This guide is part of our overview of the essential classical guitar repertoire. Paulo Bellinati (born 1950) is a Brazilian guitarist-composer and musicologist whose work brings the Afro-Brazilian jongo tradition into the classical concert hall — and whose rediscovery of a forgotten Brazilian master changed the history of his country's guitar music.
Jongo and a Lost Master
Bellinati studied classical guitar in São Paulo under Isaias Savio before spending six years in Switzerland at the Geneva and Lausanne conservatories. Back in Brazil, he pursued a dual career as concert artist and scholar. His most celebrated composition, Jongo (1988), won first prize at the Carrefour Mondial de la Guitare in Martinique and was recorded by John Williams in 1996 — a recording that brought Bellinati's music to a global audience. He also wrote a duo version for the Assad Brothers. The jongo is a communal song-and-dance form from southeastern Brazil with deep African roots; Bellinati's piece captures its percussive vitality and rhythmic complexity within a single guitar.
His scholarly legacy is equally significant. Through years of painstaking research, Bellinati rediscovered, transcribed, and recorded the complete works of Anibal Augusto Sardinha — known as Garoto — a brilliant Brazilian guitarist-composer of the mid-twentieth century whose music had fallen into near-oblivion. This project earned international recognition and helped restore Garoto to his rightful place in Brazilian musical history. In 1994 Bellinati received the Prêmio Sharp — Brazil's highest music industry honour — for his arranging work.
