When I began the writing of my book Brazil's Fat Lady Can't Sing, But She Can Still Do the Bossa Nova, my enthusiasm for opera and, if I may be all inclusive, for soccer, cinema, bossa nova, pop music, and musical theater was at its unassailable peak. With the passage of time (by my count, almost a decade and a half), the glow of that enthusiasm has dimmed in proportion to events as they continue to spiral out of control - both in Brazil and elsewhere.
If that is the case, well, then, so be it. To the extent these subjects have revealed themselves to be somewhat flawed, I remain convinced of their efficacy. I am not so naïve as to believe the institutions that have existed in Brazil, or that have endured throughout the world, have functioned at top speed and full tilt. That these institutions have been influential in bolstering the production of opera and film, in maintaining the support of men's and women's soccer, in driving the investment in and promotion of new musical-theater material, and in contributing to the vitality of the popular song format are undeniable pluses.
On the other hand, there is no question that music, in every conceivable form, is Brazil's lifeblood. Considered a participatory event, music is an expression of the public's taste (or mood) at any given moment. It can manifest itself in communal gatherings, rock concerts, soccer stadiums, church socials, birthday parties, after-school programs, wedding celebrations, and fêtes in the park; in street demonstrations and political rallies, in local and national news coverage, indeed wherever music may be heard or found.
Author, musicologist, former diplomat, and accomplished performer Vasco Mariz, in the Introduction to his book História da Música no Brasil ("The History of Music in Brazil"), made note that "the Brazilian people have always been musically inclined." I have yet to encounter, nor have I ever been made aware of, anyone who disputes that claim.
Along similar lines, the genealogy of Brazil's musical styles can serve as a blueprint for the country's vaunted diversity: in the beginning, there was choro, and choro begat samba; the combination of samba with cool-jazz begat bossa nova; and bossa nova begat Música Popular Brasileira (MPB). With Música Popular Brasileira and the influx of British Merseybeat, one can chart the next stage of development in the shorter-lived Tropicália movement - itself a compendium of the musical, artistic, literary, and audiovisual ideas re-imagined as a form of protest. While bossa nova hit the world's shores with the force of a typhoon, by comparison Tropicália was a mild ripple. But which genre has proven to be more resilient, both musically and artistically, or more challenging and inventive?
For the Young Guard and the older generation of that era, Tropicália was everything and it was nothing; it came from everywhere and nowhere at once; it created and destroyed, constructed and deconstructed the country's musical foundations. Transformative is a term that has also been used to describe the genre's impact.
In the same instant that Tropicália was commenting on the present, it paid homage to the past while hurtling toward an uncertain future. A typical aesthetic of Tropicália was its drawing from a rich variety of sources. Another was its use of "opposites" to disguise one's feelings from authorities who were forever policing what performers could or could not say or do in public.
To illustrate this point, when the tropicalistas sang "Alô, alô," what they meant was "Goodbye, goodbye," one of several methods employed for avoiding direct confrontation with the censors. Unfortunately, it didn't always work to their advantage. For their efforts, they, along with like-minded artists, journalists, students, teachers, politicians, sociologists, revolutionaries, and members of the clergy, were treated with either suppression, imprisonment, torture or exile - and often all four, even to their death.
All told, the most significant and intellectually stimulating of Brazil's musical-poetic creations registered as a giant blip on the country's radar, so radically disturbing it proved to the status quo.
Others have tried to define this typically Brazilian methodology of taking from multiple references to suit their artistic purposes. For instance, British rocker and former Police front-man, Sting, once proposed that "pop music should be a great mongrel," wherein the ability to glean "from any source" and from any country's musical traditions would result in a cornucopia of stylistic forms, elements, and ideas - all of them perfectly suitable for public consumption.
This same thought process originated in Brazil decades before with Modernist poet, polemicist, playwright, and novelist José Oswald de Andrade's 1928 "Cannibalist Manifesto," where the term antropofagia, or anthropophagy (known by the more familiar expression "cannibalism") was initially coined. Oswald de Andrade was speaking figuratively, of course, about the phenomenon of ingesting foreign cultures through their music, art, literature, poetry, philosophy, and so forth. What came out in the end evolved into something fresh and exciting, as well as distinctly and, to his eyes, unapologetically Brazilian.
There are manifold examples of cultural cannibalism throughout Brazil's history, about which I have attempted to touch upon in my work. There is the case of Carlos Gomes, a Brazilian opera composer who (first) went about in search of a theme, and (second) in search of an individual style to fit that theme. The theme, for him, which ranged far beyond his native land and into quasi-Verdian territory, remained out of reach; likewise, his search for an individual style came together with the composition of Il Guarany, Fosca, Salvator Rosa, Lo Schiavo, and, in the main, Colombo, the premise of which had a personal resonance for the native-born musician. Gomes may have passed on into obscurity, but he left behind an impressive musical legacy, if not a great one.
Another artist who flourished in the wake of Oswald de Andrade's cannibalist theory was Carmen Miranda. What Carmen was forced to accept - or, rather, what Hollywood forced upon her to admit - was what today is called "cultural appropriation," defined as "the inappropriate use by a dominant culture of borrowing," as it were, "from a subordinate culture."
Significantly, for the first decade of her career - that is, prior to her coming to America - Carmen achieved recognition for performing sambas, marchas, marchinhas, samba- choro, samba- batuque, and similar styles. As in Sting's example, and in what Oswald de Andrade had earlier envisioned, Carmen drew from both native and non-native sources to expand the range and content of her repertoire. She did not write her own songs, but rather had songwriters compose them for her. In Brazil, these songwriters, numbering among them Ary Barroso, Josué de Barros, Joubert de Carvalho, Synval Silva, Dorival Caymmi, and Assis Valente, offered their services willingly, knowing that Carmen would interpret their work to the best of her ability and talent.
Subsequently, Carmen's Broadway debut became, for Brazilians, a watershed event that, much to the entertainer's frustration, did not bear similar fruit in her home country. The so-called cultural appropriation aspects, then, can also be applied to her Hollywood career, specifically in that faux Latin persona imposed on her by the powers that be; and by her mashing of English (despite her fluency in the language) which, more often than not, accompanied the interspersing of her native Portuguese in between the lyrics of American show tunes.
By comparison, Carmen's compatriot, soprano Bidu Sayão, took the opposite position in that she exuded a typically Westernized approach to such operatic staples as Manon, Susanna, Zerlina, Violetta, Mimì, Mélisande, Micaëla, and others, as befit the requirements of the time. As always, though, Bidu's innate Brazilianness shone through in the way she carried herself on and off the stage, and the manner in which she led her later life away from it.
Separately from Carmen but contemporaneous with her and Bidu's chief period of activity, composer Heitor Villa-Lobos thrived for a time as Brazil's most voracious musical artist and educator, a "cannibal" in all but name only. His insatiable appetite for folk, street-wise, and native Brazilian sources, in addition to the variety of styles he applied these sources to, was unequaled among his peers.
After Carmen, Villa, and Bidu, cultural cannibalism continued unabated and, we should be reminded, unabashedly Brazilian, which supports Oswald de Andrade's theory in action as well as in fact. It was carried over into the classic song output of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, which came about through the influence of classical and jazz compositions, Greek mythology, Brazilian folklore, and various other sources, expanded upon at length in the preceding pages of this book.
And let's not discount the contributions of Brazil's musical and dramatic theater to the country's artistic diversity. It has impressed me, to no end, how rich and fertile this overlooked facet of Brazilian culture has been; one that has witnessed substantial growth over five or more decades, thanks to the creativity and vision of the likes of Vinicius, Villa-Lobos, Chico Buarque, Paulo Pontes, Augusto Bial, Francis Hime, Edu Lobo, Carlos Lyra, Gerald Thomas, Charles Möeller, Claudio Botelho, and that ageless national treasure Bibi Ferreira.
(End of Part One)
To be continued .....
Copyright © 2019 by Josmar F. Lopes
