Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:47:22.227Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Brazilian Identities and Musical Performances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Samuel Araújo
Samuel Araújo*
Affiliation:
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

… our faults do not allow our qualities to show themselves to best effect. That is why, at the moment, Brazilians are a people of intermittent qualities and permanent faults.

Mário de Andrade, Essai sur la musique brésilienne, 1928

This paper sets out to discuss the use and power of music in representing social identities, concentrating on the more specific case of the Brazilian nation, which has made itself a complex and all-embracing socio-political unit in spite of the great diversity and the great inequalities to be found within its borders. It is well known that what appears to be its most uniform feature, the use of a dominant language, is actually quite fragmented, due to the influence of various co-existing systems of production, cultural models and social hierarchies, which change on a daily basis. Although this diversity seems to be underwritten by daily practice and independent of debate and official encouragement, the same cannot be said of the search for national unity. It is obvious in the case of most of the action undertaken with this end in mind, that questions such as exclusion and the imbalance and arbitrariness of power have been eliminated. Besides, certain alert individuals are wary of this insistence on the construction of a nation, since the role of the old national states throughout the world seems to be disintegrating in the face of the proliferation and growing importance of social, economic and cultural relations at a supranational level. It is therefore hardly surprising that the twentieth century is considered to be a milestone in both the rise and fall of efforts to achieve Brazilian national unity. Amongst these efforts, music has played a prominent role, as I shall endeavour to show.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 48 , Issue 191 , September 2000 , pp. 115 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2000

References

Andrade, Mário de (1928). Ensaio sobre música brasileira. São Paulo: I. Chiarato 1928.Google Scholar
Araújo, Samuel (1987). Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil. Master of Music thesis in musicology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar
Azevedo, Luiz Heitor Corrêa de (1950). A Escola Nacional de Música e as pesquisas de folclore musical no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Centro de Pesquisas Folclõricas da Escola Nacional de Musica [Centre for Folklore Research at the National School of Music].Google Scholar
Béhague, Gerard (1994). Heitor Villa-Lobos: the Search for Brazil's Musical Soul. Austin, Texas: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Bosi, Alfredo (1992). Dialética da colonização. São Paulo: Cia. das Letras.Google Scholar
Cabral, Sérgio (1997). As escolas de samba do Rio de Janeiro. 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Lumiar.Google Scholar
Campos, Augusto de (ed.) (1968). O balanço da bossa. São Paulo: Perspectiva.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric (1989). Sobre Histõria, translation by Cid Knipel Moreira. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.Google Scholar
Leite, Dante Moreira (1992). O caráter nacional brasileiro; história de uma ideologia. 5th ed. São Paulo: Atica.Google Scholar
Melo, Guilherme de (1994). A música no Brasil. 2nd. ed Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional de Música.Google Scholar
Matos, Cláudia Neiva de (1994). A poesia popular na república das letras; Silvio Romero folklorista. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ: Minc/Funarte.Google Scholar
Sodré, Muniz (1979). Samba; o dono do corpo. Rio de Janeiro: CODECRI.Google Scholar
Tinhorão, José Ramos (1966). Música popular; um tema em debate. Rio de Janeiro: Saga.Google Scholar
Tinhorão, José Ramos (1969). O samba agora vai …; a farsa da música popular no exterior. Rio de Janeiro, JCM.Google Scholar
Tinhorão, José Ramos (1974). Pequena historia da música popular. Petrópolis: Vozes.Google Scholar
Turino, Thomas (1993). Moving away from Silence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vianna, Hermano (1995). O mistério do Samba. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar/UFRJ.Google Scholar
Wisnik, José Miguel (1997). O coro dos contrarios, a música em torno da semana de 22. São Paulo: Duas Cidades.Google Scholar