Music is a key part of Brazil's cultural fabric. And no music speaks to the heart of the country quite like samba. That genre inspired the Bossa Nova musicians of the 1950s and 60s. CGTN's Paulo Cabral visits the samba schools that helped shape Brazilian identity.

This is the headquarters of the Mangueira Samba School in Rio de Janeiro. The first samba school was founded in the slums of Rio de Janeiro back in the 1920s. Over the years, they have come to represent the spirit of their communities.

PAULO CABRAL RIO DE JANEIRO "The samba schools in Rio de Janeiro are deeply connected to the city's slums, the favelas, but every year, their carnival parades bring together people of all social classes and from all over the world."

Mangueira Old Guard is a group formed by the school's elders, every school of samba has an Old Guard. Being part of a community's samba school is reason for pride and a way to reaffirm one's cultural identity, something not always accepted by the establishment.

GILDA MOREIRA PRESIDENT, MANGUEIRA OLD GUARD "My grandmother used to tell me that in the beginning the samba schools were marginalized. Police wouldn't let them parade and arrest them. But then the elite discovered it and saw a joy of life they didn't have with their money and their positions. And nowadays you see people paying, a lot, for a costume to parade with us."

Modern samba first appeared in Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century combining traditional rhythms brought to the city by migrants, mixed with African beats and styles already popular in Rio, like the polka. It grew to be a key expression of Brazilian culture, to this day attracting crowds to parties like the Workers' Samba, organized every Monday in Rio by popular "sambista", a samba artist, Moacyr Luz.

MOACYR LUZ SAMBA MUSICIAN "Samba is like a state of mind. Sambistas wear samba clothes, use samba words and eat samba food, or people eat together while partying. It's the bow of Brazilian culture. Samba was also the basis for the creation of the Bossa Nova which is a more refined version of the rhythm. But it's also samba."

PAULO CABRAL RIO DE JANEIRO "In the late 1950's, a new musical style was born here in Copacabana, bringing together the traditional Samba from Rio de Janeiro's slums and the jazz heard by the city's middle and upper classes. It was the Bossa Nova."

Guitar player Roberto Menescal was part of the group that created the Bossa Nova and saw it spread across the globe. Menescal wrote some of the Bossa Nova key tunes, like "O Barquinho", Little Boat.

ROBERTO MENESCAL BOSSA NOVA MUSICIAN "We liked jazz a lot, for the music and for the attitude of the jazz musicians. It was the picture we got from the movies: cool musicians with their glass of whiskey and cigarettes. So we bought into the ideas of their music and their attitude and mixed that with the tradition of samba, that brought us beautiful melodic lines and lyrics. And then Joao Gilberto came up with the Bossa Nova beat with the guitar. That was what we needed!"

Across generations and social classes, samba is a revealing feature of Brazilian culture, a voice that sums up in the same beat the different voices of a country. Paulo Cabral, CGTN, Rio de Janeiro.