born in the tranquil ambience of 1950's rio de janeiro, bossa nova is the city's soft samba soul - originally, the new style was simply considered a new way of playing and singing samba, as it absorbed elements from other musical genres, particularly american jazz, and blended them with the traditional samba beats.

however, the genre was, and still is, delightfully unique, making it recognizable as a style of music all on its own. in fact, some even consider its creation the single most important event in brazilian musical history, which goes some way to showing how influential it was, and continues to be.