front cover of Brazilian Jive
Brazilian Jive
From Samba to Bossa and Rap
David Treece
Reaktion Books, 2013
As Brazil grows in stature as a global power, more and more people are discovering the country’s fascinating culture, especially the striking exuberance and inventiveness of Brazilian popular music. In Brazilian Jive, David Treece uncovers the genius of Brazilian song, both as a sophisticated, articulate art form crafted out of the dialogue between music and language and as a powerfully eloquent expression of the country’s social and political history.
 
Focusing on the cultural struggles of making music in Brazil, Treece traces the rise of samba through the bossa nova revolution of the late 1950s to the emergence of rap in the 1990s. He describes how Brazilian music grew out of the pain and dispossession of slavery and, inspired by African traditions, how it celebrates new ways of moving freely in time and space. Redolent with the rhythms and tones of the modern, the Brazilian soundscape also expresses the country’s dissonances and contradictions, while the conversation between melody and word often signifies a larger dialogue between its artistic and political cultures. Looking below the surface of Brazilian culture, Brazilian Jive provides fresh insight into the music of this vibrant and colorful nation.
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front cover of The Brazilian Sound
The Brazilian Sound
Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil
Chris McGowan
Temple University Press, 2008

Here is an illustrated guide to the rich music of Brazil—its history, styles, performers, instruments, and impact on musicians around the globe. From the boisterous rhythms of samba to the cool elegance of bossa nova to the hot percussion of Bahian axé music, The Brazilian Sound celebrates a world music phenomenon. This revised and expanded edition includes discussions of developments in samba and other key genres, the rise of female singer-songwriters in recent years, new works by established artists like Milton Nascimento and Marisa Monte, and the mixing of bossa with electronica. This clearly written and lavishly illustrated encyclopedic survey features new entries and photographs, an extensive glossary of Brazilian music terms and more.

This edition of The Brazilian Sound contains new discussions of: 

·  música sertaneja and música caipira
·  Brazilian funk, rap/hip-hop, and electronic dance music
·  important new samba and MPB artists
·  Plus! An updated bibliography and glossary, and a list of Web resources


 

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front cover of Goodbye, Brazil
Goodbye, Brazil
Émigrés from the Land of Soccer and Samba
Maxine L. Margolis
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
Brazil, a country that has always received immigrants, only rarely saw its own citizens move abroad. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, thousands of Brazilians left for the United States, Japan, Portugal, Italy, and other nations, propelled by a series of intense economic crises. By 2009 an estimated three million Brazilians were living abroad—about 40 percent of them in the United States.
            Goodbye, Brazil is the first book to provide a global perspective on Brazilian emigration. Drawing and synthesizing data from a host of sociological and anthropological studies, preeminent Brazilian immigration scholar Maxine L. Margolis surveys and analyzes this greatly expanded Brazilian diaspora, asking who these immigrants are, why they left home, how they traveled abroad, how the Brazilian government responded to their exodus, and how their host countries received them. Margolis shows how Brazilian immigrants, largely from the middle rungs of Brazilian society, have negotiated their ethnic identity abroad. She argues that Brazilian society abroad is characterized by the absence of well-developed, community-based institutions—with the exception of thriving, largely evangelical Brazilian churches.
    Margolis looks to the future as well, asking what prospects at home and abroad await the new generation, children of Brazilian immigrants with little or no familiarity with their parents' country of origin. Do Brazilian immigrants develop such deep roots in their host societies that they hesitate to return home despite Brazil's recent economic boom—or have they become true transnationals, traveling between Brazil and their adopted lands but feeling not quite at home in either one?
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front cover of A Respectable Spell
A Respectable Spell
Transformations of Samba in Rio de Janeiro
Carlos Sandroni
University of Illinois Press, 2021
A landmark in Brazilian music scholarship, A Respectable Spell introduces English-speaking readers to the rich history of samba from its nineteenth century origins to its emergence as a distinctive genre in the 1930s. Merging storytelling with theory, Carlos Sandroni profiles performers, composers, and others while analyzing the complex ideologies their music can communicate in their lyrics and rhythms, and how the meaning of songs and musical genres can vary depending on social and historical context. He also delves into lundu, modinha, maxixe, and many other genres of Brazilian music; presents the little-heard voices and perspectives of marginalized Brazilians like the African-descended sambistas; and presents a study in step with the types of decolonial approaches to ethnomusicology that have since emerged, treating the people being studied not only as makers of music but also of knowledge.

Incisive and comprehensive, A Respectable Spell tells the compelling story of an iconic Brazilian musical genre.

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