Besides its enticing polyrhythms, why do you think samba is receiving high scores as healing music?
JSN: The way I see it, all physical and non-physical events can be understood in terms of vibrations. There are higher vibrations and lower vibrations. One reason that Brazilian music gets such worldwide appreciation is in its sources. Samba, for instance, works on a rhythmic level with at least three layers of complexity – quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes. If you compare it, for example with a fast jazz bebop tune with two layers only (quarter and eighths) you start to see that to be able to feel the pulse of a highly syncopated style such as samba, you need to open up a place in your hearing apparatus to accommodate that third layer. Harmonically, it is a similar situation, because even very popular samba tunes feature melodies that reach to flat ninths, flat thirteenths, flat fifths and other non-diatonic tones which point to a sophisticated harmonic basis. In simple terms, Brazilian music, and samba in special, combine the most advanced rhythmic, harmonic and melodic
