I'm in a Rio taxi, driving through a dilapidated industrial zone towards the working class suburb of Ilha Do Governador, home to the 73-year-old samba musician Wilson Das Neves. With me in the taxi are Ivan Conti, the fiftysomething drummer of the Brazilian jazz-rock band Azymuth and his 25-year-old son Thiago, a music teacher. Both are playing in the new line-up of Das Neves's ‘60s samba legends the Ipanemas, replacing original members who can't make the scene on account of being dead. Isn't it strange to have three generations in one band? "Not in Brazil," says Thiago with a shrug. "In America and Europe you reject the music of your forefathers. In Brazil we celebrate it."

That evening I visit a nightclub in downtown Rio where Clara Moreno, the heavily tattooed daughter of bossa nova singer Joyce, is performing a set of samba and bossa classics. Her mother is in the audience, cheering her daughter on, having just put her grandson to bed. The next day I visit the studio of Kassin, one of Brazil's hottest producers. When he isn't working on futuristic solo material or doing remixes for other artists, Kassin plays bass in Orquestra Imperial, a 19-strong band performing traditional gafiera (dancehall) sambas that has become something of a sensation in Rio. For all of these musicians, the past, present and future are inevitably entwined.

It's a little different in the west. From the Who singing "My Generation" to punk's scorched earth approach to all that had gone before to rave declaring war on guitars, the history of western pop music has been the history of rebellion and reinvention. Our culture thrives on sticking two fingers up at our musical parents only to consequently get stuck in our own musical time period, hence the one-time punk telling youngsters that music was never so good as in his day. So why is it that Brazil does exactly the opposite?

Music is a product of its environment, and Brazil is an intoxicatingly romantic country with huge economic and social problems. From the brilliant white beaches of Ipanema, where Rio's beautiful people spend their days lost in narcissistic dreams, the slums of the neighboring hillsides are clearly visible. Enjoy a night out in chic Gavea and you'll hear gunshots coming out of nearby Rocinha, the biggest favela in South America. When you're living with the daily realities of violence and poverty are you really going to worry about whether your hairstyle marks you out as a radical young dude or not? Life is to be celebrated here because you are reminded of its finite nature every day--and not just your life, but that of those older and younger than you, too. Music here is an expression of that.

For an illustration of the Brazilian attitude to music take a YouTube journey to the late Brazilian singer Elis Regina performing Tom Jobim's "Aguas De Marco (Waters Of March)," itself a reflection on the cycle of life and death. This is a beautiful, timeless song, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in Brazil that would reject it on the grounds that Elis recorded it back in 1974. And who is the latest singing sensation in Brazil? Elis Regina's daughter Maria Rita, who looks just like her mother and sounds a lot like her too. In the name of familial harmony if nothing else, we might do worse to take a leaf out of Brazil's book and celebrate great music as something never dependent on any one demographic.

Will Hodgkinson is the author of Guitar Man, and Song Man, which are great!!

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