Popular Music in Brazil
Identity, Genres and Industry

This Element is an overview of popular music developments in Brazil, from choro and samba to contemporary pop music.

Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa (Author), Leonardo De Marchi (Author), Renato Pereira Torres Borges (Author)

9781009565240, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 December 2024

80 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.1 cm, 0.27 kg

This Element outlines an overview of popular music made in Brazil, from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Initially addressing the definition of the 'popular' category, discussion then follows on the ways a Brazilian music identity was built after the country's independence in 1822 until the end of the 1920s. An idea of 'popular music' was consolidated throughout the twentieth century, from being associated with rural musical performances of oral tradition to the recorded urban musical genres that were established through radio and television. After exploring the world of mass popular music, the relationships between traditional and modern, the topics of cultural diversity, multiculturalism, and the impact of digitalization, as well as the musical kaleidoscope of the twenty-first century, the Element ends with an insight into music genres in the era of digital platforms.

Overture
1. Building the idea of popular and the music market in Brazil
2. The social construction of music as popular and Brazilian: aesthetics, ideology, and politics (1920–2000)
3. Globalization and musical diversity
Coda
References.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6]