On June 15, 2007, Roberto Corrêa was honored with the designation Honorary Citizen of Brasília for his contributions to the city's cultural life. The phrase "o músico que fez pacto com a viola" translates as "the musician who made a pact with the viola." It refers both to his commitment to the instrument and the musical culture it represents, and, I think, to the pacts that some traditional violeiros were said to have made with the devil.
The online archive of the Instituto Moreira Salles allows you to search music, photos, the library, and visual arts.
http://ims.uol.com.br/ims/
The music holdings include José Ramos Tinhorão's library and a special collection of the works of Pixinguinha.
Thanks to Carlos Sandroni for the link.
After a Drupal upgrade, diacriticals in Portuguese aren't showing up correctly. We're working on it.
It's not new, but it might be just the thing a reader of this site is looking for:
Forró in Brasilien, Musik für Dienstmädchen und Taxifahrer?
Tiago De Oliveira Pinto
LINK
The title, "Forró in Brazil: music for maids and taxi-drivers?" alludes to the 1989 compilation on Rounder Records.
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
Leandro has posted his review at overmundo and there is some discussion--in Portuguese. I can translate it for you by request.
In my post in the discussion, I gave a photo credit for the cover photo that is reproduced on the page, and a link to a photo of mine that I was hoping to use as the cover, which shows the cavalo-marinho singers Biu Roque (L) and Deodato at Chã de Camará, Aliança, Pernambuco, in March of 1991:
Leonardo Martinelli has posted on his blog the complete version of a review and interview that appeared in the Gazeta Mercantil (São Paulo, Feb. 9, 2007, Fim de Semana section):
alteramusica.blogspot.com/2007/02/msica-de-nosso-brazil.html
My translation of the review follows. The interview will be translated soon; it's located here:
alteramusica.blogspot.com/2007/02/entrevista-com-john-p-murphy.html
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The music of our "Brazil"
Researcher casts a foreigner's eye on Brazilian music
To speak about Brazilian music is a thorny task: our musical culture is broad, it includes a large geographical area, and its historical roots, though detectable, still need more profound studies (along with the dissemination of existing ones). Many Brazilians have ventured down these dense and dangerous paths, researching specific niches of our musical culture. Even more difficult, however, is to realize a generalist impression of such a diverse musical culture, and the task becomes more risky when the goal is to explain music in Brazil for an audience that might know little more than the widely publicized stereotypes, that is, "samba, carnaval and bossa-nova."
This is precisely the goal of the book "Music in Brazil," written by the North American musician and researcher John P. Murphy (see the interview, below), which only recently is more accessible in Brazilian bookstores. It is part of the Global Music Series of textbooks, published by Oxford University Press, which includes diverse world musical cultures, a segment which is typically called world music, and includes titles on music in Bali, Egypt, Central Java, the United States, among many others. Along with the volumes on geographical themes, the collection also includes two oriented towards the theoretical conceptualization of the subject: "Teaching Music Globally, " by Patricia S. Campbell, and "Thinking Musically," by Bonnie C. Wade, both editors of the series.
Murphy's book should be understood from the perspective of a textbook. One should, therefore, take into account both its objectives and audience and its small size (less than two hundred pages). None of this, however, diminishes the merit of the work, which remains interesting for us Brazilians, as well.
To accomplish his task, Murphy--who lived in Brazil and communicates fluently in Portuguese--proposes three visions of our music: 1) "music and national identity"; 2) "music and regional identity"; and 3) "musical cosmopolitanism".
In the first part of the book the author discusses samba as our "national music," from its historical origins to a small and multifaceted current view of this genre. This part of the book also explains other genres linked to the general identity of Brazilian musical culture, such as the choro and bossa-nova. In the second part, Murphy discusses regional genres which, despite their presumed geographical limitation, are of high importance in the Brazilian musical cauldron, such as forró, capoeira, and the music of the Northeastern religious celebrations (maracatu, bumba-meu-boi, etc.). In the last part, the author addresses the highly complicated task of giving a panorama of current Brazilian music and some of its genres. Here the author emphasizes genres from the music scene of Recife (notably Mangue Beat, of Chico Science and Nação Zumbi), the city where the author lived for more than two years.
Despite the practical necessity of clear and direct definitions, Murphy does not lead the reader to a one-dimensional vision of the themes he addresses, which is very important when one considers that the target audience is a foreign one. One relevant aspect of the work is the good quantity of examples in the form of notated examples and musical analyses, along with the audio examples on the CD that accompanies the book. The author's website completes the suite of didactic materials. The author's effort to explain fine points of our culture to the public is notable (such as, for example, when he alerts the reader to the prejudice that exists in the South and Southeast towards the accent of Northeasterners).
Even if the goals of the book are taken into account, its Achilles heel is the virtual absence of references to musical activities of a more "international" character in Brazil, such as diverse currents of unmixed [lit. un-miscegenated] rock and pop, as well as jazz and classical music. The didactic character of the book makes the correction of the map of Brazil an urgent necessity (after all, northern coast is not bordered by the Gulf of Mexico and the capital of Acre is not "Rio Braneo").
The book, obviously, does not exhaust the subject (and this is not its intent), but can be a good introduction to the Brazilian musical universe. For Brazilians themselves, too.
On overmundo, Hermano Vianna writes about listening to the new boxed set of music from the 1938 Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas as music, not as a mythical time capsule, and makes connections with current and recent music.
Even those who can't read the Portuguese might want to have a look because it has a lot of links, many of which lead to audio clips.
An interesting post by Marcelo Cabral at overmundo critiques the notion of the nordestino or northeasterner.
"Muito me estranha que o carioca seja carioca, com sua identidade e lugar no espaço territorial desse Brasil nacional, e não sudestino. O carioca é carioca, o mineiro é mineiro, tal qual o paulista e também o capixaba. Ninguém é sudestino.
Essa coisa do termo "nordestino", e até do orgulho de sé-lo, é um tanto equivocada, coloca todo mundo no mesmo saco de farinha, da mesma forma que as generalizações "baiano" e "paraíba", tão usadas em São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro respectivamente.
It seems odd to me that the carioca should be carioca, with their identity and place in the territorial space of this national Brazil, and not "sudestino" [southeasterner]. The carioca is a carioca, the mineiro a mineiro, just like the paulista and the capixaba [native of Espírito Santo]. No one is a southeasterner.
This thing about the term "nordestino," and the pride in being one, is a misnomer, and puts everyone in the same bag of flour, as do the generalizations "baiano" and "paraíba," so often used in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, respectively."
This relates to the question of national identity in music: what emanates from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro is accepted as national. What comes from the Northeast, no matter what the style, gets tagged as regional.
Informative website. In English. Recent items include the settlement of a suit against Fiat by the family of Chico Science.
