Music

From Brazil to Beirut: Boussa Nova Is The Genre You Didn’t Know You’d Be Playing All Summer

BYYassine Hariss

June 19, 2025

Just like COVID, music genres can’t be contained. Able to spread at a pace that defies most metrics of speed, they cruise through crowds and cultures, picking up new influences, arrangements, and accords each time they are beamed through speakers, earphones, or headsets somewhere around the planet. Tied to a particular time frame, they serve as sonic snapshots of an era we return to in hopes of rekindling with the feeling of a moment that’s passed. And with each decade that ticks by, a sonic fingerprint is left behind. In the 1960s, two genres rose above the rest: Rock ’n’ Roll in North America and Bossa Nova in the South.

Born along Brazil’s sun-drenched coasts, Bossa Nova can best be described as a fusion of samba and jazz, characterized by a smooth, almost whisper-like sound that ran counter to the sonic exuberance dominating most stages back then. Translating to “new trend” or “new wave,” the Carioca movement embraced a new understanding of sonics; one that made Brazilian music intelligible and appealing to worldwide audiences without surrendering a single bit of its soul or essence. If anything, it managed to seduce listeners from all around the globe, even prompting other regions to chime in and reinterpret the genre through their own cultural lens; with one iteration we’ve come to refer to as Boussa Nova.

It might come as a surprise to some, but there are more people of Lebanese descent living in Brazil than in Lebanon itself. A result of multiple waves of migration that began in the late 19th and early 20th century, this shift in demographic brought along a slew of traditions and practices that embedded themselves into the fabric of their new homes in Latin America. In turn, Brazilian influences— from food and language to music— began to trickle into Lebanese households as well, planting seeds that would later bloom into something new, like Boussa Nova.

Developing organically, without official policies or conscious agendas driving this two-way exchange, over the years, a number of prominent Lebanese musicians visited or settled in Brazil as a result of the deepening ties between both countries. From Wadih El Safi and Najib Hankash to even Fairuz, some of Lebanon’s most iconic voices found their way to Brazil whether it was to live, perform, or connect with the vast Lebanese diaspora that had made the country their home.

Still, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that Brazilian musical influences began to filter back into Lebanese airwaves. And according to music journalist Gabrielle Messeder, much of that can be traced to one figure: Ziad Rahbani. Enamored by Bossa Nova’s soft swings, its influence started to be felt in his own compositions, brought into every other piece of music he would go on to write, arrange, or stage.

Since then, echoes of Brazil became a steady, unmistakable current running through his partitions, going all the way to composing a Bossa Nova inspired track for his own mother, the one and only Fairouz, in a song dubbed Shu Bkaf. Gradually taking more and more space in the Lebanese microcosm, an Arabic-inflected take on Bossa Nova eventually ended up carving its own niche, spearheaded by artists from the Cedar State but increasingly embraced by singers from elsewhere across the region. Built on the foundations of Bossa Nova but voiced in Arabic— and accented by the musical dialects of the region— the hybrid genre swayed between continents, carrying with it the cadence and ease of those who saw, and felt, the pull of multiple sounds and identities.

For those not yet familiar, we’ve curated a playlist below to give you a proper introduction. Consider it your gateway to the genre you didn’t know you’d be obsessing over this summer.

From Brazil to Beirut: Boussa Nova Is The Genre You Didn’t Know You’d Be Playing All Summer

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From Brazil to Beirut: Boussa Nova Is The Genre You Didn’t Know You’d Be Playing All Summer

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