Avelar, Idelber and Christopher Dunn, (eds.). Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship.
Hall, Michael R.
Avelar, Idelber and Christopher Dunn, (eds.). Brazilian Popular
Music and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
Brazilian musician and political activist Gilberto Gil, who served
as the minister of culture from 2003 to 2008 during the administration
of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, championed the idea that culture played an
important role in promoting citizenship rights, combating social woes,
and fostering economic development. In Brazilian Popular Music and
Citizenship, editors Idelber Avelar and Christopher Dunn contend that
Brazilian music has been "an instrument through which
disenfranchised groups have asserted claims to citizenship, as well as a
tool in the formulation of disciplinary or repressive state
policies" (p. 1). Avelar and Durra, colleagues in the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University, have compiled a collection
of eighteen essays, most of which were written by Brazilian scholars.
The essays, which cover the historical period since the 1930s, examine
popular music as an "agent and image of citizenship" as well
as popular music's "imbrication in the foreclosure of
citizenship" (p. 1). According to the editors, "even the most
seemingly 'apolitical' genres of Brazilian music have played a
role in defining how subjects have situated themselves politically in
the country" (p. 6). As such, Brazilian Popular Music and
Citizenship is the first English-language collection of essays primarily
dedicated to the study of the political dimensions of Brazil's most
productive and inventive form of popular culture.
Adalberto Paranhos examines the role of popular music during
Getulio Vargas' Estado Novo (1937-1945). Vargas encouraged
performers of samba, a genre that emerged in the poor neighborhoods of
Rio de Janeiro at the outset of the twentieth century, to perform songs
that promoted patriotism and the regime's ideology. Nevertheless,
Paranhos points out that many samba composers created songs that
criticized the Vargas regime. Fllavio Oliveira analyzes the Vargas
regime's use of state-orchestrated patriotic choral singing, which
had its roots in European musical genres, as well as the more
African-influenced samba, to promote its political agenda. Performers
such as Carmen Miranda popularized orchestrated sambas throughout Brazil
and the world.
Carlos Sandroni reveals the history of Musica Popular Brasileira
(MPB) in the aftermath of the 1964 military coup that unleashed an
authoritarian dictatorship that lasted for over two decades. Artists
such as Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, and Caetano Veloso performed
popular music that embraced radical political and social
transformations. Sandroni adroitly points out that much of the MPB music
was a subtle critique of the military regime that relied on double
meanings. Christopher Dunn examines the role of one musician, Tom Ze,
who attempted to raise mass consciousness. According to Dunn, Ze's
music "consistently reflected on the meaning of citizenship"
in Brazil during the military dictatorship (p. 19). Angelica Madeira
reveals the advent of hard rock in Sao Paulo and its critique of the
military dictatorship during its final years in power.
The remaining chapters in the book focus on Brazilian popular music
since the demise of the military dictatorship in 1985. Frederick Moehn
examines Gilberto Gil's efforts as minister of culture to provide
financial and technical assistance to musicians from marginal
communities. Malcolm McNee reveals how the Movimento dos Trabalhadores
Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers' Movement) utilized
popular music to strengthen its cause. Shanna Lorenz unveils the
uniqueness of popular music emerging from Brazil's sizeable
Japanese Brazilian community. Aaron Lorenz examines a form of samba that
portrays the brutality of life in Rio de Janeiro's favelas [shanty towns]. Wivian Weller and Marco Aurelio Paz Tella, as well as Derek
Pardue, discuss the hip-hop phenomenon, while Joao Freire Filho and
Micael Herschmann, as well as Hermano Vianna, examine the funk movement
in southern Brazil's metropolises. Osmundo Pinho, Ari Lima, and
Goli Geurreiro examine popular music movements in the northern Brazilian
state of Bahia. Daniel Sharp and Idelber Avelar analyze recent popular
music trends in the northern Brazilian state of Pernambuco.
As the authors make clear, Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship
is not a "full compendium of all the important movements in the
relations between popular music and citizenship" in Brazil (p. 27).
The majority of the book is dedicated to developments in the world of
Brazilian popular music since 1985. Regardless, the book is an
interesting and relevant look at the interconnectedness between
Brazilian popular music and the notion of citizenship. As such, the
essays simultaneously reveal the impact of political, social, and
economic movements in contemporary Brazil on popular music as well as
the impact of Brazilian popular music on those movements. Scholars and
students interested in cultural studies of popular music will be
especially pleased with this book.
Michael R. Hall
Armstrong Atlantic State University
