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Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil

2006; Duke University Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2005-041

1527-1900

Jeffrey D. Needell,

Brazilian cultural history and politics

The history of Brazilian popular music has attracted colleagues in Brazil and in other disciplines in the States for some time (for example, José Ramos Tinhorão, Hermano Vianna, Gerard Béhague, and Charles Perrone). Here, the author’s ambitious project joins those of a growing number of historians interested in cultural history, relating the development of a coherent popular music culture, ca. 1930 – 50s, to its larger political and socioeconomic context. There are chapters on the radio, samba, Northeastern regionalism, American technical and cultural influence, the choro, fan clubs, and advertising. Sources range from an American advertising archive to the indispensable Museu da Ima-gem e do Som (Rio) and the government correspondence and personal and institutional records in Rio’s and São Paulo’s public and private holdings. His approach is strengthened by a firm command of the technical issues (both musical and media), the individuals on and behind the scene, and the most current literature on the subject. While familiar with our ongoing preoccupation with subaltern agency, he is not crippled by it, nor by the seductions of a facile condemnation of cultural imperialism. Rather, his close study of the specifics of the genres, the artists, the businessmen, and the technology provide him with the grounds for a sensitive, pioneering analysis that will be required reading for any serious student of Brazilian music, the culture of the era, and the larger issues of Third World popular culture in the twentieth century. Aside from a judicious discussion of the issues of commercialism and authenticity, he has larger concerns in mind. Indeed, his discussion of the ambiguity of American cultural, technological, and institutional influence on Brazilian popular culture and urban consumption, while it may be provocative for some, is tightly and persuasively argued. Central to his analysis is the demonstration that Brazilians capably adopted and then adapted foreign influence and technology, making it their own in the creative tension between nationalist “tradition” and cosmopolitan “modernity.” One has a great deal to learn from the author, and it is made all the easier by his enviable skills as a writer and his obvious intelligence and sympathy for the subject.The strength of the contribution is such that one is frustrated by a number of problems that needlessly undercut the work. For instance, while one applauds the general omission of explicit theoretical discussion and name dropping in the text, one is puzzled by the author’s apparent and explicit animus toward Marxist approaches, often dismissed here rather cavalierly. If the author had a better understanding of Marxist analysis, particularly false consciousness, he could have employed it here quite usefully. Other frustrations are less lofty. One is surprised too often to read broad generalizations about the narrative and even about individuals’ thoughts and perceptions that are bereft of adequate citation of evidence. The author often discusses an intellectual’s or a writer’s thoughts or conclusions without demonstrating a mastery of his works or the literature associated with them. The accumulation of errors in the author’s political history (not least his ideological understanding of populist dictatorship and democracy) undermines one’s confidence in the interweave between politics and culture basic to his analysis.Indeed, even in the more cultural realm, despite his constant references, one is struck by the author’s apparent lack of familiarity with the broader scope of Brazilian cultural and intellectual history. A firmer grasp of these fields would have afforded him a useful, richer understanding of issues he treats as though new, such as the manipulation or invention of tradition or the significance of nationalism in cultural creation and insti-tutionalization. There is so much resonance between his concerns and those of Romanticism, say, or the interwar cultural milieu of the twentieth century, that one regrets such an impoverished preparation.Some of this is exemplified the author’s treatment of Gilberto Freyre; while he often cites him, he has not understood him or his context. Freyre, a founder of Northeastern regionalism, a cultural nationalist, and the seminal race thinker of the mid – twentieth century, said and exemplified much with respect to the transcultural adaptation and ambivalence about tradition and modernity central to the book. Much of this is duly referenced here, but second hand and as it suits the author, rather than with a grounded sense of Freyre’s specificity.In sum, there are lapses in terms of the work’s scholarship and intellectual breadth. Still, despite these problems, this remains a book one will recommend for its achievements. It is particularly suitable for those engaged in postcolonial cultural studies generally and modern Brazilian popular culture specifically. The subject and the writing are attractive enough to engage undergraduates, and the analysis has the substance and acuity to intrigue one’s colleagues and graduate students.