically wore a rounded skirt. At the time when the dance became popular, short skirts for women were in fashion and men wore long trousers, and the dance has become associated with such clothing, especially for women wearing short skirts that swirl up when the woman spins around, typically revealing 90s-style thong underwear.Īlso known as the forbidden dance, from the time that Brazil was a Portuguese colony, Carimbó was a common dance in the northern part of the country.
The dancers generally dance with arched legs, with the steps being from side to side, turning or even swaying, and in its original form never front to back, with a pronounced movement of the hips. It has adopted aspects of dances such as forró, salsa, merengue, maxixe and the carimbó.
The dance became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in Latin America and Caribbean countries. Lambada ( pronunciation) is a dance from Pará, Brazil, of African origin.