The Mystery of Samba

Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil

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by Hermano Vianne,

Edited by John Charles Chasteen

University of North Carolina Press

Due/Published March 1999, 168 pages, paper

ISBN 0807847666

Samba is the rhythm of Brazil, one of the leading symbols of its culture and nationhood. To the outsider, samba and Carnival, of which it is the centerpiece seem to showcase the country's African heritage. Within Brazil, samba symbolized the racial and cultural mixture that, since the 1930s, Brazilians have come to believe defines their unique national identity.

How did Brazil become the Land of the Samba only a few decades after slavery was abolished in 1888? Usually, samba is represented as having changed spontaneously, even mysteriously, from a "repressed" music of the marginal and impoversihed to a national symbol cherished by all Brazilians. Here, Vianne shows that the nationalization of samba actually rested on a long history of relations between different social groups--rich and poor, weak and powerful--often working at cross-purposes to one another.

From Alma Guillermoprieto: "A wonderfully knowledgeable and thoughtful investigaiton of how Brazil and samba helped create each other."