NOEL ROSA FOR ALL

From January this year, songs written by composer Noel Rosa will become public domain. Brasilian copyright laws protect artistic creations throughout the life of the artist in question and then for seventy years after his/her death. After this time, the work in question can be used, re-recorded and performed by anyone.

Intellectual property, such as music, is a key element of cultural and national identity. And this is the aim of public domain: to allow new artists creative stimulus so that the development of culture is less of a monologue and more of a dialogue that transcends time and space and never ends.

Now that songs by artists such as Noel Rosa have become public domain, his music has the unique opportunity of inspiring a whole new generation of Brasilians. Also known as the 'Poeta da Vila' (The Poet of Vila), he played the mandolin and the guitar and left behind innumerous sambas dealing, principally, with day-to-day life. Noel was one of the first composers to fuse ghetto samba with its more uptown variant. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 26 in 1937.'