Maxixe

Maxixe is the Brazilian couple dance and its music that swept Rio de Janeiro from the 1880s: a duple-metre salon dance fusing the European polka with the Afro-Brazilian lundu and the habanera, played by choro ensembles of flute, guitars, cavaquinho and piano. Its syncopated, lilting melodies — the tangos brasileiros of *Ernesto Nazareth* and the theatre songs of *Chiquinha Gonzaga* — were denounced as lascivious and danced anyway, in theatres, carnival halls, Paris and New York. Maxixe is the direct ancestor of both samba and modern choro; because it predates the album era, its repertory survives chiefly in sheet music and 78rpm sides.