Tim Maia is rightly recognised as one of the biggest icons in Brazilian music. He was born in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro 1942, and released over 30 albums during his extensive and well-publicised career, touching on funk, bossa nova, disco, MPB, rock, soul and jazz. In the 1970s, Maia started to record albums and perform shows promoting his synthesis of American soul and Brazilian music with elements of samba and baião. The movement gradually took the working-class suburbs of the north side of Rio de Janeiro, exploding in 1976 with the black movement and producing artists such as Toni Tornado, Banda Black Rio alongside Maia.