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Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries

2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/19452349.40.3.09

1945-2349

Michael Iyanaga,

Brazilian cultural history and politics

I was born and raised in the United States, and it was by way of bossa nova that Brazilian music first caught my attention. As a teenager, I happened upon two CDs buried in my stepfather's large collection of music: João Gilberto's Getz/Gilberto and a Verve compilation of Astrud Gilberto's music. As many readers may know, João and Astrud Gilberto are bossa nova royalty. Their notability notwithstanding, looking back now, after having read K. E. Goldschmitt's Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries, it seems I never asked a simple question: Why did my stepfather own these CDs? In other words, how had my stepfather “discovered” these two artists? How did these CDs make it into his collection? After all, his personal connection to Brazil was as tenuous as his connection to, say, Venezuela or Chile, neither of which was represented in his music collection. And why had he purchased the music of the Gilbertos but not of Roberto Carlos, Elis Regina, or Caetano Veloso (names that have far broader appeal in Brazil itself)?As K. E. Goldschmitt argues in Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries, the answers to such questions can be found most convincingly by turning to the countless cultural intermediaries—journalists, filmmakers, musicians, actors, critics, record producers, etc.—who have, for over half a century, exercised the role of helping to establish a Brazilian musical “brand,” which even today has not entirely abandoned some of the stereotypes, assumptions, and perceptions that were solidified during the initial bossa nova splash of the 1960s. Thus, Bossa Mundo explores major musical shifts (and relevant social/political changes) in Brazil and the United States/United Kingdom from the end of the 1950s to the late 2010s, illustrating that along with innovations and rearticulations in branding, we can also see decades-long continuities and complex semantic snowballing. Still, as the author makes clear, the book does not “purport to be a comprehensive history,” focusing “instead on six watershed moments that demonstrate profound changes for Brazil's national brand” (20). These watershed moments constitute the basic structure of the book.After the introduction, which establishes some of the book's basic approaches to mediation, attention/distraction, and branding, Goldschmitt takes the reader chronologically through over half a century of what they consider to be watershed moments for Brazilian music in “Anglophone” markets, the term the author uses to refer to the media industry in the United States and the United Kingdom. Except for the first two chapters, which split the 1960s into two parts, the chapters are organized by decade: early 1960s (chapter 1), mid-1960s (chapter 2), 1970s (chapter 3), 1980s–1990s (chapter 4), 1990s–2000s (chapter 5), and 2010s (chapter 6). Each chapter looks at the “branding” of Brazilian music in a slightly different way, though always through in-depth analyses of some form (or forms) of media: recordings, album covers, films, performances, etc. The book then concludes with a succinct epilogue that reviews the book's major arguments and offers some brief thoughts about the future of Brazil's musical branding.The first chapter, “Copying the Bossa Nova,” looks at the introduction of bossa nova in the United States. Here, the author explores the cool and Latin jazz that not only cleared a path for the new Brazilian genre but also helped structure how it was marketed, framed, and received. The second chapter, “Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova,” continues the discussion about bossa nova while looking at the ways in which the music was transformed into something geared toward a non-youth audience. In particular, Goldschmitt offers detailed examinations of bossa nova's use in the films The Gentle Rain, The Deadly Affair, and Casino Royale to show how the genre went from being “the cutting edge of popular culture” to something reduced to “adult tastes and sexual enticement,” a transformation that, the author concludes, “would have long-term effects for Brazil's musical brand in the following decades” (75).Chapter 3, “From Fusion to Funk,” turns to the 1970s and includes several case studies of Brazilian musicians who sought to map “their Brazilian nationality onto racial discourses . . . alter[ing] Brazil's musical brand” (77–78). Specifically, the chapter focuses on Milton Nascimento, Sérgio Mendes, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, and Eumir Deodato to illustrate the myriad ways in which specifically diasporic, “primitive,” and Othered identities were constructed by intermediaries (journalists, critics, other musicians, etc.) as well as by the Brazilian musicians themselves. The fourth chapter, “Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s,” shifts our attention to the turn of the 1990s, when Brazilian music found itself as part of the global marketplace under the moniker of “world music.” Goldschmitt focuses on two Brazilian music compilations, Brazil-Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi-Drivers and Beleza Tropical, the latter of which had been compiled by famed US musician David Byrne. In fact, Byrne becomes the foil for Goldschmitt's discussion of the Bahian singer Margareth Menezes, who, together with the Bahian drumming group Olodum, “ultimately expanded the world music circuit to more diverse opportunities for what was acceptable under the rubric of Brazilian music” (137).Chapter 5, “Remixing Brazil,” sends the reader into the twenty-first century. Here, Goldschmitt focuses on the various ways in which electronic music began to transform the music industry in Brazil and the world at the turn of the millennium, as much through DJs as through music piracy. The author then turns their attention toward two artists who achieved great success among Anglophone audiences: Bebel Gilberto and Seu Jorge. Goldschmitt contrasts the musical approaches of these two artists—using the terms “retro kitsch” (Gilberto) and “irony”/“indie kitsch” (Jorge)—to consider different forms of what the author understands as a remixing of bossa nova.The final chapter, “Constructing a New Music Industry,” brings us right up to the present, or as close as we can get with a printed book. The foci here are wide-ranging: new forms of music distribution, the Brazilian pop star Anitta, and corporate sponsorship of music. The conclusion Goldschmitt reaches is somewhat fatalistic, though it is hard to disagree with them: “the brand still reliably falls back to discursive connections to race and diversity, even when they are indirect. Artists that evoke Blackness, urbanity, and musical mixture dominate the music that circulates in new media” (177). This final chapter is especially exciting because it offers a firsthand perspective on digital music access and licensing, drawn from Goldschmitt's own work as a freelance playlist creator for Beats Music.By the conclusion of Bossa Mundo, the reader can see how and why “Brazilian music” has come to mean different things at different moments, especially the ways in which bossa nova specifically helped create a foundation for much of the music that would appear in later decades. While it might have been helpful if the reader could have learned a bit about earlier representations of Brazil abroad (such as Carmen Miranda and Disney's Zé Carioca), which surely impacted how bossa nova was received, the author's broader arguments are clear and convincing. Indeed, the wide range of source material—songs and artwork from albums, performances, films, critiques, reviews, editorials, quotes from musicians, interviews the author conducted with record company executives, performances the author witnessed, etc.—makes the author's points that much more cogent.Goldschmitt's detailed analyses of many of the songs, in technical but approachable language—with extensive attention to timbre (an aspect of music too often neglected in similar such works), performance techniques, rhythms, and other creative artistic decisions—were particularly enjoyable. As I read the chapters, I found myself wanting to listen to the songs the author discussed, whether I was already familiar with them or not. This made me wish readers could just click on a link to hear the excerpts mentioned, though I am certain copyright issues would have made including sound examples entirely too complicated (and expensive). Lucky for us all, nothing was too hard to find on Spotify or YouTube.Bossa Mundo is ideal for scholars of popular music generally, not just for specialists of Brazilian music. Indeed, readers need not have any great familiarity with Brazil (or music, for that matter) to understand the case studies, examples, and arguments because Goldschmitt offers plenty of background information on Brazilian musical genres and sociopolitical contexts. The book will give readers an excellent general overview of the past fifty years of Brazilian popular music. This makes it accessible to students of all levels. In fact, the way Goldschmitt organized the study makes it even more approachable, as the explicitly theoretical portions are concentrated in the introduction. Therefore, the six main chapters are never bogged down by jargon. In the end, readers are offered a broad understanding of Brazilian music's impact and reception in the United States and the United Kingdom. Bossa Mundo will leave readers with a clear sense of the importance of cultural intermediaries in shaping how Anglophone publics recognize the Brazilianness (that is, brasilidade) of Brazilian music.