The Defence of Tradition in Brazilian Popular Music (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

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THE DEFENCE OF TRADITION IN BRAZILIAN POPULAR MUSIC

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The Defence of Tradition in Brazilian Popular Music Politics, Culture and the Creation of Música Popular Brasileira

SEAN STROUD

© Sean Stroud 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Sean Stroud has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Stroud, Sean The defence of tradition in Brazilian popular music : politics, culture and the creation of musica popular brasileira. – (Ashgate popular and folk music series) 1. Popular music – Brazil – 20th century – History and criticism I. Title 781.6'4'0981 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stroud, Sean, 1956– The defence of tradition in Brazilian popular music : politics, culture, and the creation of musica popular brasileira / Sean Stroud. p. cm.—(Ashgate popular and folk music series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-6343-0 (alk. paper) 1. Popular music—Brazil—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Music—Political aspects—Brazil. 3. Nationalism in music. I. Title. ML3487.B7S77 2007 781.640981—dc22 2007034437 ISBN 978-0-7546-6343-0

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

Contents General Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements

vii ix

Introduction

1

1

Musical Nationalism and the ‘Cultural Invasion’ Debate

9

2

Inventing the Idea of MPB

39

3

Television and Popular Music

65

4

Cultural Imperialism, Globalization, and the Brazilian Record Industry

89

5

The State as Cultural Mediator: The Política Nacional de Cultura, FUNARTE and the Projecto Pixinguinha

111

6

Musical Mapping: Locating and Defending the Regional

131

7

Reconsidering Musical Tradition: Música do Brasil and Rumos Itaú Cultural Música

159

Conclusion

179

Bibliography Index

187 205


General Editor’s Preface The upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. A relativistic outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context, reception and subject position. Together, these have conspired to eat away at the status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. A need has arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of free, individual expression. Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series aims to present the best research in the field. Authors will be concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings in cultural context, and may draw upon methodologies and theories developed in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology. The series will focus on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from Acid Jazz to Zydeco, whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or traditional.

Professor Derek B. Scott Chair of Music University of Leeds


Acknowledgements This book is based on my doctoral thesis at King’s College, University of London, the result of three years of extremely enjoyable study during which I was indebted to the guidance and support of my supervisor Professor David Treece. It was an immense pleasure and a source of constant inspiration to be able to study with David and benefit from his exhaustive knowledge of Brazil and its culture. I am very grateful to the School of Humanities, King’s College and also the Central Research Fund of the University of London for the financial assistance that I received during my PhD. This funding enabled me to travel to Brazil and substantially broadened the scope of my research. Thanks also to Professor Malyn Newitt, Dr Henry Stobart and Dr Nancy Naro for their helpful comments on my research. Additional thanks are due to Nancy and Dr Lorraine Leu for encouraging me to embark on a PhD in the first place. During my research trips to Brazil I was extremely fortunate to receive an enormous amount of help in many ways from Professor Marcos Napolitano who was always ready to take me on trips to second-hand record stores and to recommend the latest academic study on Brazilian popular music. I am also greatly indebted to Clara Wasserman who introduced me to various sites of historical and musical interest in Rio de Janeiro of which I was unaware. Both Marcos’s and Clara’s work has been a major source of inspiration to me. Their friendship and encouragement has been an important factor in my research and their comments on my work were always perceptive and helpful. I feel that the assistance of library staff is often the key to the success of any research. The following were particularly helpful. Alan Biggins and all those at the library of the Institute of Latin American Studies; Lília Spíndula at PUC São Paulo (for sending me articles via e-mail and making me feel at home at PUC) and Nadime Netto Costa at the Biblioteca Mário de Andrade, São Paulo. I would also like to thank all the staff at the Centro Cultural de São Paulo, the Museu da Imagem e do Som in Rio de Janeiro, and the library of FUNARTE in Rio, who often went out of their way to help me find what I was looking for. I would like to thank Maria Helena and Peter Schambil for their hospitality in Rio on a number of occasions, and also Luiz Costa Lima Neto for taking me to Lapa and endlessly chatting about music. Thanks to Dr Aquiles Alencar-Brayner and Apostolos Mikalas for their friendship and support. I would like to especially thank the following for granting me interviews that provided valuable insights into my area of research: Ana Maria Bahiana, Hermínio Bello de Carvalho, Márcio Gonçalves, Maria Luiza Khfouri, Edson Natale, Thomas Pappon, Paulo César Soares, Tárik de Souza, Flávio Silva, Benjamim Taubkin, Hermano Vianna, Beto Villares and Marcus Vinícius. Finally, I would like to profoundly thank Dr Aparecida de Jesus Ferreira for sharing the journey with me. Her love, energy, sense of humour and support were crucial and remain so.


Introduction A few years ago I found myself at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London where an eclectic programme of Brazilian music and videos was being shown. A small number of people were gathered in the cinema watching a series of video clips that included Casa Cheia [Full House] by the rap group, Detentos do Rap [Prisoners of Rap]. After a minute or so of this striking video, which was shot in the infamous Carandiru prison in São Paulo, a young Brazilian woman in front of me turned to her English partner and loudly exclaimed for all to hear: ‘This has nothing to do with Brazilian music!’ before storming out with her flustered partner in tow. My reaction at the time was one of mild amusement mixed with a slight feeling of puzzlement as to how a mere music video could elicit such a vehement reaction. As time went by I occasionally thought back to that evening and I came to reflect that the woman’s reaction to the video could probably be attributed to one or more of a number of factors: an antipathy towards rap; a dislike for the setting of the video, which might reflect poorly on the image of Brazil in front of foreigners; and possibly an element of underlying racism – the woman was white and most of those featured in the video are black. That much is speculation on my part. However, I also came to the conclusion that the most important aspect of the woman’s reaction to the video, and what it represented, was that Brazilian rap failed to match her apparently deeplyrooted conception of what constituted popular music in Brazil. Her reaction seemed to suggest that she felt that ‘true’ Brazilian music, whatever that might be, needed to be differentiated from a ‘contaminated’, imported and essentially inferior style of music that might hoodwink others into believing that Detentos do Rap and their ilk were legitimate representations of national culture. These thoughts have been one of the main catalysts for this study, which examines how notions of what constitutes Brazilian popular music have been constructed over a period of forty years or so since the mid 1960s. Another point of departure for my research was my attendance at the national meeting of the Pesquisadores de Música Popular Brasileira [researchers in Brazilian popular music] (APMPB), held in Rio de Janeiro in 2001, which brought home to me the diversity of opinion among researchers and academics within Brazil over what styles and genres could be said to be truly representative of Brazilian popular music. On leaving that particular event I came away with the distinct impression that the influence of an essentially conservative group of writers and journalists, whose writings are prominent in a certain sector of the Brazilian media, continues to exert a particular influence on public perceptions of a tradition of national popular music. This led me to consider the role of the various other actors who have shaped present day notions of what is defined as Brazilian popular music, and what isn’t, namely: the record industry, the broadcasting industry, the state, academics and individual researchers. One of the primary intentions of this book is to identify the influence of those actors in delineating the parameters of Brazilian popular music, and more particularly the

2


construction of a tradition within the wider sphere of popular music as a whole, that is, Música Popular Brasileira (MPB), the socio/cultural/musical movement that has dominated the artistic scene in Brazil since the mid 1960s. MPB: A Brief Outline Popular music has occupied a significant and prominent role in Brazilian cultural life since the 1920s. That role was amplified and took on different political dimensions in the 1930s and 1940s when the political administrations of Getúlio Vargas took popular music, particularly samba, under their wing to promote their nationalistic project at home and abroad. This was a period in which songwriters such as Noel Rosa and Ary Barroso came to the fore and when Carmen Miranda became a household name in Brazil and around the world.1 The Bossa Nova movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s which was ushered in with the release of João Giberto’s Chega de Saudade LP in 1959 was to have massive repercussions both domestically and internationally, particularly after the now almost legendary bossa nova concert given by Brazilian artists at New York’s Carnegie Hall in November 1962.2 As bossa nova subsequently imploded into various competing factions, and jovem guarda [1960s Brazilian pop-rock] grew in popularity the next decisive phase in the history of Brazilian popular music occurred in the mid to late 1960s when an impressive number of highly talented musicians, performers and songwriters came to national prominence through their appearances at televised song festivals. Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Elis Regina, Gal Costa, Edu Lobo, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Geraldo Vandré and many others, all launched their careers before an enraptured national audience united by the newly created national television network.3 This new movement rapidly came to be referred to by the acronym MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) [Brazilian popular music] from about 1965 onwards. These artists, and many others such as Maria Bethânia, João Bosco, Jorge Ben, Geraldo Azevedo, Ivan Lins, Alceu Valença and Simone, dominated the musical scene during the 1970s and many of them have maintained high levels of popularity and national recognition for nearly four decades, forming the nucleus of the group of artists most recognizably associated with the term MPB. They have been supplemented at regular periods during recent years by newer stars working 1 For comprehensive accounts of this period see Lisa Shaw, The Social History of the Brazilian Samba (Aldershot, 2000) and Bryan McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil (Durham N.C., 2004). 2 Ruy Castro’s Chega de Saudade: A história e as histórias da Bossa Nova (São Paulo, 1990) is an exhaustive and entertaining survey of the history of bossa nova. See also Augusto de Campos, Balanço da Bossa e outras bossas (São Paulo, 1993) for a more analytical approach. 3 For more information about these festivals see Sean Stroud, ‘“Música é para o povo cantar”: Culture, Politics and the Brazilian song festivals 1965–72’, Latin American Music Review, vol. 21: no. 2 (2000): 87–117, Marcos Napolitano, ‘Seguindo a canção’: Engajamento politico e indústria cultural na MPB (1959-1969) (São Paulo, 2001) and Zuza Homem de Mello, A Era dos Festivais: Uma Parábola (São Paulo, 2003).

INTRODUCTION

3

within the format loosely associated with MPB, such as Marisa Monte, Chico Cesar, Lenine, Maria Rita and a host of others. The music characteristically linked with the term MPB during its ‘classic’ period – roughly the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s – was an innovative mixture of refined harmonies (frequently influenced by jazz), poetic lyrics (often with literary and/or political allusions) and varied rhythms. In what is still rather surprisingly one of the few academic surveys of MPB, Charles Perrone makes the point that it is the combination of conceptual and technical expertise that makes this music remarkable: The production of Brazil’s best contemporary songwriters represents sustained depth and formal sophistication, twenty continuous years of incisive creativity, and hundreds of songs with a minimum of throwaway lyrics or banally repetitive musical formats.4

Writing in 1989, Perrone made the valid observation that, ‘MPB – which assimilates and goes beyond Bossa Nova – is not a discrete style or a unified movement but a diversified and evolving current within the larger sphere of Brazilian popular music of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.’5 It was precisely because of this factor that MPB was able to move with the times in the 1970s as the expansion of the record industry and the media opened up new alternatives to traditional popular music. Perrone again: MPB readily incorporated foreign and regional trends and forged new avenues of expression. Hybridization was common, as composers mixed and remixed Brazilian parameters – rhythms, patterns of harmony, instruments – with those of rock, blues, soul, funk, some discothèque, Jamaican reggae, and, to a limited degree, African music.6

Nevertheless, this chameleon-like ability to meld with elements of other urban musical genres also made it increasingly difficult for many to establish what was and what wasn’t MPB, and public conceptions of the nature of the movement consequently became ever more blurred. I will return to this issue in Chapter 2, however, at this point I would like to briefly discuss the important symbolic role that MPB performs within the wider Brazilian cultural ambit. Mário de Andrade, the intellectual heavyweight and dominant figure of the Brazilian Modernist movement of the 1920s, was the first writer to tackle the subject of Brazilian popular music in any depth through various works that spanned the period between the late 1920s until the 1940s.7 His sympathies by and large 4 Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB 1965–1985 (Austin, 1989), p. 207. 5 Ibid., pp. 201–2. 6 Ibid., p. xxxii. 7 See for example, Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira (São Paulo, 1962) and Música, doce música (São Paulo, 1976). Mário de Andrade (1893–1945) was a multi-talented novelist, journalist, poet, literary and music critic, linguist, music educationalist, state cultural administrator, folklorist and musicologist. He first came to prominence through his involvement as a poet in the highly influential Modern Art Week held in São Paulo in 1922 and gained further acclaim with the publication of his celebrated novel Macunaíma in 1928. For a survey of Mário’s writings on music and how his work fits into the wider context of nationalism

4


lay more in the direction of rural popular music rather than its urban counterpart – which he generally considered to be popularesca or vulgar – and his writings on music formed part of his wider concerns about the need for Brazil to develop an independent cultural identity, undiluted by foreign influences. Echoes of Mário’s influence can be clearly detected in the output of a number of nationalisticallyorientated journalists, broadcasters and writers such as Almirante, Ary Vasconcellos, Lúcio Rangel and José Ramos Tinhorão, whose writings on popular music in the period between the 1940s and mid 1960s exerted widespread influence (this will be discussed fully in Chapter 1). The views expressed in the writings of the latter went virtually unchallenged until the mid 1960s when the televised song festivals and the explosive impact of the Tropicália movement provoked a series of articles on the revolution in popular music written by intellectuals such as Augusto de Campos, Brasil Rocha Brito and Gilberto Mendes.8 This new-found interest in popular music by Brazilian academics and intellectuals spilled over into the public arena through further articles written for the mainstream press, and heralded the start of an ongoing debate about the state of health of national popular music that has continued for the last forty years. I do not wish to suggest that popular music had not previously been the subject of public debate and governmental interest, for this had been a feature of Brazilian cultural life since at least the 1930s, however, what was radically different about the 1968 watershed was that the intense cultural activity that centred on the Tropicália movement, including the critical debates about popular music, also coincided with political debates that resulted in the imposition of severe political and artistic censorship and the flourishing of an increasingly powerful mass media and record industry. All these powerful forces coalesced at the same moment and imbued MPB with a particular, special status and kudos that intensified its cultural prominence for decades to come. MPB and Concepts of Tradition, Quality, and Authenticity The manner in which MPB has traditionally been viewed in Brazil is intrinsically bound up with notions of legitimacy and tradition. The pre-Tropicália period was largely dominated by a musically nationalistic, uncontested view of a tradition of popular music in Brazil that stretched back to the earliest days of samba at the start of the twentieth century, and also encompassed a ‘golden age’ of popular song and choro [a style of instrumental music that predated samba] in the 1930s and 1940s. As I will argue in Chapter 1, this selective and hierarchical view of the history of Brazilian popular music was largely the product of a number of writers, broadcasters and journalists who, to all intents and purposes, ‘invented’ that tradition and promoted in Brazil, see Suzel Reily, ‘Macunaíma’s Music: National Identity and Ethnomusicological Research in Brazil’ in Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, ed. M. Stokes (Oxford, 1997) pp. 71–96. 8 These articles were later collected and edited by Augusto de Campos, and published as Balanço da Bossa e outras bossas (São Paulo, 1993). See also, Airton Barbosa, ed. ‘Que caminho seguir na música popular brasileira?’ Revista Civilização Brasileira, ano. 1 no.7 (1966): 375–85.

INTRODUCTION

5

it through their writings. That specific tradition was based upon developments during the early days of samba (1917–1931) when artists and songwriters such as Donga, Pixinguinha, Ismael Silva, Sinhô and many others were influential in the formation of an urban, Rio de Janeiro-based style of popular music that itself drew heavily on Bahian and African origins.9 Out of many different styles of ‘samba’, the one known as Samba do Estácio came to be referred to as ‘authentic’ at the start of the 1930s and this gave birth to the idea of an ‘authentic’ tradition of samba that was based in a specific locale (the morro or favela) and environment (the escola de samba). This style of samba subsequently received great support from the booming radio industry and was also endorsed by the state as a standard bearer for brasilidade [‘Brazilianess’].10 When several writers and critics of popular music in the 1940s and 1950s wished to oppose the ‘contamination’ of Brazilian music by popular music from abroad, it was to this so-called ‘authentic’ music that they turned as a point of reference, and the cultural significance of the music was subsequently solidified by its insertion in ‘official’ histories of Brazilian popular music as a mythical, nostalgic ‘golden age’. The direct challenge to this ‘official’ version of musical history posed by Tropicália was fundamental because its iconoclastic mixture of foreign elements such as electric guitars and rock music questioned established notions of musical nationalism, and Tropicália’s deliberate deployment of kitsch references, the music and imagery associated with performers such as Lupicínio Rodrigues and Carmen Miranda amongst others, mocked pretensions to authenticity and legitimacy. The impact of the revolutionary performances by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso at the televised 1967 TV Record song festival ensured that MPB would never be the same: elements of Tropicalist experimentalism and a rock sensibility were gradually incorporated into MPB, even as Tropicália itself withered away. Yet these traces of experimentalism and a flirtation with the avant-garde only went up to a point: MPB artists who strayed too far from the commercially and politically acceptable ran the risk of being marginalized and labelled malditos [mavericks].11 The fact that MPB absorbed so many aspects of the existing ‘official’ view of the linear development of a tradition of Brazilian popular music (samba, choro, regional styles from the Northeast, etc.) meant that it was logical for some to laud MPB as a continuation of that same tradition. By periodically re-interpreting compositions by canonical artists such as Cartola, Noel Rosa, Ari Barroso, Pixinguinha et al., MPB was not only in constant musical dialogue with that existing tradition but also took on the mantle of responsibility for the upholding of that tradition in the minds of many critics and certain elements of the public. The links that were made between MPB and the established view of a noble musical tradition tangentially imbued MPB with 9 Excellent accounts of this period are provided by Hermano Vianna, O Mistério do Samba (Rio de Janeiro, 1995) and Carlos Sandroni, Feitiço Decente: Transformações do samba no Rio de Janeiro (1917–1933) (Rio de Janeiro, 2001). 10 Marcos Napolitano, História & Música: História cultural da música popular (Belo Horizonte, 2002), pp. 49–54. See also, Bryan McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil: popular music in the making of modern Brazil (Durham N.C., 2004). 11 Napolitano, História & Música, pp. 67–70.

6


authority and legitimacy, thereby permitting its supporters to bring to bear a greater degree of intellectual and cultural kudos in discussions about popular music. Yet at the same time, it is important to recognize that the debate on the role of MPB since the mid 1960s has also reflected a continuing and often contrasting concern with not only the underlying importance of tradition, but also the critical necessity for the periodic rupture of that tradition to allow popular music to develop and progress. One of the principal assumptions of many of those who have championed MPB is that it is ‘quality’ music (literally, ‘música de boa qualidade’), a subjective and hierarchical description employed to distinguish it from other ‘lesser’ styles of music that fail to match up to its exacting standards. I have already hinted at reasons for this attitude (MPB’s literary and poetical heritage for example), but it is important to stress at the outset that such assumptions underpin the attitudes of many of the actors responsible for the mythologization of MPB and tradition that I will be referring to, such as individual critics, writers, and the state (FUNARTE’s, Projeto Pixinguinha).12 Ironically, the actual nature of what it is that distinguishes music of boa qualidade is never defined in concrete terms, but this is an intrinsic notion that is perpetually hanging in the background of discussions relating to the value or worth of popular music in Brazil – and elsewhere of course. Issues of ‘quality’ are closely linked to another rather nebulous term, that of ‘authenticity’. I will demonstrate that this is another primary theme underpinning MPB’s function within the tradition of popular music, and this issue is particularly relevant to the discussion in Chapters 6 and 7, in which I analyse re-workings and re-conceptualizations of musical tradition in the work of Marcus Pereira in the 1970s, and Hermano Vianna and Itaú Cultural in the late 1990s. This book addresses two fundamental questions. First, how and why has MPB come to have the status that it does, despite the paradox that it has only ever represented a fraction of the market of record sales in Brazil? Second, why has the musical tradition within Brazil, of which MPB forms an integral part, been defended with such vigour over such a long period? These questions are not addressed in the existing literature, which almost exclusively tends to focus on the creativity of the musicians associated with MPB rather than analysing the phenomenon itself. My research builds on the work of Marcos Napolitano, Enor Paiano and Clara Wasserman who have all pointed to the marked influence of Mário de Andrade and the writings of Lúcio Rangel and Ary Vasconcellos in shaping a hierarchy of values within Brazilian popular music within which MPB was accorded a position of preeminence. However, I seek to go beyond these writers in attempting to identify the specific actors – music critics, the record industry, researchers – who have been responsible for the solidification of the aura of mystique that surrounds MPB. I demonstrate that it was no mere accident that MPB came to be perceived as the essence of quality in Brazilian popular music: the ground had been prepared for a long time, before a whole series of processes intervened and converged to create the conditions for it to flourish.

12 The National Art Foundation (FUNARTE) was a government body established in 1975 to deliver a new initiative on the arts. FUNARTE’s role relating to popular music is examined in depth in Chapter 9.

INTRODUCTION

7

I attempt to provide a historical narrative of key moments and trends in the construction of the idea of MPB since 1968. I focus on how various factors have combined to create the conditions in which it has been possible for some to claim that MPB’s inherent ‘quality’ and ‘authenticity’ constitute a tradition that is worthy of representing the nation. One of the central themes that I refer to is the persistent recurrence of attitudes that seek to ‘preserve and protect’ Brazilian popular music against the perceived threat from invasion by foreign popular music and cultural influences, and aesthetic dilution by the impact of commercialization and the mass media. These attitudes pre-date the 1960s, and in earlier times were closely linked to wider concepts of nationalism (both political and musical) in Brazil. They have been further refined and moulded by recent debates in Brazil on cultural imperialism and globalization. What is clear is that MPB’s pivotal role as a standard bearer for national culture, particularly in the 1970s, saw it at the forefront of the ‘defence of the national’.13 It is for this reason that I pinpoint the periodic crises of confidence in MPB that have led to much public debate and discussion on the issue: it is precisely because of the large cultural shadow that it casts, that MPB’s significance and prestige within the wider orbit of Brazilian popular music has been such a perennial subject of debate and concern in Brazil. My approach within this study is to provide a historical narrative of the rise and fall of MPB, with a specific emphasis on the manner in which popular music interacts with political and social factors. For this reason I do not provide any textual or musical analysis of the music under discussion.14 This book consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the crucial theme of musical nationalism, an underlying ideology that has acted as an ever-present backdrop to discussions about Brazilian popular music since the 1920s, and one that has been an important factor in the creation of the concept of tradition in the field of popular music. The second part of this chapter analyses the closely linked key debate on the so-called ‘cultural invasion’ in Brazil as it relates to popular music. Chapter 2 deals directly with the formation of the idea of MPB and the respective roles of those who have been the principal architects of its construction. Chapter 3 develops this discussion further by investigating the increasingly close relationship that has developed between television and popular music in Brazil, as demonstrated by the continuation of investment in the televised song festivals, even after 1972 when it was commonly considered that the festivals were an anachronism. The crucial role of popular music in telenovelas [TV soap operas] is also discussed in this chapter. Chapter 4 investigates whether theories of cultural imperialism and globalization can be successfully related to the Brazilian situation. This chapter also examines the influential role of the Brazilian record industry in the process of so-called ‘cultural invasion’. Chapter 5 addresses the important intervention on the part of the state as a cultural mediator in terms of popular music in the 1970s through the creation 13 Carlos Sandroni, ‘Adeus à MPB’, in Decantando a República: Inventário Histórico e Político da Canção Popular Moderna Brasileira, vol. 1, ed. by Berenice Cavalcante, Heloisa Starling and José Eisenberg (Rio de Janeiro, 2004), pp. 23–35 (p. 29). 14 Readers who are interested in such an approach are advised to consult Perrone’s excellent Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song, and the same author’s Letras e Letras da Música Popular Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1988).

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of FUNARTE and the Projeto Pixinguinha (a government-sponsored initiative dedicated to promoting Brazilian popular music that has been in existence for the last thirty years). Chapter 6 examines the motives behind the efforts of Mário de Andrade (in the 1930s) and Marcus Pereira (in the 1970s) to provide musical ‘maps’ of Brazil through the collection of field recordings of traditional and popular music. Particular emphasis is devoted to the importance of folklore and authenticity in both of these path-breaking projects that were equally concerned with the importance of the protection and preservation of musical tradition. Finally, Chapter 7 concentrates on two major ventures undertaken by Hermano Vianna and Itaú Cultural at the end of the twentieth century that carried on the work of Mário and Pereira, but with a totally different perspective on the validity of musical ‘authenticity’ and the role of tradition in Brazilian popular music.

Chapter 1

Musical Nationalism and the ‘Cultural Invasion’ Debate A central theme underpinning this study is how popular music in Brazil has frequently interlinked with political and cultural ideologies since the 1920s. An essential component of that linkage has been the idea of musical nationalism, which has periodically surfaced on the cultural scene ever since the publication in 1928 of Mário de Andrade’s formative work Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira.1 This chapter sets out to demonstrate how that current of musical nationalism has manifested itself, how it has been opposed, and how it also laid the foundations for the idea of musical tradition that is still so potent in Brazil. The chapter consists of three parts, the first of which starts by relating the origins of nationalist trends within music in both Europe and Brazil. This is followed by a brief section that draws some parallels between the work of Cecil Sharp and the English Folk-Song Society in the early years of the twentieth century and Mário’s influential nationalistically-flavoured writings on music that were to serve as a basis for much of the thinking on Brazilian popular music until the 1960s. The second part of the chapter discusses how the theme of protectionist musical nationalism was continued and developed through the work of several writers and journalists between the 1940s and 1960s, and how the latter were responsible for the creation of ‘invented traditions’ that formed the ideological starting point for the foundation of a hierarchy of values within Brazilian popular music. The final part of the chapter focuses on the closely linked debate about the fear of foreign ‘cultural invasion’ within Brazil that has been waged in the media and debated in public since the 1930s. I demonstrate how this debate intensified in the 1960s and 1970s and how that intensification is exemplified by the clash between the writings of José Ramos Tinhorão and alternative views that arose in the wake of the Tropicália movement. This section continues with a discussion of the reactions of some of those working in Brazilian radio to the impact of increasing levels of imported popular music, and the chapter concludes with an analysis of the efforts of the APMPB to redress the balance in favour of national music. Musical Nationalism in Europe and Brazil Musical nationalism is generally considered to be a movement that began in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century and which placed a strong emphasis 1

Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira (São Paulo, 1962).

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on the national characteristics of a country’s musical tradition. This trend began as a reaction against the domination of German music at the time by composers in other countries who considered that the heritage of their own national melodies and dances could serve as the means by which they could move their nations from the musical periphery to the forefront.2 In the last quarter of the nineteenth century composers in England, Norway, Spain and Sweden started to mine the folk aspects of their respective cultures for inspiration. Musicians and composers returning from Europe transported these ideas to Brazil, and to other Latin American countries, at the end of the nineteenth century. The rise of musical nationalism can be viewed within the wider context of ideas about ‘folk’ and national culture that originated in the Baltic provinces during the eighteenth century. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) has been credited with popularizing the theory that it was the rural isolation of peasant communities that protected them from the ‘corrupting’ influences of the wider world, which enabled them to develop their own individualistic national cultures. Herder contended that the oral peasant tradition contained the very soul or essence of a nation and that it was essential that any unifying national culture had to be grounded in that original, foundational peasant culture. As Herder’s theories gained a wider circulation, folk culture was appropriated as a symbol of nationalism and national identity, not only within Europe but further afield.3 Cecil Sharp and the English Folk-Song Society This approach was potentially problematic in a nation lacking a recognizable peasant class such as Edwardian England. For that reason, collectors of English folk song and dance sought to gather their raw material from the inhabitants of remote rural areas, as the collectors considered that the latter seemed to be the most likely repository of examples of ‘uncontaminated’ culture. There is an irony to this that John Francmanis has highlighted: . . . Membership of this elusive sub-stratum of English society was imposed rather than self-ascribed when, their deficiencies recast as virtues, selected elements of the unsophisticated rural population found themselves transformed into the ‘folk’.4

Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) was the dominant figure of the English Folk-Song Society at this time, an organization that he joined in 1901. Sharp’s ambitious approach and energetic drive revolutionized the society from merely collecting folk material into a movement whose aim was to instill patriotism in schoolchildren through the use of folk song. By re-popularizing ‘simple ditties which have sprung like wild flowers from the very hearts of our countrymen’5 Sharp believed that a new generation of English children would develop a greater awareness of their cultural heritage and 2 David P. Appleby, The Music of Brazil (Austin, 1983), p. 83. 3 John Francmanis, ‘National music to national redeemer: the consolidation of a ‘folksong’ construct in Edwardian England’, Popular Music, 21/1 (2002), (1–25), p. 2. 4 Ibid. 5 Cecil Sharp, quoted in Francmanis, ‘National music to national redeemer’, p. 7.

MUSICAL NATIONALISM AND THE ‘CULTURAL INVASION’ DEBATE

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that this would make them better citizens and patriots. Thus, Sharp hoped that a musical renaissance would lead in turn to a revival of the nation itself.6 Cecil Sharp’s initiative was hampered by opposition from other members of the English Folk-Song Society who disagreed with his methods and sweeping conclusions. As Francmanis points out: ‘effectively, he had determined who the ‘folk’ were, what constituted their art, which were their songs and dances, and what they represented’.7 Nevertheless, the issue of what exactly constituted quintessentially ‘English’ music was a major concern for some in the years leading up to the start of the First World War and in an increasingly nationalistic era composers were urged to eradicate foreign influences from their works and to replace them with ‘folk’ elements more in keeping with the common people.8 However, as a result of the increasing effects of urbanization in England even many of those living in the countryside that had formerly sung folk songs now favoured ‘ditties’ which originated in the urban music hall. Furthermore, Cecil Sharp and his followers were selective in their choice of the folk songs that they singled out to preserve for posterity and it was not unknown for Sharp to alter what he found to be more appealing or ‘tuneful’ to the modern ear.9 For some in England at the time there existed a clear relationship between folk culture and ‘high’ art, as illustrated by an article published in Musical Times in 1911: . . . The folk-art of a country, whatever its artistic merits or demerits, is the sincere expression of a community, the embodiment, in terms of literature, dance, or song, of national ideals and aspirations. Indeed, in the nature of things, an intimate and abiding relationship must always exist between the conscious, intentioned works of the really great, individual artist, and the un-selfconscious output of the people from which he sprang.10

As I will demonstrate, similar sentiments are to be found in the writings of Mário de Andrade in Brazil in the 1920s, an analysis of which will be found in the following section. Brazilian Musical Nationalism: Mário de Andrade’s Emphasis on the Role of Folk Music The roots of musical nationalism in Brazil can be traced back to the publication of A Sertaneja by Brasilio Itiberê da Cunha in 1869. Generally regarded to be the first Brazilian musical composition to be ‘nationalistic’ in character, this piece incorporated elements derived from popular forms such as the modinha, the maxixe and the Brazilian tango. Boundaries between art music and popular music in Brazil were somewhat blurred towards the end of the nineteenth century, with composers 6 Francmanis, ‘National music’. For a critical analysis of Sharp’s work, see Dave Harker, Fakesong: The manufacture of British ‘folksong’ 1700 to the present day (Milton Keynes, 1985). 7 Ibid., p. 9. 8 Ibid., p. 20. 9 Ibid., p. 10. 10 Ibid., p. 9.

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and musicians such as Ernesto Nazareth and Chiquinha Gonzaga (both of whom utilized nationalist elements in their work) falling into both camps. During the first two decades of the twentieth century most Brazilian composers of art music continued to write in the European tradition with the occasional use of nationalist features in their output. But it was during the period between the 1920s and the 1940s that musical nationalism really took hold in Brazil due to the overwhelming influence of Heitor Villa-Lobos. Villa-Lobos performed at the celebrated showpiece of the Brazilian Modernist movement, the Semana de Arte Moderna [modern art week] in São Paulo in 1922, and many of his compositions drew on traditional forms of pre-commercial Brazilian music as a source of inspiration. He was also a close friend of Mário de Andrade, and both men were later involved in musical education programmes for the Vargas regime. The climate of nationalism prevalent in Brazil in the period 1930–45 was a major factor in the growth of a number of cultural projects that sought to fuse nationalistic, populist elements with popular culture. To understand how opinions of value in popular music originated in Brazil, it is necessary to trace the development of the concept of popular music as a tradition that needed to be defended. The genesis of this trend can be detected in the impact of the Modernist movement of the 1920s on popular music, and more specifically the influence of Mário’s Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira (1928). This ground-breaking text shaped the thinking of generations of Brazilian musicians and composers from its publication right up until the 1960s. In writing the Ensaio, Mário’s intention was not only to provoke a debate amongst the artistic community but also to bring home to the public, commerce, bureaucrats, critics, and teachers the importance of the market in relation to Brazilian popular music.11 One of the most significant aspects of the Ensaio was that it also delineated for the first time the stylistic characteristics that identified music as essentially Brazilian.12 A central tenet of the Ensaio was its rallying call for more rigorous research into musical folklore within Brazil. In the view of Mário (and others such as Renato Almeida and Villa-Lobos) folkloric music and the povo [masses] were two almost interchangeable concepts, and this idea that folklore was one of the most compelling cultural reflections of that povo was to exert a significant influence in the general cultural sphere within Brazil until the 1960s.13 The totality of Mário’s work has to be considered in the wider context of the cultural project that the Brazilian Modernist movement embarked upon after the Semana de Arte Moderna. A concept of musical nationalism was at the central core of Mário’s vision, symbolized by his belief in the prospect of an evolutionary process by which Brazilian popular music would eventually break free from the shackles of international influences, to be regenerated by innately Brazilian qualities.

11 Enor Paiano, ‘O Berimbau e o Som Universal: lutas culturais e indústria fonógrafica nos anos 60’ (unpublished master’s thesis, University of São Paulo, 1994), p. 21. 12 Martha de Ulhôa Carvalho, ‘Música Popular in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais, Brazil: A study of Middle Class Popular Music Aesthetics in the 1980’s (doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 1991), p. 16. 13 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 19.


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Mário stressed the potentially important role of folk music as a source of raw material to be used by erudite composers in a process that would transform the ‘popular’ into the ‘artistic’.14 Folk music would therefore act as an ‘authentic’ source of artistic inspiration and for the first time composers were actively encouraged to incorporate Brazilian elements into their works.15 Mário organized and led several expeditions to the North and Northeast of Brazil in the 1920s and 1930s, whose aims were to collect folkloric music and dances that were supposedly ‘uncontaminated’ or ‘undiluted’ by foreign or commercial influences. Like Cecil Sharp before him, his decisions about which songs to collect for posterity were shaped by ideological considerations about ‘purity’ and ‘authenticity’ (this will be discussed in depth in Chapter 6). This search for ‘authenticity’ is fundamental to the thinking of Mário and the musical nationalists who followed him. Although popular music is considered by the latter to be ultimately subordinate to erudite music on aesthetic grounds, it is only within popular music that a natural, almost ‘naïve’ energy can be accessed that symbolizes the very essence of the national. It is only among the popular classes that the very soul of the nation resides, uncontaminated by the march of progress and civilization.16 Musical nationalists in Brazil foregrounded the importance of folklore as the only truly valid aspect of popular culture, and stressed the need to separate ‘good’ music from ‘bad’. They also sought to safeguard popular music from the potentially ‘harmful’ effects of two evils, avant-garde experimentalism and the commercial market.17 Writing in 1934, Mário scathingly referred to a style of Brazilian urban popular music that he pejoratively termed popularesca [populist]. Specifically citing the works of popular songwriters such as Catulo da Paixão Cearense and Juvenal Galeno, he described the genre as: ‘sub-music, fodder for the radio and records, ... with which factories, buisinesses and singers sustain themselves’. Whilst conceding that this style was capable of producing the occasional work of note, he found it in the main to be, ‘boring, plagaristic, false’ – an instantly disposable product more than likely to delude the general public.18 The crucial importance of Mário’s writings on popular music was that they established the basis for a hierarchy of genres. On one side, erudite music that was capable of transforming folk music into ‘art’, and on the other, música popularesca, geared towards widespread consumption through the increasingly influential mass medium of radio.19 I will demonstrate at various stages 14 Carvalho, ‘Música Popular in Montes Claros’, p. 17. See also Elizabeth Travassos Os Mandarins Milagrosos: Arte e Etnografia em Mário de Andrade e Béla Bartok (Rio de Janeiro, 1997) for an interesting comparative study of Mário’s work and that of the Hungarian composer and pioneering ethnomusicologist Béla Bartók (1881–1945). 15 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 16. 16 Santuza Cambraia Naves, O Violão Azul: Modernismo e música popular (Rio de Janeiro, 1998), p. 47. 17 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 23. 18 Cited by Naves, O Violão Azul, p. 48. An enlightening study of the contents of Mário’s own personal record collection can be found in Flávia Camargo Toni (ed.) A Música Popular Brasileira na vitrola de Mário de Andrade (São Paulo, 2004). 19 Martha de Ulhôa Carvalho, ‘Nova História, Velhos Sons: Notas Para Ouvir E Pensar A Música Brasileira Popular’, in Debates. Cadernos do Programa de Pós-Graduação em

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in this book how Mário’s low opinion of urban popular music would have long-term ramifications in influencing several key figures responsible for constructing notions of authenticity and value in the field of popular music in Brazil. It is unclear if Mário was directly aware of the work of Cecil Sharp, but there certainly appear to be some intriguing parallels to be drawn between aspects of the musical nationalism of the English Folk-Song movement as set out at the start of this chapter and that expounded by Mário and his followers. Examples of these similarities include: the high importance attached to the collection and cataloguing of material; the rejection of ‘corrupting’ influences both from abroad and by the commercial market; and the perception of indigenous folk music as a wellspring of musical inspiration for erudite composers. There is a clear comparison to be drawn between Mário’s view of música popularesca or submúsica and the efforts of members of the English Folk-Song Society to preserve folk music from what they perceived to be the harmful effects of popular song, or more specifically, the music hall. As early as 1899, the Vice-President of the Folk-Song Society had written in the following terms: There is nothing in folk-music common or unclean; . . . (Yet) if we compare the genuine old folk-music with the songs that are driving it out, what an awful abyss appears! The modern popular song reminds me of the outer circumference of our terribly overgrown towns, where the jerry-builder holds sway, and where one sees all around the tawdriness of sham jewellery and shoddy clothes . . . It is for the people who live in these unhealthy regions, people who have the most false ideals, who are always scrambling for subsistence . . . for them popular music is made, and it is made, with a commercial object, of snippets of musical slang. This is what will drive out folk-music if we do not save it. (my emphasis).20

In the following section I will demonstrate how a group of Brazilian journalists and writers set out in the 1940s and 1950s to push back what they perceived to be the impact of a tide of commercialism and foreign influence in order to ‘save’ certain ‘authentic’ aspects of Brazilian folk music. Invented Traditions in Brazilian Popular Music The rise of the urban market and the rapid development of radio and the record industry in the 1930s expanded the market for popular music in Brazil as never before. Songwriters such as Noel Rosa, and other composers working within the idiom of samba, saw the artistic and commercial opportunities that were now available and started to dream about success on a grand scale. Yet a career in popular music at this time was not all plain sailing; as Paiano points out, many of those composers and performers working in the field of popular music at this time still lived a precarious existence, relying on other occupations such as carpentry and shoe

Música, no.1, Centro de Letras e Artes, Uni-Rio, 1997, (80–101), pp. 87–8. 20 Francmanis, ‘National music’, p. 3.


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repairing to make ends meet.21 Audiences suddenly developed a fresh, more intimate relationship with the stars of popular music, generated by the growing power of radio, magazines, and the musical comedies known as chanchadas [slapstick], which in turn led to the development of large, well-organized fan clubs with thousands of members. This commercial expansion was accompanied by stylistic developments, and in the late 1930s the influence of the composer and arranger Radamés Gnatalli was to prove critical in a change of direction for popular music in Brazil. Gnatalli’s 1939 arrangement of Orlando Silva’s interpretation of Aquarela do Brasil was path breaking in that it was the first time that a samba-canção [song form of samba] received a string accompaniment instead of the more usual ‘regional’ instruments such as guitar, cavaquinho, flute, pandeiro and accordion. The idea of ‘samba with strings’ was anathema to some, and Gnatalli immediately received letters of complaint from those who considered that Brazilian music should only feature the guitar and cavaquinho, a foretaste of the resistance to the ‘dilution’ of popular music that was to follow.22 This breakthrough in the way that national popular music was viewed in Brazil was consolidated during the following years by the growing influence of Gnatalli’s arrangements, which were broadcast nationally via his work at Rádio Nacional, the tremendously popular radio station, whose period of influence spanned the era from its founding in 1936 until the early 1950s. By 1938, the government-sponsored Rádio Nacional was the most successful station in the country and some idea of the extent of its popularity can be gauged by the fact that in the early 1940s the station was receiving on average over 26,000 letters every month from listeners throughout Brazil.23 In 1943, Rádio Nacional started transmitting a weekly programme, Um milhão de melodias [a million melodies] that was sponsored by Coca-Cola. The programme mixed Brazilian and international music, and featured the Orquestra Brasileira de Radamés Gnattali that had been formed with the specific purpose of providing orchestral arrangements to Brazilian popular music of a similar standard to that provided by Benny Goodman in the United States.24 Um milhão de melodias formed part of the wider ‘Good Neighbour’ strategy between the Vargas government and the United States at the time, exemplified in cultural terms by Carmen Miranda and Ari Barroso’s trips to Hollywood, and Walt Disney’s, Brazilian-inspired animated film, Alô amigos [Hello friends].25

21 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 37. Unfortunately, little had changed in this respect even as late as the 1970s. Cartola only recorded his first LP at the age of seventy, and fellow sambistas such as Dona Ivone Lara (nurse), Nelson Sargento (painter and decorator), Alvarenga (broom maker) and Noca de Portela (market trader) were all unable to make a living by music alone. Margarida Autran, ‘Samba, artigo de consumo nacional’, in Anos 70: Música Popular, ed. by Adauto Novaes (Rio de Janeiro, 1979), pp. 53–63, p. 57. 22 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, pp. 41–2. 23 Luiz Carlos Saroldi and Sonia Virginia Moreira, Rádio Nacional: O Brasil em sintonia (Rio de Janeiro, 1984), p. 27. See also, Bryan McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil: popular music in the making of modern Brazil (Durham N.C., 2004). 24 Saroldi and Moreira, Rádio Nacional, p. 30. 25 Ibid., p. 37.

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Almirante and O Pessoal da Velha Guarda If Brazilian popular music of the 1940s was undeniably permeated to a large degree by foreign influences disseminated through the now sizeable record and radio industries, not all Brazilians took kindly to what they viewed as cultural domination from abroad. As Bryan McCann has argued, the field of popular music became a battleground during this period, an era in which many intellectual observers, ‘viewed the market as a realm of perdition: as authentic folkloric creations became commodities, their Brazilianness was inevitably diluted or corrupted’.26 One of those observers was Henrique Foreis Domingues, more commonly known by his nickname, Almirante. Almirante worked as a radio announcer at Rádio Nacional, and his longrunning weekly programme, Curiosidades musicais [Musical curiosities] first went on air in 1938. This show had an educational approach and featured work songs and regional rhythms from all over the country that were selected from Almirante’s huge personal archives. It was Almirante’s nationalistic outlook that inspired him to collect evidence that Brazilian popular music was superior to that of its foreign rivals.27 As McCann indicates, there are strong links between the nationalistic rhetoric that Almirante used on his radio programmes and similar language used by Getúlio Vargas in his political speeches of the period. Both men were concerned to draw the public’s attention to what they wished to project as the twin dangers of internationalization, and the threat to Brazil’s natural resources (oil) and cultural reserves (popular music).28 From the late 1940s until the mid 1950s, Almirante used his extremely popular radio broadcasts as a platform to promote O Pessoal da Velha Guarda [the Old Guard], a group of Brazilian musicians including Pixinguinha and Benedito Lacerda who played traditional styles of music such as old-fashioned samba, lundu, xote, and above all, choro. These genres had largely fallen out of favour with the public at a time when imported foreign music by artists such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra was all the rage. McCann has demonstrated that Almirante’s intensely nationalistic outlook led him to ‘invent a tradition’ based around the Pessoal da Velha Guarda in a calculated attempt to appeal to the patriotism of the Brazilian public.29 The concept of tradition is historically associated with notions of duty and respect for something that has been handed down from one generation to another. But as Raymond Williams makes clear, a closer examination of the concept makes it plain that only some traditions, or even specific parts of them, are selected for posterity: the whole notion of tradition is highly subjective.30 Eric Hobsbawm has demonstrated that the period prior to the First World War was notable for the 26 McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, p. 13. 27 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 65. In the late 1920s, Almirante had also been a member of the pioneering samba group, O Bando dos Tangarás that also featured Noel Rosa in its lineup. 28 McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, p. 179. 29 Bryan McCann, ‘The Invention of Tradition on Brazilian Radio’, in The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. by Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti (Durham N.C., 1999), pp. 474–82. See also, McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, pp. 160–80. 30 Raymond Williams, Keywords (London, 1983), p. 319.


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proliferation of what he terms ‘invented traditions’, which were designed to foster social and political stability in an era of turbulence and change.31 Hobsbawm defines ‘invented tradition’ as: . . . A set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.32

Amongst other examples, he cites folk song as having been modified and ritualized, not only in England, to serve nationalistic and patriotic purposes.33 This clearly brings to mind the work of Cecil Sharp, as discussed earlier in this chapter. Returning to the Brazilian context, evidence of the nationalistic fervour associated with popular music in the 1940s is demonstrated by the fact that in 1948, Almirante went so far as to suggest that Brazilians travelling abroad should identify themselves as such by whistling Carinhoso, the most famous choro composition.34 Almirante’s exaltation of choro, rather than the more obvious choice of samba as a symbol of national identity was deliberate: it was precisely the fact that the genre had languished in semi-obscurity since the turn of the century, almost unchanged and untarnished by international or national success, that marked it out for Almirante’s ‘curatorial preservation’.35 The largely imaginary, noble tradition that Almirante concocted for choro and the Pessoal da Velha Guarda was then presented as being of vital importance, to be preserved as a keystone of the nation’s cultural heritage at all costs.36 I shall return to this concept of ‘invented tradition’ in Chapter 5 when discussing the government-sponsored choro boom of the mid 1970s and FUNARTE’s, Projeto Pixinguinha. The selective choice of certain aspects of Brazilian musical history and the exclusion of genres is nothing new. Santuza Naves points out that the authorities suppressed the traditions of the entrudo [an early riotous form of carnival] and the batuque [a precursor of samba] at the end of the nineteenth century due to the fact that neither genre conformed to the rather more sanitized image that the ruling elites wished to promote.37 As I will show in the following section, those responsible for writing the history of Brazilian popular music in the 1960s highlighted certain periods and composers at the expense of others to fulfil specific objectives.

31 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-producing traditions; Europe, 1870–1914’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 263–307, (p. 263). 32 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in The Invention of Tradition, pp. 1–14 (p. 1). 33 Ibid., p. 6. 34 McCann, ‘The Invention of Tradition’, p. 479. Ironically, Carinhoso was criticized in Brazil in 1928–9 for being too ‘Americanized’ in style. Hermano Vianna, O Mistério do Samba (Rio de Janeiro, 1995), p. 117. 35 McCann, ‘The Invention of Tradition’, p. 478. 36 Ibid., p. 478. 37 Naves, O Violão Azul, p. 36.


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Ary Vasconcellos, Lúcio Rangel and the Revista de Música Popular A crucial factor in the expansion of interest in popular music in the 1950s and 1960s was the growing influence of a number of journalists and writers who were concerned about the preservation of the legacy of a so-called ‘golden age’ in the history of Brazilian popular music. These writers and intellectuals were not attached to universities or academic institutions, but exerted their influence in an independent manner through their publications, their press columns, and their radio broadcasts.38 I will now examine the influence of three of these writers and music critics, all of whom were convinced that ‘authentic’ elements of Brazilian popular music needed to be protected or saved from the threat posed by foreign music and the commercial market. These writers were Almirante, Ary Vasconcellos and Lúcio Rangel, and the significance of their work lies in the manner in which they shaped public views of what was to be considered to be important and of value in the history of Brazilian popular music. In addition to being a radio broadcaster Almirante was also an author, and the publication of his book No Tempo de Noel Rosa (1963) coincided with an ongoing debate about the origins and ‘authenticity’ of samba. Almirante argued in his book that samba was a fusion of urban musical elements that nevertheless drew on folkloric, rural roots. By emphasizing the importance of these regional elements in the development of urban samba he was attempting to invest the genre with an air of authenticity by indirectly linking urban samba with Mário de Andrade’s writings on popular music, which concentrated almost exclusively on rural popular music. The reasoning behind this was that, unfortunately for Almirante, Mário’s own writings on popular music did not provide the necessary evidence to argue for the development of a ‘legitimate’ tradition of Brazilian urban popular music, hence the need to suggest authenticity through rural antecedents.39 Ary Vasconcellos worked as a columnist for the weekly magazine O Cruzeiro and also wrote extensively on popular music during the 1960s. His book Panorama da Música Popular Brasileira, which was published in 1964, divided the history of Brazilian popular music into four distinct phases: • • • •

1889–1927, fase primitiva [primitive phase] 1927–1946, fase de ouro [golden phase] 1946–1958, fase moderna [modern phase] 1958–1964, fase contemporânea [contemporary phase]

Such unequivocal periodization of musical eras may now appear to be over didactic, but more importantly, as Paiano points out, the only period to which Vasconcellos attributed a specifically positive label is the fase de ouro, making it clear that his preference was for the music produced in the era prior to what he

38 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 63. 39 Marcos Napolitano and Maria Clara Wasserman, ‘Desde que o samba é samba’, Revista Brasileira de História, Dossiê Brasil, Brasis. São Paulo, ANPUH/ Humanitas Publicações, vol. 20 no. 39 (2000), 167–89 (p. 172).


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considered to be a pronounced decline in musical standards and authenticity. For Vasconcellos, the erosion of the status of Brazilian popular music was directly attributable to two factors: the rise of the modern music industry which encouraged composers to write purely for profit, and the post-war invasion of foreign music, principally that from the United States.40 Yet it is important to note that the music of Vasconcellos’s ‘golden age’ was not considered to be of any particular special merit at the time that it was produced: not one major newspaper in Brazil had a section devoted to popular music during that period.41 Consequently, his choice can be considered to reflect a somewhat nostalgic, retrospective analysis of music during that period. Lúcio Rangel was a music critic for various Brazilian journals and newspapers during the 1950s and 1960s. Rangel’s book Sambistas e Chorões (1962) bemoaned what he perceived to be the calamitous effect of the encroachments of foreign music on Brazilian folklore, and hailed the efforts of the venerable, sixty-five year-old instrumentalist and composer Pixinguinha (the key figure of the Pessoal da Velha Guarda) to stem the tide.42 In Rangel’s view, the essence of samba in its purest form was to be found before the advent of commercialization, in a genre he referred to as samba do morro.43 This notion of an authentic, unspoilt, spontaneous form of samba existing in an almost mythical morro [hillside shanty-town or favela] can be traced back to the publication of Na Roda do Samba by the journalist Francisco Guimarães (Vagalume) in 1933. Vagalume’s book was published at the height of a debate between various sambistas over the origins of samba, and his work was written with the express purpose of attacking the detrimental effects of the record industry on what he considered to be the original, pure form of samba still precariously existing in the ‘morro’. In his writings, Rangel echoed Mário de Andrade’s insistence on the fundamental importance of folklore within Brazilian culture, and like Almirante, he found Mário’s preference for rural samba over that produced in the urban centres somewhat problematic.44 Almirante, Vasconcellos and Rangel all championed the idea of the urgent necessity for authentic, pure, uncontaminated Brazilian popular music to be ‘rescued’ from the adverse effects of commercialization and foreign domination. Their writings must be viewed in the broader context of the massive wave of interest in folklore among Brazilian academics and intellectuals during the 1940s and 1950s, which was shaped by ideological and cultural arguments that attempted to ‘folklorize’ the idea of the povo to promote social cohesion and national identity. This ideology was common on both the right and the left of the political spectrum and was designed to counteract the negative impact of modernization and urbanization within Brazilian society, which it was felt diluted the tradition of brasilidade that was historically located within the povo. Because urban popular music was associated with commercialization and the 40 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, pp. 66–7. 41 Paulo Cesar de Araújo, Eu Não Sou Cachorro, Não: Música Popular Cafona e Ditadura Militar (Rio de Janeiro, 2002), p. 356. 42 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 68. 43 Napolitano and Wasserman, ‘Desde que o samba é samba’, p. 170. 44 Ibid., pp. 176–7.

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negation of cultural ‘purity’ and ‘tradition’, writers such as Almirante, Vasconcellos and Rangel took it upon themselves to save ‘authentic’ Brazilian popular music from the clutches of the domestic market and adulteration by foreign influences.45 Almirante was responsible for the creation of the velha guarda music festivals in the mid 1950s that attempted to rekindle interest in choros, seresteiros and sambas of the past. For all these writers, the emblematic figure of Pixinguinha symbolized their nostalgic desire to hang on to the good old days of the ‘golden age’. Pixinguinha figures in a list of the ten greatest figures of Brazilian popular music of all time selected by Lúcio Rangel for a magazine in 1962. It is highly significant that all ten artists selected by him are from the period before 1950.46 Pixinguinha and the Pessoal da Velha Guarda were also regularly featured in the Revista de Música Popular, edited by Rangel, alongside numerous articles on Noel Rosa, Ary Barroso, Sinhô, and other sambistas of the 1920s and 1930s. This magazine was published monthly between September 1954 and September 1956, and was significant for breaking the existing mould of magazines specializing in popular music, which had hitherto focused almost exclusively on commercially successful music that was broadcast on the radio. The Revista de Música Popular represented a new, more opinionated and more ideological approach to popular music expressed through the writings of its staff who were at pains to stress that they were not in thrall to the base commercialization of record companies and radio stations.47 The magazine’s raison d’être was clearly set out in the editorial column of the first issue: We have the firm intention of celebrating that wonderful music which is Brazilian popular music. By studying all its various aspects and focusing on its great composers and interpreters we believe that we are providing a valuable service.(. . . ) By placing a photo of Pixinguinha on the cover of our first issue we celebrate him as a symbol of an authentic, true, creative Brazilian musician who never allowed himself be swayed by ephemeral fashions or by foreign rhythms.48 (my emphasis).

In the same issue, an anonymous writer criticized the destabilizing effect on popular music in Brazil by the familiar foes of the bolero, rumba, North American popular music, and ‘atonal’ jazz. The writer urged for action to: Preserve our music, whether by re-recording and publicising old records that are no longer available, or by recording new songwriters and sambistas who, considered to be non-commercial, possess in their music all the traditional purity of Brazilian themes and styles.49

45 Marcos Napolitano, História & Música: História cultural da música popular (Belo Horizonte, 2002), pp. 58–60. 46 Lúcio Rangel, ‘De Anacleto a Ari Barroso’, Shopping News, 3/9/62. 47 Artur da Távola, 40 anos de bossa nova (Rio de Janeiro, 1998), p. 22. 48 Anon, Revista da Música Popular, no. 1, September 1954, p. 3. There is a certain irony here because Pixinguinha was also one of those responsible for the importation of jazz and foxtrot into Brazil. 49 Anon, ‘Antologia da Música Brasileira’, Revista da Música Popular, no. 1, September, 1954, p. 27.


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A year later, the famous samba composer Ary Barroso used an article in the Revista de Música Popular as a platform to delineate a number of ways in which he felt that samba had fallen into decline since its heyday – an unspecific and nostalgic past that he merely referred to as ‘antigamente’ [the old days]. Mournfully ruing the loss of authenticity and samba’s links with its humble roots, Barroso ends with the lament, ‘Decadência! Decadência! Decadência!’50 Almirante, Vasconcellos and Rangel were key figures that stimulated a wider public interest in Brazilian popular music, and all were heavily influenced by the tradition of musical nationalism. Paiano emphasizes the common characteristics that they shared: first, a passion for coisas brasileiras [Brazilian things]; second, the methodology of collecting information, organizing and archiving it in an attempt to remain faithful to the original, and third, a belief in a protectionist nationalism, inspired by a fear of the effect of the encroachment of the market and the importation of alien foreign influences. Their achievement was that they were the first to extend their ideas through the mass media of radio and the press to reach a wide audience and to solidify the idea of samba and choro as authentic, national forms of Brazilian music.51 Hence, for example, the change in attitude towards the work of Noel Rosa, an undoubtedly celebrated figure in the musical sphere of Rio de Janeiro, but someone who was largely unknown throughout the rest of Brazil when he died at an early age in 1937. However, by 1962, and with the benefit of retrospective hindsight Rosa had become in Rangel’s opinion ‘an immortal of samba’, deified alongside artists such as Ernesto Nazareth, Pixinguinha and Ary Barroso.52 I would not wish to dispute the undeniable musical importance of Noel Rosa’s work, merely to indicate the selective way in which he was chosen by Rangel to represent a particular view of the ‘linear’ development of Brazilian popular music. Almirante, Rangel and Vasconcellos were also responsible for the creation of a hierarchy of values in Brazilian popular music through their high-profile presence in the media and the organization of events such as the velha guarda festivals. In their foundational, historiographical accounts of the development of Brazilian popular music they celebrated the importance of a specific type of music (Rio de Janeiro samba) at the expense of other artists and genres.53 The publication of their major works on popular music within such a short time span also increased the impact that those writings had on the public and established the foundations of the ‘official’ history of popular music in Brazil. Through the publication of Rangel’s Sambistas 50 Ary Barroso, ‘Decadência’, Revista de Música Popular, no. 9, September 1955, p. 7. 51 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 69. 52 Ibid., p. 69. Rosa’s posthumous fame had also been boosted by the Vargas government of the 1940s, which chose his work to project a certain view of brasilidade. Darién J. Davis, Avoiding the Dark: Race and the forging of national culture in modern Brazil (Aldershot, 1999), p. 139. 53 This highlighting of the importance of music from Rio de Janeiro in the national history of popular music was not confined to these authors. The IBOPE (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics) was founded in 1942 to provide accurate statistics relating to audience figures for radio broadcasts. IBOPE’s findings in the 1950s were largely confined to Rio de Janeiro, thereby cementing the idea of Rio as the cultural capital of the nation. McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, p. 220.

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e Chorões (1962), Almirante’s No tempo de Noel Rosa (1963), Vasconcellos’s Panorama da Música Popular (1964), and the influential, though short-lived Revista de Música Popular (1954–56), they set out the parameters for the debate on popular music which would be continued from the mid 1960s onwards. The final part of this chapter will examine how that debate was overshadowed to a large degree by concerns in some quarters over the unwelcome influence of foreign investment and international popular music in Brazil.

‘Beatles go home!’ : the ‘Cultural Invasion’ Debate Historical Background to the Debate Throughout the twentieth century Brazilian popular music was periodically subjected to the influx of foreign influences, principally emanating from the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe. In that respect Brazil was no different from most other nations because North American popular music increasingly came to exert a hegemonic global influence as the century wore on. Technological advances in the fields of cinema (‘talkies’ were introduced to Brazil in 1927), the recording industry, and radio and television, were the primary conduits for this cultural influx, which was coupled with a massive increase in U.S. financial investment in Brazil after the First World War. Throughout the 1930s, and up until the 1950s, popular music was largely seen in Brazil as being either strictly traditional – and opposed to foreign influence – or a slavish copy of North American popular music.54 By the end of the 1950s Brazilian radio was regularly featuring jazz, blues and other styles of North American popular music. This was supplemented by recordings in a variety of Latin American rhythms like the rumba, mambo and the beguine, by artists such as Xavier Cugat, Edmundo Ros, and the Andrew Sisters. European popular orchestral music by the likes of Mantovani and Victor Sylvester, and singers such as Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour and Gilbert Becaud were also extremely popular.55 Yet these bare facts only reflect part of the story because the reality of the interaction between Brazilian and foreign music is slightly more complex. Even in the early years of the twentieth century the introduction of imported musical genres such as the cakewalk, the two-step and the Charleston, resulted in creative adaptations of these imported musical styles into Brazilian versions of the originals. For example, the first foxtrots to reach Brazil were immediately transformed into marchinas [marches] at the Rio Carnival.56 Bryan McCann has demonstrated that ample evidence exists within the field of Brazilian popular music of the 1930s and 1940s of artists experimenting with cross-cultural themes and forms that reveal multifaceted and ambiguous attitudes towards North American culture. 54 McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, p. 133. 55 José Ramos Tinhorão, História Social da Música Popular Brasileira (São Paulo, 1999), pp. 331–2. 56 Ruy Castro, ‘Música popular, das ‘Bananas’ ao ‘Desafinado’, O Estado de São Paulo, 16/9/00, p. D4.


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Through a reading of the work of songwriters such as Lamartine Babo and Assis Valente, McCann convincingly argues that several of their compositions, that have traditionally been viewed as either lyrically nonsensical or uncritical homages to US culture, can actually be seen to reflect a subtle, provocative, and creative dialogue with foreign music and international culture. McCann also provides evidence of the previously unheralded contribution of North American producers working in Brazil who were fundamental in stimulating innovation in the fields of national popular music and cinema.57 This intercontinental cultural interchange was also not simply one directional: as part of the ‘Good Neighbour’ policy between the United States and Brazil in the early 1940s, the musical compositions Na Baixa do Sapateiro, Aquarela do Brasil and Os Quindins de Iaiá (Ary Barroso), Tico-tico no Fubá (Zequinha de Abreu), Carinhoso (Pixinguinha) and Baião (Humberto Teixeira) all featured in Hollywood musicals or Walt Disney cartoons.58 Similarly, the massive popularity of bossa nova in the United States, and elsewhere, in the early 1960s was evidence of a Brazilian musical export that did not require political assistance to produce a resounding cultural impact, although it should perhaps also be remembered that the Bossa Nova movement was itself a reaction against the florid, melodramatic overwrought genre of samba-canção that had fallen under the influence of international popular music (and the bolero in particular) during the 1940s and 1950s. 59 The ‘Enemy Within’: iê iê iê As I have argued earlier in this chapter, growing anxiety about what was perceived as the ‘internationalization’ of Brazilian popular music was a major source of concern for several writers and researchers of popular music from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, and was a key factor in the publication of the Revista de Música Popular (1954–56). This journal acted as a sounding board for those who were opposed to what they saw as an increasingly restricted space in the media for traditional Brazilian popular music such as samba. By the late 1950s, music critic, José Ramos Tinhorão and others were attacking bossa nova for drawing Brazilian popular music away from its popular roots and nullifying the national importance and influence of samba at the expense of a dependence on imported North American jazz. This debate was ironically alluded to in the lyrics of Carlos Lyra’s composition Influência do jazz (1962), which expressed concerns about the increasing influence of jazz in Brazil whilst at the same time utilizing elements of jazz in the song’s arrangement.60 What was perhaps not perceived at the time was that a potentially greater ‘threat’ to national popular music had already started to take hold in Brazil with the advent of rock and roll. The screening of the film Blackboard Jungle in 1955, and the release 57 McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil. 58 Castro, ‘Música popular’, p. D4. 59 Tinhorão, História Social, p. 309. 60 David Treece, ‘Between Bossa Nova and the Mambo Kings: the internationalization of Latin American popular music’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (1992), 54–85 (p. 66).

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of records by Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley and Little Richard in Brazil in 1956, had an immediate impact and marked the start of a period in which rock music and its associated culture came to be perceived as the epitome of youth and modernity. Brazilian artists not only immediately recorded versions of the latest U.S. hits (Nora Ney released Ronda das Horas, a version of Rock around the Clock sung in English, in October 1955) but also a whole wave of Brazilian rock and roll bands started playing original compositions and cover versions sung in Portuguese.61 In 1963, as Brazilian rock and roll evolved into what became known as iê iê iê (‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ was the refrain to the Beatles’ hit She loves you) a whole new set of bands such as The Pop’s, Os Jovens, Os Inocentes, The Brazilian Bitles (sic) and the Fevers enjoyed popularity. Shrewd marketing and the enormous success of the Jovem Guarda television show that started in September 1965 established iê iê iê as a major force within Brazilian popular music. Nevertheless, due to its overwhelming similarity to an imported North American model (rock and roll), its unashamed commercialism, and its assimilation of North American and European fashions and trends, iê iê iê was attacked by supporters of samba and Canção de Protesto [Protest Song – the politically conscious, rather earnest, musically nationalistic, strand of bossa nova] for being shallow and unsophisticated, the political subtext being that it was foreign and ‘alienado’ [apolitical]. Elis Regina, the rising star of what came to be known as MPB, returned from an international tour and immediately launched into a fiery tirade that was published in Intervalo magazine, and which demonstrates the contemporary depth of feeling on the issue: Returning to Brazil, I was hoping to find samba stronger than ever. But what I saw was this submusic [submúsica], this noise that they call iê iê iê, capturing thousands of youngsters who are begining to be interested in music and who are being led astray. This iê iê iê is a drug: it deforms the minds of young people. Just look at the songs that they sing: most of them have very few notes which makes them easier to sing and to memorise. The lyrics don’t have any message: they talk about dances, sweet talk, frivolous things.62

In order to boost sales and audience ratings, record companies and television networks drummed up a highly orchestrated ‘war’ between adherents of bossa nova and iê iê iê in the media, and Regina’s remarks have to be viewed in that context. Yet when the article was published she apparently genuinely feared that supporters of iê iê iê would take reprisals against her because of her comments. Regina’s use of the term submúsica evokes memories of Mário de Andrade’s employment of the same scathing expression in 1934 to describe that which he considered to be trite, commercial pap, unworthy of serious consideration. Its use by Regina is evidence of the continuation of an underlying set of values that had been developed by adherents of musical nationalism since the 1930s. Although Regina was not publicly known to be politically affiliated to the left at this stage in her career, her comments are also perhaps indicative of a veiled frustration at the 61 For an entertaining account of the early days of Brazilian rock and roll, and the rise and fall of jovem guarda see, Marcelo Fróes, Jovem Guarda: em ritmo de Aventura (São Paulo, 2000). 62 Fróes, Jovem Guarda, p. 89.


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interruption of the democratic process within Brazil caused by the military coup that had taken place only a year earlier in 1964. It seems as if the commercial triumph of iê iê iê was a pointed reminder, at least to some, of the cultural sea-change which followed the military coup, characterized by an over-eager desire by the new military government to embrace both U.S. capital, and North American cultural mores. This political/cultural backdrop helps to explain the deep antipathy which existed between supporters of Canção de Protesto and iê iê iê: their differences were often not only in terms of musical taste, but also in political attitude.63 Elis Regina, Edu Lobo and Gilberto Gil were amongst a crowd who marched in protest against foreign music in São Paulo in 1966, an episode that came to be referred to as the ‘march against electric guitars’. Looking back on the event years later, Gilberto Gil ruefully recalled that the demonstration had been anti-iê iê iê, and had been slightly xenophobic and nationalistic in character.64 The organizers of the fifth TV-Record song festival, held in São Paulo in 1969, who banned the use of electric guitars at the event and marketed the festival with the slogan, ‘Beatles go home!’ demonstrated similar attitudes.65 By deciding to only allow the inclusion of ‘genuine’ Brazilian music in the competition, the organizers were attempting to stimulate a return to musical ‘authenticity’. However, the festival proved to be a dismal failure with the public and critics alike because the record industry and record buyers in general had already come to an awareness of a wider notion of what constituted ‘genuine’ Brazilian popular music in the wake of the innovation and experimentation introduced by the Tropicalist movement.66 José Ramos Tinhorão and Tropicalist Challenges to Musical Nationalism The musical nationalism of the 1960s differed from that which preceded it. In the ten years between Getúlio Vargas’s suicide in 1954 and the coup that brought the military to power in 1964 populism collapsed and political uncertainty increased. This period was also one in which the debate about the future direction of the nation and discussions about the issue of national identity were conducted by the Institute of Higher Studies (ISEB). Under the guise of this influential ‘think tank’, various intellectuals argued that the economic domination of Brazil had historically also been accompanied by a cultural domination that condemned exploited nations such as Brazil to merely copy the culture of their exploiters. It was argued that the only solution to this cycle of domination was to break free from the restrictive power of dominant powers (i.e. the United States) by adopting a policy of aggressive

63 Reading the celebrated round table debate, ‘Que caminho seguir na música popular brasileira?’ published in the May 1966 issue of Revista Civilização Brasileira, it is striking to note the deeply antagonistic attitude held by several of those taking part towards iê iê iê, purely on ideological (rather than merely musical) grounds. 64 Ruy Castro, Chega de Saudade: A história e as histórias da Bossa Nova (São Paulo, 1990), p. 405. 65 Luiz Carlos Sá, ‘Festival da Record: marcha-à-ré musical’, Correio da Manha, 27/11/69. 66 Napolitano, “Seguindo a canção”, pp. 324–6.

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nationalism.67 An added ingredient to this feeling of hostility towards foreign penetration of the Brazilian economy was the anti-U.S. sentiments that intensified in Brazil, and elsewhere in Latin America, after the Cuban Revolution. The political polarization of the nation during the Goulart administration (1961–64) in the period leading up to the 1964 coup was accompanied by the rise in support for the Peasant Leagues in the Northeast and the growth of several left-wing, anti-imperialist, politico-cultural movements such as the Centres of Popular Culture (CPC). Anti-imperialist and musically nationalistic sentiments have been a keystone of the work of music critic and writer, José Ramos Tinhorão since he first started working at the Jornal do Brasil in 1961. His often-uncompromising views on Brazilian popular music have changed little in that time, and Tinhorão’s views on cultural dependency have tended to emphasize the concepts of ‘alienation’ and ‘underdevelopment’ in a similar fashion to the ideas first propounded by the ISEB and the CPC in the 1950s and 1960s. Tinhorão has steadfastly held to the view that Brazil’s cultural dependency is merely an extension of its economic dependency, and he roots his views on popular music within a wider critique of social conditions in Brazil. He has made it clear that his analysis is based on an understanding of historical materialism that is concerned with the manner in which forms of popular culture that originate amongst the lower social classes are consequently appropriated by the dominant classes as their own.68 Although he originally trained as a lawyer, Tinhorão soon turned his attention to popular music instead, and he has pursued a lengthy career as a writer, journalist and critic on this subject. His first book, Música popular:Um tema em debate (1966) made an immediate impression due to its forthright views and rigorous criticism of the Bossa Nova movement. The book’s impact was so significant that one commentator has remarked that it represented the most important work on the debate on Brazilian popular music since Mário de Andrade’s Ensaio sobre a Música Brasileira.69 In Música popular: Um tema em debate, Tinhorão lamented the fact that samba had strayed from its ‘authentic’ popular roots, and like Ary Vasconcellos before him he

67 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 75. 68 Luiz Zanin Oricchio, ‘Tinhorão tenta escapar do ostracismo’, O Estado de São Paulo, 16/7/94, Cultura, p. Q3. Tinhorão’s political outlook has undoubtedly tinged much of his writing, and largely due to this factor, and a distinctly polemical approach, his general views on popular music are now considered by many to be outmoded. However, his contribution to the debate on popular music studies in Brazil cannot be underestimated. Long before it became more fashionable to write about popular music, he ploughed a lonely furrow, unaided by the support of academic institutions and often finding it difficult to publish. Nevertheless, he has created a substantial body of work (now in the region of twenty books) that is a testament to his unswerving dedication and single-mindedness. He has rigorously and methodically researched the origins of contemporary Brazilian popular music and acted as a champion for the re-evaluation of regional styles of music that otherwise would have almost certainly have been neglected. Tinhorão’s efforts in this field are evidence of the enduring legacy of the Brazilian tradition of musical nationalism first elaborated by Mário de Andrade. 69 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 92.


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considered that the critical moment in its decline had been its ‘Americanisation’ in the 1940s, which culminated in the ‘alienated’ musical style of bossa nova.70 Tinhorão was well aware of the undeniable impact of North American jazz and other forms of imported popular music within Brazil in the 1920s, but he argued that any negative effects during that period only affected the type of samba that was directed towards the middle-class market, while the more ‘authentic’ samba do morro continued unaffected in its development as it did not stray from its popular roots.71 In Tinhorão’s view, as North American economic and cultural influence increased within Brazil in the 1940s and 1950s, a relationship of cultural dependence developed, producing an ‘alienated’ Brazilian middle class that were spoon-fed with imported culture via radio, records and eventually, television.72 He specifically cites the example of Radamés Gnatalli as one of the main instigators of this trend of ‘Americanisation’, considering him responsible for ‘confusing’ arrangements that were too closely allied to jazz.73 For Tinhorão, the final straw was bossa nova’s musical inferiority complex, symbolized by the genre’s desperate attempts to gain social and cultural acceptability with the Brazilian middle classes by attempting to fuse jazzy bossa nova and elements of classical music.74 In Tinhorão’s opinion, ‘authenticity’ is a crucial factor in Brazilian popular music and he has argued that it is only to be found in Brazilian music in ‘untainted’ popular rural forms such as, carimbó, baião, xaxado, modas de viola [all regional forms of popular music], and various types of urban samba. In this respect his views owe much to the legacy of Mário de Andrade and the musical nationalist writers of the 1950s and 1960s that I referred to earlier in this chapter.75 One of the most famous initial responses to Tinhorão’s Música Popular: Um tema em debate came in an article written by the singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso.76 Veloso’s view of the influence of jazz in Brazil was diametrically opposed to that of Tinhorão: he argued that jazz had actually greatly enriched Brazilian popular music and provided another dimension for Brazilian composers to interpret the tradition of artists such as Orlando Silva, Noel Rosa and Ary Barroso in a fresh, innovative way.77 In a further article, Veloso also stressed the impossibility of defining any era of samba as ‘authentic’ and he attacked what he saw as Tinhorão’s conservative, reactionary stance:

70 José Ramos Tinhorão, Música Popular: Um tema em debate (Lisbon, 1969), p. 36. 71 Tinhorão, Música Popular:Um tema em debate, p. 47. 72 Ibid., p. 54. 73 Ibid., p. 57. 74 Tinhorão, Música Popular:Um tema em debate, p. 59. 75 Anon, ‘Tinhorão: Pela defesa do que é nacional!’, Jornal do Metrô, 27/8/84. 76 Caetano Veloso, ‘Ângulos: Primeira feira de balanço’ (1966) in, Alegria, Alegria (Rio de Janeiro, 1977), pp. 1–13. 77 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 93. However, it is worth mentioning that Hermano Vianna has demonstrated that in 1965–6, Veloso used nationalist arguments to defend bossa nova and referred to artists such as Johnny Alf and Dick Farney as ‘alienated’. O Mistério do Samba, p. 132.

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THE DEFENCE OF TRADITION IN BRAZILIAN POPULAR MUSIC Tinhorão’s book defends the preservation of illiteracy as the only salvation for Brazilian popular music . . . To state that you can only make samba with a frying pan [type of percussive instrument used in samba] tambourine and a guitar without sevenths and ninths does not resolve the problem.78

In Veloso’s opinion, popular music is, and always has been, in a constant state of flux, subject to the influence of diverse external and internal commercial and cultural factors. For him, João Gilberto and the Bossa Nova movement epitomized the essence of the continuation of what he termed the ‘linha evolutiva’ [evolutionary line] of Brazilian popular music, not, as Tinhorão claimed, its rupture.79 Paiano stresses the importance of Veloso’s stand against Tinhorão, which quickly found common ground with performers such as Edu Lobo, the conductor Julio Medaglia, and the writer, Augusto de Campos, all of whom criticized the attempts of ‘nostalgics’ such as Tinhorão who they felt wished to turn the clock back to the pre-bossa nova period.80 With the advent of the Tropicália movement in 1967–68, co-led by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, Brazilian popular music entered a new, more complex phase. Tropicália’s goal of a ‘universal sound’, synthesizing elements of rock music, jovem guarda, electric guitars, and much more besides, was anathema to Tinhorão, who famously drew comparisons between the cultural impact of the Tropicalists and the economic and technological objectives of the military dictatorship established in 1964.81 If iê iê iê could be dismissed by some as merely a diluted form of North American pop-rock, then Tropicália threw up a whole new set of challenges to those attempting to defend the purity of Brazilian popular music. Tropicália represented a potent cocktail of wildly diverse elements – avantgarde music, rock, pop, and traditional Brazilian genres, which all coalesced into a genuinely new musical creation. By utilizing the universal format of rock music as a vehicle to get their message across – as bossa nova had appropriated elements of jazz – and by using electric guitars in particular, the Tropicalists infuriated the musical nationalists and those seeking to claim to represent ‘authenticity’ in Brazilian popular music. The Tropicalist experiment was abruptly curtailed by the intense government censorship that descended on the country after the imposition of the fifth Institutional Act in late 1968. Although the movement was short-lived, it was enormously significant in cultural terms, and rapidly came to be viewed retrospectively rather nostalgically as a reference point for innovation and audacity. The gaiety and sense of joyful experimentation that characterized Tropicália stood in stark contrast to the artistic vacuum which followed the exile of Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Geraldo Vandré and others, and the all-pervading sense of musical stasis which followed the imposition of severe censorship in 1968.

78 Airton Barbosa, ed. ‘Que caminho seguir na música popular brasileira?’, p. 378. 79 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 93. 80 Ibid., p. 97. 81 José Ramos Tinhorão, Pequena história da música popular: da modinha à lambada (São Paulo, 1986), pp. 265–6.


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Veloso and Gil referred to the Tropicalist musical mélange as ‘universal sound’, and Veloso has been quite clear about the aims implicit in their work during this period: ‘By using electric guitars in melodic compositions with elements of Argentine tango and African things from Bahia, we assumed a posture of ‘being-in-the-world’ – we rejected the role of the Third World country living in the shadow of more developed countries’.82 Although Veloso’s comments were made in recent times, they seem to reflect a stance that is ironically not that far removed from that of José Ramos Tinhorão in the 1960s, reflecting the desire to achieve a musical, as opposed to political, form of non-alignment. In 1968, Gil paid tribute to the influence of the work of João Gilberto, whose bossa nova compositions Ôba-la-lá and Bim Bom had contained musical innovations that he felt opened up the possibility for Brazilian music to make use of new forms of international popular music. In Gil’s opinion, the obligation for Tropicália to take up once again the linha evolutiva initiated by João Gilberto was due to the pressing need to combat the wave of parochial nationalist sentiments that had descended on Brazilian popular music following the end of the bossa nova boom. By retreating into an absurd, self-imposed ghetto of obsession with the povo – often symbolized by themes associated with the poor of the Northeast – and an endless search for folkloric ‘purity’ Gil considered that popular music in Brazil ran the risk of failing to absorb all that was creative and dynamic about the newest forms of international music.83 The Debate Widens The contemporary cultural impact of Tropicália within popular music was so profound that it was swiftly recognized that popular music in Brazil would never be the same. Having said that, it is important to remember that the Tropicalist movement was not without its critics at the time, expressed in writings by the likes of Sidney Miller, Augusto Boal, Francisco de Assis and Roberto Schwarz amongst others.84 For example, Sidney Miller, writing in 1968, was critical of the theory that Brazilian popular music was capable of competing in the international market on equal terms with that of developed nations. Miller reiterated the view that Brazil had suffered from cultural underdevelopment for some time and that Brazilian popular music had stagnated due to the power of foreign multinational record companies that had used the Brazilian market as a lucrative dumping ground for the worst, i.e. most commercial, types of international popular music. He argued that for the Tropicalists to claim the existence of ‘música universal’ ignored the reality of the control of world markets by the dominant economic powers. In his view, Brazil remained a subordinate partner in this relationship, dependent upon more economically advanced nations to distribute

82 Quoted in Christopher Dunn, ‘Tropicália, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in Brazil’, in Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, ed. by Charles Perrone and Christopher Dunn (Gainesville, 2001), pp. 72–95, (p. 75). 83 Augusto de Campos, Balanço da Bossa e outras bossas, p. 190. 84 Marcos Napolitano, Cultura Brasileira: Utopia e Massificação (1950–1980), (São Paulo, 2001), p. 70.

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its musical raw material worldwide, as had happened with bossa nova.85 I will return to the specific issue of the role of the Brazilian record industry in Chapter 4. The debate about the gravity of the threat posed to Brazilian popular music by international imports continued to rumble on in the press in the early 1970s, and this issue increasingly started to dominate almost any press discussion relating to popular music. An illustrative example of this is an article written by Ilmar Carvalho in May 1970, in which he argued that foreign imports were impeding the development of Brazilian popular music. Carvalho contended that governmental action was urgently required to protect Brazilian popular music from the predatory attentions of foreign multinational companies such as RCA (United States), Phillips (Holland) and Odeon (England), which he claimed were swamping the Brazilian market with musically inferior product. Carvalho’s argument was that foreign imports, which relied on the sound of electric guitars, bore no relation to the richness and diversity of Brazilian popular music, and that their increasing penetration of the national market represented a major threat to the Brazilian public, who would eventually lose contact with its own cultural heritage. He urged that existing legislation, designed to ensure that two-thirds of all music played on the radio should be Brazilian, should be properly enforced and he stressed that such action was necessary to defend national culture and sovereignty and to enable Brazilian artists to compete on a level playing field.86 At the other end of the spectrum of this debate, Júlio Hungria used the subject of the ongoing fifth International Song Festival (FIC) held in Rio de Janeiro as a basis for a double page spread in the Jornal do Brasil newspaper in October 1970, in which he analysed the current state of MPB. Hungria referred to the two-year hiatus in the development of the musical linha evolutiva caused by the flight of so many influential artists from the country after the imposition of severe censorship in 1968. However, he found renewed optimism for the future of Brazilian popular music precisely because of the recent incorporation into national music of imported elements such as soul music and the music of the Beatles. In his opinion, the appropriation of international cultural influences was the only way in which Brazilian musicians and songwriters would be able to create a new, fully formed musical product capable of being exported in the same way that bossa nova had been.87 In September 1972, Revista de Cultura Vozes published a lengthy article that consisted of a series of short interviews with a number of writers and musicians.88 These interviews had been collected over the preceding two years, and reflected the polarization of opinion on the prospects for the future of MPB since the demise 85 Sidney Miller, ‘O Universalismo e a Música Popular Brasileira’, Revista Civilização Brasileira, 21/22 (1968), 207–21, (p. 212). 86 Ilmar Carvalho, ‘Estão matando a música popular brasileira’, Correio da Manha, 19/5/70. This was a plea similar to that made by several performers and composers who lobbied Getúlio Vargas soon after he took power in 1930 urging for protection for their livelihoods by legislation stipulating that at least 60 per cent of music played in theatres and on the radio should be Brazilian. Vargas expressed sympathy for their plight, but no such action was forthcoming. McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, pp. 8–9. 87 Júlio Hungria, ‘A MPB do V FIC’, Jornal do Brasil, 31/10/70, Caderno B, pp. 4–5. 88 Ronaldo Werneck, ‘MPB/Hoje: Uma salada lítero-tropical’, Revista de Cultura Vozes, 66 (1972), 677–92.


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of Tropicália. When asked about the issue of ‘cultural invasion’, songwriter and record producer Marcus Vinícius responded that he considered that the importation of foreign music was not problematic in itself and was actually to be welcomed. In his opinion, the far greater threat to the Brazilian music industry lay in the unchecked importation of foreign records, symbolized by the financial advantages enjoyed by foreign record companies operating within Brazil. Vinícius also made the perspicacious observation that despite the large amount of media attention paid to imported soul music, that had recently found popularity in Brazil, the true musical innovation at that time was the genesis of rock music, which he considered would in turn lead to the birth of a Brazilian rock movement.89 The Teatro Casa Grande Debates This concern about fears of ‘cultural invasion’ took on a far wider and more pronounced political dimension through a groundbreaking series of cultural debates held at the Teatro Casa Grande, in Rio de Janeiro in 1975. Round table discussions by experts in the fields of cinema, theatre, popular music, plastic arts, journalism, literature, and publicity were followed by public debates. Audiences for each event were in the region of 1400, of which 85 per cent were estimated to be students.90 These debates were extremely significant as they were the first public events of such a magnitude to be held in Brazil since the clampdown on political and civil rights in 1968. One contemporary press report on the events focused on the fact that the debates demonstrated that young people were now mature enough to gather in their thousands to discuss important issues without representing a threat to public order; a reference to the student unrest that had immediately preceded the imposition of the draconian fifth Institutional Act in 1968.91 The size of the audiences staggered the organizers, particularly as admission was not free. The predominant themes running through all the debates were the grave impact of censorship on the arts in Brazil and the increasing ‘de-nationalisation’ of Brazilian cultural life due to the invasion of foreign values, which were considered to be at odds with ‘authentic’ Brazilian culture. The debate on popular music on 21st April 1975 was the best attended of all the events, drawing a crowd of 1500, with 800 outside the theatre listening to a live relay of the discussion, which lasted four hours. The round table participants included writer Sérgio Cabral and singer-songwriters, Sérgio Ricardo, Chico Buarque and Paulinho de Viola. All these panellists shared the view that Brazilian popular music had reached a crisis point, and that this was substantially due to the fact that foreign multinational companies such as Odeon, Phillips, RCA, and CBS effectively controlled the Brazilian record market. Sérgio Cabral indignantly pointed to the financial advantages for these companies, who exported master tapes of records to 89 Werneck, ‘MPB/Hoje, pp. 690–91. 90 Anon, ‘De volta ao livre debate’ Visão, 9/6/75, p. 60. 91 Ibid., p. 60. Even so, the organizers adopted a cautious approach and due to concerns that political activists might hijack the event they ensured that questions from the floor were written and passed to the rostrum.

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Brazil – when all production costs had already been accounted for in the country of origin – and then received generous tax exemptions from the Brazilian government for merely printing the slogan ‘disco é cultura’ [records are culture] on the record sleeve because it had been manufactured in Brazil. In comparison, the total cost of producing a Brazilian record had now become financially prohibitive, and hence new and less renowned Brazilian artists had an uphill struggle to have their work recorded by the foreign record companies who dominated the Brazilian market.92 To illustrate his point, Cabral informed the audience that the overwhelming majority of the best-selling singles in Brazil that week were foreign, but he also stressed that this was not a new phenomenon, as Brazil had been subjected to continual importation of foreign music since the 1940s. Legislation had been passed in 1961 setting out a minimum quota of 50 per cent for the broadcast of Brazilian music on radio and in public places such as nightclubs, but it had been completely ignored. Cabral argued for the vigorous imposition of this legislation, but Chico Buarque was equivocal on this issue and maintained that not all imported music was of poor quality. The Teatro Casa Grande debates represented a rare opportunity for a young, mainly student audience to gather and express concern about what they perceived to be the artistic crisis facing Brazilian society, and the debates received extensive press coverage even though the content of the debates extended beyond merely artistic matters, i.e. the impact of censorship itself was discussed. The huge attendance at the debate on popular music demonstrates the intense interest in the subject at the time, and questions from the floor echoed the concerns of the panellists about foreign domination of Brazil’s music industry. These events reflected the anxieties of a generation growing up post-1968 and seeking some form of political leadership and direction from figures within the field of popular music. After the flight into exile by so many of the key figures in popular music in the wake of the cultural censorship imposed by the fifth Institutional Act it was widely considered, by the public and critics alike, that artists of an equal stature had not arisen to take their place. Hence the widespread attention paid to Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque on their return to Brazil in the early 1970s. Both these artists found themselves unwilling to adopt the role that was expected of them by those critical of the military regime, and Buarque’s discomfort in this respect was obvious at the Teatro Casa Grande debate.93 Some of those present at the popular music debate were half expecting a ‘show’ by Chico Buarque and were consequently disappointed at the prosaic nature of the problems facing popular music that were under discussion. Many others were impatient for some decisive action to result from the event. The open question hovering over each debate was ‘what next?’ Yet to the frustration of many of the audience there were 92 Ciclo de Debates do Teatro Casa Grande (Rio de Janeiro, 1976), p. 73. It is hardly surprising that foreign record companies were attracted to the potentially lucrative Brazilian market, as it was in a period of growth at the time that would result in it being the fifth largest market in the world in 1978–9. Marcia Tosta Dias, Os Donos da Voz: Indústria Fonográfica Brasileira e Mundialização da Cultura (São Paulo, 2000), p. 58. 93 Returning to Brazil from exile, Caetano Veloso was quoted as stating: ‘I don’t want to assume any leadership role. I only want to sing my songs so that people see that we continue singing and working. There is no more hope for organizing people around a common ideal.’ Christopher Dunn, Brutality Garden, p. 172.


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no simple answers to be had. As one of the organizers admitted after the event: ‘The response to “what can be done?” is “do it!” Not always what you would like to do, but always what you can. We did what we could.’94 ‘…We Don’t Play Samba Here’: Radio and ‘Cultural Invasion’ Legislation passed by the Quadros government in 1961, which stipulated that 50 per cent of all music played in public and on radio should be Brazilian, was never enforced. However, complaints about this at the Casa Grande debates seem to have stung the government into action because the Ministry of Communications announced in October 1975 that this figure was to be increased to 75 per cent for official radio and television stations.95 Nevertheless, in reality little changed regarding this issue, except for the fact that increasing research and monitoring was carried out by organizations such as Informa Som which had been set up in 1974 to enable those working within the music industry to have access to hard data relating to the exact number of radio plays in major cities of every record that was released in Brazil.96 This was of obvious benefit to those concerned with the payment of artists’ royalties, and also to those record companies attempting to monitor the airplay achieved for their releases. Informa Som’s statistics also provided the basis for a series of articles in the magazine SomTrês from 1979 onwards, which analysed this data to draw conclusions about trends and patterns within Brazilian radio. These articles, often written by Maurício Kubrusly, are fascinating for the depth of statistical information they contain, and also for demonstrating the continuation of the concept of ‘cultural invasion’ in certain sectors of the media. The importance of what was played on the radio in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo cannot be overestimated because syndicated radio stations all over Brazil subsequently repeatedly played those same records. In 1979, of the ten most played records in Rio de Janeiro only three were Brazilian, and in São Paulo during the same period the ratio was four out of ten. Statistics such as these prompted Kubrusly to ironically observe at the time: . . . Brazilian radio station announcers will soon have to broadcast in English as some stations have been doing recently. With this, the capitulation will be complete and radio will also be infiltrated by the strange colonized complex that guides the social columns, where we are told everyday that foreign is best, whether it be an actress, a cigarette, a household gadget or a bottle of Fedor perfume.97

To graphically illustrate his point, Kubrusly reported that when the singer-songwriter Gonzaguinha was invited to an FM radio station in São Paulo to participate in a live broadcast to promote his latest album and asked the interviewer to play a samba from

94 95 96 97

Anon, ‘De volta ao livre debate’, p. 61. Anon, ‘75% de som nativo’, Opinião, 24/10/75, p. 26. Anon, ‘Prova dos noves’, Veja, 15/2/79, pp. 103–4. Maurício Kubrusly, ‘On the radio’, SomTrês, no.16, April 1980, p. 96.

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that album, he was greeted with the response: ‘. . . we don’t play samba here’.98 The preponderance of largely North American music chosen directly from the Billboard charts played by Brazilian FM radio stations in the late 1970s was particularly galling for many commentators as it coincided with the disco boom then sweeping across Brazil. Those who viewed disco as lightweight, imported, musical fodder for the masses – as many in the Brazilian media did – breathed a collective sigh of relief as the craze finally passed and MPB once again came to the fore in the early 1980s due to massive investment and promotion by the record industry. However, ironically one form of musical domination was replaced by another, as statistics for radio play in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo during the months of December in 1981, 1982 and 1983 revealed that the playlists were now swamped with MPB, with virtually no foreign music present. Even Kubrusly saw this as problematical because during those three years the most played artists were virtually the same in both cities, namely, Gal Costa, Rita Lee, Roberto Carlos, Simone and Milton Nascimento, which constituted what he considered to be a repetitive period of musical stagnation.99 Once again, MPB was portrayed in the media as being in a phase of artistic ‘crisis’. This state of affairs was partially responsible for the kick-start given to the Brazilian rock movement in the mid 1980s through the support of independent FM radio stations in various Brazilian cities. Further discussion of the implications of this saturation of Brazilian radio by foreign music, and its relationship to record sales in Brazil will be provided in Chapter 4. Resisting the Tide: São Paulo’s Cultura FM The domination of the airwaves by FM stations pumping out large quantities of predominantly foreign music in the 1980s provoked a response in areas other than the press. The Padre Anchieta Foundation was established in São Paulo in 1969 with financial funding from the state government to promote educational and cultural activities and this resulted in the founding of Rádio Cultura and TV Cultura. One of the foundation’s aims was to actively promote Brazilian popular music and to support new artists working in that field.100 Initially, Rádio Cultura was broadcast on both the AM and FM wavelengths, with the FM frequency devoted to classical music, and the AM frequency, with far poorer reception quality, reserved for popular music. That policy changed radically when Maria Luiza Khfouri took over as musical producer of Cultura FM in 1989, and initiated a programming change in which six hours per day were allocated to Brazilian popular music. This was a conscious decision to open up Cultura FM to a wider, but still predominantly middle-class, audience and to fulfil the station’s remit to support popular music. Khfouri chose the music herself, with no concessions to pressures from record companies to air their releases. 98 Maurício Kubrusly, ‘A democracia bem relativa da FM’, SomTrês, no. 5, May, 1979, p. 105. 99 Maurício Kubrusly, ‘A trilha sonora do status quo’, SomTrês, no. 64, April, 1984, pp. 95–6. 100 Walmes Nogueira Galvão and Waldimas Nogueira Galvão, Cultura 20 Anos (São Paulo, 1989), p. 89.


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Her selection was designed to reflect both traditional and contemporary aspects of Brazilian popular music, ranging from Chiquinha Gonzaga to Cazuza, and all points in between. A series of thirty-two programmes about the life of Noel Rosa were aired, as well as programmes featuring the music of artists such as Vinicíus de Morais, Elis Regina, Egberto Gismonti, Hermeto Pascoal and Wagner Tiso. Because Cultura FM is not a commercial radio station and is financially supported by the state government, it does not operate within the same constraints that affect other commercial stations. It is not overly concerned with audience ratings and realizes that it is serving a niche market. Even so, Khfouri clearly considered her work at Cultura FM between 1989 and 1995 to be a cultural counter-attack: an attempt to provide an alternative to what she and her colleagues perceived as the mediocrity of the mainstream media. To give just one example, Cultura FM was one of the only major stations in Brazil during that period that would play music by the likes of Gismonti and Pascoal. Khfouri considers Cultura FM’s efforts to form part of a wider movement of cultural resistance, concerned with the protection of the tradition of ‘quality’ popular Brazilian music and the importance of bringing that music to a wider public.101 In the final section of this chapter I will discuss the impact of an organization dedicated to fighting on behalf of Brazilian popular music, an organization of which Khfouri is a member. The Association of Researchers in Brazilian Popular Music (APMPB) and the Continuation of the Debate Successive waves of imported musical trends such as rock, disco and reggae were popular in Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s, yet echoes of arguments in favour of the need to protect Brazilian popular music from ‘cultural invasion’ continually resurfaced at regular intervals. One of the principal forums for the continuation of this debate, apart from the press, has been within the APMPB. Founded in 1975, at the first ‘Encontro de Pesquisadores da Música Popular Brasileira’ [Meeting of Researchers in Brazilian popular music] in Curitiba, the APMPB has organized several Encontros over the intervening years that have brought together academics, critics, and researchers, all working in the field of popular music. Those closely associated with the Association have included celebrated writers and critics such as Sérgio Cabral, Ary Vasconcellos, José Ramos Tinhorão, Roberto Moura, Ruy Castro, Tárik de Souza, Zuza Homem de Mello and many others. The 1975 Encontro issued an open letter to Ney Braga, then minister for Education and Culture, calling amongst other things for the proper enforcement of the 1961 legislation specifying a fixed percentage of Brazilian popular music to be broadcast on radio and television. The second Encontro was held the following year in Rio de Janeiro, and was jointly organized by the National Art Foundation (FUNARTE) and the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC). Once again, practical solutions were suggested to the government to arrest the perceived decline in the status of Brazilian popular music. These included:

101 Author interview with Maria Luiza Khfouri, 22/8/03.

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• Financial levies on imported LPs. • The imposition of an obligatory ratio of 50 per cent of Brazilian music to be broadcast on radio. • A code of practice for radio and television in order to protect national culture. Both Ary Vasconcellos and José Ramos Tinhorão were present at this Encontro and both spoke out against what they considered to be the major threat of imported foreign popular music. Vasconcellos emphasized that merely opposing foreign imports was not sufficient, what was required was positive action in defence of national popular music. Tinhorão repeated his now familiar condemnation of ‘cultural colonisation’, and agreed that the only way in which Brazilian popular music could compete on an equal footing with foreign competition was through the imposition of surcharges on imports.102 Six years passed until the next Encontro in 1982, held in Rio de Janeiro and cosponsored by FUNARTE and the National Institute of Music. Although it had taken that long to arrange adequate funding to cover the event, a large number of delegates and the public attended the daily lectures and debates.103 Proof of the continuing importance of Tinhorão in the field of popular music research was that he found himself the subject of much debate at the Encontro, as delegates either defended his reputation or labelled him as a populist and a demagogue.104 A further Encontro in 1985 was attended by 172 delegates and featured a debate between academic writer and music critic, José Miguel Wisnik and Tinhorão, on the theme of ‘cultural invasion’. Due to a lack of funding it was a further fifteen years until the next, and latest Encontro, a week-long affair, attended by hundreds of delegates and organized by the Rio de Janeiro branch of the Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro in November 2001. To provide some sort of thematic link with previous proceedings, the debate between Wisnik and Tinhorão on the theme of ‘cultural invasion’ was reconvened to serve as the keynote debate of the Encontro. The obvious point to make here is that despite the passing of fifteen years in which the nature of popular music in Brazil had changed greatly, the issue was still felt to be of great importance by the Association’s organizing committee. At the start of the debate, Wisnik recalled the first time that he met Tinhorão, several years previously. As a fellow writer and critic specializing in popular music, Tinhorão admonished Wisnik in the following manner: ‘We live in a country dominated by foreign culture, and in such a country it is our duty to oppose such domination.’ Despite going on to praise Tinhorão’s singleminded, dedicated commitment to research in popular music in his presentation, Wisnik also referred to the latter as a type of cultural ‘Bin Laden’ – in other words, a cultural zealot. Whilst he freely conceded that cultural life and economic reality are 102 Emília Silveira,‘ Para vencer, a MPB terá que aprender Inglês’, Jornal do Brasil, 16/11/76. 103 Anon, ‘ O passado e o presente da música popular brasileira, em questão’, O Globo, 24/4/82. 104 Ibid.


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intrinsically linked, Wisnik chose to celebrate the positive aspects of transnational cultural interchange rather than regret the ‘dilution’ of the essence of Brazilian culture. He claimed that Tinhorão’s stand against ‘inauthenticity’ in popular music (bossa nova and Tropicália) and the quest for pure, uncontaminated Brazilian popular music was no longer tenable. Like Caetano Veloso in 1966, Wisnik argued that Brazilian popular music has always been a glorious hotchpotch of international influences, and that it was born out of an unholy process of mixture and synthesis, the latest example of this being the burgeoning Brazilian hip-hop and rap movement, which Wisnik considers to be the most significant development in Brazilian popular music since bossa nova.105 The debate between Wisnik and Tinhorão in 2001, illustrated that the ideology of musical nationalism is now considered by some, but by no means all, Brazilian writers and researchers in the field of popular music to be an irrelevance. For example, many in the audience at the Encontro poorly received Wisnik’s positive assessment of the contribution of rap to Brazilian music. Echoes of Tinhorão’s longstanding concerns about the dilution of Brazilian popular music by foreign influences were also to be heard in a presentation made by Marcus Vinícius (the same songwriter and record producer cited earlier in this chapter), who provided evidence of the power and influence of foreign multinationals within Brazil. To illustrate his argument, Vinícius informed the audience that a German company now owns the commercial rights to Pelo Telefone – one of the earliest recorded sambas. Vinícius also gave several other examples of Brazilian musical compositions that were no longer owned by Brazilian interests.106 His moral outrage at this state of affairs was perhaps understandable, but failed to address the key issue of the responsibility of those who took the decision to cede control of the patrimonial rights to certain aspects of Brazilian popular music in the first place. Through its Encontros and the writings of its members in the press, the APMPB has acted as a pressure group, periodically alerting the government to what many of its members have seen as threats to national popular music. The Association’s influence was clearly present in some of the ideas expressed in the government’s Política Nacional de Cultura [National Cultural Policy] of 1975, and also in the Projeto Pixinguinha initiative, both of which will be discussed in depth in Chapter 5. Members of the APMPB were responsible for a massive project to compile a discography of all 78 rpm records produced in Brazil between 1902 and 1964. This invaluable research that incorporates 55,000 recordings and 550,000 references was funded and published by the Ministry of Culture. Members of the APMPB such as Hermínio Bello de Carvalho have also been responsible for the publication of dozens of studies on ‘forgotten’ figures from the world of Brazilian popular music (particularly in the field of samba) through the auspices of FUNARTE, works that have helped to perpetuate the memory of the contribution of such artists. Unfortunately, the APMPB’s Encontros have been irregular affairs, and it has to be conceded that 105 José Miguel Wisnik, ‘Encontro Nacional De Pesquisadores de Música Popular Brasileira’, UERJ, Rio de Janeiro, 29/10/01. 106 Marcus Vinícius, ‘Encontro Nacional De Pesquisadores de Música Popular Brasileira’, UERJ, Rio de Janeiro, 1/11/01.

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they now have a lower visibility in the media than they did in the 1970s. Despite this, they have represented one of the very few opportunities that have existed in Brazil for academics, writers, journalists, researchers, musicians and students to gather together and discuss fundamental issues relating to popular music. Conclusion Mário de Andrade’s writings on music have clearly informed the debate on values within Brazilian popular music since the publication of his Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira. They have influenced ideas about what constitutes the ‘Brazilian’ element in Brazilian popular music, and they have also been used to define what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in popular music by establishing the basis for a hierarchy of values. Mário’s idea of ‘authenticity’ in music, and the importance he attributed to Brazilian folk music in particular, can be clearly distinguished in the writings of Almirante, Vasconcellos, Rangel and Tinhorão. Mário’s writings also form the bedrock of various initiatives which have attempted to preserve and protect Brazilian folklore and popular music, such as the work of the APMPB, the establishment of the FUNARTE (discussed in Chapter 5), Marcus Perreira’s ‘musical mapping’ of Brazil in the 1970s (discussed in Chapter 6), and Ariano Suassuna’s Armorial movement, to name but a few. Mário’s notion of the need for Brazilian music to break away from the dominance of foreign influences to develop its own identity struck a particularly resonant chord in the 1960s, when ideas of ‘cultural dependency’ were very much in vogue. Despite the brief moments of musical autonomy suggested by the Bossa Nova and Tropicália movements, the increasing domination of the Brazilian market by multinational record companies from the early 1970s onwards, represented for many musical nationalists and members of the public evidence of external manipulation and exploitation designed to prevent the development of a truly independent form of Brazilian popular music. In an increasingly ‘globalized’ age such sentiments are now far less common, but they can still be detected in the pronouncements of some members of the APMPB, and journalists and critics who resent what they perceive to be the ever more fragmented and international character of the Brazilian music scene. Having discussed the tradition of musical nationalism, the following chapter will address how the sense of the ‘national’ within popular music became symbolically embodied within MPB from the mid 1960s onwards.

Chapter 2

Inventing the Idea of MPB Attempting to define the type of Brazilian popular music suggested by the term MPB is not as simple as it might initially seem. The phrase appears on the face of it to be self-explanatory, i.e. music that is both popular and Brazilian. However, due to a variety of interconnecting factors the original significance attributed to the acronym shifted away from its original connotation in the mid 1960s and has developed over the intervening years into a type of shorthand that alludes to a series of values and assumptions about popular music in Brazil. The first part of this chapter analyses the distinguishing features of MPB in order to determine what it is that makes MPB unique and distinct from Brazilian popular music as a whole, and why it has occupied an iconic status within Brazilian culture for more than forty years. The second part of the chapter examines the respective roles of the record industry and the press in the formation of the notion of MPB as ‘music of quality’. Particular attention is devoted to the part played by the recording industry in the 1970s in helping to create the ‘myth’ of MPB. The Singularity of MPB MPB came into existence as a musical hybrid, incorporating elements of jazz, bossa nova and international popular music, and that original musical diversity, and MPB’s seemingly infinite capacity to re-invent itself, are two of the principal reasons why its influence has been so long-standing in an era of increasing musical diversification in Brazil. Marcos Napolitano has referred to MPB as having acted as a ‘centrifugal force’ within Brazilian popular music, attracting and absorbing elements of samba, choro, rock music, pop, música sertaneja [Brazilian country music] and many other styles into its ambit, whilst at the same time retaining its position of dominance in the musical hierarchy that exists within Brazilian popular music.1 However, to counterbalance the notion of MPB as an all-embracing musical movement it is important to consider another of its defining aspects. MPB was originally forged in the heat of a fierce rivalry between supporters of jovem guarda and international pop music and bossa nova in the mid 1960s. During that period, an era when foreign music dominated the national charts, MPB boldly proclaimed itself as ‘Brazilian’ by definition, and its supporters attempted to seize the nationalist high ground by using MPB as a standard bearer for national popular music, seeking to repel not only the incursions of imported music but also the ‘enemy within’ represented by jovem guarda. 1

Napolitano, Seguindo a canção, p. 290.

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The record industry exploited this ‘struggle’ during the 1960s with a largely phoney war conducted in the media between the Philips label, associated with artists in the MPB camp, and its main rival CBS, which represented many jovem guarda artists. When sales for both labels boomed, due primarily to the popularity of MPB and jovem guarda, each company set about creating a roster of artists.2 As MPB grew in popularity and established its position within the music industry and the media its position was further consolidated by the growing power of both the record industry and the television networks. As Napolitano has observed, this simultaneous development resulted in a synergetic boost for MPB at a critical stage.3 The heyday of MPB in the late 1960s and the 1970s also coincided with a large growth in the communications and entertainment industry, which provided the backdrop to an explosion in youth culture markedly different to that which had gone before (this issue will be explored later in this chapter). Since the early 1970s, MPB has shown a marked ability to move with the times in an attempt to retain and expand its popularity in the face of the rise of alternative musical movements, so much so that it has come to represent an increasingly broad church.4 However, this amalgamation of influences normally takes the form of a dilution of the essence of the musical style that is being absorbed. Theoretically, any type of music can become MPB, but only if its regional roots are de-emphasized (if it is derived from a regional form), its rough edges are honed (if it is overly percussive or electric) or its harmonies are made more complex (if it is derived from a popular form).5 Blurring of boundaries between genres has regularly occurred as artists from the fields of samba, rock and pop have entered and re-entered the MPB camp. This overlapping of artists from different musical styles was most pronounced towards the end of the 1980s when even a former bastion of Brazilian rock music such as the group Legião Urbana was considered to have become ‘MPB’.6 Those responsible for the marketing and image of MPB in the 1970s astutely drew upon the established tradition of popular Brazilian music since the 1930s to re-brand artists such as Noel Rosa, Pixinguinha and Clementina de Jesus as forerunners and trailblazers for MPB. By imaginatively associating MPB with these velha guarda artists, and by regularly re-recording their compositions, MPB performers and songwriters were, and still are, imbued with part of the historical aura of ‘authenticity’ and musical status of their predecessors. Thus, MPB has been projected at different times – and sometimes simultaneously – as part of a glorious musical tradition, and also as an innovative, anthropophagic musical form capable of adapting and transforming the latest trends in popular music for its own benefit. 2 Napolitano, Seguindo a canção, p. 84. 3 Ibid., p. 84. 4 This becomes clear when one enters Brazilian music stores and often encounters a diverse and ever-changing array of music gathered together under the catch-all title of ‘MPB’. 5 Idelber Avelar, ‘Heavy Metal Music in Postdictatorial Brazil: Sepultura and the Coding of Nationality in Sound’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 12/3 (2003), 329–46 (p. 342). 6 Arthur Dapieve, Brock: O Rock Brasileiro dos Anos 80 (Rio de Janeiro, 1995), p. 196.

INVENTING THE IDEA OF MPB

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As Paulo Cesar de Araújo points out, two contrasting and yet often complementary schools of thought about popular music in Brazil have developed since the mid 1960s: one that venerates ‘tradition’, and another that champions ‘modernity’.7 This can therefore be seen as having been another of the factors that has facilitated the longevity and ‘authoritarian’ status of MPB, for the movement synthesizes elements of both these tendencies. MPB has also benefited from being the focus of an intellectual debate, conducted in academic journals and the press, that has often sought to portray it as the latest stage in what Caetano Veloso famously referred to in 1965 as a ‘linha evolutiva’ within popular music.8 By using this expression Veloso was drawing attention to the possibility (and implied necessity) for popular music to progress through the selective choice of elements from Brazil’s musical tradition, in conjunction with the periodic need to break free from existing musical patterns, as had been the case with the innovations introduced into Brazilian popular music by João Gilberto and the Bossa Nova movement.9 Consequently, MPB simultaneously has a foot in both the present and the past, and can be projected as both the upholder of tradition and the harbinger of musical modernization. Definitions of MPB At the height of its fame and exposure in the 1960s and 1970s, the use of the term MPB in the Brazilian media became virtually synonymous with Brazilian popular music as a whole. Acres of coverage of MPB in the press celebrated the rise of singersongwriters following in the footsteps of major stars such as Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque, who had come to fame via the televised song festivals of the 1960s. The legacy of this so-called ‘classic’ phase of MPB has been extremely long lasting in the field of popular music and the general cultural sphere in Brazil, which has resulted in both positive and detrimental effects. The sheer quality and originality of much of the music produced under the umbrella of MPB between 1965 and the late 1970s is undeniably impressive.10 Nevertheless, from originally being merely one of the latest in a long line of musical currents to develop within Brazil, MPB came to overshadow the entire field of popular music, being viewed by many within the mass media as a reference point and yardstick by which all other types of popular music should be judged. That view was easier to understand, if not necessarily to agree with, when it was relatively clear what kind of popular music MPB referred to. However, by the 1980s it had become increasingly difficult to define the precise parameters of MPB due to the appearance of numerous alternatives in the field of popular music,

7 Araújo, Eu Não Sou Cachorro, Não, pp. 337–64. 8 Airton Barbosa, ed. ‘Que caminho seguir na música popular brasileira?’, p. 378. 9 Marcos Napolitano, História & Música:História cultural da música popular (Belo Horizonte, 2002), pp. 68–9. See also, Eduardo Granja Coutinho, Velhas histórias, memórias futuras: o sentido da tradição na obra de Paulinho da Viola (Rio de Janeiro, 2002), pp. 82–5. 10 For an outstanding survey of this period, see Perrone, Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song.

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such as rock, axé-music [dance music from the state of Bahia] and música sertaneja, all of which occasionally included elements of MPB in their makeup. The Enciclopédia da Música Brasileira is generally accepted to be one of the most authorative reference works yet published in the field of study of Brazilian popular music. It states that the first use of MPB as an acronym was in the text of the liner notes to a 1960 LP by bossa nova artist Carlos Lyra. The Enciclopédia goes on to observe that MPB subsequently became synonymous with bossa nova, but after 1965 was associated with all popular music in Brazil, apart from rock, blues and soul. By 1981, MPB was considered to encompass all Brazilian popular music, including rock.11 Evidently one could contest the Enciclopédia’s definition of MPB on the grounds of reflecting a partial view of the contributor and/or editor; nonetheless, the point to stress here is that the acronym has signified very different things to different people at various stages over the last four decades. When I attended the national meeting of researchers in Brazilian popular music (APMPB) in Rio de Janeiro in 2001, I was surprised by the wide-ranging and conflicting definitions of MPB expressed by many of the delegates present. Perhaps it is therefore hardly surprising that this ambiguity also extends to consumers of popular music in Brazil. A survey of self-confessed fans of MPB in 2002 revealed that they included pagode [a form of samba] and the music of Roberto Carlos (the high priest of música romântica) within the category of MPB, neither of which would have traditionally been considered to form part of the movement.12 This sense of confusion and uncertainty is not so surprising if we recognize that genre labels within popular music are fluid and have always been imprecise, created to serve both the record industry and individual consumers. Music can, of course, fit into several different categories at the same time.13 Carlos Sandroni has argued that the use of the term MPB between the 1960s and the 1980s had three overlapping meanings: first, it was a way of distinguishing MPB from art and folkloric music; second, it carried with it an ideological significance associated with a support for the ‘povo brasileiro’ [Brazilian masses]; and third, it was a statement of personal taste that reflected a liking for a broad range of music – including samba and bossa nova for example – but with certain limitations (rejecting European or US influenced rock).14 11 Marco Antonio Marcondes (ed.), ‘Enciclopédia da Música Brasileira:Popular,Erudita e Folclórica’ (São Paulo, 2000) p. 542. 12 Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa, ‘Categorias de avaliação estética da MPB – lidando com a recepção da música brasileira popular’, presented at IV Congreso de la Rama Latinoamericano, IASPM, Mexico City, April 2002 <www.hist.puc.cl/historia/iaspmla> [accessed 1 March 2003], pp. 6–7. For a further academic survey of what consumers consider to be MPB, see Laan Mendes de Barros, ‘O Consumo da Canção de Consumo: Uma análise dos processos de recepção da canção popular Brasileira por jovens universitários’, (unpublished doctoral thesis, E.C.A, University of São Paulo, 1994). 13 Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Oxford, 1996), p. 77. 14 Carlos Sandroni, ‘Adeus à MPB’, in Decantando a República: Inventário Histórico e Político da Canção Popular Moderna Brasileira, vol 1, ed. by Berenice Cavalcante, Heloisa Starling and José Eisenberg (Rio de Janeiro, 2004), pp. 23–35 (p. 29).


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Martha de Ulhôa Carvalho has adopted a different approach to categorizing MPB and has attempted to divide Brazilian popular music into two main categories: first, MPB, which has its roots in the lundu and the samba of the 1930s, and second, música romântica, which is derived from the modinha. Carvalho contends that social class, gender, age and race all play crucial roles in determining how popular music is distinguished and defined in Brazil.15 She contends that in the wake of the Brazilian Modernist movement of the 1920s concepts of national identity were developed by intellectual elites that sought to create an ‘authentic’ Brazilian culture. In musical terms, these intellectuals associated themselves with the values contained within the European classical music canon. That canon attributed particular value to classical music (as regards technique and erudition) and folk music (as a valuable source of raw material capable of being developed into ‘art’ for nationalist aims). For these intellectuals and tastemakers – some of whom were referred to in the previous chapter – the validity of urban popular music was to be judged in relation to its proximity to classical or folk music. In Carvalho’s opinion, the style of MPB that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s was imbued with high intellectual prestige due to its sophisticated lyrics and harmonies and because it drew on traditional forms of folk music for its inspiration, and is therefore an ‘authentic’ reflection of the national.16 Carvalho’s analysis helps to explain how the cachet of legitimacy that is attached to MPB is denied to other genres, such as música romântica for example, even though the latter has always been far more popular in terms of sales in Brazil. Thus, intellectual and class-based value judgements are behind the labelling of the music of Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso as MPB, and that of Amado Batista, for example, as brega.17 The existence of brega [also known as música cafona, literally, ‘bad taste’], a sub-genre of romantic, popular music has been common knowledge since at least 1984, when press reports revealed that the relatively unknown Amado Batista was second only to Roberto Carlos in terms of record sales in Brazil.18 Despite being massively popular, mainly in the peripheral areas of urban centres and in the interior, brega has never met with the approval of the official arbiters of taste in Brazil.19 From the 1960s until the 1980s, MPB was an overwhelmingly middle-class product, made by predominantly middle-class artists for a middle-class, often student, audience. Consequently, middle-class music critics have largely ignored brega and it has been almost completely airbrushed out of all ‘official’ histories of Brazilian popular music because of its associations with a ‘socially inferior’ public. This marginalization 15 Martha de Ulhôa Carvalho, ‘Tupi or Not Tupi MPB: Popular Music and Identity in Brazil’, in The Brazilian Puzzle: Culture on the Borderlands of the Western World, ed. by David Hess and Roberto Da Matta (New York, 1995), pp.159–79 (pp. 162–3). 16 Ibid., p. 164. 17 Ibid., p. 163. 18 See for example. Anon, ‘Campeões de audencia’, Visão, 15/10/84, pp. 54–7. 19 The brega artists Milionário and José Rico were extremely popular in China in the 1980s, and as part of an agreement for cultural interchange, the Chinese government sent the Peking Symphony Orchestra to Brazil and requested Milionário and José Rico to tour China. When the Brazilian government refused to fund the trip on aesthetic grounds the duo paid for it at their own expense. Samuel M. Araújo, ‘Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil’, Latin American Music Review, vol. 9, no.1, (1988) 50–89 (p. 85).

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has been recently rectified by Paulo César de Araújo’s major study, ‘Eu Não Sou Cachorro, Não: Música Popular Cafona e Ditadura Militar’. Without debating the inherent ‘quality’ or lack of it pertaining to música cafona, Araújo persuasively argues for a re-assessment of the value of this music and the cultural role that it has played, and continues to play, in the lives of countless millions of Brazilians over the last forty odd years.20 Araújo’s book has provoked considerable discussion in Brazil due to its iconoclastic debunking of several of the myths that surround MPB. He authoritatively demonstrates how música cafona and MPB have been traditionally portrayed in a ‘two-tier’ fashion in the media, bringing to mind comparisons between Mário de Andrade’s views on música popularesca in the 1930s, and music critics in the 1970s who have referred to brega as ‘submúsica’.21 Araújo also clearly identifies how música cafona’s role in providing various aspects of social criticism through its lyrical content has been completely ignored by the Brazilian media. MPB: ‘Quality’ and ‘Popularity’ Carvalho’s analysis, cited earlier in this section, raises the important issue of how MPB is branded as a ‘superior’ product. This is partly due to the strong links that exist between MPB and Brazilian literature and poetry. Most studies of Brazilian popular music of the 1960s and 1970s tend to make at least some reference to the remarkable flowering of song lyricists associated with this phase of MPB. The outpouring of work by the likes of José Carlos Capinam, Aldir Blanc, Fernando Brandt, Ruy Guerra, Vitor Martins and Ronaldo Bastos led at least one contemporary writer to consider that the finest Brazilian poetry of that era was to be found within the field of popular music.22 A creative fusion between elements of Brazilian popular music and Brazilian poetry has been a persistent feature of the cultural scene since the Modernist movement of the 1920s. Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna has traced the development of a tradition of lyrical sophistication in Brazilian popular music in the twentieth century that commences with Noel Rosa in the late 1920s, and which encompasses songwriters as diverse as Catulo da Paixão Cearense, Sinhô, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque. Sant’Anna argues that with the synthesis of three interconnected factors in the 1950s – the publication of Lúcio Rangel’s Revista de Música Popular Brasileira (1954–6); the decision by the poet Vinícius de Moraes to write lyrics for popular music in the late 1950s; and the rise of bossa nova – it is clearly possible to identify a systematic link between popular music and literary poetry.23 José Miguel Wisnik also considers Vinícius de Moraes’s transition from lyrical poet to songwriter to have been of the utmost importance for the development of MPB. In his view, from that juncture lyricists and composers working within popular 20 (Rio de Janeiro, 2002). 21 Araújo, Eu Não Sou Cachorro, Não, p. 186. 22 Ana Maria Bahiana, ‘Os novos poetas da música’, Opinião, 19/3/76, p. 18. 23 Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna, Música popular e moderna poesia brasileira (Petrópolis, 1986), p. 179.


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music started to creatively explore the boundaries between written and sung poetry by drawing upon the fertile tradition of Brazilian poetry contained in the works of the like of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, João Cabral, Manuel Bandeira and Mário de Andrade.24 This period of intense cross-fertilization between literary sources, poetry, and popular song reached its height between the late 1960s and 1973, after which it continued in the work of a few composers such as Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque and Marcus Vinícius, but by 1980 it was no longer the norm.25 Some idea of the complex nature of MPB and how it possesses the capacity to appeal on various different levels can be encapsulated in the following quote from Carvalho: Brazilians enjoy MPB for many different reasons: Elis Regina for her interpretations of songs, Milton Nascimento for his communication of emotion, Caetano Veloso for his vocal suavity and wit, and Chico Buarque de Hollanda for his perceptive and clever critique of Brazilian politics. MPB is made for listening rather than dancing . . . MPB artists aim at the creative communication of emotion by means of an elaborate language understandable to persons of ‘culture’ and ‘good taste’.26

This emphasis on the cerebral, rather than corporal aspect of MPB, is reinforced by Nelson Ascher, who recalls attending a concert by MPB singer-songwriter Jards Macalé in the late 1970s at which he was astonished to see some of the audience get up to dance. Although certain MPB compositions might have received an airing in nightclubs at the time, in the main the music was considered ‘serious’ and was not composed with dancing in mind.27 By emphasizing the cerebral over the corporal, MPB was differentiated from more ‘popularesca’ styles of music that were designed primarily for dancing to. Within the internal hierarchy of MPB, even the standing of a celebrated singer-songwriter such as Jorge Ben is diminished because much of his output is dance or ‘party’ music. As stated earlier, the use of the term ‘popular’ in relation to MPB has a specific, historical association with ideological ideas of affiliation with the povo brasileiro. However, if sales figures are taken as a reflection of popularity then the notion that MPB is ‘popular’ is untenable. Despite the fact that MPB still occupies a somewhat privileged status within the boundaries of Brazilian popular culture, it has extremely poor sales.28 Highly significantly, a major survey in 2002 showed how far MPB had 24 José Miguel Wisnik, ‘The Gay Science: Literature and Popular Music in Brazil’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 (1996), 191–202 (p. 191). 25 Charles Perrone, Letras e Letras da Música Popular Brasileira, pp. 165–6. 26 Carvalho, ‘Tupi or Not Tupi’, pp. 172–3. 27 Nelson Ascher, ‘MPB esplendor e glória’, Livro Aberto, ano 2, no. 7, 1998, 25–9 (p. 27). 28 Over the last forty years MPB has only very rarely figured as one of the largest sellers in the Brazilian market. In 2002, MPB accounted for less than 10 per cent of sales in Brazil, compared with pop (21 per cent); rock (15 per cent); religious music (14 per cent); pagode and samba (12 per cent), and música sertaneja (11 per cent). Source: ‘O Mercado Brasileiro de Música 2002’, Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos (ABPD). The figures available did not include rap, as Trama, the major Brazilian rap label was not part of the ABPD. In an interview with Márcio Gonçalves at the ABPD in Rio de Janeiro on 12/11/01, he informed

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fallen from favour with the public, who now ranked it second to last in popularity, trailing even behind religious music.29 This raises the familiar and thorny issue of what constitutes ‘popularity’ within the field of popular music. Simon Frith is of the opinion that although sales figures of popular music are often presented as scientific data, they are a partial view of a larger whole, merely being reflective of sales in certain types of shops, and radio play on certain types of stations.30 Frith has suggested that other indicators of popularity might include readers’ polls in the music press, attendances at live shows, music industry awards, and general visibility in the media. The problem with a market-based definition of popularity is that there is no certainty that the figures provided are accurate and furthermore, those figures do not give us more subjective information such as why a particular product sold, and whether the consumer enjoyed it or not.31 Bearing in mind that MPB has only occasionally been the most popular sector of Brazilian popular music (at least purely in terms of sales) one could argue that an essential component in the longevity of MPB has been its popularity amongst journalists and those working in the media, many of whose formative years were probably spent listening to the icons of 1970s MPB and watching the televised song festivals. Their enduring affection for MPB has ensured that media exposure for artists such as Maria Bethânia, Chico Buarque et al. has continued even during periods of relatively poor sales for those artists. In addition, these writers and critics have consistently made a case for the inclusion of artists working in the fields of jazz or instrumental music under the broad definition of MPB: artists who in terms of sales figures alone could hardly be deemed to be ‘popular’ by any stretch of the imagination.32 Jairo Severiano has spent many years studying Brazilian popular music, and he is co-author with Zuza Homem de Mello of A Cancão no Tempo, a marvellously entertaining and meticulously researched two-volume study of Brazilian popular song during the period 1901–1985.33 This work selects a variety of compositions from each year in question, chosen with a view to two criteria of popularity: first, the commercial success of the song, measured by its time in the charts and number me that official sales of rap in Brazil were minimal, i.e. less than one per cent. Obviously, this takes no account of the massive sales of pirated CDs in Brazil, an important issue that is discussed in Chapter 4. 29 Marcelo Marthe, ‘Quem compra o quê’, Veja, 25/9/02, p. 118. 30 Simon Frith, ‘Towards an aesthetic of popular music’, in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, ed. by Richard Leppert and Susan McClary, (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 133–49 (p. 138). 31 Frith, Performing Rites, p. 15. A stimulating debate on the contemporary relevance of the term ‘popular music’ (in which Simon Frith participates) can be found in ‘Can we get rid of the ‘popular’ in popular music? A virtual symposium with contributions from the International Advisory Editors of Popular Music’, Popular Music vol. 24/1 (2005) 133–45. 32 I am referring here to artists such as João Donato, Luis Melodia, Egberto Gismonti and Hermeto Pascoal who were regularly championed by music critics in the 1970s and 1980s in mainstream magazines such as Veja and Istoé, but whose record sales were minimal. 33 A Canção no tempo: 85 anos de músicas brasileiras: vol. 1: 1901–1957, vol. 2: 1958–1985 (São Paulo, 1998).


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of radio plays, and second – and far more subjective – the longevity of the song in the public consciousness.34 Consequently, the authors include a song such as Chico Buarque and Edu Lobo’s Beatriz, which has never been a commercial success since its release in 1985, because in their opinion it has become a ‘classic’ over a period of time and is apparently often cited by the public as an all-time favourite in radio polls. . . . ‘Beatriz’ became famous as time went by, imposing itself through its beauty [beleza] like a classic of modern Brazilian music. From beginning to end its score is enchanting, on the same creative level as the greatest composers from any age or country.35

The authors’ choice of Beatriz, a waltz written for a ballet score, reflects an underlying ethos that forms one of the foundations of the value system underpinning MPB. Sophisticated arrangements, elaborate harmonies, and an implicit comparison with European classical music are all factors which enable a composition to transcend the boundaries of short-lived popular acclaim to ascend to a higher level, that of works initially overlooked by the public which eventually receive the merit that they ‘deserve’.36 Severiano and Mello’s choice of songs such as Beatriz is symptomatic of a desire to associate MPB tangentially with a ‘higher’ form of culture and to distinguish it from ‘lesser’ forms of popular music. The attention devoted by the authors to compositions such as Beatriz – in contrast to the omission of numerous equally ‘popular’ brega compositions for example – reflects their own musical tastes and is also an indication of their desire to elevate the contemporary musical taste of the general public in an era dominated by what they consider to be an extremely poor level of musical creativity. What is chosen, and equally what is omitted, tells us much about the values of those involved in the selection process of what they consider to be important in popular music. One is reminded here of the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, which emphasize that cultural preference is the direct result of education and social class. For Bourdieu, ‘nothing more clearly affirms one’s class, nothing more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music’.37 He views ‘taste’ as a concept that is utilized by social groups to differentiate and distance themselves from other social groups, and one of the ways in which this can be achieved is by the accumulation of ‘cultural capital’. This idea of cultural capital in relation to popular music could include such factors as a detailed knowledge about a certain musical tradition or genre, or the acquisition of detailed information about musicians and performers.38 This is particularly evident in one of the most visible and influential strands of writing on popular music in Brazil: a trend that accentuates the importance of detailed information about the

34 Jairo Severiano, ‘Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores de Música Popular Brasileira’, UERJ, Rio de Janeiro, 30/10/01. 35 Severiano and Mello, A Canção no tempo, vol. 2, p. 303. 36 Ibid., p. 9. 37 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1984), p. 18. 38 Roy Shuker, Understanding Popular Music (London, 2001), pp. 215–16.

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lives and work of musicians and composers, often at the expense of serious analysis of their musical significance. Severiano and Mello’s writings on popular music fall into an ever-growing body of work which has systematically set out to rescue forgotten or undervalued musicians and performers from the past in an attempt to bring their work to a new generation of listeners. Their writings, and those of Sérgio Cabral, Ruy Castro, João Máximo, Carlos Didier and José Ramos Tinhorão for example, are extensively researched and represent an extremely valuable source of reference material but at the same time they are also often tinged with a nostalgic hankering for a bygone era of musical ‘purity’. Several of these writers are members of the Associação dos Pesquisadores da Música Popular Brasileira (APMPB), or are associated with the organization. Simon Frith has argued that the writing of genre histories in popular music derives largely from a usually mythical account of its own past. A problem arises in his opinion, ‘ . . . when the academic account is written over the mythical one – by the collector – and the history of the genre is rewritten in terms of a new purism’39 (his emphasis). As I argued in the previous chapter, several writers and critics have participated in such a ‘rewriting’ exercise over the last forty-odd years, guided by a concept of musical nationalism and notions of authenticity that were first formulated in Brazil in the late 1920s. The significance of A Canção no tempo and similar works is that their authors occupy a position of authority in the eyes of the Brazilian media and their opinions as cultural gatekeepers are therefore likely to be enshrined in the popular view, thereby perpetuating the ‘myth’ of the cultural importance of MPB. The Political Dimension to MPB One of the major distinguishing factors that has historically given MPB a particular cultural resonance is its socio-political linkage. Alberto Ribeiro da Silva (amongst others) has described what he sees as a specifically political aspect to the movement. During the 1960s, the type of music represented by the abbreviation MPB gradually appropriated the common perception of what constituted popular urban Brazilian music. Despite notionally representing Brazilian popular music as a whole, Silva argues that in the 1960s and 1970s MPB actually formed a geographically, ideologically, and socially discrete subsection, namely, the output of a group of songwriters and performers that was targeted at a university-educated, middleclass public based in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo who were politically opposed to the military dictatorship.40 In Silva’s opinion, MPB of the 1970s was the spiritual heir to the legacy of the Brazilian Canção de Protesto movement of the 1960s. With the demise of the military regime in 1985, and the ascendancy of alternative musical trends such as Brazilian rock and música sertaneja, this type of politically tinged MPB faded away and the acronym began to take on a wider, more inclusive significance.41 39 Frith, Performing Rites, p. 89. 40 Alberto Ribeiro da Silva, Sinal Fechado: A Música Popular sob Censura (Rio de Janeiro, 1994), p. 148. 41 Ibid., p. 147.


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Nevertheless, by the mid 1970s, MPB had undeniably assumed a hugely significant role in the political and cultural lives of numerous Brazilians. In the absence of democratic governance and the lack of other channels for freedom of expression, MPB was imbued with the responsibility for articulating the political aspirations of the liberal, urban middle-class.42 The multiple effects of military dictatorship, modernization and urbanization, and the growth of issues such as trade unions and women’s rights overshadowed an era of extreme social change. All these factors were transmitted, to a greater or lesser degree, into MPB, which found itself assuming the mantle of popular resistance to the regime. Of all the forms of Brazilian popular culture, it was only music that possessed the necessary profile and social fluidity (as opposed to literature or cinema for example) to perform this role of defiance.43 The communitarian aspect of MPB – its ability to be enjoyed by groups of friends singing together, often accompanied merely by an acoustic guitar – symbolized for many the solidarity of those unable to express opposition to the military regime in other forms. Having been appropriated by the political left through the ideological split in bossa nova that resulted in the formation of the Canção de Protesto movement in the 1960s, MPB subsequently developed its own sub-divisions, with individual composers consciously or unconsciously associated with particular left-wing factions.44 As governmental repression intensified between 1968 and 1973, the political dimension to MPB came to the fore in a more oblique fashion through the work of severely censored songwriters such as Chico Buarque and Gonzaguinha. These songwriters, and many others, had to resort to increasingly inventive methods to get their work past the eagle eyes of the censors, developing in the process an often densely metaphorical language within their lyrics to continue to pass social comment on Brazilian society under military rule. The music of a particular generation of artists – principally Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento – came to articulate political consciousness for a middle-class generation in their formative years under the dictatorship. The intensity of attachment between MPB and some on the political left was such that during the 1970s, so-called ‘patrulhas ideológicas’ [ideological patrols] in the press began to hound those performers and songwriters who were perceived to be failing to oppose the military regime through their artistic output and/ or public utterances. During the mid 1980s, as the military gradually ceded power back to civil society, MPB played a slightly different political role: through its use in political television commercials and the appearance of MPB artists at political rallies, MPB became the soundtrack to the process of abertura or redemocratization.45 As Idelber Avelar has indicated, MPB’s role in the campaign in support of free and direct elections in 1984, and the subsequent endorsement of the Tancredo-Sarney political alliance by several MPB stars demonstrated to the more cynical how MPB

42 Silva, Sinal Fechado, p. 26. 43 Ascher, ‘MPB esplendor e glória’, p. 29. 44 Ibid., pp. 28–9. 45 See Charles A. Perrone, ‘Open Mike: Brazilian Popular Music and Redemocratization’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 7 (1988), 167–81.

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had lost its once oppositional edge and had now become the acceptable face of the democratic post-authoritarian establishment.46 MPB Today Because of all the factors set out above, and especially for those of a certain age, MPB possesses a resonance that goes beyond that normally associated with popular music. In David Treece’s view, MPB represented the ‘continuation by other means, of the dialogue between the intellectual avant-garde and popular culture’ from the early 1960s until the return to civilian rule.47 Yet for Treece, what was once an oppositional movement has now become a ‘hegemonic tradition, in the way that it appears to validate one particular current of songwriting and performance, out of many, as the exclusive bearer of national-popular authenticity’.48 This view has also been endorsed by Luís Antônio Giron, who has argued that the recent spate of books celebrating the so-called ‘golden era’ of the televised song festivals demonstrates that the creative cycle of that generation of artists is now at an end. Giron goes further, arguing that in some ways the overwhelming influence of MPB has actually been detrimental to popular music in Brazil: ‘The MPB fraternity formed such a tightknit group that nobody else was accepted into that group. It became a movement that was self-devouring, self-absorbed and worst of all, over-powerful.’49 In Giron’s opinion, it was this overwhelming, suffocating dominance that prevented artists such as Chico César, Lenine, and Chico Science (three of the most creative songwriters of the 1990s) from enjoying success until they were in their thirties, and then only via the initial route of rock music rather than MPB.50 Giron’s point is pertinent, but the evidence leads one to think that it is the influence of the record industry, rather than that of individual stars of MPB, that has prevented the flowering of young talent. A further voice has been recently added to the growing chorus of dissent, with Carlos Sandroni arguing that MPB is now officially dead, in the sense that its original capacity to unify various strands of popular music is no longer relevant, and that MPB has reverted to being just one of many categories to be found in record stores.51 Although MPB’s standing has slowly but steadily diminished since its heyday there still remains a residual core of respect for the movement based around certain long-established artists such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and Chico Buarque. These artists, most of whom are now in their early sixties, are also those still most often presented on the global stage as emissaries of Brazilian popular 46 Idelber Avelar, ‘Defeated Rallies, Mournful Anthems, and the Origins of Brazilian Heavy Metal’, in Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, ed. by Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn, (Gainesville, 2001), pp. 123–35 (pp. 124–5). 47 David Treece, ‘Mapping MPB in the 1990s: Music and Politics in Brazil at the end of the Twentieth Century’, in ‘I Sing the Difference: Identity and Commitment in Latin American Song’, ed. by Jan Fairley and David Horn (Liverpool, 2002), pp. 99–105 (p. 103). 48 Ibid., p. 103. 49 Luís Antônio Giron, ‘A MPB acabou’, Bravo!, July 2003, p. 59. 50 Ibid. 51 Sandroni, ‘Adeus à MPB’, p. 31.


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music, regardless of their standing at home. Occasions such as Chico Buarque’s sixtieth birthday provoked unprecedented coverage in the quality press, with lengthy supplements devoted to retrospectives of his career.52 Yet it is increasingly clear that assumptions about the continuing cultural significance of MPB may not be universally shared. A major nationwide survey carried out by the magazine Veja in 1996 revealed that only one per cent of those questioned believed that Brazilian music was a cause of national pride.53 Tárik de Souza has ironically referred to MPB as ‘that mega-abbrieviation that just won’t shut up’54 and it appears that despite the steady decline in public interest in the genre, those in control of the media are reluctant to abandon it completely because it has exerted such a strong symbolic role in Brazilian culture over so many years. The situation is complicated by the fact that contemporary definitions of MPB now have to encompass elements of genres that stretch far beyond the traditional conception of MPB. As Souza observes, MPB of the late 1960s and early 1970s was filtered through the primary prism of bossa nova, whereas current Brazilian popular music is filtered through the prism of diverse international influences, including hip-hop.55 As I demonstrated in the previous chapter, many Brazilian writers who have specialized in popular music have warned of the harmful effects of a ‘cultural invasion’ of Brazil by external influences, primarily from the United States. In such circumstances, and over a period of several decades, MPB has fulfilled a totemic role, symbolically demonstrating resistance to the encroachments of the ‘invader’. This underlying anxiety lies at the root of the numerous articles in the Brazilian press that have periodically agonized over the ‘crisis’ affecting MPB during the last forty years. It is precisely because the perceived strength and creative fertility of MPB is seen by some as an indicator of the health of Brazilian cultural life in general that it has remained at the heart of any discussion relating to Brazilian popular culture for such a long period. The Influence of the Record Industry and the Press in the Ascendancy of MPB MPB and the Brazilian Record Industry An underlying system of aesthetic values permeates the Brazilian record industry, a system that owes much to developments within that industry that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, and which was largely responsible for the creation of the idea of MPB. The largest record companies operating within Brazil have always been international, and strategies developed and perfected abroad were gradually introduced into the Brazilian market from the end of the 1960s. Not surprisingly, it was, and remains, as difficult to predict the success of record releases in Brazil as it is anywhere else. In order to overcome some of this unpredictability, record companies 52 See for example, O Globo, Segundo Caderno, 18/6/04, pp. 1–18. 53 Ricardo Grinbaum ‘O brasileiro segundo ele mesmo, Veja 10/1/96, p. 54. 54 Tárik de Souza, ‘Geração 00’, Jornal do Brasil, Caderno B, 16/4/03, p. B1. 55 Souza cites Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil’s Haiti as an example of this. Interview with the author, Rio de Janeiro, 15/11/01.

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have devised marketing strategies to create commercial hierarchies in an attempt to define potentially commercial music and to categorize types of music in terms of their saleability. In the United States and Britain the music that has traditionally received the most favourable treatment by the record industry, and that which could be said to occupy the apex of the hierarchical pyramid, has traditionally tended to be white, rock and pop. In terms of promotion and media exposure in Brazil, the equivalent position has been occupied by MPB. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Brazilian record companies attempted to contract artists from every genre of popular music to increase their chances of success, in other words they adopted a ‘throwing mud against a wall’ approach; large amounts of records in different genres were produced in the hope that some would become hits. However, over time certain labels became associated with specific types of music; CBS with jovem guarda, Phonogram with MPB, Sigla with telenovela [TV soap opera] soundtracks, for example. Some smaller Brazilian labels such as Continental were able to target specific niche markets such as artists who were particularly popular in the north or south of the country – a substantial market that accounted for 30 per cent of all recordings in the mid 1970s.56 Several of the larger labels opted for the longer-term development of a roster of artists that could be nurtured over time, and who, it was hoped, would form the nucleus of a cast of stars that would eventually generate regular repeat sales and lend identity and prestige to the label. André Midani’s Innovations One of the most influential label executives in this respect was André Midani, who was in charge of Phonogram and Warner Brothers in Brazil during the 1970s. Like CBS supremo Clive Davis in the United States, Midani had a gift for anticipating and exploiting future developments in popular music. When he took over at Phonogram in 1973, he used rigorous analysis of sales trends and market share to ruthlessly cut the number of contracted artists from 170 to 32.57 Midani had long been aware that the average age of record buyers in Brazil was far higher than in Europe and the United States due to lower spending power amongst the young. However, the Brazilian consumer boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s dramatically reversed this trend and the average age of those buying record players, cassette players and radios tumbled.58 Midani’s long-term vision rested on the creation of a cast of national artists capable of providing an alternative to international popular music, and he was conscious of 56 Damiano Cozzela (ed.), Disco em São Paulo, IDART–Departamento de Informação e Documentação Artísticas (São Paulo, 1980), p. 33. This fascinating study was carried out in 1976 and contains a wealth of valuable information on the workings of the Brazilian record industry at the time. The objective of the study was to clarify the use of records as a means of communication within São Paulo. 57 Ana Maria Bahiana, ‘Os pós-caetanistas’, Opinião, 23/7/73, p. 16. For an amusing account of Midani’s equally rigorous approach to the search for the formula for success, including the use of psychological analysis of his top selling artists, see Nelson Motta, Noites Tropicais (Rio de Janeiro, 2000), pp. 256–7. 58 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau e o Som Universal’, p. 215.


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the importance of tapping into the burgeoning market for Brazilian popular music that had been identified.59 His strategy was to recognize that the appetite of Brazilian consumers for foreign music was not going to disappear and that a specific type of Brazilian popular music (MPB) could be promoted as a sophisticated alternative to imported rock and pop. Despite turning Phonogram into the most successful record company in Brazil at the time, Midani was fired in 1976. Taking many of his cast of stars with him to Warner Brothers, his aim was to specifically target the newly discovered youth segment of the market and he declared that the only artists he would be employing in future were to be under the age of thirty and singer-songwriters.60 Despite Midani’s decision to actively promote MPB, record companies in Brazil generally tend to follow trends rather than initiate them. Marcia Tosta Dias included several interviews with record company staff in her comprehensive study of the Brazilian record industry, and many of those interviewed point out that their companies merely reflect the existence of musical movements and trends that already exist, rather than create them themselves: There is a ‘marketing project’[projeto de marketing] and a ‘marketing artist’, [artista de marketing] both of which only exist because of the record company. A true artist [artista verdadeiro] and a musical movement exist even without a record company. Bossa Nova, Roberto Carlos, Jovem Guarda, Tropicalismo, Axé [music], Sertanejo would all have existed irrespective of the influence of record companies or radio. It’s just that they would not have had such a big impact. We just help to spread the music, ourselves and the communication networks.61

As I have previously indicated, Brazilian record companies have tended to either opt for a diversified approach of contracting artists in all existing genres to maximize sales opportunities, or have decided to focus on a strictly segmented area of the market such as telenovela soundtracks. A problem can arise when a record label has a large cast of contracted stars working in a genre that suddenly becomes unfashionable. The periodic economic crises that have adversely affected the record industry in Brazil have inevitably led to artists’ contracts not being renewed at times, or to a reduction in investment in the promotion of new artists. At such moments, labels have to make difficult decisions about which artists to support. Nonetheless, it seems that some companies are prepared to allow the profits generated by ‘artistas de marketing’ to fund their support for less successful but more prestigious ‘artistas verdadeiros’.62 Such thinking reflects an awareness that musical trends are cyclical, and that yesterday’s musical trend or star may rise again – this is particularly true in Brazil, where artists such as Jorge Benjor, Zé Ramalho, Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia, for example, are periodically ‘rediscovered’ by a new public, often due 59 Rita C.L.Morelli, Indústria Fonográfica: Um Estudo Antropológico (Campinas, 1991) pp. 68–9. 60 Ibid., pp. 77–8. 61 Marcos Maynard, President of Polygram records, Brazil, quoted by Marcia Tosta Dias, Os Donos da Voz: Indústria Fonográfica Brasileira e Mundialização da Cultura (São Paulo, 2000), p. 79. 62 Dias, Os Donos da Voz, pp. 89–90.

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to the use of their music in telenovelas or ‘unplugged’ appearances on MTV. This strategy also demonstrates a sensibility to the need to ‘protect’ a type of Brazilian popular music that has cultural significance beyond the merely commercial, and illustrates an underlying conception of what constitutes music of ‘quality’ on the part of the record companies. Such thinking has its origins in one of the most significant changes in consumer trends in the record business in the late 1960s: the increasing importance attached to the sales of albums as opposed to singles. The profits to be made from the sales of albums were much higher than the seven-inch format, but it was extremely difficult to sell large numbers of a rock album in the 1960s unless it contained a hit single. After the critical acclaim afforded to the Beatles album Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) rock music was suddenly seen in a new, more serious light, and rock artists and record companies were now convinced of the benefits to be gained by recording significant works of ‘artistic merit’ which demanded the release of albums, rather than singles that were associated with ephemeral chart success. The crucial significance of this development was that whereas the success of singles had been due largely to the popularity of a song, the sales of albums were now linked to the artists themselves. Due to the rise of rock music in Europe and the United States, sales of albums in those markets started to outstrip those of singles in 1967–68. Aided by the effects of the consumer boom in the late 1960s, to which I have already referred, and the adoption of similar marketing strategies which had proved successful abroad, the same pattern occurred in Brazil, and by 1970, the album was considered the driving force of the record industry, with the artists themselves now considered the product to be marketed, rather than merely the music that they produced.63 This paved the way for the development of the highly creative period of MPB of the mid 1970s, that was characterized by the willingness of record companies to invest heavily in the marketing of albums with elaborate packaging (covers utilizing the photography of Cafi, and the imaginative artwork of Elifas Andreato, for example), the routine inclusion of lyric sheets, and sophisticated orchestration and arrangements. Such a ‘quality’ product was primarily aimed at a university-educated, middle-class market, that was economically consumerist and also capable of being persuaded by suitably targeted marketing campaigns that MPB was its music, and worthy of support and protection. Editora Abril’s, História da Música Popular Brasileira One of the most important factors in fixing the importance of MPB in the public’s consciousness in the early 1970s was the release of a series of ten-inch records and accompanying booklets that went under the title, História da Música Popular Brasileira. This series was commissioned by the Abril publishing group in conjunction with RCA records, and was sold fortnightly at news stands, with the music of a different artist featured in each issue between 1970 and 1972. The series was the brainchild of João Luiz Ferrete (who was also one of the founder 63 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, pp. 187–8.


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members of the APMPB in 1975) and was lavishly produced, with superb artwork by Elifas Andreato and extensive text written by illustrious writers and critics such as José Ramos Tinhorão, Tárik de Souza, Ary Vasconcellos, Sergio Cabral and Lúcio Rangel amongst others. Of the forty-eight artists featured in the series, more than two-thirds were from the 1930s. This is highly significant, because it coincides with the idea of a so-called musical ‘golden age’ during that period, which had been championed by writers such as Lúcio Rangel and Ary Vasconcellos in the 1950s and 1960s, which I discussed in the previous chapter. These views also coincided with Ferrete’s desire to educate the public about its musical heritage. As he proudly proclaimed a few years later: ‘for the first time, names such as Pixinguinha, Lupicínio Rodrigues, Assis Valente and even Noel Rosa became familiar to an enormous number of people’.64 The series was a massive success with the public, with sales totalling nearly two and a quarter million, and a second series followed in 1976 due to public demand.65 Apart from acting as a form of cultural ‘rescue mission’ by reminding the public of the contribution of many forgotten artists from the 1930s and 1940s, the História da Música Popular Brasileira series also placed contemporary performers and songwriters such as Chico Buarque, Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Geraldo Vandré firmly in the pantheon of the musical ‘great and the good’ at a time when several of the aforementioned were in exile and in danger of being written out of the ‘official’ history of Brazilian popular music. Part of the success of these series is almost certainly due to the fact that they filled a gap in the public’s knowledge about national popular music that was not met elsewhere through television, radio coverage, or even general education at the time. This had been one of the principal campaigning aims of the APMPB, set out in the open letter to the government after the organization was established in 1975. The success of the series also had a ‘knockon’ effect, which encouraged record labels to re-issue neglected recordings by artists such as Pixinguinha, Noel Rosa and Carmen Miranda. It also boosted sales of less well-known artists who had been brought to a wider public by their inclusion in the series, and provoked a broader public discussion of the history and development of Brazilian popular music.66 Hierarchies of Genre Enor Paiano has drawn attention to the existence of a hierarchical treatment of artists within Brazilian popular music, which he traces back to the time of bossa nova. For Paiano, the release of João Gilberto’s Chega de Saudade LP in 1959 represents perhaps the first example of a Brazilian record that was a complete creative project in terms of material, arrangements, interpretation, and even its idiosyncratic cover. Paiano also cites Rogério Duprat’s work with Gilberto 64 Anon, ‘O especialista’, Veja, 24/3/76, p. 53. 65 Disco em São Paulo, IDART, p. 36. 66 N.Y. Hamakawa, A. Jacobsberg, L.H. Jucak, G. Marton, ‘Livro – Disco’, Cadernos de Jornalismo e Editoração 12: Produção de Discos, ECA, USP (June 1979), 49–59 (pp. 56–7).


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Gil (1967–68), Nara Leão’s Opinião de Nara LP (1964), and the Tropicália ou Panis et Circencis manifesto album (1968) as further examples of records that were deliberately intended to be artistic statements rather than simply records.67 Artists considered to be ‘significant’ in cultural terms, such as the cream of the movement that came to be known as MPB, were afforded preferential treatment by their companies and were often paid more than ‘popular’ artists on the same label. MPB has been, and still is to a large extent, viewed in a favourable light in the media, despite often relatively low sales figures in comparison with other types of popular music. To understand why this is so, it is crucial to recognize the aura of cultural prestige that MPB artists lend to a record label. André Midani addressed this issue in 1974 in the following terms: In order for the record industry to be succesful we believe, pragmatically rather than paternalistically , that it is important not just to think about record sales but also about culture . . . We believe that a record should either have great commercial potential or great cultural content.68

Martha de Ulhôa Carvalho has argued that MPB’s aura of prestige is directly linked to its proximity to aspects of música erudita [art music], which occupied the position of supremacy in Brazilian music from the 1920s to the 1950s. In her opinion, both bossa nova and Tropicália were afforded musical kudos by being respectively linked with the post-war Música Viva and Música Nova art music movements, and with the demise of Tropicália, MPB was specifically selected to occupy the position previously held by música erudita.69 A prime example of the type of privileged treatment enjoyed by the stars associated with MPB is provided by the way in which Milton Nascimento’s career was handled in the mid 1970s. Although sales of Nascimento’s early albums were poor, his record company (Odeon) decided to invest heavily in his career because they were convinced of his artistic merit, as explained by a senior official at his record company at the time: Odeon has three different groups of artists, and these groups are defined in relation to the consumer. There is the popular group, the mid-range group and the sophisticated group. Artists such as Paulinho da Viola and Clara Nunes can reach all three types of consumer. At the moment Milton is reaching the sophisticated group and the mid-range group, continually increasing this part of the market.70

Odeon set no limits on the amount of money to be spent on recording Nascimento’s albums at this time – production costs of Minas (1976) for example, were over twice the average for a Brazilian album71 – and he and his fellow musicians (many of whom were from the state of Minas Gerais and therefore referred to as Mineiros) were given carte blanche by the label’s executives regarding artistic 67 68 69 70 71

Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 208. Cited in Paiano, ‘O Berimbau’, p. 212. Martha de Ulhôa Carvalho, ‘Nova História, Velhos Sons’, pp. 87–90. Anon, ‘Mariozinho: “Um Investimento”’, Jornal da Música, 23/7/76, p. 14. Ibid.


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freedom in the studio: ‘We have already got our commercial artists. You Mineiros are the crème de la crème [nossa faixa de prestígio]. The record company will not interfere: record whatever you want.’72 This stratification extended to sub-divisions being created within record companies, with separate labels being set up for ‘popular’ artists, and those considered to be ‘MPB’.73 The ‘popular’ labels often featured singers such as Odair José, Amado Batista and Agnaldo Timóteo, who were all successful with their romantic style of music that came to be known, rather disparagingly, as brega. As previously mentioned in this chapter, artists such as these, and brega itself, have been almost completely written out of the history of Brazilian popular music, despite being enormously successful in terms of sales and popular appeal.74 Some measure of that success can be gauged by the fact that it was estimated in 1981 that ‘popular’ labels accounted for at least 60 per cent of the sales of the major record companies.75 Brega, sertanejo, carimbó and other regional styles of popular music have often been marketed at what is considered a ‘peripheral’ audience, with the price of such records selling at up to 50 per cent less than full-price, due to the lower spending power of the target audience.76 Nonetheless, during the periodic crises that have affected the Brazilian record industry, sales of such records held firm at an average of 34 per cent of all sales in Brazil for each year between 1977 and 1984.77 The lowly status attached to brega and other ‘peripheral’ styles by the musical establishment has been criticized by some commentators, who perceive a form of thinly veiled, class-conscious, musical snobbery. As the artistic director of the Continental record label put it: ‘These artists sing for class “C”, which is the class of the Brazilian poor and destitute.’78 Ricardo Schott has also referred to the hypocritical attitudes that have created this two-tier system: It is seen as acceptable to like Cartola e Paulinho da Viola [traditional samba artists] – because samba was historically a genre that was always maverick in nature – but it is seen to be bad taste to listen to Fábio Jr., Odair José, Waldick Soriano and others [brega artists].79

72 Milton Miranda, Odeon records, quoted in Márcio Borges, Os Sonhos Não Envelhecem: Histórias do Clube da Esquinha (São Paulo, 1996), p. 209. 73 Ibid., p. 204. 74 An excellent analysis of brega can be found in, Samuel M. Araújo, ‘Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil’, Latin American Music Review, vol. 9, no. 1 (1988) 50–89. 75 Anon, ‘A canção surbana’, Veja, 28/1/81, p. 78. 76 Araújo provides one definition of música periférica, with a quotation from an interview with the singer Eduardo Dusek, in which he states that it is ‘for the great masses of the interior’, with ‘interior’ signifying an economic category rather than a geographical one, i.e. relatively distant from the metropolis, and possibly including a small coastal city or the favelas [shanty towns] of a large city. ‘Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil’, p. 52. 77 Anon, ‘Disco: a bolsa ou a vida?’, SomTrês, no. 79, July 1985, p. 88. 78 Anon, ‘Campeões de Audiência’, Visão, 15/10/84, p. 54. 79 Ricardo Schott, ‘História e glória (?) de um estilo maldito’, [accessed 23 September 2002].

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Brega and the like have been almost totally excluded from the mainstream media, and the coverage that these genres receive is almost entirely through the medium of AM rather than FM radio. This is significant in social terms, as AM radio is associated in the popular imagination with the music that an empregada [domestic servant] might listen to whilst at work in the kitchen for example, whereas FM radio is often projected as the more upmarket sound of the living room, i.e. the empregada’s employers.80 The Press and the ‘New Wave’ of Music Criticism For many years, the media has sustained this conception of a pyramid within Brazilian popular music, with MPB at the apex. This has been most evident in the press, which has played a significant role as a tastemaker or cultural gatekeeper regarding popular music. In Chapter 1, I referred to the influence of writers such as Lúcio Rangel, Ary Vasconcellos and José Ramos Tinhorão, whose journalistic writings were instrumental in shaping public views on popular music. From the early 1970s, a new wave of writers such as Ana Maria Bahiana and Tárik de Souza began writing about popular music in alternative, left-wing magazines such as Pasquim, Movimento and Opinião. These writers started their careers at a time when MPB was undergoing a particularly creative phase, and their writings not only gave a boost to MPB at a crucial moment, but also provided the quality of prose and analysis that the music itself merited. Solidly in support of Brazilian popular music in general, and MPB in particular, through their perceptive and imaginative articles, reviews and columns, they championed the idea of a broader, less dogmatic conception of MPB, a view that encompassed elements of jazz, rock and progressive music, and which reflected the increasing eclecticism of MPB of the period. Both these writers, and others such as José Miguel Wisnik, were responsible for regular critiques and polemical pieces in magazines and newspapers, designed to create an ongoing debate on future directions for Brazilian popular music. Tárik de Souza was probably the first professional Brazilian music critic when he started working for Veja in 1968. In the 1970s, he was often writing for six different magazines or newspapers at the same time, partly to make a living, but also as part of his desire to provoke and expand this debate about popular music.81 In 1976, he stated how he saw his role as a music critic: . . . my work has several intentions. The first is to selectively inform the reader about what is happening in the field of music. Secondly, there certainly is a concern to shape that opinion and allow it to develop as openly as freely as possible – from Stockhausen to Tonico e Tinoco [a música sertaneja duo], from Miguel Aceves Mejia [a Mexican mariachi star of the 1950s] to Caetano Veloso – always searching for an analysis that is objective rather than dogmatic.The third concern is to influence the artistic movement itself. In the following way: publicising as much as possible (but always when justified) the best of

80 Araújo, ‘Brega’, pp. 53–5. 81 Author interview with Tárik de Souza, Rio de Janeiro, 15/11/01.


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what is happening in all sectors of music, and criticising (without being professorial) what the editorial policy of the magazine considers to be of poor quality.82

Souza’s comments were made in a letter to the author of a study of the Brazilian music industry, but they read almost as a manifesto for the new school of popular music criticism in Brazil in the way that they emphasize a fresh, diverse approach to popular music. What is also apparent is Souza’s intention to avoid sitting on the critical fence and his desire to actively influence the development of Brazilian popular music. His approach, and that of writers such as Ana Maria Bahiana, was designed to expand the public’s awareness of all aspects of Brazilian popular music (but particularly MPB) and to champion the best of foreign music such as jazz, rock and soul. There is a freshness of approach and a level of penetrating analysis in the work of these writers that is completely at odds with what preceded them.83 This is even more remarkable when one considers the constraints that they were working under due to artistic censorship. Working for magazines as diverse as the pro-establishment Veja, and the left-wing Opinião meant that Souza was writing for extremely different audiences and employers, and his articles and reviews were subject to severe censorship at times, so much so, that for long periods it was impossible for him to even write the names of artists such as Chico Buarque or Geraldo Vandré who were out of favour at the time. When reviewing records, Souza had to be extremely careful not to make it evident to the censor that he was aware of the controversial nature of songs with hidden lyrical meanings and had to pretend that he had not understood any lyrical subtext that might be present.84 Ana Maria Bahiana’s work was also heavily censored, and she quickly came to realize that any use of words such as a ‘youth’, ‘conflict’, and ‘oppressed’, or references to drugs and homosexuality were strictly out of bounds. This made her job as a critic more arduous because she was obliged to prepare at least double the amount of material for publication to take account of potential cuts by the censor. Like Tárik de Souza, she swiftly learned the importance of the use of oblique references and euphemisms to enable her work to be published. The early 1970s were a key period in the development of both Brazilian popular music and Brazilian music journalism. It was an era marked by the emergence of a new generation of music critics such as Bahiana, José Miguel Wisnik and Okky de Souza, all of whom had a different view of Brazilian popular music, belonging as they did to a generation more in tune with rock music. All these writers were resoundingly pro-Tropicália, and less reverential about bossa nova than their predecessors. This generation found allies amongst slightly older writers such as Maurício Kubrusly and Tárik de Souza, who had been students at the time of Tropicália, and who had been 82 Cited in Othon Jambeiro, Canção de Massa: As Condições da Produção (São Paulo, 1975), p. 126. 83 For representative samples of their work, see Bahiana’s, Nada sera como antes: MPB nos anos 70 (Rio de Janeiro, 1980) and Souza’s, O Som Nosso De Cada Dia (Porto Alegre, 1983). 84 Author interview with Tárik de Souza. For a series of illuminating articles dealing with the issue of press censorship in Brazil during this period see Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro (ed.), Minorias Silenciadas: História da Censura no Brasil (São Paulo, 2001).

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enormously affected by the movement. These new writers found it difficult to make their voices heard in the post-Woodstock era, as they confronted the conservative attitudes of the established musical press who were antagonistic towards the legacy of Tropicália, which they merely considered to be a short-lived burlesque aberration, and largely ignorant of worldwide developments in Blues, progressive rock and the like.85 Not surprisingly, the new wave of music journalists turned initially to sympathetic left-wing alternative magazines such as Movimento and Opinião, and marginal publications such as Bondinho and Verba Encantado, in order to publish their work. Having found their feet journalistically, they then graduated into the mainstream press and their writings found a far wider readership, exerting in the process a significant influence on public attitudes towards MPB. Those Brazilians who had access to information about the developments in youth culture in the United States and Europe in the early 1970s, and who affiliated themselves to those cultural movements, felt themselves to be at a disadvantage because they had tantalizing glimpses of the counterculture developing outside Brazil, but lived in the shadow of an extremely repressive military dictatorship. Nevertheless, some significant signals of imminent cultural change in Brazil occurred in 1972, with the explosive national success of the outrageous rock group Secos e Molhados, and the high media profile of rock musicians such as Raul Seixas and Walter Franco at the 1972 Festival Internacional de Canção, held in Rio de Janeiro. The small tribe of Brazilian rock fans, who were hitherto accustomed to a siege mentality of ‘us and them’, began to sense that a cultural change was taking place in Brazil that mirrored that which had already taken place abroad.86 In the pre-Internet age, these fans of popular music were severely restricted in the means by which they could communicate with each other outside of their immediate communities. That changed with the growth of letters pages in music journals, which acted as a forum for discussion, sales or exchanges of records, and above all demonstrated that likeminded souls were to be found in other Brazilian cities outside Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Accompanied by the rapid growth of coverage of popular music in the cultural supplements of the major newspapers such as the Folha de São Paulo and the Jornal do Brasil, a number of music magazines sprang up in the 1970s. These included the Brazilian version of Rolling Stone, Jornal da Música and SomTrês, all of which regularly featured writers and critics such as Tárik de Souza, Ana Maria Bahiana, Sílvio Lancellotti and Ezequiel Neves. Although often short-lived, these publications acted as the Brazilian equivalent of Rolling Stone or Melody Maker, as they included much material on foreign pop, rock and jazz, accompanied by reports on the Brazilian counterculture, hippie festivals and the like. Lengthy, thoughtful reviews of albums, reader’s letters, and information on fan clubs were also accompanied by translations of song lyrics into Portuguese. What is highly significant is that none of these publications focused solely on Brazilian music, reflecting the continuing interest of their readership (largely middle-class students) in foreign pop, and increasingly, rock music. It was not considered commercially viable to launch a ‘serious’ music journal specializing 85 Author interview with Ana Maria Bahiana, 23/9/03. 86 Ibid.


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solely in Brazilian music. The impact of these magazines combined with the expanding coverage in the mainstream press, reflected the increasingly serious attention paid to popular music in Brazil by the media, and both factors were instrumental in shaping consumers’ views through reviews and polemical articles. Bizz and the Critical Assault on MPB The music magazines cited above also provided an important cultural link with the outside world for Brazilian readers eager to keep up to date with developments in international popular music. Perhaps the most influential of these publications to date was Bizz (1985–2001), which was the first major circulation, Brazilian journal specializing in popular music and youth culture. Thomas Pappon worked as a journalist at Bizz between 1986–88, and he reveals that he and his colleagues deliberately set out to adopt a more critical approach to music journalism, directly modelled on the style of the British music paper New Musical Express.87 Bizz was launched at a time when many editors and journalists felt that Brazilian popular music was undergoing a period of stagnation and that readers would be more interested in what was happening musically outside Brazil rather than at home. Several of the journalists working at Bizz were in bands themselves and were heavily influenced by groups such as Joy Division, The Smiths and the Cure. These journalists were in favour of the post-punk ethic that attacked the vast majority of ‘establishment’ performers as self-satisfied ‘dinosaurs’, and they were ready to act as standard bearers for the incipient independent rock movement growing in Brazil in the wake of the epochal ‘Rock in Rio’ concert of 1985. The critical edge that had made the journalistic style of the New Musical Express notorious in England was something that had not existed in Brazil before, and part of Bizz’s mission was to bring this fiercely attitudinal approach to bear on aspects of the Brazilian music scene by attempting to attack some of the myths surrounding the hierarchical status enjoyed by the ‘sacred cows’ of MPB.88 Bizz’s success (monthly circulation figures in 1986–87 reached 120,000) was due to its ability to tap into the underground rock culture that had developed in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasília and Salvador. In each of these cities, alternative radio stations had helped to foster a semi-alternative culture based on non-mainstream, independent rock music, both Brazilian and foreign. Bizz rapidly developed as the mouthpiece for this ‘new wave’ movement, as it served to inform its readership of the latest developments both abroad and within Brazil. The editorial policy of Bizz towards MPB artists was epitomized by a sense of frustration with the media’s longstanding obsession with a group of well-established artists such as Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque and Gal Costa. The late writer and journalist Roberto M. Moura also referred to this protective critical shield, revealing that when he worked for Veja in

87 Author interview with Thomas Pappon, London, 22/2/03. 88 In Pappon’s opinion, cultural differences in Brazil make it difficult for a critic to be openly hostile about the work of an artist they are reviewing, particularly if the artist is present. Author interview as above.

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the 1980s the magazine’s editor advised him that he was never to critically attack major, established stars such as Maria Bethânia and Roberto Carlos.89 In the same way that the British punk movement and its allies in the music press attacked the ‘sacred cows’ of the rock establishment for their complacent domination of the music business, so MPB artists eventually felt the critical lash: Instead of uniting musical genres, the acronym MPB ended up uniting groups of people, lobbies, marketing strategies. If it was once a musical symbol, it turned into the trade mark of a few singers and songwriters whose repertoire is, and was, dotted with baroque boleros, sambas and rhetorical reggaes. In other words, it became the trademark of Simone, Djavan, Fagner and numerous other kings of ego.90

Ironically, the Brazilian rock movement of the 1980s, which had posited itself as the antithesis of MPB, eventually lost momentum, and those bands that survived did so by adopting a less aggressive, more melodic approach, which led some to conclude that rock music had become the ‘new MPB’.91 The demise of Bizz in 2001 coincided with the rise of various Internet sites dedicated to Brazilian popular music. Of these, the most ambitious to date has been CliqueMusic, which was founded in 2000 with the intention of using the Internet to publicize every aspect of the richness and diversity of Brazilian popular music.92 The website became a massive archive of information on almost every artist and genre within the field of Brazilian popular music, utilizing newly commissioned writings by José Ramos Tinhorão, Carlos Calado and Jairo Severiano, amongst others. The site also served as a means of accessing information about live shows in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and of listening to new releases which can also be bought from the website directly. Tárik de Souza was the first editor of CliqueMusic, and he considers that the website was designed to provide more exposure for ‘quality music’, such as that released on smaller labels like CPC-UMES which struggle to achieve widespread publicity in Brazil. That a market exists for a service similar to that provided by Cliquemusic does not seem in doubt, as the website received a staggering one and a half million ‘hits’ in its first year of operation, solely by word of mouth and without advertising.93 Unfortunately, lack of funding has adversely affected the website since that time, and the frequency with which it is updated has diminished accordingly. At the time of writing, no national magazine covering popular music as a whole 89 Roberto M. Moura, Encontro de Pesquisadores da Música Popular Brasileira, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, 1/11/01. 90 Luís Antônio Giron, ‘O fim do que era doce’, SomTrês, no. 100, April 1987, p. 70. Giron was one of the very few journalists writing in mainstream newspapers such as Folha de São Paulo who had the audacity to criticize the major figureheads of MPB, and he was regularly sacked from various journals for such attacks. 91 Patrícia Farias, ‘Sobre Rock, Jornais e Brasil’, Papéis Avulsos, Centro Interdisciplinar de Estudos Contemporâneos, Escola de Comunicação, Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, no. 46 (1993), 3–28 (p. 23). 92 Anon, ‘Sobre CliqueMusic’, mission statement at Cliquemusic website, [accessed 7 january 2003]. 93 Author interview with Tárik de Souza, 15/11/01.


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exists in Brazil, and this predicament has been seen by some as the death knell for traditional forms of music periodicals in Brazil.94 Whether the Internet can fulfil that need remains to be seen.95 Conclusion It is seemingly paradoxical that MPB, which has only very rarely been one of the biggest selling types of popular music in Brazil, can have been able to occupy such a symbolically commanding role in Brazilian popular culture for so long. That MPB has been assigned this role is due to several interconnected factors; the most important of which are the support and investment given to MPB by the record industry and the press, and the fact that for many years MPB was a cultural form that embodied political, artistic and social values that encapsulated for many the essence of the national. Now that those values are either outdated or increasingly questioned, MPB no longer exerts the same cultural power and influence as before. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to assume that the media will abandon MPB altogether, so long as those in positions of influence continue to hold MPB in high esteem and disseminate the idea that it somehow symbolizes aspects of national pride. The following chapter will develop and expand this discussion, by demonstrating that the Brazilian media have been preoccupied over a period of decades with recreating the ‘golden age’ of the televised song festivals that gave birth to the modern era of MPB. This fixation is revealed through an analysis of the mutually beneficial relationship that developed between the television networks and the record industry from the early 1970s onwards.

94 Tatiana Tavares, ‘Internet passa a informação musical em revista’, [accessed 10 June 2007. One of the only magazines to feature a wide range of solely Brazilian popular music has been Música Brasileira, which was published between 1996 and 2001, and at the time of writing was only available online on the Internet. However, there are several magazines dedicated to specific genres such as rap, reggae, música sertaneja etc. 95 There are numerous websites devoted to Brazilian popular music, of varying quality. Useful points of reference for this type of material at the time of writing were, <www.slipcue. com>, <www.geocities.com/altafidelidade> and .


Chapter 3

Television and Popular Music The televised song festivals of the 1960s have left an indelible mark on the Brazilian cultural scene and are considered by many to have been the crucible for the formation of the concept of MPB. Most accounts of the history of these festivals end with the last International Song Festival (FIC) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1972. One would therefore assume that nothing further of note occurred at the several festivals that have taken place since that date. The detailed analysis of the later festivals provided in the first part of this chapter is intended to serve two purposes. First, to show that these events, although seen by some as a poor reflection of the festivals of the ‘golden era’ that preceded them, are extremely significant for those seeking to study underlying patterns in Brazilian popular music since 1972. They demonstrate the continuation of the search by television networks and record companies for new artists and música de boa qualidade (‘quality music’, in other words MPB) to match the standards of that which was unearthed by the festivals of the 1960s. Second, they clearly indicate the increasingly close relationship between the record industry and television networks (primarily TV-Globo) that developed over that period, and which reached a new peak at MPB-80. This symbiotic relationship is explored further in the second part of this chapter through an analysis of the pivotal role played by popular music in telenovelas. Specific attention is paid to the overwhelming influence of TV-Globo in this field, and I consider the interdependent connection that exists between telenovelas and MPB. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the increasingly important impact of the satellite/cable channel MTV Brasil on Brazilian popular music. ‘Farofa-fá’: the Return of the Song Festivals The Growth of Television in Brazil Television first started broadcasting in Brazil in 1950 when Assis Chateaubriand’s TV-Tupi station went on air. Initially, the medium was elite-orientated due to the scarcity of television sets in Brazil and the consequent lack of advertising revenue. However, from humble beginnings the industry’s development mushroomed to such an extent that whereas in 1960 only 760,000 homes possessed a television set, by 1970 that figure had soared to 6.7 million, 19.6 million by 1977, and 33 million by 1990.1 The initial impetus for such rapid growth was directly linked to 1 Joseph D. Straubhaar, ‘The Electronic Media in Brazil’, in Communication in Latin America: Journalism, Mass Media, and Society, ed. by Richard R. Cole (Wilmington, 1996),

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substantial levels of government incentives and investment from 1964 onwards, and in particular the introduction of credit policies in 1968 that enabled members of the lower-middle class to buy television sets. The military government was determined to develop a sophisticated communications network nationwide to act as an adjunct to its political programme of centralized authoritarianism. Another motive behind the military’s support for a national television network lay in its desire to create a communications system of a similar standard to those of the advanced capitalist nations at the time, part of the ongoing project to modernize Brazil and to create the image of a powerful nation that would be taken seriously by the international community. Television was specifically chosen to play a crucial role in the communications revolution, and to this end the Empresa Brasileira de Telecomunicações (EMBRATEL) was created in 1965, establishing twenty-four television centres in large and medium-sized Brazilian cities, whose remit was to monitor the output and distribution of programmes. This was a distinctly political project and the government was acutely aware of the importance of television as a medium for improving economic development and for fostering a sense of national identity.2 Cultural events were specifically intended to be included within these parameters, and the series of televised song festivals which started in 1965 can therefore be considered as forming part of this process, alongside other epochal broadcasts watched by millions of viewers, which were billed as national ‘shared experiences’ bringing the country together, such as the televised moon landings of 1969 and the soccer World Cup held in Mexico in 1970.3 The unprecedented success of the televised TV-Record and FIC song festivals in the late 1960s coincided with a frenzied search by the television networks for new audiences. Popular music features on television were not a new phenomenon: there had been regular shows since 1956 on TV-Tupi and TV-Rio for example, featuring artists such as Ari Barroso, Jackson do Pandeiro and Luiz Gonzaga. Nevertheless, the startling success in terms of television ratings and media attention of the programme O Fino da Bossa, which showcased talents such as Elis Regina, Jair Rodrigues, and Chico Buarque (all of whom had been discovered through the early song festivals) paved the way for the development of the importance of the televised festivals in the public consciousness.4 Other televised music programmes during this period included, Bossaudade, Pra Ver a Banda Passar and Ensaio Geral. Jovem Guarda, which started broadcasting in 1965, featured the youth idols, Roberto Carlos, Erasmo Carlos and Wanderlea. pp. 217–43 (p. 227). 2 Straubhaar, ‘The Electronic Media in Brazil’, p. 236. 3 Sean Stroud, ‘Música é para o povo cantar’, p. 94. Even so, it is interesting to note that as late as 1970, 75.5 per cent of television sets were still concentrated in the economically developed southeast. Alberto Ribeiro da Silva, Sinal Fechado, p. 94. 4 For a fuller discussion of the cultural significance of this phase of the festivals see Stroud (2000). Napolitano (2001) provides an in-depth analysis of many aspects of the festivals from 1965–69. Zuza Homem de Mello’s A Era dos Festivais: uma parabola (São Paulo, 2003), presents a wealth of material (including wonderful photographs) on the festivals between 1960 and 1972. See also Treece (1997) and Vilarino (1999).

TELEVISION AND POPULAR MUSIC

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The show rapidly reached viewing figures of four million and by 1967 was the most popular programme on Brazilian television, demonstrating that a new youthful audience for popular music had emerged, a development that sparked a war between the major television networks as they chased higher ratings to attract this burgeoning market. The most powerful television networks were dominated by individuals who also controlled various sectors of the national Press and communications system, namely Roberto Marinho (TV-Globo) and Machado de Carvalho (TV-Record).5 Festival Internacional de Canção 1972: End of an Era? The televised song festivals held in Brazil between 1965 and 1972 changed the face of Brazilian popular music by bringing a host of new innovative performers and songwriters to the public’s attention within a very short period. A seemingly endless stream of talent took advantage of the exposure provided by the festivals to launch their careers, and legions of fans vociferously supported their idols either at the festivals themselves or through watching the events on television. However, most contemporary observers considered that the 1972 FIC represented the closure of a glorious cycle of festivals that had started in 1965 with Elis Regina’s all-conquering performance of Arrastão at the inaugural TV-Excelsior festival. Much had changed in the field of Brazilian popular music and in Brazilian society during the intervening period, but it was clear that the televised festivals had left an indelible impression on the era. That the formula had run out of steam can be attributed to a number of factors, the most important of which were falling attendances and television ratings; the rise of cultural alternatives (the telenovela was first launched in 1963 and was well established by the following year); and the proliferation of numerous poor imitations. Some of the criticism of the latter FICs was due to a feeling that the festivals were getting out of control, triggered by press reports of widespread ‘mob disorder’ at the 1971 FIC.6 Some criticism also appears to have been provoked by the public success of compositions that were largely in the U.S. soul idiom, such as BR-3, sung by Tony Tornado, which won the 1970 FIC, and Erlon Chaves’s performance of Eu também quero mocotó at the same event. In live performance Tornado came across as a Brazilian version of James Brown, with his soulful voice and expressive dancing. The lyrics to Eu também quero mocotó were full of sexual doubles entendres, and Erlon Chaves’ final stage appearance at the festival featured him dancing erotically with two white women (Chaves was black) that led to boos from the audience and Chaves being led away by the police to be charged with offending public decency. Both these songs were essentially lighthearted crowd pleasers, but to some they seem to have signified a challenge, representing further evidence of the ‘decline’ of Brazilian popular music and the threat posed by an imported foreign model (black U.S. soul), which had little in

5 6

Stroud, ‘Música é para o povo cantar’, pp. 94–5. See for example, Anon, ‘E o tumulto cantou mais alto’, Jornal do Brasil, 5/10/71.

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keeping with Brazilian ‘traditions’.7 Nelson Motta, who was a member of the jury at the festival, recalls that many of his fellow jurors who were critics and writers on popular music were still overly concerned about being seen to be encouraging what they perceived to be ‘good music’, rather than judging a composition purely on its popularity at the festival. Motta makes the astute observation that at this juncture, radical changes in popular music in Brazil – the growing influence of rock and soul music in particular – made it much harder to define what exactly constituted ‘good music’, and that the festivals had not been simply about musical excellence for some time:8 The new music that was springing up demanded new criteria. The festival had not been merely a competition of musical excellence for some time, it was now a shop window of ideas, a window of freedom within an oppressive climate, an opportunity for new talents and new languages . . . Popular music was much more than just music and lyrics. It was one of the rare spaces which remained to express, however metaphorically, insatsfaction with the [military] regime and a minimum of hope for change.9

Abertura 1975: TV-Globo’s Search for New Talent TV-Globo had dominated the field of the major televised song festivals since 1970 and while ratings remained high the FIC represented a glamorous flagship of live popular music. Yet when ratings plummeted in 1972, the network decided to end its involvement ‘for good’.10 Nevertheless, within three years the network had made an abrupt volte-face and launched Abertura, a new televised song festival in January 1975. Abertura was co-sponsored by TV-Globo and the São Paulo city council, and was broadcast nationwide over five evenings. The network’s decision to re-launch the festivals was symptomatic of a pattern of periodic investment in popular music by television networks that would continue over the next twenty-five years. This investment has nostalgically sought to recreate the heady success of the televised song festivals of the 1960s, which are still enshrined in certain sections of the media as the yardstick by which standards of popular music should be judged. TVGlobo’s decision to reinvest in an apparently outmoded format was influenced by a widespread feeling expressed in the press that Brazilian popular music had endured a particularly barren phase since 1972 and that new performers of note had been few

7 Tony Tornado lived for a period in the United States and was arrested in Brazil on one occasion for giving the ‘black power’ salute associated with the Black Panthers. For a comprehensive and long-overdue assessment of Brazilian soul see Bryan McCann, ‘Black Pau: Uncovering the history of Brazilian soul’, Journal of Popular Music Studies 14 (2002) 33–62. 8 Nelson Motta, Noites Tropicais (Rio de Janeiro, 2000), pp. 209–11. 9 Ibid., pp. 210–11. 10 TV-Globo’s decision was almost certainly influenced by political considerations. Various songwriters (including Tom Jobim and Chico Buarque) presented an anti-censorship manifesto at the 1970 FIC that led to their arrest and provoked the sacking of the event’s organizer, Augusto Marzagão. Júlio Hungria, ‘Quais serão as novas aberturas?, Opinião, 14/3/75, p. 21.


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and far between during that period. With the exception of Novos Baianos (1972), and Secos e Molhados, João Bosco and Fagner (all 1973), that was the case. Phases of intense musical creativity in any country are short-lived and rare at the best of times. However, a major factor in the paucity of new stars appearing at this time must have been to a large extent the straightjacket of artistic censorship that existed in Brazil. For example, Chico Buarque and Gilberto Gil’s performance of Cálice at the ‘Phono 73’ show in May of that year was dramatically terminated by the censor cutting the sound to the artists’ microphones,11 and Buarque’s 1974 album Sinal Fechado was a collection of songs by other composers, apart from one written in the name of his pseudonym, Julinho da Adelaide. In a clear attempt to evade the attentions of the censor, many established artists had resorted to covering lyrically uncontroversial older standards, and record companies rushed to record velha guarda artists such as Moreira da Silva, Lupicínio Rodrigues and Zé Keti. For many inside the music industry, this was clearly a time for musical introspection rather than innovation. Another major factor influencing TV-Globo’s decision to return to televising song festivals was the ongoing crisis in the Brazilian record industry caused by the sharp rise in the price of oil imports that started in 1973. Brazil imported 80 per cent of its oil at this time, and more expensive oil meant dearer vinyl. As these increased costs were passed on to the consumer (by 1975, the cost of an LP was the equivalent of 10 per cent of the minimum wage) record sales dropped alarmingly by 24 per cent in the period November 1973–March 1974.12 This was in stark contrast to the ‘golden year’ of 1973, when the massive success of the group Secos e Molhados had boosted record sales to new heights. However, the commercial potential of popular music can also be judged by the fact that during the 1960s the Brazilian record market grew by 300 per cent due to the impact of the Bossa Nova movement.13 Record companies were well aware of the ‘spin off’ effect of such a boom on the market; as customers flocked to record stores to buy a new release by the latest sensation, they could be enticed to buy records by other artists.14 The problem for the music industry in 1974–75 was that there were no new artists of sufficient stature to resuscitate sales. This explains the decision to attempt to unearth new talent through the route of the song festivals. TV-Globo arranged that of the forty compositions in competition at Abertura, thirty-one were by composers unknown to the general public. These newcomers included Leci Brandão, Ednardo, Jorge Mautner, Alceu Valença and Luís Melodia. The festival also featured malditos such as Jards Macalé, Hermeto Pascoal and Walter Franco. Shows by established MPB artists including Gal Costa, Quarteto em Cy, Toquinho, Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben, Ney Matogrosso and Ivan Lins closed each programme to ensure that ratings did not drop too low. The jury awarded first prize

11 Brief film footage of this dramatic moment is now available on the DVD Phono 73: O canto de um Povo (Universal Music, 2005). 12 Anon, ‘Um mercado em crise’, Visão, 12/5/75, p. 67. 13 Júlio Hungria, ‘Quais serão as novas aberturas? p. 21. 14 Anon, ‘Um Mercado em crise’, p. 67.

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to Carlinhos Vergueiro (Como um ladrão), second place went to the then unknown Djavan (Fato consumado) and third prize to Walter Franco (Muito tudo).15 Several aspects of this festival provoked considerable comment in the press. There was much criticism of the quality of compositions submitted, the vast majority of which were considered to be mediocre at best, which it was argued demonstrated a continuing ‘crisis’ within Brazilian popular music. Walter Franco’s performance provoked great hostility from the audience, who booed him viciously. The audience had taken to chanting ‘Farofa-fá’ (the title of a particularly bland song which was eliminated in the preliminary rounds) during the competition to display its disapproval of any composition that they disliked. Subjected to a storm of booing as he attempted to perform ‘Muito Tudo’ at the conclusion of the festival, Franco incorporated part of the melody of ‘Farofa-fá’ into his own composition and taunted the audience: ‘but isn’t it Farofa-fá that you want?’16. Unable to make himself heard above the din, Franco abandoned his attempts to perform the song and sat on the stage, crosslegged, playing a bizarre game of dice with the song’s arranger, Júlio Medaglia and flautist Tony Osanah as the audience continued their howling.17 This confrontational reaction was nothing new for Franco, as he had suffered a similar fate at the 1972 FIC, where his performance of the experimental ‘Cabeça’ – an almost wordless composition which focused on the use of breath and the body – was too much for the audience, who vented their displeasure all too audibly. Yet Jards Macalé, Jorge Mautner and Hermeto Pascoal (all so-called malditos) were also booed at Abertura, which led some observers to lament the increasing conservatism of the audience at these events. Some commentators considered this conservatism to be a direct consequence of the increasingly bland popular music used in telenovelas. This in turn provoked a debate in the press on the increasingly problematic interrelationship between television and popular music. The writer and critic Ana Maria Bahiana had already tackled this theme the previous year, in an article in which she had traced the manner in which television had moved away from featuring popular music on a regular basis in the early 1970s, and was now attempting to redress the balance with the announcement of the plans for the Abertura festival.18 Bahiana’s article was based on several interviews with a number of representatives from the world of popular music and television, and revealed a fundamental split in notions of how popular music should be dealt with by television. In the article, a representative of TV-Globo expressed the view that the network felt a sense of ‘cultural duty’ to drag Brazilian popular music out of its torpid state of low creativity, and the network was prepared to take the risk of investing in popular music (IBOPE ratings for music programmes had dropped to extremely low levels) a risk which was 15 Details of the performers and songs featured in all the televised song festivals can be found in Mello’s, A Era dos Festivais: Uma Parábola. 16 Mello, A Era dos Festivais, p. 20. For more information on disruptive behaviour by the audience at the festivals, see Stroud, ‘Música é para o povo cantar’, pp. 100–104. 17 José Márcio Penido, ‘A fenda’, Veja, 12/2/75, p. 55. 18 Ana Maria Bahiana, ‘Música popular & televisão: a dificíl aliança’, Opinião, 12/8/74, pp. 15–16.


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minimized by using the tried and tested festival formula. TV-Globo considered that MPB was merely in a state of suspended animation, waiting for the right moment to awaken refreshed and revitalized. On the other hand, Júlio Medaglia contended that it was not television’s responsibility to act as the creative source for a ‘renovation’ of popular music it was only the vehicle of transmission. For him, television’s relentless consumption of musical raw material had been damaging to MPB, as it rapaciously devoured everything in its path. Medaglia did not wish to see another ‘explosion’ within MPB, as had occurred during the 1960s largely through the influence of the early televised song festivals, and he thought that television should allow popular music to go back to basics and be allowed to develop naturally over time. This view was shared by the composer Gutemberg Guarabira, who felt that the festival format was only successful at the outset, when it was a novelty: There was a huge reservoir of static creativity that the festivals mobilized, used up and wasted until it was exhausted, without allowing time for another reservoir of talent to develop.19

Bahiana’s article proved to be remarkably prescient because all these issues received a further airing in the press after the conclusion of Abertura. Writing in the magazine Veja, the journalist Silvio Lancellotti acknowledged that at least TV-Globo had organized a platform for new artists to showcase their talents, but he regretted that the network’s influence on the event resulted in success for bland compositions that would not have been out of place in a soundtrack to one of the network’s own telenovelas.20 Even Abertura’s producer admitted this and conceded that some of those who had participated in the festival would be invited to contribute to future TV-Globo telenovela soundtracks.21 Given the importance of the role of the telenovela in Brazilian cultural life by 1975, it was already evident that a continuous supply of new compositions and stars would be required to supply the aural backdrop to the daily programmes.22 The Globo organization had eagerly seized the opportunity to exploit the commercial potential of the telenovela, and had founded its own record label (Som Livre) in 1971 solely to market telenovela soundtracks, which swiftly came to dominate the best-selling LP charts.23 I shall return to the issue of the powerful influence of telenovelas on Brazilian popular music later in this chapter. As the Abertura festival closed, TV-Bandeirantes launched a new musical programme, produced by Walter Clark who had been responsible for the legendary TV-Record festivals of the 1960s. Clark had also been in charge of the screening of the first appearances of Walter Franco, Simone, and Secos & Molhados on his show 19 Bahiana, ‘Música popular & televisão’, p. 16. 20 Sílvio Lancellotti, ‘Entupimento mental’, Veja, 12/2/75, p. 56. 21 Anon, ‘Música: quem quer os novos?’, Visão, 10/2/75, p. 67. 22 Examples of festival composers whose careers were accelerated by the use of their songs in telenovelas in the 1970s include Luís Melodia, whose Juventude Transviada was used in Pecado Capital (1976) and Ednardo’s Pavão Misterioso, featured in Saramandaia (1978). 23 Marcia Tosta Dias, Os Donos da Voz, p. 60.

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Mixturação, aired by TV-Record in 1973. His new brief with TV-Bandeirantes was to produce Mambembe, a programme which could not be further from the TV- Globo style of musical show. TV-Bandeirantes gave Clark a free rein to produce a show without any need to meet a ratings level, its only criterion being to unearth ‘music of quality’. This was possible because the budget for the show was low, and also because TV-Bandeirantes was not the market leader for this type of programme and was therefore not having to defend ratings figures.24 Despite their apparent differences, Abertura and Mambembe were similar programmes in the respect that they both acted as a shop window for new talent at a time when the unearthing of fresh faces was seen as essential in order to generate interest and income, not only for television networks, but also for the record industry, radio, theatre impresarios, publishers and performing rights organizations.25 The dilemma facing the television networks was how to avoid the expensive failings of TV-Globo’s short-lived programme Som Livre Exportação, which was taken off the air in 1971. That show’s attempt to encourage new talent had been laudable, but some critics felt that its failure had been due to an elitist approach which was off-putting to a mass audience and the fact that the show featured a crop of talent who were pushed to prominence before they had the chance to develop a significant repertoire.26 TV-Tupi Festival da Música Popular 1979: Identifying ‘New Values’ in Popular Music The São Paulo based television station, TV-Tupi sponsored the next major televised song festival after an interval of four years in which the charts had been dominated to a large extent by music from telenovela soundtracks and imported disco music. Of the seven thousand entries to the competition, thirty-six were aired at the festival, which was broadcast live to an audience of ten million via the EMBRATEL network. The veteran festival producer Solano Ribeiro was brought in to organize the proceedings, which were won by Fagner (Quem me leverá sou eu), with Walter Franco (Canalha) second, and Oswaldo Montenegro (Bandolins) in third place. This latest festival once again attracted much press coverage, and as in 1975 again offered an opportunity for journalists to speculate on what the festival revealed about the contemporary state of Brazilian popular music. Polemic and controversy marked the outset of the competition when Caetano Veloso criticized the composition of the jury, which included Zuza Homem de Mello and Júlio Hungria, for being exclusively white and male. Somewhat ludicrously, Mello argued that an attempt had been made to recruit a female juror but without success, and in an attempt to deflect the charge of racism he retorted that the jury did not contain any Japanese members either.27 To ensure adequate television ratings the festival also included shows by established 24 Anon, ‘Música: quem quer os novos?’, p. 68. 25 Ibid., p. 67. 26 Anon, ‘Terceira corrida do ano’, Veja, 20/10/71, p. 88. Anon, ‘Motivo de muito orgulho?’, Veja, 16/6/71, p. 74. 27 Anon, ‘Cadê os novos?’, Visão, 24/12/79, p. 134.


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artists, and Veloso’s own appearance inspired the audience to give him an ovation on his entry, swiftly followed by jeering and hooting when he performed a song by Jorge Ben which was not to their liking. Large sections of the audience also turned their backs on Veloso at this point.28 Press reports suggest a climate of tension at this festival, with several younger un-established performers complaining of discrimination by the jury, which they felt was biased in favour of professional artists who were merely using the event to gain greater publicity for themselves. These younger performers found this particularly galling, as the proclaimed aim of the event was to discover ‘new values’ in popular music. Several regional artists such as Kleyton and Kledir (Rio Grande do Sul) and Zé Ramalho (Paraíba) complained that the festival was dominated by the patronizing attitudes of elitist Cariocas and Paulistanos, either unaware or dismissive of the musical creativity that existed outside of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.29 Kleyton and Kledir’s appearance at the festival was early evidence of the potential of the ‘new wave’ of música sertaneja to make a significant impact on the national scene. The other revelation of the festival was Arrigo Barnabé, whose Sabor de Veneno was greeted by a fusillade of eggs from the audience, yet Barnabé went on to become the leading light of the ‘Vanguarda Paulista’ in the early 1980s and was hailed by Júlio Medaglia as the greatest musical talent to emerge in the 1970s.30 Nevertheless, the majority of critics at the time felt that the TV-Tupi festival had failed in its avowed aim: new values in popular music had not been discovered.31 The significance of this was that many concluded that the music industry was once again at a point of ‘crisis’. Although the Brazilian music industry was ranked at the time as the sixth largest in the world, fresh stimulus from new talent was urgently required because the disco boom had run its course in Brazil and sales by old favourites such as Chico Buarque and Roberto Carlos were insufficient, on their own, to satisfy potential demand from record buyers. Musical television programmes were still few and far between, and as I demonstrated in Chapter 1, radio networks were criticized in several quarters for playing a large proportion of foreign music, in direct contravention of laws that demanded a fixed percentage of Brazilian music.32 A vicious circle had developed, whereby a limited number of records that record companies had heavily invested in, were repeatedly played on the radio to ensure the success that would meet the financial outlay of the record companies.33 In these circumstances, the TV-Tupi festival acted as a marvellous opportunity for record companies to gauge the potential viability of new artists, at minimal financial outlay to themselves. However, composers presenting their work at a festival were faced with a dilemma. The festivals represented one of the only ways for new

28 Anon, ‘Conflito de gerações’, Veja, 21/11/79, p. 161. 29 Nei Duclós, ‘O som desconhecido das novas gerações’, Istoé, 12/12/79, pp. 76–8. 30 Júlio Medaglia, ‘A MPB hoje é um cocô!’, Pasquim, 12/9/80, p. 17. 31 See for example, Anon, ‘Conflito de gerações’, pp. 161–2, and Duclós, ‘O som desconhecido das novas gerações’, pp. 76–8. 32 Anon, ‘A dura escalada ao sucesso’, Visão, 12/11/79, p. 127. These laws were never properly enforced and were consequently ignored. 33 Ibid., p. 127.

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artists to make a name for themselves – the other was to have their compositions covered by established artists, as was the case for Fagner, Belchior and João Bosco and Aldir Blanc, whose songs were recorded by Elis Regina early in their careers. Yet if composers entered the competitions they had to decide whether to have the courage to persevere with their own work, or maximize their chances of winning, and launching a potentially lucrative career, by churning out predictable, ‘festival music’.34 The festivals therefore ran the risk of endlessly repeating the same formula, as Mário Rocha from EMI-Odeon was well aware: In the beginning the festivals opened up an opportunity to present compositions stored up by songwriters who had no chance of recording them or getting them known by other means; they weren’t songs specifically composed for festivals, as was the case with A Banda and Disparada. When the stock of songs and songwriters ran dry, ‘festival’ songs appeared and it was this that killed the festivals.35

Spare a thought then, for the team who had the unenviable task of sifting through the seven thousand entries for the TV-Tupi festival, the vast majority of which were judged to be woefully inadequate. An extensive analysis of the lyrics to all entries was carried out at the time, and it provides an interesting insight into the state of Brazilian popular music in 1979. The overwhelming majority of compositions were based on themes of bitterness, indecision, confusion and insecurity. Half of the entries were lyrically ‘nostalgic’, in that they looked back with longing to a rosy past, and expressed fear for the future. The writers of half the entries expressed doubt about where their future lay, and incredibly, more than three thousand of the songs submitted contained the verb ‘caminhar’ [to march].36 That such themes of pessimism and self-examination were permeating the field of popular music is hardly surprising after fifteen years of military rule and repression. It was, after all, only at this juncture that the severest effects of censorship were being reduced as the government tentatively moved towards a policy of re-democratization. Festival da Nova Música Popular Brasileira MPB-80: Television and Record Industry in Perfect Harmony In the wake of the 1979 TV-Tupi festival, TV-Globo planned their own event, larger in scope and significantly different from that of its rivals. The festival was advertised throughout Brazil by TV-Globo’s national network and the compositions that reached the finals were selected by record companies (rather than members of a jury) affiliated to the ABPD. This was evidence of a significant new, closer relationship 34 Anon, ‘A dura escalada ao sucesso’, p. 126. 35 Ibid. 36 Sílvio Lancellotti, ‘Procurado: o compositor’, Istoé, 12/12/79, p. 78. Interestingly, Geraldo Vandré’s Pra não dizer que não falei de flores: Caminhando, which had been banned by the censor since 1968 because of its left wing associations, started to be played on the radio in the middle of 1979 and was finally released from its ban on 21/11/79. The TV-Tupi festival ran throughout the month of November 1979, although obviously entries for the festival would have had to been submitted some considerable time before.


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between the television networks and the music industry regarding the televised song festivals. However, this had been explicit the year before, when in November 1979, Solano Ribeiro, organizer of the TV-Tupi festival, revealed that he had been put under extreme pressure before the start of his festival: I was accosted by a guy who said he represented various record companies; he pushed me up against the wall and said: ‘Either you do the festival with us or the songs featured in the festival will not be played on Brazilian radio’.37

Ribeiro was able to maintain the independence of the TV-Tupi festival, but MPB-80 was a decisive shift away from any attempt at impartiality. Television, radio and the record industry were all now working hand in hand to promote the same product. The festival was held over a period of two months in front of an eclectic group of two hundred jurors. This massive number was ostensibly to avoid charges of jury-rigging, however, individual numbers of votes that were cast were never revealed. In a highly symbolic break with the festival tradition, the general public was excluded from the event itself, and jurors, journalists and representatives of the record industry took their places. Oswaldo Montenegro (Agonia) won the festival, Amelinha (Foi deus quem fez você) was second, and Raimundo Sodré (A massa) third. In unprecedented circumstances, three songs featured in the festival were receiving repeated radio play during the competition, and Foi deus quem fez você was topping radio ratings in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in July 1980, before the festival had even finished.38 By October 1980, it was clear that MPB was enjoying a huge revival within Brazil, and that MPB-80 had played a major part in that change. The festival had acted as a five month-long showcase for artists selected by record companies to represent the ‘new’ face of Brazilian popular music, backed up by the promotional power of the Globo empire. In 1979, the percentage of foreign music played on Brazilian radio was 60 per cent, in comparison with 40 per cent Brazilian music. Towards the end of 1980, those figures had been reversed, and sales figures showed a similar pattern.39 This was almost wholly due to a massive investment by the Brazilian record industry in promoting MPB artists such as Joanna, Fagner, Gonzaguinha, Simone, and Amelinha to the Brazilian public, a strategy that was achieved through more sophisticated marketing and product placement. At the MPB-80 festival, TVGlobo was careful to arrange for songs from virtually every area of Brazil to be featured, thereby encouraging high viewing figures across the whole nation. Record companies jostled to ensure that their contracted artists were featured in the opening section of the festival programme, guaranteeing a television audience of twenty million who had just finished watching the nightly soap opera Água Viva.40 After his success at MPB-80, Oswaldo Montenegro’s record company (WEA) swiftly

37 38 39 p. 20. 40

Anon, ‘A dura escalada ao sucesso’, p. 127. Benício Medeiros, ‘A agonia chega à MPB’, Istoé, 3/9/80, p. 49. Márcio Bueno, ‘Ai, ai meu Deus, o que foi que aconteceu?’, Movimento, 20/10/80, Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos, ‘Terceiro round’, Veja, 18/6/80, p. 110.

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negotiated with Som Livre and TV-Bandeirantes for the inclusion of his music in the soundtrack of telenovelas that were broadcast at the time.41 The end of the disco boom that had dominated the Brazilian charts for some time also facilitated this explosion of media attention towards MPB. In the resultant vacuum that was created, record sales dipped, and the Brazilian record companies – the majority of which were controlled by multinational corporations – made a strategic decision to invest heavily in home-grown talent. Previous commercial strategies to substitute reggae for disco in the national consciousness had not proved successful, but a new generation of female artists such as Fatima Guedes, Sandra Sá, Ângela Ro-Ro, Marina, and Joyce was on the point of breaking through to a wider audience. An added impetus to the flowering of this ‘new-wave’ of MPB was a climate of increased artistic freedom due to a relaxation in the severity of artistic censorship, exemplified by the end of the ban on Geraldo Vandré’s, Pra não dizer que não falei de flores, which resulted in huge sales for recordings of that song. TV-Globo’s decision to feature acts from all over Brazil at MPB-80 also resulted in an upsurge in interest in regional music. Nonetheless, sceptics were quick to point out that the multinational record companies controlling the Brazilian music industry were likely to close the window of opportunity for MPB as soon as a new international musical trend could be identified.42 Such views were prophetic, and that new trend would prove to be rock music. Fifteen songs featured at MPB-80 went on to be commercial successes after the festival, a fact that unsurprisingly encouraged TV-Globo to continue their investment in the festivals. MPB-81 received sixty thousand entries from all over Brazil, Portugal, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay. Nevertheless, this festival, and MPB-82 and MPB-83 that followed, failed to unearth new talent capable of major commercial success, with the exception of the new-wave pop act Gang 90 e as Absurdettes. To coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the first televised song festival, Solano Ribeiro was hired once again by TV-Globo and their co-sponsors Shell to produce the ‘Festival dos Festivais’ in 1985. Public interest in the event remained high, with ten thousand entries for the competition, which was won by Tetê Espíndola (Escrito nas estrelas). Espíndola’s live performance garnered much praise from the critics, but apart from revealing the talent of Leila Pinheiro, hailed in some quarters as the ‘new Elis Regina’, the festival was generally judged to have been a resounding flop.43 Critics once again perceived the overall quality of entries as lamentable, typified by diluted Brazilian rock music, uninspired regional themes, and stultifyingly banal lyrics. Solano Ribeiro argued that it would take time for talent introduced for the first time at the festival to come to fruition, but his reasonable pleas fell on largely deaf ears.44 Veja’s reviewer took the opportunity to paint a wider

41 Medeiros, ‘A agonia chega à MPB’, p. 49. Som Livre’s links with the Globo telecommunications empire gave it a significant advantage in the amount of free publicity that could be generated to promote its telenovela soundtracks. 42 Bueno, ‘Ai, ai meu Deus’, p. 21. 43 Adones de Oliveira, ‘No entanto, é preciso cantar’, Visão, 6/11/85, pp. 46–7. 44 Anon, ‘A ressaca da festa’, Veja, 6/11/85, pp. 124–5.


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picture of Brazilian popular music once again in ‘crisis’, characterized by even major stars such as Chico Buarque stuck in a period of creative paralysis.45 Rock music was considered to be in the ascendancy at this juncture, hardly surprising in a year overshadowed by the mammoth ‘Rock in Rio’ festival. The vice-president of the country’s largest record company put it in these words: ‘For a song to be successful on the FM radio stations it has to have at least a little flavour of rock.’46 This standardization also extended to the ubiquitous predominance of a specific set of studio production techniques based around the use of drum machines, synthesizers and electric keyboards, which came to be known as the ‘FM sound’. Originally emanating from Los Angeles, this method of production rapidly became ubiquitous, and was used in 1985 on LPs by the likes of Gal Costa, Fagner, Gonzaguinha and Djavan, drawing criticism from some for creating a homogenous uniformity that negated the individuality of the artists in question.47 Festival da Música Brasileira 2000: Flogging a Dead Horse? During the 1990s, the televised song festivals disappeared from sight, but somewhat surprisingly they were revived once again by TV-Globo, who sponsored the Festival da Música Brasileira in August 2000. The festival was another giant affair, with over twenty-three thousand entries, and was won by Ricardo Soares (Tudo bem, meu bem). Solano Ribeiro was once again employed to run the festival, which he declared to be a shop window for new musical talent. In order to avoid any allegations of manipulation, the identity of those submitting entries was withheld from those selecting the finalists, with the result that compositions by well-known artists such as Lenine and Billy Blanco were excluded.48 The festival’s stated aim was the ‘recuperation of quality MPB ’ but the glossiness of the event could not prevent extremely low television ratings and a critical press. Once again, the artistic merit of the songs in competition was adjudged to be pitifully poor. The live audience roundly booed the winning composition (a mediocre poprock affair) and Hermeto Pascoal accused the organizers of planting supporters in the audience to create an artificial sense of drama at the event.49 Júlio Medaglia defended the competition despite the low ratings, but he also referred to the harmful consequences of Globo’s alliance with the record industry: ‘What is important is that Globo are trying to bring back what they themselves destroyed, by abandoning their links with Brazilian popular culture in favour of the interests of the large record companies.’50 The most vehement criticism of the event came from the singer and composer Lobão, who scornfully argued that TV-Globo was attempting to revive something that no longer existed: 45 Anon, ‘A ressaca da festa’, p. 125. 46 Ibid., p. 125. 47 Ibid., pp. 125–6. 48 Sérgio Martins, ‘Festival para quê?’, Veja, 23/8/00, p. 148. 49 Fabio Danesi Rossi, ‘Artistas condenam e Ibope confirma fracasso de festival’, Jornal do Commercio, 17/9/00, p. 5. 50 Rossi, ‘Artistas condenam e Ibope’, p. 5.

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THE DEFENCE OF TRADITION IN BRAZILIAN POPULAR MUSIC It’s the mausoleum of the dead tongue, an absurd anachronism, a constraining thing. Father Christmas, Chico Buarque, Elis Regina, they don’t exist any more . . . Chico [Buarque] is not going to come again, he was already an anachronism when he recorded A Banda! The truth is that no clone of Caetano Veloso is going to appear, MPB is dead in that sense.51

Ivan Lins was more measured in his criticism, but also pointed out that MPB was now out of step with the modern world: When MPB fell out of the media’s view in the 1980s a whole generation were without a reference point. My music developed because I had feedback from the public. Today, there is no interest in discussing MPB and an artist has no idea whether what they are doing is any good.52

Whatever the merits of these arguments, yet another attempt has been made to relaunch competitive song festivals in Brazil, this time via the Internet. In 2001, IBM organized the first ‘e-festival’, which attracted eleven hundred entries, of which forty were selected for competition. A series of heats were interspersed with live shows by Daniela Mercury, Toquinho, João Bosco, Gilberto Gil and Milton Nascimento. The public cast fifty thousand votes via the Internet, and the winning contestant had the honour of sharing the stage with Milton Nascimento in front of an audience of three thousand people on the closing night of the festival. The commercial success of the first e-festival led IBM to repeat the event in 2002. Zuza Homem de Mello was responsible for the selection of songs to be featured at the festival, and stressed that any type of music could be entered, the only stipulation being that the lyrics were in Portuguese.53 There are obvious advantages to an Internet-based festival, not least that the audience can listen to the songs at its own leisure and as many times as it wishes before it casts its votes. IBM’s decision to sponsor the festival is based on the importance of Brazil in economic terms; the country figures within the top ten global markets for the company. IBM are also marketing their products at a youth audience and have identified the significance of the song festivals as a Brazilian cultural tradition which may be past its peak, but still has the capacity to attract public interest. The Cultural Significance of the Festivals In the late 1970s and the 1980s it became increasingly costly for record companies to launch the careers of new artists, and the festivals acted as a cheap way to test the popularity of new talent in front of a demanding public. What has also been demonstrated time and time again since the heyday of the festivals in the late 1960s is that many in the media see them as the epitome of ‘quality’ and innovation within Brazilian popular music. This idea has been repeatedly presented in the media, 51 Rossi, ‘Artistas condenam e Ibope’, p. 5. 52 Rodrigo Cardoso, ‘Perdi a virginidade aos 20’, Istoé, 11/9/00, p. 60. 53 Anon, ‘Para Zuza, e–festival IBM 2002 será melhor do que o primeiro’, [accessed 1 July 2002].


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particularly at times when it is considered that the standing of MPB has fallen to a new low and when it is posited that the regular cycle of musical renovation in Brazil is in danger of drying up.54 Part of this obsession with the festivals probably lies in the fact that they have represented one of the rare opportunities for popular music to be aired on Brazilian television. Programmes dedicated solely to popular music have been few and far between since the 1960s, and it has been more common for artists to be allotted slots to publicize their latest release on popular variety shows such as Domingão do Faustão.55 The festivals of the 1960s are often nostalgically seen in Brazil as a highpoint in national cultural production, played out against a backdrop of social and political ferment, with the public and the media as central actors in the drama. With hindsight, it was hardly surprising that the flight into exile of the musicians and singers who left the country after the imposition of the fifth Institutional Act in 1968 would have a detrimental effect on the future development of popular music in Brazil for several years to come, leaving an artistic vacuum waiting to be filled. For those who attempted to fill that vacuum, the challenge was to work within new constraints of governmental censorship and also with record companies less inclined to pander to their whims than before. The numerous subsequent attempts by record companies and television networks to revive the festivals demonstrate a stubborn belief in the possibility of re-creating a ‘golden age’ when audience and performers united in a passionate celebration of popular music. The Inter-relationship between Popular Music and Telenovelas The Overwhelming Influence of TV-Globo It would be hard to overestimate the cultural impact of television in Brazil. In 1996, out of a population of nearly 160 million, 77 per cent watched television habitually, and the average daily household viewing time exceeded five hours. Broadcasting in Brazil has been dominated by TV-Globo since the 1960s. The network reaches about half of the Brazilian population and is considered to be the fourth largest in the world after the three largest networks in the United States.56 TV-Globo’s hegemonic influence has been due to several factors, not the least of which has been the close links the network maintained with the military governments that ruled Brazil between

54 This was also demonstrated by the advertising campaign for a festival of Brazilian music held in London in 2004, which was marketed as being ‘a festival like in the good old times’. Anon, ‘brazilian festival’, Leros, May 2004, p. 59. 55 There have been occasional attempts to launch more ambitious programmes featuring live music such as Chico & Caetano (TV-Globo 1986) and Som Brasil (TV-Globo 1994) but these were not popular with the public and also received extremely poor critical press. See for example, Anon, ‘Talento mal aproveitado’, Veja, 28/9/94, p. 131 and Anon, ‘Final apático’, Veja, 24/12/86. 56 Straubhaar, ‘The Electronic Media in Brazil’, p. 217.

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1964–85.57 During this period, TV-Globo exerted an almost monopolistic control of broadcasting in Brazil, with a 60–70 per cent share of the viewing audience in the major cities at any given time, a figure that sometimes rose as high as 90 per cent. Despite the emergence of competition from networks such as SBT/TVS, TV-Manchete and TV-Bandeirantes in the 1980s and 1990s, TV-Globo still retains an average audience of over 60 per cent.58 TV-Globo’s success has also been based on efficient marketing, research, investment in the latest technology, and its ability to worm its way into the national consciousness, representing itself as an ever-present that viewers can rely upon to provide a product of high quality, the so-called ‘Globo trademark of quality’.59 One of the most important, if not the most important means by which popular music has been disseminated within Brazil since the early 1970s, has been through the use of music as the soundtrack to telenovelas. The template for these telenovelas was the radio serials produced in Argentina and Cuba in the 1940s, and televised soap operas broadcast in the United States in the 1950s. The first home-produced telenovelas were broadcast in Brazil in the early 1950s. These rapidly rose in popularity and began to be aired daily at peak hours, which in turn attracted greater advertising revenue. Increasingly sophisticated production values were accompanied by the exploration of quintessentially national themes from 1965 onwards, a development that has been referred to as the ‘Brazilianization’ of an imported cultural model.60 By the 1970s, telenovelas were the most popular programmes in Brazil and their impact was such that they were regularly influencing changes in cultural behaviour, and even the use of the Portuguese language, both at home and abroad. They continue to exert a key cultural role in Brazil and they are still the most popular television shows, with millions of Brazilians tuning in on a daily basis to the various telenovelas that occupy the key slots of daily broadcasting during the evening. TV-Globo rapidly exerted a stranglehold on the production of telenovelas, becoming the market leader, a position that it has never relinquished. TV-Globo forms part of a vast, multimedia organization, and realizing the potential to be generated from the sales of music played during telenovelas, a separate record label (Som Livre) was set up in 1971 to market the soundtracks to those shows. Incredibly, within three years the label had grabbed 38 per cent of all record sales, and by 1977 it was the top selling record label in Brazil.61 The all-encompassing scope of the Globo communications empire enables popular music played during TV-Globo telenovelas to be advertised through radio stations and newspapers also controlled by the network in a perfect example of ‘media synergy’. TV-Globo shamelessly 57 For more information on the rise of TV-Globo see Michèle and Armand Mattelart, The Carnival Of Images: Brazilian Television Fiction (New York, 1990). 58 Straubhaar, ‘The Electronic Media in Brazil’, p. 225. 59 José Marques de Melo, As Telenovelas da Globo:Produção e exportação (São Paulo, 1998), p. 17. 60 Joseph Straubhaar, ‘The Development of the Telenovela as the Pre-Eminent Form of Popular Culture in Brazil’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 1 (1982), 138–50 (pp. 141–2). 61 Rita C.L. Morelli, Indústria Fonográfica: Um Estudo Antropológico (Campinas, 1991), p. 70.


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uses product placement in its telenovelas to generate income, and the use of popular music in these programmes follows similar lines. The sophisticated practice of cross merchandising and promotion of the music contained in a TV-Globo telenovela has been outlined in the following manner by Thomas Tufte. A well-known musician is contracted to record the opening song of a new telenovela, which is then recorded by Som Livre and starts to appear as a jingle on the radio. Television adverts are broadcast to advertise the telenovela using this song. Prior to the start of the new series, a CD of the Brazilian music featuring in the telenovela is launched in the shops. Som Livre also plan their sales strategy around the probability that the sales of artists featured in the telenovela soundtrack will start to pick up once the show is on air. For the duration of the airing of the telenovela (normally six months) radio plays of featured songs are intense. Months after the start of the telenovela’s run, a CD of the international songs featured in the show is released as a separate recording, which is then the subject of intense radio exposure.62 Simon Frith has referred to the reasoning behind this symbiotic type of relationship when writing about the use of popular music in British television: Here is the circular argument beloved of advertisers: because this is your sort of music this must be your sort of television; because this is your sort of television this must be your sort of music. The relationship of music and television is not organic but a matter of branding.63

Uses of Popular Music in Telenovelas One of the most potent elements in a telenovela is the use of popular, and less frequently, classical music in the soundtrack to underline the action. This technique is often used to associate a particular song or musical theme with specific characters in the drama. Thus, a snippet of the theme associated with a character or couple starring in the telenovela will often accompany their appearance in the drama itself. Other functions of music in these programmes can include: the evocation of emotion, the conjuring up of regional atmosphere, and the ‘scene setting’ of a historical period or era. With daily domestic broadcasting of telenovelas running at four to five hours, the demand for music to serve as a soundtrack to the dramas is intense. But what kind of music (national and international) is chosen to feature in telenovelas, and what are the criteria for such choices? Are there ‘acceptable’ types of music for telenovelas that are aired at 6pm as compared to 9pm, for example? Why do some telenovelas feature almost incessant musical ‘dialogues’ with the characters, and others have much less musical input? Why have telenovela soundtracks remained so popular with Brazilian consumers for over thirty years, and how does this compare to other Latin American countries? All these issues are potentially intriguing because of the substantial impact of telenovelas on sales (official and un-official) in Brazil, and the all-pervading musical and cultural influence that these programmes exert. 62 Thomas Tufte, Living with the Rubbish Queen: Telenovelas, Culture and Modernity in Brazil’ (Luton, 2000), pp. 127–8. 63 Simon Frith, ‘Look! Hear! The uneasy relationship of music and television’, Popular Music, vol. 21/3 (2002), 277–90 (p. 282).

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Unfortunately these topics lie outside the scope of this present work but they would undoubtedly merit further research.64 The musical soundtrack to telenovelas almost exclusively utilizes pre-existing recordings. As I have mentioned, the Brazilian music featured in these programmes has traditionally had a higher profile in marketing terms than the foreign music also featured in the shows, and has had its own recording that is released onto the market first.65 Two months prior to the start of a new TV-Globo telenovela, record companies receive a dossier from TV-Globo outlining the plot and the personality traits of each character. The record companies then submit songs from their existing repertoire to TV-Globo that they feel will convey the essence of these characters.66 The decision to approve a particular song at TV-Globo lies with Mariozinho Rocha, who has been musical director at the company since 1989. Rocha has stated that the use of music in a telenovela is of fundamental importance in ensuring its popularity with the public.67 Ever since the first telenovela soundtracks were produced in the early 1970s, they have been extremely successful in terms of sales, and the impact of the inclusion in a telenovela soundtrack on an artist’s career is often considerable –particularly if their music is used as the opening theme or is associated with a major character in the drama – almost always guaranteeing increased sales and a higher media profile. Consequently, a recording artist often sees the opportunity to feature in the soundtrack to a telenovela as akin to winning a lottery.68 Occasionally, unknown artists are introduced to the public through this sort of exposure, and it has also been used to revamp the careers of those that have been out of the limelight for some time, such as Luís Melodia, Fagner, Sidney Magal and Zé Ramalho.69 The guaranteed high sales of a telenovela soundtrack enable Som Livre to negotiate the rights to use music from record companies at extremely low rates. This has been particularly useful for record companies in times of economic recession, when overall record sales have dropped alarmingly. Both Sony and Polygram formed joint record labels with Globo in 1993 to boost sales, further evidence of the increasingly close relationship between television networks and the record industry.70

64 Two studies that deal very briefly with the specific role played by music in the soundtrack to telenovelas are: Fernando de Jesús Giraldo Salinas, ‘O Som na Telenovela: Articulações Som e Receptor’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, E.C.A, University of São Paulo, 1994), and Rafael Roso Righini, ‘A Trilha Sonora da Telenovela Brasileira: De Criação à Finalização’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, E.C.A, University of São Paulo, 2001). 65 In November 2003, Celebridade was the first telenovela to have its national and international soundtracks to be included on the same release. 66 Sérgio Martins, ‘Gincana sonora’, Veja, 14/6/00, p. 156. 67 Tánia Fusco, ‘Central de sucessos’, Istoé Senhor, 5/2/92, p. 58. 68 For statistics showing the dramatic effect on an artist’s sales after inclusion in a TVGlobo telenovela, see Maria Elisa Alves, ‘Comunhão de bens’, Veja, 21/7/93, p. 105. 69 Fusco, ‘Central de sucessos’, p. 59. 70 Alves, ‘Comunhão de bens’, p. 105.


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The Impact of Telenovelas on MPB The telenovelas of the early to mid 1970s (Véu de Noiva, Pigmalião 70, Assim na Terra como no Céu) featured music by some of the biggest contemporary names in MPB such as Elis Regina, Ivan Lins, Maria Bethânia, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. As musical tastes changed over the years, and MPB diversified, that musical diversification was reflected in the music featured in telenovelas, which although still regularly including artists associated with MPB, also featured more outright pop, rock music, ballads and música sertaneja. Some critics have expressed concern about the long-term effect of the novelização of Brazilian popular music, feeling that it has resulted in the creation of a genre that merely serves to enhance the dramatic effect of a television series without having any other inherent musical merit.71 This is reminiscent of criticism that was levelled at the quality of entries to the later televised song festivals, where it was widely believed that contestants were submitting ‘festival music’, in other words, music that was similar to previously successful compositions and that was likely to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Despite the exposure given to their work through use in telenovelas, songwriters such as Chico Buarque and Edu Lobo have also registered their concern that the public who buy telenovela soundtracks are often completely unaware of the identity of the writers and performers of the songs they include, merely associating them with the themes of central characters in the telenovelas themselves.72 The monopolistic influence on Brazilian popular music exerted by the Globo organization has also been criticized for making it almost too easy to create hit records, due to the overwhelming promotional and distributional power that Globo can bring to bear through its multifaceted empire.73 Yet ironically, in recent times telenovelas – often denigrated in the past as the arch-enemies of ‘quality music’ – have been hailed as the potential saviours of MPB as they currently represent one of the only outlets for the public to hear such music, a current that has been largely excluded from mainstream radio broadcasting. The argument has also been made that telenovela soundtracks now provide one of the rare opportunities for new MPB artists to achieve public recognition and that they act as a springboard for the careers of such artists who are in the process of attempting to establish themselves.74 Certainly at the time of writing there seems to be a far higher profile for the use of music by ‘classic’ MPB composers and performers such as João Donato, Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethânia, Noel Rosa and Chico Buarque, in telenovelas such as Celebridade, Mulheres Apaixonadas and Belissima. Maria Rita’s eponymous first CD achieved enormous sales in Brazil in 2003–2004, and in 2004 a song from the CD was used as the title music of a prime time TV-Globo telenovela, which was in itself a reflection of Rita’s success. It is still a little early to judge whether this represents a short-lived 71 Alves, ‘Comunhão de bens’, p. 105. 72 Anon, ‘Um pega que durou uma noite inteira’ (Rountable discussion with Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Edu Lobo and Aldir Blanc), Homem, 1975, p. 6. 73 Maurício Kubrusly, ‘Quem escolhe o que você ouve?’, Jornal da Tarde, 13/9/75. Anon, ‘Sucessos a reboque’, Visão, 23/7/73, p. 93. 74 João Pimentel, ‘Uma trilha de sucesso’, O Globo, 9/11/03.

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trend or the start of a renaissance for MPB as a whole, but Rita’s success and the appearance of artists such as Max de Castro, Wilson Simoninha, and Pedro Mariano does suggest that there may be a ‘new wave’ of MPB on the horizon. The influence of the music contained within the telenovelas produced by TVGlobo is not confined to the national market. In 1988, TV-Globo was exporting its telenovelas worldwide, to countries including Italy, Portugal, France, Poland, Hungary, China, and the whole of Latin America. In 1997, the global revenue from exported telenovelas was worth U.S. $100 million to the Globo organization.75 These exports started in 1975, and the decision by French television networks to broadcast Baila Comigo in 1985 was seen as extremely significant by Globo, who were aware of France’s position as a ‘cultural leader’ in Europe, and the possibility that success in France might open the gates to other French-speaking countries.76 The most difficult market to crack has been that of the United States, due to protectionist measures existing in the North American market and the aversion of many viewers in the U.S. to subtitled programmes. Another problem was commercial in nature; the telenovela soundtracks produced in Brazil normally featured some North American popular music that TV-Globo was not authorized to promote commercially in the United States. To alter the original soundtrack would have been time-consuming and expensive, so subsequent TV-Globo telenovela soundtracks featured only Brazilian music. TV-Globo’s decision also allowed for the independent marketing of Brazilian popular music in their soundtracks by their label Som Livre in Europe and elsewhere.77 Crucially, it also gave a major boost to sales of Brazilian music within Brazil itself. Brazilian telenovelas offer an insight into Brazilian culture for those who watch them worldwide. Those viewers are also directly exposed to Brazilian popular music via the soundtracks, and it would seem that there might be a link between exposure to telenovelas and a corresponding popularity of Brazilian popular music. For example, MPB has been popular in France for many years and Brazilian performers regularly tour France and other European countries in the summer months. Some idea of the potential cultural impact of Brazilian telenovelas abroad can be gauged by the success of the screening of A Escrava Isaura in Poland in 1985. Twentyeight million viewers (86 per cent of the viewing public) voted the series as the best television programme of the last ten years, and long after the series was screened songs from the telenovela were still played on Polish radio.78 I would not claim that telenovelas have always achieved such levels of success outside Brazil, but the Polish experience is an interesting example of a type of reverse ‘cultural invasion’.

75 Daniel Mato, ‘Miami in the Transnationalization of the Telenovela Industry: On Territoriality and Globalization’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 11, no. 2 (2002), 195–212 (p. 199). 76 Melo, As Telenovelas da Globo, p. 43. 77 Ibid., p. 46. 78 Mattelart, Michèle and Armand, The Carnival Of Images, pp. 12–13.


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MTV Brasil and MPB The most recent development in the transmission of popular music through the medium of television in Brazil has been the introduction of Music TV (MTV) in 1990. The Brazilian version of this satellite/cable channel is owned by the Editora Abril publishing group, and in 1995 was received by twelve million households in one hundred and seventy cities.79 Established in the United States in 1981, MTV has been a colossal success with its formula of music videos broadcast twenty-four hours a day. These videos have become the mainstay of the music industry worldwide. Increasingly sophisticated, and often produced at vast expense, they are seen as the major promotional tool in publicizing a new release. MTV’s motto is ‘Think globally, act locally’, and that reasoning has influenced the strategy employed in Brazil. Recognizing that national music accounted for about 65 per cent of record sales in Brazil, MTV Brasil increased its broadcasting of Brazilian music videos proportionally, at the expense of imported videos from the United States and Europe.80 The influence of MTV Brasil on Brazilian popular music has been important in two major ways. First, it has acted as a means by which new talent (bands such as Skank, and Chico Science Nação Zumbi, for example) has been exposed to a nationwide public for the first time. The second trend has been the ability of the channel to recycle the careers of older MPB stars such as Gilberto Gil to a younger generation unfamiliar with their work via the Acústico [Unplugged] series.81 MTV Brasil’s target audience is the 15–24 age group from social classes A and B, and its average daily audience is estimated at 1.2 million.82 Joseph Straubhaar has identified a possible limitation on the potential audience for MTV Brasil as only 45 per cent of Brazilian households had a second television set in 1992, and younger viewers may not be able to control family viewing patterns.83 Additionally, the growth of the market for satellite/cable services in Brazil remains static at 5–6 per cent.84 Nevertheless, it should also be taken into account that MTV Brasil’s music videos are also reaching an additional unrecorded audience through public spaces such as airport waiting lounges, record shops, fitness centres, and bars and restaurants.85 By 1999, MTV Brasil had become the major showcase for popular music in Brazil, and the channel started to widen its scope by moving away from pop and rock music to 79 Anon, ‘Sabor tropical’, Veja, 6/9/95, p. 104. 80 The amount of MPB videos transmitted by MTV Brasil varies, but is in the region of 30–60 per cent of all that are broadcast. Email correspondence with Yone Sassa, musical programmer, MTV Brasil, 12/10/03. 81 Sales of Gilberto Gil’s Parabolicamará LP received good reviews but only sold 68,000 copies. After exposure on MTV Brasil, his next release Acústico sold 270,000. Anon, ‘Sabor tropical’, Veja, 6/9/95, p. 106. 82 Anon, ‘Sabor tropical’, p. 104. 83 Straubhaar, ‘The Electronic Media in Brazil’, p. 235. 84 Straubhaar, ‘Brazil: The Role of the State in World Television’, in Media and Globalization: Why the State Matters, ed. by Nancy Morris and Silvio Waisbord (Lanham, 2001), pp. 133–53 (p. 140). 85 Sérgio Martins, ‘Choque no visual’, Veja, 18/8/99, p. 141.

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broadcast videos of samba, pagode, rap and axé-music in keeping with the growing markets for those genres. However, in 2005 the director general of MTV Brasil made it clear that the channel did not feel that it had a ‘democratic’ responsibility to support all types of Brazilian popular music and stated that gospel and música sertaneja for example would not be broadcast on MTV Brasil.86 Conclusion The televised song festivals that have taken place since 1972 have reflected an ongoing search for music of a certain type (‘quality music’) and stature to match the significance of that produced in the ‘golden era’ of Caetano Veloso, Elis Regina, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque et al. It appears that many in the Brazilian media wish to project the notion that there exists a cultural void that can, even at this late stage, be filled by a return to a winning formula that produced so many performers who still dominate the field of MPB over four decades later. Part of that search for new performers via the festivals is tied up with the increasingly incestuous relationship that has developed between television networks and the record industry, a liaison that constantly requires fresh talent to stimulate sales in an ever more competitive market. By harnessing the massive exposure provided by television, particularly TV-Globo, the festivals became a relatively cheaper way of unearthing new talent, and testing that talent before a live audience, than investing in unknown artists. However, by the time of MPB 80, the symbolic link with the public at the festivals (acting as jurors) was broken, and the events were revealed to be merely exercises in naked commercialism, which nevertheless, helped to provoke a major revival for MPB at the time. The use of popular music in telenovelas is ubiquitous and immensely powerful. It is the single major source by which Brazilians access popular music, and the soundtracks to these programmes regularly top the lists of best-selling CDs (both official and pirated). The Brazilian popular music that is featured in telenovelas therefore forms an integral part of the daily lives of the vast majority of the Brazilian population. The power of these programmes to influence popular music can be judged by the fact that TV-Globo’s decision to use only Brazilian music in the soundtrack to the 1985 telenovela, Roque Santeiro immediately raised the profile and sales of MPB, and catapulted the careers of artists such as Dominguinhos, Elba Ramalho and Zé Ramalho, whose music was featured in the show. The most recent trend of using ‘classic’ MPB in telenovelas demonstrates the enduring symbolic power of that music, and also the continuation of a link with the past (Maria Rita is the daughter of the late Elis Regina). The Brazilian music featured in telenovelas also finds a global audience when those programmes are exported worldwide, and therefore fulfils a cultural role because it represents what many abroad will consider to be ‘typical’ Brazilian music.

86 André Mantovani, in Admirável Mundo: MTV Brasil, ed. by Maria Goretti Pedroso and Rosana Martins (São Paulo, 2006), p. 7.


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The role of Brazilian popular music in the post-1972 festivals and telenovelas has reflected powerful changes in the relationship between the public, popular music and television. As popular music has become more and more of a commodity, marketing strategies and product placement have ensured that music has increasingly been seen as a means to benefit television networks, record labels and the entertainment industry in general. The profile of Brazilian popular music in both the festivals and telenovelas is especially important because there has never been a tradition of television programmes on the major networks that have regularly featured popular music. That may be in the process of changing with the continuing growth of MTVBrasil (which is now open to air) which may offer a future platform for new ways of presenting Brazilian popular music. In the next chapter I examine the relationship between the Brazilian record industry and popular music from a different perspective. I will consider theories relating to cultural imperialism and globalization in an attempt to determine whether they are relevant to the specific case of Brazil.


Chapter 4

Cultural Imperalism, Globalization, and the Brazilian Record Industry Brazilian popular music is often considered to be the flagship of Brazilian culture but the industry responsible for its production is almost completely under the control of multinational companies, and has been since the 1930s. The Brazilian market has long been targeted as being potentially lucrative, and as recently as 1998 rose to being the sixth largest in the world.1 Yet by 2002, the Brazilian record industry had slipped out of the top ten and was facing the world’s second largest incidence of music piracy, with an estimated 115 million pirate CDs sold in Brazil during that year.2 This chapter has two main parts, the first of which starts by briefly outlining the development of the powerful transnational conglomerates that control the production and distribution of popular music globally. This is followed by a general discussion of theories of cultural imperialism and globalization, with particular emphasis on how they have been applied to the field of popular music. The second, more substantial part of the chapter focuses on how relevant these theories are to the Brazilian record industry and Brazilian popular music in general. The chapter as a whole is intended to complement the discussion in Chapter 1 surrounding the fears about ‘cultural invasion’ and is an attempt to examine those anxieties from a theoretical and ideological standpoint. The Global Setting: Commerce and Theory The Record Industry Worldwide Considering the vast global demand for popular music and the undoubted enjoyment that it brings to countless millions of consumers it is striking that the industry responsible for its production and distribution is still often widely regarded with deep suspicion, if not downright hostility, by those opposed to the more manipulative and commercial aspects of the music business. Part of this reaction can be attributed to the abiding influence of the writings of Theodor Adorno who argued in the 1940s that popular music was the product of a ‘culture industry’ which viewed it as a commercial product like any other, to be ruthlessly marketed to a mass audience

1 2

Marcia Tosta Dias, Os donos da voz, p. 176. O Mercado Brasileiro de Música 2002, ABPD, p. 41.

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with scant regard for aesthetic considerations.3 Adorno’s scepticism was based on his observations of the effect of technological innovations in the media such as the introduction of the phonograph, radio, and ‘talking’ cinema in Nazi Germany, from which he fled in 1933, and subsequently in the United States where he eventually settled.4 Adorno concluded that the use of popular music as a form of ‘entertainment’ was deliberately manipulated by the music industry and the state to induce passivity among the listening audience in order to promote acceptance of authoritarianism and to reduce the opportunity for individual or radical thought.5 Three decades later, Chapple and Garofalo expressed their concern about the ‘hijacking’ of popular music by capitalist interests over the course of the intervening years. More specifically, they highlighted the role played by a handful of gigantic companies that monopolized the control of the production and distribution of popular music in the United States throughout the twentieth century.6 The effect of the commercial stranglehold exerted on the distribution of popular music outside the United States is an issue that has gained increasing significance since the 1970s, and a number of writers such as Malm and Wallis (1984), Negus (1992), Burnett (1996) and Wicke (1999) have documented the wave of mergers that have consolidated the dominance of a small number of transnational companies within the global entertainment industry. In terms of popular music, the six largest companies in 1996 (Sony, Warner, Polygram, EMI, BMG and MCA) were responsible for over 90 per cent of sales in the United States, and 70–80 per cent of sales worldwide.7 The frantic round of mergers within the industry that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s was an indication of the increasing importance of popular music within the wider global framework of the media, leisure and communications industries. The popular music industry generates revenue of billions of dollars annually, and has been increasingly seen as a powerful adjunct to the portfolios of multinational companies seeking to diversify their interests in the entertainments sphere. This policy of ‘media synergy’ allows for potentially lucrative ‘tie-ins’ whereby corporations can stage-manage the promotion of a product, such as a singer contracted to themselves, through a variety of media that they already control, such as the press, radio and television.8 3 Theodor W. Adorno (with the assistance of G. Simpson) (1941) ‘On Popular Music’, in On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written word, ed. by Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, (London, 1990) pp. 301–14. 4 Keith Negus, Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge, 1996) pp. 8–9. 5 Ibid., p. 10. 6 Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Chicago, 1977) p. 300. 7 Robert Burnett, The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 18. Keith Negus makes the important point that statistics relating to worldwide record sales and market share of the major record companies have to be viewed cautiously due to a prevailing air of secrecy within the industry. The most reliable source of information on this subject in the UK is the annual report produced by the British Phonographic Industry. Keith Negus, Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry (London, 1992), pp. 156–7. 8 Negus, Producing Pop, pp. 4–5.

THE BRAZILIAN RECORD INDUSTRY

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The recording industry was originally established in the United States and Europe, and the pattern of control by a small number of companies from those regions, and latterly Japan, has persisted until today. Commercial domination of a large percentage of the global market has enabled those companies to increase sales of European and American artists outside the boundaries of their home territories. This is not a new phenomenon – even in 1977, CBS and RCA were reporting that more than half their income was generated from sales in their international divisions – however, due to a major recession in the US music industry in the 1980s, systematic exploitation of the world market now became a priority for further growth.9 Theories of Cultural Imperialism and Globalization A major source of discussion in the field of popular music studies in recent years has revolved around the issues of cultural imperialism and the effects of globalization on popular music around the world. Cultural imperialism has been defined as the way in which ‘the transmission of certain products, fashions and styles from the dominant nations to the dependent markets leads to the creation of particular patterns of demand and consumption which are underpinned by and endorse the cultural values, ideals and practice of their dominant origin’ (original emphasis).10 More often than not, cultural imperialism has been loosely associated with ‘Americanization’ or ‘westernization’. A fear of the effects of cultural ‘Americanization’ has been present since the start of the twentieth century, and was experienced at various periods in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Europe, and Latin America (particularly in the 1970s).11 This developed into a more academic theory of cultural imperialism in the 1970s, one that has often been associated with the political left, who have frequently focused on the effects of transnational capitalism and consumerism. It was these arguments that set the scene for the initial critical reception of the effects of globalization.12 The internationalization of the music industry, as described earlier, has often been cited as evidence of a continuing form of cultural imperialism.13 For those who have accepted the veracity of the cultural imperialism thesis, the most commonly expressed solution has centred on some form of restriction on the importation of foreign culture and/or positive action by the state to protect and promote national music.14 During the 1980s, theories of cultural imperialism were increasingly 9 Reebee Garofalo, ‘Whose World, What Beat: The Transnational Music Industry, Identity and Cultural Imperialism’, The World of Music 35 (1990), 16–32 (p. 19). 10 T. O’Sullivan, J. Hartley, D. Saunders, M. Montgomery and J. Fiske, Key Concepts in Communications (London, 1994), p. 74. 11 Negus, Popular Music in Theory, p. 165. 12 John Tomlinson, ‘Internationalism, Globalization and Cultural Imperialism’, in Media and Cultural Regulation, ed. by Kenneth. Thompson (London, 1997), pp. 117–62 (p. 122). 13 Roy Shuker, Understanding Popular Music (London, 2001), p. 67. 14 Ibid., p. 71. An example of such protectionism was the introduction by the French government of legislation in 1996 to ensure that 40 per cent of music played on the radio should be sung in French. Tomlinson, ‘Internationalism, Globalization and Cultural Imperialism’, p. 130. As I have shown previously, similar legislation in Brazil has been unsuccessful because it has not been enforced.

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critiqued because it was considered that they were over-simplistic in some respects and did not pay sufficient regard to factors such as changing economic and cultural circumstances. One of the most serious criticisms of the cultural imperialism thesis was that it over-emphasized the notion that the mere importation of cultural goods into a nation necessarily implied that those goods would exert a profound cultural or ideological significance within that country.15 Several writers have argued that a hegemonic ‘one-way’ flow of popular music emanates from the United States and Britain, and that it is distributed to other nations in the forms of recorded music, radio and television, the effects of which can be damaging for the national culture of developing nations.16 However, this ‘one-way’ flow theory has been challenged by some, such as Garofalo, who argues that the traditional idea of a purely centre-periphery relationship between dominant and subordinate nations is outdated as it does not take into account factors such as cultural resistance in developing countries, and that it is a theory that is too heavily reliant upon the idea of a ‘passive audience’, unable to creatively consume popular music which is imported from abroad.17 Wallis and Malm’s groundbreaking study of the music industry in small countries, published in 1984, revealed that by the early 1970s most of the twelve countries they studied, which included Tanzania, Tunisia, Sweden and Chile, shared music cultures with many features in common. In their opinion this factor, and the existence of an adequate level of music industry technology in each nation, reflected the existence of a process of ‘transculturation’, which coincided with the simultaneous emergence of national pop and rock music in all the countries in question.18 Wallis and Malm present ‘transculturation’ in this context as being a by-product of three factors: the rise of transnational corporations working in the cultural field; increased coverage of global technology, and more sophisticated worldwide marketing strategies. The resultant musical product – the global disco boom of 1975–78 is cited as an example – is then marketed on a worldwide scale to appeal to the largest possible audience.19 Wallis and Malm’s idea of ‘transculturation’ seems to reflect an early awareness of aspects of the phenomenon that subsequently came to be referred to as ‘globalization’. One way in which cultural patterns are imposed globally within popular music is through the privileging of what international record companies refer to as an ‘international repertoire’, i.e. Anglo-American artists singing pop or rock in English, a practice that has been commonplace for decades. Yet this trend has not gone unopposed, and it can also be argued that in many countries consumption of imported culture is severely restricted to the ruling elites, often barely touching large sectors of the poorest in society. It is also significant to point out that many so-called 15 Tomlinson, ‘Internationalism, Globalization and Cultural Imperialism’, p. 135. 16 Negus, Popular Music in Theory, p. 170. 17 Garofalo, ‘Whose World, What Beat’, p. 18. 18 Roger Wallis and Krister Malm, Big Sounds from Small Peoples: The Music Industry in Small Countries (London, 1984) p. 302. 19 Ibid., p. 300. One could also point to the marketing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album that eventually notched up worldwide sales of 40 million copies, and which was responsible to a large degree in reviving the global music industry in the mid 1980s. Burnett, The Global Jukebox, p. 5.


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‘authentic’ and ‘traditional’ cultures are actually the result of long-standing crosscultural interchange between the centre and the periphery.20 Writers such as Nestor García Canclini and Jesús Martín-Barbero have highlighted the importance of cultural hybridization in Latin America, and their arguments have been subsequently invoked by those who refute the inevitability of the development of a homogenous global culture.21 Jocelyn Guilbault has argued that increasing trends towards cultural globalization have provoked two contrasting responses in developing countries, either a protectionist defence of the local form of popular music, or a vigorous attempt to promote local culture within the global marketplace.22 The Brazilian situation, at least at the institutional and the commercial levels, appears to confirm the former of these two trends, reflecting a generally insular approach that has failed to develop a coordinated strategy to implant Brazilian popular music within the world market. The recent success of Bebel Gilberto in Europe and the United States, and the establishment of an influential Brazilian drum’n’bass movement are two examples of Brazilian music that have flourished without the assistance of governmental help or a major marketing campaign. The Marketing of Popular Music The issues of cultural imperialism and globalization are highly relevant to any analysis of the Brazilian music scene over the last forty years, and they are particularly relevant to the recurrent themes of protectionism and preservation within Brazilian popular music that underpin this book. I will discuss these issues shortly. However, I first wish to briefly consider a number of facets of the music industry itself, which are relevant to the ways in which popular music is marketed in Brazil. It is important to bear in mind that the term ‘music industry’ refers to a complex entity comprising of ‘a network of record companies, studios, agencies, the mass media – radio, television, film and press – local promoters, publishing houses, chains of record shops and specialist shops, a network which is difficult to disentangle’.23 Within the confines of the music industry, the key relationship is that which is forged between the artist and the audience. Without a product to promote in the marketplace success will always be limited. Without promotion of that product, it is unlikely that the prospective audience will know of its existence. To produce a CD that is marketable, the artist first has to convince representatives of a record company that their work is worthy of consideration. Despite the investment of colossal sums in market research, the ability of record companies to predict whether a record will be 20 Negus, Popular Music in Theory, pp. 172–4. 21 Nestor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: strategies for entering and leaving modernity (Minneapolis, 1995). Jesús Martín-Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hegemony (London, 1993). 22 Jocelyne Guilbault, ‘On Redefining the “Local” Through World Music’, The World of Music 35(2) (1993), 33–47 (pp. 34–5). 23 Peter Wicke, Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics and Sociology (Cambridge, 1999), p. 118. It is also useful to remember that a large percentage of popular music is produced completely outside the confines of the music industry, in settings such as social clubs, bars and churches.

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a hit is still a woefully inexact science. When such hopeful inefficiency proved to be too costly, record companies turned to more effective marketing and promotional techniques in an attempt to reduce the margin of error. It is impossible to persuade someone to buy a record, but ‘the more a particular record is brought to the attention of the buying public, the less likely it becomes that it will not be bought simply because it is unknown’.24 Thus, a concerted and expensive media campaign is mounted to make the consumer aware of a new release, and television and radio exposure are critical elements in that process. Even so, it is still the case that record industry personnel are always aware that it is only possible to know what will be successful with hindsight, and the timescale within which the industry operates, from signing an artist to producing and promoting a CD, is extremely lengthy. The continual dilemma for record companies is how to anticipate future trends, whilst at the same time retaining a substantial portion of the existing market.25 To try and combat the uncertainty of predicting success, the music industry relies upon a set of commercial hierarchies (as described in Chapter 2) to define potentially commercial music and to prioritize types of music in terms of saleability. As Negus points out, in Britain, since the success of the Beatles in the 1960s the apex of this hierarchy has tended to be occupied by white, guitar-led rock music, whereas other music such as reggae or soul has not received the equivalent exposure and promotion.26 Record companies wage constant costly promotion campaigns designed to drive their competitors out of the consciousness of the potential record buyer. It is far more cost-effective to promote the stable image of a star performer or a long established group rather than continuously seek to introduce new acts to a sceptical public.27 Critics of this industry-centred line of analysis might argue that it fails to make allowances for the possibility of an ‘active audience’ for popular music, rather than the ‘passive audience’ envisaged by Adorno. The ability to download music for free from the Internet through the sharing of music files between consumers represents a major challenge to the music industry and has resulted in punitive legal action against companies such as Napster and even individual members of the public. Piracy is also a major problem for the industry worldwide, and one that currently seems almost insurmountable in Brazil. Both practices are examples of consumers deciding to engage with popular music outside the official scope of the music industry. I will now analyse the themes and issues addressed above, within the more particular context of the Brazilian experience.

24 Wicke, Rock Music, p. 132. 25 Keith Negus, ‘Where the mystical meets the market: creativity and commerce in the production of popular music’, Sociological Review 43 (1995) 316–41, (pp. 330–31). The emergence of Internet sites such as MySpace and YouTube is now revolutionizing the ways in which groups can market themselves, often without the aid of record companies. 26 Ibid., pp. 331–2. 27 Wicke, Rock Music, p. 133.


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The Specific Case of Brazil The Record Industry in Brazil In the decade between 1969 and 1979, the Brazilian record industry moved from fourteenth to sixth place in the world in terms of sales.28 In the preceding years, record sales had been modest for a nation of such a size and were seen more as an adjunct to artists’ live appearances on radio in the 1950s, and concert appearances in the 1960s.29 The major factor that provoked the rapid growth in the sales of records that occurred in the early 1970s was the explosion in sales of consumer goods, including record players, cassette players and televisions, due to greater availability of consumer credit that was deliberately stimulated and supported by the military regime and which accompanied the advent of the so-called ‘Economic Miracle’ from 1968–72.30 This gave the Brazilian record industry massive momentum that was only temporarily reversed by the global economic downturn in Brazil engendered by the 1973 oil crisis. Other factors stimulating growth in the early 1970s included the substantial sales of telenovela soundtracks, more sophisticated marketing strategies within the industry, and the tax relief allowed to foreign recordings produced within Brazil, which displayed the slogan ‘disco é cultura’ on the record sleeve.31 Such rapid growth led to an intensification of investment by foreign record companies, principally concerned with selling foreign records within Brazil, from 1976 onwards.32 Despite the onset of economic recession, diversification of the types of music produced and sold, including the disco boom that swept Brazil in 1977–78, pushed sales figures to record heights in 1979.33 As hyper-inflation played havoc with the Brazilian economy during the 1980s, the fortunes of the record industry fluctuated accordingly, and the situation worsened during 1990–92. However this state of affairs stabilized once more due to the return of consumer confidence associated with the success of the economic plans implemented by the Itamar Franco administration, and increased sales of CDs to a wider sector of Brazilian society.34 Further periods of alternating financial stability and uncertainty during the period 1994–2000 meant that music sales in 1996 grew

28 Rita C.L. Morelli, Indústria Fonográfica: Um Estudo Antropológico (Campinas, 1991), p. 74. 29 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau e o Som Universal’, pp. 192–3. Paiano reveals that the most successful records of the late 1950s only sold about 50–100,000 copies and that sales of 35,000 copies of João Gilberto’s Chega de Saudade in 1958 were considered exceptional. Paiano, p. 193. 30 Ibid., p. 195. 31 Paiano, ‘O Berimbau e o Som Universal’, pp. 197–8. 32 Morelli, Indústria Fonográfica, p. 52. 33 Dias, Os Donos da Voz, pp. 76–7. Dias provides an excellent survey of developments within the Brazilian music industry during this period, incorporating numerous statistics on sales figures. An invaluable source of statistics relating to music sales in Brazil is the annual report produced by the Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos. 34 Ibid., pp. 106–7.

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by a staggering 35 per cent in relation to 1995, but in 1999 they fell by around 30 per cent after the devaluation of the Brazilian currency.35 The epidemic growth of musical piracy in Brazil in recent times has undoubtedly dealt a massive blow to sales in the last few years. Other factors cited as reasons for the downturn in sales cited by the Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos (ABPD) [Brazilian association of record manufacturers] have included the increasing use of the Internet to download music, general global financial instability, and the rise of alternative forms of leisure pursuits.36 Research carried out in 2002 by the ABPD revealed that virtually the same percentage of women buy CDs as men in Brazil, and that the average Brazilian consumer of CDs is young (between eighteen and thirty-five), and middle-class.37 Musical Piracy Musical piracy is an increasingly critical issue in Brazil, with the sales of pirated CDs having soared from 3 per cent of the market in 1997, to 59 per cent in 2002. This represents total sales of one hundred and fifteen million pirate copies, despite a costly anti-piracy campaign carried out by the record companies in Brazil since 1996.38 The scale of this problem can be judged by the fact that at the time of writing Brazil ranked second in the world after China in terms of the volume of pirated material. Somewhat surprisingly, even though it is an offence under Brazilian law to produce such material there have been no known prosecutions for such offences. It is common knowledge in Brazil that vast amounts of pirated CDs and DVDs reach the country from Paraguay and are then distributed throughout Brazil. The attractions of pirated CDs for Brazilian consumers are obvious. The cost of a pirated CD in the street in 2007 was approximately one fifth of the price for the same CD in a retail outlet. The massive figures involved in this trade reveal that millions of Brazilian consumers are obtaining recorded music without the consent of the recording industry. It also appears that this phenomenon is not restricted to those who are unable to pay the full price of a CD. In 2002, a major survey of fifteen hundred consumers from all social classes all over Brazil found that no less than 63 per cent of those surveyed admitted to buying pirated CDs.39 One of the most fundamental problems for the record industry to overcome is that it is widely considered by Brazilian consumers that official CDs are overpriced. In a nation such as Brazil, where popular music forms such an integral part of national culture, efforts to take action against those who make popular music more

35 Maria Elizabeth Lucas, ‘Gaucho musical regionalism’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9/1 (2000), 41–60 (p. 41). 36 João Bernardo Caldeira, ‘Balanço musical’, Jornal do Brasil, 26/9/03. Caderno B, p. 5. 37 O Mercado Brasileiro de Música 2002, pp. 3–33. 38 Ibid., p. 41. 39 Marcelo Marthe, ‘Quem compra o quê’, Veja, 25/9/02, p. 118. Pirated copies of musical DVDs are also very popular and can be bought on the streets of almost every Brazilian city.


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accessible to those on low incomes will more than likely be highly unpopular.40 Setting aside the ethical and financial issues of the loss of royalties to the artists involved, the situation in Brazil represents a clear example of an ‘active audience’ deciding to take advantage of a situation which benefits them financially, and in doing so, sidestepping the traditional methods by which consumers have purchased popular music. This, along with the increases in the downloading of music from file-sharing websites, will inevitably result in continuing serious implications for the Brazilian record industry.41 Cultural Imperialism and the Brazilian Record Industry A recurrent theme in press coverage of the Brazilian record industry since 1968 has been an overwhelming preoccupation with the cultural, political, and economic ramifications of the influence of foreign music in Brazil, and the power exerted by foreign record companies within the country.42 By regularly featuring articles that have criticized the extent of the penetration of the Brazilian market, the press have exploited – or possibly helped to foster, it is difficult to tell which – an underlying uneasiness about the levels of foreign cultural domination in Brazil. A representative example of this type of attitude is provided by the following quotation by Marcus Vinícius from an article written in 1978: . . . the problem with the record industry became more acute from 1968 onwards, when the multinationals discovered that Brazil was the world’s fifth biggest market for record sales. From then on, the multinationals started to bring in the master copies of foreign records and we started to receive international rubbish. This created a terrible problem: we receive terrible music and end up drowning in it. The first serious consequence of this invasion was the unfair competition with local product. The second, the extremely low quality of the product that was imported. And the third, the avoidance of payment of authorship rights.43

40 Jack Bishop, ‘Quem são os piratas? A política de pirataria, pobreza e ganância na indústria da música popular no Brasil, México e Estados Unidos’, presented at IV Congreso de la Rama Latinoamericano, IASPM, Mexico city, April, 2002. <www.hist.puc.cl/historia/ iaspmla> [accessed 1 March 2003]. 41 Sales of pirated CDs were one of the major factors cited for the collapse in February 2003 of the Brazilian record label, Abril Music. The label’s forty-eight contracted artists were all Brazilian, and included Gal Costa, Rita Lee and Titãs. The other major reason for the label’s financial failure was attributed to the difficulty of competing with foreign multinational record companies. Marco Antonio Barbosa, ‘Mercado fonográfico na encruzilhada em 2003’, [accessed 11 February 2003]. 42 See for example; Anon, ‘Proteção legal para nossa música popular’, A Tarde, 17/11/72; Ilmar Carvalho, ‘Estão matando a música popular brasileira’, Correio da Manha, 19/5/70; Carolina Andrade, ‘A liberdade relativa do som’, Jornal do Brasil, 13/7/78, Caderno B, pp. 4–5, and Irlam Rocha Lima, ‘Congresso vai debater a música brasileira’, Correio Braziliense, 22/2/85, p. 21. 43 Andrade, ‘A liberdade relativa do som’, p. 4.

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Vinícius’s argument demonstrates a concern about the aesthetic consequences of a ‘flood’ of imported music into Brazil, but at the same time he also raises political and economic issues that were of major concern to the political left at the time. Ariano Suassuna expressed similar views in 1996: . . . I am opposed to the mass culture that they are trying to disseminate. At the moment, the Americans don’t even need to send bombers or the navy to dominate Brazil. They send Michael Jackson and Madonna. In this way they will undermine the basis of [our] popular culture.44

It is impossible to state with absolute certainty how widely views like these that express concern about cultural imperialism have been held among the general public, but it is surely significant that they have been regularly aired in major newspapers and magazines over the last forty years. Any discussion of the impact of theories of cultural imperialism in Brazil has to take into account a deeply rooted sentiment of ‘anti-Americanization’ that is often held by those on the political left in the country. This attitude seems to be inspired by a number of factors, which include a general distaste for the effects of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America since 1945, and a more specific hostility towards alleged U.S. cooperation in the 1964 coup and the support given to the brutal military dictatorship that followed. Foreign domination of sectors of the Brazilian economy such as the automobile, advertising, and pharmaceutical industries is nothing new, and television and the cinema in Brazil have also long been overshadowed by the influence of the United States. However, it seems that it is the totemic role occupied by popular music in the formation of concepts of Brazilian national identity for such a long period that has had some part to play in provoking such regular expressions of protectionist and nationalistic sentiment in the media. This protectionism has also extended to the disapproving reactions by sections of the media and public given to Brazilian performers who are perceived to have ‘sold out’ by deciding to pursue their careers in the United States with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. Some examples of this that spring to mind are Carmen Miranda in 1940, Sergio Mendes in the 1970s, and Gilberto Gil in 1979.45 When discussing the level of so-called cultural imperialism within Brazil in relation to popular music it is notable that the Brazilian media often provides contradictory messages about the subject. Despite the aforementioned concern and anxiety about the effects of foreign infiltration of the market, there is also often evidence of a sense of national pride in the fact that Brazil’s record industry is ranked as one of the largest in the world, and this has regularly served as a preface to press reports on the subject over the years. Thus, Brazil’s world ranking in terms of music sales, which has fluctuated anywhere between fifth and fourteenth since 1968, is often presented as a symbol of Brazil’s pre-eminence in the world, a kind of cultural and 44 Gerson Camarotti, ‘De quinta categoria’, Veja, 3/7/96, p. 8. 45 For a discussion of the reaction to Miranda, see McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, pp. 145–50. For Sérgio Mendes’ views on the issue see Anon, ‘Sérgio Mendes, bananas para a crítica’, Folha de São Paulo, 2/9/79. Gilberto Gil discusses his treatment by the critics in, Luís Cláudio Garrido, ‘Gil Depõe’, in Gilberto Gil Expresso 2222, ed. by Antonio Risério (Salvador, 1982), pp. 213–26 (pp. 216–18).


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economic thermometer of national well-being. Of course, it was precisely the size of the potential market and the potential profits to be made that lured multinational record companies to Brazil in the first place. Foreign record companies were dominating the Brazilian record industry as early as the 1930s. Between 1974–75 of the eight largest record companies operating in Brazil three were Brazilian. By 1988, only one of the six largest companies was Brazilian.46 It is therefore clear that the Brazilian record industry is dominated by foreign capital, which is in keeping with the global trends of domination by a handful of media giants, as outlined at the start of this chapter. The commercial benefits for foreign companies operating in Brazil during this period were considerable: imported records had already had their production costs met, and therefore had to meet lower sales figures than in the country of origin to realize a profit.47 Further financial incentives were provided by the Brazilian government, which had introduced tax relief for the production of Brazilian records since 1969. This strategy was originally designed to stimulate the production of Brazilian popular music but it backfired when the multinational record companies operating in Brazil also took advantage of the tax breaks to produce even more foreign music within Brazil. Promoting new records by national artists was much more costly than the promotion of international artists who had already generated success abroad, and whose recordings costs had already been met. With these economies in mind, it was argued that up-and-coming national artists were being unjustly penalized by foreign record companies who, when they did invest in Brazilian artists, concentrated on the well-established, big-sellers rather than taking a risk on unknowns.48 A common perception in the 1970s also seems to have been that the presence of foreign record companies in Brazil was acting as barrier to the development of Brazil’s own record industry, whilst at the same time contributing to the ‘denationalization’ of Brazilian culture.49 That view is supported by the comments of a representative of Phonogram Records in Brazil in 1978, who admitted that one of the principal criteria for the release of a record in Brazil at that time was that it had appeared in the top positions of the charts supplied by Cash Box and Billboard in the United States, and Music Week in England – a clear example of the powerful effect of the influence of ‘international repertoire’ that I referred to earlier.50 During the 1970s, lists of best-selling records regularly appeared in the magazine Veja and the newspaper Jornal do Brasil. These statistics related to sales in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which was understandable as the two cities accounted for between 60 and 70 per cent of total national sales.51 The figures also regularly revealed that the majority of the best sellers were foreign rock and pop, rather than

46 Dias, Os Donos da Voz , pp. 74–5. 47 Morelli, Indústria Fonográfica, p. 48. 48 Anon, ‘Disco: a bolsa ou a vida?’, SomTrês, No. 79, July 1985, pp. 84–5. 49 See for example, Andrade, ‘A liberdade relativa do som’, Caderno B, p. 4. 50 Sonia Maria Teixeira, ‘A imposição concreta dos custos’, Jornal do Brasil, 13/7/78, Caderno B, p. 5. 51 Disco em São Paulo, IDART–Departamento de Informação e Documentação Artísticas, ed. by Damiano Cozzela, (São Paulo, 1980), p. 137.

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Brazilian music. However, concern about the accuracy of these figures led the ABPD to appoint their own researchers to produce an unbiased list of best sellers. What those new statistics revealed was that the tastes of those living in both cities did not coincide.52 In Rio de Janeiro, in 1979 for example, in spite of a higher percentage of imported music played on the radio, sales of Brazilian music still outstripped foreign imports, whereas in São Paulo the reverse was true.53 Even more significantly, the figures as a whole also revealed that despite the release of a larger percentage of foreign records over Brazilian, total sales of Brazilian music in both cities over a longer period were higher.54 It would therefore appear that despite alarmist reports to the contrary, Brazilian popular music was not being ‘swamped’ during this period, at least in terms of sales. The ‘Rock in Rio’ Factor Sales of Brazilian popular music soared in 1979–80, due in the main to the conscious decision by the record industry to invest in, and to promote MPB that I referred to in the previous chapter. However, after this bright interlude, the Brazilian record industry entered a period of crisis that lasted until 1986. This was caused by a general economic downturn in Brazil, which was triggered by escalating foreign debt and galloping inflation.55 The change of fortunes in 1986 was due to governmental economic stabilization plans and the spin-off effect of the monumental success of the first ‘Rock in Rio’ festival held in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985. Produced at a cost of more that $11 million, and attracting a public of 1.4 million (a world record for a single event at that time), the ten-day event was the biggest investment in the history of Brazilian show business.56 A mini-city, complete with two shopping centres, was constructed on the edge of Rio de Janeiro to accommodate the enormous audiences. The international artists chosen to perform came from a wide spectrum of pop, rock, heavy metal and new-wave, and included Queen, Rod Stewart, James Taylor, AC/DC, Whitesnake and the Scorpions. The choice of Brazilian performers was predominantly MPB, with a smattering of rock groups, and included Ney Matogrosso, Alceu Valença, Eduardo Dusek, Rita Lee, Elba Ramalho, Lulu Santos, Os Paralamas do Sucesso, Blitz and Barão Vermelho. Sales of national popular music increased by nearly 15 per cent in the year after ‘Rock in Rio’57 and Brazilian rock music also received a major boost from the festival as the genre finally took centre stage due to the massive media exposure that it received at the event. However, there was a distinct pecking order of artists at ‘Rock in Rio’: several national acts complained about the inferior sound quality provided for their performances compared with that afforded to the international stars, and 52 Anon, ‘Sucessos de verdade’, Veja, 8/6/77, p. 92. 53 Anon, ‘O blefe das paradas de sucesso’, SomTrês, no. 2, February 1979, p. 97. 54 Maurício Kubrulsky, ‘Inédito: Os números de negócio dos discos’, SomTrês, no. 3, April 1979, p. 98. 55 Source, ABPD. 56 Anon, ‘E o sonho (re) começou, Visão, 28/1/85, pp. 65–7. 57 Source. ABPD.


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also the fact that they were relegated to opening the show for the foreigners. It is therefore perhaps slightly surprising that it was Brazilian popular music, rather than the international variety, that benefited to such a degree from ‘Rock in Rio’ but a contributing factor may well have been the euphoric mood of optimism then sweeping the country generated by the return to civilian rule that coincided with the festival. The impact of ‘Rock in Rio’ was substantial because it demonstrated to foreign investors the vast potential for live shows in Brazil, and a series of ‘mega’ shows by artists such as Tina Turner and Sting, and the ‘Hollywood Rock’ festival followed in 1987–88. These shows were sponsored to the tune of millions of dollars by the likes of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Wrangler, and Souza Cruz (a subsidiary of British American Tobacco Company), and represented shrewd marketing opportunities, as a representative of Wrangler pointed out: For example, in the Maracanã [the Rio de Janeiro soccer stadium that hosted many of these shows] we will have 150,000 potential consumers of jeans, from all age groups, concentrated in one place.58

‘Rock in Rio II’ (1991) and ‘Rock in Rio III’ (2001) continued the trend of enormous festivals combining national and international acts, but the 2001 event was marked by a rebellion by several Brazilian groups who refused to perform because the Brazilian band O Rappa were excluded from the festival after they took exception to being asked to open the show for little-known American acts. O Rappa’s argument was based on the fact that those foreign artists invited to perform at the event were responsible for record sales in Brazil of roughly one million copies and were receiving a fee of $60,000, whereas their Brazilian counterparts were responsible for sales of two and a half million, yet were only receiving a fee of $10,000.59 As I have mentioned, the international capitalist extravaganza that was ‘Rock in Rio’ failed to lead to a huge influx of international music: on the contrary, it resulted in a boost for sales of Brazilian popular music, and also kick-started the birth of the Brazilian rock movement of the 1980s. Challenges to the Cultural Imperialism Theory Sales of national popular music within Brazil surged again in 1995, when they represented 63 per cent of the market, and the percentage rose each successive year until it reached 76 per cent, a figure that has been maintained until 2002. The official statistics for 2002 indicate that 76 per cent of sales were of national music (the second highest percentage in the world after the United States); the first seventeen of the top twenty best selling CDs of that year were by Brazilian artists; 86 per cent of music played on the radio was Brazilian; and 85 per cent of pirated CDs included Brazilian music.60 These figures are perhaps surprising because the Brazilian market has been increasingly penetrated by international music in recent years through the influence of the above-mentioned festivals and shows, radio, television (particularly 58 Anon, ‘Decibéis milionários’, Veja , 13/1/88, pp. 60–69. 59 Anon, ‘Rebelião in Rio’, Veja, 8/11/00, p. 162. 60 O Mercado Brasileiro de Música 2002, pp. 21–35.

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telenovelas and MTV) and the Internet. They are also in stark contrast to the sales figures of national music in other countries such as England, France and Germany.61 However, other figures provided by the ABPD demonstrate an even more surprising underlying trend: Brazilian popular music has consistently outsold international pop every year since 1972, usually at a ratio approaching two to one.62 These specific figures appear to roundly refute the ‘cultural invasion’ thesis, but as they only relate to sales figures they are unable to address the less tangible issue of the feeling that Brazilians might have had in the past that their national culture was being engulfed by external influences through media saturation by foreign music. So why does Brazilian popular music remain so favoured by the Brazilian public despite the domination of the market by foreign record companies and high levels of media presence for foreign pop? The explanation seems to lie in a number of aspects. First, since 1969, record companies have been given large tax incentives to record Brazilian artists, although that is insufficient explanation on its own to explain this phenomenon because similar subsidies exist in countries like France, for example. Second, Brazil seems to be able to generate new musical genres on a regular basis, axé-music and pagode have been cited as recent examples of musical styles that have sprung naturally from popular roots to rapidly gain popularity in the nation as a whole.63 Third, although samba’s popularity has varied over the years it has never gone out of fashion completely, and due to its capacity to periodically reinvent itself remains among the most popular styles of Brazilian music with the public. In addition, a youthful population (in 1994, 50 per cent of the 160 million population were under 30),64 actively consuming popular music (in 2000, 43 per cent of all sales were to those in the 20–29 age group65); a mild climate which allows for year-round open-air shows; and an extensive network of large venues all around the country, are also all factors which contribute towards impressive sales figures for national music.66 The influence of Brazilian radio may also play a major part in the success of national music: despite the long periods during which many believed that Brazilian radio was dominated by foreign music, in the last few years the reverse has been true. A study by Adriana Baptista of the four most popular FM radio stations serving greater São Paulo in 2002, revealed that 93.8 per cent of their musical output was Brazilian popular music.67 This may well be linked to the fact that recent tax incentives to encourage the recording of national artists has resulted in a situation in 61 In 2002 the respective figures were England (43 per cent), France (59 per cent) and Germany (40 per cent). Source: O Mercado Brasileiro de Música 2002, p. 21. 62 These figures were obtained from the ABPD. 63 Anon, ‘Explosão nacional’, Veja, 20/3/96, p. 115. 64 Christina Magaldi, ‘Adopting imports: new images and alliances in Brazilian popular music of the 1990’s’, Popular Music, vol. 18/3 (1999), 309–29, (p. 327). 65 Source, ABPD. 66 Anon, ‘Explosão nacional’, p. 116. I have asked many Brazilians to explain the reason for this; the most common responses to my question were that it was because Brazilians had a strong affinity for their own music, and that they simply liked it! 67 Adriana Braga de Ameida Baptista, ‘Rádio e Música Popular Brasileira: Estudo Crítico das Inter–Relações entre o Rádio FM e a Música Brasileira no início do século XXI, em São Paulo’ (unpublished master’s thesis, E.C.A, University of São Paulo, 2003), p. 103.


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2003 whereby 80 per cent of artists contracted to record companies in Brazil were Brazilian.68 The final aspect that has contributed to the enduring popularity of national music has been the strategies of the record industry itself. Record companies in Brazil have shrewdly marketed a profusion of ‘new’ styles of music in recent years, such as samba-rock, samba-reggae, for-rock (forró mixed with rock), manguebeat and pop-nejo (pop and sertanejo), alongside traditional styles such as MPB. Christina Magaldi argues that this unapologetic mixture of local and international styles represents one of a number of factors that reflect a new attitude towards the importation of forms of popular music.69 Magaldi considers that the youthful urban public that consumes popular music actively welcomes the importation of hip-hop, rap and rock, so much so that, ‘Older generation issues of resistance against AngloAmerican music are, in their own words, ‘ancient history’.70 She makes the valid point that symbols of brasilidade now have to share space with international symbols of youth and modernity71 and highlights how funk and rap have been appropriated by Brazilian youth as symbols of empowerment in their relations with the ruling classes.72 Magaldi contends that Brazilians do not consider rap to be a Brazilian genre in the same way as samba: it is the very ‘foreignness’ of rap that is the essence of its appeal. However, she also makes the important observation that such a factor does not invalidate the possibility for Brazilians to accept rap, rock and hip-hop as legitimate forms of cultural expression for themselves.73 Whether one agrees with the fundamental premise of the ‘cultural invasion’ argument or not (as I have shown, the statistics relating to record sales suggest that it is flawed) there is no doubt that many individuals and organizations within Brazil have perceived their culture to be endangered and marginalized by external influences over a long period, and that anxiety has been, and occasionally still is, transmitted through the media on a regular basis. Much concern has been expressed about the effects of cultural ‘norteamericanização’ over the years, and the debate entered the public arena in a significant manner in 1975, at the Teatro Casa Grande debates that were discussed in Chapter 1. The effect of this growing public concern was that the military government felt the necessity to take action to address the issue by promoting the Projeto Pixinguinha (analysed in the following chapter). Nevertheless, in general terms, governmental policy towards popular music within Brazil since 1968 has been characterized by a ‘hands off’ approach. The limited form of protectionism in favour of national popular music, the creation of FUNARTE in 1975, and the support for the Projeto Pixinguinha for example, has been continually undermined by tax

The four stations analysed were Band FM, Sucesso FM, Transcontinental FM and Gazeta FM. 68 Eliane Azevedo, cited in Baptista, ‘Rádio e Música Popular’ , p. 39. 69 Magaldi, ‘Adopting imports’, p. 309. 70 Ibid., p. 313. 71 Ibid. See also, Micael Herschmann, O Funk e o Hip-Hop invadem a cena (Rio de Janeiro, 2000), p. 220. 72 Magaldi, ‘Adopting imports’, p. 317. 73 Ibid., p. 326.

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concessions to multinational record companies and a disinclination to interfere with the operations of transnational companies operating within Brazil.74 The argument continues to circulate, within the Association of Researchers in Brazilian popular music, for example, that Brazilian popular music is still under threat, and that it might be possible to return MPB to a position of pre-eminence merely by restricting the influence of imported music in Brazil. It should also be mentioned that there are several small independent record labels (such as CPC-UMES, and Kuarup) that maintain a resistance towards the domination of the multinational companies operating in Brazil by regularly releasing only Brazilian music.75 However, it would be foolish to propose that there has been complete unanimity about the threat represented by foreign music in Brazil. There have always been Brazilian fans of imported rock and pop for example, and a flourishing Brazilian counter-culture grew up in the early 1970s that took its lead from abroad. Many Brazilians have also been able to enjoy imported rock music and home-grown samba for example, in equal measure. What seems clear is that despite the best efforts of the multinational record companies, saturating the market with foreign music, backed up by FM radio networks heavily plugging imported records, the high profile of foreign pop and rock music used in telenovelas, and the arrival of MTV, Brazilian consumers have still gone out and bought a higher percentage of national music. I would suggest that the Brazilian experience appears to confirm Garofalo’s argument that cultural resistance against the encroachments of a dominant foreign culture is still possible, and that merely bombarding the media of a ‘dependent’ nation with a particular type of popular music does not ensure that consumers will necessarily buy that music, or that if they do, they may still actively consume national music.76 There is clearly a distinction to be made between a consumer’s aural experience of popular music that is unsolicited, but which is experienced through the media on a daily basis (and which may well be enjoyed) and the conscious economic and cultural decision to purchase a CD. Globalization and the Brazilian Record Industry As we have seen, the Brazilian music industry does not exist in a vacuum. Due to its size and potential profitability the Brazilian market has been a target for foreign 74 This is in contrast to action in support of Brazilian cinema. Legislation was passed in the 1960s and 1970s that demanded that cinemas show Brazilian films on a certain number of days per year. Taxes were also levied on foreign films. Robert Wesson, The United States and Brazil: Limits of influence (New York, 1981), pp. 149–50. 75 For an excellent recent analysis of independent record production in Brazil see Dias, Os Donos da Voz, pp. 125–55. 76 There may be a comparison to be drawn between the attitudes of the Brazilian public towards foreign music and imported television programmes. Research carried out between 1962–92 has shown that Brazilians prefer home-produced television shows to foreign television, and that has been reflected in the percentage of nationally produced programming. Joseph D. Straubhaar, ‘Brazil: The Role of the State in World Television’, in Media and Globalization: Why the State Matters, ed. by Nancy Morris and Silvio Waisbord (Lanham, 2001), pp. 133–53 (pp. 145–9).


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investment since the first records were produced in Brazil. Foreign companies have dominated the Brazilian record industry almost since its inception, and as I demonstrated earlier in this chapter, that influence intensified, particularly in the 1970s and again in the 1980s, when multinational interests decided to increase their investment in the Brazilian market. Virtually every type of international popular music has established itself in Brazil, to a greater or lesser degree, at some stage or other. These have ranged from jazz, rock, soul and country music, to disco, funk, punk, reggae, rap, hip-hop, and latterly, drum’n’bass. Many of these imported musical styles have been adapted and mixed with existing Brazilian musical genres to produce domestic variants of tremendous variety and creativity. For instance, several recent studies have looked at the effects of globalization in Brazil by concentrating on the importance of ethnicity and the influence of Afro-Diasporic music in Brazil that has been most evident in the development of Bahian samba reggae and the funk movements in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.77 Artists such as Fernanda Abreu and Carlinhos Brown have also made much play of what they see as their ‘transnational’ status, considering themselves to be not only Brazilian, but also citizens of a global musical community, fusing their national musical traditions with the latest musical and technological developments from around the world.78 Developments such as these would appear to bear out Shuker’s argument that despite the undeniably profound impact of the transnational music industry on local music scenes worldwide, a world musical homogenization has not taken place: ‘The process is rather one in which local musicians are immersed in overlapping and frequently reciprocal contexts of production, with a cross-fertilization of local and international sounds.’79 Straubhaar also emphasizes that much of most people’s identity is still derived from local factors such as religion, language, ethnicity, and collective memory, and he is wary of an overemphasis on the impact of globalization, which may differ widely in different areas of the world.80 There are also other more critical views of the impact of globalization such as that of Doreen Massey, who stresses its ‘uneven’ nature, and the fact that those controlling the process, rather than merely experiencing it, are still largely those in positions of power in the developed world, rather than say the urban poor in Latin America.81 Negus’s view of the impact of globalization on popular music is also not as optimistic as that of Shuker:

77 Several articles are collected together in Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn, eds, Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization (Gainesville, 2001). See for example: Livio Sansone, ‘The localization of Global Funk in Bahia and in Rio’ (pp. 136–60); Ari Lima, ‘Black or Brau: Music and Subjectivity in a Global Context’ (pp. 220–32), and Antonio J. V. dos Santos Godi, ‘Reggae and Samba-Reggae in Bahia: A Case of Long-Distance Belonging’ (pp. 207–19). 78 Frederick Moehn, ‘“Good Blood in the Veins of This Brazilian Rio”, or a Cannibalist Transnationalism’, in Perrone and Dunn (eds), Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, pp. 258–69. 79 Shuker, Understanding Popular Music, p. 72. 80 Straubhaar, ‘Brazil: The Role of the State in World Television’, pp. 135–6. 81 Cited in Tomlinson, ‘Internationalism, Globalization and Cultural Imperialism’, p. 144.

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At a local level, processes of globalisation in popular music are increasingly being experienced as a tension between progress and restoration; between the eclectic, syncretic forms of acculturated expression brought about by the meeting of various musical techniques, technologies and traditions; and a concomitant retreat into nostalgia, with attempts to preserve the imagined purity of the past by constructing idealised ‘heritage’ cultures . . . 82

That kind of tension is evident in Brazil in the conflicting attitudes of those who wholeheartedly embrace the impact of post-Tropicália musical hybridity (manguebeat and hip-hop for instance), and those who still consider that Brazilian musical identity is in danger of being stifled by external economic and cultural domination. It is also reflected in the largely negative view of funk and hip-hop presented by the Brazilian mass media.83 One consequence of the ongoing conflict between the global and the local has been the emergence of a more fluid concept of identity, as identified by Stuart Hall, whereby people are able to feel part of the world and part of their neighbourhood at the same time.84 In terms of popular music, such a fluidity of identity was undoubtedly facilitated by two factors: first, the emergence of MTV in 1981 and its subsequent expansion worldwide (MTV Brasil started broadcasting in 1990); and second, the spate of globally televised ‘mega’ concerts or media events in the mid-1980s, such as ‘Band Aid’, ‘Live Aid’ and ‘We are the World’.85 These events, and those that followed, not only provided new markets for the transnational media corporations, but also coincided with the massive Brazilian festivals such as ‘Rock in Rio’ (1985) and the series of ‘mega’ shows by artists such as Tina Turner, Sting and the ‘Hollywood Rock’ festival, all of which occurred in Brazil during 1987–88. As I have indicated previously, the increasing popularity of rap and hip-hop in Brazil indicates that a fluid conception of identity already exists, and artificially imposed notions of national musical identity may already be outmoded. Brazilian Popular Music in the Global Setting When one considers the position of Brazilian popular music in the world market, one is struck by the increased interest that it has generated in recent years. There are of course antecedents for this: the influence of Brazilian composers and performers who went to Hollywood in the 1940s, the musical interchange between Brazilian and North American jazz musicians at the time of Bossa Nova, and the huge number of Brazilian musicians who have followed successful careers abroad, particularly in the United States, since the 1960s.86 In 2004, Bebel Gilberto’s Tanto Tempo CD 82 Negus, Producing Pop, p. 7. 83 For an analysis of this coverage, see Michael Herschmann, O Funk e o Hip-Hop invadem a cena (Rio de Janeiro, 2000), particularly pp. 87–123. 84 Cited in Garofalo, ‘Whose World, What Beat’, p. 25. 85 Garofalo, ‘Whose World, What Beat’, p. 22. 86 The list of these musicians who have particularly worked in the field of jazz is almost endless, but would include names such as João Donato, Eumir Deodato, Sergio Mendes, Naná Vasconcellos, Moacyr Santos, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Luiz Bonfa, Raul de Souza


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became the biggest selling Brazilian recording of all time in the international market, clearly demonstrating that Brazilian popular music has now attained new levels of recognition and acclaim abroad.87 The global success of the film Cidade de Deus has also introduced many to more eclectic variations of Brazilian music, such as soul and funk from the 1970s, and even the music of the father figure of Brazilian rock music, Raul Seixas. Part of the appeal of Brazilian music abroad seems to lie in a perception of its ‘exotic’ nature. Mário de Andrade referred to this underlying aspect of the foreign view of Brazilian music in 1928 when he drew attention to the European trait of searching in Brazil for an element of spicy ‘otherness’.88 In more recent times, for those tired of European and North American popular music, Brazilian music has been portrayed as refreshing and uninhibited, and as possessing qualities lacking in ‘old world’ music.89 David Byrne has been responsible for much of the recent revival of interest in Brazilian music in the United States and elsewhere, and he deserves great credit for bringing several diverse aspects of that music to a global audience that might never have otherwise been exposed to the likes of Tropicália, forró, and the music of Tom Zé. This raised profile for Brazilian popular music has manifested itself in its increasing use in TV advertisements in Britain, and the release of a plethora of CD compilations of Brazilian music.90 Intriguingly, the intense interest of European and Japanese record collectors in the most arcane and neglected areas of Brazilian popular music of the 1960s and 1970s has actually led to a recent rediscovery of such music in Brazil itself over the last few years, with several labels now re-releasing long-forgotten treasures from their archives. As Frederick Moehn rightly points out however, only a small section of Brazilian popular music (almost invariably MPB) is taken up and consumed by non-specialist foreign audiences, and ironically this music is a minority interest, at least in terms of sales, in Brazil itself. Moehn sees in this a reflection of the middle-class tastes of foreign consumers and the lack of a large working-class Brazilian population outside of Brazil.91 The international marketing and production of music from Brazil has taken on an increasingly transnational dimension in recent years. A prime example of this is Maria Bethânia’s 1994 album Canções que você fez para mim, which was produced

and Paulinho da Costa. Antonio Carlos Jobim is often quoted as having once said, ‘the internacional airport is the best destination for a Brazilian artist’. Sérgio Martins, ‘A classe operária da música’, Veja, 24/9/03, p. 136. 87 Anon, ‘Cibelle (Brazil)’, [accessed 10 June 2007]. 88 Andrade, Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira, p. 15. 89 Of course the same could be said about other forms of Latin, African, and Indian music. 90 To cite just three examples, Tamba Trio’s version of Mas que nada was used as the soundtrack to a repeatedly aired Nike television advert at the time of the 1998 football World Cup. In Britain in 2004, a version of Wilson Simonal’s Não vem que não tem accompanied a major advertising campaign by IKEA, and Tejo, Black Alien e Speed’s Quem que cagüetou? was used to promote Nissan cars. 91 Moehn, ‘Good Blood in the Veins of This Brazilian Rio’, p. 266.

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in Rio de Janeiro, London and Los Angeles.92 Mercosul countries have also been identified as potential markets for Brazilian popular music, with artists such as Roberto Carlos, Chitãozinho and Xororó, Daniela Mercury, and Xuxa recording in Spanish.93 Carlinhos Brown’s 1996 CD Alfagamabetizado was released in France even before being launched in Brazil. The CD was backed by a massive advertising campaign in France (which is seen as a key market for ‘world music’) and this strategy was part of an effort by his record company to portray Brown as an international artist, the importance of whose work transcends national boundaries rather than simply appealing to the Brazilian market.94 Whether such efforts will ultimately prove successful remains in doubt. Similar attempts have been made with the career of Milton Nascimento for example, who has often recorded with jazz musicians in the United States, but who has failed to break through to a wider audience on any great scale. The recent enormous worldwide sales of Bebel Gilberto’s Tanto Tempo seem to make it inevitable that Brazilian popular music will be marketed with increased vigour in the global markets in the future. Ironically, Gilberto’s music is still virtually unknown in her own country, and only receives publicity because of the sales that she has generated abroad, further evidence of the unpredictability of the impact of globalization on popular music in Brazil. Conclusion There is no doubt that the record industry in Brazil has been historically dominated by multinational corporations, and that those corporations have attempted to flood the market (one of the world’s largest) at various periods with international popular music. Fears of the effects of this ‘cultural imperialism’, and arguments in favour of the need to ‘protect and preserve’ Brazilian popular music have been raised at regular intervals through the Brazilian media but have been met with little response from the government which has tended to adopt policies that are unlikely to discourage foreign investment in Brazil. In terms of popular music at least, it seems that theories of cultural imperialism are inappropriate to the Brazilian situation. The resistance of Brazilian consumers to the encroachments of foreign popular music is clearly demonstrated by the overwhelmingly strong sales of Brazilian popular music that have been maintained consistently over the last thirty years. There also appears to be evidence of the existence of a powerful ‘active audience’ in Brazil, confirmed by the huge growth of the sales of pirated CDs, the vast majority of which are of Brazilian music, in recent years. It therefore appears that the economic control of the Brazilian record industry by foreign interests has not resulted in a concomitant cultural domination. The increasing impact of globalization on Brazilian popular music appears to be in a state of flux, and is taking new, sometimes unexpected directions. This has been apparent from the recent emergence of the Brazilian drum’n’bass scene 92 Dias, Os Donos da Voz, pp. 117–18. 93 Ibid., p. 120. 94 Ibid., pp. 167–8. Brown’s Carlito Marrom CD (2005), in which several of the songs are sung in Spanish was also launched in Spain prior to Brazil for similar reasons.


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in São Paulo, which has seen the genre imported, given a specific Brazilian twist, and re-exported to Europe where it has made a major impact. As Brazilian music makes greater inroads into the world market than ever before, so hip-hop and rap (themselves hybrid international styles of music) establish themselves to a greater extent in certain areas of Brazil. There is nothing new in this: there is a long history of the anthropophagic absorption of popular music in Brazil, some examples of which include tango, maxixe, jazz, rock and roll (jovem guarda), rock (Tropicália), soul and funk (the Black Rio movement of the 1970s), and reggae (samba reggae). This trend is highly likely to continue in the future, and it is how that foreign music is digested and interpreted by Brazilian audiences and performers that will continue to be of interest. The Brazilian government has historically taken a ‘hands off’ approach to any form of regulation of the record industry in Brazil, and has also failed to enforce legislation in favour of national music through the impositions of quotas for radio and television and the like. The following chapter will examine one of the very few occasions when the state decided to intervene on behalf of Brazilian popular music in an attempt to ‘protect and preserve’ it.


Chapter 5

The State as Cultural Mediator: The Política Nacional de Cultura, FUNARTE and the Projeto Pixinguinha The Brazilian military found itself at a crossroads in the mid 1970s. After several years of repressive, authoritarian rule that had been particularly severe between 1968 and 1973 its political objectives were now called into question on several fronts. This chapter will examine the ways in which the administration responded to increasing calls from various groups and individuals concerning the need to address what many saw at the time as the ongoing ‘denationalization’ of Brazilian culture, and more specifically, Brazilian popular music. This was a key moment, both politically and culturally, because it represented the first tentative steps by the military to move away from a strategy of out and out authoritarianism, and towards the possibility of a rapprochement with civil society. This delicate and by no means irreversible process was the springboard for a new intervention in cultural matters, reflected in the government’s plan for culture, the Política Nacional de Cultura [National Cultural Policy], which was launched in 1975. This chapter is divided into three parts, the first of which examines how the Política Nacional de Cultura reflected the government’s new approach. In the second part of the chapter I discuss the importance of the establishment of the National Art Foundation (FUNARTE), a government body specifically set up in 1975 to take the lead on the new cultural initiative. The remainder of the chapter analyses the significance of the Projeto Pixinguinha, an enterprise that constitutes virtually the only substantial example of intervention by the state in the field of popular music since the Carnegie Hall bossa nova show of 1962. The Projeto Pixinguinha quickly grew from a relatively small-scale enterprise into a significant, nationwide initiative. It was designed with the primary intention of promoting live music shows at subsidized ticket prices, bringing Brazilian popular music to the lower economic classes in cities all over Brazil, this at a time when many considered that foreign music was increasingly dominating the national airwaves. The Projeto Pixinguinha was designed to counteract that perceived domination by re-focusing attention on Brazilian popular music, and the architects of the project also used it as a vehicle to attempt to protect and preserve a specific tradition of Brazilian music that they considered to be threatened.

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The Political Context: Distensão and the Need for Change The period 1973–74 is generally seen as a watershed in Brazilian history because it heralded a change in emphasis by the military regime and marked the start of the long transition from authoritarianism to the return of democratic government in 1985. The inauguration of Ernesto Geisel as President on 15 March 1974 initially seemed to signify the continuation of the bureaucratic-authoritarian regime that had abrogated civil, constitutional and political rights in Brazil since 1964: a regime that had established a virtual dictatorship of the federal executive over the legislature and judiciary, largely enforced by the notorious fifth Institutional Act of 1968. The military maintained control of the major functions of government, with civil society excluded from any meaningful contribution to politics, although the façade of democracy had been maintained by the retention of a two-party electoral system. However, Geisel’s selection as President was in fact loaded with significance as it represented the triumph of the more ‘liberal’ faction within the military that adhered to the thinking of former President Castelo Branco, the so-called ‘Castelistas’. Geisel had a personal record of opposition to hard-line policies within the military and as a former president of Petrobrás (the state-controlled oil company) he brought personal qualities to the post that hinted at an ability to establish links with civil society.1 Geisel and his key political advisor, General Golbery do Couto e Silva, immediately set out to distance themselves from the ruthless image of the Médici administration that had preceded them. Their desire for a more ‘liberal’ administration through a controlled process of ‘distensão’ [détente] with civil society was a reflection of a pragmatic desire on the part of many within the military for a staged return to democratic rule. Although Geisel was not in favour of a return to unfettered democracy he was convinced that changes in policy were required to move towards a ‘normalization’ of Brazilian society. If those changes were to be successful he was aware that he would require support from within the military establishment, and that it would also be necessary to construct alliances with representatives of sectors of society that were traditionally hostile to the regime. Shortly before taking office, and soon afterwards, the government made overtures to the Church, the legal profession and the Press, primarily to start a dialogue between the state and civil society, but also to explain the parameters of the proposed political ‘opening’. This represented the first phase of a lengthy process that Alfred Stepan has referred to as a complex dialectic ‘between regime concession and societal conquest’.2 The fact that democratic institutions had been preserved by the regime, and also Geisel’s decision to allow the 1974 congressional elections to go ahead in a relatively democratic manner, were to be major factors in helping the opposition party, the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB), to use the 1974 federal elections as a 1 A detailed analysis of the Geisel administration can be found in Thomas E. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil 1964–85 (Oxford, 1988), and Elio Gaspari, A Ditadura Derrotada (São Paulo, 2003). 2 Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton, 1988), p. 39. For a succinct account of the rise of civil opposition to the military dictatorship, see Marcos Napolitano, Cultura e Poder no Brasil Contemporâneo (1977–1984) (Curitiba, 2002).

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platform to articulate demands for change. The surprising gains for the MDB at the expense of the official governmental party (ARENA) at these elections was a major shock for the regime, and also provided evidence of growing popular disillusionment with military rule. This public discontent was largely due to widespread concern over the effects of the economic crisis that developed in 1973–74 after the OPEC oil price shock in 1973 – a development that precipitated the end of the period that came to be dubbed the Brazilian ‘Economic Miracle’. Middle class support for the military, which had been crucial to the success of the 1964 coup, was suddenly in question because that sector of society now also found itself the victim of economic austerity together with the more traditionally economically disadvantaged. Geisel’s presidency also coincided with growing public debate about the role of multinational corporations in Brazil – a parliamentary enquiry in 1975 revealed that almost 50 per cent of Brazilian industry was under foreign control – and fears about potential loss of national sovereignty. As the debate on distensão widened, the business community’s criticism of the mismanagement of economic policy was replaced by the potentially politically more dangerous criticism of the regime itself.3 There was also a growing realization both within and outside the regime that the material benefits of the ‘Economic Miracle’ had failed to trickle down to the poorest in society and that issues of social inequality still needed to be addressed. These interconnected issues; national sovereignty, social inequality, and the need to bridge the deep divide between state and civil society were all vital factors that had a direct bearing on the government’s cultural policy. The Política Nacional de Cultura Faced with this rising groundswell of voices calling for change, and anxious to retain and regain support for their policies, Geisel and his ministers decided to take action. Together with a four-year economic plan for national development that was announced in 1975, the military launched a new initiative to promote Brazilian culture in a strategic move designed to reach out to the disaffected middle class, intellectuals and the artistic community. This decision was also undoubtedly prompted by the fact that despite eleven years in power the regime was unable to dominate the cultural high-ground that was still commanded by those opposed to the military.4 This was a shrewd tactic, as it involved relatively low financial commitment on the part of the regime whilst at the same time targeting the artistic community who fulfilled a key role as opinion formers in Brazilian society.5 The strategy was outlined in an important policy document entitled the Política Nacional de Cultura (PNC), which was produced by the Ministry of Education 3 Fernando Henrique Cardoso, ‘Entrepreneurs and the Transition Process: The Brazilian Case’, in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy, ed. by G. O’Donnell, P. Schmitter and L. Whitehead (Whitehead, 1986), pp. 137–53 (p. 144). 4 Gabriel Cohn, ‘A Concepção Oficial da Politíca Cultural nos anos 70’, in Estado e Cultura no Brasil, ed. by Sérgio Miceli (São Paulo, 1984), pp. 85–96 (p. 88). 5 Isaura Botelho, Romance de Formação: Funarte e Política Cultural 1976–1990 (Rio de Janeiro, 2001), p. 70.

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and Culture (MEC) in 1975.6 This document set out an influential new role for the government in the promotion of national culture, and also established a series of initiatives to promote the arts in general. Taking as its starting point a definition of culture in its widest sense, the document repeatedly stressed the high priority now accorded to cultural matters by the new administration: It is a priority target of the governmnent to promote the defence and the constant valorisation of national culture. President Ernesto Geisel has signalled that Brazilian development is not simply economic; it is above all social, and within that social development there is a special place for culture.7

The PNC called for a widening of participation in national culture, rejected its monopolization by a privileged elite, and argued in favour of equal access to culture for all. Much emphasis was made of the important role to be played by culture in strengthening and consolidating national identity. One of the key goals identified by the government’s strategy was: The protection, the safeguarding and the valorisation of the national historic and artistic heritage, and those traditional elements generally expressed in folklore and the popular arts, characteristics of our cultural personality, expressing the very feeling of nationality.8

This high importance placed on the need for the preservation and protection of the national cultural heritage is highlighted elsewhere in the document, where reference is made to ‘the safeguard of our cultural values, threatened by the massive imposition, through the new means of communication, of foreign values.9 However, as Renato Ortiz has observed, the PNC reflected a nostalgic view of culture, firmly rooted in the importance of celebrating the past rather than dealing with the complexities of the present.10 The cultural ramifications associated with the effects of Brazil’s rapid economic development and increasing urbanization were acknowledged by the report’s authors, who recognized that the recent technological advances in communications in Brazil had brought with them imported cultural and social values which were at variance with some aspects of existing Brazilian ethics: . . . how can we reconcile the preservation of what is characteristically ours with the incorporation and absorbtion of new cultural elements imposed by development, and at what point can we even reach agreement about this?11

6 A similar policy document was circulating in 1973 but was withdrawn, seemingly because it was felt that the moment was not right for such a strategy. Alberto Ribeiro da Silva, Sinal Fechado, p. 165. 7 Política Nacional de Cultura, p. 20. 8 Ibid., p. 24. 9 Ibid., p. 25. 10 Renato Ortiz, Cultura Brasileira e Identidade Nacional (São Paulo, 1985), pp. 97–8. 11 Política Nacional de Cultura, p. 28.


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Yet as Marcos Napolitano rightly points out, the irony here is that it was the military regime itself that was responsible for encouraging the massive influx of foreign investment into Brazil – a key factor in the explosive growth of the mass culture industry in the late 1960s to mid 1970s. The military were also highly instrumental in facilitating the rise of TV-Globo, an extremely powerful organization which had strong links with the U.S. Time-Life group, and which represented the epitome of cultural ‘norteamericanização’.12 The PNC repeatedly emphasized that the government did not wish to directly intervene in the spontaneity of the artistic process itself and that it viewed its role more as one of encouragement and sponsorship of all artistic endeavours rather than one of ‘command and control’. Nonetheless, it is important to note that strict artistic censorship was still firmly in place in 1975, the year in which for example, Banquete dos Mendigos (‘Beggars’ Banquet’, an LP by various Brazilian performers intended to raise funds for UN projects, which featured extracts from the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights) was abruptly seized by the censor, and Roque Santeiro (a controversial telenovela) was banned by the authorities before it could even be aired.13 These political and cultural contradictions reflect the struggle for influence between various factions within the administration at that time, and also indicate the delicate balance between forces in favour of a more liberal outlook to culture and those opposed to any such concessions. The PNC and Popular Music The action plan arising out of the PNC incorporated regional support for popular culture throughout Brazil together with increased assistance for national theatre, cinema, dance and literature. In terms of popular music, it is clear that the messages emanating from the Association of researchers in Brazilian popular music (APMPB) in 1975 and the Teatro Casa Grande debate (both discussed in Chapter 1) in April of the same year had had a significant bearing on the government’s thinking. For example, one of the PNC’s recommendations was that action should be taken to protect the authorship rights of musicians and composers working in the field of popular music, an issue that had led to the founding in late 1974 of the Brazilian Musical Society (Sombrás), an independent organization dedicated specifically to pressing the government on this issue.14 Other PNC recommendations were for the preservation of the historical treasures of Brazil, the conservation of the ‘cultural symbols of our history’, and greater support for the conservation of national and 12 Napolitano, Cultura Brasileira, p. 104. 13 During the period of the Geisel administration (1974–79) the Censorship Service of the Federal Police Department banned 840 songs. This compares to 47 films, 400 books and 117 plays that were banned during the same time. Ian Bruce, ‘Cinema censorship’, in Index on Censorship: Brazil, ed. by Michael Scammell (London, 1979), pp. 36–42 (p. 36). 14 Artists associated with Sombrás included Victor Martins, Gonzaguinha, Aldir Blanc, Jards Macalé, Gutemberg Guarabira, Caetano Veloso, Ivan Lins, Paulinho da Viola, Sueli Costa, Joyce, Sérgio Ricardo, Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque. For a detailed account of the struggle for musical authorship rights in Brazil, see Morelli, ‘Arrogantes, Anônimos, Subversivos’.

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individual archives.15 This echoes the open letter to Ney Braga from the inaugural meeting of the APMPB, which called for a national body dedicated to the ‘preservation, research and integrity of the popular cultural heritage’.16 Nevertheless, even if the PNC represented an attempt by the government to reach out to the middle class and the artistic community in a new atmosphere of ‘conciliation’ there was still a limit to the extent to which the government would consider taking direct action to protect the interests of Brazilian popular music. In 1976, Marlos Nobre was appointed by FUNARTE to set up the National Institute of Music, a body intended to promote the interests of both Brazilian popular and art music. Nobre was wholly in favour of raising the profile of traditional forms of regional music such as maracatú, frevo and embolada which had been largely neglected and marginalized but made it clear that more commercial Brazilian popular music would have to fend for itself in the marketplace, that is no action would be taken by the government to restrict the operations of multinational record companies operating within Brazil.17 It can therefore be argued that at this stage the administration was keen to be seen to be receptive to concerns about the ‘denationalization’ of Brazilian popular music but was in fact more concerned about not alienating foreign investors in Brazil. Perhaps this can be put into context when one considers that in 1975 the government passed legislation that obliged cinemas to show Brazilian films on at least 112 days of the year, and yet chose not to implement similar measures in the field of popular music. Reaction to the PNC from certain sections of the political left was, somewhat surprisingly, fairly positive. Despite their fundamental political opposition to the regime, many on the left welcomed the document’s nationalistic, critical view of the detrimental effects of imported mass culture in Brazil. Certain artists who felt marginalized by the multinational record companies operating in Brazil, that they considered to be more concerned with promoting foreign music than homegrown talent, thought that their careers might benefit from the new space in the market, which might open up following the report’s proposals.18 One of the areas of popular music that undoubtedly benefited from governmental support in the wake of the report was choro. Margarida Autran has explained the government’s motivation in this manner: If in 74/75 the government decided to promote spontaneous forms of culture which, like choro, were surviving in a marginal way, seeking to integrate then into the market, it is because they [the government] need a basis of ideological nourishment. It is within cultural forms that already have a popular basis that this nourishment will be sought. It is necessary to fill the cultural void, ‘interpreting’ the ‘fears and hopes’ of the masses and

15 Política Nacional de Cultura, p. 33. 16 Paulo Roberto Marins de Souza, ‘A preservação da memória musical em 11 sugestões’, Jornal do Brasil, 8/3/75. 17 Bubbi Leite Garcia, ‘É importante que o povo eleve seu gosto’, Opinião, 9/7/76, p. 28. Nobre attended the second ‘Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores de Música Popular Brasileira’ in 1976. 18 Napolitano, Cultura Brasileira, p. 104.


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imposing upon them new standards, in favour of the preservation of Brazilian ‘cultural identity’.19

The journalist and writer, Roberto Moura was also well aware that the state’s decision to promote choro, as opposed to other forms of popular music, was not coincidental because a purely instrumental form of music was unlikely to cause controversy or trouble the censor.20 From 1975 onwards, the Rio de Janeiro state government organized a series of live choro shows, and this was backed up by a vigorous press campaign to publicize the ‘rediscovery’ of choro. In 1977, the Brazilian record industry released a series of re-recordings of classic choro to cash in on the genre’s new-found popularity. This concerted effort to project choro into the public consciousness by national and state governments, the media, and record industry, was undoubtedly successful and resulted in a full-scale choro boom. The musical nationalists were delighted, as it highlighted the importance of an integral part of their conception of the traditional Brazilian musical heritage that was to be defended at all costs from the threat of dilution by foreign influences.21 As Tamara Livingston-Isenhour and Thomas Garcia have clearly demonstrated, there was nothing accidental about this re-birth of choro: it was the direct result of an intervention by a middle-class cultural elite of academics, journalists and critics who acted as a ‘revivalist community’ in championing choro as an ‘authentic’ alternative to contemporary ‘contaminated’ culture.22 FUNARTE: From Repression to Co-option? During the Geisel Aministration (1974–79), state involvement in culture intensified as never before. This period was marked by the establishment of the National Council on Copyright (1975), the National Council for Cinema (1976) and the Campaign for the defence of Brazilian folklore (1975) amongst others. The creation of FUNARTE in 1975 was one of the most significant developments in the growth of the state as a cultural mediator, at least in terms of the impact on popular culture and music. FUNARTE was to be nationally responsible for three areas that did not already come under the jurisdiction of the MEC, namely, the plastic arts, folklore, and music. FUNARTE’s remit was to act primarily as a support body, sponsoring artistic development and projects, and working towards the preservation and promotion of cultural values characteristic of the povo. FUNARTE’s ethos was directly derived from the PNC, and Roberto Parreira, the organization’s first executive director, 19 Margarida Autran, ‘“Renascimento” e descaracterização do choro’, in Anos 70: Música Popular, ed. by Adauto Novaes (Rio de Janeiro, 1979), pp. 65–75 (p. 68). 20 Ibid. 21 Ironically, many choro compositions were originally adapted from foreign polkas, tangos, waltzes and the schottische, which became known in Brazil as xote. Perhaps even more ironically, North American ragtime was also an influence on choro. 22 Tamara Livingston-Isenhour and Thomas Garcia, Choro: a social history of Brazilian popular music (Bloomington, 2005), pp. 131–2. See also Tamara E. Livingston, ‘Music revivals: towards a general theory’, Ethnomusicology 43/1 (1999): 66–85.

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was also involved in the drafting of the PNC. He was adamant that the PNC was concerned above all with combating the ‘de-characterisation of Brazilian culture’ and the importance of defending national culture.23 FUNARTE’s role with specific reference to popular music was four-fold: first, to stimulate the production of new artistic output; second, to support the work of popular music researchers; third, to fund the recording of ‘culturally significant’ music, and fourth, to investigate the failure of legislation designed to ensure an adequate percentage of Brazilian music being aired on radio and television.24 All these objectives directly reflected the concerns of the APMPB, which had been pressurizing Ney Braga, the Minister of Education and Culture, to take action in these areas. Following representations from the APMPB, Braga had commissioned a survey among composers, researchers and those involved in the record industry to investigate the so-called ‘de-characterization’ of Brazilian music by foreign influences, and the absence of any adequate archives relating to national popular music.25 The results of the surveys commissioned by Braga confirmed the seriousness of the problems facing the Brazilian music industry and the report concluded that if no preventative measures were taken the creative force of Brazilian popular music might disappear altogether. However, as I have demonstrated, the government was only prepared to go so far in its support of popular music, and as I will explain shortly, the decision was made to support the FUNARTE-sponsored Projeto Pixinguinha, rather than attempt to impose restrictions on imported popular music in Brazil. The severity of censorship in the artistic field between 1968 and 1973 and the continuing arbitrary effects of censorship during Geisel’s period of office made it difficult for many working in the cultural sphere to know how to respond to the government’s newly discovered interest in culture. Suspicion and disbelief were rife among intellectuals and artists, who naturally speculated that the prospect of a more liberal approach to the arts was unlikely while the Ministry for Justice still held sway over all aspects of censorship.26 It is precisely for that reason that the Teatro Casa Grande cultural debates in 1975, referred to in Chapter 1, were so symbolically significant: by permitting such a large gathering of young people who were potentially hostile to the regime (for the first time since the imposition of the fifth Institutional Act in 1968) it was made clear that there was substance to the new government’s avowed desire to enter into a dialogue about fresh cultural and political directions. The fact that the negative impact of censorship on the arts was itself widely discussed at the Teatro Casa Grande debates was further evidence of a government that was less inclined to clamp down at the slightest suggestion of dissent, and one that was more amenable to cultural and political dialogue.

23 Botelho, Romance de Formação, p. 68. 24 Margarida Autran, ‘O Estado e o músico popular: de marginal a instrumento’, in Anos 70: Música Popular, ed. by Adauto Novaes (Rio de Janeiro, 1979), pp. 91–100 (p. 95). 25 Ana Maria Bahiana, ‘O ministro e a música’, Opinião, 20/12/74, p. 20. 26 For more on the effects of censorship on popular music during this period see Silva (1994) and Araújo (2002). Interesting information on the effects of censorship in general in Brazil can also be found in Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro (ed.) (2001).


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Nonetheless, several political commentators within Brazil are still highly sceptical of the motives behind Geisel and Golbery’s overtures towards civil society at this time. Renato Franco for example, makes the point that the policy of hard-line censorship prior to 1974 had already achieved its objectives, and that by 1975 it had actually become an anachronism that impeded the government’s wider political aims. The slightly more relaxed attitude towards artistic censorship under Geisel was also advantageous for the administration in cultural and political terms in two ways: it gave the impression to the public that things were generally becoming more ‘democratic’, and it also wrong-footed intellectuals and artists, who were now obliged to move from a position of out-and-out opposition to the regime. The latter were now faced with a dilemma: either they remained implacably opposed to the regime, thereby missing the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of any potential newfound artistic freedom, or they collaborated with the military in the hope that things really were about to change for the better and found themselves in the invidious position of possibly being accused of being ‘co-opted’ by the regime.27 This policy of the attempted ‘co-option and control’ of the artistic and intellectual community by the Geisel administration has been discussed by Flora Sussekind, who sees it as forming part of a wider strategy on the part of a government who were anxious to attract the support of those capable of winning over public opinion in favour of the regime’s new policies. She also highlights the comparisons that were drawn at the time between the paternalistic and interventionist cultural policies of Geisel, and those of the Vargas regime forty years earlier.28 What is particularly intriguing about the situation in 1975 is that some of the newly-formed or revamped government organizations responsible for culture, such as Embrafilme and FUNARTE, began to employ staff, some of whom had been previously opposed to, and in some cases persecuted by, the military regime.29 The influx of dynamic young employees, many of them artists and musicians returning from extensive periods abroad, immediately brought an atmosphere of creative tension to FUNARTE. Highly unusually for a Brazilian government department, these employees were extremely irreverent in their attitudes towards the political administration and did not consider themselves ‘state functionaries’ in any traditional sense. Furthermore, they were accorded a large degree of autonomy in the direction of their projects and were not, at least in the early years, subjected to a high degree

27 Renato Franco, ‘Política e Cultura no Brasil: 1969–1979’, (Des)Figurações. Perspectivas. (Revista de Ciêcias Socias,UNESP) 17–18 (1994), 59–74 (p. 68). 28 Flora Sussekind, Literatura e Vida Literária: Polêmicas, diários & retratos (Rio de Janeiro, 1985), p. 22. Official state intervention in the cultural field in Brazil started in the 1930s with the creation of the Ministério de Educação e da Saúde under the administration of Getúlio Vargas. During the period 1936–45, large numbers of renowned intellectuals and artists worked within that state apparatus helping to promote the official view of national culture. For an analysis of the ‘co-option’ of these intellectuals, see Sérgio Miceli, Intelectuais e classe dirigente no Brasil, 1920–1945 (São Paulo, 1984). See also, Daryle Williams, Culture wars in Brazil: the first Vargas regime, 1930–1945 (Durham, 2001) for a stimulating account of the development of cultural policies under Vargas. 29 Sussekind, Literatura e Vida Literária, p. 23.

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of bureaucratic constraint.30 Under Roberto Parreira’s direction, FUNARTE was determined to re-invigorate cultural activity throughout the country, and in his own words FUNARTE ‘opened space at the municipal level; injected resources locally, stimulated cultural development in the most varied regions and situations throughout Brazil (his emphasis)’.31 This decision to focus on the local was crucial to the initial decision to support the Projeto Pixinguinha in 1977 and also the continuing support devoted to the various editions of the project over the following decades. The Projeto Pixinguinha and the ‘rescue’ of MPB Overview The inspiration behind the Projeto Pixinguinha came from a series of live shows of popular music held in Rio de Janeiro in 1976. These shows took place in the Teatro João Caetano, and became known as ‘seis e meia’ [six-thirty] because they were targeted at people who worked in the centre of the city who were on their way home from work. Tickets were deliberately priced at low levels to attract ordinary working people who might not normally be able to afford to attend such events. The idea for this initiative came from Albino Pinheiro, who invited Hermínio Bello de Carvalho to take charge of the artistic direction of the shows. Both Pinheiro and Carvalho were concerned about the large numbers of working people who were faced with long queues for buses in the rush hour at the end of the day in the Praça Tiradentes, on which the theatre was situated. Their imaginative idea was to provide accessible, well-produced, cheap entertainment for those people, for a period of an hour or so before the regular theatre-going audience arrived at the Teatro João Caetano, by which time traffic congestion would have eased in the area.32 Hermínio Bello de Carvalho had been elected vice-president of Sombrás in 1974 and he was a prominent figure in that organization’s struggle for the recognition of authorship rights for composers and musicians. Following the overwhelming initial success of Seis e Meia, he presented the idea of a similar project through the auspices of Sombrás to the Minister for Culture, who passed it to Roberto Parreira at FUNARTE. Carvalho’s distinguished career as a cultural activist in Brazil started in the mid 1960s, when he produced the famous ‘rosa de ouro’ [golden rose] shows that were largely responsible for the rediscovery of the talents of the singer, Clementina de Jesus and instrumentalist, Jacob do Bandolim amongst others. Carvalho has also written extensively as a poet, journalist and novelist, and has composed several songs in collaboration with artists such as Paulinho da Viola, Cartola, and Chico Buarque. Throughout his career, Carvalho has consistently championed the need for the protection of the tradition of ‘authentic’ Brazilian popular music against the encroachments of foreign popular music and he was a leading figure, along with 30 Botelho, Romance de Formação, pp. 65–6. 31 Ibid., p. 70. 32 Author interview with Hermínio Bello de Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, 26/9/03. Carvalho had originally seen a similar series of shows at the Théatre da la Ville whilst on holiday in Paris in 1973.


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Sérgio Cabral and Paulinho da Viola, in fostering the choro boom of the 1970s. In many ways, his role as a defender of these values has taken as its point of departure the writings of Mário de Andrade, and he is fond of quoting Mário’s phrase: ‘It is necessary to “brazilianise” the Brazilians’. He is a self-styled ‘anti-colonialist’ and is fond of nailing his colours to the mast with comments such as, ‘culture should be treated as if it was an aspect of national security’, and ‘music is also part of ecology. Our rhythms, dances and habits are integrated into our ecosystem, they are defining markers of our cultural identity’.33 When Carvalho took his proposal to FUNARTE in early 1977 it was because he was deeply concerned about the increasingly restricted space for MPB in the national music industry and the domination of the media by foreign popular music.34 As I demonstrated in Chapter 1, these preoccupations about declining standards in Brazilian popular music and unfair competition with foreign music were also shared by organizations such as the APMPB, Sombrás, and various journalists writing in the Brazilian media at the time. Roberto Parreira accepted Carvalho’s proposal enthusiastically, although the initial amount of funding provided by FUNARTE was minimal. Nevertheless, the Projeto Pixinguinha was born and the first show took place in Rio de Janeiro on 5 August 1977. The project’s broad objectives went further than merely providing low-cost musical entertainment for inner-city workers. Adopting the slogan ‘creating new cultural spaces without encroaching on those that already exist’, the Projeto Pixinguinha sought to ‘open up the work market for Brazilian musicians’.35 By utilizing theatres that would normally have been empty at 6.30 p.m. the project aimed to provide entertainment by ‘the best names in Brazilian popular music’ combined with the ‘creation of new audiences and new cultural habits for a public that is approachable but that is also needy and not normally present at this type of leisure activity’.36 This attempt to reach out to the poor and ‘culturally dispossessed’ was one of the most radical notions at the heart of the project: it was conceived as a means to open cultural windows for a previously excluded mass audience.37 The Projeto Pixinguinha’s typical format was to present two or three artists on the same evening, one of the artists being well known, but not currently in the media spotlight, and at least one other performer that was relatively unknown to the public. This was designed to remind the public of musicians and performers that had fallen out of the limelight and at the same time introduce them to new names working in the same field of ‘quality music’. The other main objective of the project was to take Brazilian popular music out of the dominant cultural centres of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and make it accessible to those living all over Brazil. As an early report on the project published by FUNARTE proudly stated: ‘For the first time some cities will

33 34 35 36 37

Hermínio Bello de Carvalho, O Samba É Minha Nobreza (Rio de Janeiro, n.d.), p. 5. Anon, ‘Música, ação. Vem aí o Projeto Pixinguinha’, Jornal da Tarde, 28/6/77. Anon, Projeto Pixinguinha (Rio de Janeiro, n.d.), p. 1. Ibid. Author interview with Hermínio Bello de Carvalho.

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have a regular, daily programme of popular music for the public at large, for people who rarely have the opportunity to watch a musical show in a theatre.38 In 1977 shows were presented in Curitiba, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte, and over the following two years the project reached cities such as Manaus, Cuiabá and Belém in the North, and João Pessoa, Natal and Salvador in the Northeast. In 1983 the project modified its approach by starting all shows with a performance by a regional performer, chosen by local representatives, followed by artists brought from Rio de Janeiro. In 1984 the process was reversed when regional performers toured Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The early years of the Projeto Pixinguinha were a period when music was truly taken to the masses in accordance with the guidelines set out in the PNC. Between 1978 and 1979 the project was responsible for 1468 shows all over the country reaching a total audience of more than one million people39 and by 1987 the project had visited 46 cities in 22 different states.40 The project’s fortunes have fluctuated in the intervening years, largely due to the effects of financial constraints, and the fact that it has been used as a political football at various times. Despite being suspended between 1997 and 2004 it remains the longest-running and most successful project of its type in Brazil. The Projeto Pixinguinha within the Broader Political Context To fully understand the importance of the Projeto Pixinguinha and why the government was so supportive of it, particularly in the late 1970s, it is necessary to take a wider view of the state’s cultural orientation at the time. As previously indicated, in 1974 Geisel’s administration took the first step towards what was to become a long drawn-out political process of re-democratization within Brazil. The new direction in cultural policies, enshrined in the PNC and designed to be implemented by FUNARTE, was one that was intended to appeal to specific interest groups within Brazil. As I have mentioned, the disaffected middle class, artists and intellectuals were the primary target of this policy change, due to their important role as opinion-shapers. The new emphasis on culture was also designed to present a more ‘human’ face to a regime that had hitherto largely been characterized by repression and brutality. But the PNC also called for a widening of participation in national culture beyond the confines of the middle class: A small intelectual elite, both political and economic, can lead the development process. But that situation cannot continue for long. It is neccessary that everyone benefits from the resulting achievements. And for this to take place it is neccessary that all, equally, participate in national culture. From this awareness we come to the conclusion that the Política Nacional de Cultura, as conceived by this Ministry, is not intended just for the priveliged few, but for all Brazilians.41

38 Anon, Projeto Pixinguinha, p. 1. 39 Autran, ‘O Estado e o músico popular’, p. 98. 40 Aramis Millarch, ‘Um projeto que deu certo’, O Estado do Paraná, 18/5/89. [accessed 10 June 2007]. 41 Política Nacional de Cultura, pp. 9–10.


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This aspiration to bring national forms of culture to the broad mass of the population also contains a distinct element of ‘anti-elitism’ that no doubt reflects the recognition at the time that the sympathy of the majority of the artistic and intellectual ‘elites’ was still aligned with opponents of the regime.42 Thus, there exists a palpable tension within the text of the PNC that demonstrates a desire to create a cultural agenda capable of appealing at one and the same time to the middle class and also to the masses. That tension also manifested itself within the early years of FUNARTE, due to the influx of anti-establishment, and anti-regime, middle-class intellectuals who were charged with organizing and administering the new cultural strategy. Theories of the ‘co-option and control’ of these artists and intellectuals by the regime during this period are strongly refuted by Hermínio Bello de Carvalho, who argues that he and his colleagues working on the Projeto Pixinguinha in the late 1970s were not ‘co-opted’ in any sense by the administration. On the contrary, Carvalho is adamant that if anything FUNARTE was actually ‘taken over’ by the artists and intellectuals working within it, and that they formed a nucleus of cultural resistance to the regime at the time.43 Such a situation would have been unthinkable only a few years previously, and some credence is given to Carvalho’s claims by the fact that the Projeto Pixinguinha was never subjected to any form of censorship or governmental interference.44 The decision of the Brazilian administration to introduce a new cultural strategy in 1975 also reflects a growing preoccupation with governmental approaches to culture on a global scale at the time. As Roger Wallis and Krister Malm have demonstrated, the 1970s was a decade in which large numbers of developing nations formulated cultural policies as part of their quest to define national identity.45 With the advent of distensão, and the gradual moves to a wider form of political abertura [opening] the Brazilian military were increasingly keen to improve their profile, not only at home but also abroad. Participation at UNESCO conferences, such as the one held in Bogotá in 1978, clearly influenced the cultural policies developed within Brazil under the auspices of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs (SEAC), a government body concerned with the overall direction of cultural policy that was formed in 1979. UNESCO’s line at this time was to stress the need for developing nations to incorporate the regional into the national in terms of planning, and also the importance of the cultural aspect of national development, particularly for the poorest sectors of society.46 SEAC’s initial cultural policy was to specifically target its efforts towards those on low incomes and the regions. As Botelho indicates, the government’s thinking was that art could be put to a more far-reaching purpose: ‘The work in the area of culture would therefore be the driving force of a wide-ranging policy, at the same time providing a response

42 Gabriel Cohn, ‘A Concepção Oficial da Política Cultural’, p. 89. 43 Author interview 26/9/03. 44 Author interview 26/9/03. This is also confirmed by Paulo Cesar Soares who has been involved in the administration of Projeto Pixinguinha since its inception. Author interview with Soares, 29/6/04. 45 Roger Wallis and Krister Malm, Big Sounds from Small Peoples: The Music Industry in Small Countries (London, 1984), p. 217. 46 Botelho, Romance de Formação, pp. 80–81.

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to social problems within the country.’47 This observation is particularly relevant when one considers that 1979 marked the start of a period of accelerating inflation within Brazil and the rise of massive strikes by organized labour against the regime all over the country. Taking into account these general political factors it is clear to see why FUNARTE provided support to the Projeto Pixinguinha. With its emphasis on the importance of regional culture, its subsidized ticket prices, its general orientation towards ordinary working people, and its attempt to link the local and the national, the project could be seen to fulfil many of the objectives set out by UNESCO and SEAC. Addressing the Imbalance: the Promotion of ‘Quality Music’ The defensive, conservative view of national culture contained in the PNC can also be detected in the type of popular music that the state decided to support through the auspices of FUNARTE and the Projeto Pixinguinha. A phrase that is frequently associated with the project by its creators is the desire to promote ‘música de boa qualidade’ [quality music] which broadly means in practice the championing of music that falls into the category of MPB. What needs to be stressed is that the Projeto Pixinguinha was conceived first and foremost as a cultural riposte to the intensification of distribution and media presence of foreign music within Brazil during the 1970s that I outlined in the previous chapter, and which culminated in the disco craze that engulfed Brazil in 1977–78, symbolized by the massive success of Dancin’ Days, the extremely popular telenovela of that period.48 Hermínio Bello de Carvalho already had extensive experience of negotiating with the government in his role as representative for Sombrás. During that period he repeatedly recommended that the government take remedial measures to reverse the decline in fortunes of Brazilian musicians and composers, who were finding it harder and harder to find work due to the dominance of multinational record companies in Brazil that on his opinion were more concerned with promoting imported music that would generate greater profits for those companies. Carvalho contented that the so-called ‘crisis’ in Brazilian popular music that the media were so fond of referring to at this time was not due to a lack of local talent, but that it was rather that any emerging talent was denied a suitable outlet in which to flourish.49 This was linked by him to the declining number of venues for live music in Brazil, a factor that was exacerbated by the rising popularity of discotheques in 1978 which, it was frequently argued, was killing the market for live music and threatening the livelihood of professional musicians.50 As I have previously indicated, the government ultimately shied away from enforcing statutory measures to increase the percentage of Brazilian 47 Botelho, Romance de Formação, p. 81. 48 Author interview with Paulo Cesar Soares, 25/9/03. 49 Anon, ‘Em defesa da música nacional?’, Jornal da Tarde, 16/8/77. 50 This issue was periodically debated in the press. See for example, Fernando Sombra and Magdalena de Almeida ‘Triste situação a dos músicos. Tocando e cantando quase de graça’, O Estado de São Paulo, 20/1/75, p. 23; and Wagner Carelli, ‘Emprego: nota que 80 mil músicos desconhecem’, O Estado de São Paulo, 17/7/77, p. 26.


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music broadcast on radio and television or played in nightclubs, and chose instead to provide financial support for Carvalho’s Projeto Pixinguinha, which it was hoped would go some way towards providing that type of outlet for live music. Carvalho was fundamentally concerned about the preservation of the legacy of the historical roots of Brazilian popular music. His overwhelming interest in continuing the work started by Mário de Andrade shaped his vision of what type of musical tradition should be preserved, and also what type of music should be excluded from that tradition. In the early years of the Projeto Pixinguinha, a committee of people working in the general field of music were chosen to select the artists who would feature in the live shows. The idea of resuscitating the careers of artists who were now finding it difficult to gain media exposure and helping to launch the career of artists working within the same general parameters of ‘música de boa qualidade’ was intended to revitalize Brazilian popular music by ‘publicising national music and reactivating the market with raw material of the highest level, eminently ours’ (my emphasis).51 It was also a strategy that was designed to create a symbolic link with the traditions of the great Brazilian musical stars of the past in the minds of younger generations, and thereby rescue that tradition from a position of potential cultural oblivion. The ‘quality’ of the artists chosen for the project in the late 1970s was of far greater importance than their potential commercial appeal: artists were deliberately selected who would find it almost impossible to obtain exposure through the normal commercial channels.52 To provide some idea of the type of music supported by the Projeto Pixinguinha, the combinations of artists appearing together in 1977, the first year of the project, included Nana Caymmi and Ivan Lins; Clementina de Jesus, João Bosco and Conjunto Exporta Samba; Marília Medalha and Zé Keti; Beth Carvalho and Nelson Cavaquinho; Marlene and Gonzaguinha. In 1978 a FUNARTE document referred to the diversity of music brought to the public by the project so far: From Macalé and Kid Morengueira’s delightful samba to the tuneful voice of Alaíde Costa; from the black force of Clementina to the explosiveness of Marlene; from the sorrowful lament of the Quinteto Violado to the songs of rejection of Marisa Gata Mansa; from the provocative poetics of Gonzaguinha to the crazy frevo of Moraes Moreira; from the classical guitar of Turíbio Santos to the rustic moda de viola of de Canhoto da Paraíba, the Projeto Pixinguinha represents Brazilian popular music conquering and occupying the space that it deserves, in the minds and the hearts of an increasingly large number of Brazilians.53

The list of artists that have passed through the project over the years reads like a roll call of the great and the good of MPB.54 Samba veterans such as Cartola, Monarco, and Elza Soares, rubbed shoulders with bossa nova icons likes João Donato, Carlos 51 Anon, Projeto Pixinguinha, p. 1. 52 Ibid., p. 4. 53 Anon, Obrigado Pixinguinha. Milésima apresentação (Rio de Janeiro, 1978), pp. 7–8. 54 For a full list of artists between 1977–97 see FUNARTE’s website:, accessed 1 May 2007. Note, the first two numerals relates to the year of the show. All shows presented by Projeto Pixinguinha were recorded, and at the time of writing FUNARTE was planning to digitalize these archive recordings to make them available to researchers and the public.

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Lyra and Leny Andrade. Artists at the start of their careers such as Simone, Djavan and Carlinhos Vergueiro were presented to the public alongside seasoned campaigners such as Tito Madi, Jackson do Pandeiro, Radamés Gnatalli and Nelson Sargento. Performers’ salaries and travelling costs were paid for by FUNARTE but these were not excessive, especially in the early years when the project was run on a shoestring. As the project moved around the country like a musical caravan to increasingly far-flung destinations, its orientation changed slightly as it was recognized that it was important to highlight the regional music of the cities that were visited, and in later years the aspect of circulating popular music within the nation took on more prominence within the project. This was supplemented by the creation of festivals of regional music known as Feiras Pixinguinhas [Pixinguinha Fairs] in cities such as Belém and Salvador, where regional artists were recorded by FUNARTE, and the recordings issued as LPs that were distributed around Brazil. Although the Projeto Pixinguinha has promoted a great number of artists over the years it would also be true to say that those artists have almost entirely been associated with a conception of Brazilian popular music that does not stray too far from the conventional. The type of popular music showcased by the project has always been one that is centred on performers operating principally in the fields of samba, bossa nova and MPB. Performers from the idioms of Brazilian rock music, reggae, música sertaneja, brega, or in recent times funk and rap, have been conspicuous by their absence. The organizers of the Projeto Pixinguinha would doubtless argue that more ‘commercial’ musical genres such as these have countless other means by which they can promote themselves through the mainstream media but it is clear that the choice of artists presented by the project has reflected a largely elitist taste rather than showcasing the more ‘populist’ music that is regularly consumed by the vast majority of the population. That the project should have at its core a desire to resurrect music of the past is perhaps not surprising: it was after all named after the emblematic composer and musician who symbolized to Herminío Bello de Carvalho (and others such as Almirante and Lúcio Rangel, see Chapter 1) all that was truly national and ‘uncontaminated’ in Brazilian popular music. Carvalho has been one of those responsible for continuing the gradual process of ‘canonization’ of Pixinguinha, frequently referring to him as a ‘saint’ and working ceaselessly to ensure that his memory is preserved. This idolization of Pixinguinha is reflected in the words of Ary Vasconcellos, who wrote in 1964: If you had 15 books to talk about the whole of Brazilian popular music rest assured that it would not be enough. But if you only had one word, all is not lost; quickly write: Pixinguinha.55

It would be foolish to attempt to deny the central role played by Pixinguinha in the development of popular music in Brazil in the twentieth century. However, the point at issue here is that as Bryan McCann has expertly demonstrated, Pixinguinha, choro, and the velha guarda revival movement of the 1950s, of which Pixinguinha was the key figure, have all been used as potent symbols of cultural resistance against the

55 Panorama da Música Popular Brasileira (São Paulo, 1964), p. 84.


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‘Americanization’ of Brazilian music for decades.56 The Projeto Pixinguinha is a continuation of that fight against the ‘dilution’ of Brazilian popular music, which in turn forms part of an ongoing wider debate about anxieties surrounding the ‘cultural invasion’ in Brazil that dates back to at least the 1930s and which continues even to this day in some quarters. The figures relating to the number of people who have attended shows organized by the Projeto Pixinguinha project over the years are unquestionably impressive. What is perhaps rather less clear is whether the type of audience originally targeted by the project has been consistently reached. Official statistics obtained during the period 1977–80 showed that the audiences at the events organized by the project were of all ages and reflected the diversity of Brazilian society, including students, teachers, office workers and housewives.57 Paulo Cesar Soares, who was responsible for the administration and artistic direction of the project for many years, also confirms that the typical audience profile tended to be heterogeneous and representative of all social classes.58 However, on one infamous occasion in Curitiba in 1985, the project’s target audience of the less-advantaged did not react favourably to the musical spectacle set before them. The city’s local cultural department distributed 2000 tickets for a show by Elizeth Cardoso (a grande dame of bossa nova) to people living in low-cost housing projects. Due to an administrative mix-up those who were invited thought that they would be attending a show by Menudo, Os Tremendos or Gretchen (all of whom were ‘populist’ artists performing locally at the same time). When it became clear that the show did not feature those artists, the audience vented their displeasure by giving Elizeth Cardoso a ferocious reception, with much booing, and shouts such as ‘We want Menudo!’ and ‘Enough of this! We came here to see Os Tremendos!’59 A local journalist dismissed the hostility shown towards Elizeth Cardoso and the approval demonstrated for ‘low-class’ artists such as Gretchen and Menudo at the time as being merely a manifestation of bad manners by an uneducated audience.60 Yet this particular audience surely represented exactly the sector of society that the Projeto Pixinguinha was established to reach, and although it should be stressed that this was an isolated occurrence, it is nevertheless an interesting example of the reaction of a ‘culturally deprived’ audience who refused to be cajoled into liking the type of music that it had been rather patronizingly decided should appeal to them.

56 Hello Hello Brazil, pp. 160–80. 57 J. Kosinski de Cavalcanti, ‘Pixinguinha, um projeto carinhoso’, Cultura 36 (1981), 18–22, (p. 20). 58 Author interview with Paulo Cesar Soares, 29/6/04. 59 Aramis Millarch, ‘Elizeth Cardoso foi humilhada no Guaíra’, Estado do Paraná, 20/8/85. [accessed 10 June 2007]. 60 Aramis Millarch, ‘Repercussão nacional das vaias a Elizeth’, Estado do Paraná, 22/8/85. [accessed 10 June 2007].

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The Impact of the Projeto Pixinguinha The critical reception to the Projeto Pixinguinha in its initial period was unanimously positive, with some writers quick to praise the project’s attempt to turn the tide against foreign music: . . . at last someone has started to pay due attention to our music, preserving the most authentic and honest values – and not the aural rubbish that the multinational record companies impose on us and which the middle and upper classes in their flighty parties consume in their expensive ‘discotheques’.61

Subsequent press coverage has stressed the importance of the project in keeping alive the careers of musical stars of the past. The project has also enabled artists to reach out to a different kind of audience who would not normally attend their shows due to the cost of tickets, or revealed to artists the true extent of the affection that is felt for them in different regions of Brazil, that they were perhaps unaware of.62 As one of the principal flagships of FUNARTE’s cultural policy, the Projeto Pixinguinha still retains a considerable aura of prestige due to its sheer longevity. Its long-term significance lies in the fact that it has been virtually the only statesupported enterprise linked with popular music over the last forty years. In artistic terms, perhaps the most refreshing aspect of the project has been the way in which it has consistently juxtaposed performances by older performers with those at the start of their careers and demonstrated that a market exists among younger audiences for the music of veterans such as Inezita Barroso and Oswaldinho do Acordeon, to name but two of many. By raising the profile of such artists, the project has represented an alternative, but essentially conservative view of MPB that differs from that provided by mainstream record labels and the mass media. In that sense, it has complemented the music policy of small independent labels such as Kuarup and CPC-UMES, that have also fought to provide an alternative to the mainstream, and who have managed to establish a niche market for their output. The repercussions of the Projeto Pixinguinha go beyond the strict confines of the shows produced under its auspices. It has inspired a number of smaller, similar projects all over Brazil, such as Projeto Moqueca (Vitória), Segundas musicais (Salvador), Show da tarde (Belo Horizonte), Projeto Luís Assunção (Fortaleza) and many others since the 1970s.63 It has also provided the opportunity to train a large number of people in cities all over Brazil in the skills required to produce shows, such as direction, script-writing, lighting and the like. It has helped to inspire the refurbishment of theatres in cities such as Maceió, Porto Alegre and Brasília and led

61 Aramis Millarch, ‘João & Clementina’, Estado do Paraná, 25/8/77. [accessed 10 June 2007]. 62 Cavalcanti, Pixinguinha, um projeto carinhoso, pp. 19–20. 63 In June 2004, I attended a ‘Seis e Meia’ type show at the Teatro João Caetano in Rio de Janeiro, which featured the 80-year-old sambista, Nelson Sargento. The cost of entrance was the equivalent of when the Projeto Pixinguinha started, i.e. little more that the price of a pack of cigarettes.


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to the building of a major theatre specifically to house live music in São Paulo.64 The early years of the project coincided with a massive resurgence of interest in Brazilian popular music in Brazil itself, particularly in 1980 (as outlined in the previous chapter). Although this new focus on national music was largely due to a decision by record companies to promote Brazilian music, major artists such as Simone and Djavan who formed part of that boom received their initial exposure to the public by featuring in shows organized by the project. The Projeto Pixinguinha played some part in preparing the ground for that boom by re-introducing the public across the nation to the existence of Brazilian popular music at a time when it was still largely out of favour with the media. One of the other achievements of the project was to successfully raise the profile of instrumental music, particularly Brazilian jazz, which went on to undergo its own mini-boom in the 1980s. The Projeto Pixinguinha has also impacted on the wider sphere of MPB by keeping the compositions of older artists in the public consciousness. By providing exposure for these artists, the project has acted as a source of artistic inspiration for younger, more mainstream performers who record compositions from the past, and consequently bring them to a far wider, younger public.65 Conclusion The Geisel administration’s decision to adopt a new approach to culture in 1975 was taken at a crucial moment in the formation of the military’s move to open a dialogue with civil society. Proposals similar to those contained in the Política Nacional de Cultura had been existence in 1973 but it was only in 1975, with the new administration hesitantly proposing a strategy of distensão, that the document was given the green light. Although the PNC reflected an attempt to win the hearts and minds of a culturally aware public (particularly the middle class) there is an obvious anomaly in that it was launched at a time of continuing cultural censorship by the government, thereby demonstrating the politically fluid nature of the period. What can be detected within the text of the PCN is the undeniable influence of various pressure groups such as the APMPB, and the impact of the public debates at the Teatro Casa Grande, both of which had brought home to the administration public disquiet about what was seen as an ongoing ‘de-nationalization’ of national culture and popular music. The establishment of FUNARTE in 1975 opened the door for greater state support for national culture, particularly in the form of music. FUNARTE’s ethos was directly derived from the conservative view of national culture contained in the PNC, and Hermínio Bello de Carvalho’s proposal that became the Projeto Pixinguinha, with its concept of the defence of a tradition of national popular music, fell neatly into the category of cultural initiative that FUNARTE wished to promote. Nevertheless, that does not explain why the Projeto Pixinguinha was so successful. It obviously touched a chord with the public, who flocked to the shows

64 Cavalcanti, Pixinguinha, um projeto carinhoso, pp. 20–21. 65 Author interview with Paulo Cesar Soares, 29/6/04.

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it promoted. It may be that many of those who attended saw the shows as a cheap form of entertainment; it may be that many were making the point that they wished to ‘defend’ national music by their presence. Quite probably, for many people it was a combination of both these factors. The Projeto Pixinguinha certainly increased the aura of importance surrounding MPB by promoting the idea that this type of music merited being supported, cherished and defended, and as it was a national project it propagated that notion around the country as a whole. In certain aspects, the Projeto Pixinguinha acted as a forerunner for Rumos Itaú Cultural Música (discussed in Chapter 7), the principal similarities being that the Projeto Pixinguinha set out to create space in the market for Brazilian artists and was also concerned to emphasize the importance of regional music by creating a platform for that music to circulate within Brazil. However, the difference between the two projects lies in the inherently greater musical conservatism of the Projeto Pixinguinha that seems to make it unlikely that the project will open up to the vast musical hybridity that exists in Brazil today. Champions of the Projeto Pixinguinha, such as Paulo Cesar Soares argue that it is still necessary today, precisely because of the continued lack of media space for the type of music endorsed by the project. Soares makes the point that paradoxically, at a time when MPB enjoys such a high profile worldwide, there is still much ignorance in Brazil itself about the history and tradition of popular music produced nationally.66 Hermínio Bello de Carvalho also feels that the long-term significance of the project, and its overall legacy, was that it started to generate a debate about memory, tradition, and popular music in Brazil.67 This nationalistic determination not to allow the musical achievements of the past to be subsumed by the music of the present is reminiscent of the motives that inspired Marcus Pereira to record Brazilian regional music in the 1970s, whose work I will analyse in the following chapter.

66 Author interview with Paulo Cesar Soares, 29/6/04. 67 Author interview with Hermínio Bello de Carvalho.

Chapter 6

Musical Mapping: Locating and Defending the Regional1* The belief that Brazilian rural folk music was endangered and on the verge of extinction inspired several expeditions during the twentieth century that were designed to record that music for posterity. These expeditions were motivated by three main factors: the need to utilize rural music as an artistic source of inspiration for composers of national art music; a desire to educate the Brazilian public about its music heritage, and a reflection of the concern that this regional musical tradition might vanish under the onslaught of urbanization, modernization, and the absorption of cosmopolitan influences. This chapter examines two of the most important of these projects that attempted to create a ‘musical map’ of Brazil by investigating and recording aspects of the diversity and richness of the nation’s regional popular music. The first of these was Mário de Andrade’s pioneering Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas (MPF) of 1938, which was complemented by the more extensive later work of Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil (1973–77). Mário and Pereira’s projects were guided to a substantial degree by a conception of the need to preserve and protect the music that they set out to document, and Pereira’s work was driven by the desire to defend the tradition of rural popular music, which he considered to be unjustly marginalized. I will outline the aims and objectives, working methods, and impact of both of these extremely important endeavours. The chapter is divided into three main parts. In the first, I provide an overview of theories relating to the study of folk music, and the importance of the concept of ‘authenticity’ in studies of folk music in Europe and the United States. A brief discussion of the fundamental role of folklore in Brazil follows. The second part of the chapter examines Mário’s 1938 expedition. The final, major part of the chapter analyses Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil in detail. This enormous project, which resulted in the release of sixteen LPs of regional music, is important for three main reasons. First, in a climate of uncompromising political and artistic censorship it attempted to bring to the fore elements of a cultural and political debate that had polarized Brazil in the early 1960s: a debate that was abruptly terminated by the military dictatorship that seized power in 1964. Second, Música Popular do Brasil demonstrates the beginning of an awareness of a new, more complex relationship between traditional, largely rural popular culture and the increasingly urbanized Brazilian society of the mid 1970s. Finally, at a time when popular music in Brazil 1* This chapter is based on a previously published article, ‘Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil, beyond folklore?’, Popular Music, Vol. 25 (2), 2006, pp. 303–18. By permission of Cambridge University Press.

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was increasingly orientated towards influences emanating from abroad, Marcus Pereira dramatically bucked the trend and re-introduced the Brazilian public to aspects of the regional, rural tradition of popular music and culture that would have a profound influence in Brazilian popular music over the last three decades of the twentieth century. Folk Music, Tradition, and Authenticity As previously discussed in Chapter 1, the idea of the ‘discovery’ of folk culture formed an integral part of the writings of Johann Gottfried von Herder in Germany in the eighteenth century. It was also an inspiration for several movements of musical nationalism in Europe in the nineteenth century and the work of Cecil Sharp in Britain in the early years of the twentieth century. However, as Richard Middleton points out, despite a vast amount of study over the course of more than two centuries there is still no unanimity over the definition of basic terms such as ‘folklore’, ‘folk music’ or even ‘folk’.1 This is partially due to the fact that folk music and its relationship to other forms of music have varied greatly during that period. The significance of the concept of ‘authenticity’ lies at the heart of the inter-relationship between folk and popular music. This has often manifested itself in the view that ‘authentic’ folk music is produced outside of the economic constraints of the music industry, and folk music is still often portrayed as an uncorrupted product of an individual or community that remains true to its ‘roots’, maintaining a tradition which resists the ‘alienated’ culture adopted by mainstream society. Middleton sees this as impinging on popular music in two distinct ways: ‘Authentic’ folk music is presented as an ‘Other’, to which popular music can be adversely contrasted; or its values are seen as surviving, or recreated, within certain favoured forms of popular music, usually forms associated with specified groups or subcultures.2

Naturally, one has to exercise caution in applying cultural theories relating to popular music that often originate in Europe and the United States to the specific case of a nation such as Brazil. Nevertheless, as I shall demonstrate, Middleton’s views on the role of folk music in relation to popular music can help to provide an insight into the Brazilian experience, particularly with regard to the ‘musical mapping’ projects carried out by Mário de Andrade and Marcus Pereira. Ideas of what is meant by ‘authenticity’ have changed over time. In Cecil Sharp’s era, the most significant factor determining authenticity was felt to be the text of a song. However, technological advances in the 1930s made it possible to record performances in the field, leading to the pioneering work of Alan and John Lomax who made extensive recording trips all over the United States during the 1930s and 1940s for the Library of Congress’s Archive of Folk Song. In the wake of these developments the emphasis changed to prioritize the aural rather than the textual element in deciding whether a song was authentic or not. When musicians and 1 2

Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Buckingham, 1990), p. 127. Ibid., p. 129.

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songwriters in the United States in the 1960s started to mix traditional elements of folk music with pop and rock, and enjoyed considerable commercial success in the process, this blurred the boundaries yet again and prompted a further debate about the meaning of ‘authenticity’, which in turn resulted in the prioritization of the idea of the cultural context in which the music was produced, this giving rise to the use of the term ‘tradition’ in relation to folk music.3 The role of the person responsible for the recording or collection of the folk song is central to the concept of ‘authenticity’. Even during the early days of the systematic collection of folk songs at the start of the twentieth century it is clear that personal prejudices and agendas influenced the decisions of those choosing which songs should be preserved. For example, Cecil Sharp censored ‘bawdy’ lyrics that were not to his liking and he also omitted material that he considered to be unsuitable because it was not ‘old enough’, had been written down, or had been tainted by commercial influences.4 Likewise, Alan Lomax coached the performers he recorded to modify their repertoires and styles to approximate them to his personal conception of authenticity.5 As I will show, this tendency can also be clearly detected in the work of Mário de Andrade’s 1938 expedition. One of the principal motivations behind the musical mapping projects described later in this chapter was a sense of disillusionment with the contemporary state of Brazilian popular music. This idea of a sense of cultural alienation in the present that is unfavourably contrasted with a rose-tinted view of the past has been cited by Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw as one of the preconditions that enable a popular mood of nostalgia to develop.6 Chase and Shaw also examine the rise of the concept of ‘tradition’, which they feel ‘may be the most important encounter that non-historians have with what passes for history [. . .] traditions are represented as the means by which our own lives are connected with the past’.7 However, it is the ease with which traditions are frequently accepted and their often innate conservatism that link the concept of tradition with nostalgia. The failings of the present can be compensated by answers from the past.8 More often than not, tradition is selective, ‘with the past actively organised to speak to current anxieties and tensions’.9 All of which would seem to correspond to Hobsbawm’s theories of ‘invented tradition’ that I referred to in Chapter 1 and also Tamara Livingston’s analysis of the underlying conservatism that is at the heart of all music revivals.10

3 Neil V. Rosenberg, Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (Chicago, 1993), pp. 11–16. 4 Middleton, Studying Popular Music, p. 130. 5 Rosenberg, Transforming Tradition, p. 14. 6 Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw, ‘The dimensions of nostalgia’, in The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, ed. by Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase (Manchester, 1989), pp. 1–17 (p. 4). 7 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 8 Ibid., p. 11. 9 Ibid., p. 14. 10 Livingston, ‘Music revivals’.

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Folklore in Brazil When John Thoms, the founder of the Folklore Society in England in 1878, first coined the term ‘folklore’ he merely gave a new catch-all designation to the studies of peasant culture that had already been underway in Europe for some considerable time. What began as the study of orally transmitted verse and legends gradually expanded to include poetry, dance, festivals, costumes and beliefs of rural communities, and the term ‘folklore’ was subsequently adopted throughout Europe and elsewhere. The Brazilian Modernist movement of the 1920s sought to amalgamate elements of the study of folklore, together with ideas borrowed from the European avantgarde, to formulate a new vision of national identity. For the Modernists, the role of folklore was to act as a popular, national element to counterbalance the influence of cosmopolitan, i.e. European, erudition. By emphasizing the importance of popular cultural forms the Modernists employed the familiar European argument that only the ‘folk’ or povo who had been shielded by geographical isolation from the ‘corruption’ and excesses of imported culture were qualified to act as the standard-bearers of true Brazilian individuality.11 The Modernists also considered that elite, middle-class, and working-class cultural forms could not be held to be genuinely popular, as they had been compromised by their proximity to urbanized, cosmopolitan society.12 As in Europe and the United States, those studying folklore in Brazil at the time were concerned above all else with ideas of ‘authenticity’, and Brazilian scholars, like their foreign counterparts (Cecil Sharp for example), were not averse to distorting their findings to fit this over-riding objective.13 The search for national identity and the essence of what it was to be truly ‘Brazilian’ that had characterized much of the Modernist movement was taken up by Getúlio Vargas in the 1930s and 1940s and used as an ideological tool to both legitimize and bolster the state. Vargas was well aware of the power of both erudite and popular culture to influence the population and his governments specifically targeted cultural activity as an important link between political and social life. Consequently, from the 1940s the status of the folcloristas in Brazil began to rise, as they were seen by the government as important intellectual intermediaries in the ongoing attempt to tie together the idea of povo and nation. The heyday of the folklore movement in Brazil occurred in the period between the foundation of the National Commission for Folklore in 1947 and the military coup in 1964. State commissions were established in 1948 to promote and protect traditional aspects of culture and early tentative efforts were also made to protect traditional popular music.14 A measure of the continuing importance given to traditional culture by the state can be demonstrated by the formation of a specific section dedicated to folklore within FUNARTE in 1975, a body that persists to this day.

11 Maria Clara Wasserman, ‘Abre a Cortina do Passado: A Revista da Música Popular e o pensamento folclorista (Rio de Janeiro: 1954–1956)’ (unpublished master’s thesis, University of Paraná, 2002), pp. 31–2. 12 Luís Rodolfo Vilhena, Projeto e Missão: O Movimento Folclórico Brasileiro 1947–64 (Rio de Janeiro,1997), p. 25. 13 Ibid., p. 28. 14 Ibid., p. 186.


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Édison Carneiro, one of the most celebrated folcloristas of the 1940s and 1950s, recognized as early as 1955 that external intervention to protect traditional forms of culture might actually compromise the nature of their authenticity.15 Subsequent critics of the Brazilian folklore movement have drawn attention to its essentially authoritarian approach and have also claimed that what was often portrayed by the folcloristas as a cultural rescue operation was in fact a paternalistic assumption of the right to speak on behalf of those whom the folcloristas claimed to be helping.16 As in Europe and the United States, Brazilian academics have found it difficult to agree on a definition of seemingly basic terms such as ‘povo’ that lie at the heart of studies of folklore and popular culture. In discussing the inter-related concepts of ‘folk’, ‘nation’ and ‘tradition’, Rita Carvalho raises these pertinent points: . . . How can we distinguish exactly the kind of povo that is interesting? How can we differentiate between who is the povo and who is not the povo? Are there sectors of society that are not povo? To sum up, what is the povo and what is not?17

It is beyond the scope of this present study to attempt to address questions such as these, but I mention them to illustrate that there are fundamental issues that remain unresolved concerning folklore and popular culture, both in Brazil and abroad. One factor that should perhaps be highlighted is that the idea of folklore in Latin America, as opposed to say Europe, carries with it a heightened political sense, particularly because the cultures defined as ‘folkloric’ in Latin America can often be a vital, living part of contemporary existence, as well as a reference point for past traditions. Furthermore, it is in Brazil itself that folklore has acted most strongly as an alternative critical tool to posit alternatives to capitalist mass culture and the power of the mass media.18 The debate surrounding the importance of what represents the true essence of national and popular culture in Brazil has historically produced two major contrasting positions. The first of these is a nostalgic, backward-looking folkloric approach that celebrates above all the importance of ‘tradition’ that is bound up in history and collective memory. The second is a forward-looking, national-developmentalist ideology introduced by the Institute of Higher Studies (ISEB) in the 1950s (and carried forward in the thinking of the CPC’s in the early 1960s amongst others) that wished to break with the ‘alienated’, externally-imposed political and cultural tradition, and move towards a new definition of what it was to be Brazilian.19 The establishment of the Federal Council of Culture in 1966 and the publication of the Política Nacional de Cultura in 1975 demonstrated that the former position had triumphed, for the 15 Vilhena, Projeto e Missão, p. 187. 16 Ibid., p. 29. 17 Rita Laura Segato de Carvalho, ‘Folclore e Cultura Popular-Uma Discussão Conceitual’, Seminário Folclore e Cultura Popular, Instituto Nacional de Folclore, Rio de Janeiro (1992), 13–21 (p. 15). 18 William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London, 1991), pp. 4–5. 19 Renato Ortiz, A Moderna Tradição Brasileira: Cultura Brasileira e Indústria Cultural (São Paulo, 1994), pp. 160–63.

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military regime’s notion of culture was revealed as patrimonial and traditional, based on the preservation of the memory of Brazil’s heritage, and reminiscent in approach to that of Vargas’s Estado Novo [New State].20 The fortunes of FUNARTE have fluctuated greatly since it was established in 1975, and the prevailing government’s level of interest in culture has often determined the profile and effectiveness of the organization.21 Nonetheless, despite the encroachments of increasing globalization and massive technological developments in recent times, folklore continues to exert a significant impact on the lives of millions of Brazilians, particularly those living in rural areas. I will now discuss the first of the major musical mapping exercises carried out in Brazil by the Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas in 1938. Mário de Andrade and the Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas of 1938 You could say that Brazilian popular music is unknown, even among ourselves …We know some regions. Principally, around Rio de Janeiro because of the maxixe …We also know a little about the music from Bahia and the Northeast. Of the rest: practically nothing.22 (Mário de Andrade)

Mário de Andrade: Culture and Politics As I outlined in Chapter 1, Mário de Andrade’s Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira (1928) was fundamental in establishing the elements that identified music as essentially Brazilian. The Ensaio also contained a clarion call for the start of a systematic investigation into Brazilian musical folklore to provide source material for composers of art music to utilize in their nationalistic compositions, which was in keeping with the overall objectives of the Brazilian Modernist movement, of which Mário was a key figure. For the Modernists, the quest for a true national identity would be achieved by rejecting the slavish imitation of imported cultural models and by replacing them with re-invigorated, quintessentially Brazilian elements. To achieve this, Brazilians would have to embark on a journey of self-discovery to reclaim their own identity, something that Mário would later refer to as the need to ‘abrasileirar o brasileiro’ [Brazilianize the Brazilians]. This was an era of cultural experimentation that increasingly came to be dominated by the influence of the Vargas administrations (1930–45). The artistic expression of the nation’s attitudes, mores and aspirations that came to prominence under Vargas was enormously indebted to the cultural explosion which flourished in the years following the watershed of 1922. The sociological writings of Gilberto

20 Renato Ortiz, Cultura Brasileira e Identidade Nacional (São Paulo, 1986), p. 96. 21 It may not be coincidental that FUNARTE fared well during the Geisel regime when the President’s daughter was director of the folklore section of the organization. On the other hand, the Collor administration (1990–92) sacked large numbers of FUNARTE employees; an act that was considered by some to be political revenge by Collor against the artistic community whom he had felt had opposed his election. 22 Mário de Andrade, Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira (São Paulo, 1962), p. 20. Originally published in 1928.


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Freyre and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda; the influence of the Modernist poets; the rise of Regionalism as a literary trend; the revival of interest in Brazilian folklore, and the international prominence given to the music of Villa-Lobos are all examples of the creative forces that prepared the ground for a national culture that was self-assured and which no longer looked to Europe solely for inspiration. Mário’s prestige enabled him to straddle the seemingly diverse worlds of culture and politics, and in 1935 he was appointed as the director of São Paulo’s Department of Cultural Expansion. He promptly threw himself headlong into a series of projects designed to facilitate access for ordinary people to artistic centres such as the city’s showpiece Municipal Theatre and the creation of centres for study and research such as the Public Music Library. These projects were all concerned with the idea of the solidification and preservation of a concept of national culture, a major concern for both the Modernists and the ruling elites in Brazil at the time.23 Mário had already made two trips to the Northeast in 1927 and 1929, during which he carried out extensive field research that resulted in the collection and annotation of hundreds of popular songs. There had been previous attempts to gather together collections of folk song in Brazil, most notably Sílvio Romero’s Cantos Populares de Brasil (1883) yet it was Mario’s contention that Brazilian musical folklore had not been treated with the seriousness that it merited, and that the previous studies in the field had been inadequate.24 Emphasizing the significance of Brazilian traditions was part of Mário’s strategy, designed to win the hearts and minds of Brazilian intellectuals who might otherwise be seduced by the ‘superiority’ of foreign culture. It should be remembered that that this was an era when large numbers of the Brazilian elite were enraptured by European opera and classical music, and they considered Brazilian popular and folk music to be reminiscent of the nation’s shameful, backward, colonial past, exemplified by ‘obscene’ dances such as the samba and maxixe.25 Mário’s approach was also designed to persuade the Brazilian government of the significance of protecting national culture. Stressing the importance of the national over the regional was critical because regional differences could act as a barrier to the creation of the idea of a truly national povo.26 Thus a contradiction existed because the regional differences that gave Brazilian culture its complexity and richness were at the same time elements that could potentially lead to the break-up of the nation.27 Mário’s research trips to the Northeast in the 1920s formed part of a wider project in which he intended to publish the largest collection of Brazilian folk music 23 Flavia Camargo Toni, A Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas do Departamento de Cultura (São Paulo, n.d.), p. 20. 24 Andrade, Ensaio Sôbre a Música Brasileira, p. 70. 25 Arnaldo Daraya Contier, ‘O Ensaio sobre a Música Brasileira: Estudo dos Matizes Ideológicos do Vocabulário Social e Técnico–Estético (Mário de Andrade, 1928)’, Revista Música, Universidade de São Paulo, E.C.A. Departamento de Música, vol. 6, (1995), 75–121 (pp. 78–9). 26 Elizabeth Travassos, Os Mandarins Milagrosos: Arte e Etnografia em Mário de Andrade e Béla Bartok ( Rio de Janeiro, 1997), pp. 144–5. 27 Regional separatism has long been a feature of Brazil’s political life and was particularly evident in the 1920s, culminating in the revolt of 1930 that brought Getúlio Vargas to power.

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and dance produced by a single researcher.28 He was particularly drawn to the North and Northeast of Brazil because these were areas that he considered to contain the richest concentration of traditional popular music, particularly in rural areas, that he felt had remained uncorrupted by the transmission of foreign influence through the increasingly powerful media of radio and cinema. Mário was not the first to scour Brazil searching for folk melodies and compositions – Villa Lobos had undertaken a similar mission in the very early twentieth century, and there had been other various folklorists who had been involved in collecting expeditions – but he was the first to attempt to capture these compositions for posterity with the benefit of recording equipment. Although he was not opposed to all Brazilian urban popular music, Mário was particularly concerned about the potentially destabilizing influence of foreign popular music such as North American foxtrot, French chanson and Argentinian tango, all of which were becoming ever more popular in Brazilian urban centres. He felt that such international influences diluted the ‘authenticity’ of Brazilian music and might lead to it disappearing altogether.29 We need young researchers who will go to the houses of the povo to seriously and comprehensively collect that which the povo protects and which it quickly forgets, disorientated by the effects of invasive progress.30

This was a period when profound changes were taking place in the arts in Brazil due to the rise of the culture industry, and commercialism was seen by some as a threat to the artisan tradition. This posed a dilemma for Mário regarding the issue of what could be considered ‘popular’ in artistic terms. If the majority of the population demonstrated a genuine liking for commercially mass-produced popular music, then did that make it ‘popular’ by definition? His solution was to draw a distinction between ‘authentic’ artistic creation that emanated from the rural povo and the crude or vulgar, urban popularesca.31 Therefore, in attempting to highlight the ‘authentic’ nature of the rural music that he championed he placed it in a culturally superior position to the ‘debased’ urban music that he perceived to be its deadly rival. Consequently, his view of folk music at the time corresponds to Middleton’s previously cited idea of folk music as an authentic ‘other’, to which other forms of popular music can be adversely contrasted.

28 Álvaro Carlini, ‘Cante Lá Que Gravam Cá: Mário de Andrade e a missão de pesquisas folcloricas de 1938’ (unpublished master’s thesis, F.L.C.H, University of São Paulo, 1994), p. 22. The collection was to be entitled Na Pancada do Ganzá, but was not completed in Mário’s lifetime and was posthumously published in a piecemeal fashion. For further discussion of these trips and their impact on Mário’s thinking, see Vivian Schelling, A Presença do Povo na Cultura Brasileira: ensaio sobre o pensamento de Mário de Andrade e Paulo Freire (Campinas, 1991). 29 Contier, ‘O Ensaio sobre a Música Brasileira’, pp. 109–10. 30 Mário de Andrade, ‘A Situação Etnográfica do Brasil’, in Jornal Síntese, October 1936, quoted in Carlini, ‘Cante Lá Que Gravam Cá’, p. 24. 31 Travassos, Os Mandarins Milagrosos, pp. 16–17.


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Mário’s position at the Department of Culture enabled him to continue his folkloric studies and he organized a further trip to the North and Northeast scheduled to commence in February 1938. This trip was primarily intended to collect folkloric material for the Public Music Library that had started to make recordings of popular music in rural areas of Minas Gerais and the state of São Paulo in 1937. The trip planned for 1938 was intended to provide non-musical material that would be used for ethnographical study, and also popular music that would serve as a source of inspiration for composers who were seeking to develop a form of national art music based on Brazilian folk melodies.32 The urgency of the mission was made clear by the head of the Department of Culture, Paulo Duarte, who claimed that the majority of Brazilian rural songs and melodies were on the verge of extinction and that their preservation was of the utmost importance for both science and art.33 The team picked by Mário to carry out the Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas (MPF) comprised Luís Saia, Martin Braunweiser, Benedicto Pacheco, and Antônio Ladeira.34 Their task was to record, photograph, film and annotate aspects of folklore, using the latest available technology and utilizing research techniques recommended by the ethnologist Dina Lévi-Strauss. Funding for the trip was arranged by the city council of São Paulo, and Mário himself suggested its itinerary, which was designed to coincide with various regional festivities such as bumba-meu-boi. The techniques for carrying out research in the field recommended by Mário to his team of folcloristas are illuminating as they reveal a sociological aspect to the expedition. The team was advised to obtain not only the title and genre of a song, but also details of its singer, including name, date of birth, sex, colour, age, level of education, place of birth and social position.35 This was not a voyage into the complete unknown, as the team received precise instructions from Mário to seek out songs and dances such as bumba-meu-boi and congadas that he had already partially researched on his previous trips.36 Consequently, the expedition left São Paulo with a preconceived agenda devised by Mário to collect musical material that conformed to his pre-existing notions of what was ‘important’ and ‘authentic’. The MPF left São Paulo in February 1938, but the political fallout from the establishment of the Estado Novo by Vargas in November 1937 meant that Mário was unable to accompany the expedition. During the following months the MPF visited the states of Pernambuco, Paraíba, Maranhão and Pará, but in June 1938 they were advised that a political crisis in São Paulo necessitated their immediate return. They finally arrived in São Paulo in July of that same year. The amount of material collected by the MPF was vast: 20 notebooks of songs, 168 78rpm records containing 1500 songs, 1066 photographs, 9 black and white 16mm films, and 775

32 Carlini, ‘Cante Lá Que Gravam Cá’, pp. 36–7. 33 Carlini, Cachimbo e Maracá: O Catimbó da Missão (1938), (São Paulo, 1993), p. 25. 34 The fullest accounts of the 1938 mission are to be found in Flavia Camargo Toni, A Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas do Departamento de Cultura, and Carlini, ‘Cante Lá Que Gravam Cá. 35 Toni, A Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas, p. 27. 36 Carlini, ‘Cante Lá Que Gravam Cá’, pp. 88–90.

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objects. It would take over twenty years for Mário’s collaborator, Oneyda Alvarenga to curate this material at the Public Music Library.37 The overall aim of the trip had been to study all aspects of folklore with particular emphasis on popular music, dance and costume. The types of traditional music recorded for posterity by the MPF were those used by ordinary people to accompany work, play and prayer, and included, emboladas, cocos, rojões, martelos, desafios, cantigas de roda, repentes, sambas, valsas, solos de viola, cantigas, galopes, lundus, oitavas and many more. In addition, valuable material was documented concerning religious ceremonies such as xangôs, babaçuês and catimbós, and popular dramatic dances such as praiás, boibumbas, reis de congo and danças praieiras.38 I have already mentioned that the MPF was not a complete leap into the dark because Mário had planned its route. The researchers were also in close contact with regional experts on folklore, such as Luís da Câmara Cascudo in Rio Grande do Norte, Ademar Vidal in Paraíba, and Ascenso Ferreira in Pernambuco, who were all close friends of Mário. The members of the MPF were advised of the most suitable local practitioners of folklore to visit, much of what they saw was not spontaneously performed, and the team often had to pay for a performance to be arranged. Value judgements in keeping with Mário’s own opinions were also made – for example, Martin Braunweiser revealed that when the team arrived in the city of Recife just before Carnival, they considered the music that they found there to be ‘popularesca’, and only filmed it, rather than recording it. In some ways it is surprising that the expedition was such a success. The MPF had to overcome daunting logistical obstacles, not least the difficulty involved in travelling into the interior of the states visited (even an established route from Paraíba to Maranhão took sixteen days by lorry at the time). The team was often working in primitive conditions without the aid of electricity, and the whole trip was also overshadowed by political events. Mário’s absence had deprived the MPF of its figure of authority and none of the members of the team had previously been to the regions visited.39 One of the most serious setbacks for the MPF was the politically motivated sacking of Mário from the Department of Culture in May 1938, which meant that he was never able to study the material collected by the project that he had been largely responsible for. Although the Public Music Library received a vast

37 Toni, A Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas, p. 44. This material is available for study at the Coleção Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas, Centro Cultural de São Paulo. A CD containing twenty songs collected by the MPF is commercially available (Missão de Pesquisas Folcóricas, The Discoteca Collection, RCD 10403, 1997). A six CD set of songs collected by the MPF was also released by SESC São Paulo in 2006 (Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas CDSS005/06). A fascinating re-working of several of the compositions collected by Mário during his travels to the North and Northeast (including some collected by the MPF of 1938) can be found on the Turista Aprendiz CD by the group A Barca (CPC-UMES, CP519, 2000). 38 José Saia Neto, ‘Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas’, Centro Cultural de São Paulo website, [accessed 19 August 2003]. 39 Carlini, ‘Cante Lá Que Gravam Cá’, p. 449.


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amount of material for its archives, due to a lack of funding and political will the MPF’s findings remained largely unknown until decades later.40 Luís Saia had claimed in an interview to the press at the start of the expedition that the team wished to ‘. . . show Brazil to the Brazilians’41 but that was not achieved because of changing political circumstances that overwhelmed Brazil and rendered Mário’s sociological insights out of favour in the authoritarian climate of the Estado Novo. Popular music within Brazil was entering a new more celebratory phase at this time (Ary Barroso’s ultra-patriotic Aquarela do Brasil was recorded in 1939) and a smoother, sanitized form of samba was sponsored and exported to the world by the Vargas regime. The vision of Brasil that the MPF’s findings would have revealed to a contemporary audience would have been one more in keeping with the social-realist novels of the Northeastern writers of the era, exemplified by the harsh conditions described in Graciliano Ramos’s Vida Secas [Barren Lives] that was published in 1938. We can only surmise how the music recorded by the MPF would have sounded to a listener at the time. Yet despite the increasing sophistication of Brazilian popular music this was still an era when 70 per cent of Brazilians lived in the countryside and consequently elements of the music that the MPF encountered would have been familiar to the vast bulk of the population. Writing in 1932, Mário revealed that during his trips to the North and Northeast he had encountered widespread resentment within those regions towards São Paulo, a city that was perceived to be arrogant and out-of touch with the rest of the country.42 Six years later, in correspondence relating to the aims of the MPF he revealed that it was an attempt to provide material that would re-acquaint the cosmopolitan metropolis with its own cultural roots. In his efforts to construct a form of cultural bridge between the metropolis and the regions Mário sought to alert urban audiences to the richness of the rural musical traditions that still existed within Brazil, and also to his belief that such traditions were on the verge of annihilation due to the growing encroachments of the music industry and the impact of foreign popular music. The MPF formed part of his wider nationalist cultural plan that sought to valorize all aspects of Brazilian culture. At the same time it ‘captured for posterity a pre-development, pre-tourist Brazil where the country’s multi-cultural and multiethnic heritage were in a dynamic relationship that continues to evolve to this day’.43 The true legacy of the MPF would only be realized nearly four decades later, in its influence on the work of Marcus Pereira that I will discuss shortly. 40 An incomplete series of books and records based on the on the work of MPF (1938) was published by the Prefeitura of São Paulo between 1948 and 1955. The archive then fell into neglect and was only rediscovered in the 1980s by researchers such as Flávia Camargo Toni and Álvaro Carlini who have been largely responsible for its re-classification and preservation. Carlos Sandroni, ‘Notas sobre Mário de Andrade e a Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas de 1938’, Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, no. 28 (1999), 60–73 (p. 62). 41 Cited in Toni, A Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas, p. 34. 42 Mário de Andrade, ‘Preface to Na Pancada do Ganzá’, in Arte em Revista, ano 2, no.3 (1980), 55–8 (pp. 56–7). 43 Morton Marks, liner notes to Missão de Pesquisas Folcóricas, The Discoteca Collection, RCD 10403, 1997.

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Folk Music v Popular Music: From Mário de Andrade to Marcus Pereira Although he founded the Brazilian Society of Folklore in 1936, Mário did not consider himself as a folclorista as such because he felt that he lacked the scientific discipline that the profession demanded. Mário was far more interested in providing the raw material from his research expeditions to enable Brazilian composers to create national art music. Although he considered that Brazilian popular music was the most totally national creation of the Brazilian people up to that point, Mário’s conception of popular music was firmly centred on folk music, rather than urban music, which he considered to be vulgar or popularesca. While the material collected by the MPF of 1938 languished in the archives for decades the idea of ‘musical mapping’ that had inspired the expedition was not wholly forgotten. In the early 1940s, the Brazilian composer and professor of music, Luiz Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo, carried out a series of field recordings in the states of Goiás (1942), Ceará (1943), Minas Gerais (1944), and Rio Grande do Sul (1945) that formed part of a collaboration between the National Institute of Music in Rio de Janeiro and the Library of Congress in the United States. The ongoing ‘Good Neighbour Policy’ developed between Rio de Janeiro and Washington during the Second World War inspired this initiative, and although Azevedo used research methods developed by Alan Lomax in the United States, it is equally clear that he saw his work as a direct continuation of the pioneering work of Mário de Andrade.44 Azevedo was concerned to explore what he saw as a major division in Brazilian folk and popular music, the distinction between caboclo [rural] and ‘black’ music, but his work in the field revealed that such distinctions were largely academic as both genres were considerably intermixed. Even so, his decision to focus on regional genres and what he considered to be the ‘other’, largely rural Brazil, as opposed to urban samba then at the height of popularity, was a significant initiative that unfortunately received little public recognition at the time.45 Debates on the relative merits of folk and popular music increased in the 1940s and 1950s, and Clara Wasserman has demonstrated that the Revista da Música Popular (1954–56), although short-lived, was an important vehicle for expressing views on popular music by both folcloristas and also writers who championed urban popular music, particularly samba.46 This debate intersected on a national and international level in 1954 at the International Congress of Folklore that was held in São Paulo. The Congress debated the distinctions between folk and popular music, and its findings emphasized the oral tradition and collective nature of a composition as being some of the most important hallmarks of folk music. However, there was 44 Email correspondence with Dr Samuel Mello Araújo, 25/11/03. Dr Araújo has been undertaking research on the fieldwork of Luiz Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. A commercial recording of some of the music collected by Azevedo is available on the CD, L.H. Corrêa de Azevedo: Music of Ceará and Minas Gerais, RCD, 10404, 1997. 45 Morton Marks, liner notes to L.H. Corrêa de Azevedo: Music of Ceará and Minas Gerais, RCD 10404, 1997. Azevedo also founded the Centre of Folklore Research at the National School of Music in Rio de Janeiro. 46 Wasserman, ‘Abre a Cortina do Passado’.


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a lack of general agreement over the issue in Brazil after the Congress, and the debate continued, particularly regarding the role of samba which, although generally recognized as the traditional symbol of national cultural identity since the 1930s, was quintessentially urban music, at least in its Carioca guise, and therefore did not fit the folclorista paradigm of ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ popular music.47 This issue was re-ignited in 1962 at the first National Congress of Samba, organized by Édison Carneiro on behalf of the Campaign for the defence of Brazilian Folklore. This event was organized in the face of concern over the harmful impact of foreign cultural influences on Brazilian popular music at the time, i.e. the impact of bossa nova, and demonstrated that the folcloristas considered that national music was under threat. The conclusions of the Congress were encapsulated in the so-called ‘carta do samba’ [samba letter] written by Carneiro, which argued in favour of the importance of the preservation of the traditional characteristics of samba (particularly the importance of percussion) and urged composers not to mix ‘pure’ samba with foreign rhythms.48 Echoes of this argument would be raised in the subsequent battle that raged between supporters of Canção de Protesto and Jovem Guarda in the mid to late 1960s; although by that stage the debate had taken on additional political connotations. The folclorista movement in Brazil was motivated by a desire to bring together intellectuals and researchers from all over the country with the specific idea of constructing an image of a unified nation.49 Initially supported by the state, that commitment waned after the coup in 1964, even though the military government returned to the issue in 1975 with the foundation of FUNARTE. Dramatic changes in the field of Brazilian popular music during that period, particularly post-Tropicália, left those who were concerned about the preservation of Brazil’s rural musical heritage isolated and largely unheard. Those concerns were kept alive by a small group of individuals, collectors and researchers such as Marcus Pereira, rather than the state. In the ‘musical mapping’ of Brazil carried out by Pereira we can see the continuation of the idea of the need for the valorization of rural music first expounded by Mário de Andrade, and the desire to somehow bring the nation together and define itself through its musical heritage. Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil (1973–77): Beyond Folklore? Marcus Pereira (1930–81) was determined to build on the foundations laid down by Mário in the 1930s. Born in São Paulo, he trained as a lawyer and subsequently worked as a journalist and writer. Pereira ran his own advertising agency from 1963 and four years later he began to give his clients a record featuring the music of littleknown Brazilian artists, produced at his own expense, as an annual Christmas present. Pereira was also co-owner of a São Paulo nightclub at this time that specialized in presenting traditional Brazilian popular music; a style that the club’s owners considered to be increasingly marginalized by the mass media. A visit to Recife’s carnival in 1963 left Pereira with a love of the local frevo music and a passion for 47 Wasserman, ‘Abre a Cortina do Passado’, p. 40. 48 Ibid., pp. 47–8. 49 Ibid., p. 33.

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the music of the Northeast in general. His long-held ambition to bring this music to a wider audience was realized in 1972 when he commissioned a team of researchers, including Hermilo Borba Filho and members of the group Quinteto Violado, to roam the Northeast recording aspects of popular music and culture. Música Popular do Nordeste [Popular Music of the Northeast] 1973 The expedition of 1972 produced a large amount of material that was edited down to fill four LPs, 1500 copies of which were distributed to Pereira’s clients at the end of the year. The critical approval given to these records and the feverish interest generated by the general public, largely on a word-of-mouth basis, persuaded Pereira to leave his successful business and found his own record label in early 1974. Pereira subsequently released the records on a commercial basis to critical acclaim in the press and healthy sales ensued.50 The series of four albums consisted of examples of various types of frevo, trio elétrico, violeiros, cirandas, bumba-meu-boi, samba de roda, coco, bambelô, emboladas and banda de pífanos. The records contained lengthy sleevenotes by various writers, including Pereira himself, which provided mini-essays on the historical development of the music contained within. In that sense they fulfilled a similar educational role to that provided by Alan Lomax’s records in the United States and the MPB series produced in the early 1970s by the Abril publishing group that I referred to in Chapter 2. The music itself is an eclectic mixture of rural folk styles, including large chunks of improvised poetry, urban frevo and stylized re-creations of folkloric music such as bumba-meu-boi recorded by the Quinteto Violado. Despite his love for the purest, traditional forms of Northeastern music Pereira was aware that he needed to win over the general public if these records were to achieve any form of commercial success and consequently he lightened the often uncompromising nature of much of the music by including more ‘accessible’ re-workings of traditional themes provided by the Quinteto Violado who had just started to enjoy considerable commercial success in their own right. The sleevenotes to these records, and others in the series, frequently refer to Mário de Andrade’s writings on music and the series as a whole is dedicated to the Brazilian people and Mário’s memory. Música Popular do Centro-Oeste/Sudeste [Popular Music of the Centre-West/ Southeast] 1974 Following the success of Música Popular do Nordeste, Marcus Pereira was able to continue his exploration of regional music, and a further four-record set was released in 1974 that included modinhas, modas, canções, cururu, catira, sambas, congadas, jongo, moçambique, religious songs, folias, calango, ciranda, coreto, modas de viola, toadas, fandangos, dança de Santa Cruz, and dança de São Gonçalo. The symbolic link with Mário de Andrade was once again evident through the participation of 50 Música popular do Nordeste was one of the biggest sellers of the year and sold in excess of 40,000 copies. Osvil Lopes,‘Afinal alguém está preocupado em preservar nossa arte popular’, Folha da Tarde, 6/7/74.


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Oneyda Alvarenga as consultant to the collection and other consultant/researchers such as Martinho da Vila were responsible for the selection of examples of various musical genres, thereby acting in the same way that Mário’s regional advisors such as Luís da Câmara Cascudo had done in 1938. Yet again, Pereira mixed field recordings of potentially ‘difficult’ music with updated versions of regional compositions sung by well-known, commercially successful artists such as Nara Leão, Ivone Lara and Clementina de Jesus. Música Popular do Sul [Popular Music of the South] 1975 This four-LP set was perhaps the most varied to date, and included music by composers and performers from Rio Grande do Sul, milongas, religious songs, música missioneira, música de inspiração indígena, cantos de trabalho, folclore de Santa Catarina, ditos, pajadas, declamações, fandangos, chotes, rancheira, bugio and vanerão. These albums vividly demonstrated the extraordinarily rich fusion of indigenous, Jesuit, African, Spanish and Portuguese influences that characterize the music of the south of Brazil, and they also exposed how music is integrally linked to a vast tradition of dramatic dance, religious ceremonies, popular drama and folguedos [festivities] in the region. Pereira’s increasingly high profile within the music industry enabled him to persuade singer Elis Regina, then at the height of her popularity, to contribute to the series alongside other ‘unknown’ artists such as 100-year-old singer Miquelinha Antonia de Oliveira and relative novices such as the young group Os Tapes, who specialized in recreating music of the indigenous people of the area. The sleevenotes to this collection also revealed that it was the music critic and writer Sérgio Cabral who had coined the phrase ‘musical map’ with reference to Pereira’s ongoing project. Música Popular do Norte [Popular Music of the North] 1977 The four albums which made up the final instalment of this project included music by composers and performers from the north of Brazil, compositions by Waldemar Henrique, bois do Maranhão, zabumba, matraca, pindaré, boi do Amazonas, boi do Pará, tambores, rhythms and dances from Maranhão, modinhas from Pará, religious festivals, carimbós, retumbão, lundú, chula Marajoara, polca, mazurka, valsa de ponto de lenço, music by the Kamayurá Indians, marambiré, desfeiteira, batuque do Pará, dança dos imperiais, dança do cacetinho, dança da caninha verde, ciranda and pássaros. By this stage, Pereira’s recordings had adopted a more documentary style and the albums include a couple of short interviews with singers, and almost ambient recordings of religious processions. Although this collection once again revealed a stunning diversity of music and popular culture, Pereira conceded that his efforts were, by necessity, limited: ‘It was only possible to document that which appeared to us to be fundamental, and then only in a fragmentary way.’51 Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil series was a gigantic undertaking, the first of its kind in Latin America and carried out largely at his own cost, which 51 Sleevenotes to Música Popular do Norte.

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left him with enormous debts.52 Although the series featured over ninety different types of music it was not intended to be an intellectual or musicological study that would only provide interest for a limited number of academics. Pereira’s wife, Carolina Andrade, who was heavily involved in the project, made that clear when she informed the press that she and her husband did not consider their approach to be ‘folkloric’ or anthropological, rather that they had provided an enormous ‘musical report, in which the reporter filters their impressions through their feelings’.53 Not surprisingly, Pereira’s research followed lines of personal interest favoured by him and his team, and as his objective was to ‘document, inform and entertain’ he decided against producing purely folkloric records.54 As I will explain shortly, his methods of acquiring material provoked much controversy, and harsh criticism in some quarters. Like Mário, Pereira was undoubtedly a musical nationalist who saw the various forms of regional music and culture that he catalogued as being endangered and, in some cases, on the verge of extinction. In his various roles as a journalist, publicist and promoter of Brazilian culture in general, he was always extremely concerned with the defence of national interests and the effects of cultural and economic dependency in Brazil.55 He considered that traditional forms of popular music in Brazil were marginalized and neglected at the expense of imported cultural material promoted by the multinational record companies that dominated the Brazilian music industry at the time. The choice of well-known artists such as Elis Regina and Nara Leão to feature in Música Popular do Brasil was not merely to boost sales; these were also performers sympathetic to Pereira’s left-nationalist views who agreed that Brazilian popular music was under threat and that it was necessary to take a stand to defend Brazil’s musical heritage.56 Although Música Popular do Brasil sold relatively well, and there obviously existed a commercial market for such music, Pereira was convinced that further commercial success was prevented by the lack of access to the all-powerful promotional power of television, largely controlled by TV-Globo, that was only interested in promoting its own telenovela soundtracks and imported North American culture. In his opinion, if this trend was allowed to continue unchecked it would result in the disappearance of Brazilian music from the marketplace, representing the ‘complete destruction of our national personality, leaving us robots without a face or a soul…’.57 Carolina Andrade also lamented what she considered to be the ‘contamination’ of the cultural traditions of the North of Brazil, the ‘real’ Brazil 52 Pereira received a large loan from a government agency once the series was under way but was dogged by financial problems until his death in 1981. Vitu do Carmo, ‘Nem músico, nem musicólogo. Apenas um viabilizador das coisas’, Música, no. 11, 1977. 53 Margarida Autran, ‘O samba é a desgraça nacional. Fazer música regional é nosso caminho certo’, Correio do Povo, 6/3/77. 54 Anon, ‘Do morro ao livro, a música regional, em levantamento’, O Globo, 2/7/74. 55 Marcus Pereira, Lembranças de Amanhã (São Paulo, 1980), p. 4. 56 Author interview with Marcus Vinícius (artistic director for Discos Marcus Pereira 1976–81) São Paulo, 29/8/03. 57 Pereira, Lembranças de Amanhã, p. 12. See also Malu Maranhão’s interview with Marcus Pereira, ‘A música dos Brasis’, Folha de São Paulo, Folhetim, 28/10/79, p. 4.


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in her view, by the corrupting influence of television, which had led to a state of affairs where one particular form of bumba-meu-boi (one of Brazil’s oldest forms of folklore) in Maranhão went under the title of ‘Planet of the Apes’.58 The similarities with Mário de Andrade’s concerns about foreign domination of Brazilian popular music are striking, and Pereira was clear about where he saw his work in relation to that of his predecessor: Mário was the first to carry out in-depth research into our folklore using scientific methods. When he died he left a huge legacy that was incomplete. It was with his contribution in mind that we carried out our work. 59

Political Considerations Like Mário before him, Marcus Pereira felt that his work was severely hampered because of political interference. Although he was never a politician himself, Pereira was a close friend of Miguel Arraes, and acted as the São Paulo representative of Arraes’ left-wing administration in Pernambuco in the early 1960s.60 Arraes was the first socialist to be elected governor of the state of Pernambuco in 1962 and he was brought to power through the support of both urban and rural workers whose mass mobilization was orchestrated by a broad alliance of communists, socialists and trade unions that built on the long-standing tradition of radical politics in Pernambuco, symbolized by the foundation of the Peasant League in 1956. During a period of national political polarization in which the Goulart government increasingly flirted with socialist ideas, the Arraes administration was committed to avowedly leftwing policies such as moves towards greater social inclusion of the poor masses, agrarian reform, and the radical literacy programmes of Paulo Freire. Consequently, the Arraes administration was seen as a flagship for the political left as a whole throughout Brazil. This political radicalization was coupled with a cultural campaign in Pernambuco known as the Popular Culture Movement (MCP) that was founded in Recife in 1961, which brought together left-wing artists from all spheres in an attempt to use culture as a tool for political consciousness-raising. One of the most celebrated examples of this was the establishment of Centres of Popular Culture (CPC) in Recife, and subsequently in other areas of Brazil, that sought to fuse forms of popular culture, including folklore, with an overtly political agenda. Because of his links with Miguel Arraes and his unapologetically political outlook, Pereira found it extremely difficult to obtain distribution deals with record companies for the Música Popular do Brasil series and was effectively shunned 58 Tânia Carvalho, ‘Está completa o mapa musical do Brasil’, Ứltima Hora, 6/1/77. 59 Anon, ‘Do morro ao livro, a música regional, em levantamento’, O Globo, 2/7/74. There is a further link between the MPF of 1938 and Marcus Pereira’s musical mapping. Pereira often referred to the inspiration he derived from Paulo Duarte (head of the Department of Culture in São Paulo in 1938 and one of those responsible for the MPF) to whom he was related by birth. Author interview with Marcus Vinícius, Rio de Janeiro, 2/11/01. 60 Anon, ‘A morte de Marcus Pereira, um empresário dedicado à música brasileira’, Jornal da Tarde, 21/2/81.

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by those in power, who did not take kindly to his criticisms of the Globo media organization and the establishment.61 There was an underlying political content to Música Popular do Brasil that reflected Pereira’s views on the social situation within Brazil at the time. Before recording Música Popular do Nordeste he re-read Euclides da Cunha’s classic account of the 1893–97 Canudos War, Os Sertões [Rebellion in the Backlands], which includes a damning critique of the consequences of the marginalization of Brazil’s rural poor, and he also watched several little-known documentaries by Tomás Farkas about the contemporary social, cultural and economic conditions in the Northeast of Brazil.62 This was a period when the military dictatorship was at its most repressive, a period also characterized by the regime’s drive towards the concept of a ‘Grand Brazil’ symbolized by high-profile nationbuilding projects, such as the construction of the Transamazônica Highway. At this moment traditional music was not only considered ‘outdated’ by the Brazilian media but was also deemed to be potentially politically ‘subversive’ by the military because of its historical links with the povo.63 Pereira’s cultural perspective was undoubtedly shaped by his own political convictions, and these were profoundly influenced by the experiments in popular culture and participation carried out in Pernambuco in the early 1960s.64 Three of the founder members of the MCP in Recife (Hermilo Borba Filho, Ariano Suassuna and Aluizio Falcão) were close collaborators with Pereira on the Música Popular do Nordeste series, and all three contributed to the sleevenotes of those particular records. I would argue that Música Popular do Brasil can be viewed as an attempt by Pereira to continue the discussion about the marginalized role of the povo in Brazilian society that was central to the social and political mobilization of the early 1960s, and which was abruptly curtailed by the 1964 coup. By returning to the music of the Northeast, and that of Pernambuco in particular, Pereira and his fellow ‘orphans of the revolution that never arrived’65 were making the, by necessity, veiled political point that those issues and discussions had not been forgotten by many Brazilians and that despite the prevailing climate of political and artistic censorship, alternative voices were still audible. Even the record sleeves to Música Popular do Nordeste all bore the same austere image of a Northeastern boiadeiro [herdsman] riding through a patch of thorny caatinga [scrubland], highly reminiscent in style of Nelson Pereira dos Santos’ Cinema Novo masterpiece, Vidas Secas (1963), which had starkly portrayed the condition of Brazil’s marginalized rural poor. 61 Author interview with Marcus Vinícius, Rio de Janeiro, 2/11/01. Unfortunately, Marcus Pereira committed suicide in 1981, just before the start of the process of re-democratization in Brazil. By 1982 many of his friends occupied positions of political power in São Paulo and Marcus Vinícius considers that those friends may well have been able to provide support for his initiatives if he had lived. 62 José Carlos Rego, ‘Nordeste no canto de suas gentes’, Correio da Manhã, 27/12/72. 63 Author interview with Marcus Vinícius, São Paulo, 29/8/03. 64 Pereira’s close friend and colleague Marcus Vinícius has attempted to carry on aspects of Pereira’s work through his record label, which is significantly entitled CPC-UMES (Centro Popular de Cultura da União Municipal dos Estudantes Secundaristas de São Paulo). 65 The phrase is borrowed from José Teles, Do Frevo ao Manguebeat (São Paulo, 2000), p. 78.


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The notion of ‘folklore’ was still highly contentious at this time, with many on the left preferring to use the term ‘popular culture’ because of the conservative connotations historically associated with the idea of folklore. Pereira referred to his collection as ‘popular music’ rather than ‘folklore’ and through his focus on the music of Brazil’s regional poor he attempted to draw attention to the plight of the nation’s marginalized masses. In their own small way, Pereira’s records offered a sublimated form of cultural resistance to the prevailing order, not only for him but also perhaps for many of those who bought them, who were still largely denied other legal forms of articulating a public display of political defiance to the military regime at that time. Pereira was concerned to provide a voice through his records for the ‘other’ Brazil, those sectors of society largely excluded from the official, triumphalist versions of Brazilian history of the era. Música Popular do Brasil deliberately set out to challenge the cultural hegemony of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and reversed the customary metropolitan-centred cultural bias by bringing the normally culturally marginalized populace to the fore.66 These records were intended, above all, to remind the public of the vast excluded Brazilian hinterland that possessed its own living cultural traditions. As such, Pereira was asserting that notions of the popular and the national must, by definition, include the whole of Brazilian society rather than merely representing the more ‘refined’ tastes of the metropolitan elites. Pereira’s overriding concern was that Brazil’s regional musical heritage should be charted and made available to the public. At a time when many were again concerned that international influences were increasingly penetrating Brazilian popular music he considered it essential to preserve and protect those artists associated with folklore and tradition, many of whom found it impossible to obtain a recording contract, or were elderly.67 Pereira’s role was to enable the public to re-evaluate the contribution of these artists, who had been largely omitted from the widelyheld conception of what constituted Brazilian popular music, and to simultaneously introduce new artists working within the tradition of ‘música de boa qualidade’. He also made a direct attack on the all-powerful position of samba within Brazilian popular music, the influence of which he considered to be unhealthily exclusive, by opening up alternative musical avenues for exploration.68 The opinion that is often expressed in Brazil that it is a ‘country without a memory’ inspired him to document numerous aspects of Brazilian folk culture that not only included popular music, but also oral poetry, dance, and religious ceremonies in the Música Popular do Brasil 66 The Canção de Protesto movement of the mid 1960s was a similar attempt to combine politics with regional aspects of popular music that was cut short by the imposition of the fifth Institutional Act in 1968. For a detailed analysis of Canção de Protesto see Treece (1997) and Napolitano (2001). 67 Between 1974 and Pereira’s death in 1981 his record label released more than one hundred albums, including the first LPs by veteran sambistas Cartola and Donga. The release of Brasil, Flauta, Cavaquinho e Violão in 1974 has been credited with being one of the factors responsible for the new wave of interest in choro in the mid 1970s. Angelo Iacocca, ‘Um desafio para todos nós: preservar a obra de Marcus Pereira’, Música, no. 50, 1981, p. 47. 68 Luis Carlos Azevedo, ‘Um homem e uma história musical’, Ứltima Hora, 3/2//74, p. 13.

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series. Pereira was aware that many aspects of Brazilian popular culture had already disappeared because they had not been registered due to the absence of adequate technology and lack of funding, and Música Popular do Brasil was a direct attempt to redress that failure using the latest developments in sound recording technology. Pereira tapped into an underlying curiosity about national and cultural identity that is particularly evident in Brazil, and the rest of Latin America, and his efforts were an attempt to allow Brazilians to ‘re-discover Brazil’ in much the same way that Mário de Andrade had attempted thirty years previously.69 Critical Reception Perhaps because of his oppositional stance, the fact that he was not a member of the establishment, and his determination to fight his corner despite overwhelming odds, Marcus Pereira was seen by many in the press as pursuing a quixotic mission to open the ears of those living in the dominant south of the country to the wonders of Brazilian regional music.70 The press reception for Música Popular do Brasil was overwhelmingly positive, ecstatic even, and all sixteen of the records in the series featured in the annual ‘best of’ polls conducted by the critics of the major Brazilian newspapers. The review of Música Popular do Nordeste in the Estado de São Paulo was typical: I think that this is the first time in the history of the Brazilian recordings that an album has appeared that is so well realised, so well recorded, and that has such importance for the popular music and folklore of our country.71

Sílvio Lancellotti summed up this unanimity of critical opinion in the following manner, ‘Nobody should search for possible faults and omissions in such a pioneering and wide-ranging work. They would run the risk of risk of committing a cultural indignity.’72 Música Popular do Brasil seems to have come as a breath of fresh air to music critics, many of whom considered that Brazilian popular music was going through yet another of its periodic ‘crises of quality’ in the early to mid 1970s. Pereira’s desire to valorize the musical traditions of Brazil echoed many of their own concerns about what they saw as the ongoing dilution of Brazil’s musical heritage and the increasing domination of the airwaves and sales charts by imported pop, rock, and disco that I discussed in the previous chapter. Nevertheless, the regular criteria employed by music critics in the press were inadequate to review Música Popular do 69 Author interview with Marcus Vinícius, São Paulo, 29/8/03. 70 See for example, Roberto Moura, ‘Marcus Pereira: A morte do Mitavaí na luta contra os macobebas do disco’, Pasquim, 12/3/81, p. 20. Pereira also had plans (unfortunately never realized) to carry out an exercise similar to Música Popular do Brasil for the whole of Latin America. Marcus Pereira, Música está chegando a vez do povo. 1. A História de “O Jogral” (São Paulo, 1976), p. 61. 71 Carlos Vergueiro, review of Música Popular do Nordeste , O Estado de São Paulo, 14/1/73. 72 Sílvio Lancellotti, ‘O mapa do Brasil já está completo’, Istoé, 4/5/77, p. 44.


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Brasil; these were not after all normal ‘popular music’ records as they had far more in keeping with folklore recordings. Consequently, many reviews failed to provide any in-depth analysis of the music itself and often merely re-hashed large sections of the sleevenotes to the records. Pereira found himself in the curious position of being universally lauded in the press but unable to adequately distribute his records to the public because of opposition from within the record industry. In addition, he was denied the radio and television exposure that was crucial to further commercial success. Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil demonstrated the existence of traditional, national, cultural forms that many in the media and the general public perceived to be more aesthetically pleasing than contemporary popular culture – saturated as they considered it to be with foreign influences – and his work was a key factor in resuscitating that cultural heritage. However, rather than merely being an exercise in nostalgia, Música Popular do Brasil (in the attention paid to the music of Os Tapes for example) attempted to demonstrate new paths for Brazilian popular music to follow: paths that would rely on a firm grounding in the traditions of the past. By 1977 it was apparent that a rising tide of interest in all matters ‘folk’ had overtaken Brazil, prompting Veja magazine to devote a four-page article to the phenomenon. Pereira’s recordings were hailed as the symbol of this movement, which was characterized by large attendances at folk festivals, increasing numbers of seminars on the issue, and state governments increasingly publicizing the folklore to be found in their regions. The article concluded that it seemed that the zeitgeist appeared to reflect a desire to turn away from technological progress and massproduced culture in favour of less sophisticated alternatives.73 This wave of interest in all cultural manifestations of folklore had also been assisted by the growth of internal tourism within Brazil during the 1970s and the foundation of FUNARTE by the government in 1975, which included a section specifically dedicated to the promotion and preservation of folklore. The influence of Música Popular do Brasil can be detected in the comments of the head of FUNARTE’s newly created National Institute of Music, who declared in 1976 that his objective was to combat the ‘denationalisation’ of Brazilian culture by valorizing rural forms of music such as maracatú and frevo.74 Pereira’s success in helping to generate such interest in regional culture should also be considered in the light of the fact that between 1970 and 1980 Brazil’s urban population increased from 55 per cent to 67 per cent of the total population,75 a percentage of urban against rural that was almost the reverse of the picture when Mário de Andrade carried out the MPF in 1938. This rapid rate of state-planned urbanization and industrialization, accompanied by the economic crisis that followed the ‘Economic Miracle’ of 1968–72, seems to have provoked a desire in some Brazilians to return to a slightly nostalgic view of the rural past, and may – along with a generalised hippy-derived ‘back to the roots’ attitude 73 Anon, ‘Folclore: festa e agonia’, Veja, 9/2/77, pp. 46–50. 74 Bubbi Leite Garcia, ‘É importante que o povo eleve seu gosto’, Opinião, 9/7/76, p. 27. 75 Bertha K. Becker and Claudio A.G. Egler, ‘Brazil: a new regional power in the world economy’ (Cambridge, 1992), p. 126.

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prevalent among some sectors of Brazilian youth at the time – be one of the reasons why Pereira’s records found such a sympathetic urban audience when they were released.76 Large-scale internal migration from the countryside to urban areas may have also made it easier for city dwellers to encounter examples of rural folk music in the major Brazilian cities by the end of the 1970s. In one of the most thoughtful analyses of Música Popular do Brasil, written in 1975, José Miguel Wisnik touched on some of the dilemmas raised by the series of records. Bastions of endangered rural popular culture situated on the margins of industrialized society that were ‘discovered’ by Pereira’s team of researchers had two options: either to disappear, or to be transformed into picturesque, exotic ‘folklore’ by urban society. Those cultural forms that survived would often only do so by adopting aspects of the very same modern culture that threatened their existence. Wisnik pointed out that much popular rural music was associated with a pre-industrial age in which the music itself was intrinsically linked to agricultural and religious ceremonies; once that connection was removed the music lost much, if not all, of its relevance.77 One of the criticisms that can be levelled at Música Popular do Brasil is that it failed to provide an adequate explanation of the social context and uses of the music that it documented. Despite the copious sleevenotes to the records, the listener is generally not advised how these examples are representative of their genre: we don’t know why these particular tracks were selected. Second, and more important, we very rarely gain an insight into the opinions of the people who made this music, and we are consequently excluded from any true sense of the role that this music plays in the lives of its creators and performers. It is difficult to ascertain why these particular traditions have survived rather than others, and to what extent the religious aspects of the ceremonies that are recorded are crucial to their continuation. Issues of Authenticity and Controversy Música Popular do Brasil reflected a rather ambiguous view of ‘authenticity’ through the music that it documented due to the fact that it trod a fine line between popular music (music aimed at a commercial mass market, the tracks featuring Elis Regina, Martinho da Vila and Nara Leão for example) and raw, field recordings of ‘folk’ music such as the several recordings of music that accompanied religious processions in the series. As I have previously stated, Pereira’s records were first and foremost aimed at a commercial rather than an academic market and he was aware of the risk of alienating potential record buyers by including too much ‘difficult’

76 I do not wish to suggest that this reasoning formed part of Pereira’s original plan for the project but that it may well have been an unintentionally potent factor in determining sales for Música Popular do Brasil. The Brazilian music critic and writer Ana Maria Bahiana remembers being astounded at the sheer variety of the music contained in the Música Popular do Brasil records at the time of release and recalls that for her and her circle of friends it was a great source of pride that this was above all Brazilian music. Author interview, 23/9/03. 77 José Miguel Wisnik, ‘Escapando da Morte’, Movimento, 15/9/75, p. 20.


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material. But he was also aware that it was how the material was presented that was of utmost importance, as he made clear in a press interview: …For example, the voice of an old singer that might appear as incoherent and inaudible to many listeners, gains a new interest if it is placed next to an interpretation (of the same song) by Elis Regina.78

It seems as if Pereira was attempting to present Brazilian folk music as a musical ‘other’, to refer back to Middleton’s use of the term, to contrast favourably with contemporary ‘contaminated’ popular music but that he simultaneously wished to indicate that ‘authentic’ folk values still existed within popular music in the work of sambistas such as Clementina de Jesus and Martinho da Vila. Música Popular do Brasil juxtaposed traditional rural performers with their modern, urban counterparts, such as Elis Regina, and within that juxtaposition perhaps it is possible to glimpse a growing understanding that the rural, popular tradition does not necessarily exist completely outside the experience of modernity and the sphere of mass culture, but rather that it co-exists within that modernity, influencing it in a two-way process. These ideas of a more complex relationship between modernity and tradition have been elaborated at length in García Canclini’s (1995) influential study, in which he argues that so-called ‘traditional’, pre-commercial culture in Latin America is not simply negated by the experience of modernity but that it frequently becomes incorporated or welded to modern capitalist mass-produced culture in often complex and subtle ways.79 Although Pereira’s musical map mainly focuses on marginalized forms of rural music, at the same time it dedicates a whole record to urban frevo, including a ‘hybrid’ performance of frevo by a Bahian trio eléctrico. Pereira’s recordings are non-doctrinaire: they are not afraid to include repentistas [responding improvisers] who refer to the Beatles in their lyrics, and they give particular prominence to Os Tapes, a community-based group from Rio Grande do Sul, dedicated to finding new ways to articulate the Guarani musical traditions of their area without resorting to mere imitation. Pereira seems to be making the point that these are living, breathing forms of music and culture that form an integral part of people’s everyday life, continually in dialogue with the surrounding environment, rather than a world apart.80 A high-profile debate about ‘authenticity’ developed in connection with Pereira’s use of the group Quinteto Violado in Música Popular do Nordeste, the sleevenotes to which claimed, rather ironically as it turned out, that ‘Quinteto Violado’s sound is not their own. It is a sound that comes directly from the people – ‘the greatest

78 Marcus Pereira, quoted in Wisnik, ‘Escapando da Morte’. 79 Nestor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis, 1995). See also Rowe and Schelling (1991). 80 Marcus Vinícius recounts that he had several conversations with Pereira about the issue of ‘authenticity’ in Música popular do Brasil, and that he eventually persuaded Pereira that it was essential that the records featured more eclectic styles of music than merely the folkloric. Author interview with Marcus Vinícius, Rio de Janeiro, 2/11/01.

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Brazilian composer of all time’.81 These sleevenotes also referred to Quinteto Violado’s re-workings of traditional music such as bumba-meu-boi as being a necessary means by which the ‘musical message’ could reach an urban audience, and concluded that the group’s work should not be construed as an ‘adulteration’ but rather a work of ‘preservation’.82 Quinteto Violado were exploring a type of re-working of popular culture similar to that which had already been developed by Ariano Suassuna’s Movimento Armorial of the early 1970s. Suassuna’s movement was conceived as ‘a standard bearer against the process of de-characterization and vulgarization of Brazilian culture’83 and attempted to draw on aspects of popular Northeastern culture, including music, to create the foundations of a truly national, erudite culture, rather than merely churning out a poor imitation of foreign culture.84 Marcus Pereira and Suassuna shared a similar desire to promote national rather than imported culture, and Suassuna wrote some of the sleevenotes to Música Popular do Nordeste. However, the Movimento Armorial was not without its critics, some of whom pointed out that although it claimed to be based on popular roots, it was essentially a middle-class movement aimed squarely at a middle-class audience.85 The same kinds of allegations of elitism were levelled at Quinteto Violado in a series of articles published in 1976 in the left-wing magazines Opinião and Movimento. These articles argued that the group had appropriated various pieces of folk music, in their role as researchers for Marcus Pereira, from impoverished popular composers and either passed them off as their own or failed to credit the true authors of the pieces.86 The general tone of these articles was that Quinteto Violado’s music was a pale imitation of the real thing, served up for an elite, universityeducated Rio/São Paulo audience, as far removed from the povo as it was possible to get. Pereira himself became embroiled in a continuation of this press debate the following year when Istoé magazine published an article that accused him of being part of a general trend of ‘researchers’ who were merely concerned with exploiting popular Northeastern artists by appropriating their art and failing to recompense them adequately.87 In his defence, Pereira pointed out that he had done all that he 81 Aluizio Falcão ‘Quinteto Violado: Novo caminho para a MPB’, sleevenotes to Música popular do Nordeste, vol. 4, Discos Marcus Pereira, 1973. 82 Ibid. 83 Ariano Suassuna, ‘Movimento foi uma bandeira’, Continente Multicultural, ano. 11, no. 14, February 2002, p. 19. 84 Mark Dineen, Listening to the people’s voice: erudite and popular literature in North East Brazil (London, 1996), p. 185. 85 See for example, Ronaldo Correia de Brito, ‘Um produto da classe média’ in Continente Multicultural, ano. 11, no. 14, February 2002, p. 17. 86 Marcos Cirano, Ricardo de Almeida, Antônio Magalhães, Paulo Cunha and Nelson Torreão Júnior, ‘Arte sem copyright’, Opinião, 18/6/76, pp. 26–7. Geraldo Sobreira and Maria Rita Kehl, ‘Os maquiladores da pobreza’, Movimento, 4/10/76, p. 18. Héber Fonseca, ‘O som do Nordeste em arranjos bem comportados’, Movimento, 18/10/76, p. 18. Cirano et al. also criticized Fagner and Alceu Valença for passing off the work of little-known Northeastern poets and composers as their own. 87 Moacir Japiassu and Ronildo Maia Leite, ‘O Nordeste denuncia quem exporta a sua arte’, Istoé, 17/8/77, pp. 43–5.


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could to pay those who had participated in Música Popular do Nordeste and that it was grossly unfair to hold him personally responsible for the economic conditions in the Northeast that led poor musicians and composers to sell their art to those from outside.88 One senses that Pereira was particularly piqued that he, of all people, should be accused of cultural and economic exploitation when he had accumulated a vast personal debt in releasing Música Popular do Brasil, his records were denied radio and television exposure by the media, and above all, the fact that he was an independent record producer, one of the very few fighting for ‘…the valorisation of authentically Brazilian music at a time when foreign music has absolute domination of the market’.89 It is ironic that Pereira’s ‘protectionism’ was construed by some as exploitation but the general press debate on this issue raised several important, and largely unanswered, issues such as: the role of rural, popular culture in urban, middle-class society; the reasons why repentistas and the like were still popular in rural areas despite the all-powerful influence of radio and television; whether this culture loses its essential cultural significance when it is taken out of its natural context; and the consequences for rural areas when their local culture is marketed as ‘folklore for tourists’.90 When discussing Música Popular do Brasil it is essential to bear in mind the background of deep social division that exists in Brazil. There is an obvious paradox, for example, in the fact that, although Pereira’s records overwhelmingly featured music originating from the rural poor, they were targeted at a middle-class audience. Not surprisingly, the urban, middle-class purchaser of Música Popular do Brasil would have enjoyed a completely different experience listening to the recordings compared to those for whom the music formed an integral part of their daily lives. One thing is certain: Marcus Pereira changed the way that the Brazilian public viewed regional music. Música Popular do Brasil was the first case in which much of the sheer diversity and richness of regional music within Brazil had been documented, and more importantly, brought to the public at large. Even a seasoned music critic such as Sérgio Cabral was moved to write: ‘So Brazil had all this and wasn’t aware of it?91 Hailed by many at the time as a major contribution to Brazilian culture, Pereira’s achievement was all the more impressive because it was conducted 88 Marcus Pereira,‘Eu, explorador da arte…’, Istoé, 31/8/77, pp. 50–52. 89 Marcus Pereira, ‘Nosso papel é valorizar a música brasileira’, Istoé, 26/10/77, p. 78. 90 Maria Rita Kehl recounts an amusing anecdote that illustrates the potential for cultural misunderstanding in this respect. To mark the premiere of Tânia Quaresma’s film Nordeste, Cordel, Repente, Canção in São Paulo in 1976, various Northeastern repentistas and popular singers who featured in the film were invited to perform at a theatre in São Paulo. The audience were overwhelmingly middle-class (predominantly students and journalists) and the time allotted for each act was only a few minutes. When the performers over-ran this limited time they refused to leave the stage and continued singing while the next act followed them, resulting in a number of acts performing at the same time. The audience started whistling and booing this perceived lack of etiquette, which was the result of a desire to enforce limits on the improvising skills of the performers. Maria Rita Kehl, ‘O povo pela metade’, Movimento, 5/7/76, p. 17. 91 Sérgio Cabral, ‘A música que vem do Sul’, Opinião, 19/9/75, p. 21.

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by a private individual, at his own expense, rather than by the state.92 By 1976 even some of those who feared that Música Popular do Brasil might represent a dilution of the essence of regional culture were convinced of the historical significance of the recordings and the important factor that they had been made available to the public.93 Música Popular do Brasil was more than a ‘musical map’ of Brazil: it radically changed the Brazilian record-buying public’s attitudes towards its own regional music – particularly that of the South, which had traditionally been considered a poor relation of music emanating from the Northeast. The collection went beyond the customary treatment of folklore in two ways. First, its interpretation of rural music transcended the traditional approach to this genre through its re-workings of such music. The juxtaposition on the same record of MPB artists and performers of traditional folk music invited the general listener to make fresh connections between folklore and popular music. Second, the socio-political subtext to the material, although relatively subtle, was designed to reactivate the debate about the position of rural folk music in relation to the field of Brazilian popular culture as a whole. Música Popular do Brasil was not the first time that MPB and traditional regional music had been brought together; for example, compositions such as Arrastão and Disparada (that were heavily influenced by Northeastern music) had been extremely successful in the mid 1960s due to their appearance in televised song festivals. The use of regional elements in popular music also surfaced in the music of artists from Bahia (Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa) and Minas Gerais (Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges). Nevertheless, Música Popular do Brasil gave a major boost to the awareness of regional diversity and encouraged many artists working in the field of popular music to experiment with regional styles in their own compositions. It also helped to remove some of the stigma previously attached to regional culture at a time when cultural forms such as maracatu were on the verge of extinction. It was a key factor in the inspiration of movements such as manguebeat in Pernambuco in the 1990s and the proliferation of genre-transcending groups that exist in Brazil to this day. Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil also provided the template for Abril Entretenimento’s huge Música do Brasil project (coordinated by Hermano Vianna and Beto Villares) of the late 1990s (discussed in the following chapter) that, albeit from a different perspective, musically mapped those areas of the country Pereira had been unable to document due to financial constraints. If Mário de Andrade had laid the foundations for the cultural bridge between the regions and the metropolis, then Marcus Pereira went ahead and built the bridge – a musical bridge that was designed to enable Brazilians to discover the ‘forgotten part of the country, that doesn’t appear on television and that you never hear on the radio’.94

92 FUNARTE and the Campaign for the defence of Brazilian folklore were jointly responsible for the release of several 45 rpm recordings of regional folk music such as congada in mid 1970s. The series went under the title of Documentário Sonoro do Folclore Brasileiro but received little publicity. 93 Danusia Barbara, ‘A Presença do Sul’, Jornal do Brasil, 20/9/75. 94 Maurício Kubrusly, ‘A Herança de um Brasileiro’, SomTrês, no. 28, 1981, p. 98.


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Conclusion Both Mário de Andrade’s Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas of 1938 and Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil were projects that were intended to help defend the tradition of regional popular music in Brazil. Both were guided by the idea of folk music as an authentic ‘other’ to be compared and contrasted favourably with contemporary popular music, which both men considered to be ‘contaminated’ by alien foreign influences. However, Mário’s over-riding concern was how to utilize that music as the foundation of a new tradition of national art music. When the MPF discovered ‘popularesca’ music in Recife, it largely ignored it because it did not conform to Mário’s idea of the Northeast of Brazil as a reservoir of uncorrupted musical purity. Although Marcus Pereira was equally concerned about the threat posed to regional music, his approach regarding authenticity was less rigid and reflects a realization that compromises were necessary in order to bring that music to the record-buying public for the first time. Perhaps Pereira was not fully aware of the potential dilemma facing those who seek to protect and preserve the past by bringing it into the orbit of the present. There is no painless way of achieving such an objective that does not carry with it a degree of intervention and manipulation on the part of the ‘protector’, even if they are well intentioned. The true essence of what it was that attracted the ‘protector’ in the first place is irrevocably transformed, for better or worse, by the process of protection and preservation. Those who attempt the task of preservation run the risk of not only alienating those whose music and culture they set out to protect, but can also attract the wrath of those who accuse them of corrupting hitherto ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ musical forms for their own commercial gain (as Pereira found to his cost). Nevertheless, Pereira’s work had profound implications for Brazilian popular music and was a major source of inspiration for two substantial surveys of regional popular music that were carried out at the end of the twentieth century, which I will analyse in the following chapter.


Chapter 7

Reconsidering Musical Tradition: Música do Brasil and Rumos Itaú Cultural Música The vision of the musical mapping of the nation did not die with Marcus Pereira. Nearly twenty-five years later, a further two massive ventures, Música do Brasil (coordinated by Hermano Vianna and Beto Villares) and Rumos Itaú Cultural Música, set out to provide progress reports on the state of health of regional popular music in Brazil. However, whilst these latest projects might have found their initial inspiration in Mário de Andrade and Marcus Pereira’s path-breaking work their interpretations of the significance of musical authenticity and the central importance of musical tradition differ from those of their predecessors. Both these most recent endeavours point to more open, flexible ways of thinking about the interrelationship between popular music and the nation, and in different ways they both go beyond the confines traditionally associated with the concept of MPB. This chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part starts with an outline of Hermano Vianna’s profound influence on Música do Brasil (2000) and then analyses the project’s aims and working methods. This is followed by an examination of the central issue of national identity that Música do Brasil attempted to raise and a discussion of the project’s attitudes towards authenticity and the specific role of those concerned about safeguarding the future of regional popular music. This first part of the chapter ends with an assessment of the critical reception to Música do Brasil. The second part of the chapter discusses Rumos Itaú Cultural Música (2000– 2001) and starts by analysing this project’s aims and objectives, which is followed by a description of its methodology. The chapter ends by considering the critical reception of the project, which raised significant questions about its basic premise. ‘The “preservationist” needs to act like a clown’: Hermano Vianna and Música do Brasil (2000) By the late 1990s the musical and social environment in Brazil had changed dramatically from the 1970s when Marcus Pereira set out on his musical voyage around the country. The return to civilian rule in 1985 was followed by long spells of crippling inflation and financial instability but was also accompanied by continuing technological and industrial development. Concerns about the detrimental impact of foreign popular music in Brazil were now far less common, at least in the media, due in part to an increasing awareness that Brazilian popular music was strong enough

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to survive the periodic waves of ‘contamination’ from abroad, and also due to the growing influence of the Internet and MTV in Brazil. It was in these changed circumstances that the Abril publishing group considered ways to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the ‘discovery’ of Brazil in 2000. The anthropologist and writer, Hermano Vianna was already renowned in the world of Brazilian popular music studies due to his pioneering study of the Rio funk scene and his polemical enquiry into the modern history of samba.1 Vianna had also already carved out a successful career for himself in broadcasting, working on the extremely popular television programmes Programa Legal and Brasil Legal, which enabled him to travel extensively throughout Brazil during the 1990s, an opportunity that allowed him to make his own personal recordings of the regional music that had increasingly come to fascinate him. A chance meeting with the son of the director of Abril enabled Vianna to present his plans for a major project to record that regional music and he was subsequently contracted by Abril to undertake this scheme, jointly with Beto Villares, which was intended to form a fundamental part of their ‘500 years since discovery’ celebrations.2 Vianna had a long-held ambition to ‘musically map’ Brazil and he was well aware of the projects I analysed in the previous chapter, all of which remained incomplete for a number of reasons, most notably the lack of adequate funding. He was acutely conscious of the emblematic role played by popular music in the definition of Brazilian national identity and the crucial function that it plays in the construction of the image that Brazil presents to itself and the outside world. In a similar way to Marcus Pereira, Vianna considered that the traditional view of samba as the quintessential style of Brazilian music needed to be challenged by foregrounding the multiplicity of genres of regional music to be found in Brazil that are still largely unknown by the general public. With the enormous financial resources of Abril behind him Vianna would finally be in a position to fulfil the legacy of Mário de Andrade and Marcus Pereira and create an all-encompassing musical map of the nation. The Project Vianna’s basic premise was to set out to cover those areas of regional music that had not been previously documented (such as the music of the northern state of Amapá for example) or that were difficult to access, and at the same time to provide some continuity with Mário’s and Pereira’s projects by providing an update on some of the music recorded by the latter during the 1930s and 1970s. Vianna’s travels around Brazil for what became known as the Música do Brasil project started in Amapá in May 1998 and finished in Cuiabá in February 1999. During the course of the expedition he and his large team of photographers, filmmakers and sound recording engineers travelled a total of 80,000 kilometres all over the country, recording more than 100 musical groups based in more than 80 locations. The project was originally 1 O Mundo Funk Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, 1988), O Mistério do Samba (Rio de Janeiro, 1995). 2 Author interview with Hermano Vianna, Rio de Janeiro, 26/9/00.

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simply intended to record various styles of popular music but it swiftly gathered a momentum of its own and eventually produced a total of 160 hours of film footage; a series of videos that were subsequently broadcast on MTV Brasil; four CDs; a separate book of photographs (both of which went under the title Música do Brasil) and an Internet website. Vianna was faced with the dilemma of deciding whether to record a little of everything that the expedition encountered in a more superficial manner, or to concentrate in depth on fewer areas. He chose the former option, principally because he was well aware that this was a very rare opportunity to carry out such a financially well-supported undertaking.3 Vianna decided to focus his attention on the innumerable religious and secular festas, folguedos, folias and autos [all popular forms of festivities] that occur at various times of the year all over Brazil because part of the central thesis of Música do Brasil is that these represent an essential part of the Brazilian psyche – the desire to brincar [to play, or to amuse oneself].4 His decisions about exactly which festas to study were shaped by his own previous research; the writings of folcloristas such as Luís da Câmara Cascudo, who had assisted the MPF in 1938, local knowledge from musicians or academics, and the advice of friends with intimate knowledge of an area, such as the Pernambucano musician and composer Sibá. During the ten months that they travelled throughout Brazil Vianna and his team did not encounter any major difficulties in the course of their fieldwork. However, the sheer scale of the operation and the complex logistics involved in the project ensured that it was not always possible to carry out the three major functions of photography, filming, and sound recording at the same time. Further complications frequently ensued when some musicians were either too drunk to perform, or were incapacitated due to hangovers! The musical performances that did take place were captured for posterity in glorious sixteen-channel digital quality. Nevertheless, Vianna and his team were acutely conscious that even the seemingly ‘neutral’ act of recording is not without significance, for apparently trivial factors such as the positioning of microphones, and even the type of microphones used, form part of a series of decisions that have artistic implications for the final recording. They were also aware that what they finally produced were, in fact, ‘re-creations’ of the music that they heard in situ. For example, decisions were made to increase or reduce the prominence of instruments or voices in the final mix of the CDs, and several of the 108 pieces of music contained on the Música do Brasil CDs were abbreviated; a necessity because some performances lasted for hours. Consequently, the music heard on the CDs is an approximation of the live music that Vianna and his team heard in the field. As regards the type of music that was recorded, it was the principal objective of the project to ensure that the music that would finally be presented to the

3 The final cost of the Música do Brasil project was in the region of U.S. $2 million. Vianna had unsuccessfully tried to obtain financial support from the Brazilian government. Author interview with Hermano Vianna. 4 Hermano Vianna, Música do Brasil (São Paulo, 2000). Note: there are no page numbers to this book.

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public would be as varied as possible, rather than concentrating on a limited handful of genres.5 Música do Brasil was a vast multi-media project that expanded as it developed. In its multi-faceted character it was closer in spirit to the MPF of 1938 than Marcus Pereira’s efforts, which were solely aural in nature. The obvious major difference between the MPF and Música do Brasil is that the fruits of Vianna’s project were made available to certain sectors of the public, i.e. those who were able to access it either through the CDs, in book form, through the videos that were shown on MTV Brasil (and later on general access television networks) and via the Internet. Regarding the music itself, Vianna decided to organize the material in a four-CD set in a thematic manner, rather than geographically, as a tribute to Mário de Andrade, who had organized his collection of cocos in that fashion, and also to draw the listener’s attention to the project’s wider, more ambitious themes, namely, the very nature of Brazilian identity. The first CD is entitled Música dos Homens, das Mulheres e das Umbigadas [Music of men, women and bellies] and includes compositions that are ‘vaguely’ connected to questions of identity such as: ‘Who are we? What is our race? Is our country our language? What can this language do and what does it want to do? Which is superior: sex, love or friendship?’6 The music contained in the second CD, Música dos Mares e das Terras [Music of seas and lands] is intended to raise issues such as: ‘Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Where did our instruments and musical styles come from?’7 The theme of the third CD, Música dos Santos [Music of the saints] is self-explanatory and covers several aspects of the wide range of religiously-inspired music in Brazil, such as that dedicated to saints Benedito and Gonçalo, and the Afro-Brazilian forms of candomblé and tambor de mina. The final CD in the series, Música das Coisas, dos Bichos e dos Vegetais [Music of things, animals and vegetables] is extremely eclectic and features songs that celebrate aspects of the natural world as diverse as Amazonian birds, millstones, and houses in the process of construction. The thematic method by which this music is presented reflects one of the central tenets of Música do Brasil: it is designed to be polemical and it is deliberately intended to provoke the listener into hearing these sounds in a fresh manner, rather than merely as dusty folkloric relics. The stunning clarity of the recordings, tidied up to a certain extent in the studio, certainly helps in this respect, revealing a musical subtlety that even the participating musicians have almost certainly never heard.8 The variety of music covered by these CDs is immense, and includes regional styles such as; samba de parelha, siriri, coco, cururu, tambor de taboca, maracatu, congada, cantiga, samba-de-roda, batuque, fandango, ciranda, catumbi, caxambu, maçambique, marabaixo, cavalo-marinho, folia de reis, boi-de-reis, boi-de-mamão and many others. Perhaps the only obvious omission from a collection that claims to 5 2000. 6 7 8

Hermano Vianna and Beto Villares, liner notes to Música do Brasil CD, Abril Music, Vianna and Beto Villares (2000). Ibid. Author interview with Hermano Vianna.


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be the largest survey of Brazilian music ever attempted is the scant attention devoted to indigenous music. However, this was a deliberate omission on the part of the project’s organizers, who considered that they did not have the necessary expertise to deal with that particular category of music.9 The liner notes to the CDs are concise but informative, placing the music in its cultural and historical context and often providing thumbnail portraits and photographs of the participating performers, thereby perhaps providing the listener with a greater sense of identification with the music and performers than that offered by Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil. Vianna and Villares clearly state that the information presented in these notes regarding the origins and histories of these forms of music is not to be treated as definitive in any sense as this particular subject is rife with controversy, ambiguity, and differences of opinion, even among the performers and songwriters themselves.10 The Issue of National Identity One of Hermano Vianna’s main arguments regarding the cultural significance of the music so assiduously catalogued and presented by the Música do Brasil project is that it is not only ‘a data bank of what is produced in the country but it is also an attempt to try and understand Brazil itself’.11 That view was probably prompted by the fact that Música do Brasil was intended to tie in with the commemoration of the anniversary of the creation of modern Brazil, yet it is also clear that travelling the length and the breadth of the country brought Vianna directly into contact with both positive and negative aspects of the cultural and racial diversity of a Brazilian nation on the cusp of a new millennium. Vianna writes movingly of his discussions with young black people about the racism that they experience living in the predominantly white state of Santa Catarina, and also of the dilemma he faced when an indigenous woman, who was aware that Vianna was an anthropologist, asked him the following question: I think that you can help me. What am I? I think that you can tell me. Yesterday I was watching television with my children. Some Indians appeared on the television and my children asked me: Mum, what are we? Are we Indians? I didn’t know how to respond [...] I am a Taraiana Indian [...] But I married a person of mixed race [caboclo] from Bahia. What does that make my child?12

Vianna struggled to formulate a reply: Her question is unanswerable. In truth there are various answers, none of which is exactly adequate [...] It’s not good enough to pretend that the problem does not exist, inventing

9 Vianna and Villares (2000). Of the 108 tracks, only four feature music by indigenous groups. 10 Vianna and Villares (2000). 11 Hermano Vianna, quoted in Márcia Vieira and Karla Monteiro, ‘Usina de Idéias’, Veja Rio, 29/3/00, p. 10. 12 Vianna, Música do Brasil (São Paulo, 2000).

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artificial identities which don’t convince anyone now. The best thing is to transform the problem into a positive advantage: after all, getting used to not having a defined identity can be a creative relief.13

Vianna’s desire to demonstrate that seemingly ‘confused’ racial identities can create positive cultural outcomes is confirmed by several musical examples selected for Música do Brasil. For example, the Grupo de Dança de São Gonçalo da Mussuca, from the state of Sergipe, sing of an imaginary Africa but admit that they have no idea of the meaning of the lyrics to some of their songs, which are all that remains of a language spoken by their ancestors. Likewise, the Xucuru-Kariri Indians from the Northeastern state of Alagoas, are in the process of re-inventing their indigenous cultural heritage and now avoid singing in Portuguese in public, preferring to use their native language. Vianna considers that Brazilian culture and national identity is profoundly influenced by this pattern of constant flux and instability: The ‘national’ is not something that is fixed and unchangeable. It is changing all the time, it is a collective enterprise that is constantly renewing itself. Isolated national culture does not exist, not in a a way that can be thought of as a homogenous whole. [...] Marky Mark [a Brazilian drum ’n’ bass DJ/artist] or DJ Marlboro [a Brazilian baile funk DJ] are creating the ‘national’ as much as a master of congada or a sambador of maracatu rural. It is not neccessary to put a tamborim [percussion instrument associated with samba] in drum ’n’ bass to make it Brazilian. Who has the right to define what is Brazilian and what isn’t? There are many contrasting and conflicting definitions of ‘Brazilianess’ [brasilidade] and I am not interested in finding a lowest common denominator for all of them: I prefer to encourage diversity.14

Vianna’s defence of diversity (with its distinct echoes of Caetano Veloso’s 1968 comments in the Revista Civilização Brasileira that I referred to in Chapter 1) welcomes the absorption of imported styles of popular music such as rap and drum’n’bass into very heart of Brazilian music and is far removed from the more defensive and protectionist attitudes of Mário de Andrade and Marcus Pereira. Yet Vianna quite correctly argues that Brazilian popular music has always reflected this fluidity: Maxixe would not have existed if polca had not been imported from some corner of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And quite probably there wouldn’t have been samba if maxixe hadn’t existed. That’s how it will be from now on: music wants to be free and therefore refuses to be isolated by national boundaries.15

Brazilians seem to have an endless capacity to absorb musical influences from every corner of the globe, but they also have the creative ability to adapt those styles to their own tastes, often transforming them into something uniquely Brazilian. As

13 Vianna, Música do Brasil (São Paulo, 2000). 14 Hermano Vianna, quoted in Jotabê Medeiros, ‘Hermano Vianna vê a cultura em movimento’ O Estado de São Paulo, 29/5/01 [accessed 29 May 2001]. 15 Vianna, Música do Brasil (São Paulo, 2000).


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Vianna points out, these musical styles are not devoured in a standardized fashion across the nation as a whole; some genres (reggae in Maranhão, Gangster rap in São Paulo, house music in Belém for example) are restricted to certain areas or cities. Cultural Intervention: the Researcher as Palhaço The second major strand of Vianna’s thesis presented in Música do Brasil relates to his concept of an ‘espaço da brincadeira’ [space for play] in Brazilian life, that I briefly referred to earlier in this section. In his view, this takes the form of an extensive inter-linked rede [network] of which each festivity forms an integral part and in which ‘everything circulates: snatches of melodies; rhymes; musical instruments; details of clothing; scenes from theatrical performances’.16 Within this network: The player [o brincante] does not act as a passive spectator from a secular tradition over which they have no control and can only ‘preserve’. Their role is more like that of a DJ, or any other cybernetic musical producer who makes their own collages out of a specific repertoire [...]17

Vianna considers that the whole concept of popular culture in Brazil needs to be radically re-thought. Whereas the traditional view of folklore has been one of isolated, cultural phenomena, distanced from the ‘contamination’ of the cultural industry, in fact, what he found through the work of Música do Brasil was that many forms of traditional popular culture were alive and well, precisely because of the ‘corrupting’ intervention of the media and technology. This demonstrates for Vianna that the boundaries between different forms of culture are not as rigid as previously thought: it is altogether a more complex arrangement, with considerable scope for flux and interchange.18 Vianna supports his theory by pointing to evidence of the ever-growing crosspollination of cultural influences in traditional festivities such as the folias de reis in the state of Rio de Janeiro that have increasingly featured imagery and musical influences from the Rio funk movement and heavy-metal music (principally through the characters known as palhaços [clowns] that feature in the festivities) in recent years. The folias de reis were actually reinvigorated by these new influences as greater numbers of young people wanted to participate in them, precisely because of the links that had grown up with the funk bailes and the youth culture iconography (including marijuana and Nike) that had entered the folias.19 Equally importantly, the funk movement has in turn been influenced musically, principally in vocal stylings, by the folias de reis.20 To imagine that these regional cultural forms exist in total 16 Vianna, Música do Brasil (São Paulo, 2000). 17 Ibid. There are potentially interesting parallels to be drawn between Vianna’s concept of brincadeira and the more generalized ludic mentality which exists in Brazilian culture and which can be located in such diverse examples as the writings of Roberto da Matta, Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma, and the popular ethos of malandragem [roguery, trickery]. 18 Christiane Costa, ‘Cultura popular ou ‘folkmídia’?’, Jornal do Brasil, 23/9/00. 19 Hermano Vianna, ‘A Circulação da Brincadeira’, Folha de São Paulo, 14/2/99. 20 Author interview with Hermano Vianna.

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isolation is naïve, as Vianna makes clear when he refers to a conversation he had with a member of a boi-de-reis group in Cuité, a small town in the state of Rio Grande do Norte: ‘I asked if he had heard of the bumbódromo in Parintins [an increasingly popular form of Amazonian carnival], he looked at the dozens of TV aerials in Cuité and replied: “I watch it every year on the Amazon satellite channel.”’21 It is in his discussion of the significance of this cultural exchange that Vianna’s views become most controversial: The error of many well-intentioned preservationists is to think that to save a folguedo from the threat of disappearing it is necessary to isolate it from the rest of the world, keeping by force its ‘veracity’ or ‘authenticity’. The opposite approach might be more advantageous: it is neccessary to guarantee circulation, facilitate contacts between the brincadeiras and the rest of the world. In other words: the ‘preservationist’ needs to act as a palhaço.22

Vianna sees this role of the palhaço, which he links to the Afro-Brazilian deity Exu and the classical deity Hermes, as a crucial component in the complex network of brincadeira, with the palhaço responsible, amongst other things, for the role of communicating with the public and the outside world. Vianna suggests that it is imperative that he and other researchers in this field actively participate in the communication process that binds the brincadeira network together, rather than standing at arm’s length and merely studying the proceedings. To this end, Vianna made a point of ensuring that those musicians and performers participating in Música do Brasil were not only able to have access to recordings of their own performances from the mobile studio that accompanied the team, but were also able to see and hear recordings of other performers already taped by Vianna and his team throughout other areas of Brazil.23 Música do Brasil can therefore be considered to be a ‘musical map’ designed not only for observers on the ‘outside’, but also for those on the ‘inside’ of the brincadeira. Vianna’s emphasis on the importance of the role of the palhaço as the communicating link between brincadeira and the world at large raises the issue of the precise nature of his personal role in this process. Within the Música do Brasil project and in his earlier television work Vianna also adopted the role of palhaço, or cultural mediator, responsible for transmitting his message through the media. Vianna’s conception of his own role echoes the importance that he attaches to Gilberto Freyre’s ‘intervention’ in the development of the nationalization of samba in the 1920s.24 In other words, it could be argued that Vianna is now fulfilling a similar mediating role to that of Freyre and other intellectuals in the 1920s in his attempts to 21 Vianna and Villares, liner notes to Música do Brasil CD. At least one of the groups featured on the Música do Brasil CD (Comunidade dos Arturos, Contagem, Minas Gerais) have their own Internet website. 22 Vianna, Música do Brasil (São Paulo, 2000). 23 Author interview with Hermano Vianna. Vianna already had experience of a highly participatory role in his study of the Rio funk scene. By helping DJ Marlboro to programme an electric drum machine and thereby developing a new rhythm, he was indirectly responsible for changing the musical direction of Brazilian funk. Vianna, O Mundo Funk Carioca, p. 9. 24 O Mistério do Samba.


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bring the music of the povo to the attention of a wider audience. There are also some obvious comparisons to be drawn between the positions of both Vianna and Freyre, in the way that they both valorize and celebrate cultural diversity and mixture in their definition of popular culture. Música do Brasil and Authenticity Vianna clearly has little time for what he considers to be outmoded debates revolving around the issue of ‘authenticity’ and the mythical search for ‘purity’ in popular music: The important thing is not to have preconceptions, not to try to impose on the ‘povo’ the ‘correct’ manner (as music was played in a mythical past) that the ‘povo’ should play.25

Nevertheless, he considers that such paternalistic thinking still exerts a strong influence in Brazil and it was precisely for this reason that one of the central purposes of Música do Brasil was to directly challenge the myth of ‘authenticity’ in popular music.26 It is in relation to this particular issue that he feels that Música do Brasil differs substantially from earlier ‘musical mapping’ projects, particularly that of Marcus Pereira, which Vianna judges to have been largely driven by a keenly felt sense of regret that ‘genuine’ Brazilian popular music was dying out due to the influence of the foreign-controlled record companies that dominated the Brazilian music industry at the time. Vianna feels that his experience was diametrically opposed to that of Pereira: the music he encountered was not on the verge of extinction, and was not in need of external assistance to survive.27 He believes that Música do Brasil should not be viewed as a type of rescue mission because the music that he and his team came into contact with is in a state of rude health and is infinitely capable of adaptation: This music is alive and life always involves transformation, confusion, complexity, change. [...] this music is not isolated in a world out of the media eye. This music dialogues with other music that pass through all the medias, through all the communication networks, absorbing elements but also exporting ideas, rthymic cells, melodies.28

In Vianna’s opinion, it is almost impossible to disentangle musical strands so as to determine which are more ‘original’ or ‘authentic’: 25 Vianna and Villares (2000). 26 Author interview with Hermano Vianna. 27 Ibid. 28 Vianna and Villares (2000). An illustration of the difference in attitudes between Pereira and Vianna on this issue is provided by the sleevenotes to Pereira’s Música Popular do Norte (vol. 4). In describing the music of Tribos (racially-mixed groups that performed music often of indigenous inspiration at festivals in Manaus) Pereira makes the following observation: ‘The influence of music from other regions, through radio and television or by internal migration, like the Northeasterners, has produced curious alterations in the presentations of tribos who, often enter or leave the stage singing and dancing frevo, marcharancho and samba enredo’ (my emphasis).

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Did the lundum emerge in Angola? Did it go to Portugal? Did it come to Brasil? Or was it all the other way around? The probability is that the order of the facts does not alter the musical outcome. It is more than likely that the lundum was developed in the three places, that were in close contact, at the same time.29

He cites the example of the Grupo Raízes do Samba de São Brás, in Bahia (a rural group playing traditional samba-de-roda), one of whose number plays electric guitar instead of the traditional viola, and Vianna makes the valid point that such music would have almost certainly been filtered out of previous ‘musical mappings’ on the grounds that it lacked ‘authenticity’. However, the guitarist in question was influential in the development of trio eléctrico in Bahia in the 1970s, and rather than seeing this as a betrayal of tradition Vianna considers it as positive affirmation of the endless fertile interaction between traditional and popular music in Brazil, and confirmation of the ongoing construction of a new ‘tradition’ in the making.30 Critical Reception and Aftermath Música do Brasil was a massive, innovative, multi-media operation that comprehensively examined aspects of Brazilian popular culture and music on a scale and in a fashion that had never been attempted before. How then, is it possible to evaluate its success? Although Vianna was a major source of inspiration behind Música do Brasil (along with Beto Villares) and also its public face, in the wider scenario he was only a small cog in the rather larger wheel of Abril Entretenimento, the body responsible for funding the project. Despite the fact that he was only personally responsible for certain aspects of the enterprise he was highly conscious of important factors such as the need to reimburse those musicians and singers involved in order to avoid the sort of accusations that had been levelled at Marcus Pereira.31 In Vianna’s opinion, the reaction of those musicians and singers to their inclusion in Música do Brasil was overwhelmingly positive: not only did it represent recognition for them by the national media, but the resultant publicity also often enabled them to obtain increased leverage with their local councils to fund their own local projects. Perhaps rather surprisingly, Vianna was not concerned with the specific issue of the target audience that the project was aimed at in the first place, but he does consider that Abril did not really know how to effectively market the enormous volume of material that the project gathered.32 Vianna was nominated for an Emmy award in the category of arts documentary for Música do Brasil in the United States and he was also nominated for the prestigious Prêmio Multicultural 2001 Estadão Cultura, in Brazil. Despite these nominations, and the fact that the project received a large amount of positive press 29 Vianna and Villares, liner notes to Música do Brasil CD. 30 Author interview with Hermano Vianna. 31 Ibid. Vianna stated that all those who participated in the project were paid, but that it was often very difficult to decide exactly who to pay, as over 1000 performers in total were involved. He also advised me that all participating groups received a copy of the Música do Brasil CD. 32 Author interview with Hermano Vianna.


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coverage in many of the major Brazilian newspapers and magazines, Vianna has expressed a sense of disappointment at the lack of a truly analytical examination of Música do Brasil.33 One of the reasons for that may be the sheer, monumental nature of the project; it is a daunting task for any reviewer, inevitably constricted by space limitations, to even attempt to do justice to more than a few of the 108 tracks featured on the CDs. Furthermore, how to know which tracks to choose to discuss when normal value judgements relating to musical taste are perhaps out of place in these circumstances? As with Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil, musical critics were generally at a loss as to how to find an appropriate method to discuss and analyse music that does not fall within the normal parameters of commercial popular music and which the general public are more than likely inclined to find ‘difficult’ at first hearing. Although the vast majority of the press coverage of Música do Brasil was positive, frequently focusing on the richness and diversity of the music that Vianna had unearthed, it also failed to address some of the more polemical issues relating to national identity and musical authenticity that the project had hoped to raise. It may be that the current state of Brazilian journalism in general, and the Brazilian music press in particular, does not provide an appropriate forum for an adequate discussion of an effort of the scale and complexity of Música do Brasil. Having said that, perhaps one of project’s most striking successes was the way in which it briefly caught the attention of the MTV generation in Brazil, when fifteen half-hour programmes featuring film footage and music from Música do Brasil were aired on the channel in 2000.34 Although these programmes were deliberately ‘populist’ in their approach they attempted to demonstrate both the diversity of regional forms of popular music and at the same time the links that exist between such music and more commercial genres such as funk, rap and pop. To broaden the appeal of the programmes, they featured cameos by such stars as Fernanda Abreu, Caetano Veloso and Carlinhos Brown, alongside long sections of more traditional music. Vianna was extremely surprised by the large numbers of e-mails sent to the Música do Brasil website from mainly adolescent viewers of the MTV programmes, many of whom considered that the shows represented for them a ‘moment of discovery’.35 The series also generated some controversy in the media through the claim in one of the programmes that Brazilian funk should be considered a national rhythm.36 Although Vianna himself was personally extremely pleased with the outcome of the project in terms of the quality and quantity of material recorded, he was disappointed that Música do Brasil did not reach a wider public. Part of that problem was almost certainly the relatively high cost of the Música do Brasil CDs and book and also the fact that only limited numbers of these were ever distributed.37 33 Author interview with Hermano Vianna. Vianna considers that the major newspapers with nationwide distribution (O Globo, Folha de São Paulo, Estado de São Paulo and Jornal do Brasil) were annoyed when they were denied exclusive coverage of the project, and consequently gave a more superficial critical response to Música do Brasil than perhaps was merited. 34 The programmes were actually aired three times, twice on MTV. 35 Author interview with Hermano Vianna. 36 Anon, ‘Os 500 sons do Brasil’, Jornal do Brasil, 15/3/00. 37 2000 books and 3000 CDs were produced, hundreds of which were distributed to schools and libraries. However, when I visited the Centro Cultural de São Paulo in late 2003,

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Vianna always intended that Música do Brasil would be a long-term project, in which all the data obtained, including 40,000 photographs and 153 hours of unseen footage, would be available to the public and researchers, either through the Internet website or in other archives such as FUNARTE’s Folklore Museum in Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, since the demise of Abril Entretenimento in 2003 that seems increasingly unlikely and at the time of writing the Música do Brasil website was no longer available online. Regrettably, it seems likely at present that Música do Brasil may be an extremely important body of work that remains virtually unknown in Brazil and abroad and that it is also unavailable for analysis by other researchers. Establishing Alternatives to the ‘Grande Mídia’: Rumos Itaú Cultural Música 2000–2001 Música do Brasil was not the only musical mapping project underway in 2000. Itaú Cultural, the cultural section of the major Brazilian bank Itaú, had been involved in a major artistic project known as Rumos [directions] for several years. This programme had already encompassed cinema, dance, literature, and the visual arts, and in 1997 Rumos Itaú Cultural Música was established with the primary objective of identifying ‘new works, languages and tendencies in Brazilian music’. As part of that programme it was decided to investigate the current state of musical production throughout the whole of Brazil in 2000. The nation was divided into ten geographical regions and a team of thirty curators (musicians, journalists and producers) was appointed to oversee the project under the supervision of three national curators, one of whom was Hermano Vianna. Musicians and performers were invited to submit their compositions from each geographical area, and a total of 1712 were received, of which 78 were chosen by the curators for inclusion in a series of ten CDs, one for each area, produced by Itaú Cultural and jointly distributed throughout Brazil by ten independent record producers representing each area. A series of concerts showcasing some of the selected artists was also held at Itaú Cultural’s headquarters in São Paulo. Aims and Objectives The overall goal of Rumos Itaú Cultural Música’s ‘musical mapping’ exercise (which I shall refer to for convenience as RICM) was significantly different from Vianna’s project and the efforts outlined in the previous chapter. Instead of purely documenting existing music and bringing that to an audience, the central purpose

I was surprised to learn that the Centre did not possess a copy of Música do Brasil in either book or CD format. Although Música do Brasil was not initially aimed at a mass market, it was subsequently planned to produce a series of magazines with accompanying CDs and/or videos (similar to the MPB series produced by Abril in the 1970s) to go on sale at news stands, thereby greatly widening the project’s general audience. Unfortunately these plans have not yet come to fruition, and are now unlikely to following the demise of Abril Entretenimento in 2003. Author interview with Hermano Vianna.


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of RICM was to create a ‘permanent’ and ‘dynamic’ project with highly ambitious aims: The objective of the mapping is to democratise information in respect of the production of Brazilian music and thereby intensify the relationship and the flow of information between musicians, producers, record companies, music schools, institutions, journalists, means of communication, live music venues, festivals and record shops. The idea is therefore to organise an extensive national music circuit for music.38

RICM was designed to attract entries from professional musicians responsible for ‘creative works that present a basis or research linked to traditional Brazilian music, identified by rhythmns (frevo, jongo, batuque, maracatu etc.), manifestations (congada, boi-bumbá, amongst others) or popular music (choro, samba, forró etc.)’.39 I will return to the significance of this definition of ‘tradition’ later in this chapter. The project was not a competition or a festival, therefore there were no prizes for the successful musicians and performers whose entries were selected. Nevertheless, it was anticipated that the 78 artists chosen for final selection would benefit from the national exposure for their work that would follow its inclusion in the CDs and also the kudos that they would gain by representing the music of their region to a national audience. Benjamin Taubkin was the consultant responsible for RICM, and he was well aware that its aims were extremely ambitious; nonetheless, he considered that RICM was capable of providing at the very least a snapshot view of the contemporary state of music in Brazil. He was not concerned about documenting ‘traditional’ Brazilian music itself as this had been recently covered by Hermano Vianna’s Música do Brasil but he was more interested in locating music with its roots based in tradition. Like Vianna, Taubkin was well aware of the previous attempts to musically map Brazil and he believes that the motivation behind these periodic quests, including RICM, is a nationalistic, rather than xenophobic, love for all aspects of Brazilian culture and a desire to celebrate its richness and diversity.40 The main objective of RICM was to document music produced in areas other than the more celebrated musical centres such as the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Bahia and Pernambuco, and to redress the fact that little was known of the music being created in the rest of the country. RICM also reflected a conscious decision by its organizers to try to break away from the musical focus that is habitually centred on Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo by working co-operatively with a network of contacts in all areas of Brazil and to act as an artistic stimulus for isolated musicians scattered all over the country, 38 Anon, ‘Mapeamento Música’ <www.itaucultural.org.br/aplicexternas/mapeamento/ musica.asp> [accessed 3 December 2000]. 39 Ibid. 40 Author interview with Benjamim Taubkin, São Paulo, 27/8/03. Taubkin had been planning a musical map of the whole of Latin America for more than ten years, and his original proposal to Itaú Cultural was for a re-creation of the journey taken by Mário’s Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas of 1938 to compare how Brazilian regional music had changed in the intervening period.

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The project was deliberately designed to concentrate not only on composers and performers but also to encompass an analysis of the more unglamorous but essential processes by which music is produced, distributed, and advertised throughout the country. Thus, RICM was not only interested in what type of music was being produced outside of the well-established, mainstream, Rio-São Paulo circuit, but perhaps more significantly it was also concerned about how to start to bring that marginalized music from the geographical and cultural periphery to the centre. This is potentially the most radical aspect of RICM’s mission: although Brazilian popular music as a whole, and MPB in particular, has been periodically influenced by regional music since the late 1960s, MPB (and Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) have traditionally been the dominant factors in the national projection of what matters musically. However, increasing regional musical self-confidence and identity, symbolized by the wave of rock bands that came out of Brasília in the 1980s and the manguebeat movement in Pernambuco in the early 1990s for example, represented challenges to the hegemony of MPB and also suggested that the regions no longer necessarily look to the centre for approval. The ever-growing assuredness of the urban funk and rap movements also now raises questions about where the centre and the periphery of Brazilian popular music are actually situated. RICM’s second main objective was to take the first steps towards the creation of a nationwide musical network, one that is intended to be parallel to that monopolized by the ‘grande mídia’ [mass media].41 This intention to highlight the quality of musical production outside the conventional media spotlight and the orbit of the major record labels was a fundamental driving force behind the project, and was summed up by Lui Coimbra, one of the curators, who stressed the need to develop a means of distribution that was more concerned with cultural content rather than mere financial returns.42 This ethos echoes the views expressed by many participants at the National Meeting of Researchers in Brazilian popular music (2001) and reflects a fundamental antipathy towards what are seen by many (Marcus Vinícius and Roberto Moura to name but two) as the machinations of the ‘cultural industry’ and its banal output. It is an outlook that also invites comparisons with Projeto Pixinguinha’s underlying goal over the last thirty years – to create a parallel market for the promotion of Brazilian popular music of ‘quality’ – and also the work of independent record labels such as Kuarup and CPC-UMES who are dedicated to presenting a type of music that finds it hard to secure a place in the more commercially orientated market for popular music in general. Methodology The regional curators chosen to administer RICM were all experts in the music of their particular geographical areas. The project was open to all styles of music, not just popular, and the curators were inevitably influenced by their own personal interests in selecting the artists chosen to represent their area. There was no hidden agenda 41 Author interview with Benjamim Taubkin. 42 Quoted in Julio Moura, ‘Agora, os novos talentos respondem’, <www.cliquemusic. com.br/br/Acontecendo/Acontecendo.asp?Nu_Materia=2881> [accessed 10 June 2007].


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to ‘discover’ new artists, but the music of those who were chosen was intended to reflect three prime factors; originality, ‘quality’, and a strong regional flavour.43 A major consideration for the curators was that the artists had to be unknown outside their own geographical area, even if they were relatively well known and successful in their own region. Songs had to be sung in Portuguese or indigenous languages, and the insistence on music with its roots in ‘tradition’ meant that a unadulterated rock composition, even if sung in Portuguese, could not be selected whereas a composition that possessed some element of ‘tradition’, however slight, might be.44 This rather cautious desire to cling on to the notion of ‘tradition’ in defining the purpose of the project illustrates that RICM’s strategy and approach were essentially conventional in character and meant that the project was less inclined to provide a radical challenge to established ideas of what constitutes the musical ‘tradition’ in Brazil. The project’s definition of what was represented by ‘quality’ in a composition was inevitably subjective and contentious, and a second level of filtering was built into RICM, whereby all 33 regional and national curators met together in São Paulo in October 2000 to jointly agree the selection of the final 78 artists. Those responsible for the organization of RICM, and the majority of the curators, were extremely impressed by the musical talent of the final selection, something that pleasantly surprised Benjamin Taubkin, who had not really expected such a high level of competence from entrants before the start of the project.45 The number of applications for RICM varied from area to area, possibly due to differing levels of success with publicity for the project. As one might expect, a majority of those who applied to RICM were from urban areas; however, despite the use of local press, local radio, meetings and the Internet to advertise the project it was not always the case that the target audience was reached. Edson Natale was jointly responsible for the coordination of RICM and he was also curator for the state of São Paulo. In his opinion, it was ironic that RICM was able to carry out a musical survey of regions as remote from São Paulo as the northern state of Pará, but his own team, despite their best intentions, failed to map the musical output of the hip-hop movement on the periphery of the city of São Paulo. Natale attributed this failure to three factors; either the language used to encourage people to participate in the project and to advertise it in general was inappropriate; or the hip-hop community felt that the project was not for them, or the information sent to representatives of the community was unfortunately not passed on to those who might have benefited from it.46 The variety of music eventually presented in the ten-CD collection, Cartografia da Música Brasileira, was vast, and extensively reflected elements of local and transregional musical fusions. To cite just a few examples, it included pós-rock-carioca (Suely Mesquita), novo samba-pop-mineiro (Vander Lee), samba-punk-curitibano 43 Roberto Corrêa,‘Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul e Distrito Federal e Tocantins’, <www.itaucultural.org.br/rumos_musica/roberto.htm> [accessed 3 December 2001]. 44 Author interview with Benjamim Taubkin. 45 Ibid. 46 Author interview with Edson Natale, São Paulo, 28/8/03.

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(Maxixe Machine), nova-viola-nordestina (Pedro Osmar) alongside experimental electro pop from Piaui (DJ Dolores) and more traditional genres such as choro, samba, and maracatu.47 Of the material presented in the CDs, 5 per cent was classical music, 45 per cent instrumental, and 50 per cent was vocal. Critical Reception and Aftermath RICM represented a significant departure from previous ‘musical mappings’ in that the music that it presented was produced almost wholly inside the entertainment industry rather than being marginalized in a folkloric ‘ghetto’. For that reason, the standards used to evaluate its success by the media were slightly different from those applied to the work of Marcus Pereira and Hermano Vianna because critics were more comfortable analysing and reviewing music that conformed to conventional notions of ‘popular’ music. Although the overall tone of the analysis of RICM in the media was generally positive, one particular review/article by Marco Frenette in the cultural magazine Bravo! was extremely critical of the project, concluding that it had failed to achieve its fundamental objectives. Frenette claimed that despite the laudable aims of the project and the undeniable quality of the music of those selected, RICM’s effectiveness had been compromised because the final musical portrait of Brazil reflected the musical tastes of the curators rather than the contemporary reality of music in Brazil. Frenette cited the absence of rap and electronic music in the CD representing the São Paulo area as evidence that RICM had failed to reveal the enormous significance of the urban music produced in the city. Furthermore, he pointed out that the existence of important centres of hip-hop in cities such as Recife and Rio de Janeiro had been ignored, and that it was ludicrous that the only electronic music that was featured in the CDs produced by RICM came from the Northeast rather than São Paulo, the acknowledged centre of production of such music in Brazil. Frenette concluded that such choices were indicative of ‘elitist’ attitudes that precluded an accurate reflection of new Brazilian music, and which on the contrary emphasized a conservative, idealized vision on the part of the project’s organizers.48 This extremely critical article provoked a spirited response in the same magazine from Benjamin Taubkin, who argued that Frenette had missed the main point of RICM, i.e. that the project was primarily designed to focus only on compositions linked with traditional Brazilian music, either in terms of rhythm (frevo or jongo for example), popular manifestations (such as congada or bumba-meu-boi), or popular music (such as forró or samba for example). Taubkin also claimed that despite the best efforts of RICM’s organizers, no rap or hip-hop compositions had been submitted and he conceded that future versions of RICM (it is planned to be bi-annual) needed to address that failure.49 Taubkin’s defence of RICM seems to complicate matters further: because he does not define all the types of music that are ‘linked with the 47 Hermano Vianna, ‘Nacional’, <www.itaucultural.org.br/rumos_musica/hermano. htm> [accessed 10 June 2007]. 48 Marco Frenette, ‘Conjunto em descompasso’, Bravo! No. 42, March 2001, p. 98. 49 Benjamim Taubkin, ‘Rumos Musicais’, Bravo! No. 43, April 2001, p. 11.


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Brazilian tradition’ it is unclear quite where RICM’s parameters lie, and one is left to draw one’s own conclusions. As I stated earlier, Taubkin informed me that a straightforward composition in the rock music idiom would have been ineligible for submission even if sung in Portuguese, yet a ‘tradition’ of Brazilian rock music exists since the late 1950s. If a ‘pure’ rap or hip-hop composition, sung in Portuguese but with no other link to ‘tradition’, had been submitted it seems extremely unlikely that it would have qualified under RICM’s selection criteria as stated above. It appears to me that the underlying ethos of RICM is fundamentally at odds with certain styles of music, such as funk and rap, which are not considered by some of the project’s organizers to form part of the Brazilian ‘tradition’. This is somewhat surprising; as is the case with Brazilian rock music, there now exists a well established and highly influential ‘tradition’ of Brazilian rap for example, which dates from the early 1990s. This raises the more wide-ranging question of how long a period of time is required for a tradition to become established in terms of popular music, and opinions about this issue will inevitably be coloured by personal musical prejudices. The personal statements provided by the curators on the Itaú Cultural website make it clear that for many of them RICM was a means to publicize what they consider to be the boa música [good music] that falls outside the confines of the corrupted orbit of the ‘grande mídia’, which in Brazil is often shorthand for the overwhelming power of the Globo media empire.50 Many of those curators are hostile to what they see as the type of culturally worthless, popular bundmusic,51 for example, that is disseminated by the mass media, and consequently they seem unlikely to embrace with open arms music (such as rap and funk) that already has an alternative commercial space in the media within which to promote itself. As I have highlighted at various stages in this study, the whole notion of what constitutes ‘boa música’ in Brazil is inevitably subjective and is likely to reflect assumptions about social status, class and levels of education. There are clear parallels to be drawn between the attitudes of some of RICM’s curators and those of Mário de Andrade, exemplified by Mário’s dismissive views of what he saw as commercial ‘música popularesca’ or ‘submúsica’ that I referred to in Chapter 1. There are also parallels to be drawn between the attitudes of some of RICM’s curators and the opinions expressed at regular intervals over the last thirty years by members of the Association of Researchers in Brazilian popular music, and also by large numbers of the delegates at the National Meeting of Researchers in Brazilian popular music in 2001. These attitudes often seem to reflect a protectionist mentality shaped by what appears to be their self-appointed role as custodians of musical integrity and values. Coincidentally, the much-maligned TV-Globo ‘Festival da Música Brasileira’ that I referred to in Chapter 3 was running concurrently with RICM in 2000 and 50 See for example, Lui Coimbra, ‘Rio de Janeiro e Espírito Santo’ [accessed 10 June 2007] and Arthur de Faria, ‘Rio Grande do Sul’, [accessed 10 June 2007]. 51 Brazilian dance music often accompanied by sexually suggestive dance routines.

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Benjamim Taubkin was a member of the festival jury. His low opinion of the TV-Globo festival ultimately reinforced his belief in the value of RICM because it became clear to him that an initiative such as RICM will never originate from within the established media, which he considers to be more preoccupied with commercial considerations than aesthetic concerns.52 In fact, for Taubkin and several of the curators, RICM represented a type of ‘anti-Globo’ competition because in their opinion, the richness and diversity of music unearthed by their project belied the commonly expressed opinion in the media at the time that Brazilian popular music was once again immersed in a period of ‘crisis’, demonstrated by the poor standard of music revealed at Globo’s festival. The immediate impact of RICM was hampered by the limited attention that it received in the media.53 The initial release of 1000 CD collections was distributed to radio networks, schools, libraries, researchers and the specialist press. However, further plans to distribute the CDs were undermined by the complex distribution arrangement that had been agreed with independent regional record labels, which unfortunately never bore fruit.54 A series of seminars was held to discuss issues arising from the project, but further plans to publicize the project on nationwide radio and through the Internet fell foul of issues relating to copyright. The alternative musical network planned by RICM has not yet been established, although one of the project’s major goals – to ‘democratize’ information about music in Brazil – has been accomplished, at least partially. A large amount of information relating to the location of independent music venues in Brazil, and how that music is brought to the public, through local press, radio, television and music stores, was circulated throughout the whole country by a team of four people from Itaú Cultural over a period of six months. Edson Natale is well aware that the overall success of this particular objective will only be achieved when this information circulates independently of Itaú Cultural, a hypothetical state of affairs at present.55 Nevertheless, despite these setbacks, and the fact that he is of the opinion that RICM could, and perhaps should have occupied a greater role in Brazilian culture, Benjamin Taubkin is convinced that the RICM of 2000 was above all a positive initiative that attempted to create the beginning of a dialogue about alternative aspects of popular music that fall outside of the mainstream. For Taubkin, the crucial difference between RICM and previous ‘musical mapping’ exercises is that those responsible for recording the music have not simply melted away, their task presumed to be completed. RICM is intended to be a long-term commitment to the development of a national awareness of the quality and diversity of music produced in contemporary Brazil that does not fit into the restrictive pigeonholes created by the media. The perennial problem in Brazil, and elsewhere, is that all too frequently there is a lack of continuity in the planning of major cultural policies, which are 52 Author interview with Benjamim Taubkin. 53 Benjamin Taubkin sent a synopsis of RICM to 100 national journalists but failed to receive a single reply. Author interview with Benjamim Taubkin. 54 At the time of writing it was impossible to buy the Cartografia da Música Brasileira CDs, even from Itaú Cultural, and there are no plans to re-release it. 55 Author interview with Edson Natale.


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often at the mercy of short-term policy changes. Long-term projects such as RICM are particularly vulnerable to this uncertainty despite the backing of a financial giant such as Itaú.56 Whether it is possible to continue to build on the groundwork laid down by the first RICM remains in the balance and only time will tell whether such an ambitious project can survive the harsh reality of economic life in Brazil. Conclusion Música do Brasil and RICM were two contrasting, but also in some respects complementary, undertakings. The view of musical tradition proposed by Música do Brasil was deliberately fluid and ambiguous, refusing to state with certainty the origins of regional styles of music whose history is frequently shrouded in doubt and conjecture. Música do Brasil also consciously chose not to agonize over hair-splitting issues of musical authenticity and argued instead for the celebration of a national and popular music capable of embracing Brazilian drum’n’bass and congada at both ends of its eclectic spectrum. Música do Brasil’s commitment to celebrate musical diversity was also linked to an awareness of the ethnic and cultural complexity within Brazil that permits multiple expressions of brasilidade. Hermano Vianna’s theory of the importance of ‘brincadeira’ in national culture was a central feature of Música do Brasil, and he urges those concerned about the preservation of regional forms of culture, including popular music, to act as a direct link between that culture and mainstream society rather than attempt to construct a protective shield around it. Vianna concludes that forms of regional popular music and culture are far more resilient than may have been previously thought and that they are robust enough to withstand the ‘threats’ of technological progress and globalization. RICM’s fundamental objectives, to create an alternative circuit for regional popular music and to break down barriers between the local level and the dominant centre, are extremely ambitious. In some ways, the desire to democratize information about music in Brazil for example, they are similar in intent to Vianna’s desire to create a network of ‘brincadeira’. By highlighting the importance of the regional musical ‘periphery’ RICM is challenging assumptions about the relative importance of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, and the project is an attempt to educate the public in the same way that Mário de Andrade wished to ‘Brazilianize the Brazilians’. Although it might seem that arguments about authenticity in popular music in Brazil have been rendered almost obsolete for many such as Vianna, for some at least there remains an ongoing anxiety about what constitutes ‘música de boa qualidade’. This is demonstrated by the central ethos of Itaú Cultural’s RICM, and is also reflected in the attitudes of many of its curators. The subjective nature of the musical choices made by those responsible for musical mapping in Brazil has been a consistent feature: from Mário’s decision to travel to the Northeast in search of ‘uncontaminated’ popular music, and the decision of the Missão de Pesquisas

56 Author interview with Benjamim Taubkin. The second edition of RICM went ahead in 2004–2005.

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Folclóricas not to film ‘popularesca’ carnival music in Recife, to the criticism levelled at Itaú Cultural for failing to musically map the huge rap and hip-hop movement in its own backyard. The potential pitfalls of attempting to preserve and protect, or merely to document regional music have also been a constant. Marcus Pereira fell foul of sections of the press, eager to expose his ‘exploitative’ methods, and the media exposure generated by their inclusion in Hermano Vianna’s Música do Brasil has prompted the Arturo community in rural Minas Gerais to organize a secular form of their musical/religious processions specifically for tourist consumption.57 These four major attempts to musically map the nation have all been driven by a burning desire to educate the Brazilian public about the extraordinary richness and diversity of their popular music, past and present. They have also all been projects with intrinsic aspirations to bring the nation closer together in a cultural sense through popular music.58 Musical mapping can generally be seen as indicative of a desire to reflect the neglected musical and cultural output of the furthest corners of the nation, perhaps as a subliminal means of keeping those far-flung boundaries within the nation itself. This desire for national integration is an important factor in a country the size of a continent, where even as recently as 2001 the RICM curator for the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul could claim that he felt more of a musical affinity with Uruguay or even Europe than the rest of Brazil because of the effects of geographical and cultural isolation.59 Analysing both the projects examined in this chapter, and also those discussed in the previous chapter, raises the question of whether they can be considered to be significant, and if so, for whom? If we evaluate their importance solely on the basis of their impact on the general public, then it is clear that Marcus Pereira’s Música Popular do Brasil achieved the greatest success because his records reached a substantial section of the record-buying public, in comparison to the work of Mário’s Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas, which has only been available to non-academics in recent years. Hermano Vianna’s Música do Brasil and Itaú Cultural’s RICM have unfortunately failed to make a significant mark on the public consciousness for the reasons previously outlined. Nevertheless, even those projects that have been less successful in this respect have acted as timely reminders of the continuing existence and importance of regional popular music, and they have highlighted the significant cultural role that this music plays in the lives of millions outside the major Brazilian cities. Equally importantly, all of these projects have attempted to present an alternative view of what constitutes Brazilian popular music by challenging orthodox attitudes and prejudices.

57 ‘Music and ritual: rhythmic ritual in Brazilian congado’, seminar paper presented by Glaura Lucas, King’s College, University of London, 24/1/04. 58 There have other smaller efforts to document the specific regional music of one area, such as bahiasingulareplural produced by the state government of Bahia in 2001. 59 Arthur de Faria, ‘Rio Grande do Sul’, [accessed 10 June 2007].

Conclusion

Musical Hegemony and the MPB ‘Alliance’ By the start of the twenty-first century Brazilian popular music, and indeed Brazilian culture in general, had become the object of unprecedented levels of media attention in Britain and elsewhere in the world. This was exemplified by the commercial success of Bebel Gilberto’s Tanto Tempo CD, which in 2004 became the biggest selling Brazilian release of all time in the international market. Tanto Tempo’s subtle reworking of the bossa nova tradition is also a reminder of an earlier era, the heady period in the early 1960s when Brazilian music briefly ruled the world and international audiences became intoxicated with the ‘new sound’ (bossa nova) emanating from that country. Yet Tanto Tempo’s re-working of a well-established musical genre reflects only part of the complexity and vibrancy of Brazilian popular music that both Brazilians and an increasingly larger international audience have been enjoying over the last ten years or so. That period has been characterized by a growing awareness of the existence of the extensive, largely untapped world of Brazilian music that lies outside the familiar, narrow confines of bossa nova and MPB. Genres such as contemporary Brazilian drum’n’bass, and soul and funk from the 1970s have all received unprecedented exposure, and have been utilized to liven up the dancefloors of chic clubs worldwide, and also to spice up the soundtrack to Fernando Meirelles’s highly successful 2002 film, Cidade de Deus [City of God]. This shifting profile – the generalized perception and acceptance that the field of Brazilian music is a diverse and fragmented one extending far beyond the confines of MPB itself – has served as the aural backdrop to this study, which has addressed two central issues. The first of these is how and why it was that MPB came to attain the cultural dominance that it did within Brazil, given that its appeal and market profile were largely middle-class in character and that it has only very rarely enjoyed high levels of sales. The second issue to be addressed was why a certain ‘tradition’ of popular music within Brazil, of which MPB is the symbolic core, has been defended so vigorously over such a long period. Throughout the course of this book I have identified the various socio-economic, ideological and political factors that were responsible for propelling MPB to its position of cultural and musical pre-eminence. Particular emphasis was placed on the several interlocking roles of actors such as the press, the record industry, television networks, researchers and the state, in cementing the notion of MPB as a symbol of the totality, rather than merely a subdivision, of Brazilian popular music over several decades. I have demonstrated how the connection between MPB and television developed into an almost incestuous relationship, of equal benefit to both parties, through the trajectory of the post-1972 televised song festivals, and how that relationship was nurtured and sustained through

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the ubiquitous and pivotal use of popular music in telenovelas. A central issue I have highlighted has been that the influence of MPB as a musical style has persisted for so long because it was the soundtrack to some of the key developments in Brazilian politics and cultural life, and also because it has been consistently marketed as a stable beacon of quality in a sea of musical ephemera. The fact that MPB shot to prominence in the mid 1960s and consolidated its position through the early 1970s is no accident: Brazilian society was dramatically and rapidly transformed, both economically and socially, during that era due to the impact of urbanization and industrialization: fundamental changes that also came about under the shadow of an authoritarian military regime. A massive expansion in the national market for cultural goods occurred after the 1964 coup, and in terms of popular music this was reflected in the sales of record players, which increased by 813 per cent between 1967 and 1980, and in the sales of LPs, which rose from 25 million in 1972 to 66 million in 1979.1 Unfortunately there are very limited statistics available relating to which particular genres of music were sold during the 1960s and early 1970s, but it seems safe to conclude that these were the economic factors that released increased consumer spending power – especially middle-class spending power – and which, accompanied by incessant media attention for the movement between the mid 1960s and mid 1970s, gave MPB a significant boost during a critical period. The middle class was a vital ally of the military regime and was also the main beneficiary of the ‘Economic Miracle’ between 1968 and 1972. It was the middle class which was the primary consumer of MPB during this crucial phase and consequently it became ‘their’ music. The massive investment in MPB during this period is inextricably linked to the shifting relationship between the Brazilian middle class, the state, the market, the social scene and the culturalideological developments of the time. In other words, the first question addressed by this study is not paradoxical after all; the middle-class identity of MPB is the key to its hegemonic status. The Declining Fortunes of MPB The dominance of MPB has unravelled over an extended period that can be dated from the early to mid 1980s. Periodic press reports chronicling the ‘creative drought’ afflicting MPB became more and more apparent in the 1980s and 1990s, articulating a frustration that the movement had lost its way and that the MPB repertoire had become even more cautious and predictable than during the period of the most intense government censorship. During this time, many MPB artists took the safe option of regularly re-recording tributes to ‘classic’ songwriters such as Tom Jobim, Ary Barroso, Chico Buarque, Roberto Carlos et al. to ensure that the public continued to buy their CDs.2 This developed into a full-blown trend of endless recycling of songs 1 Renato Ortiz, ‘Popular Culture, Modernity and Nation’, in Through the Kaleidoscope: The Experience of Modernity in Latin America, ed. by Vivian Schelling (London, 2000), pp. 127–147 (p. 135). 2 Anon, ‘O golpe do baú’, Veja, 10/11/99, p. 217. See also, Okky de Souza,‘Trilha perigosa’, Veja, 7/10/81, p. 123.

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by renowned artists from the past, ushering in what one journalist referred to as the ‘song-book era’.3 The reasons cited for this trend were two-fold: first, there was a dearth of new song-writing talent to match that of the ‘good old days’ twenty years previously (a familiar claim that had been made at regular intervals over the previous twenty years); and second, the tactic seemed to guarantee large sales, something not to be considered lightly in an era of generally falling record sales. As MPB increasingly gave the appearance of turning into a musical ‘museum’ it lost touch with a younger audience and also alienated potential songwriters who, unable to persuade MPB performers, or their record companies, to cover their compositions, were more likely to try their luck in other fields such as pagode, música romântica or música sertaneja.4 Despite its ailing condition, MPB still exerts a degree of cultural influence in the Brazilian media, although even these last vestiges of its prestige have come under increasing attack over the last few years. Hermano Vianna was involved in an acrimonious press debate on the issue in 1999, after he launched a fierce assault on the arrogance of those writers and critics who continue to marginalize styles of popular music such as pagode and axé-music that are considered to be less prestigious than MPB: There are artists who, no matter how many records they sell or how loved they are by the majority of the Brazilian population, do not ‘exist’ in the opinion of the editors of the Enciclopédia da Música Brasileira. [...] The megastars of axé or pagode are targets for all sorts of insults by ‘critics’ and the like. This crazy intolerance has taken on the tone of a moral crusade on behalf of ‘boa’ música (which, by definition, is that which the ‘critic’ likes, based on criteria that are never seriously discussed).5

In his ground-breaking study Eu Não Sou Cachorro, Não: Música Popular Cafona e Ditadura Militar, Paulo Cesar de Araújo deconstructed the hierarchically dominant position conferred upon MPB, demonstrating the systematic manner in which it has been cosseted by critics and the record industry in comparison to more ‘popularesca’ styles of music such as música cafona or brega.6 MPB also received a critical broadside from an article published in 2003 by the journalist Luís Antônio Giron, who forcefully argued that contemporary Brazilian popular music (now, in his opinion a combination of rock, pop and electronic music) has virtually lost any connection to the established idea of MPB. Giron believes that the old musical hierarchy has now been dismantled, and that in contemporary Brazilian popular music ‘anything goes’, with axé-music, música sertaneja, pop, pagode and forró all competing on an essentially equal footing, although he does concede that the legacy of MPB can still be detected in the existence of a musical ‘standard of quality’. Giron concludes his piece with what reads like an epitaph for MPB:

3 4 5 6

Julio Cesar de Barros, ‘De costas para o novo’, Veja, 27/3/96, p. 114. Ibid., p. 115. Hermano Vianna, ‘Condenação silenciosa’, Folha de São Paulo, 25/4/99. Araújo, Eu Não Sou Cachorro, Não (Rio de Janeiro, 2002).

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The time to celebrate the generation of geniuses has now passed; it is now time to reserve entries for them in encyclopedias and bury for ever the mother-acronym [MPB] so that new Brazilian musicians can achieve their destinies without the shackles of the past.7

Whether Giron’s predictions will materialize still remains in doubt, but in the drastically changing world of popular music worldwide, with its ever decreasing time-spans of loyalty to musical styles and performers, it seems extremely unlikely that any future generation of Brazilian musicians and performers will be venerated to the degree, and with the consistency, that the biggest names of MPB, such as Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque, have been since the 1960s. The Defence of Musical Tradition Turning now to the other main question posed by this study, I have argued throughout this book that a clearly defined tendency has existed over a period of decades among various groups and individuals in Brazil who have felt the necessity to defend popular music from the threat of ‘alien’ foreign influences. That trend was first identified in the writings of Mário de Andrade and is particularly apparent in the activities of the Association of Researchers in Brazilian popular music (APMPB), FUNARTE’s Projeto Pixinguinha, and the work of Marcus Pereira, all of which have left their own particular mark on Brazilian popular music. The persistence of these attitudes over such a long period, and the perennial debate on the issue of ‘cultural invasion’ within popular music in Brazil, are inextricably bound up with political, social and intellectual arguments that cross the social divide, encompassing the state, intellectuals, the media and the public. These concerns about foreign cultural penetration can be viewed in the context of the argument, as analysed by Roberto Schwarz, that Brazilian culture has been characterized by an imitative tendency ever since Independence, and that this has often resulted in an uncritical adoption of imported cultural forms, normally from the United States or Europe. Those Brazilians who have resented such cultural imitation have frequently based their own search for ‘authentic’ national cultural roots on the notion that it might be possible to locate such a culture if only the anti-national effects of the mass media and commercial interests could be removed.8 Schwarz’s sceptical questioning of this fallacy is particularly pertinent if applied to the case of the Brazilian record industry. Concerns about the dilution of national popular music by commercialization and foreign influences have resurfaced on a regular basis because, in the opinion of those who oppose foreign cultural domination, it is the Brazilian record industry (which has been, and still remains, foreign-controlled) that has been responsible for the subversion of Brazilian popular music from within Brazil itself. Various initiatives intended to protect and preserve Brazilian popular music have been fuelled by an undercurrent of musical, and occasionally political, nationalism. These endeavours, whether they be Almirante’s broadcasts; the writings of 7 Luís Antônio Giron, ‘A MPB acabou’, Bravo!, July 2003, p. 61. 8 Roberto Schwarz, ‘Brazilian Culture: Nationalism by Elimination’, in Misplaced Ideas: essays on Brazilian culture, ed. by John Gledson (London, 1992), pp. 1–18 (p. 3).

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Vasconcellos, Rangel and Tinhorão; the musical mapping of Marcus Pereira, the work of the APMPB and the Projeto Pixinguinha, have often taken on an added dimension of cultural resistance, incorporating a desire to refute the axiom that Brazil is a ‘country without a memory’. It is largely because Brazilian popular music has had such a strong association with the concept of national identity that the tradition has been defended with such passion.9 The dream of cultural unification has been of critical importance in the construction of Brazilian nationhood due to the country’s geographical vastness and ethnic and social diversity. In the complex nationalist and populist discourse that developed during the twentieth century, popular music played a key role, being employed at different times as a powerful symbol of brasilidade and social unification (in the 1930s) and an emblem of the possibility of social transformation (in the 1960s). The role of intellectuals – poets, musicians, historians, anthropologists, folklorists and the like – has been identified as of paramount importance in the development of nationalist ideologies worldwide because the latter have been historically considered to be adept at articulating concerns that are potentially shared by the population at large through the construction of ‘appropriate images, myths and symbols’.10 In the conceptualization of musical tradition in Brazil, Mário de Andrade’s writings fulfilled that intellectual role and his overall influence on attitudes towards popular music in Brazil has been enduring and considerable. Mário’s thinking has been the ideological touchstone for many of the projects discussed in this book that were fundamentally preoccupied with the defence of that tradition. Almirante, Vasconcellos, Tinhorão, and some of the researchers, critics and academics attached to the APMPB can also be considered to fulfil this role of providing an intellectual foundation for the justification and validation of a particular musical tradition. As the twentieth century entered its final decades, adherents of musical nationalism in Brazil increasingly saw the ground cut away from beneath them as popular music diversified further and further away from any notion of absolutist purity. This escalating musical heterogeneity and fusion of disparate national and international styles seems to confirm Bryan McCann’s assertion that Mário was ultimately incorrect in his assessment of the potential damage to popular music in Brazil from ‘alien’ influences; it was those very influences that were eventually responsible for the creation of a vibrant, self-assured musical tradition in Brazil that Mário had yearned for.11 Evidence of that complex, hybrid tradition can be seen in such disparate developments as Beto Villares and Hermano Vianna’s Música do Brasil project, the music of Carlinhos Brown and the blocos-afro in Bahia, and the manguebeat movement that arose in Pernambuco in the early 1990s.

9 Such defensiveness has not been confined to Brazil or Latin America. The BBC in Britain were particularly concerned about the potentially subversive cultural affects of North American popular music in Britain in the 1950s and laid down strict limits on how much of such material should be broadcast. Dick Hebdige, Hiding in the Light: on images and things (London, 1988), pp. 54–5. 10 Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London, 1991), p. 93. 11 McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil, pp. 16–17.

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Despite the fears regularly expressed during the 1970s, by Marcus Pereira among others, that Brazilian popular music was endangered by foreign music and notwithstanding high sales for imported music at the time, sales of Brazilian music actually outsold foreign records by a ratio of two to one, and furthermore, have done so for a period of at least twenty years. So did Brazilian popular music actually need to be defended with such forcefulness after all? Sales are of course not the only criterion by which levels of cultural penetration can be measured, but it surely seems that the case for the defence of national music was somewhat overplayed, doubtlessly because the issue was linked for some to other wider ideological and political agendas of the period such as the debate pre and post-‘Economic Miracle’, on both the political left and right, about issues such as Brazil’s economic development, the nation’s future development and ‘dependency’ theory. Yet Brazil has repeatedly found itself at the intersection of transatlantic musical movements and the country has been directly involved in the global musical field for some considerable time. Brazil has also experienced extreme nationalist sentiments at various historical moments but has also consistently been the subject of pronounced international influences in the political, cultural and economic spheres. An almost constant tension between the two competing and contradictory forces can be identified: the fundamental character of Brazilian popular culture is simultaneously national and international. ‘Disco é cultura’ – the slogan that was stamped across the sleeves of hundreds of thousands of Brazilian records in the 1970s – is symptomatic of the ambiguity at the central core of the arguments about foreign dominance of national music. The phrase was in one sense evocative of the artistic sentiments of several of the stars of MPB of that period who were convinced that their music had a social and cultural significance that went beyond the mere commercial.12 This was reflected in the degree of attention to detail that was lavished on the packaging of LPs by MPB artists (cover photography, liner notes, lyric sheets) in the 1970s, which demonstrated that the albums were designed to be considered cultural artefacts rather than merely ‘records’. MPB was also targeted at the same social elites that have historically looked to North America and Europe for cultural models, and like bossa nova before it, it was marketed in the 1970s, by André Midani and others, as a ‘sophisticated’ cultural product to match those imported from abroad. The phrase ‘disco é cultura’ also suggests that the military governments of the 1970s believed that popular music was worthy of support and that it merited being placed on a similar footing to other more ‘elevated’ cultural forms traditionally associated with governmental financial assistance. Yet in reality it was the very administrations associated with this ethos that introduced generous tax concessions for multinational record companies operating in Brazil, and which, for fear of jeopardizing foreign investment, steadfastly refused to challenge the commercial stranglehold exerted by those companies. It was also the same administrations that only decided to support cultural projects such as the Projeto Pixinguinha when they felt that there was political capital to be made from the opportunity. Therefore a contradiction exists between the rather grandiose claims suggested by the slogan 12 Araújo, Eu Não Sou Cachorro, Não, p. 188.

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‘disco é cultura’ and the perfunctory manner in which the state merely paid lip service to defending national popular music. The recurrent desire to musically ‘map’ the nation seems to reflect an underlying desire to engage with the central question of what it is to be Brazilian. Writer and critic Ana Maria Bahiana considers that contemporary concerns and ongoing debate about nationality in Brazil reflect the fact that the country is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in Latin America and that many Brazilians do not consider themselves to be ‘Latin Americans’ in the widest sense of the term. Furthermore, Brazil has a very complex relationship with the United States (one that might be termed ‘love-hate’) and was almost a French, Dutch, and Spanish colony at various periods in history. In Bahiana’s opinion, due to these cultural and historical reasons, Brazilians appear to periodically need to reinforce their sense of identity, and popular music, along with sport, is one of the few opportunities where it is possible for Brazil to attempt to define itself on the national and international stage.13 The financial sponsorship of the Música do Brasil and RICM projects by commercial giants such as Abril and Itaú is a demonstration of the continuing belief held by the organizers of those projects that popular music has something significant to say about Brazilian identity, and, as I demonstrated in Chapter 7, Música do Brasil was inspired by a desire to explore aspects of national identity rather than merely document different styles of regional music. However, it should also be stressed that the various efforts to musically map Brazil since 1938 have all been targeted at a predominantly elite audience and they have all made a brief ripple on the cultural scene before vanishing, largely without trace. This raises the question of whether issues such as the need to preserve musical tradition are of any real relevance to the majority of the population, or are they merely the concerns of limited numbers of academics and intellectuals? In this regard it might be relevant to consider the general motives of those who were so vociferous about the threat to Brazilian popular music. On what terms do some individuals and associations assume the moral right to claim that they are acting in the defence of the national? On behalf of whose cultural heritage and memory are they acting, and in whose interest is it to take up the cudgels of cultural resistance? Obviously the motivations of the individuals and organizations examined in this book have varied greatly but they have one thing in common; none of them exist(ed) in a cultural or social vacuum. Individuals such as Marcus Vinícius and Hermínio Bello de Carvalho and organizations such as the APMPB can be considered to form part of what is sometimes referred to as a ‘musical class’ in Brazil that often adopts a self-imposed mission to guard the nation’s musical heritage and to keep it alive. Knowing that the state has historically shied away from any major efforts to promote and preserve the memory of popular music in Brazil, with the obvious exception of the Projeto Pixinguinha, this ‘musical class’ takes up this duty precisely because it is aware that it is extremely unlikely that any official body will intervene in this area. One could also argue that what is actually being defended – in addition to, or even perhaps rather than – musical tradition is the position of the ‘musical class’ itself. These individuals and associations often take on the role of unpaid cultural guardians, and gatekeepers in some instances, but at the same time in the course of 13 Author interview with Ana Maria Bahiana.

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their work they also acquire personal recognition, something that brings with it an element of status in the Brazilian artistic and academic fields.14 The particular sensitivity, for some at least, concerning the perceived threat to popular music in Brazil is slightly puzzling because it does not appear that this sensitivity extends to other cultural forms such as literature or cinema, for example. This emotional attachment to popular music is evident in the regular attendance by Brazilians at live music shows, both in Brazil and abroad, and the central function that such music still plays in the lives of millions through television, radio, religious ceremonies and rituals, and folkloric traditions. Perhaps it was this underlying national sentiment that Marcus Pereira and Hermano Vianna tapped into during their musical treks around Brazil. Yet it surely paradoxical that in a nation which appears to value popular music so highly there are no departments dedicated to popular music studies in Brazilian universities (the few Brazilian academics working in the field are usually based in History, Literature or Politics departments), and there are virtually no Brazilian academic journals specialising in popular music studies. I have argued that MPB represents the concerted effort of a specific class within Brazilian society to define and express itself. That MPB was profoundly bound up with the history of the Brazilian middle class from the mid 1960s onwards is evident from its consumer profile, its political and ideological importance (during the period of the military dictatorship), and the various persistent interventions in support of MPB by actors such as the ‘musical class’, researchers and critics. At the same time it is important to note the contradiction between the historical, ideological function of MPB as a ‘national treasure’ and the fact that not only is there a striking lack of support for Brazilian popular music at the state, institutional and academic levels but also that beyond the confines of the middle class the wider Brazilian public now appear to have minimal interest in the importance of MPB as a symbol of national identity.

14 Mention should also be made at this point of the important role of individual record collectors in Brazil whose extensive collections have often served as invaluable archives for record labels seeking to re- release historical material. As Shuker points out, one of the multiple functions of the collecting of records can be ‘stewardship and cultural preservation’. Roy Shuker, ‘Beyond the ‘high fidelity’ stereotype: defining the (contemporary) record collector’, Popular Music, 23/3 (2004), 311–30 (p. 312).

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Beto Villares, São Paulo, 26/9/06. Discography L.H. Corrêa de Azevedo: Music of Ceará and Minas Gerais, RCD 10404, 1997. Missão de Pesquisas Folcóricas, The Discoteca Collection, RCD 10403, 1997. Missão de Pesquisas Folcóricas CDSS005/06. Turista Apprendiz, A Barca, CPC-UMES, CP519, 2000. Música do Brasil, Abril Music, 2000. Música popular do Nordeste, vols. 1–4, Discos Marcus Pereira MPL 2001–2004, 1973. Música popular do Centro-Oeste/Sudeste, vols. 1–4, Discos Marcus Pereira MPL 2005–2008, 1974. Música popular do Sul, vols. 1–4, Discos Marcus Pereira MPL 2010–13, 1975. Música popular do Norte, vols. 1–4, Discos Marcus Pereira MPL 9352–9355, 1977. Coleção Cartografia Musical Brasileira / Rumos Itaú Cultural Música (2001/2002) Cartografia Musical Brasileira – AC/AP/AM/PA/RO/RR – CMB75 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – AL/CE/PB/PE/RN/SE – CMB76 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – BA – CMB77 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – DF/GO/MG/MS/TO – CMB78 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – ES/RJ– CMB79 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – MA/PI – CMB80 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – MG – CMB81 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – PR/SC – CMB82 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – RS – CMB83 Cartografia Musical Brasileira – SP – CMB84

Index A Escrava Isaura 84 Abertura (1975) 68–72 ABPD, see Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos Abreu, Fernanda 105, 169 Abreu, Zequinha de 23 Abril Abril Entretenimento 156, 160, 168, 170, 185 Abril Music 97n41 Editora Abril 54–5, 85 Acordeon, Oswaldinho do 128 Adelaide, Julinho da 69 Adorno, Theodor 89–90, 94 African/Afro-Diasporic music 3, 5, 29, 105, 145, 162 Alagoas 164 Alf, Johnny 27n77 Almeida, Renato 12 Almirante 4, 16–17, 18–22, 38, 126, 182, 183 Alô Amigos 15 Alvarenga 15n21 Alvarenga, Oneyda 140, 145 Amapá 160 Amelinha 75 Andrade, Carlos Drummond de 45 Andrade, Carolina 146 Andrade, Leny 126 Andrade, Mário de 3–4, 6, 8, 9, 11–14, 18, 19, 24, 26, 27, 38, 44, 45, 107, 121, 125, 131–3 passim, 143–7 passim, 150, 156, 157, 159, 160, 164, 175, 177–8, 182 Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas (MPF) 131, 136–43, 151, 157, 161, 162, 177–8 Andreato, Elifas 54, 55 Andrew Sisters 22 APMPB, see Associação dos Pesquisadores da Música Popular Brasileira Araújo, Paulo César de 44, 181 ARENA 113

Argentina 29, 76, 80, 138 Armorial movement, see Movimento Armorial 38 Arraes, Miguel 147 Arturo 178 Assim na Terra como no Céu 83 Assis, Francisco de 29 Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos (ABPD) 74, 96, 100, 102 Associação dos Pesquisadores da Música Popular Brasileira (APMPB) 1, 9, 35–8, 42, 48, 55, 104, 115, 116, 118, 121, 129, 172, 175, 182, 183, 185 Association of Researchers in Brazilian Popular Music (APMPB), see Associação dos Pesquisadores da Música Popular Brasileira axé-music 42, 53, 86, 102, 181 Azevedo, Geraldo 2 Azevedo, Luiz Heitor Corrêa de 142 Aznavour, Charles 22 babaçuês 140 Babo, Lamartine 23 Bahia 5, 29, 42, 105, 136, 153, 156, 168, 171, 183 Bahiana, Ana Maria 58, 59–60, 70–71, 152n76, 185 baião 27 Baila Comigo 84 baile funk 164, 165 bambelô 144 banda de pífanos 144 Bandeira, Manuel 45 Bandolim, Jacob do 120 Banquete dos Mendigos 115 Barnabé, Arrigo 73 Barroso, Ary 2, 5, 15, 20, 21, 23, 27, 66, 141, 180 Barroso, Inezita 128 Bastos, Ronaldo 44 Batista, Amado 43 batuque 17, 162, 171

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batuque do Pará 145 Beatles, The 24, 25, 30, 54, 94, 153 Becaud, Gilbert 22 beguine 22 Belém 122, 126, 165 Belissima 83 Belo Horizonte 122, 128 Ben, Jorge 2, 45, 55, 69, 73 Benjor, Jorge 53 Bethânia, Maria 2, 46, 53, 62, 83, 107 Bill Haley and the Comets 24 Billboard 34, 99 Bizz 61–2 Black Rio movement 109 Blackboard Jungle 23 Blanc, Aldir 44, 74, 115n14 Blanco, Billy 77 Blitz 100 blues music 42, 60 BMG 90 Boal, Augusto 29 boi-bumbas 140, 171 boi-de-mamão 162 boi-de-reis 162, 166 boi do Amazonas 145 bois do Maranhão 145 boi do Pará 145 bolero 23, 62 Bondinho 60 Bonfa, Luiz 106n86 Bosco, Belchior 74 Bosco, João 2, 69, 74, 78, 125 bossa nova 2, 53, 55, 56, 59, 143, 179, 184 and the cultural invasion debate 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 37 and MPB 39, 42, 44, 49, 51 and Projeto Pixinguinha 125, 126, 127 Bossa Nova movement 2, 3, 23, 26, 28, 38, 41, 69, 106 Bossaudade 66 Braga, Ney 35, 116, 118 Branco, Castelo 112 Brandão, Leci 69 Brandt, Fernando 44 Brasília 61, 128, 172 Brasilio Itiberê da Cunha 11 Braunweiser, Martin 139, 140 Bravo! 174 Brazilian Bitles, The 24

Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics, see IBOPE Brazilian Music Society, see Sombrás Brazilian Society of Folklore 142 brega 43, 47, 57–8, 126, 181 see also música cafona Britain, see Great Britain Brito, Brasil Rocha 4 Brown, Carlinhos 105, 108, 169, 183 Buarque, Chico 2, 31–2, 41–51 passim, 55, 59, 61, 66, 68n10, 69, 73, 77, 78, 83, 86, 115n14, 120, 180, 182 bugio 145 bumba-meu-boi 139, 140, 144, 147, 154, 174 Byrne, David 107 Cabral, João 45 Cabral, Sérgio 31–2, 35, 48, 55, 121, 145, 155 Cafi 54 Calado, Carlos 62 calango 144 Campaign for the Defence of Brazilian Folklore 117, 143, 156n92 Campos, Augusto de 4, 28 Canção de Protesto 24, 25, 48, 49, 143, 149n66 canções 144 candomblé 162 cantigas 140, 162 cantigas de roda 140 cantos de trabalho 145 Capinam, José Carlos 44 Carandiru prison 1 Cardoso, Elizeth 127 carimbó 27, 57, 145 Carlos, Erasmo 66–7 Carlos, Roberto 34, 42, 43, 53, 62, 66, 73, 108, 180 Carneiro, Édison 135, 143 Cartola 5, 15n21, 57, 120, 125, 149n67 Carvalho, Beth 125 Carvalho, Hermínio Bello de 37, 120–21, 123, 124–5, 126, 129, 130, 185 Carvalho, Ilmar 30 Carvalho, Machado de 67 Cascudo, Luís da Câmara 140, 145, 161 Cash Box 99

INDEX Castro, Max de 84 Castro, Ruy 35, 48 catimbós 140 catira 144 catumbi 162 cavalo-marinho 162 Cavaquinho, Nelson 125 caxambu 162 Caymmi, Nana 125 Cazuza 35 CBS 31, 40, 52, 91 Ceará 142 Cearense, Catulo da Paixão 13, 44 Celebridade 82n65, 83 Centre of Folklore Research 142n45 Centre-West of Brazil 144–5 Centres of Popular Culture (CPCs) 26, 135, 147 César, Chico 3, 50 Chateaubriand, Assis 66 Chaves, Erlon 67 Chico & Caetano 79n55 Chico Science Nação Zumbi 50, 85 China 43n19 Chitãozinho and Xororó 108 choro 4, 5, 16–17, 20, 21, 39, 116–17, 121, 126, 149n67, 171, 174 chotes 145 chula Marajoara 145 Cidade de Deus 107, 179 cinema 22, 23, 104n74, 107, 116, 117, 118, 138, 179, 186 cirandas 144, 145, 162 City of God, see Cidade de Deus Clark, Walter 71–2 classical music 27, 34, 43, 47, 81, 174 CliqueMusic 62 cocos 140, 144, 162 Coimbra, Lui 172 congadas 139, 144, 156n92, 162, 164, 171, 174, 177 Conjunto Exporta Samba 125 Continental 52, 57 coreto 144 Costa, Alaide 125 Costa, Gal 2, 34, 50, 61, 69, 77, 97n41, 156 Costa, Paulinho da 107n86 Costa, Sueli 115n14 country music 105

207

CPCs, see Centres of Popular Culture CPC-UMES 62, 104, 128, 148n64, 172 Cuba 80 Cugat, Xavier 22 Cuiabá 122, 160 Cuité 166 Cultura FM 34–5 cultural imperialism 7, 89, 91–3, 97–100, 101–4, 108 cultural invasion 9, 22–38, 51, 89, 102, 103, 127, 182 Cunha, Euclides da 148 Curitiba 122, 127 cururu 144, 162 dança de Santa Cruz 144 dança de São Gonçalo 144 dança do cacentinho 145 dança do caninha verde 145 dança dos imperiais 145 danças praieiras 140 Dancin’ Days 124 Davis, Clive 52 declamações 145 Deodato, Eumir 106n86 Department of Culture 139, 140, 147n59 desafios 140 desfeiteira 145 Detentos do Rap 1 disco 3, 34, 35, 72, 73, 76, 92, 95, 105, 124, 150 Disney, Walt 15, 23 distensão 112–13, 123, 129 ditos 145 DJ Dolores 174 DJ Marlboro 164 Djavan 62, 70, 77, 126, 129 Domingão do Faustão 79 Domingues, Henrique Foreis, see Almirante Dominguinhos 86 Donato, João 46n32, 83, 106n86, 125 Donga 5, 149n67 drum ’n’ bass 93, 105, 108–9, 164, 177, 179 Duarte, Paolo 139, 147n59 Duprat Rogério 55 Dusek, Eduardo 57n76, 100 Editora Abril, see under Abril Ednardo 69, 71n22

208


electronic music 174, 181 embolada 116, 140, 144 Embrafilme 119 EMBRATEL, see Empresa Brasileira de Telecomunicações EMI 90 EMI-Odeon 74 Empresa Brasileira de Telecomunicações (EMBRATEL) 66 England 99 folk music of 10–11, 14, 17, 132–3 English Folk-Song Society 9, 10–11, 14 Ensaio Geral 66 entrudo 17 Espíndola, Tetê 76 Europe 84, 85, 93, 107, 109, 134, 135, 184 folk music of 131, 132–3 influence of 22, 24, 42, 60, 107, 137, 182 musical nationalism in 9–10, 132 record industry in 91 Fábio Jr. 57 Fagner 62, 69, 72, 74, 75, 77, 82, 154n86 Falcão, Aluizio 148 fandangos 144, 145, 162 Farkas, Tomás 148 Farney, Dick 27n77 Federal Council of Culture 135 Ferreira, Ascenso 140 Ferrete, João Luiz 54–5 Festival da Música Brasileira (2000) 77–8, 175–6 Festival da Nova Música Popular Brasileira (MPB-80) 65, 74–6, 86 Festival dos Festivais (1985) 76 Festival Internacional de Canção (FIC) 30, 60, 65, 66, 67–8, 70 FIC, see Festival Internacional de Canção Filho, Hermilo Borba 144, 148 folclore de Santa Catarina 145 folguedo 166 Folha de São Paolo 60, 62n90 folia 144, 165 folia de reis 162, 165 folk music 10, 17, 43, 131, 132–3 Brazilian 11–14, 131–2, 136–43, 144, 152–3, 154, 156, 157 English 10–11, 14, 17

European 131, 132–3 US 131, 132–3 folklore 8, 12, 13, 19, 38, 114, 117, 131, 132, 134–6, 136–43, 144, 146, 147–52, 155, 156, 165, 186 Folklore Society 134 for-rock, see forró forró 103, 107, 171, 174, 181 Fortaleza 128 foxtrot 20n48, 22, 138 France 84, 108, 138 Franco, Itamar 95 Franco, Walter 60, 69, 70, 71, 72 Freire, Paulo 147 Frenette, Marco 174 frevo 116, 125, 143, 144, 151, 153, 171, 174 Freyre, Gilberto 136–7, 166–7 FUNARTE 35, 36, 37, 38, 103, 111, 116, 117–20, 122–4, 129, 134, 136, 143, 151, 156n92, 170 Projeto Pixinguinha 6, 8, 17, 37, 103, 111, 118, 120–29, 130, 172, 182, 183, 184, 185 funk 3, 103, 105, 106, 107, 109, 126, 160, 165, 169, 172, 175, 179 Galeno, Juvenal 13 galopes 140 Gang 90 e as Absurdettes 76 Gata Mansa, Marisa 125 Geisel, Ernesto 112–14, 115n13, 117, 118, 119, 122, 129, 136n21 Gil, Gilberto 2, 5, 25, 28–9, 49, 50, 55, 69, 78, 83, 85, 86, 98, 115n14, 156 Gilberto, Bebel 93, 106, 108, 179 Gilberto, João 28, 29, 41 Chega de Saudade 2, 55, 95n29 Giron, Luís Antônio 62n90, 181–2 Gismonti, Egberto 35, 46n32 globalization 7, 89, 91–3, 104–6, 108, 136 Globo 71, 75, 76n41, 77, 80, 82, 83, 84, 148, 175–6 see also TV-Globo Gnatalli, Radamés 15, 27, 126 Goiás 142 Gonzaga, Chiquinha 12, 35 Gonzaga, Luiz 66 Gonzaguinha 33–4, 49, 75, 77, 115n14, 125 Goodman, Benny 15 gospel music 86

INDEX Goulart, João 26, 147 Great Britain 92, 94, 183n9 Gretchen 127 Grupo de Dança de São Gonçalo da Mussuca 164 Grupo Raízes do Samba de São Brás 168 Guara 153 Guarabira, Gutemberg 71, 115n14 Guedes, Fatima 76 Guerra, Ruy 44 Guimarães, Francisco, see Vagalume Haley, Bill 24 heavy metal 165 Henrique, Waldemar 145 Herder, Johann Gottfried 10, 132 hip-hop 37, 51, 103, 105, 106, 109, 173, 174–5, 178 História da Música Popular Brasileira 54–5, 144 Hobsbawm, Eric 16–17, 133 Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de 137 Hollywood Rock festival 101, 106 house music 165 Hungria, Júlio 30, 72 IBM e-festival 78 IBOPE (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics) 21n53, 70 iê iê iê 23–5, 28 indigenous music 14, 145, 163, 164, 167n28, 173 Informa Som 33 Institute of Higher Studies (ISEB) 25, 26, 135 Institutional Act (fifth; 1968) 28, 31, 32, 79, 112, 118, 149n66 International Congress of Folklore 142–3 International Song Festival (FIC), see Festival Internacional de Canção Internet 62–3, 78, 94, 96, 97, 102, 160, 161, 162, 170, 176 Intervalo 24 invented traditions 9, 14–22, 133 ISEB, see Institute of Higher Studies Istoé 46n32, 154 Itaú Cultural 6, 8, 170, 175, 176, 177, 185 Jackson, Michael 92n19, 98

209

Japan 91, 107 jazz 20n48, 23, 27–8, 39, 46, 58, 59, 60, 105, 106n86, 109, 129 Jesus, Clementina de 40, 120, 125, 145, 153 Joanna 75 João Pessoa 122 Jobim, Antonio Carlos 44, 107n86 Jobim, Tom 68n10, 180 jongo 144, 171, 174 Jornal da Música 60 Jornal do Brasil 26, 30, 60, 99 José, Odair 57 jovem guarda 2, 28, 39–40, 52, 53, 109 Jovem Guarda 66–7, 143 Joyce 76, 115n14 Kamayurá Indians 145 Keti, Zé 125 Khfouri, Maria Luiza 34–5 Kleyton and Kledir 73 Kuarup 104, 128, 172 Kubrusly, Maurício 33–4, 59 Lacerda, Benedito 16 Ladeira, Antônio 139 Lancellotti, Silvio 60, 71, 150 Lara, Dona Ivone 15n21, 145 Latin America 10, 22, 26, 81, 84, 91, 93, 98, 105, 135, 145, 150, 153, 185 Leão, Nara 55–6, 145, 146, 152 Lee, Rita 34, 97n41, 100 Lee, Vander 173 Legião Urbana 40 Lenine 3, 50, 77 Lévi-Strauss, Dina 139 Library of Congress 142 Archive of Folk Song 132 Lins, Ivan 2, 69, 78, 83, 115n14, 125 Lô Borges 156 Lobão 77 Lobo, Edu 2, 25, 28, 47, 83 Lomax, Alan 132–3, 142, 144 Lomax, John 132 lundu 16, 43, 140, 145 lundum 168 Lyra, Carlos 23, 42, 125–6 Macalé, Jards 45, 69, 70, 115n14, 125 maçambique 162

210


Maceió 128 Madi, Tito 126 Magal, Sidney 82 Mambembe 72 mambo 22 Manaus 122 mangue-beat 103, 106, 156, 172, 183 marabaixo 162 maracatú 116, 151, 156, 162, 164, 171, 174 marambiré 145 Maranhão 139, 140, 145, 147, 165 marchinas 22 Mariano, Pedro 84 Marina 76 Marinho, Roberto 67 Marky Mark 164 Marlene 125 martelos 140 Martins, Victor 44, 115n14 Marzagão, Augusto 68n10 Matogrosso, Ney 69, 100 matraca 145 Mautner, Jorge 69, 70 Maximo, João 48 maxixe 11, 109, 136, 137, 164 Maxixe Machine 174 mazurka 145 MCA 90 MCP, see Popular Culture Movement MDB, see Movimento Democrático Brasileiro MEC, see Ministry of Education and Culture Medaglia, Julio 28, 70, 70, 73, 77 Medalha, Marília 125 Médici, Emilio 112 Meirelles, Fernando 179 Mello, Fernando Collor de 136n21 Mello, Zuza Homem de 35, 46, 72, 78 A Cancão no Tempo 46–8 Melodia, Luis 46n32, 69, 71n22, 82 Mendes, Gilberto 4 Mendes, Sergio 98, 106n86 Menudo 127 Mercury, Daniela 78, 108 Mesquita, Suely 173 Midani, André 52–4, 56, 184 Milionário 43n19 Miller, Sidney 29

milongas 145 Minas Gerais 56, 139, 142, 156, 171, 178 Ministry for Justice 118 Ministry of Cultural Affairs (SEAC) 123–4 Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) 35, 37, 113–14, 118 Miranda, Carmen 2, 5, 15, 55, 98 Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas (MPF), see under Andrade, Mário de Mixturação 72 moçambique 144 modas 144 modas de viola 27, 144 Modernist movement (Brazil) 3, 12, 43, 44, 134, 136 modinha 11, 43, 144, 145 Monarco 125 Monte, Marisa 3 Montenegro, Oswaldo 72, 75 Morais, Vinicíus de 35, 44 Moreira, Airto 106n86 Moreira, Moraes 125 Morengueira, Kid 125 Motta, Nelson 68 Moura, Roberto 35, 61, 117, 172 Movimento 58, 60, 154 Movimento Armorial 38, 154 Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB) 112–13 MPB, see Música Popular Brasileira MPB-80, see Festival da Nova Música Popular Brasileira MPF (Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas), see under Andrade, Mário de MTV 54, 65, 85–6, 87, 102, 104, 106, 160, 161, 162, 169 Mulheres Apaixonadas 83 Museum of Image and Sound 36 music industry, see record industry Music Week 99 Música Brasileira 63n94 música cafona 43–4, 181 see also brega música de inspiração indígena 145 Música do Brasil 156, 159–70, 171, 177–8, 183, 185 música erudita 56 música missioneira 145 Música Nova 56 música periférica 57n76

INDEX Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) 2–4, 5–7, 24, 30, 34, 39–41, 50–51, 63, 100, 107, 144, 156, 159, 172, 179–80, 184, 186 definitions of 41–4 and politics 48–50, 180, 182, 184–5 popularity of 45–8, 75–6, 78, 79, 103, 104, 179–80, 180–82 and the press 58–63, 179 and Projeto Pixinguinha 121, 124–6, 128–30 quality of 44–5 and record industry 51–8, 65, 75–6, 86–7, 103, 179 and telenovelas 83–4, 86–7, 180 and television 65, 71, 75–6, 79, 83–4, 85–7, 179–80 Música Popular do Brasil, see under Pereira, Marcus música romântica 42, 43, 181 música sertaneja 39, 42, 48, 53, 57, 58, 73, 83, 86, 103, 126, 181 Música Viva 56 musical nationalism 9 in Brazil 10, 11–14, 21, 24, 25, 37, 38, 48, 182–6 in England 10–11 in Europe 9–10, 132 see also cultural invasion Napolitano, Marcos 6 Napster 94 Nascimento, Milton 2, 34, 45, 49, 56, 78, 108, 156 Natal 122 Natale, Edson 173, 176 National Art Foundation, see FUNARTE National Commission for Folklore 134 National Congress of Samba 143 National Council for Cinema 117 National Council on Copyright 117 National Cultural Policy, see Política Nacional de Cultura National Institute of Music 36, 116, 142, 151 National School of Music 142n45 Nazareth, Ernesto 12, 21 Neves, Ezequiel 60 Neves, Tancredo 49 New Musical Express 61

211

Ney, Nora 24 Nobre, Marlos 116 Nordeste, Cordel, Repente, Canção 155n90 North America 84 influence of 22–5, 107, 117n21, 138, 183n9 North Brazil 138–41, 145, 146–7 Northeast Brazil 136–41, 144, 148, 154–5, 156, 157, 164, 174, 177 nova-viola-nordestina 174 novo samba-pop-mineiro 173 Novos Baianos 69 Nunes, Clara 56 O Fino da Bossa 66 O Pessoal da Velha Guarda 16–17, 19, 20, 21, 40, 69, 126 O Rappa 101 Odeon 30, 31, 56 oitavas 140 Oliveira, Miquelinha Antonia de 145 Opinião 58, 59, 60, 154 Orquestra Brasileira de Radamés Gnattali 15 Os Inocentes 24 Os Jovens 24 Os Paralamas do Sucesso 100 Os Tapes 145, 151, 153 Os Tremendos 127 Osanah, Tony 70 Osmar, Pedro 174 Pacheco, Benedicto 139 Padre Anchieta Foundation 24 pagode 42, 86, 102, 181 Paiano, Enor 6 pajadas 145 Pandeiro, Jackson do 66, 126 Pappon, Thomas 61 Pará 139, 145, 173 Paraíba 73, 139, 140 Parintins 166 Parreira, Roberto 117–18, 120–21 Pascoal, Hermeto 35, 46n32, 69, 70, 77 Pasquim 58 pássaros 145 Peasant Leagues 26, 147 Peking Symphony Orchestra 43n19 Pereira, Marcus 6, 8, 38, 130, 131–2, 141,

212


143–4, 157, 159, 160, 164, 167, 168, 174, 177–8, 182, 183, 184, 186 Música Popular do Brasil 131, 143–56, 157, 162, 163, 169, 177–8 Música Popular do Centro-Oeste/ Sudeste 144–5 Música Popular do Nordeste 144, 148, 150, 153–5 Música Popular do Norte 145 Música Popular do Sul 145 Pernambuco 139, 140, 147, 148, 156, 161, 171, 172, 183 Pessoal da Velha Guarda, see O Pessoal da Velha Guarda Philips 30, 31, 40 ‘Phono 73’ 69 Phonogram 52–3, 99 Piaf, Edith 22 Piaui 174 Pigmalião 70 83 pindaré 145 Pinheiro, Albino 120 Pinheiro, Leila 76 piracy (music) 94, 96–7 Pixinguinha 5, 16, 19, 20, 21, 40, 55, 126 PNC, see Política Nacional de Cultura Poland 84 polca 145, 164 Política Nacional de Cultura (PNC) 37, 111, 113–18, 122–3, 124, 129, 135 Polygram 82, 90 pop music 39, 40, 60, 83, 85, 92, 103, 150, 169, 174, 181 pop-nejo 103 Pop’s, The 24 Popular Culture Movement (MCP) 147, 148 Portela, Noca de 15n21 Porto Alegre 122, 128 pós-rock-carioca 173 Pra Ver a Banda Passar 66 praiás 140 Presley, Elvis 24 progressive rock 58, 60 Projeto Luís Assunção 128 Projeto Moqueca 128 Projeto Pixinguinha, see under FUNARTE Public Music Library 137, 139, 140 punk 61–2, 105 Purim, Flora 106n86

Quadros, Jânio 33 Quaresma, Tânia 155n90 Quarteto em Cy 69 Quinteto Violado 125, 144, 153–4 radio 9, 13, 14–15, 16, 22, 27, 33–6, 58, 61, 72, 73, 75, 77, 80–81, 90–94 passim, 101, 102, 104, 118, 125, 138, 151, 155, 156, 176, 186 Rádio Cultura 34 Rádio Nacional 15, 16 Curiosidades musicais 16–17 Um milhão de melodias 15 Ramalho, Elba 86, 100 Ramalho, Zé 53, 73, 82, 86 Ramos, Graciliano 141 Ramos, José 23 rancheira 145 Rangel, Lúcio 4, 6, 18–22, 38, 44, 55, 58, 126, 183 rap 1, 37, 86, 103, 105, 106, 109, 126, 164, 165, 169, 172, 174–5, 178 RCA 30, 31, 54, 91 Recife 140, 143, 147, 148, 157, 174, 178 record industry Brazilian 14, 22, 27, 29–34 passim, 40, 50, 51–8, 63, 69, 72–7 passim, 86, 89, 95–100, 103–9, 116–17, 118, 146, 151, 179, 182 and marketing 93–4 worldwide 89–94 reggae 3, 35, 62, 76, 94, 105, 109, 126, 165 Regina, Elis 2, 24, 25, 35, 45, 66, 67, 74, 78, 83, 86, 145, 146, 152, 153 regional styles/music 3, 5, 15, 16, 18, 26n68, 27, 40, 57, 73, 76, 116, 120, 122, 123–4, 126, 128, 130, 131–2, 157, 159, 177–8, 185 and Hermano Vianna 159–70, 177–8 and Itaú Cultural 170–77, 177–8 and Marcus Pereira 131–2, 143–56, 157, 177–8 and Mário de Andrade 131, 136–43, 157, 177–8 see also folk music reis de congo 140 religious music 46, 144, 145, 162 repentes 140

INDEX retumbão 145 Revista de Cultura Vozes 30 Revista de Música Popular 20–21, 23, 44, 142 Ribeiro, Solano 72, 74, 76, 77 Ricardo, Sérgio 31, 115n14 Richard, Little 24 RICM, see Rumos Itaú Cultural Música Rico, José 43n19 Rio Carnival 22 Rio de Janeiro 5, 31, 48, 60, 73, 99–100, 105, 136, 142, 154, 160, 174 APMB meetings in 1, 35–6, 42 and cultural hegemony 21, 33–4, 48, 73, 149, 171, 172 festivals/shows in 30, 60, 61, 62, 65, 77, 100–101, 106, 117, 120–22, 128n63, 165 radio play in 21n53, 33–4, 61, 75, 100 Rio Grande do Norte 140, 166 Rio Grande do Sul 73, 142, 145, 153, 178 Rita, Maria 3, 83–4, 86 Ro-Ro, Ângela 76 Rocha, Mário 74 Rocha, Mariozinho 82 rock and roll 23–4, 109 Rock in Rio 61, 77, 100–101, 106 rock music 3, 24, 35, 39, 40, 42, 50, 54, 58, 59, 68, 83, 85, 92, 103, 104, 105, 150, 181 Brazilian rock movement 31, 34, 40, 48, 60, 61–2, 76–7, 100–101, 107, 126, 172, 175 and Tropicália 5, 28, 109 Rodrigues, Jair 66 Rodrigues, Lupicínio 5, 55, 69 rojões 140 Rolling Stone 60 Romero, Silvio 137 Roque Santeiro 86, 115 Ros, Edmundo 22 Rosa, Noel 2, 5, 14, 16n27, 20, 21, 27, 35, 40, 44, 55, 83 rumba 22 Rumos Itaú Cultural Música (RICM) 130, 159, 170–78, 185 Sá, Sandra 76 Saia, Luís 139, 141

213

Salvador 61, 122, 126, 128 samba 2, 14–22 passim, 23–8 passim, 33–4, 37, 57, 86, 102, 103, 104, 125, 126, 137, 141, 142–3, 149, 160, 164, 166, 171, 174 and MPB 4–5, 39, 40, 42, 43, 62 samba de parelha 162 samba de roda 144, 162, 168 Samba do Estácio 5 samba do morro 5, 19, 27 samba-canção 15, 23 samba-punk-curitibano 173 samba-reggae 103, 105, 109 samba-rock 103 Santa Catarina 163 Santos, Lulu 100 Santos, Moacyr 106n86 Santos, Nelson Pereira dos 148 Santos, Turíbio 125 São Paulo 1, 25, 48, 60, 61, 99–100, 109, 139, 142, 143, 147, 154, 165, 173, 174 cultural hegemony and 48, 73, 121, 141, 149, 171, 172 festivals/shows in 12, 25, 62, 68, 72, 122, 129, 155n90, 170 radio play in 33–5, 75, 100, 102 São Paulo Department of Cultural Expansion 137 Sargento, Nelson 15n21, 126, 128n63 Sarney, José 49 SBT/TVS 80 Schwarz, Roberto 29, 182 SEAC, see Ministry of Cultural Affairs Secos e Molhados 60, 69, 71 Segundas musicais 128 Seixas, Raul 60, 107 Semana de Arte Moderna 12 seresteiros 20 Sergipe 164 Severiano, Jairo 46, 62 A Canção no Tempo 46–8 Sharp, Cecil 9, 10–11, 13, 14, 17, 132, 133, 134 Show da tarde 128 Sibá 161 Sigla 52 Silva, General Golbery do Couto e 112, 119 Silva, Ismael 5

214


Silva, Moreira da 69 Silva, Olando 15, 27 Simonal, Wilson 107n90 Simone 2, 34, 62, 71, 75, 126, 129 Simoninha, Wilson 84 Sinhô 5, 20, 44 siriri 162 Skank 85 Soares, Elza 125 Soares, Paulo Cesar 123n44, 127, 130 Soares, Ricardo 77 Sodré, Raimundo 75 solos de viola 140 Som Brasil 79n55 Som Livre 71, 76, 80, 81, 82, 84 Som Livre Exportação 72 Sombrás 115, 120, 121, 124 SomTrês 33, 60 Sony 82, 90 Soriano, Waldick 57 soul music 3, 30, 31, 42, 59, 67–8, 94, 105, 107, 109, 179 South Brazil 145, 156 Southeast Brazil 144–5 Souza, Okky de 59 Souza, Raul de 106n86 Souza, Tárik de 35, 51, 55, 58–9, 60, 62 Suassuna, Ariano 38, 98, 148, 154 Tamba Trio 107n90 tambor de mina 162 tambor de taboca 162 tambores 145 tango 11, 29, 109, 138 Taubkin, Benjamin 171, 173, 174–6 Teatro Casa Grande debates 31–3, 103, 115, 118, 129 Teatro João Caetano 120 Teixeira, Humberto 23 Tejo, Black Alien e Speed 107n90 telenovelas 7, 52, 53, 54, 65, 67, 70, 71, 72, 76, 79–84, 86–7, 95, 102, 104, 115, 124, 146, 180 televised song festivals 2, 4, 5, 7, 25, 41, 46, 50, 63, 65, 66–79, 83, 86, 87, 101, 156, 179 television 22, 27, 33–6 passim, 63, 86–7, 101, 104n76, 118, 125, 146–7, 151, 155, 156, 166, 179, 186 see also

telenovelas, televised song festivals Thoms, John 134 Time-Life 115 Tinhorão, José Ramos 4, 9, 25–7, 28, 29, 35, 36–7, 38, 48, 55, 58, 62, 183 Tinoco e Tinoco 58 Tiso, Wagner 35 Titãs 97n41 toadas 144 Toquinho 69, 78 Tornado, Tony 67, 68n7 trio eléctrico 144, 153, 168 Tropicália 4, 5, 9, 28–9, 31, 37, 38, 53, 56, 59–60, 107, 109 TV-Bandeirantes 71–2, 76, 80 TV Cultura 34 TV-Excelsior 67 TV-Globo 65, 67, 68–72, 74–6, 77, 79–81, 83, 84, 86, 115, 146, 175–6 TV-Manchete 80 TV-Record 5, 25, 66, 67, 72 TV-Rio 66 TV-Tupi 65, 66, 72–4 Festival da Música Popular (1979) 72–4, 76 UNESCO 123–4 United Nations 115 Declaration of Human Rights 115 United States 80, 84, 85, 92, 93, 98, 99, 106, 107, 108, 134, 135, 184, 185 folk music of 131, 132–3 influence of 22–5, 26–7, 34, 42, 51, 60, 67, 98, 182 record industry in 90–91, 98 Vagalume 19 Valença, Alceu 2, 69, 100, 154n86 Valente, Assis 23, 55 valsa de ponto de lenço 145 valsas 140 Vandré, Geraldo 2, 28, 55, 59, 74n36, 76 vanerão 145 Vanguarda Paulista 73 Vargas, Getúlio 2, 12, 15, 16, 21n52, 25, 30n86, 119, 134, 136, 137n27, 139, 141 Vasconcellos, Ary 4, 6, 18–22, 26, 35, 36, 38, 55, 58, 126, 183

INDEX Vasconcellos, Naná 106n86 Veja 58, 59, 61, 46n32, 71, 76–7, 99, 151 Velha Guarda, see O Pessoal da Velha Guarda Veloso, Caetano 2, 5, 27–9, 32, 37, 41–51 passim, 53, 55, 58, 61, 72, 73, 78, 83, 86, 115n14, 156, 164, 169, 182 Verba Ecantado 60 Vergueiro, Carlinhos 70, 126 Vermelho, Barão 100 Véu de Noiva 83 Vianna, Hermano 6, 8, 156, 159–70, 171, 174, 177–8, 181, 183, 186 Vidal, Ademar 140 Vila, Martinho da 145, 152, 153 Villa-Lobos, Heitor 11, 137, 138 Villares, Beto 156, 159, 160, 163, 168, 183 Vinícius, Marcus 31, 37, 45, 97–8, 148n64, 172, 185

215

Viola, Paulinho da 115n14, 120, 121 Viola, Paulinho de 31, 56, 57 violeiros 144 Vitória 128 Wanderlea 67 Warner Brothers 52, 53, 90 Wasserman, Clara 6 WEA 75 Wisnik, José Miguel 36–7, 44, 58, 59, 152 xangôs 140 xaxado 27 xote 16, 117n21 Xucuru-Kariri Indians 164 Xuxa 108 zabumba 145 Zé, Tom 107

The Defence of Tradition in Brazilian Popular Music (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Folk (American Popular Music)

Performance and Popular Music: History, Place And Time (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music)

Mediation in Family Disputes (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music)

B-Sides, Undercurrents and Overtones: Peripheries to Popular in Music, 1960 to the Present (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

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American Popular Music (2008)

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