Marchinha, marchinha de carnaval, marchinha carnavalesca or marcha carnavalesca is one of several genres of music typical of Brazilian Carnival

Brazilian Carnival

The Carnival of Brazil is an annual festival held forty-six days before Easter. On certain days of Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival," from carnelevare, "to remove meat." Carnival celebrations...

 in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 and Southeast Region of Brazil

Southeast Region, Brazil

The Southeast Region of Brazil is composed by the states of Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. It is the richest region of the country, responsible for approximately 60% of the Brazilian GDP. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais are three richest states of Brazil,...

. The others main carnival genres are: samba-enredo

Samba-enredo

Samba-enredo is a sub-genre of Samba in which songs are performed by a samba school for the festivities of Carnaval. "Samba-enredo" is the Portuguese equivalent of "samba in song", or "song samba"....

, frevo

Frevo

Frevo is a wide range of musical styles originating from Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, all of which are traditionally associated with Brazilian Carnival. The word frevo is said to come from frever, a misspeaking of the Portuguese word ferver . It is said that the sound of the frevo will make...

, maracatu

Maracatu

Maracatu is a term common to two distinct performance genres found in Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil: maracatu de nação and maracatu rural . A third style, maracatu cearense , is found in Fortaleza, in the northeastern state of Ceará...

 and Axé music

Axé music

Axé is a popular music genre originating in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil approximately in 1986, fusing different Afro-Caribbean genres, such as Marcha, Reggae, and Calypso. It also includes influences of Afro-Brazilian music such as Frevo, Forró and Carixada. The most important creator of this music...

.

Marchinha is a extremely comic genre of music and the very name "marchinha" (little march) satirizes the seriousness of military marches, in the both musical and step senses, which are involved in the satirization generalizated of the society that occur during the carnival, p. ex., the election of Rei Momo (King Momo, the king of carnival). The bands features trombone

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

s, Tuba

Tuba

The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...

s, horn

Horn (instrument)

The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

s, clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

s, flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

s and piccolo

Piccolo

The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...

s and percussion.

The first marchinha was the composition (in 1899) of Chiquinha Gonzaga

Chiquinha Gonzaga

Francisca Edwiges Neves Gonzaga was a Brazilian composer, pianist and conductor....

 entitled "O Abre Alas", made to the Cordão Carnavalesco "Rosa de Outro".

Marchinhas are composed and played to date by the blocos carnavalescos every year, in the "street carnival" of Rio de Janeiro.