Music in Brazil John P. Murphy | Oxford University Press Global Music Series

There's a new section of the site today: "Open access: articles, papers, photos, audio." Right now there's one conference paper that was written and delivered in Portuguese in 2002. Soon there will be more publications there in English.

I think the results of research, especially research supported by public funds, should be freely available. My two long research trips in Brazil were supported by a U.S. Dept. of Education Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Over the coming months and years I will be making articles, conference papers, photos, audio files, and other materials from my Brazilian research available on this site. Your comments are welcome.

That's the title of Brazil Classics 7, recently released by Luaka Bop.

Find out more about it and read the essay by Megwen Loveless at the Luaka Bop site.

(Note on translation: in the sequence with Otto and a singer whom I don't recognize singing as they walk through a puddle, "bob" is translated as "curles" [sic], as in hair, I guess. "Bob" is slang for a popular herbal product. The context of the lyric makes it clear: "legalize o bob" [legalize the 'bob'].)

Peter Ermey published a review in the Journal of Folklore Research. Thanks to T.M. Scruggs for telling me about it.

Percussionist Sérgio Cassiano, a former member of Mestre Ambrósio, has a brief profile at All About Jazz about his Open School project. Here's his site.

This is a music blog in Portuguese dedicated to psychedelic rock:

brnuggets.blogspot.com

"Esse é um blog dedicado à pouco conhecida psicodelia brasileira. Pretendo postar com freqüência alguns álbuns relevantes e raros dos anos 60 e 70, bem como resenhas, históricos e curiosidades."

"This is a blog dedicated to little-known Brazilian psychodelic [music]. I intend to post frequently some relevant and rare albums from the 60s and 70s, as well as reviews, historical items, and curiosities."

Stephen Brown wrote a short review for TLS (Times Literary Supplement) issue 5404 (Oct. 27, 2006), pp. 32-33.

In a generally positive review, he suggested including more on art music and new blends of art and popular music, such as "the compilations produced by Almir Chediak, where you can hear, for example, Simone and Wagner Tiso perform an early Jobim tune with lied-like intensity." He notes the lack of a pronunciation guide; now the audio glossary is online. When I get some free time I can record pronunciations for Portuguese terms and names on each page. Finally, he complains about the student activities, which are a common feature of the series.

Two reviews of the book appeared recently:

1. A review article by Suzel Reily of Queen's University Belfast on recent books on Brazilian music in Ethnomusicology 51/3 (Fall 2007), pp. 487-492.

2. A review by Rogério Budasz of the Federal University of Paraná (Curitiba) in Music and Letters 88/4 (November 2007), pp. 709-711.

This CNN story tells how tecnobrega, a popular form of electronic music in northern Brazil, thrives on piracy.

Maybe you've just started a class that uses this book and found your way here, or found the site in a web search. Either way, I'm glad you're visiting the site. There is a lot of material here to supplement the book, and I add new links from time to time. Please feel free to contact me. My email is murphy@unt.edu.