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How music helped to define
modern Brazilian culture
at home and abroad.

Although African influences undeniably pervade the popular music of Brazil, until now few books have examined the role of Blackness, what author Darién Davis calls Africaneity, in the creation and development of twentieth-century Brazilian musical traditions. This innovative, accessible work off ers a fascinating look at Brazilian music from the 1920s to the 1950s, as it expanded at home and traveled abroad. Whether he is talking with samba musicians, watching classic movie musicals, or listening to recordings made more than half a century ago, Davis explores how the historical forces of race, class, and gender colluded in the development and export of Afro-Brazilian culture.

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Customer Reviews (2)

Of interest to any musical historian, be they amateur or professional
Brazil is a culture with much in the way of unique roots. "White Face, Black Mask: Africaneity and The Early Social History of Popular Music in Brazil" is a scholarly discussion of the history of Brazilian music and the move towards Africaneity during the first half of the twentieth century. Samba, classical, and other genres are discussed as author Darien Davis takes a wide-reaching look at the evolution of the country's music. "White Face, Black Mask" is of interest to any musical historian, be they amateur or professional.

development of Brazilian music in the 20th century
Author of a previous book on African influences in Brazilian culture, Middlebury College professor of history Davis elaborates how today's Brazilian popular music came to "demonstrate the difficulty of determining where blackness ends and whiteness begins" from its origins in the early part of the 20th century where white musicians "incorporated black rhythms, idioms, symbols, and styles into their musical performances." Even so, blacks were in ways purposely, subtly, and habitually denied opportunities to perform for themselves the music being appropriated and developed by the white musicians.

Africans had been a part of Brazilian culture from the earliest days of Portuguese colonialism in the 1500s. It was only in 1888 when slavery was abolished, however, that blacks began in diverse ways to move into the mainstream of Brazilian culture. This movement was strengthened and to some extent encouraged and sanctioned in what is known as the "Vargas era" for the Brazilian president Getulio Vargas who was in power for most of the period between 1930 and 1954. The growth of radio as a popular medium and the emergence of a national cinema were related cultural developments influencing the development of Brazilian popular music during this period.

The progress of black music in Brazilian popular music is not essentially a South American version of such progress in American society. For although slaves, blacks with African roots from the beginning had a different place, a different status in Brazil; and when slavery was abolished, there was never the virulent racism, rigorous segregation, and Jim-Crow laws which were daunting hurdles to American blacks; and which led them to establish their own forms of society for survival and expression. Whereas in America, for instance, blues and jazz patently grew out of such black society and took a course of being embraced by and sometimes claimed by the majority white culture, in Brazil "it is difficult to treat 'Afro-Brazilian popular music' and 'Brazilian popular music' as two distinct categories" at any point. For despite slavery and its late abolition, Brazil was a "syncretic culture" with cultural fusion in ways America never was. Davis's book opening up a historical and social process unfamiliar to most readers is of particular interest with the current emergence of Brazil as a hemispheric power and also within the field of globalism and multiculturalism.
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