Samba

Good point! Italian and Brazilian music have many things in common and the examples can continue!

From wikipedia: Some aspects of Brazilian culture are contributions of Italian, German and other European immigrants; came in large numbers and their influences are felt closer to the South and Southeast of Brazil.

This influence was not only felt in USA but France, Italy and Japan mainly. The 1966 French movie "A Man and a Woman" (Un homme et une femme) shows this influence clearly. In Italy, we had the famous composer and maestro Morricone trailing the samba & bossa nova fashion too.

Samba and bossa nova they walk together, yes, but they can be totally two distinct things, I'm portuguese (i dunno if there is a brazilian in the forums that would be perfect to make this clear) i listen to the music from brazil since i remember walking, and in the jazz schools here you learn a lot of bossa (and believe, everytime you go to a jam with a girl.. if it depends on her, youll be playing bossas all night long ahah anyway, not revelant right now), my point is, even that the samba had a big influence on jazz, was the bossa nova that made the real influence, as sonority, structure or even chords and harmonic changes, what i'm saying is that i feel here a bit of a confusion between bossa and samba, at least i would never say that setence exactly like that, even that samba was, and it is, a huge influence in a lot of other music, it is bossa that deserves it space ( im not saying this as a smartass or whatever, just saying because i really think that they are two things totally different and when we think of the influence from brasil it seems more apropriate to say that bossa is the brother of jazz instead of samba). Samba is more like a traditional dance, a.. musical popular manifestation, bossa is something more like jazz, i can't explain it better, bt even if you think about the theoric part of it, the samba its not that close to jazz since its more a rhythm thing, while bossa.. damn.

to finish, i know, bossa nova is sub derived genre of samba, bt it seems more correct this way, and during the 50's the jazz musicians in america were crazy about bossa, not necessarly samba. Bt well, im not here to correct, i dont want to look like snobish, just trying to figure this out (maybe im just used to think it that way, and its because during all my entire life and through some jazz schools we say everytime bossa and not samba, taking samba as something different.. at the end of the day, its just a name ! Give us some brazilian rhythms and i'm happy ! )

Check here this 1947 song (10 years before bossa nova officially appeared):

Here another samba-jazz, this time from 1954:

The real and final bossa nova, a kid where samba and jazz were parents only appeared in 1958, with the now famous LP named "Canção do Amor Demais", which contained this landmark by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes:

BTW, the name bossa nova (new trend) was revived in 1958 since it has been used since the 1930s by Noel Rosa, Carmen Miranda and others and initially it referred to the orchestrated urban samba in opposition to the more raw root samba from the favelas. 

EDIT: although my username here is Atkingani everyone knows me by my nickname Guigo.  And welcome Dionisio. 

The original here (the correct name is Waldyr Azevedo):

The clear rain on the dark night"