samba

Samba is a Brazilian music and dance style with Afro-Brazilian origins that developed in Rio de Janeiro’s marginalized communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is built on lively, syncopated rhythms typically played in a duple meter around 2/4, with a prominent percussive and vocal emphasis. Common instruments include the pandeiro, surdo, tamborim, cuíca, agogô, and cavaquinho, along with hand claps and call-and-response phrases. Samba underpins a wide range of subgenres and contexts, from the festive rhythms of Carnival parades to more intimate samba-canção and regional varieties. Its themes cover celebration, daily life, love, and social commentary, and it has become a emblem of Brazilian culture both domestically and abroad.

Samba is also the name of a free and open-source software project that implements the Server Message Block and Common Internet File System protocols (SMB/CIFS) to enable file and printer sharing across Windows and Unix-like networks. Initiated in the early 1990s by Andrew Tridgell, Samba allows interoperability between diverse operating systems and can function as an Active Directory-compatible domain controller in modern releases. The project is maintained by the Samba Team and hosted at samba.org, with core components such as smbd for file services, nmbd for NetBIOS name resolution, and winbind for integrating Windows accounts. It supports modern SMB protocols, encryption, and various authentication methods, making network resources accessible across heterogeneous environments.

In contemporary usage, the term samba most commonly refers to the Brazilian music and dance tradition or the network software, depending on context.