“Pelo Telefone,” recorded in 1917, is widely considered the first commercially recorded Brazilian samba.
The song is credited to Donga, with contributions and disputed authorship involving other musicians from Rio’s Afro-Brazilian musical communities. Its recording marked an important moment in samba’s transition from community-based performance into a commercially distributed popular genre.
“Pelo Telefone” means “On the Telephone.” The song’s history is complicated because early samba composition often emerged collectively, and credit for the work became controversial. Even so, Donga’s recording is the landmark most commonly cited in accounts of samba’s commercial beginnings.
The song is not identical to Rio carnival itself, and it did not single-handedly create samba. Samba developed through multiple African, Afro-Brazilian and urban Rio traditions. The recording matters because it provided an early nationally circulated example of the style that later became central to Rio’s carnival culture.