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Since the 1970s Brazil has been one of the few countries in the world where the consumption of Brazilian music has exceeded that of music from overseas. Maintaining a constant international presence through bossa nova and trends in música popular brasileira, Brazilian music has been increasingly recognized by both musicians and scholars as having a constitutive role in the musical landscape of the world.
With this collection of freely accessible chapters, we explore the history and significance of Brazilian music throughout the 20th century.
From the mid-20th century to the present, the Brazilian art, literature, and music scenes have been witness to a wealth of creative approaches involving sound. This is the backdrop for Making It Heard: A History of Brazilian Sound Art, a volume that offers an overview of local artists working with performance, experimental vinyl production, sound installation, sculpture, mail art, field recording, and sound mapping. In a chapter by Tânia Mello Neiva, the author discusses the work of selected Brazilian women artists who are very active in the music and sound art scenes, and explores how they have been impelled—through their art and associated creative methodology—to question or try to break with some of the norms that symbolize and reproduce patriarchal and hegemonic values in the fields of experimental music and sound art.
Explore further by reading Tânia Mello Neiva’s chapter “Engaged Sonorities: Politics and Gender in the Work of Vanessa De Michelis" from Making It Heard: A History of Brazilian Sound Art.
What better way to affirm the out-and-out Brazilian-ness of one’s new album than to begin by employing the country’s most representative musical genre in a rousing rendition with lyrics about the most typical dish of the national cuisine? The opening salvo of the first Chico Buarque is one such affirmation: “Feijoada complete” (Complete bean stew meal) serves up on a sound platter an all-embracing black-bean stew repast, with all the trimmings and side dishes. This A1 track is characteristic of the encompassing collection with its sonic frame, crafted lyrics, elements of popular culture, and connections to other genres and dates. Throughout Chico Buarque’s First Chico Buarque, an entry in the growing 33 1/3 Brazil series, author Charles A. Perrone situates the album in inter-related contexts: the artist's own career; the evolution of Brazilian Popular Music; and, especially, historical conjuncture—his work spanning the period of military dictatorship in Brazil, 1964-85.
Explore further by reading the chapter “Setting the Table, on the Ground” from Chico Buarque’s First Chico Buarque by Charles A. Perrone.
Música caipira is a term used to denote the large group of musical subgenres performed in the rural areas of the “Middle-South” of Brazil—that is, the states of São Paulo, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, and the southern areas of Minas Gerais and Goiás. In the 21st century, música caipira is regarded as a basis of Brazilian popular music, one of its most traditional genres. It can be heard in many places in the Middle-South, chiefly at community events such as parties or on specialist radio programs. This genre is at the heart of debate about the transformations that urbanization and modernization have wrought in Brazilian society and Brazilian popular music. For many musicians and critics, the process of modernization that música caipira underwent, and the emergence of música sertaneja, are seen through a negative lens—one that laments the dissolution of many traditions. From this viewpoint, música caipira is a good index of the problems created by the modernization of society. Yet in spite of this, música caipira remains a powerful symbol of Brazilian musical and cultural traditions, in particular those of the Middle-South.
Explore further by reading Allan de Paula Oliveira’s chapter “Música Caipira” from the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume IX: Genres: Caribbean and Latin America.
Most die-hard Brazilian music fans would argue that Getz/Gilberto, the iconic 1964 album featuring "The Girl from Ipanema," is not the best bossa nova record. Yet we've all heard "The Girl from Ipanema" as background music in a thousand anodyne settings, from cocktail parties to telephone hold music. So how did Getz/Gilberto become the Brazilian album known around the world, crossing generational and demographic divides?
Bryan McCann traces the history and making of Getz/Gilberto as a musical collaboration between leading figure of bossa nova João Gilberto and Philadelphia-born and New York-raised cool jazz artist Stan Getz. McCann also reveals the contributions of the less-understood participants (Astrud Gilberto's unrehearsed, English-language vocals; Creed Taylor's immaculate production; Olga Albizu's arresting, abstract-expressionist cover art) to show how a perfect balance of talents led to not just a great album, but a global pop sensation. And he explains how Getz/Gilberto emerged from the context of Bossa Nova Rio de Janeiro, the brief period when the subtle harmonies and aching melodies of bossa nova seemed to distil the spirit of a modernizing, sensuous city
Explore further by reading the chapter “Bossa, Race, and Politics” from João Gilberto and Stan Getz's Getz/Gilberto by Bryan McCann.
Rock performed by Brazilians dates back to Nora Ney’s 1955 cover of “Rock around the Clock” and Celly Campelo’s 1959 “Estúpido Cupido,” a translation of “Stupid Cupid” presented on the national television show Chacrinha. Brazilian rock, however, began in the early 1960s with a generation of singers influenced by the likes of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and the Beatles, who popularized a distinctly Brazilian sound. Previously the domain of música popular brasileira, the flag of social protest was hoisted by many rockers. Bands in the 1970s under the dictatorship had their songs censored, and artists were tortured and exiled. It wasn’t until the 1980s that major labels such as CBS, EMI Som Livre, and Warner started to take Brazilian rock seriously. Rio’s Barão Vermelho, São Paulo’s Titãs, and Brasília’s Paralamas do Sucesso and Legião Urbana had gold and platinum disks and, with FM stations like Rádio Fluminense, Rádio Rock, and Transamérica behind them, silenced the decades-old epithets of rockers as alienated, Americanized, and colonized.
Explore further by reading Jesse Wheeler’s chapter "Rock Brasileiro (Brazilian Rock) from Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music.
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