Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Music, Citizenship, and Violence in Postdictatorship Brazil

2007; University of Texas Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/lat.2007.0032

1536-0199

Frederick Moehn,

Public Spaces through Art

This essay shows how individuals approaching debates over citizenship, development, civil society, and problems of violence in Brazil evoke music as a kind of audiotopia (from Josh Kun, 2005)—or a sonic space of an imagined country where inequalities are leveled out. It explores these themes in a variety of contexts, such as a concert in Carnegie Hall; the work of Nega Gizza (of the urban hip-hop organization CUFA); music recordings associated with the Rural Landless Workers Movement (MST); a televised MPB song festival; and the cultural policies of the Lula administration. The essay traces a web of horizontal and vertical linkages between radically different sectors of Brazilian society and between cultural practices, social structures, and the state.