As the first Brazilian international artist, introducing Brazilian popular music (in the form of the genres modinha and lundu) to the Portuguese court as early as 1775, Domingos Caldas Barbosa figures as one of the most important names in this field. The son of a black slave Angolan woman who arrived pregnant in Rio de Janeiro and a Portuguese tradesman, Caldas Barbosa was acknowledged by his father as a legitimate son and was educated by the Jesuits. In the rare condition of a literate mulatto in the 18th century, Caldas Barbosa evidenced his bitterness against prejudice by composing ironic and satiric poems directed against the white elite of his time. Around 1760, he was sent to the extreme South Brazil in response to the complaints of powerful people against him. Returning to Rio in 1762 after the Sacramento Colony (where he was living) was taken over by the Spanish, it is believed that he mingled with black slaves, lowlife viola players, Bohemians, and the populace in general. In 1763, he departed for Portugal to study at Coimbra University, but it never occurred. In 1775, as protégé of the brothers José and Luís de Vasconcelos e Sousa, he appeared as an ordained chaplain and wire-stringed viola player, performing for the aristocratic guests of Conde de Pombeiro and Conde de Figueiró. He is referred to having played even in the royal palaces of Belém, Caxias, and Queluz. As a kind of minstrel, he introduced the Brazilian modinha and lundu in those elegant reunions. Moved by the new economic order, the nascent bourgeoisie, eager for new kinds of cultural expression that could represent less rigid habits, embraced the straightforward approach of the modinhas, which addressed beloved women directly (unthinkable in the classic erudite poetry). Under the academic pseudonym Lereno Selinuntino, Caldas Barbosa was one of the founders of the Nova Arcádia of Lisbon in 1790, together with Bocage, Curvo Semedo, and others. Suffering the prejudice of those Europeans, Caldas Barbosa was satirized in several poems of his contemporaries, including Bocage, which is another way of acknowledgement for his surprising success in an snub environment. He had the verses of his modinhas and lundus published under the title Viola de Lereno in two volumes, in 1798 and 1826. The two genres became such a mania in the Portuguese court that they were taken by many erudite composers, who wrote new themes or harmonized existing ones, depriving them of their characteristics. His musical creations were also disseminated among the Brazilian popular classes, having been appropriated in such an intimate way that the folklorist Sílvio Romero, who collected a large amount of popular songs in the North, discovered that Caldas Barbosa's songs were assimilated in folklore as anonymous. ~ Alvaro Neder, All Music Guide