Brega

Brega is Brazil's great romantic popular music of the 1970s and after: sentimental ballads and bolero-inflected songs of love, betrayal, and longing, sung with direct emotional force by performers such as *Reginaldo Rossi*, crowned the King of Brega, and *Odair José*. Long dismissed by critics as tacky, the word brega itself means corny, the music was the commercial backbone of working-class Brazil, sold through radio and television across the North and Northeast. Its trademarks are unadorned confession, orchestral or keyboard-backed arrangements, and choruses built to be sung along by an audience that never shared the critics' embarrassment.