Since attending Carnaval 2003 in São Paulo, I have not been able to get certain refrains from the samba of São Paulo's championship samba school, Gaviões da Fiel, out of my head.

Rio de Janeiro: samba de Noel
Terra da garoa: Adoniram, o menestrel ...

And

Viva o Maranhão... salve a miscigenação
O xaxado... o forró e o baião!"

"Noel" is Noel Rosa, the legendary samba composer of the 1930s; Adoniram, "the troubadour," is Adoniram Barbosa, São Paulo's heavyweight champion in the cultural rivalry with Rio, and composer of the funny and Hank-Williams-sentimental "Trem das Onze" ["11:00 Train"].

The second chorus sings the praises of the Amazonian state of Maranhão, home of such native genres as maracatú and cacuriá, and lists three genres of what you might call Brazilian "country and northern" music.

But the key word here is miscegenação — "mixing" — a term applied to the profoundly mixed ethnic heritage of the Brazilian people that also aptly describes the soul of Brazilian culture. It's a deeply syncretic and eclectic blending of traditions, defined most explicitly by the Tropicalia movement, founded during the early years of the military dictatorship by artists like Gil and Caetano Veloso — whose book Tropical Truths is now available in English.

Despite the best efforts of gringo Tropicalists like David Byrne and his Luaka Bop label, which issues discs from the likes of Tom Zé, the Brazilian Captain Beefheart, Brazil remains a dark continent for music fans from the global North — with the exception of hardcore fans like Harvey Pekar and the erudite Daniella Thompson.

On the the other hand, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's also probably the first country in the world with a dreadlocked pop star holding ministerial rank in the government: The monumental Gilberto Gil, who finally won Grammy honors in 1999 in the World Music category for the elaborately produced but richly conceived album, Quanta. In fact, Brazilians owned that category from 1998 to 2001, culminating in an overdue tribute to the great bossanovista Jõao Gilberto. Gil now heads the national Ministry of Culture. It's like having Bob Dylan and James Brown as joint secretaries of education.

So, where to begin? My friend Sergio — a São Paulo composer, magazine editor, and obsessive aficionado of bossa nova and an old-school form of Brazilian popular song called choro or chorinho, had some advice for me as I departed.

"Tell those gringos back home there are only three albums in the charts right now worth listening to: Elza Soares, the Tribalistas, and Margareth Menezes. The rest is crap."

Who are we to argue with impeccable taste? All three represent the stylistic miscegenção of Brazil's best music — the blending of the local with the international, the elaborately produced with the hauntingly simple, the reverence for tradition with the will to innovate in a mode that's peculiarly Brazilian.