While you feast your eyes on the stunning scenery in Rio 2, your senses are treated to infectious music that combines Brazilian sounds from around the country with a contemporary twist. Songs performed by artists will.i.am, Janelle Monáe, Bruno Mars, Kristen Chenoweth, Jamie Foxx, Andy Garcia, Jesse Eisenberg, and even Anne Hathaway who give the sequel what director Carlos Saldanha calls a “sophisticated and fun soundtrack.”
Rio 2 opens in a grand scene on New Year’s Eve where the characters we met in Rio celebrate with Monáe’s “What is Love” that she sang for the first time in front of a live audience at the world premiere of the movie in Miami.
“Rio was all about Carnaval, so it had a lot of Bossa Nova and Samba,” Saldanha explains. “For Rio 2, we wanted to explore other rhythms and percussion from the north and northeastern parts of the country.”
The Rio 2 soundtrack is a collaboration between Brazilian music legend, Sergio Mendes, award-winning film composer, John Powell, and the renowned Carlinhos Brown, a Brazilian musician, songwriter and record producer that is designed to explore the diversity of Brazil’s world music. “Brazilian music is very rich, with different rhythmus and beats, There is so much diversity,” says Saldanha.
For young music lovers who want to further explore the sounds of Brazil, the Rio 2 soundtrack is available for download or as a CD and I’ve also created a playlist on Spotify that features some of the sounds that I love from Brazil. Enjoy!
I was a guest of Fox for the world premiere event of Rio 2. All opinions are my own.
This sounds like such a fun movie!