When Rio was black: Soul music, national culture, and the politics of racial comparison in 1970s Brazil

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 89, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 3-39

  Alberto, Paulina L ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 65849084675     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-2008-043     Document Type: Review

References (98)

1. Lena Frias, "Black Rio: O orgulho (importado) de ser negro no Brasil," Jornal do Brasil, caderno B, 17 July 1976.
2. On changing racial terminology among black activists throughout the twentieth century, see George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1991);
3. Kim D. Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991).
4. See also Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York: Vintage Books, 1946);
5. Carl N. Degler, Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1971).
6. See especially Abdias do Nascimento, O negro revoltado (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1982);
7. Abdias do Nascimento, "O genocídio do negro brasileiro," in O Brasil na mira do pan-africanismo, ed. Abdias do Nascimento (Salvador da Bahia: EDUFBA/CEAO, 2002).
8. Michael George Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994);
9. France Winddance Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1998).
10. On affirmative action, see Sérgio da Silva Martins, Carlos Alberto Medeiros, and Elisa Larkin Nascimento, "Paving Paradise: The Road from 'Racial Democracy' to Affirmative Action in Brazil," Journal of Black Studies 34, no. 6 (2004): 787-816.
11. J. Michael Turner, "Brown into Black," and Michael Mitchell, "Blacks and the abertura democrática" both in Race, Class, and Power in Brazil, ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine (Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, UCLA, 1985), 73-94, 95-119;
12. Hanchard, Orpheus and Power, 114-20;
13. Helene Monteiro, "O ressurgimento do Movimento Negro no Rio de Janeiro na década de 70" (Master's thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1991).
14. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, "On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason," Theory, Culture and Society 16, no. 1 (1999): 41-58.
15. For subsequent defenses of Hanchard, see M. Hanchard, "Acts of Misrecognition: Transnational Black Politics, Anti-imperialism, and the Ethnocentrisms of P. Bourdieu and L. Wacquant," Theory, Culture, and Society 20, no. 4 (2003): 5-29;
16. John French, "The Missteps of Anti-Imperialist Reason: Bourdieu, Wacquant and Hanchard's Orpheus and Power," Theory, Culture and Society 17, no. 1 (2000): 107-28.
17. For an overview of these debates, see Peter Wade, "Images of Latin American Mestizaje and the Politics of Comparison," Bulletin of Latin American Research 23, no. 3 (2004): 355-66.
18. See Hebe Maria Mattos de Castro, Das cores do silêncio: Os significados da liberdade no sudeste escravista, Brasil, século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 1995);
19. Sueann Caulfield, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2000);
20. Peter Fry, "Politics, Nationality, and the Meanings of 'Race' in Brazil," Daedalus 129, no. 2 (2000): 83-118;
21. Tiago de Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco: Identidades sociais e massificação da cultura no teatro de revista dos anos 1920 (Campinas: UNICAMP, 2004);
22. Robin E. Sheriff, Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2001);
23. Paulina L. Alberto, "Terms of Inclusion: Black Activism and the Cultural Conditions for Citizenship in a Multi-Racial Brazil, 1920-1982" (PhD diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2005).
24. See George Reid Andrews, "Brazilian Racial Democracy, 1900-90: An American Counterpoint," Journal of Contemporary History 31, no. 3 (1996): 483-507;
25. John French, "Translation, Diasporic Dialogue, and the Errors of Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant," Nepantla 4, no. 2 (2003): 375-89;
26. and Micol Seigel, "Beyond Compare: Comparative Method after the Transnational Turn," Radical History Review, no. 91 (2005): 62-90.
27. Bryan McCann, "Black Pau: Uncovering the History of Brazilian Soul," in Rockin' Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America, ed. Deborah Pacini Hernández, Héctor Fernández-L'Hoeste, and Eric Zolov (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2004);
28. Dunn, Brutality Garden, 177-80;
29. Lívio Sansone, "Global Funk in Bahia and Rio," in Blackness without Ethnicity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 115-16.
30. On Rio's political police, see Darien J. Davis, "The Arquivos das Polícias Politicais [sic] of the State of Rio de Janeiro," in Latin American Research Review 31, no. 1 (1996): 99-104;
31. This followed the fusion of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Guanabara. Davis, "The Arquivos," 101.
32. Sonia E. Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women's Movements in Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990);
33. Maria Paula Nascimento Araujo, A utopia fragmentada: As novas esquerdas no Brasil e no mundo na década de 1970 (Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2000).
34. George Reid Andrews found one single successful instance of conviction for antiblack racism under the Afonso Arinos Law in the period between 1951 and 1988. Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 318 n. 11.
35. DGIE 252, pp. 8-7, 23 Aug. 1976.
36. DGIE 241, pp. 245-44, 29 Aug. 1975
37. and DGIE 250, pp. 728-27, 23 Aug. 1976.
38. McCann, "Black Pau," 69-70, 77-82.
39. Some of these flyers appear in DGIE 252, pp. 6-2.
40. Hermano Vianna estimates that there were up to 15,000 dancers per event, held daily from Monday to Sunday. Hermano Vianna, 0 mundo funk carioca (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1988), 21, 26. Frias estimated about 300 conjuntos in Rio, with almost nightly dances ranging in attendance from 5,000 to 15,000 people. The cultural supplement Um e Meio of Rio's Jornal do Commercio placed the total number of dancers in the "millions" ("Black Rio," Um e Meio, 20-21 Nov. 1977), while a DJ in Frias's article estimated between one and two million.
41. Frias, "Black Rio." For more on the soul recording industry, see Ana Maria Bahiana, "Enlatando Black Rio," in Nada será como antes: MPB nos anos 70 (Rio: Civilização Brasileira, 1980);
42. and McCann, "Black Pau," 83-84.
43. Vianna, 0 mundo funk carioca, 27-28.
44. James H. Kennedy, "Political Liberalization, Black Consciousness, and Recent Afro-Brazilian Literature," Phylon 47, no. 3 (1986): 203.
45. For more on the "Shaft Night" soul dances at the Renascença in the 1970s, see Sonia Maria Giacomini, A alma da festa: Família, etnicidade e projetas num clube social da zona Norte do Rio de Janeiro, o Renascença Clube (Belo Horizonte: UFMG / Rio de Janeiro: IUPERJ, 2006), 195-96.
46. Frias, "Black Rio."
47. See, for instance, Antonio Luigi Negro and Paulo Fontes, "Trabalhadores em São Paulo: Ainda um caso de polícia," in No coracão das trevas: O DEOPS/SP visto por dentro, ed. Maria Aparecida de Aquino, Marco Aurélio Vannucchi Leme de Mattos, and Walter Cruz Swensson (São Paulo: Arquivo do Estado / Imprensa Oficial, 2001), 166.
48. Though Freyre most famously laid out his ideas concerning Brazil's racial mixture and harmony in his classic 1933 Casa-grande e senzala, he did not coin the term "racial democracy" until his post-WWII publications, such as Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Knopf, 1946).
49. See Antônio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães, Classes, raças e democracia (São Paulo: Editora 34; Fundação de Apoio à Universidade de São Paulo, 2002), chap. 5.
50. Bryan McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2004);
51. Peter Fry, "Feijoada e 'soul food': Notas sobre a manipulação de símbolos étnicos e nacionais," in Para Inglês Ver: ldentidade e política na cultura brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1982);
52. Hermano Vianna, The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999);
53. Dain Borges, "The Recognition of Afro-Brazilian Symbols and Ideas, 1890-1940," Luso-Brazilian Review 32, no. 2 (1995): 59-78.
54. McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil;
55. Vianna, The Mystery of Samba.
56. Andrews, "Brazilian Racial Democracy," 487-89.
57. Renato Ortiz, Cultura brasileira e identidade nacional (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1985), 47.
58. Clarival do Prado Valladares, The Impact of African Culture on Brazil (Brasília: Ministério das Relações Exteriores /Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1976), 39, 58.
59. Thales de Azevedo, Democracia racial: Ideologia e realidade (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1975). 53.
60. For instance, Thomas Skidmore, "Race and Class in Brazil: Historical Perspectives," in Fontaine, Race, Class, and Power, 12.
61. Ibraim De Leve, "'Black power' no Brasil," O Globo, 1 Oct. 1977.
62. "Racismo," O Globo, 26 April 1977.
63. Gilberto Freyre (from "Atenção brasileiros!" Diário de Pernambuco, 15 May 1977), cited in "Black Rio," Um e Meio, 20-21 Nov. 1977.
64. De Leve, "'Black power' no Brasil."
65. On Frias, see Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity, 115.
66. On Frias's political perspective, see the letter she circulated after being fired from the Jornal do Brasil in 2001, reprinted in Opinião: De que morreu Lena Frias? Web site of Associação de Músicos, Arranjadores e Régentes, www.amar.art.br/opiniao/opiniao-20.htm (accessed 11/12/07).
67. Tárik de Souza, "Soul: Sociologia e mercado," Jornal do Brasil, 27 Aug. 1976. This echoes several contemporary articles in the Jornal da Música in which authors sought to distinguish between "real" soul and inauthentic deformations;
68. for example, "O que é Soul de verdade?" Jornal da Música, 11 Nov. 1976.
69. Tarlis Batista, "Os Blacks no embalo do soul," Manchete, 11 Sept. 1976.
70. "Black Rio," Um e Meio, 20-21 Nov. 1977.
71. Batista, "Os Blacks no embalo do soul."
72. See also J. R. Tinhorão, "Protesto 'Black' é fonte de renda 'White,'" Jornal do Brasil, 14 June 1977.
73. Roberto M. Moura, "Carta aberta ao Black-Rio," Pasquim, 2-8 Sept. 1977.
74. Aldir Blanc, "Safari," Pasquim, 5-11 Aug. 1977.
75. Moura, "Carta aberta ao Black-Rio." The end of Gonzales's quote to Batista also suggests a return to samba. Batista, "Os Blacks no embalo do soul."
76. "Black Rio," Veja, 24 Nov. 1976.
77. For instance, though the secret police cited soul star Tony Tornado on the apolitical nature of soul, in another report, they mention picking him up for having "performed in the Teatro Copacabana, where he took the opportunity to air some ideas about racial discrimination in Brazil." DGIE 252, p. 66, 9 Nov. 1976.
78. See Turner, "Brown into Black";
79. Mitchell, "Blacks and the abertura democrática";
80. Lélia Gonzalez, "O Movimento Negro na última década," in Lugar de negro, ed. Lélia Gonzalez and Carlos Hasenbalg (Rio de Janeiro: Marco Zero, 1982).
81. Gonzalez, "O Movimento Negro na última década," 34.
82. "Por que o Black-Rio incomoda?" Jornal SINBA, July 1977.
83. "Descansem em paz," Jornal SINBA, April 1979.
84. McCann, "Black Pau," 84; Monteiro, "O ressurgimento do Movimento Negro," 71-72.
85. For an analysis of contemporary advertisements and their complete exclusion of blacks as consumers or businesspeople, see Carlos Hasenbalg, "O negro na publicidade," in Lugar de negro, ed. Lélia Gonzalez and Carlos Hasenbalg (Rio de Janeiro: Marco Zero, 1982), 103-14.
86. Frias, "Black Rio," and Gonzalez, "O Movimento Negro na última dé́cada."
87. Frias, "Black Rio." For more on homemade soul clothing, see Giacomini, A alma da festa, 193-94.
88. Cf. Néstor García Canclini, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2001),
89. and George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2003).
90. See Boletim do IPCN, July 1976.
91. Batista, "Os Blacks no embalo do soul." Gil and musician Caetano Veloso openly expressed their support for soul, which in their view shared the goals of their own musical movement, Tropicália: to challenge what Christopher Dunn calls "state-sanctioned forms of national culture." Tropicália similarly came under attack from both left and right for its foreign references.
92. Gonzalez, "O Movimento Negro na última década," 31-33;
93. Carlos Alberto M. Pereira and Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda, eds., Patrulhas ideológicas, marca reg: Arte e engajamento em debate (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1980), 202-12.
94. See "Candeia, agora no Orum," Jornegro, Nov. 1978; "E o povo não viu o carnaval! (o samba não é para quem o faz)," Jornegro, Mar. 1978.
95. Fry, "Feijoada e 'soul food'," 53.
96. Peter Fry offers historical perspective on his early interpretation of soul in "'Feijoada e soul food' 25 anos depois," in A persistêcia da raça: ensaios antropológicos sobre o Brasil e a África austral (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2005), 147-66.
97. Jamu Minka, "Recado para a turma do soul," in Boletim IPCN, July 1977.
98. For more on the African-oriented politics of these groups (and the secret police's surveillance of them), see Alberto, "Terms of Inclusion," chap. 6.