Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries 9780190923532, 9780190923525

Bossa Mundo chronicles how Brazilian music has been central to Brazil’s national brand in the United States and the Unit

816 119 3MB

English Pages 245 [257] Year 2019

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD FILE

Polecaj historie

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries
 9780190923532, 9780190923525

Table of contents :
Title_Pages
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction_Mediation_Attention_and_Brazils_Musical_Brand
Copying_the_Bossa_NovaJazz_and_Dance_Fads_in_the_Early_1960s
Adult_Contemporary_Bossa_NovaThe_Jet_Set_and_Easy_Listening_on_Record_and_in_Film
From_Fusion_to_FunkBrazilian_Musical_Strategies_of_Racial_Affiliation_in_the_1970s
Brazilian_Music_as_World_Music_in_the_Late_1980s
Remixing_BrazilDistraction_and_Retro_Taste_at_the_Turn_of_the_Millennium
Constructing_a_New_Music_IndustryMusically_Branding_Brazil_in_the_2010s
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Bossa Mundo

Alejandro L. Madrid, Series Editor Walter Aaron Clark, Founding Series Editor Walter Aaron Clark, Series Editor for current volume Nor-​tec  Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World Alejandro L. Madrid From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions Craig H. Russell Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila D. R. M. Irving Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism, & Performance Ruth Hellier-​Tinoco Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-​Century Spain Susan Boynton Whose Spain? Negotiating “Spanish Music” in Paris, 1908–​1929 Samuel Llano Federico Moreno Torroba: A Musical Life in Three Acts Walter Aaron Clark and William Craig Krause Agustín Lara A Cultural Biography Andrew G. Wood Danzón Circum-​Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore

Music and Youth Culture in Latin America Identity Construction Processes from New York to Buenos Aires Pablo Vila Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain Eva Moreda Rodríguez Carmen and the Staging of Spain Recasting Bizet’s Opera in the Belle Epoque Michael Christoforidis Elizabeth Kertesz Rites, Rights and Rhythms A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia’s Black Pacific Michael Birenbaum Quintero Discordant Notes Marginality and Social Control in Madrid, 1850–​1930 Samuel Llano Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco K. Meira Goldberg Opera in the Tropics: Music and Theater in Early Modern Brazil Rogerio Budasz Sound-​Politics in São Paulo Leonardo Cardoso Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries K. E. Goldschmitt

Bossa Mundo Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries K. E. GOLDSCHMIT T

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–​0–​19–​092353–​2  (pbk.) ISBN 978–​0–​19–​092352–​5  (hbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America

For the Brazilian musicians and music industry workers who fight to make the world more meaningful.

Acknowledgments The path to completing this book was circuitous, compounded by the precarity of being an early-​career scholar. The dedication of librarians has been a vital source of consistency over many moves and upheavals. Much of the historical research for this book was conducted at the libraries and special collections at the University of California, Los Angeles (including Music Special Collections and the Film and Television Archive), which served as a major font of resources well after I completed my studies. I also consulted historical sources at the following academic libraries: University of California, Irvine; Colby College; New College of Florida, University of South Florida, and Ringling College of Art and Design; University of Cambridge; Wellesley College; and Tufts University. A  special thank you goes to the staff at the main branch of the Boston Public Library and at the British Library who kept historical music periodicals in excellent condition. At New College of Florida, Caroline Reed helped me to hunt down sources for the first stages of writing. More recently, Carol Lubkowski, the Wellesley College music librarian, helped with some vexing research questions. Thank you. Many institutions have funded the research that went into this book. As a graduate student at UCLA, these included two Dean’s humanities fellowships from the Graduate Division, a Title IV FLAS and Summer FLAS in Brazilian Portuguese, additional funding from the UCLA Department of Musicology, as well as fieldwork grants from the International Institute and the Latin American Institute. I was also one of the first recipients of financial support from the new Herb Alpert School of Music to attend Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory V in 2008 hosted by Toby Miller, Kate Oakley, and David Theo Goldberg on the topic “Creative Societies, Cultural Industries, New Humanities?” That collection of scholars and policymakers was inspiring and has shaped my increasing investment in media studies that ultimately formed the core of this book. At Colby College, I received travel and research funding as part of my Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. The Music & Letters Trust in the United Kingdom funded a crucial trip to Brazil in 2015. I am deeply grateful to my PhD committee at UCLA for nurturing this project from its earliest beginnings. Thank you to Randall Johnson, Tamara

x Acknowledgments Levitz, Mitchell Morris, and Anthony Seeger for each asking probing questions during my PhD defense to push me to rethink the whole project. I was fortunate to have Timothy Taylor as the chair of my committee, and his ideas still shape much of my thinking. His unwavering support and candid assessment of my work were just what I needed through my years of contingent academic employment. I have benefited greatly from the conversations and hospitality of many people in Brazil. To my collaborators working in the Brazilian music industries: I have met with many of you over the years, and it still baffles the mind that you entertained so many of my questions. Special thanks to Marcela Boechat, David McLaughlin, Michel Perrin, Pena Schmidt, and Maurício Tagliari for your generosity, enthusiasm about my project, and for challenging my ideas. Numerous scholars at Brazilian institutions have helped me over the years, including Samuel Araújo, Frederico Coelho, Ivan Fontanari, Maria Elizabeth Lucas, and the late Santuza Cambraia Naves. I also benefited from a broader social network that made the practicalities of living in Brazil possible. To Jenée Slocum, Julia Michaels, and Thais Riback, thank you for your friendship and for a base of emotional support back when I was first starting. I also owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who provided safe and welcoming accommodations:  Thomas George Caracas Garcia, Michel Perrin, Valéria Monteiro, Ivana Cabral, and Daniela de Sá. I am indebted to the many who lent me far more support than I ever expected. Thanks to Jeanine Ashforth, Jessica Deschaines, and Ann-​Michelle Van Eepoel for embracing my love of researching Brazilian music from the outside and encouraged me to keep going. Special thanks to everyone who taught me the true meaning of “community” during the darkest period of my academic precarity: Aimee Bahng, Bill Bahng Boyer, P. Allen Roda, Steven Shipman, Alice Shipman, Taylor Rothenberg-​Manley, and Valentine Conaty. Maribeth Clark showed unparalleled generosity and I benefited from timely advice from J.  Griffith Rollefson and Hettie Malcomson. I  would not be where I am without all of you. Early versions of this research first appeared as invited presentations and colloquia. Anupama Jain, Priscilla Doel, and Lily Funahashi gave me supportive comments when I presented the beginnings of ­chapter 4 as part of the Colby College Humanities Colloquium. Questions from Steven Miles and Heather Love at the New College of Florida Gender Studies “Brown Bag” presentation helped me in the early stages of c­ hapter 1. Geoffrey Kantaris and Rachel Harris urged me to make broader connections when I presented

Acknowledgments  xi research from ­chapter 2 at the Faculty of Music Colloquium at Cambridge and as part of the SOAS Ethnomusicology Seminar Series. Thank you to Julie Coimbra at the Centre for Latin American Studies at Cambridge and Henry Stobart at the Latin American Music Seminar at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of London, for invitations to present in environments dedicated to Latin American research. Thanks to Myke Cuthbert and Rebecca Marchand for the invitation to present at the joint meeting of AMS-​NE and the New England Conference of Music Theorists. And finally thank you to Philip Gentry and Russell Murray for the warm welcome at the University of Delaware. Many people read early drafts of this book. Harriett Barnes-​Duke, Allie Kleber, and Schuyler Wheldon deserve a special mention for reading the entire manuscript and serving as sounding boards as I pulled everything together. Allie, in particular, helped to make the manuscript more readable to a nonacademic audience and also helped with image formatting. Marie Abe, Chloë Alaghband-​Zadeh, Kevin Fellezs, Shannon Garland, Philip Gentry, Darien Lamen, Andrew Mall, Steven Pond, Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Nichole Rustin-​Pascale, Mark Samples, Nick Seaver, Daniel Sharp, Michael B. Silvers, and Benjamin Tausig read drafts of chapters and provided crucial feedback at various stages. You all showed boundless generosity and patience with this project. Finally, I feel especially grateful to Josh Rutner as an editor and indexer. His experience, musical knowledge, and sense of humor made the revision process much more enjoyable. My colleagues at Wellesley College have given me a scholarly home that provided much needed stability to complete this project. In the Music Department, thanks to Eliko Akahori, Martin Brody, Lisa Graham, David Russell, and Kera Washington for making the music department a stimulating and supportive scholarly home. Special thanks to Gurminder Bhogal and Claire Fontijn for advice on book contracts and publishing and to Jenny Olivia Johnson for camaraderie on broader questions of contemporary music, career, and pacing. Thanks to Isabel Fine, Cercie Miller, and Paula Zeitlin for coming together to invite Luciana Souza for a residency, which provided a massive boost for refining the book’s framing. There are many brilliant colleagues in other departments at Wellesley, but I’ve been especially grateful for conversations with Patricia Berman, Susan H. Ellison, Octávio Gonzalez, Laura K.  Gratton, Brenna Greer, Koichi Hagimoto, António Igrejas, Ada Lerner, Peggy Levitt, Irene Mata, Patrick McKewan, N. Adriana Knouf, Petra Rivera-​Rideau, Lawrence Rosenwald, and Edward Silvers.

xii Acknowledgments Thank you to Magdalene Christian and Jim Wice for facilitating crucial administrative processes. Prior to Wellesley, I  held many short-​term posts, and the ideas herein are due in part to the connections I made at those places. At Colby College, I  had many productive conversations with Todd Borgerding, Daniel Cohen, Ben Fallaw, Paul Machlin, Steven Nuss, and Eric Thomas. While I was at New College of Florida, Mark Dancigers was a frequent interlocutor about the sounds in Brazilian music. At University of Cambridge, thank you to:  Nicholas Cook, Ian Cross, Martin Ennis, Marina Frolova-​Walker, Matthew Machin-​Autenrieth, Susan Round, David Trippett, and Benjamin Walton in the Faculty of Music; Stuart Davis, Susan Smith, and Jeremy West at Girton College; Maite Conde in Medieval and Modern Languages. There is a broad network of music scholars who have helped me to develop ideas while also providing me with a sense of community. They include:  Rachel Adelstein, Ananay Aguilar, Jayson Beaster-​ Jones, Tyler Bickford, James Buhler, Patrick Burke, Andrew Eisenberg, Luis-​Manuel Garcia, Sumanth Gopinath, Jack Hamilton, Eric Harvey, Michael Heller, Eduardo Herrera, Sydney Hutchinson, Monique Ingalls, Robin D.  James, Elizabeth Keenan, Keir Keightley, Morgan Luker, Noriko Manabe, Elizabeth Morgan, Michael O’Brien, Daniel Party, Marysol Quevedo, Graham Raulerson, Jason Robinson, and Susan Thomas. Charles Kronengold and Darien Lamen generously shared drafts of unpublished work. Eric Weisbard and Theo Cateforis lent me their perspective on pop criticism of the 1980s. In the Boston area, I’ve been fortunate to have collaborative and scholarly friendships with Nick Seaver and Leslie Tilley. Thank you especially to Leslie for the writing dates, ceaseless encouragement, and fantastic food. In the world of Brazilian music scholars, I have been mentored by Jason Stanyek and Frederick Moehn in an unofficial capacity since my earliest years as a graduate student. I have also had many productive conversations with other Brazilianists, including especially Carla Brunet, Leo Cardoso, Daniel Gough, Michael Iyanaga, Cristina Magaldi, Bryan McCann, Jeff Packman, Suzel Riley, Liv Sovik, and Chris Stover. Since my first academic post, I  have had countless top-​notch students, but a few of them asked especially prescient questions that reminded me of my audience. Thanks to Elise Brown, Cosme Del Rosario-​Bell, Nick Doig, Elliot Evins, Rachel Frazer, James Gabrillo, Caroline George, Tessa Kim, and Holland Rhodd-​Lee. You all make me so proud.

Acknowledgments  xiii Two anonymous readers reviewed this manuscript for the press and I have benefited greatly from their deep engagement and feedback. Thank you to my editor, Suzanne Ryan, who believed in this project from the first time we talked in 2009 and who entertained numerous developmental meetings over the years. Thanks also to Walter Clark who initially expressed interest for it in the CLAIMS series and to Alejandro Madrid for steering the project through to completion when he took over as series editor. Alejandro has been a mentor and colleague since 2004 and his guidance through this process has been reassuring. This project would have been impossible without family broadly conceived. Thank you to my parents, my sister Amy, her husband Barry, and Nina and Evan for keeping me grounded. Thank you to Esther, for your enthusiasm and teaching me important things about who I am. To Brett, for all of the music nerdery over the years. Sophie Gamwell has done far more for this project than can be listed here. Although trained in a different field, she never wavered in her support for my ideas and always urged me to state boldly why they matter. Thank you, Sophie, for saying “yes.”

Introduction Mediation, Attention, and Brazil’s Musical Brand

Much is at stake when a country as musically rich as Brazil must choose a single song to present to the glare of the international spotlight. In the year leading up to the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament, numerous Brazilian musical artists took part in a competition to provide the official FIFA World Cup song for the legions of international football fans descending upon the country. “Todo Mundo,” co-​written by Mario Caldato Jr. and the songwriting team Rock Mafia (Tim James and Antonina Armato), was but one of many songs entered into the competition, but its story is useful in uncovering some of the complications of mediating Brazilian music for international audiences. The compositional and recording process of the song is transnational at its core. It also reveals the intersection of Brazilian cultural policy and corporate interest. The official version of the song was called “The World Is Ours”—​an inexact translation of “Todo Mundo”—​and featured the Carnaval group Monobloco and English lyrics sung by David Correy, a Brazilian American finalist on the second season of the televised talent contest The X Factor. That the song featured Correy so prominently—​and that it was part of a cross-​section of branding and promotional efforts—​makes sense: he was a celebrity at the time, and easily compatible with the international business strategy of the song’s sponsor, Coca-​Cola, especially among Anglophone publics beyond Brazil.1 Although “Todo Mundo” did not become the official 2014 FIFA World Cup anthem—​that honor went to “We Are One (Ole Ola),” featuring Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez, and northeastern Brazilian star Claudia Leitte—​it was eventually released on the official World Cup album and accompanying playlists.

1 I  use the word “public” deliberately here due to the fact that many Brazilian record industry workers I consulted for my research emphasized “público,” the Portuguese word for “public” or “audience,” over “audiência,” the more literal translation.

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.003.0001

2  Bossa Mundo The history of “Todo Mundo” exemplifies some of the compromises and erasures of Brazil’s musical branding. The first iteration of the song was released domestically in Brazil in 2013 and featured Portuguese vocals by Gaby Amarantos. As a star of tecnobrega, Amarantos was subject to some of the stigma associated with her genre’s musical roots. Tecnobrega is an electronic dance music variant of brega (“tacky”) music. During my early research trips to Brazil, in 2007 and 2008, music industry workers described tecnobrega as one of many marginal genres not worth record label investment due to its legally dubious practices and links to musical piracy networks, all of which was meant to circumvent traditional revenue models. It is, in some respects, an “outlaw” genre. However, a number of Brazilian scholars (Lemos and Castro 2008; Guerreiro do Amaral 2009; Vianna 2013) have argued that tecnobrega could also embody the possibilities of a new kind of music industry operating at the periphery. Amarantos’s appearance on “Todo Mundo,” and the song’s links to Brazil’s national branding effort in 2014, was the result of years of tecnobrega shedding some of its stigma.2 There were eventually eight official versions of the song vying for the attention of publics through various media—​which is not unreasonable, given the context of a massive international sports event.3 Further, it shows that those involved with the song’s dissemination were all too aware that public focus during such an event is rarely on the music. Motivating this book is the key question of what happens to Brazilian music when it is mediated through different routes to reach multiple publics who are paying attention to many things—​not just the music. By investigating that process, this book shows the lasting effects of transnational mediation on the country’s musical brand. The stories of Amarantos and tecnobrega demonstrate the ephemeral nature and some of the lasting effects of the mediation process. Tecnobrega began to gain traction with taste-​making global music blogs starting in 2010. I  first noticed the genre’s expanding international appeal when, in early 2010, a non-​Brazilian music blogger asked me about one of its variants—​ tecnomelody—​and shared a link to hundreds of MP3s. In June of that year, O Globo, one of the top newspapers in Brazil, described Amarantos’s traction 2 Some scholars prefer the term “nation brand” to describe the process of building and maintaining a country’s soft power through goods, symbolic capital, and prestige (cf. Aronczyk 2013; Dinnie 2015). 3 These included a remix featuring US-​ based EDM crooner Aloe Blacc and Correy with Monobloco’s drums buried in the mix and a variety that combine Correy singing in English with Gaby Amarantos singing in Portuguese. There were also Spanish, Spanglish, and Portunhol (Portuguese Spanish) versions.

Introduction  3 with the Rio de Janeiro public as “cada vez mais popular” (more and more popular) and referenced her nickname, “Beyoncé do Pará” (Calaznas 2010). Tecnobrega was rising in national and international esteem. Soon, global urban music enthusiasts had their pick of tecnobrega acts to place next to other styles in the global bass scene.4 Amarantos’s song “Ex Mai Love” from her solo debut, Treme, had been chosen in 2012 for the opening credits of Cheias de Charme, a telenovela on the Globo network, the television station that commands over 50 percent of the Brazilian market. But her ubiquity in Brazilian media was short-​lived. While some sectors of Brazilian society continued to celebrate her successes, taste-​making elites moved on to other styles to promote in the international arena—​tecnobrega simply could not hold their attention. Thus, like many artists riding the crest of a trend, Amarantos’s appearance in “Todo Mundo” and her subsequent replacement by David Correy in transnational versions of the song reflected the capricious tastes of corporate and national branding. The successive arrival and erasure of a tecnobrega star in “Todo Mundo” is consistent with the lengthy history of Brazil’s self-​promotion through music. Brazil has regularly marketed itself to Anglophone publics through popular music. Like other musically rich countries in Latin America—​such as Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina—​Brazil has captured the imagination of people in many parts of the world through music, giving the country increased prominence and driving tourism and international financial investment. Brazilian popular music, from its earliest examples in the first half of the twentieth century such as the international waves of maxixe, choro, and samba, was how the country appealed to its powerful allies to the north and across the Atlantic—​ often through the entertainment industry’s collaboration with politicians.5 As the century progressed, the processes through which Brazilian music did that promotional work changed in step with the expansion of media technology. From its first appearance in the international market, Brazilian music circulated and found new audiences through sheet music, newspaper and radio coverage, ballroom dance fads, musical theater and film, and, to a lesser degree, audio recordings. Later, it would appear in such varied media as film scores, televised specials, video game soundtracks,

4 For more on the history of the term “global bass” see David Font-​Navarette (2015) and Garth Sheridan (2014). 5 A good example is the collaboration of producers and politicians to achieve Carmen Miranda’s Hollywood fame in the run-​up to World War II (Bishop-​Sanchez 2016; Shaw 2013; Mendonça 1999).

4  Bossa Mundo trailers, specialist magazines, Muzak programming, and dedicated playlists on streaming music services, among many others. Through its wide dissemination, music from Brazil became the sound of the country’s international image, or national brand (even before “branding” as a concept encapsulated a variety of marketing and promotional practices in the digital age). Yet the story of Brazilian music (and the strength of the country’s musical reputation) among English-​speaking publics is more complex than mere representation due to the exponential expansion of media technologies and the ways in which they have influenced what people hear—​ even when they are not paying attention. This book argues that the mediation of Brazilian music in an increasingly crowded transnational marketplace has had lasting consequences for the rich creative output celebrated by Brazil as part of its national brand. Through an emphasis on music as part of the media industries, Bossa Mundo demonstrates the extent to which Brazilian music has played a prominent role in Anglophone culture in the postwar period. In a series of chronologically organized case studies from the late 1950s through the mid-​2010s, I show how Brazilian music has seeped into multiple corners of mainstream Anglophone popular culture via mediation. In so doing, it has demonstrated its market durability by fitting into contexts where audiences are not necessarily aware of its presence. The story I tell sits at the juncture of music, mediation, and attention. In these breakthrough moments, I explore not just what the music in question may have represented, but what it did and how. Through a discussion of the political meaning of mass-​mediated music, Bossa Mundo makes the case for shifting scholarly focus from the heightened emotions and attention at the core of vibrant musical scenes to the broader media environment where listeners and intermediaries often have other priorities. By attending to how transnational mediation transforms the potency of music among publics with varying levels of emotional and monetary investment, I  argue for a more expansive study of how music changes as it reaches the apex of popular appeal.

Attention of International Publics A key theme in this book is how the attention and distraction of Anglophone publics intersect with Brazil’s branding project in the second half of the

Introduction  5 twentieth century. New scholarship on attention and affect, led by Anahid Kassabian (2013), has thrown into question some of the key assumptions behind work in popular music studies and sound studies. Today, it is nearly a given that mass-​mediated vernacular music has social and political meaning and that it has a powerful potential to represent differences in race, class, gender, sexuality, and age. But a weakness of analyses that posit music as a representational text is that they tend to privilege one type of listener—​the kind who attends to the particular details that would interest a music critic or fan, or one who engages in what some musicologists describe as “structural listening.”6 The question of what happens to that representational potential when audiences are clearly directing their attention elsewhere requires more unpacking. In the case of international audiences of Brazilian music, they may be focused on the filmic image, on the content of advertisements the music underscores, or on the dance fad on TV that they are trying to emulate. Bossa nova, for example, has also had a lengthy reputation as Muzak often dismissed as “elevator music.” Critiques of mass-​ mediation from the mid-​ twentieth century have dominated scholarly inquiries into listening, effectively casting aside most contexts where publics encounter music. When popular music scholars have attempted to consider audience distraction and attention, they draw primarily on ideas from the Frankfurt school of social research—​most notably those of Theodor Adorno, who bemoaned “the regression of listening” surrounding recorded music in a capitalist system (2002: 288). He argued that all commercial music recordings and performances exist to drive sales for venues and media playback devices, thereby degrading the value of listening skills and increasing the degree of commodity fetishism between the audience and musician. He further argued that people who listen to popular music enjoy the status that comes with spending money on the music rather than what they hear. For Adorno, the only type of music of any worth was “difficult music” that required expert listeners to fully comprehend it (Adorno 1976), certainly not music that serves as the background to some other activity.7 Taken with a longer view, it is clear that worries around perception and attention reveal broader anxieties about music and mass culture. As Adam

6 For an excellent critique of this, see Dell’Antonio (2004). 7 Franco Fabbri (2013) points out that background listening is a type of “taboo” for adherents of structural, expert listening.

6  Bossa Mundo Krims (2007) persuasively argues, popular music scholars have been united since the 1990s in their effort to write against Adorno, because his ideas—​a “foundational trauma in the discipline” (2007: 91)—​circulate more than any other Marxist critique of music. Krims observed that many music scholars use Adorno to uncover the politics of musical representation at the risk of getting trapped in familiar hand-​wringing about the commodification process. I believe that this problem originates in mistrust of the profit motive in recorded music and audiovisual mediation—​commercial enterprises that demand a return on investment. For many scholars and critics, the central problem with the industrialization of music is the contradiction of mass profits and political meaning; publics enjoy massively popular music even as it is clear that profits influence mediation and distribution as well as compositional form, arrangement, recording production, and performance on stage. By its very nature, popular music is shaped by commercial processes. This tension recalls the conflicts over music during the early years of the Brazilian military dictatorship. As Christopher Dunn (2001) and Marcos Napolitano (2001; 2007)  recount, that contradiction of the aesthetic and commercial purposes of music came to light during the televised popular song contests and television shows of the mid-​to-​late 1960s. The competitions often pitted performative protests of Música Popular Brasileira (MPB)—​a genre named by leftist cultural elites that was, in effect, a detente between mass culture and the idealized popular classes—​against the imported style of rock ’n’ roll. Tropicália’s irreverent use of the two opposing styles was all the more daring because these musicians conveyed their message through multiple forms of media: live TV broadcasts, coverage in newspapers and magazines, film, and, of course, audio recordings. The official reason for the arrest and exile of the tropicália musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil was subversion. They troubled boundaries and were disruptive in how they did it in performances and broadcast media. From the perspective of Brazilian music and social movements, the issues of attention and mediation are central to the story. Without a doubt, the upheavals caused by tropicália demonstrate that music has representational and political meaning, but I contend that scholars need to take into account the multiple levels of mediation and public investment. Only then is it possible to capture how music accomplishes representational and political work. Taking the industrialization and mediation process seriously expands the view of the social and historical role of music beyond the “idealized” versions of listeners and musicians, who rarely appear in the historical archive.

Introduction  7 The reality is that attentive listeners are only one small group among the many publics that have encountered Brazilian popular music in the United States and the United Kingdom. Michael Warner describes the proliferation of publics as ways in which strangers come to have a type of co-​presence with each other. Publics are not just about personal identity or other demographic data. In his words, “Merely paying attention can be enough to make you a member” of a public (2005: 71); however, Warner does not explain what kind of attention he means. Warner formulated his notion of publics and counter-​publics to account for the political activism of various mainstream and minority groups utilizing similar social mechanisms to accomplish their goals. While some ethnomusicologists have expanded on Warner’s notions as they apply to music (Bickford 2012; Dueck 2013), they largely leave open the question of attention and competing sensory stimuli. In his application of publics to recorded audio sermons in Islam, anthropologist Charles Hirschkind (2009) describes the ways that the sounds resonate across multiple sensory registers in addition to the discursive and semantic work they accomplish for religious adherents. Audile publics can be fragile due to their relationship to the demands of the market as well as regulatory institutions and governance. Hirschkind shows that there is a transience about publics that are mediated through audio technology, both for listeners who are invested and for those who are not. These listening publics are even more fragile once we raise the question of direct engagement, consent, and awareness of music and sound. Brian Larkin (2014) shows how residents in Jos, Nigeria, have developed techniques of inattention to religious loudspeakers as a tactic for urban living, thereby refusing that particular audile public in favor of another. One thing that the expansion of sound studies has shown clearly is that music and sound can operate on publics in insidious ways. They can urge people to make certain decisions (via advertising, retail music, acoustic crowd control techniques, etc.) even when they are aware of this fact.8 They can even reinforce new regimes of racism through the creation of sonic barriers and segregation (Stoever 2016). Thus, one task that this book proposes is to reimagine a musical public that includes attention in the plural (including inattention), or a range of possible responses to exposure to Brazilian music in English-​ speaking markets. 8 For more on music and crowd control, see Thompson and Biddle (2013), Goodman (2009), Cheng (2016).

8  Bossa Mundo It is nothing new to note varying levels of engagement with expressive culture, whether through the commercial end of its mediation or through attention. Historically speaking, debates about attention as a concept emerge when large-​scale changes in industrial culture are afoot. As Jonathan Crary notes in The Suspensions of Perception:  Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (1999), attention first began to appear as a problem in the cultural discourse in the late nineteenth century alongside advances in psychology and an acceleration in the rhythm of modern, industrialized life. In the early twenty-​first century, there is a renewed interest among content providers in talking about attention as its own economy that drives advertisers and content creators to compete, and in idealizing new skills in attention, including multitasking, deep focus, and what N. Katherine Hayles describes as “hyper attention”—​deep attention that switches across multiple information streams (2007). In popular music studies, attending to the unique sounds of a recording, video, or event is often what demonstrates the skills of a scholar trained in a music program. When music scholars attend to the relationship between musical and so-​called “extra-​musical” content—​such as a video or an onstage performance—​we alternate between two different registers of deep focus with the underlying ideal that a nonspecialist audience cares to pay attention to the same things. However, other modes of attention happen all the time and the reality of popular music circulation in the late twentieth and early twenty-​first centuries is that attention to all sorts of media is fluctuating. The literary critic Yves Citton (2017) offers a compelling alternative to the discourse of “attention economy” that helps illuminate the social mechanism through which certain types of media—​music included—​break through in contexts that have become increasingly sensorially saturated since the turn of the millennium. In The Ecology of Attention, Citton argues that attention is relational at its core. His theory takes into account the asymmetries of who pays attention to whom and what, and how some forms of attention are given outweighed influence, especially in social media (e.g., timeline and recommendation algorithms, best-​seller lists). Attention is “transindividual,” forming at the meeting point between individuals and collectives that include people and the machines that they program. What someone likes or pays attention to is constituted by a vast network of others with varying levels of influence also giving that same thing attention. Attention is never neutral: some

Introduction  9 powerful users’ attention can translate into something “going viral” or becoming trendy while others have that power only as part of a collective. An example of this from Brazil was the surprise virality of Michel Teló’s “Ai, Se Eu Te Pego,” a live recording of sertanejo-​universitário, a type of rural pop music that is among the most profitable styles in Brazil. The song rose to international prominence between 2011 and 2012 through a combination of its endorsement by soccer star Neymar and its being featured in YouTube algorithms, in social media memes, and, eventually, on terrestrial radio. People encountered the song through a range of listening contexts and attention-​driving factors, all of which fueled its popularity. The song reached peak attention when Pitbull released a Spanglish version complete with samples from Teló’s hit. Ultimately, Teló’s recording was the sixth-​best-​selling single of 2012 throughout the world. That success was the combined result of many types of transindividual attention that lent Teló additional exposure. Attention can also be manipulated by powerful interests, such as corporations, with the means to place ads or feature artists in top spots in social media. At two different junctures in this book—­​­chapter 1 and c­ hapter 4—​ I analyze how Brazilian music became entangled in the aspects of the media and cultural industries that perpetuated dance fads. Both in the case of the bossa nova dance craze in the early 1960s and that of the lambada in 1989 and 1990, the success of these fads depended on varying levels of attention, passive and active public exposure, and corporate interests that helped to guide the process. Within this model of transindividual attention for music and sound, we can account for how individuals pay attention to others’ attention. This occurs whether we follow the path of someone’s looks and physical gestures—​or digital ones such as “likes” or “shares”—​or whether through conspicuous consumption or more formal mechanisms, such as a favorable review, or placement in a film soundtrack or curated playlist. In each of these cases, someone with influence is shaping the experience of how publics perceive new musical content. Keeping in mind this model of transindividual attention, I focus on the social actors who function as cultural intermediaries in the commercial sphere and direct the attention of publics. These intermediaries operate between Brazilian musicians, the music industry, and the Anglophone market, shaping Brazilian musical exposure for broad swaths of the market. Throughout this book, I often highlight this role, whether performed by record company workers, critics, concert managers, or musicians themselves

10  Bossa Mundo who have done this kind of work. Social theorist Pierre Bourdieu (1998: 365) famously described cultural intermediaries as “need merchants” whose ability to shape trends is crucial to the production of consumer tastes and dispositions. Today, one could also conceive of intermediaries as what Tim Wu calls “attention merchants” in his book on advertising (2016)—​they control attention flows, not just the circulation of media and content. Cultural intermediation involves important labor processes. Jennifer Smith Maguire and Julian Matthews encourage scholars to think of the artists, writers, and creatives doing the work of intermediation as street-​ level bureaucrats who “implement abstract institutional policies and operationalize intangible cultural values” (2014:  6). In other words, they are a type of service worker. Their labor is often intangible, but they take part in the production and reproduction of musical values (Taylor 2017; Beaster-​Jones  2016). The period covered in this book (1960–​2018) bears witness to the expansion of musical content in the United States and the United Kingdom, and thus, with more content available, the demand for cultural intermediation increases in each case study.9 This intermediation work is less romanticized than other kinds of musical labor (especially composition and performance), but I linger on it because it offers a view into cultural production and circulation in each period when Brazilian music was a powerful force and crossed over to broad publics across class, race, and age spectrums. At many junctures throughout this book, intermediaries championed the musicians and styles in question, sometimes out of admiration and at others as part of a ruthless search for profit. Both types of intermediation merit a closer look because they allowed Brazilian music to reach new publics, with varying levels of engagement. Since Bossa Mundo takes the role of media industries seriously, it offers a new way to think through how different publics pay attention to the music that they encounter and who or what is shaping that exposure. By discussing listener attention from alternative perspectives, it offers a way to consider what this music does when publics are focused elsewhere. Thus, the book proposes a framework for conceiving of the power of popular music that expands outward from discussions of representation and expert listening to consider these musical publics in the plural. 9 Mike Featherstone (2007) offers specific insight into how the expansion of goods in the second half of the twentieth century leads to the increasing importance of cultural intermediaries.

Introduction  11

For English Eyes (and Ears) For some decades, Brazilian scholars and critics have bemoaned the intermediation processes that Brazilian music undergoes in English-​speaking countries. For many, the global commercialization process is hardly limited to a simple critique of capitalism and the mistranslations of expressive culture among new publics—​their critiques extend to fundamental fears about the imperialist influence of Anglophone media industries on Brazilian culture. Through the course of my ethnographic and historical research, I  encountered numerous Brazilians who echoed variations on the sentiment that “transnational music and media industries corrupt local music-​ making,” but just minutes later they were liable to discuss a desire to benefit from the profitable US market. Such discussions of music express wider anxieties about the sway of the foreign market based in an extended history of influence from the United States and England. While some have argued that other countries (such as France) have had a lasting impact on urban Brazilian culture, it is the Anglophone powers that have shaped the political economy of such goods as coffee, beef, soy, and oil, among others.10 Indeed, the country’s position in the global supply chain as a producer of primary resources and commodities, and its reliance on direct foreign investment and loans from the United States and the United Kingdom, gives those nations considerable influence. Put more simply: Brazil has consistently been at the bottom of the global supply chain, while the United States and the United Kingdom are among those countries benefiting most from the extraction of Brazil’s natural wealth. Thus there have been many moments in the last century alone where interest from the United States and the United Kingdom has had consequences for the trajectory of Brazilian history.11 Clearly, music and other forms of expressive culture do not go through the same refinement process in the global supply as do goods such as coffee. However, the success of Brazilian music in Anglophone markets throughout the last century has found its source primarily in the collaboration of national policymakers who have viewed music as part of the country’s international reputation, or as an asset to the national brand to strengthen its soft 10 For a discussion on the influence of French culture on Rio de Janeiro, see Castro (2004), and for a discussion of France’s influence on samba, see Vianna (1999). 11 Seigel (2009) explores how trade with the United States affected Brazil’s “coffee and milk” politics. General histories of Brazil by Thomas Skidmore (1999) and E. Bradford Burns (1993) cite numerous instances of US and British intervention in Brazil in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

12  Bossa Mundo power. The distribution process of Brazilian music through transnational media industries emphasizes major hubs in the United States and the United Kingdom even though investing in Anglophone markets is far from the only route for reaching international audiences.12 Yet as the United States was the dominant political and economic force in the postwar period, trends there often spread significantly, sometimes through the efforts of the State Department, and sometimes through the reach of media industries seeking international profits. Media industries based in the United States do not dominate simply through sheer force but through penetration into local markets at the ground level. In film alone, the United States has historically taken in a large share of its box-​office receipts from international markets and, as Courtney Brannon Donoghue argues, it has done so by localizing and forming relationships within those local media markets (2017). Music, however, has followed a different path in its patterns of industrial consolidation from the local to the multinational level. In places like Brazil, international investors built local record companies.13 In the aftermath of World War II, the Brazilian recording industry experienced its largest period of growth through the investments of RCA Victor, Columbia, Decca, and Capitol—​all of which were based in either the United States or the United Kingdom. As radio grew in size and scope, recorded and broadcast media corporations began to consolidate, with many also forming their own in-​ house publishing firms. As of this writing, the “big three” major record companies—​ Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.—​take in nearly 90 percent of international recording music revenues (with just over 10 percent going to independent record companies). Those majors are all a part of multinational corporations that also produce and distribute television and blockbuster films. All three are publicly traded corporations with ownership and sway from investors all over the world. And yet, the international music market is often stubbornly geared toward trends that will play in the United States. That is part of the reason why Brazilian record industry workers largely view success in Anglophone markets as hugely beneficial—​if difficult to crack. To be sure, 12 A separate study could be conducted on the routes through which this music has found audiences in other Portuguese-​speaking countries or those that speak romance languages such as French, Spanish, or Italian. 13 For a comparative analysis of the emergence of popular music in major port cities around the world, see Denning (2015).

Introduction  13 there is plenty of money to be made outside of the Anglophone market, but its power nonetheless holds in Brazil and elsewhere. The continued route to international fame via Anglophone markets can inspire cynicism, as exemplified in the work of Marxist nationalist music critic José Ramos Tinhorão. Tinhorão chronicled the internationalizing process on Brazilian music in 1969 in his O Samba Agora Vai . . . A Farsa da Música Popular no Exterior [Samba Is Now Going . . . The Farce of Popular Music Abroad]. In 2015, he published a newly revised and expanded edition, stating in the preface that the period between 1969 and 2015 amounts to a “definitive confirmation, four decades after its first publication, of the implicit irony the title already proposed: the possibility of exporting the popular music of a country does not reside in an artistic object’s better or worse quality, rather in the capacity of its placement in the market as a commercial product” (2015: 7).14 For Tinhorão, this process is part of a larger project of economic domination wherein powerful countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom treat the exported culture of Latin America as a raw material (“matéria-​prima”) that only becomes viable in the rest of the world through a process of mediation and appropriation.15 Thus he exemplifies a leftist critique of the extended influence of international market process, especially those from the United States and the United Kingdom. In Brazilian popular music, at least, that line of critique of US and European influence has been a constant source of biting humor. For example, samba singer Lamartine Babo recorded “Canção para Inglês Ver” in 1931 with a clear reference to the common phrase in Brazil, “para inglês ver,” or “for English eyes.” As anthropologist Peter Fry (1982) notes, the expression is a way of describing doing something to the letter of the law, pointing to the history of the bureaucratic management of the railway system run by the British. The fact that this expression is so common in Brazil indicates just how extensive British and US dominance has been there.16 Following this line

14 “. . . constitui a confirmação definitiva, quatro décadas após seu lançamento, do que a ironia implícita no seu título já propunha: a possibilidade de exportação de música popular de um país não reside na maior ou menor qualidade que possua enquanto objeto artístico, mas na capacidade de sua colocação no mercado enquanto produto cultural.” 15 For some examples of this critique in Latin America writ large, see Dorfman and Mattelart’s How to Read Donald Duck (2018 [1971]) and Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America (1997 [1971]). Both were originally published at the height of US intervention in Latin America. 16 Songs that refer specifically to the effects of the “Good Neighbor” policy include “Boogie-​ Woogie na Favela” from 1945 and “Adeus América” by Geraldo Jacques and Haroldo Barbosa from 1948. For songs that reference other aspects of international influences on Brazilian popular music, see “Falsa Baiana” and “Chiquita Bacana.”

14  Bossa Mundo of thought, it is well worth considering just how much of Brazilian popular music has been created with an ear to the Anglophone market. For Tinhorão, it is impossible to untangle the economic power of the United States and the United Kingdom from the fact that many Brazilians desire international acceptance, success, and popularity in a variety of arenas (2015: 12). Authors like Tinhorão critique the coercive power of neo-​colonial capital to shape what is popular and celebrated on a national level because they homogenize local traditions. Beyond Marxist-​nationalist invectives, some academics have taken the story of Brazilian music in the Anglophone world as an opportunity to critique the process through which Brazil has been promoted internationally over the last half century. In the mid-​1990s, ethnomusicologist Maria Elizabeth Lucas (1996) levied a critique of US-​based media industries for the reductionist representation of Brazilian music as “naturalized” in order to make it viable for late capitalist exchange. From her perspective, the transnational media industries have sought to unite all of the various distinct practices and modes of being under the “unified rubric of ‘identity’: Brazilian music.” In a less academic setting, composer and critic José Miguel Wisnik (2012) joined critiques on world music in retail environments (Sterne 1997; Kassabian 2004)  in a column for the newspaper O Globo exploring the meaning of hearing the bossa nova song “Águas de Março” in a Whole Foods Market in Chicago. While he saw it as a sign of the music’s viability in international markets, his students viewed it as yet another example of Whole Foods attempting to market itself as a “chic” place with worldly ambitions. In this case, the continued viability of Brazilian music in Anglophone media and retail spaces causes complex problems for national identity due in part to the commercializing process and the extensive history of English-​language markets serving as a synecdoche for global success. Indeed, in Charles Perrone and Christopher Dunn’s landmark collection, Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization (2002a), the editors use “internationalization” in their introductory chapter to label their brief sketch of US and Brazilian musical exchange, echoing the ways that Brazilians themselves often conceive of the process. With this extensive history of intervention and critique in mind, Bossa Mundo tackles the breakthrough moments of Brazilian music in Anglophone markets as a means to uncover the continued process of domination by countries in the North Atlantic. In describing just what this music is doing in Anglophone media industries, I steer clear of some

Introduction  15 common tropes such as “influence” and “presence”—​terms that are inadequate descriptors for explaining how Anglophone publics and corporations shape industrial processes in Brazil. Stating that Brazilian music has been influential does not provide a framework for discussing varying levels of listener engagement and has the potential to affirm the projects of empire in the United States and the United Kingdom. By emphasizing transnational mediation, I shift the focus to the mechanisms for the flows of content and attention. I argue that mediating Brazilian music to English-​speaking publics was a dynamic process with consequences for musical production and mediation in each country. Thus I advance the extended tradition in Brazil of critiquing the proportionally outsized influence that the United States and the United Kingdom in particular have on Brazilian music and media industries.

Branding Racial Difference Brands for places, especially nation-​states like Brazil, rely on market semiotics and logics of difference to compete for tourism, public attention, and monetary investment. Like many aspects of investment futures, a strong national brand means that a country can be highly ranked, even if there is little material evidence for such a prognosis: value in this sense is based on speculation and perception with all of the vagaries that they imply (uncertain commons 2013). With this logic in mind, some countries (and cities) invest a significant share of public funds to tout their musical diversity in the hopes of bolstering the rest of the local economy. In Brazil’s case, the promotion of the country’s musical diversity comes hand in hand with its racial diversity. Among some intellectuals and policymakers, Brazil is portrayed as a “racial democracy.” Further, racial and musical diversity are central to the country’s self-​promotion due to the history of race in the country’s music and how brands do their work. Over the last few decades, brands have come to function less as combinations of slogans, logos, typefaces, and jingles and more as media unto themselves, uniquely suited to an age of rapidly circulating social media (Lury 2004). Brands come into being through consumer use and experience. And design is crucial in capturing public attention. As Jayson Beaster-​Jones notes, the social meanings of the brand are “laminated onto the practical uses and pre-​existing significances of the product” (2016: 87). Many corporate

16  Bossa Mundo entities now treat the value of the brand as more important than whatever products they purport to sell (Klein 2002). Melissa Aronczyk identifies the proliferation of this kind of thinking in the landscape of corporate mergers of the early 1990s when managers began to experiment with alternative ways to assess value beyond tangible assets and revenue (2013: 24–​ 25). In the early twenty-​first century, the marketplace consists of signs and objects, with brands competing for attention and consumer loyalty to create long-​lasting  value. One aspect of musically branding a nation focuses on strengthening perceptions of the cultural and economic value of the nation-​state through semiotics. Brands compete for public attention and loyalty in a crowded landscape, often relying on deeply ingrained associations and sign-​values to do their work (Danesi 2006; Baudrillard 1981). When a brand dominates a market, it essentially functions as a metonym for the good or corporate entity in question—​e.g., “google” for all web searches or “kleenex” for all facial tissues—​where the brand’s signification of difference and prestige (or dependability) overtakes all others through poetic logic (Danesi 2006: 114–​ 16).17 Through that logic, sometimes policymakers and nation brand consultants emphasize one style of music that is unique to that place (and often linked to dancing) because it can serve as a metonym for any number of cultural expressions—​as is the case with tango in Argentina or calypso in Trinidad and Tobago, to name two examples in the Americas (cf. Luker 2016; Guilbault 2007). In the case of Brazil, it is samba that fulfills this metonymic and representational role, and it has done so for decades, long before branding as a concept entered popular parlance; it is at the root of most moments when Brazilians feel compelled to “perform Brazil” to adapt to Anglophone publics (Albuquerque and Bishop-​Sanchez 2015). Samba’s logic of difference—​the crucial component that allows a brand to dominate a market—​is, at its core, a racial logic. The genre developed out of Brazil’s Afro-​Brazilian communities at the turn of the twentieth century and features many common components of Afro-​diasporic music. The link between urban samba, nationalism, and international promotion first appeared in the 1930s, coinciding with changes in how the Brazilian intellectual elite understood the role of Afro-​Brazilian culture as a valuable contribution to Brazilian society (cf. McCann 2004; Vianna 1999; Napolitano 2001; Netto 2016). That reputation has stuck. For example, the Brazilian

17 Special thanks to Mark Samples on helping me to think through this point.

Introduction  17 national soccer team’s style of play is often equated with samba: one Nike advertisement explicitly used that association by featuring the racially diverse team playing samba prior to heading out to the soccer pitch (Goldschmitt 2011b). Further, despite numerous styles of music circulating during annual Carnaval celebrations and competing for the attention of the national press, samba is what receives coverage in the international press, even when samba mixes with international styles. The spectacle of samba schools dancing and performing in the Sambadrome—​especially the dancing of sparsely clad Afro-​Brazilian women—​is a large part of samba’s extended international appeal, and forms a part of Brazil’s brand. Yet samba does not act alone as Brazil’s brand. As Frederick Moehn (2008) persuasively argues, it is often strengthened by other musical values such as an aesthetics of stylistic mixture and the valorization of regional styles, serving to reinforce the aspect of Brazil’s national brand that promotes the country’s racial diversity. Those stylistic mixtures are discursively linked to Brazil’s reputation for racial mixture, and they are but one of many ways that the country’s brand has captivated the attention of Anglophone publics. Other genres in Brazil have varying relationships with national identity, branding, and race. Brazilian sociologist Michel Nicolau Netto notes that regional and international styles have a tentative relationship with the notion of a national brand. Further, he argues that even some of the most popular regional styles do not need to be a part of the country’s national musical brand, while others—​such as hip-​hop and funk—​are relevant elements in national identity due to the importance of those styles in the African diaspora (2016: 19). In this way, the brand for Brazil takes part in what John and Jean Comaroff describe as commercialization of ethnic and racial difference as a kind of identity economy (2009). The durability of samba and mixture as metonyms for Brazil’s brand is indelibly tied to perceptions that the country is better than most at race relations. It is one of the features that consistently grabs the attention of onlookers from abroad. The reality is that race in Brazil functions differently than in the United States and the United Kingdom. Samba and discourses of diversity are inextricably linked with the history of slavery and (sometimes forced) racial mixture in that country. In the first half of the twentieth century, the changing dimensions of racial discourse in Brazil required many internationally regarded white performers to adjust their performance styles to what Darién Davis calls a “different national and intercultural gaze,” in line with the discourse of racial democracy among patriotic Brazilians (2009:  xix).

18  Bossa Mundo In the mid-​twentieth century, white Brazilian musicians often had the most access to national and international media platforms and the attention of publics even as Afro-​Brazilian cultural expressions were the most popular within Brazil. Thus, those white Brazilians often performed a version of Afro-​Brazilianness while the discourse of “racial democracy” and national identity gave them cover from critique. Brazil’s reputation of racial difference and superior race relations bolstered the country’s brand while obfuscating the persistence of inequality. Historically speaking, samba has focused the attention of Anglophone publics on the country’s racial difference even when performed by white musicians such as Carmen Miranda. The historic similarities between the United States and Brazil (and their ongoing relationships with the United Kingdom) often draw comparisons when it comes to race. When Ella Shohat and Robert Stam published their iconic Unthinking Eurocentrism:  Multiculturalism and the Media in 1994, they posed the example of racial representation in Brazilian cinema as a point of comparison with Hollywood in the United States. After all, both countries take up vast expanses of their respective continents and enjoy a richness in natural resources. Yet as Stam notes in his history of race in Brazilian cinema, the two countries are “distortions” of each other (1997). Part of the reason for those mutually distorting factors is the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, which ran from the early sixteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century. While the story of the slave trade begins and ends with racism and greed, it was also entangled in the project of empire. Portugal, the United Kingdom (and their colonial legacies in the Brazilian Empire), and, later, Brazil’s Old Republic and the United States were all shaped by slavery. Both the United States and Brazil struggled to incorporate the formerly enslaved into their economic systems once slavery was abolished and turned to recent immigrant groups to fuel the ballooning labor demands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which included immigrants from central and southern Europe and Asia rather than those of African descent.18 Yet even at the level of the violence of slavery, the two countries diverge: in terms of raw number, more enslaved people were brought to Brazil than the United States by a factor of ten. 18 This was due, in part, to the types of labor that enslaved people performed. In addition to domestic work, the types of manual labor (and the physical risks involved) varied by climate. While manual labor in the United States was largely focused on tobacco and later cotton, places with tropical climates like Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil relied on slave labor to fuel the production of sugar. In Brazil, enslaved people also worked in the gold mines.

Introduction  19 Despite that shared history of slavery, the ideology of race in Brazil differs from that of the United States. Brazil has more variance of racial and ethnic identities. There is no “one-​drop rule” in Brazil;19 instead, the country boasts a huge variety in racial identities, which expresses its extensive history of racial mixture. Yet many of the immigration and labor policies of Brazil’s first half century after the abolition of slavery (by royal decree) were part of a policy of embranquecimento—​or “whitening” the population—​to make it more in line with the white supremacist ideals and scientific racism coming from Europe. The celebration of Brazil’s history of racial mixture as embodied in the notion of “racial democracy”—​rather than trying to “whiten” the population—​ was implemented on a policy level only after anthropologist Gilberto Freyre published his ideas of luso-​tropicalism that celebrated Afro-​Brazilian culture in the 1930s (Skidmore 1993). When it comes to music, the confluence of policy and ideology around race is what has captivated other nations, often to the detriment of other features. The vocabulary around race in Brazil is descriptive, yet some of the words are explicitly tied to the national brand and what first captures the attention of foreigners feeding into stereotypes. The words to describe someone’s skin color and racial identification can often depend on context (Telles 2004; Sansone 2003). What is more, race and class often overlap in daily discourse. The country’s racial mythology is founded in a triangle of influence—​the African, the European, and the indigenous Brazilian—​which results in recent immigrant groups outside of the triangle not fitting easily into the label “Brazilian” (Lesser 2007; Lesser 1999). Clearly the country is far more diverse than that racial mythology purports, and yet the celebrations of samba on a national level resulted in the iconic status of various categories of Brazilians of African descent, especially the mulata (a woman of mixed race, often sexualized in imagery) and the baiana (a woman from the state of Bahia, who indexes notions of Brazilian authenticity and is often envisioned as Afro-​ Brazilian).20 The mulata and the baiana are the two racial categories that have 19 Racial ideology for most of the United States meant that a person was considered Black regardless of skin color if there was any evidence of a Black ancestor, or “one drop” of Black blood. This rule was an important component of Jim Crow laws in the former Confederacy after the Civil War. 20 Other categories of identification, such as the nordestino (a man from the Brazilian northeast), although describing a region of Brazil, have resulted in implied racialization (cf. McCann 2004: 120–​ 23). Some words have changed as the discourse around racial justice developed over the last century: it used to be common for preto/​a (and its diminutive variant pretinho/​a) to describe a Black person, but more recently many Afro-​Brazilians prefer negro/​a as a racial identifier. Further, with the widespread implementation of affirmative action policies in Brazil, especially in university admissions and civic sector jobs, persons with more ambiguous racial identity often struggle with whether to identify as pardo/​a (“gray” or “dusky” but often used for mixed-​race Brazilians) or negro/​a for

20  Bossa Mundo had the most currency outside of Brazil as well, with images of the mulata often put forward to capture the attention of tourists and spectators. That highly sexualized racial category exerts its power in the persistent objectification of Brazilian women entertainers and performers in transnational mediation. Race is far more flexible in Brazil while still having clear economic and social consequences. The branding of Brazil as a bastion of racial difference has had a lasting effect on how publics perceive the country through music. Given the fact that Anglophone publics have been exposed to Brazilian music in a variety of contexts, it should be no surprise that some aspects of Brazil’s brand of racial difference have cut through more than others. That branding of racial mixture, combined with varying levels of attention, can reinforce some stereotypes above other qualities in the music. I join other scholars working with sound, race, and affect who aim to show how the mediation of music can open up new opportunities for understanding race (Stoever 2016; Weheliye 2005; Vazquez 2013). As the examples in this book unfold, I aim to underscore how processes of mediation have had enduring influence on the perpetuation of Brazilian stereotypes in music. Through these analyses, Bossa Mundo shows the pernicious effects of valorizing and branding racial diversity on musicians and the audiences alike.

Organization of the Book Bossa Mundo covers over fifty years of Brazilian music in the United States and the United Kingdom, but it does not purport to be a comprehensive history. I focus instead on six watershed moments that demonstrate profound changes for Brazil’s national brand, and I explore what those changes have meant for musical production in Brazil. The first two chapters tell the story of how bossa nova became the most internationally famous style of music from Brazil in the 1960s. Chapter 1 details the role of musicians and the music press in what became a veritable jazz and dance fad and the consequences of such widespread crossover success on the legacy of bossa nova. I show how Brazil’s reputation as racially Other allowed bossa nova to function as an escape hatch for tensions around strategic ends. For a vivid example, see Gregory Warner, “Brazil in Black and White,” NPR Rough Translation (2017).

Introduction  21 race and music in the early 1960s United States. At the time, jazz critics, musicians, and audiences were embroiled in debates about race and jazz, and bossa nova helped diffuse that tension. Chapter 2 shifts the focus from jazz and dance fads to bossa nova being marketed to adults. Through the close analysis of bossa nova in three films from the 1960s, I show how the genre expressed redefinitions around sexuality and gender. In contrast to a focused discussion of the mediating role of the music press and dance studios, this chapter shifts to the role of film music and the wider media industry practice of cross-​promotion to capture the public’s attention. As most fads do, bossa nova ran out of steam within a few years. However, Brazilian musicians of the 1970s were on the ground level of new musical developments in the United States. Chapter 3 shows how musicians like Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Sérgio Mendes, and Eumir Deodato sought to affiliate themselves with sounds more directly linked to broader musical strategies of the African diaspora. These musicians produced musical expressions of a transnational racial consciousness that allowed them to redefine the limits of “sounding Brazilian”; and that change allowed them to take part in broader political strategies of resistance that marked the 1970s in the United States and the United Kingdom. At the same time, the decade was marked with an expansion of popular music publics, expressed through the proliferation of popular music genres and new musical formats, including the extended dance remix. Since most of these musicians did this crucial work as session musicians and sidemen, they were less visible than those with their names on the album cover. New technologies and political realities altered the mediation of Brazilian music to Anglophone publics, and by the late 1980s, the music was taking part in what would soon be called “world music.” Chapter 4 traces the influence that world music had on Brazilian music at a defining moment in its political history. Around the same time that Brazilians were newly experiencing democracy at all levels of governance—​after over two decades of dictatorship—​the apparatus for global musical circulation and mediation was moving decisively to digital technology. This resulted in more readily available music, an increased demand for cultural intermediaries in the production of world music compilations, the creation of specialist record labels, the dissemination of the lambada dance fad, and the promotion of high-​ profile intercultural collaborations. All of this occurred against the backdrop of increased public attention to planetary consciousness and environmental activism.

22  Bossa Mundo At the turn of the millennium, Brazil’s economy boomed, which brought with it increased technological and socioeconomic mobility as well as market appeal. These factors had consequences for how music spread domestically and globally, and Brazilian music began to circulate in contexts where publics would be overstimulated. In ­chapter 5, I engage with debates around inattention related to “promotional ubiquitous music” in retail, film, and television soundtracks.21 Amid the many successful artists from the late 1990s and early 2000s, I focus on the contrasting examples of Bebel Gilberto and Seu Jorge, due to how they approached their careers in Brazil and in Anglophone markets. In different ways, both artists found their most enduring success through new distribution and licensing channels that privileged cut-​up and remixed Brazilian music with clear references to iconic images of a Brazilian past in line with the country’s brand. Finally, ­chapter 6 investigates how the international mediation of Brazilian music has changed in an era marred by crisis and uncertainty. Even though the country’s musical and cultural infrastructure has waned, musicians and record companies have sought new opportunities and business relationships to help build international publics. Through this process, the definitions of what counts as a cutting-​edge and vibrant Brazilian musical expression has changed, and one is less likely to hear stereotypical sounds and referents to international musical successes of Brazil’s past, such as samba and bossa nova. These shifts have developed from broader changes in the technologies of brand promotion, international connectivity, and the extension of the country’s cultural policy to corporations. Combined, these factors demonstrate how new mobilities that characterize the sociocultural flows of the 2010s continue, regardless of Brazil’s faltering status in the world. The continued popularity of Brazilian music in the United States and the United Kingdom stands as a testament to the creativity with which musicians and music industry workers navigate structures of cultural dominance within transnational media industries. Even as the examples in this book may tempt Brazilian music enthusiasts to throw up their hands at the continued dominance of the Global North in these mediating processes, it is my hope that Bossa Mundo demonstrates the rich possibilities of these types of musical exchanges alongside its critique of their operation. By focusing on the transnational mediation of Brazilian music, I  aim to demonstrate the potency of the music for publics that do not prioritize

21 For theories of ubiquity, see Anahid Kassabian (2013) and Leslie Meier (2011).

Introduction  23 the sounds that they are hearing. Rather than devaluing Brazilian music, this scholarly orientation explains the extent to which the country’s musical brand has managed to flourish amid vast changes. I ask how certain intermediaries leveraged significant power to shape this story, and why this music broke through to new heights of popularity as often as it did. Further, I suggest that studying musical attention in the plural can offer a more nuanced understanding of how music becomes embedded in daily life. Through the example of Brazilian music, Bossa Mundo offers a new model for studying musical mediation that demonstrates how music accomplishes important cultural work at its most popular.

1 Copying the Bossa Nova Jazz and Dance Fads in the Early 1960s

Quincy Jones was an early lover of bossa nova. The first cut on his 1962 album Big Band Bossa Nova was called “Soul Bossa Nova”—​a title that united bossa nova with “soul jazz,” an offshoot of hard bop that featured funky grooves and pop appeal.1 The track features a mixture of breathy flutes, piccolo, and the cuíca—​the friction drum that “yelps” in an energetic samba—​as well as big band brass accents and piano. That overall texture makes “Soul Bossa Nova” a predecessor to the emerging Latin-​pop style that defined the recordings of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass as well as Sérgio Mendes and Brasil ’66 just a few years later. Yet with those indexes of samba, there is little in this song, apart from its name, that specifically recalls bossa nova. At the time, Jones admitted that his music was taking part in a jazz recording fad. As he related to critic Gene Lees in 1963, “Everybody got caught by surprise by the Twist and nobody wants to get left out if bossa nova gets big. So everybody’s recording it” (quoted in Lees 1963: 23). A year and a half after Jones’s release, Judy Garland featured a dance number to “Soul Bossa Nova” as part of her TV variety show. It was a fashionable performance in every sense. The ensemble’s choreography to Jones’s score emphasized the syncopated rhythms of the arrangement with brass blasts accompanying stylized bossa nova dance moves, followed by sways, leaps, and finger snaps. The modern dance performance highlighted the music’s chic associations and the minimal stage design focused attention on dancers wearing nearly identical two-​tone outfits. Above all, it was fun. Both Jones’s recording and the version that appeared on Garland’s show did the important work of expanding bossa nova from the cool jazz approaches of Stan Getz, Charlie Byrd, and Herbie Mann to pop. 1 Stan Getz also recorded an album of the same name just months after Jones. Quincy Jones’s “Soul Bossa Nova” might be more familiar to contemporary listeners as the score to the title sequence for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, dir. J. Roach).

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.003.0002

Copying the Bossa Nova  25 “Soul Bossa Nova” represents the convergence of televised mass media and embodied dance through jazz-​pop crossover among Anglophone publics. While the biggest bossa nova hit—​“The Girl from Ipanema,” from Getz/​ Gilberto—​arrived two years later, in 1964, the style’s emergence in popular culture in the United States and the United Kingdom via jazz and dance was profound even then. From that moment to its peak, bossa nova spread across a variety of venues and practices. At the time, bossa nova represented many things: an exotic new jazz style, a trendy dance, and the essence of cutting-​edge fashion for the privileged—​predominantly white—​elite. Bossa nova’s success in Anglophone markets was a defining moment for Brazil’s national brand. I trace here the style’s passage from the height of cultural prestige to its appearance as a dance fad to its ultimate rejection by civil rights sympathizers and purists in the jazz press. Bossa nova attained crossover success through intermediaries such as enterprising musicians, dance studio managers, critics and reporters in the music press, radio and television programmers, and cultural icons of the period. It reached a broad cross-​section of Anglophone publics during a period when youth expressed uninhibited enthusiasm for dance fads, regardless of their commercialism. While many such fads were geared specifically to the youth market, the bossa nova—​like the twist before it—​had broad intergenerational and interracial appeal. Since they were likely focused on the social and embodied aspects of dancing, those who danced to bossa nova likely attended to different things in the music than the qualities jazz critics championed at the time. Fads are by definition short-​lived and thus do not demand a significant investment of time. One need only pay attention for a brief period to participate in a fad in fashion, music, dance, or food. Fads are also easy to access and emerge from the transindividual attention of influential critics, reporters, and popular culture consumers. Fads are relational. In the early 1960s, once something became a fad it represented the opposite of the hip exclusivity often attributed to jazz and the socially conscious idealism of the counterculture—​all of which dominated the cultural expression of white middle-​class youth in the period. By then, “hipness” was ripe for mainstream co-​optation by the men occupying boardrooms at ad agencies, themselves important cultural intermediaries of the period (Ford 2013; Frank 1997). Thus if music was an important expression of generational identity and cultural resistance, then the continuous production of fads and their expansion to mainstream publics represented a threat to the seriousness of the emerging

26  Bossa Mundo counterculture.2 In addition, bossa nova coincided with attempts by jazz musicians and critics to acknowledge the complicity of commercial musical production in systemic racial bias. Put another way: white jazz critics were confronting issues of civil rights. Regardless of its merits, bossa nova could only compete for so long. This chapter argues that it was easy for intermediaries such as jazz critics to dismiss bossa nova due to its overtly commercial path of dissemination and subsequent transformation into a fad. Even as its success crossed racial and generational lines, bossa nova’s links to the machinations of the media industries threatened to undermine efforts to address racial bias in music. Bossa nova demonstrated one of the last moments jazz crossed over into mainstream popularity. That it did so while attached to a dance—​with much of the attention on dancing bodies rather than musical notes or civil rights—​ made it suspect to the New Left. Those associations would have consequences for Brazil’s musical brand for decades to come. Unlike other dance fads of the postwar period, the bossa nova had no link to African American roots or youth revolt.3 The dance was a US invention to sell more records, and, as I argue in c­ hapter 2, its appeal to adult tastes as a dance and musical style ultimately marked it as different from the rising tide of countercultural musical trends that overtook the Anglophone youth musical market by the mid-​1960s. Bossa nova was far from the first instance of a Latin American popular music style that circulated as a dance fad: by the 1960s, the US public was already voraciously consuming Latin American dance styles.4 Bossa nova’s eventual loss of status in Anglophone popular culture had lasting effects on Brazil’s musical brand in foreign markets through patterns set by US media industries. By tracing bossa nova’s routes through early 1960s popular culture in the United States and United Kingdom, I highlight how record industry excess and notions of “good taste” in listening form the extremes of response to Brazil’s most visible musical export in the postwar period. Further, I argue that since the machinations of the media industries (and industrial reproduction more broadly) can be coded as feminized and 2 Todd Gitlin discusses the importance of popular music for social cohesion among members of the Students for a Democratic Society (1987: 195–​221). 3 Most social youth dances from the early 1960s began as scandalous appropriations of African American youth culture before they were disseminated through such media as television shows, magazines, and film (Wall 2013). 4 On the first Brazil-​inspired dance fad in the United States and Europe during the 1910s, see Seigel (2009: 67–​94).

Copying the Bossa Nova  27 white (cf. Andreas Huyssen 1986), bossa nova’s fad status facilitated the easy dismissal of Brazilian music. While bossa nova persisted long after its height of popularity, it lost some luster due to its links with commerce, whiteness, adults, and the feminine popular. This is the story of bossa nova’s initial fall from grace.

Bossa Nova as a Fad in Brazil One reason why the US recording industry tried to promote bossa nova in the early 1960s was the music’s unparalleled success in Brazil. There it was a social movement and its effects were felt in Brazilian music for decades. Bossa nova’s major innovation came from distilling the complex polyrhythms of the samba with a postwar cosmopolitan sensibility. João Gilberto, an introspective musician from the northeastern state of Bahia, introduced a new batida, or beat on the guitar, simplifying the samba rhythms of the tamborim and the agôgô.5 It caught on among a cohort of musicians that eventually earned the name of primeira turma (“first team” or “first group”). When combined with composer Antônio Carlos “Tom” Jobim’s approach to complex harmonies, introspective lyrics about nature, love, and alienation, and Gilberto’s soft, restrained approach to singing, bossa nova’s sound stood apart for being everything that samba-​canção (“samba song”) was not, while still referencing the rhythmic foundation of samba.6 Gilberto’s voice took advantage of the intimacy of the microphone, and his batida featured a physically close approach to the guitar that alternated between the thumb and the rest of the fingers plucking together. By contrast, guitar parts in typical samba songs emphasize running bass lines, and plucked or strummed rhythms in the right hand to emphasize the rolling eighth notes of a samba groove. As Irna Priore (2008) has argued, Gilberto’s approach to samba microrhythms added an additional layer of delay, thereby creating metrical dissonance with his vocal lines. The prevalence of rubato in his vocal lines provided further metrical dissonance. The tense rhythmic energy in bossa nova derived not from percussion but from melodic instruments such as voice, guitar, and (later) piano. 5 See Mendes (2005 [1968]) for an early academic treatment of bossa nova and samba rhythms. 6 Of the many styles of samba that have circulated in Brazil, the samba-​canção of the 1950s featured lush orchestration and a loud, bel canto style of singing. It was the style of samba that circulated on radio programs and recordings.

28  Bossa Mundo Bossa nova was a revolutionary approach to harmony and melody. Jobim was steeped in a musical modernism that drew from the restraint of postwar jazz developments such as cool, as well as harmonic approaches from across the modern music spectrum that reveled in dissonance—​especially nonfunctional harmonies and extended chords. Similarly, Vinícius de Moraes contributed an approach that elevated lyrics to what he called poetry. David Treece (2013: 80) argues that bossa nova equalized the different components of melody, harmony, and words into an “ecological rationality” that afforded intimacy. For the cohort that gathered around Jobim, Gilberto, and de Moraes, that intimacy connected the rhythms of samba to jazz and to French composers such as Ravel and Debussy. It was a musical sensibility of middle-​class aspirations. To a generation of bossa nova musicians, Brazilian popular song was as important as new literary developments (e.g., concrete poetry). These songs balanced intellectualism with love and romance, reflecting the economic optimism of the period immediately following former dictator Getúlio Vargas’s death and Juscelino Kubitschek’s ambitious economic development programs. Thus bossa nova exemplified years of cultural cross-​pollination between Latin America, the United States, and France; in addition to new notions of modernity, these exchanges included the business side of how the music circulated in the international music industry.7 For many, the movement broke with worn patterns of Brazilian popular music. When bossa nova developed as a style in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, it expanded in influence so quickly that “bossa nova” ceased to describe simply a music. As a social movement, bossa nova caught on with middle-​ class youth—​especially those affiliated with universities—​and eventually influenced fashion and the broader pop culture. It quickly became shorthand that many commentators (and advertisers) used to describe everything young, new, and exciting. In Brazil, the bossa nova fad was associated with youth culture, but it was far removed from dancing and, in many respects, it resembled the aesthetic and cultural affinities that marked the early 1960s folk music revival in the United States (Reily 1996). Many Brazilian musical critics and historians categorize bossa nova as a cultural movement (cf. Naves 2005). Even though it only dominated the music scene for five years (before it was eclipsed by the rise of a military dictatorship and the musical responses

7 French publishers were the first to show interest and take advantage of Brazilian songwriters. When I interviewed Roberto Menescal in 2017, he related that he and most of his compatriots had no understanding of the long-​term consequences of signing away their songwriting rights.

Copying the Bossa Nova  29 to it), the style and approach made lasting changes to how musicians in Brazil approached rhythmic complexity and cosmopolitanism.8 That bossa nova found such a huge audience in the United States in such a radically different form is a point of pride for cariocas (residents of Rio de Janeiro)—​there are restaurants in the Ipanema neighborhood to commemorate the location where Vinícius de Moraes wrote the lyrics to “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), numerous bossa nova–​themed shops and bookstores, and the city’s international airport was renamed in honor of Jobim in 1994. Amid that pride, many carioca bossa nova fans omit references to the changes that occurred when the music found an Anglophone audience—​especially the dance craze and its entanglement in debates around African American aesthetics in the years after its popularity peaked.

Bossa Nova and Latin Jazz of the Early 1960s In 1960, the US recording industry anticipated the potential for the bossa nova to be a major trend. This was due to the international success of Orfeu Negro, a film directed by Marcel Camus and produced by Sascha Gordine—​ both French—​which set the mythical tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnaval and featured an idealized portrait of life in Rio’s hillside favelas.9 The film’s soundtrack was recorded by Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Carlos Jobim, who would later become figureheads of the bossa nova movement, just as they were developing the style. For international audiences, Orfeu Negro was the first introduction to the sounds of bossa nova. The film’s legacy weighs so heavily on filmic representations of Brazilians and persons of African descent that such figures as Caetano Veloso and Barack Obama explore their complicated reactions to it in their memoirs (Veloso 2002: 159; Obama 2007: 123–​24). And yet it won the Palm d’Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and the 1960 Academy Award for Best International Film, and its soundtrack sold all over the world. 8 For an analysis of Brazilian music critics’ responses to bossa nova, see Jason Borge (2018). 9 That idealized portrait of Afro-​Brazilians was the source of controversy. Janet Flanner from the New Yorker described Parisian adoration of the film in mixed terms: “Technically, the film is often rickety, but of the three great Cannes triumphs, it is the one the French love most and argue about least” (Flanner 1959). According to Charles Perrone (1998), the Parisian reception of the film among filmmakers associated with the emerging Nouvelle Vague, such as Jean-​Luc Godard, was cool due to perceived inauthenticity.

30  Bossa Mundo The breakout success of Orfeu Negro and its soundtrack also tinged the mediation of bossa nova among Anglophone publics. Even though the music was mostly created by white, middle-​class Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro’s South Zone, its mediation through the film conveyed a vague sense that bossa nova was Other while also expressing the cosmopolitan aspirations of the musicians who created it in the South Zone. It took two more years and an international trip by a jazz musician to find the right formula for bossa nova to break into the US mainstream. Despite some well-​placed intermediaries—​including jazz radio DJ and tastemaker Felix Grant10—​and early attempts by the US record industry to capitalize on the film’s success (such as the release of João Gilberto’s Brazil’s Brilliant João Gilberto, in 1960), bossa nova experienced a false start (Castro 2000: 241). When guitarist Charlie Byrd returned from a 1961 State Department–​ sponsored tour of South America with an armful of bossa nova records, the foundation for a bossa nova breakthrough in the United States was already in effect across different segments of the media industries. Even as many narratives of bossa nova’s success identify tenor saxophonist Stan Getz’s pivotal first encounter with the songs of João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim through Byrd’s introduction—​an event that would lead to the release of Jazz Samba in 1962—​evidence points to the record industry anticipating that the music could be a hit in the United States. Jazz Samba just happened to hit the mark. The effectiveness of Byrd and Getz as intermediaries was not due to the fact that they were the first to recognize the potential of the music to reach a US audience, but rather their adaptation of it into a cool jazz aesthetic (about which I elaborate below) to make it legible to jazz audiences.11 In addition to two older samba songs, “É Luxo Só” and “Baia” (also known as “Na Baixa do Sapateiro”) by Ary Barroso, Jazz Samba featured contemporary jazz arrangements of bossa nova songs such as Jobim’s “Desafinado” and “Samba de Uma Nota Só.” Jazz Samba was so successful that Getz and Byrd took part in a Carnegie Hall concert featuring many of the musicians most associated with the music from Rio de Janeiro. Versions of bossa nova soon appeared in other countries, including the United Kingdom, France, 10 Felix Grant was an influential jazz DJ based in Washington, DC, from 1945 until his death in 1993. In 1964, the Brazilian government awarded him the Order of the Southern Cross in recognition of his efforts in promoting Brazilian musicians in the United States. See his archives for more information, http://​lrdudc.wrlc.org/​jazz/​felix.php, accessed 26 August 2017. 11 Bossa nova’s originators noticed. Many of the Brazilian musicians profiled in Chris McGowan’s The Brazilian Music Book (2014) describe tracks on Jazz Samba as bossa nova tunes played in a jazz style.

Copying the Bossa Nova  31 Jamaica, Russia, and Japan. The legacy of Jazz Samba in the United States was most apparent through the widespread reach of Stan Getz and João Gilberto’s Getz/​Gilberto, the recording of which occurred soon after the Carnegie Hall concert. Its success (which was somewhat delayed—​the album was released two years later, in 1964) was so profound that the hit single “The Girl from Ipanema” eventually became one of the most recorded songs of the century (cf. Castro 2000). The approach that the musicians, alongside producer Creed Taylor, took to recording bossa nova was a clear departure from how the music was performed and produced in Brazil. Byrd made some errors in transcribing the melody and harmony of Jobim’s song, which meant that his versions circulated most widely in the United States and United Kingdom. The rhythm also changed. Some of the main innovations of bossa nova musicians were in how they distilled the interlocking polyrhythms of samba percussion and placed them in the guitar as it played complex harmonies. Even when early Brazilian recordings of bossa nova added orchestration to have it conform to samba-​canção conventions, they highlighted the rhythmic innovation of bossa nova in the melodic and harmonic instruments. Take the earliest recording of João Gilberto performing “Desafinado” from 1959. In the first few seconds, the guitar plays the opening chords over a rich orchestral arrangement, including flutes, violins, and drums. The guitar features a rhythmic figure that slowly builds in textural depth as the flutes join. When Gilberto’s voice enters, the production quality is laden with intense reverb that reduces the vocal intimacy. The accompaniment in the percussion and strings is soft and gently complements the overall smooth sound production—​it never overpowers Gilberto’s voice and guitar. The only percussion sounds are brush strokes and rim-​clicks on the snare and a subtle shaker from a samba ensemble. The rhythms coming from the percussion section mostly add to the depth of Gilberto’s playing rather than building the polyrhythmic intensity more typical of a samba ensemble. That choice places the samba in the gaps of Gilberto’s guitar rhythms rather than squarely in the drums. Regardless of the changes that the innovators introduced through their transcriptions, songwriting, and recordings, many of samba’s qualities were audible to Brazilian audiences at the time. It was just enough of a difference to inspire imitators and spearhead a major change in how Brazilian popular song was conceived and produced. By contrast, Byrd and Getz’s “Desafinado” places the syncopation everywhere in the rhythm section but the guitar. It opens with an upright bass

32  Bossa Mundo playing an undifferentiated “Latin” 3-​2 clave-​style rhythm over an F and E♭ high on the neck of the D and G strings.12 The drums enter with samba rhythms, using a brush on the snare to emulate the shaker rhythms and closed hi-​hat outlining the basic beat. The opening seconds of the track establish that polyrhythms will be based in the rhythm section while the melodic and harmonic content will likely come with the guitar and saxophone—​conventions that would have made sense to listeners accustomed to post-​World War II progressive jazz styles. Getz’s saxophone tone is clean and clear as it states the main melody, serving as the voice in bossa nova’s sonic ecology. Byrd’s guitar comping style outlines the harmonic content of the song without using Gilberto’s signature bossa nova batida. Instead, the drums serve the role of outlining the samba rhythms. Due to the interplay of bass and drums, there are fewer rhythmic gaps left for the listener’s imagination. The one quality that does not change between these two recordings of the same song is the overall sheen of production. It is a clean-​sounding track, with clear high-​and low-​end frequencies, and it exhibits the laid-​back and tightly arranged quality that defined cool jazz—​the drums are far enough in the back of the mix to make their polyrhythmic qualities less obvious, allowing them to simmer just beneath the surface. Thus Byrd and Getz’s recording of “Desafinado” altered the bossa nova to something more familiar to fans of Latin-​influenced  jazz. Jazz Samba was so successful that the record industry scrambled to take advantage by releasing a stream of bossa-​inspired albums for the next two years (and beyond). In the rush to capitalize on the genre through recordings and a new dance, critics and musicians struggled to identify key musical characteristics. Since the most successful Latin styles prior to bossa nova had been Afro-​Cuban, much of the reception of early bossa nova releases described it in terms more appropriate to Cuban music. They also betrayed broader biases towards rhythmic complexity and against so-​called “sweet” and overtly commercial jazz approaches. Many of these critics were listening for Latin-​jazz values of a different kind, which explains some of the gaps in apprehending what they were hearing. A good example of the confusion that abounded in discussions of bossa nova was in the critical reception of jazz interpretations of the music from 12 Although there are some rhythmic similarities between Afro-​ Brazilian and Afro-​ Cuban rhythms, Brazilian musicians describe the 3-​2 pattern as a “toque” (or beat) in Afro-​Brazilian religious ritual rather than a “clave.” Although some bossa nova recordings do adopt a 3-​2 pattern, the note lengths differ. See Mendes (2005). “Desafinado” features an inexact samba-​influenced rhythm.

Copying the Bossa Nova  33 Black Orpheus. In a Down Beat review of Vince Guaraldi’s Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus, Harvey Pekar stated, “The first four selections are from the prize-​winning Brazilian film Black Orpheus. There isn’t much Spanish flavor, however, in Guaraldi’s handling of them.” He continues to lament how the opening track is dominated by the swing beat (Pekar 1962b: 26). That Pekar used “Spanish flavor” in his review is telling. On one level, he was drawing from the Afro-​Cuban synesthetic concept of sabor or “flavor” for “feel” or “groove.” There was no equivalent concept to describe samba or bossa nova, causing the critic to misplace his complaint that he sensed something missing from the album. Beyond flavor, perhaps bossa nova and Afro-​Cuban jazz were difficult to distinguish due to their proximity to popular dance music and exotica—​styles that jazz critics de-​emphasized after the early 1950s. Since Vince Guaraldi treated the songs from Black Orpheus like jazz standards, most of which were originally hits from Broadway musicals, his reworking of those tunes had little to do with either samba or bossa nova. It is clear upon close listening that Guaraldi’s group attempted to unite a cool jazz approach with the tunes from the film.13 The first tune, for example—​ “Samba de Orpheus” (“Samba de Orfeu”)—​opens with an extended upright bass solo over a samba-​derived rhythm on the snare drum—​an arrangement strategy that resembles what Byrd and Getz did for the opening of “Desafinado.” When the piano enters, however, the song switches to a driving 4/​4 swing. The trio plays with this contrast by switching back and forth toward the end of the track. In this setting, the samba is tightly connected to the first and final iterations of Luiz Bonfá’s tune. As drummer Colin Bailey related to me in a phone interview in 2014, that switch between the straight-​ ahead swing—​the jazz concept for how driving eighth notes are articulated in a long-​short pattern—​and samba was how the group had been playing the song at jazz clubs around San Francisco at the time.14 That alternation between swing and samba in the track is likely what perplexed Pekar and a Billboard reviewer who wrote, “There’s nothing samba-​ish about this one” (“Vince Guaraldi Trio Cast Your Fate to the Wind” Billboard 1962: 31). The trio treats another selection from the film, “Manhã de Carnaval,” as a ballad. Guaraldi’s take on the other songs from the Black Orpheus soundtrack are equally lacking in samba or Latin rhythms. What likely disappointed these 13 In the context of post-​jazz practice, the “tune” refers to melody and harmonic structure of the song in “lead sheet” form. 14 By contrast, the concept of “swing” in Brazilian samba (often spelled “suingue”) emphasizes microrhythmic pull at the end of a sixteenth-​note pattern.

34  Bossa Mundo critics was that Guaraldi and his trio moved in and out of “Latin” rhythms for “Samba de Orfeu” instead of keeping the Latin-​ness of the tune at the foreground.15 That Guaraldi recorded these tracks concurrently with Byrd and Getz’s Jazz Samba sessions is probably the reason why the album and single had such a profoundly different approach to bossa nova since both groups were experimenting in how to adapt bossa nova to jazz. For Guaraldi and others, the tunes were easier to execute than the microrhythms of samba. It would take Guaraldi a few years to alter his cool jazz adaptation of bossa nova to foreground Brazilian rhythms. Bossa nova’s entry into the US music market via cool jazz musicians like Guaraldi, Byrd, and Getz tied the music to existing critical discourses tangled up with racial appropriation and commercialization. By the early 1960s, “cool” as a jazz subgenre was associated with jazz musicians from the West Coast (some of the most successful of whom had relocated there from New York), and many of the most commercially viable were white.16 However, “cool” as a cultural approach existed long before cool jazz emerged as a major stream after World War II. As a broad concept, cool was the meeting point of African American social resistance and a desire for an alternative to the “hot”—​that is, fast with explosive energy—​approaches in bebop and other styles from the swing era. In the era before the civil rights movement took hold, “keeping cool” was both necessary for survival and a cultural strategy of resistance (Dinerstein 2017). Cool was a part of being hip. The two concepts overlapped considerably, with hipness encompassing the exclusionary and subcultural component of mid-​ century African American culture and its appropriations by mainstream, white culture (Ford 2013). Due to its history, cool jazz held the unenviable status of being both popular with crossover audiences in the early 1960s and the subject of rebuke by civil rights activists. Cool jazz took hold after the release of Birth of the Cool, a 1954 reissue of Miles Davis’s 1948 collaboration with orchestrator and arranger Gil Evans featuring a racially integrated group of musicians that later came to embody the style on the West Coast. Birth of the Cool expressed the creative possibilities of cool aesthetics as an alternative to the frenetic 15 Many US jazz musicians struggle to make the switch between Latin and swing rhythmic paradigms. Some other jazz standards that historically switch between Latin and swing are “I’ll Remember April” (De Paul/​Johnson/​Raye) and “On Green Dolphin Street” (Kaper/​Washington). 16 The proliferation of post–​World War II jazz genres results in blurred genre boundaries. See DeVeaux (1991).

Copying the Bossa Nova  35 nature of bebop. Cool featured smoother arrangements that contrasted with bebop’s prioritization of overt displays of virtuosity and rapid harmonic progressions that pop audiences often struggled to understand. It was an exclusionary stance that was crucial to bebop as a musical expression of racial resistance (DeVeaux 1997). The expressive restraint so important to cool jazz was the antithesis of the emerging discourse of freedom that took over in the 1960s once jazz musicians began to take part in the civil rights movement (Monson 2007; Saul 2003). By 1962, cool jazz was more commercially viable with white audiences than other jazz movements that expressed Black notions of resistance and change—​such as free jazz. In the early 1960s, some activists viewed the cool jazz approaches of those musicians living on the West Coast with suspicion. Yet those same crossover approaches appealed to jazz musicians who were less invested in the polarizing racial discourses of the period, including some who played styles such as hard bop and soul jazz.17 The angst around cool and light Latin jazz also emerged within the context of the rise of jazz as cocktail or lounge music and worries over listener attention. Although lounge pianists were mid-​twentieth century icons (memorably embodied in the character of Sam in Casablanca [1942, dir. M. Curtiz]), the notion of jazz as “background music” drew the ire of the “hip,” younger generation. Cool saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh recorded a tongue-​ in-​ cheek tune called “Background Music” in 1955, responding to critics who complained that cool was less serious jazz for inattentive listeners.18 Responses also spread to film. Although financially unsuccessful upon its initial release in Anglophone markets in 1960, Françoit Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player in the United States and Shoot the Pianist in the United Kingdom) became an icon of art-​house cinema, exemplifying how lounge pianists had become the subject of mockery. By the early 1960s, most jazz pianists who chose to work in lounge and pop classical settings abandoned jazz careers once they found financial success with non-​ jazz publics (Lanza 2004: 96–​103). Cool’s commercial viability also affected the way that critics understood bossa nova’s Latin-​ness. Jazz critics by the late 1950s expressed a preference for Latin approaches that were coming from musicians associated with the “hot” rhythmic approaches of bebop and hard swing—​styles that were less 17 See LeRoi Jones’s (Amiri Baraka) essay “Jazz and the White Critic,” where he described cool as clichéd (alongside funk, hard-​bop, groove/​soul, and swing) by the early 1960s (Baraka 2010: 28). 18 Special thanks to Josh Rutner for this point.

36  Bossa Mundo commercially successful than cool.19 That preference continued to color the critical reception of Latin-​themed jazz albums that were released just months prior to Jazz Samba. Cool and its stylistically adjacent brethren in pop and vocal jazz were simply too commercial for critics seeking music that was politically meaningful to them. Reviews of Latin-​themed albums featuring lighter approaches demonstrate misgivings about string orchestra accompaniment, a lack of “hot” rhythmic approaches that foreground polyrhythms, or suggest more generally that their Latin-​ness made the records sound “dated” due to mambo’s peaking in popularity in the late 1940s. Some of the same assumptions that undergird reviewer complaints about Guaraldi’s record were also on display in other reviews of Latin jazz records in the years leading up to Jazz Samba’s release. Most reviewers were skeptical of Latin albums if other jazz qualities, such as swing and rhythmic drive, were not on full display while celebrating experimentation with Latin rhythms. Complaints were often about orchestration and arrangement as much as they were about Latin music being dated. In a 1958 review of Nat King Cole’s Cole Español, reviewer John Tynan complained about the light approach to Latin jazz, stating that the album only works “for those who go for gutless Latin strains” (Tynan 1958: 31). Tynan’s disapproval exemplifies the bias many jazz critics had against the softer, more commercially viable approaches to Latin styles. Similarly, an unnamed reviewer of conga player Candido’s Latin Fire stated: [I]‌t does swing and somehow avoids becoming a hopeless hodge-​podge of conflicting effects. There is a tendency toward over-​stylization in the brass figures that detracts from the impact of these top section hornmen wailing over Afro-​Cuban rhythms. Such stuff sounds dated today, incidentally, for much of the fascination that Latin drum music held for jazzmen in the past has worn off. (Candido Latin Fire 1959: 55)

Here, the reviewer posits swing as one of the few positive qualities of the album, while he deems the standard Latin pop approaches as unacceptable. Even reviews of Latin-​influenced jazz records released during the initial outpouring of bossa nova asserted that light Latin jazz had a questionable

19 This was due to the influx of mambo in the 1950s. I Love Lucy is an excellent barometer of the popular culture influence of mambo during the mid-​1950s: it was the most watched television show in the United States for four of its six seasons.

Copying the Bossa Nova  37 status. For example, in a review of Cal Tjader’s In a Latin Bag, Ira Gitler states, “This can’t be rated as a jazz album because it doesn’t pretend to be, except in the liner note [sic]” (Gitler 1962). Every track on the LP features light Latin rhythms and percussion, including such jazz standards as “Misty.” Gitler was likely listening for a Latin jazz approach that was not there. Despite the previous surges of Afro-​Cuban styles in jazz, the particular mixture of Latin, jazz, and pop exhibited by recordings like Tjader’s in the early 1960s were likely too far from the postwar jazz conventions for Gitler to respect. The assumption made in reviews like these is that serious jazz lovers would not be interested in lighter Latin jazz styles. Because Latin music in this period was acceptable only if it featured fast polyrhythms and had a strong sense of groove, bossa nova had some difficulty being taken seriously. The understated approach to rhythmic complexity was wholly unfamiliar. Jazz critics filtered the relative first flush of success of bossa nova recordings through their preferences and values. Their role as intermediaries had a profound effect on the extended viability of bossa nova beyond the initial outburst of recordings.

A Fad Is Born A major factor in the rapid development of the bossa nova as a social dance arose from the financial success of the twist (Goldschmitt 2011a). As a social dance, the twist was one of the biggest sensations of the early 1960s, including two separate runs on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart (the second of which finished in early 1962). It spawned numerous pop spin-​offs—​including “The Peppermint Twist,” “Twist and Shout,” and Chubby Checker’s twist sequel, “Let’s Twist Again”—​and a twist-​themed record label, TwisTime Records. That this happened just prior to Byrd and Getz’s release of Jazz Samba altered bossa nova’s course through US popular culture. From April 1962 through 1963, Jazz Samba and its single, “Desafinado,” performed well on the charts. The single peaked at number 4 on the Adult Contemporary charts in 1962 and crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at number 14 later that year. The album itself would reach the top of the pop charts the following year. For a jazz record in the 1960s, that kind of success was unprecedented: as the narrator in Ken Burns’s Jazz describes, the song “was one of the few jazz records of the decade to reach a broad, integrated audience” (Burns 2000). At the time of its explosion,

38  Bossa Mundo Melody Maker encapsulated the crossover success of bossa nova on its cover image announcing the style’s arrival in the United Kingdom with a racially mixed couple dancing together beneath the words “Bossa nova’s here!” The success of “Desafinado” on the Billboard charts and in wide-​ranging demographics and multiple markets was due in part to how music industry executives invented and perpetuated the bossa nova dance fad. Within months of Jazz Samba’s arrival, the search was on for a related dance to cement the fad’s status in the mainstream. Due to the symbiotic relationship between youth dances and record sales in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many in the industry assumed that bossa nova’s financial viability depended upon that combination of music and dance. The record industry posited that bossa nova’s success required a dance that was popular, distinctive, and easy to learn to drive record sales. At the same time, these “record men” were honest about the dance’s development in the United States and not Brazil.20 A Billboard article titled “Is the Bossa Nova the New Twist?” succinctly articulated the hopes for the genre: Though the bossa nova has no dance yet going for it, the Fred Astaire Studios are now creating a dance to go with the Coolpix waxing of “Recado,” by the Zoot Sims ork. Many astute tradesters feel that if anyone comes up with the “right” record, these publishers and record men mean a teen-​slanted bossa nova, like a hully gully, twist or mashed potato dance. Right now, it is understood, a lot of pop record men are sitting up nights trying to come up with such a record-​dance combination. This would be a natural development in the light of the fact that practically all of the new dances have burst upon the teenage population, and quickly been picked up by the dancing teens, as a result of single record hits that have featured a dance. (Rolontz 1962: 4)

Industry insiders believed the key to extended success was a “record-​dance combination” that would appeal to teenage dancers and then spread to the broader public. The competition to codify a dance meant that there were competing bossa nova dance styles—​the above quote cites Fred Astaire Studios, but Arthur Murray, the great ballroom dance democratizer, had his own version. Its path to popularity and dissemination differs from that of 20 “Record men” is a postwar term for people working as producers and A&R (who were almost entirely men).

Copying the Bossa Nova  39 most social dances during the period, which were normally created among African American teens and then disseminated across racial and age barriers. With bossa nova, the dance’s route to a broad public began with white teens dancing to music performed by (mostly) white musicians. The dance cemented how just about every factor of bossa nova’s success in the United States was tied up in the racial politics of the time. From a wider cultural perspective, its start within the industry and its spread from white teens to the rest of the population—​and to Europe via the United Kingdom—​meant that it had the potential to carry an air of hipness associated with race and class privilege, devoid of the scandal that accompanied the youth dances that originated in African American communities.21 The dominant versions of the bossa nova dance fit into the expectations of Latin styles that had already spread across ballrooms in North America. Many were a combination of the cha-​cha-​cha and samba with a slow-​slow-​ quick step to accompany the beat. (These steps resembled the dance that Judy Garland did to “Soul Bossa Nova” on her TV show.) The version of the bossa nova that Arthur Murray Studios advertised featured couples in a parallel dance with crossover foot movements. Other versions of the bossa nova shifted the emphasis away from couples to something more akin to the line dance (for a good representation, see the bossa nova dance sequences in the 2008 film Doubt set to Eydie Gorme’s 1963 pop hit “Blame it on the Bossa Nova”–​–​a song that features bossa nova in name only). Arthur Murray’s advertising from the time shows that dance studios such as his also conceived of bossa nova as yet another dance trend. Some ads promoted bossa nova alongside the mambo, cha-​cha-​cha, and pachanga.22 Yet the link to the twist endured—​indeed, no other dance appeared in print advertising next to bossa nova as often as that iconic teen dance fad. Murray’s version of the bossa nova was decidedly different from the twist in terms of movement (the bossa nova had less of it), ease of learning (the bossa nova required more coordination), and the relations to barriers of gender and class (the bossa nova highlighted them, instead of crossing over). When promoting his version of the dance, Murray stated that the bossa nova was “gentler” than the twist and “you have partners again. The man leads and the woman follows. You don’t have to be an athlete to do it. That’s why we think 21 For an exemplary study of dance fads in the United Kingdom, see Wall (2008). 22 Mambo, cha-​cha-​cha, and pachanga were all “Latin” dance trends that originated from Afro-​ Cuban culture, with mambo being the most virtuosic and exclusive among US ballroom dance enthusiasts.

40  Bossa Mundo it will be around for a long time” (quoted in “Bossa Nova” 1963: 106). Both dances coincided with a fashion trend of tight skirts and tight hair for women while also restoring the primacy of couples dancing in the years just before the sexual revolution.23 The bossa nova dance complemented the rhythms and textures of the music and also appeared less wild and risky to older segments of the population. It caught on with the white upper and middle classes and subsequently spread beyond youth culture to the broader public. Through the coordination of record companies and dance studios, bossa nova sat at the crossroads between accessible teen dance fad and elite Latin ballroom style. However, it was because the bossa nova was more complex than the easy abandon of the twist that it fell short of industry expectations. By the summer of 1963, news media coverage of bossa nova music and dance explicitly linked the style to class differences rather than age. Bossa nova appeared in advertisements for East Coast summer resorts as part of dance class packages (Tamiment 1963; Brickman 1963). Through visual representation and snappy copy, these ads indicated that knowing the bossa nova would make a person sophisticated (as knowing Bach) and trendy (as fitting in at a Parisian nightclub). Thus the style leapt from youthful exuberance to connections to luxury and prestige. That link was crucial to how the style was used to sell products as diverse as cashmere sweaters, throw rugs, ice cream, and new haircuts. In the ad copy for each of these items, bossa nova was the crucial link to convey sophistication and quality.24 Yet there was a consciousness that the magic of bossa nova could not last and marketers in multiple industries expressed the need to churn out bossa nova products and packages quickly. One industry insider even described “how the manufacturers of the ‘Bossa Nova’ fashions [worked] overtime to rush their goods on the market before the musical fad [fizzled] out” (Young 1962: 14). That industry impulse to use bossa nova to sell products and appeal to a broad swath of the public meant that critics and audiences committed to music without such appeals to commercial success would be uncomfortable. This was especially the case among jazz critics in publications like the New York Times and Down Beat. Down Beat reacted to bossa nova’s widespread success and commercialization with loud misgivings in a special issue. The magazine’s staff speculated on 23 Special thanks to Steve Pond for raising this point. 24 The ad copy for products between June and December 1963 uses bossa nova to sell “Short Sleeve Sweaters” for the wearing around campus (Sweaters 1963) and a holiday-​themed bossa nova rug (Penney’s Holiday Choice 1963). An advertisement for a New York hair salon states, “If you can’t do the bossa nova, wear it!” (B. Altman 1963).

Copying the Bossa Nova  41 the style’s long-​term impact on jazz, posited new theories about the music’s origin—​with a widely contested narrative placing it in California rather than Brazil—​and commented on the music’s popularity beyond jazz circles. Fundamentally, however, the editorial staff expressed the need to write about the bossa nova due to its fad status: “Where and how bossa nova started is relatively unimportant. The names of those who brought it before the public also are of little import. What is important is that this welding of a Brazilian rhythmic approach and jazz is the most talked about, best-​selling fad to hit jazz since groove-​funk-​soul. The word ‘fad’ is used purposely” (DeMichael 1962: 10). Through the editorial’s signposted use of “fad,” Don DeMichael demonstrated how observers in the jazz press understood the commercial viability of the style. Throughout much of the rest of 1963 and 1964, jazz critics responded to the rush of bossa nova albums with an awareness that it was a profitable fad. The rhetoric surrounding the style’s faddishness and crossover appeal was so immense, in fact, that reviewers of bossa nova records sometimes defensively justified their continued enjoyment of the style amid the onslaught of crossover recordings. For example, a review of the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival describes how Laurindo Almeida and his quintet “played around with Bossa Nova, until you forgot it as a fad and could recognize fine Latin Music as simply that” (Seidenbaum 1963: 1). Similarly, when describing a Paul Winter album, John S. Wilson, writing for Down Beat, qualified his bossa nova music as somehow an exception to the trend: “As a result, much of the bossa nova material in the set was recorded prior to the arrival of the bossa nova fad up here. It is, possibly because of this, simply stated, unpretentious, and representative of the charming side of the bossa nova that made it initially attractive” (Wilson 1963b:  28). Overwhelmingly, these reviewers were concerned that bossa nova’s overt commercialism would make it difficult for audiences to recognize the quality and seriousness in the music above the fray. The misgivings about bossa nova spread to jazz fans and readers of Down Beat. One letter to the editor, under the title “Bossa Nova ad Absurdum,” expressed the widespread frustration with the record industry’s rush to churn out album after album: Already this bossa nova business has gotten out of hand. Since nobody wants to be left out in the cold, we will soon be seeing albums like: Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt’s Bossa Nova Boss Tenor Battle, Ornette Coleman’s

42  Bossa Mundo Shape of Bossa Nova to Come, the Dukes of Dixieland’s Rampart Street Bossa Nova, Meade Lux Lewis’ Bossa Nova Boogie, Max Roach’s We Insist Bossa Nova in 5/​4 Time, and Les McCann’s Going to Meetin’ Bossa Nova. By the time we get to the Bossa Nova Soul of Ira Gitler, those cats like Charlie Byrd, Bud Shank, Herbie Mann, and Cal Tjader will come out with a “new wave” called “American jazz” in radical rhythms like 4/​4. Then where will we be? (Scott 1963: 8)

Each fictional example in the letter combines the name of a well-​regarded album of the time with the words “bossa nova,” thereby conveying the tackiness of the endless procession of new recordings. The letter’s author goes further by naming the cool jazz musicians (even Charlie Byrd) frequently associated with bossa nova as the ones to return to straight-​ahead “American jazz” rhythms. A vocal segment of jazz critics and audiences on both sides of the Atlantic—​those who made up the readership of music reviews in Down Beat, the New York Times, and the United Kingdom’s Melody Maker—​expressed a disdain for the way that record labels had a history of colluding with other media industries to construct fads, and in so doing sway public attention. This was related to how the jazz press responded to the “payola” scandal of the late 1950s and to resentment over the diminishing cultural power and market share of jazz. The main narratives about payola in the United States place the radio “pay-​to-​play” practice squarely on the shoulders of the increasing ranks of independent record companies that recorded rock ’n’ roll, R&B, and other African American–​derived popular musics. There was nothing new about the scandals that plagued the music industry.25 Even so, the scandal from 1959 and 1960 (and the ensuing congressional investigation) involving rock ’n’ roll DJ Allan Freed and television personality Dick Clark is widely cited as feeding into the public mistrust in rock ’n’ roll, and other musical genres with roots among African American communities that appealed to teenagers. Down Beat, in particular, reacted strongly to the 1959 scandal with coverage lasting for three consecutive issues the following year. For Down Beat, payola threatened the DJ’s role as arbiter of good taste and quality: 25 As Elijah Wald opines, the payola scandal was “one of the silliest sideshows” of the period, since the practice was “already old news by the ’teens” (2009: 207). Music industry historians note that the practice was so widespread in the 1930s that it took a toll on the music industry amid congressional investigations and widespread disgust (Sanjek 1996: 204; Segrave 1994: 30–​54).

Copying the Bossa Nova  43 But perhaps the greatest single benefit to result from the payola probe has been the discreditation [sic] of the disc jockey as chief arbiter of American musical taste. No longer could teenagers say “But I know it’s good; So-​and-​ So said it was on his radio program.” With practice of bribery on open display [. . .] the honesty of disc jockey opinion was not only open to question: it was now frankly mistrusted all over America. (Other Side of the Coin 1960: 18)

Thus it was the confluence of the corrupting influence of money and teenage listening practices that most threatened musical integrity for jazz musicians, critics, and DJs—​in essence, the extended community of musicians and cultural intermediaries of the time. They were what constituted jazz’s ideal public. That temporal proximity of visible payola to dance fads and the explosion of the teen market did not elude the careful eye of jazz record industry watchers. Given that the rush to record bossa nova albums was so blatantly tied to the desire to “cash in” on the fad, it was no wonder that reviewers and musicians alike viewed those records with mistrust. Even though bossa nova was based on jazz, the music press viewed it as threatening postwar jazz values by foregrounding the market-​driven nature of the industry. This was after the advent of bebop had disrupted the link between jazz and popular music (cf. DeVeaux 1997). For some, the only aspect of the style that was of any worth was its newness. Even Laurindo Almeida, a Brazilian guitarist who profited greatly from bossa nova’s popularity, commented that something was amiss with the mad rush to record the music: “That’s one thing about bossa nova—​and I hate to say this, because I like money too—​but bossa nova’s not supposed to be that popular” (quoted in Feather 1963: 35). What Almeida criticized (and what lurked beneath the surface of many comments about the bossa nova fad) was its popularity at the expense of other jazz, as though listener attention to jazz styles were a zero-​sum  game. The confusion about how to understand bossa nova’s massive popularity within a jazz context extended to the initial Down Beat review of the famous Carnegie Hall concert on November 21, 1962. Although that concert featured bossa nova musicians such as Jobim, Gilberto, and Bola Sete, the focus of reviews was on how their sense of rhythm failed to conform to North American jazz rhythms. Bill Coss, the reviewer for the concert, stated, “now that Latin has come to Manhattan (and, in the following days, gone to New

44  Bossa Mundo Jersey and Pennsylvania), there is some basis for judgment of the music that has seemingly become so important to jazz sales” (Coss 1963: 35). The emphasis on the commercial aspect of the music’s success haunted much of his review. He later complained that the music had no “swing.” Sydney Frey, one of the concert’s promoters, declared to Billboard that the audience members who were disappointed “expected bossa nova to be something absolutely wild, or at least this is what the critics expected” (Frey quoted in Chase 1962: 16). Despite his complaints about the quality of the performance, Bill Coss did, however, reserve praise for Jobim and Gilberto as performers. He wrote: “Still, it must be said that, excepting Jobim and Gilberto, bossa nova seems to gain in translation. I  take some comfort in the words of musicians whom I  respect that the concert was not representative of the best of bossa nova. If it was, then a colleague’s withering criticism—​‘It’s West Coast Brazilian music’—​has truth as well as significance” (Coss 1963: 35). Considering that this was bossa nova innovator Tom Jobim’s first public performance as a singer, Coss’s backhanded compliment indicates how exceptional his reception was by the jazz press. By this point, Jobim was already recognized as the standard that others had to strive to meet. The Carnegie Hall concert punctuated bossa nova’s arrival in the United States, and soon other Latin crossover acts, such as Xavier Cugat and Laurindo Almeida, claimed to have arrived at the mixture of Brazilian music with jazz in advance of Byrd and Getz’s success (Jones 1962). Cugat’s claims made little impact, perhaps due to his status as a purveyor of exotica, which by the early 1960s was falling out of fashion. Almeida, for his part, made a concerted effort to publicize his previous recordings as being in line with what Byrd and Getz did (to say nothing of Gilberto and Jobim) in a Down Beat article titled “The Real Story of Bossa Nova” (Tynan 1962: 28). Indeed, the combination of Almeida’s claim to have anticipated the trend while living in Los Angeles during the 1950s and Coss’s review of the Carnegie Hall concert set off a firestorm of exchanges in Down Beat, culminating in the now-​ famous profile “Bossa Nova: Anatomy of a Travesty” and the curious spoof exposé “The Really Real Bossa Nova Story” (Lees 1963; McSiegel 1963).26 While it may be easy to dismiss these competing claims about where the style started, it bears underscoring that much of the press coverage of bossa nova



26 Within a year, Almeida stated, “I never claimed to have invented anything” (Dawbarn 1964: 8).

Copying the Bossa Nova  45 neglected to mention any Brazilian musicians, focusing instead on Getz. One article in particular credited bossa nova’s success to “Getz by Way of Brazil.” The scrambling about bossa nova was as much about giving credit where they claimed it was due as it was about righting preconceptions about the meaning of the style. Due to these flaps, it took additional work for Brazilian musicians to gain a sympathetic audience among discerning jazz publics. Gene Lees was a champion of Brazilian musicians in the jazz press and presented Jobim’s perspective on the negative side of the music’s commercial success in the United States. In “Bossa Nova: Anatomy of a Travesty,” Lees focused on Jobim’s dislike of publishers and zeroed in on the problems of translating Brazilian Portuguese lyrics to English. Jobim also claimed that his songs suffered as a result of inaccurate transcriptions of his harmonies (Lees 1963:  23). Even as Byrd and Getz paid Jobim’s compositions respect, they changed the melodies (such changes were common practice in jazz adaptations of Broadway show tunes), with the result that Brazilian musicians were unhappy with the first US versions of their music. Jobim lamented too the transformation of bossa nova into a pop cultural phenomenon in both the United States and Brazil: “Bossa Nova is not a dance. We do not dance to it in Brazil. It is a music to listen to, like good jazz. But now they have a bossa nova dance in the United States, and I see they have here bossa nova shoes. It is like what they did to bossa nova in Brazil” (Jobim quoted in Lees 1963:  23). He acknowledged the mania surrounding bossa nova in both countries that extended well beyond the intent of musicians that initially created it. Later in the article, when explaining his feelings about coming to the United States for the Carnegie Hall concert—​and, by extension, the negative reviews—​Jobim said, “I didn’t want to come here. I knew what they would do. I knew what the concert (Carnegie Hall) would be like. I didn’t want to come but they put pressure on me.” Overall, Jobim’s response to his US reception demonstrated how slighted he felt by the whole process of international success. The misunderstandings and mistranslations of what bossa nova was continued as it spread to audiences beyond jazz’s core, especially among African Americans. In the next section, I show how the conflicts bossa nova inspired in the music press—​among jazz critics in particular—​served as a prelude to how it would shift in meaning as it came into direct conflict with the rising tide of civil rights activism as it was expressed in music.

46  Bossa Mundo

Bossa Nova and the Black Bourgeoisie Around the same time magazines like Down Beat were responding to bossa nova for a mostly white male readership, print media for African Americans were addressing the influx of bossa nova recordings in ways that revealed the class tensions at the heart of the civil rights movement. At one extreme, publications sidestepped a preoccupation with the commercialism of bossa nova’s success by attempting to credit musicians linked to the African diaspora in the music’s creation.27 For example, in March 1963, Ebony—​a magazine aimed squarely at the Black middle class—​published an extended feature on the bossa nova dance, with imagery and profiles that erased the music’s original connection to Brazilians of a mostly European ethnic heritage. In images from that issue, the male dancer, Buddy Phillips, is dressed in an undifferentiated “Latin” outfit, similar to what the “malandros” wore in the live-​action Bahia segment in Disney’s The Three Caballeros (1944) but no longer in fashion in Brazil by the early 1960s. In addition to the dancers, Ebony featured a photo of Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete as the only visual example of a Brazilian bossa nova musician. As a nickname, Bola Sete means “7 ball”—​the only black ball in Brazilian billiards—​and was derived from him regularly being the only Afro-​Brazilian musician in jazz groups around Rio de Janeiro. In bossa nova circles both in Brazil and elsewhere, Bola Sete was better known as a sideman than as an innovator. Rather than address the music’s status in Brazil, the magazine chose to overstate its Afro-​diasporic link through photographs. It is telling that Ebony chose to highlight him above other musicians, such as Jobim, who were playing shows around the United States in the early 1960s. US reviews often touted Bola Sete as more authentic than other bossa nova artists playing in the States at the time (cf. Wilson 1963a: 30). Bola Sete’s visible affiliation with the double consciousness of the African diaspora allowed him to be embraced by the African American press without complication, as opposed to the ambiguous racial heritage of the other bossa nova musicians from Brazil. Like many media outlets of the time, Ebony attempted to unite bossa nova’s popularity with other Latin styles, specifically those that were marked as part of the African diaspora; however, the

27 Black middle-​class values were often at the crossroads of Black musical criticism. Scott Saul (2003) analyzes how Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, and Malcolm X all engaged music and class.

Copying the Bossa Nova  47 feature’s author confused both the music’s origin and its innovation—​“The idea of combining Afro-​Cuban musical ideas with American jazz is hardly new”—​before launching into a US-​and jazz-​centric narrative of the music, crediting its rise to West Coast jazz (Bossa Nova Merger 1963: 103). The rest of the article focuses on the task of instructing its readers on how to do the popular dance. Ebony’s feature on bossa nova as a social dance coincided with the growing visibility of the Black middle class in the decades following the end of World War II. The Black middle class demographic was not neutral. African American critics and activists suspected middle-​class taste for being insufficiently political due to ties with commercialism and the threat to black male autonomy. As Scott Saul has noted, the discourse of “freedom” in jazz music and African-​American popular culture took on a variety of guises: freedom from the financial rewards of the recording industry, the conventions of musical structures, and, for some, middle-​class upward mobility (2003). Thus for some critics, the enjoyment of mass-​produced objects popular with white consumers by the Black bourgeoisie threatened the movement’s artistic ties to modernist notions of progress and virility. The response to bossa nova was far different among critics writing for Black periodicals such as The Chicago Defender and The Negro Digest—​a magazine with links to the Black Arts Movement aimed at bettering African Americans through political and social action with its coverage of Black artistic expression. Bob Hunter of The Chicago Defender cited bossa nova as a blending of African American styles with Afro-​Cuban melodic phrases, and credited US-​based jazz musicians with the music’s creation (Hunter 1962). The Negro Digest, on the other hand, covered bossa nova mostly through recordings by well-​known jazz artists, such as Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Byrd, often interspersed with complaints about bossa nova’s excessive popularity (e.g., “The Bossa Nova parade goes on virtually unabated. . . .”), grudgingly lauding the artists in spite of the trend (On Record 1963: 95). Those misperceptions about the commercial appeal of bossa nova also grew from tensions around popular music’s role in North American culture amid the social upheavals of the 1960s. Most notable was the growing awareness of the role of the music industries and youth culture in the civil rights struggle, and of the seedier elements of an expanding music industry (such as payola). The postwar boom in economic growth and musical distribution presented a tangible problem for a musical genre like jazz. Many jazz fans prided themselves on enjoying a genre that rewarded musical ability and

48  Bossa Mundo artistic expression over profit. By the early 1960s, they approached the “record men” (who ran most of the industry) with mistrust and reacted to any new fad with frustration at the blatant commercialism involved in selling a new music to an eager audience. Jazz history about this era is polarized with respect to bossa nova: depending on the commentator, its massive popular success and crossover politics either led to the downfall (and eventual redemption) of jazz, or was the pinnacle of fusion tendencies in the 1960s.28 The widespread perception of bossa nova as the essence of commercial excess in jazz led Ron Welburn, a poet and critic associated with the Black Arts Movement, to write a scathing critique of the music. In “The Black Aesthetic Imperative,” he discussed Black and white approaches to jazz and Latin rhythms and in the process made an explicit criticism of Stan Getz. Welburn characterized the role of Black musicians in the evolution of jazz as part of a dialectical Black creation, a key part of which is “the black musician’s continual response to cultural subterfuge by ‘white jazz.’ ” When hard-​bop musician Horace Silver played Latin rhythms, he was understood by Welburn to be partaking in a “harder sound”—​one that incorporated his own Cape Verdean heritage. On the other hand, Welburn used a different language for describing Getz and bossa nova: One morning in the spring of 1962, we all woke up to the fresh, clean sound of “Desafinado,” and the white sycophant establishment applauded the resurgence of Stan Getz. Bossa nova, or rather, a watered-​down version of the original, proved to be the successful antidote. The bossa nova interjection was not a musical movement, but it served its purpose: it killed off the down-​ home, earthy musical dominance of black music; it was popular long enough for whites to straighten themselves out psychologically. Also, bossa nova rapidly attained the commercialism jazz critics had warned about with soul jazz. (emphasis added, Welburn 1971: 139)

Note that some of his comments echo the complaints of Jobim just a few years prior. Welburn pits the soft, “watered-​down” styles of bossa nova against the earthy rhythms of overtly Black jazz and the antagonism of the African American avant-​garde, framing Getz’s cool take on bossa nova as a betrayal of the Black roots of jazz and the opposite of hard, Black music.



28 On the two narratives in jazz, see DeVeaux (1991).

Copying the Bossa Nova  49 Welburn’s language was more inflammatory and gender-​laden than other critics at the time. He pitted the primal “down-​home” and “earthy rhythms” against the slickness and the straightened-​out needs of white audiences and wasted no words moving from the loss of the music’s “earthy” grooves to decrying the music’s commercialization. Welburn echoed the widely held belief that tied jazz virtuosity, innovation, and autonomy to the actions of men. It was in keeping with the overarching ideology of Black Nationalism and the arts during the period. In an analysis of gender and the Jazz Composer’s Guild, an influential organization in the mid-​ 1960s, Benjamin Piekut describes Black Nationalism as an ideology that “turned on tropes of masculinity and patriarchy” (2011: 122). The subtext here is that the commercial success of bossa nova violated the masculine values of serious jazz. Cultural theorist Andreas Huyssen (1986) describes how mass culture has been associated with the feminine since the nineteenth century. Mass-​produced items were placed in a long line of trends that critics bemoaned as being too indistinguishable and easily imitated. This association saturated public perception in the 1940s and 1950s—​right around the same time that jazz critics were beginning to decry any economic, reproducible values in music. For many, the values of masculinity in jazz were central, especially as the discourse of freedom became increasingly prominent with the fragmentation of jazz into hard bop, free jazz, and other styles during the 1960s. Much of the divisiveness around bossa nova had to do with its passage from critical acclaim to an exhausted commodity. That its transformation occurred at the beginning of the most tumultuous period of the Cold War would have long-​lasting consequences for what the music represented to the Black bourgeoisie.

Aftermath The commercial success of bossa nova in American popular culture and its resonance in the United Kingdom did not allow it to be absorbed into the jazz tradition without complications. Recent popular music and jazz studies have noted that criticism tends to privilege music that is perceived as independent of the economic pressures of surviving in the entertainment industry, in order to more authentically frame it as a revolutionary force of cultural vanguardism. These arguments are especially prescient when discussing the fallout in the jazz community in the decades following the advent of bebop.

50  Bossa Mundo As Scott DeVeaux (1997) has argued, the demonization of commercial interests in jazz is inextricably linked to racial struggle where success was eventually equated with whiteness. This equation is especially unfortunate due to the race of those whose record was the first major breakthrough for bossa nova: Getz and Byrd. They never masked their whiteness. The racial, economic, and geographic position of those who started the bossa nova movement in Brazil was unabashedly upper class and white, an especially loaded designation for a country like Brazil, where economic disparities often trump racial differences (cf. Hanchard 1994). Yet even as the music found publics in the United States and United Kingdom, it never shed its ties to the prevailing sense of Brazil as Other. Its mixture of foreignness and cosmopolitanism was part of its appeal. The mediation of Bola Sete demonstrated how bossa nova’s Otherness was tied up in race, vague as it was. Bossa nova became popular during the same period when many in the jazz community were just beginning to recognize racial bias as an important component of jazz’s history, especially in their role as critics, and to contend with the broader social changes that eventually defined the 1960s. Between pages in Down Beat that specifically addressed bossa nova were articles that examined Ornette Coleman’s experimental album Free Jazz, the landmark record, first released in December of 1961, that announced free jazz as a subgenre by way of a forty-​minute track of free improvisation. Free Jazz was released a mere three months before Jazz Samba. Coleman was a lightning rod for the jazz avant-​garde, flouting conventions of jazz and pushing the boundaries of Black experimentalism. It was not just free jazz: many in the jazz community were also confronting musical vanguardism at the same time that they were struggling with racial tension and the role of the white jazz critic.29 The jazz press eagerly moved on to topics other than bossa nova. In many instances, they sought to judge musicians playing bossa nova tunes by technical ability to legitimize their success. Despite claims that the music was a fad, bossa nova songs continued as staples of the jazz repertoire. Jobim, Gilberto, and others went on to become internationally successful. Their popularity was so exceptional that jazz legends often voiced their support for Jobim, Gilberto, and de Moraes, echoing their canonization within Brazil. There were many reasons why bossa nova might have had problems sustaining the attention of Anglophone publics in the early to mid-​1960s, but

29 See Monson (2007) for an analysis of this moment.

Copying the Bossa Nova  51 nothing would be as damning to it as the very machinations that animated popular culture at that time. The mass production of music during the period lent this style an air of suspicion, especially since there was little room for niche tastes. Bossa nova’s rise coincided with tensions within jazz just before the major social upheavals and audience segmentation that defined the rest of the decade. This meant that the style was inevitably marked as too pedestrian. Even as the music survives in its most vibrant form in the jazz repertoire, it is most often performed as background music in environments where audience attention is directed elsewhere—​for example, weddings, restaurants, and cocktail parties. That it was also so overtly commercial—​ ranging from record industry recording rushes to invented dance fads—​ meant that by the time civil rights took hold, the style lost its links with the vital sociopolitical currents of the day. The following chapter explores what happened when bossa nova lost its cross-​generation appeal and, with it, its edge with youth culture.

2 Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova The Jet Set and Easy Listening on Record and in Film

Bossa nova underwent a sea change in the mid-​1960s as teenagers cast it aside for rock and soul. When it lost its cross-​generational appeal, it continued to create important meanings for adult listeners in the North Atlantic. Consider its prominence in Un Homme et Une Femme [A Man and a Woman] (1966, dir. C. Leloush), the award-​winning film about a budding romance between two young parents with deceased spouses.1 In a standout scene, Anne Gauthier (played by Anouk Aimée) fondly remembers her deceased husband, Pierre Gauthier (played by Pierre Barouh). The ensuing flashback montage features Barouh’s performance of a French translation of Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes’s “Samba da Benção.” The montage lends emotional depth to Anne’s grief, demonstrating just how much the social meanings of bossa nova had changed since its days as a fad associated with youth. To illustrate the tenuous nature of Anne’s memories, the camera shows Pierre singing the bossa nova while the couple performs mundane domestic tasks—​he serenades her as they lounge in their home together, while she shampoos his head in the sink, and when they share bread and wine. Throughout the montage, there is no visible musical accompaniment to his singing save two brief clips where Pierre strums a few chords on a guitar. The drums and piano are in the soundtrack, but they are invisible, exposing the boundary between the reality of the song’s production and Anne’s memory of Pierre’s sheer enjoyment of it. The incongruity of the character singing in scenarios where people rarely sing exposes the liminality and malleability of memory, especially on the part of people experiencing tremendous loss. The song’s narrative function in the film is just one example of how the listening publics for bossa nova changed in the mid-​1960s in the Global North. Instead of crossing social barriers as a youthful and fun fad (as discussed in 1 Like Orfeu Negro before it, Un Homme et Une Femme won the Palm d’Or at Cannes (1966) and the Academy Award (1967) for Best Foreign Language Film.

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.003.0003

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  53 c­ hapter 1), bossa nova was newly geared to adults. Cultural intermediaries such as filmmakers imbued the style with the ability to soundtrack subject matter distant from just a few years prior. The foreign and exotic quality of bossa nova allowed it to reference not just Brazil, but also a range of topics and narrative scenarios. Similarly, the musical qualities of what these publics heard as bossa nova featured loose references to the Brazilian style; bossa nova had become a diffuse, Latin musical referent. And since the bossa nova soundtrack was auxiliary to the image and narrative, viewer attention was more dispersed, resulting in a decreased awareness of the music. The mediation of bossa nova through film soundtracks for an older audile public added new layers of exoticism (and sexualization) to Brazil’s national brand. The prominence of the music in the montage sequence from Un Homme et Une Femme demonstrates just how the meaning of bossa nova began to change through filmic mediation. Pierre’s singing in Anne’s memory illustrates what Robynn J. Stilwell (2007) describes as “the fantastical gap” or blurring between music in the narrative film world (diegetic music and sound) and music that expresses the interior world of the character and action (non-​diegetic film music). For Stilwell, there is both magic and danger in that gap as it demonstrates the instability of the filmic world. Here, the gap expresses the precarious hold on memories of deceased loved ones. This chapter explores how bossa nova in other audiovisual media in this period often expressed an underlying danger tied to the exotic, although not always through such clear gaps in the soundtrack. These moments often occurred when characters dealt with sexual or exotic subject matter. That contextual setting altered the meaning of Brazilian music among Anglophone publics during this period. Un Homme et Une Femme illustrates how bossa nova was changing through the process of mediation. The film featured bossa nova through the efforts of its charismatic supporting actor, Pierre Barouh, who was an important intermediary for Brazilian music in France.2 Barouh’s French-​language version of the song known as “Samba Saravah” was a hit in France. Barouh sang a slight alteration of the bossa nova rhythm to make it more palatable, singing with a mixture of a syncopated samba rhythm and straight eighth notes. Since the film was popular in the arthouse cinema circuit in the United States and the United Kingdom, the simplified samba rhythms allowed that version of the 2 Barouh later displayed his admiration of Brazilian music in the documentary Saravah (1971, dir. P. Barouh).

54  Bossa Mundo song to translate well to easy listening and adult contemporary publics. As Keir Keightley (2011) shows, it is the echo of “Samba da Benção” in Francis Lai’s film score that became a popular touchstone in easy listening formats in 1960s US popular culture, resonating in recordings by Astrud Gilberto and Cal Tjader. Bossa nova transformed into music for older publics with a desire to see less youthful subject matter depicted in their media. That shift to adult sensibilities also marked the bossa nova as separate from youth tastes just as the baby boom generation began to embrace the countercultural changes affiliated with the political Left. In the years following the initial saturation of bossa nova in US and British media, the style began to express differences in taste that cut across age, class, and their relationship to cultural capital. Bossa nova lost prestige and became a musical symbol of sex and exoticism. A  key part of its transition from trendy sophistication to the risk-​averse tastes of the adult contemporary (AC) format occurred through its mediation in film alongside its success in recordings. In many cases, bossa nova accompanied subject matter that reinforced the centuries-​old baggage of seduction and sexiness tied to the tropical locale of Rio de Janeiro. Of the many legacies of bossa nova’s use in film during this period, its association with sex (especially seduction), exoticism, and tourism has stuck. That bossa nova’s move to adult publics occurred first in concert with and then separate from the counterculture cemented its associations with retro-​kitsch in later decades (as I discuss in c­ hapter 5). During this period, the recurring public debate around the mass reproducibility of art continued apace. By the mid-​1960s, cultural critics had been grappling with the industrialization of art for a few decades (cf. Greenberg 1939; Adorno 2013; Benjamin 2002). In 1960, Dwight Macdonald published the two-​part essay “Masscult and Midcult” in Partisan Review. He complained that the divide between “high” and “folk” art had been replaced by massive industrialization. This resulted in formulaic products for the masses (masscult) and, worse, products feigning avant-​garde ambitions for the nouveau riche (midcult) (2011). The culture industries fed public attention, and there were just enough venues like arthouse cinemas and record stores to satisfy publics across different class strata. Macdonald employed the familiar language of “degradation” to describe the commodification of taste. Through his emphasis on consumers’ happiness, he critiqued mass media’s manipulation of affect and attention. Through its passage from the cutting edge of hip to adult contemporary, bossa nova was one of many forms of popular culture that had become

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  55 entangled in these aesthetic and generational debates. It fit Macdonald’s notion of “midcult,” and as a result, any stylistic changes could be labeled a “degradation” of the original style from Brazil. But the rise of the counterculture made parsing the aesthetic value of bossa nova difficult beyond generational divisions. This was especially clear in the legacy of Sérgio Mendes. Bossa nova’s continued appeal to an older demographic was also entangled in the rising discourse of identity politics surrounding masculinity. In addition to the norms of masculinity shifting in the postwar period to emphasize domesticity and cooperation (Robinson 2013), new twists on representations of (Western) man’s place in global politics appeared across audiovisual media with clear consequences for music.3 Sartorial expressions of the day’s youth challenged previous ideals of male bodies, fashion, and lifestyles—​some men grew their hair longer, wore more feminine clothing, and opted to “tune in and drop out,” thereby abandoning the progress-​driven narratives at the core of previous models of heteronormative masculinity. Thus, the threat to normative masculinity was reflected in filmic representations of men as fragile and vulnerable to the dangers of femininity and homosexuality. As Krin Gabbard (1995) has shown, traces of that crisis appear across popular media and continued for decades in film. Newly appropriated musical styles like bossa nova appearing in film at the same time would have a lasting effect on the musical legacy of Brazil abroad. While bossa nova made these transformations in meaning as the counterculture rose in influence in English-​speaking countries, the style’s legacy in Brazil was of a wholly different nature. Starting with the mid-​1960s, the political environment in Brazil ushered in an era of popular music protest that embraced the counterculture. It is a historical irony that just as bossa nova reached the zenith of its international appeal in the Anglophone world with the release of Getz/​Gilberto and the hit single “The Girl from Ipanema,” Brazil underwent a political crisis that rendered the musical style passé and out of touch. The Brazilian military staged a coup d’état (with US backing) on March 31, 1964, which had a lasting effect on Brazil’s youth music and culture. Many histories of Brazilian popular music trace the end of the bossa nova movement to that instant.4 Soon, popular music formed what Christopher Dunn 3 For a discussion on the legacy of James Bond songs within this sociopolitical milieu, see Daub and Kronengold (2015: 75). 4 See McGowan and Pessanha (2008), Perrone and Dunn (2002a), and Castro (2000). For a detailed analysis of the bossa nova movement’s shifts in international orientation after 1964, see Naves (2005).

56  Bossa Mundo calls a “Manichean divide” between music with an internationalist posture and music based in leftist nationalism (2001: 65). As discussed in this book’s Introduction, the public for Brazil’s song contests divided into those that enjoyed rock ’n’ roll (the jovem guarda or “young guard”), and those who championed protest songs that developed from mixing bossa nova and regional genres that coalesced as Música Popular Brasileira (MPB, where the “popular” stands for Marxist notions of the “popular classes”). As that divide broke down by the late 1960s, musicians involved in the tropicália movement, such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Os Mutantes, mixed kitsch aesthetics with rock and regional styles.5 Veloso (2002:  167–​ 68) describes how the tropicalists embraced many Brazilian idols past, such as Carmen Miranda who by the 1960s was regularly viewed as an example of the tacky excesses of the Americanization of the Brazilian samba. They also embraced icons that were readily reproducible symbols of mass culture, including references to Batman, and international commodities such as swimming pools and Coca-​Cola—​all meant as markers of cafona or bad taste in what Christopher Dunn argues was satire of the backward attitudes of the military dictatorship (Dunn 2001). That pop-​kitsch riffing of tropicália musicians was so pronounced that it caused some hand-​ wringing by tropicália experimenters in other media (Dunn 2016: 79–​80). The aesthetic strategy of mixture and ironic consumption exemplified those musicians’ knack for swallowing new and old, low-​brow and high-​brow, global and local, and spitting them out anew, thereby redefining Oswald de Andrade’s cultural cannibalism for generations to come.6 In the years following the upheavals of 1968, the countercultural impetus for tropicália went from encompassing a controversial take on Brazilian taste, mass media, and the avant-​garde to becoming the standard-​bearer for 5 Scholars writing about tropicália aesthetics use “kitsch” to describe the mixture of ironic consumption of mass-​produced products in poor taste, often displaying garish sentiment. See Dunn (2001), Harvey (2002), Leu (2006), and Sovik (2002). 6 Oswald de Andrade was a modernist poet who sought to change Brazilian art and literature through “Manifesto de Poesia Pau-​Brasil” in 1924 and “Manifesto Antropófago” (Cannibalist Manifesto) in 1928. Both represented an aesthetic strategy for embracing the best of European modernism while maintaining a uniquely Brazilian essence based on home-​grown legacies, such as indigenous cannibalism in the Amazon as recounted by Hans Staden in the sixteenth century. Dunn contextualizes the tropicalists’ interest in Andrade’s manifesto within a framework of allegorical representation: “Like Oswald, the tropicalists revisited the question of national formation, but they also used allegory to represent and critique the regression to military authoritarianism in Brazil. The allegorical mode was not a constant in tropicalist song, but it surfaced intermittently in songs addressing the urban experience, political violence, and the geopolitical position of Brazil” (2001: 74). To this day, Brazilian critics often refer to cultural expression as being “antropofágico/​a” if it employs politicized internationalist mixture.

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  57 MPB. Alongside the occasional throwback to bossa nova and old sambas, many MPB musicians continued to experiment with mixing pop, avant-​rock, and regional aesthetics; the style’s links to the Brazilian middle classes and its embrace of musical mixture subsequently transformed the tropicalists’ approach to global counterculture into something Brazilian and a method for covertly critiquing a regime that stayed in power until the election of Fernando Collor de Melo in 1989. By contrast, the experience of Brazilian music in English-​speaking countries during the mid-​to-​late 1960s was considerably less fraught, while still expressing some of the great tensions and upheavals of the day.

Bossa Nova’s Sex Appeal The release of Getz/​Gilberto in 1964 was something of a bossa supernova. Released a full year after the bossa nova craze began to lose steam in the United States, the album catapulted bossa nova to the peak of its national and international popularity before fading. Owing in part to Astrud Gilberto’s English vocals, “The Girl from Ipanema” became one of the most recognizable songs around the world (and would eventually be the second most recorded tune of the century, just behind Lennon and McCartney’s “Yesterday”).7 In a last-​minute editing decision by producer Creed Taylor, he spliced João Gilberto’s Portuguese vocals, leaving only Astrud’s English vocals for the radio edit. That intervention highlighted Astrud’s smooth, yet tonally flat, voice, and her sound went on to define bossa nova at its height. No other bossa nova song would implant itself in Anglophone popular song repertoire to such a large extent. The Getz/​Gilberto LP had a lasting effect on the careers of most of the musicians involved. Antônio Carlos Jobim continued to record and release albums in the United States (including collaborations with Frank Sinatra in 1967 and Elis Regina in 1972), and Stan Getz rode the bossa nova wave as far as it would go, with three spin-​off albums recorded in 1963 and 1964: Jazz Samba Encore!, Getz au Go Go, and Getz/​Gilberto #2. By early 1964, he confessed in Melody Maker that he had “played [‘Desafinado’] so many times that sometimes [he got] just a little bit sick of it” (Houston 1964: 6). 7 Indeed, Bryan McCann (2018) credits Astrud Gilberto’s vocals with the album’s international success.

58  Bossa Mundo The fate of the newlyweds João and Astrud Gilberto represents the clearest contrast to bossa nova’s international fame. Since the recording for Getz/​Gilberto occurred just after the (in-​)famous 1962 bossa nova concert in Carnegie Hall (as discussed in c­ hapter 1), the recording featuring husband and wife mistakenly gave the impression that the couple was still in love when it arrived in record stores in 1964. In fact, the Gilbertos separated in 1963 and divorced the next year. João began dating Miúcha, daughter of the famed Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and sister of the increasingly famous MPB musician and songwriter Chico, after meeting her in Paris during a European tour. For much of the next decade, João traveled on a regular basis between the United States, Brazil, and Mexico—​ New York for new concert recording dates with Stan Getz and the birth of his daughter, Brazil to marry Miúcha and make regular appearances on the TV show “O Fino da Bossa,” and Mexico for extended concert dates. Astrud, on the other hand, stayed in the United States. She had a brief affair with Stan Getz starting just after the Getz/​Gilberto recording session, joined his band for a time, and released multiple albums between 1963 and 1972. She also appeared with Getz’s band on such television shows as The Hollywood Palace and The Ed Sullivan Show and in films such as Get Yourself a College Girl (1964, dir. S. Miller).8 Her work on film soundtracks, in particular, solidified bossa nova’s links to sex appeal. In September 1965, Gilberto released her second solo album, The Shadow of Your Smile, for Verve, in an attempt to move beyond the bossa nova fare that had catapulted her to stardom. The cover of the album features a headshot of a wind-​swept Astrud Gilberto with her hair brushing past half of her face, wearing what appears to be the top of a thin-​strapped black dress. Apart from the wind there are no clues as to her location at the time of the photo shoot. That lack of place set the album apart; the cover images for her solo debut and her third and fourth albums all featured her looking at the camera through what appears to be tropical foliage. The bareness of the setting combined with the minimalism of the rest of the cover design—​three rectangles of various hues of purple—​has a deliberately different effect. The design worked with fantasies about her as an object of the male gaze with no clear reference to Brazil, or even a tropical locale. By placing her anywhere with decent

8 Jason Borge argues that her appearances on television in support of Getz/​Gilberto put an international face on bossa nova with television hosts often introducing her as the personification of “The Girl from Ipanema” (2018: 121–​22).

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  59 weather, the cover designs demonstrate how mediation processes of the mid-​ 1960s divorced bossa nova from any conscious association with Brazil. The track listing of The Shadow of Your Smile demonstrates that she was attempting to position herself as a bossa nova singer who could also appeal to fans of jazz/​pop/​vocal, and the broader marketing apparatus around Brazil. Listed between such pop standards as “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Who Can I Turn to (When No One Needs Me)” were three Luiz Bonfá songs that were slated to appear on the soundtrack for The Gentle Rain—​“The Gentle Rain,” “Non-​Stop to Brazil,” and “O Ganso”—​the following year. Upon its release, Billboard noted its strong sales potential and anticipated that the album would do well, citing the appealing combination of US and Brazilian standard fare (Spotlight Pick 1965). Although the film was released six months later, the appearance of those songs among the standards on Astrud Gilberto’s second LP signaled that the producers were starting the film’s marketing efforts early. The Gentle Rain (1966, dir. B. Balaban) was an independently produced film (by Comet Productions) shot on location in Brazil, with a soundtrack composed by Luiz Bonfá and Eumir Deodato. Although the The Gentle Rain was not very successful, the use of bossa nova throughout the soundtrack is illustrative of larger trends in how bossa nova became linked to grown-​up topics and themes. Of the songs from the soundtrack, the theme song was the one that Gilberto performed most often in concert. The soundtrack was popular with many recording artists, but it was “The Gentle Rain” that did best with jazz vocalists, such as Tony Bennett and George Benson, owing to its broader appeal.9 At the time, The Gentle Rain was most famous for the lurid gossip about the off-​screen affair between its two romantic leads, Lynda Day and Christopher George. The affair resulted in a divorce and child custody battle between Day and her first husband, Joseph Pantano. Day married George in 1970 and they remained together until his death in 1983. The film sets up the onscreen romance between their characters, Judy Reynolds (Day) and Bill Patterson (George), as a hotbed of sexual and psychological dysfunction. Judy first travels to Rio de Janeiro after her marriage fails due to her sexual frigidity. There she meets Bill at a party for American expats living in the city. He is a mute whose psychological scars are only explained later in the film. The two begin an intense affair that, in addition to love scenes, involves travel around the city, thereby showcasing many of Rio de Janeiro’s most famous tourist destinations (as well as a road trip to Iguazu 9 Luiz Bonfá played guitar on Bennett’s recording in 1966 for The Movie Song Album.

60  Bossa Mundo Falls) and Brazilian music (sambas, bossa nova, and military marching bands) in the film’s diegesis and score. Toward the end of the film, the audience learns that Bill’s verbal block developed as a psychological response to the trauma of losing his family in a car crash. Judy decides to end the affair and return to New York City when her family friend, Nancy Masters (played by Fay Spain), points out the difficulty of sustaining a long-​term relationship with a mute. The film ends with Bill reading Judy’s letter explaining that she is returning to the United States and encourages him to call her by telephone to stop her. The closing shot of the film shows Bill staring at the phone while pulling his hair in agony. The affair has contrasting effects on the romantic leads. Judy’s experience in Rio de Janeiro has freed her from her struggles with frigidity, while Bill confronts his inability to move past his trauma. The film features a type of sexual tourism set to samba and bossa nova—​a legacy that continues for decades in filmic representations that portray increased sexual liberation (and sexual difference) in Brazil. Print ads for the film emphasize the centrality of Judy’s sexual journey. An ad that ran in magazines featured Judy’s explanation of everything that was wrong with her marriage and her reasons for escaping to Brazil: “When I married that nice young man . . . nothing happened; I froze every time he touched me.” Another ad that appeared alongside newspaper movie listings referred directly to the passion of the relationship with ad copy intended to entice, “When a simple touch becomes caress . . . becomes raging torrent!” Information about contests related to the film, including “2 Exciting Trips to Rio de Janeiro,” cruises to the Caribbean, free Arthur Murray bossa nova lessons, and jewelry, appeared just below the ad’s black and white poster image (Display Ad—​2 Exciting Trips to Rio de Janeiro 1966: 18). Judy’s subjectivity and desires were on full display in these ads with the clear intention of drawing on fantasies about the film’s locale to attract women (and their beaus) to the theater. The bossa nova, sexuality, and tourism were all rolled into one exciting package aimed clearly at young women, in keeping with stereotypes about the potential for sexual liberation tied to Brazil. The film’s plot also highlights what many scholars describe as the growing crisis of white masculinity in the 1960s—​a current that runs through all three Anglophone films in this chapter. The crisis that began with men returning to domesticity at the end of World War II was exacerbated by the rising visibility of marginalized groups, such as women, African Americans, and gays and lesbians. As Sally Robinson (2013) and many others have argued, identity

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  61 politics emerged in North American consciousness with the 1950s and only began to threaten heteronormative white masculinity in the late 1960s.10 The rise of awareness around minority rights groups and the so-​called “liberation” of the baby boom generation posed a direct threat to the status quo. This resulted in the marking of the default category of “straight white man” in various ways. In film, television, and literature, this anxiety appeared as leading men and protagonists struggled to cope with losing power. Many scholars who study such filmic representations of white masculinity focus on how themes of alienation, loss of economic capital, and sexual deviance came to the fore after the 1960s.11 At the same time, women experienced increased sexual autonomy through their increasing importance in the workplace and the rise of second-​wave feminism in its popular coinage, “women’s liberation.” In keeping with the times, The Gentle Rain features a female protagonist seizing sexual freedom and confidence while her male lover lingers in self-​doubt and verbal impotence. After she has achieved the liberation she sought by going to Rio de Janeiro, she returns to the United States a liberated woman, leaving behind all of the psychological wounds embodied by Bill. Given the film’s plot and its unremarkable status in 1966, it is a surprise that the theme song did well among jazz and pop vocalists. Throughout the film, the musical theme highlights moments of intense emotional intimacy by opening with Bonfá playing an unaccompanied guitar, first with just the melody in the upper strings and then using the lower strings of the guitar to provide a rhythmic backbone to the tune. At two prominent points of Judy and Bill’s affair, a swelling orchestra joins the guitar’s theme—​when they share their first kiss and night together in his apartment, and toward the end of the film when she tells Bill that she is moving back to New York for a new job. In both instances, the contrast highlights the delicacy of bossa nova as performed by guitar and the strength of her character. The theme expresses her growth during her time in Rio de Janeiro as the film’s protagonist. One could argue that the swelling orchestra expresses her sexual maturation. Thus, in keeping with conventions for female protagonists, her musical theme doubles as the romantic theme for the film.12

10 See also Elaine Tyler May (1988) and Jacob Smith (2004). 11 J. Halberstam describes the late 1990s version of James Bond by Pierce Brosnan as an extreme version of masculinity that highlights its performativity (1998: 3–​4). This crisis in masculinity echoes previous hand-​wringing about the feminizing effect of city living in the 1920s. See Alison McCracken (2015) for a discussion of anxieties around masculinity and recording technology. 12 For feminist analyses of this convention, see Gorbman (1987) and Buhler (2014).

62  Bossa Mundo Once Matt Dubey added lyrics, “The Gentle Rain” changed from being a musical theme to soundtrack to a woman’s sexual and geographic journey to something more akin to a jazz standard decoupled from the film; it is striking that Astrud Gilberto’s 1965 recording of the song captures some of the melancholy at the heart of the film’s plot. At first, she is accompanied by arpeggiated chords on the acoustic guitar until she gets to the title of the song, “in the gentle rain.” From there, the guitar shifts to a more recognizable bossa nova rhythm beneath the rich instrumental arrangement of the track. Throughout the entirety of the recording, the pulse in the guitar stays consistent, never varying from a stiff, dogmatic approach to bossa nova rhythms beneath a lush orchestra. Through that rhythmic approach, it embodies the aesthetic that Charles Kronengold describes as “not rock” for mid to late 1960s adult contemporary recordings featuring the bossa nova rhythm (n.d.). Equally compelling about this recording is Astrud Gilberto’s voice. Like many of her other recordings, Gilberto does not employ vibrato and often sings slightly flat. As the theme music to a romance that results in separated lovers, her steady and laconic vocal signature highlights the loss at the heart of the story. “Non-​Stop to Brazil” opens the film and encourages audiences to empathize with the character of Judy. The first minutes feature Judy on a flight to Rio de Janeiro’s Galeão International Airport. There are aerial views of Guanabara Bay while the score features Luiz Bonfá playing an introductory vamp between two chords on the guitar, backed by an upright bass and gentle percussion. The orchestra fills out the sound with falling gestures and playful effects from the strings and flutes. The melody enters on the French horn and cellos as the sequence shifts to inside the plane and focuses on Judy looking out the window before she sits back in her seat and sighs. The perspective then shifts back to the views outside the plane for the title card. “Non-​Stop to Brazil” accompanies the bittersweet excitement of the protagonist arriving in a new country for the first time. After the film finished production, Matt Dubey and Norman Gimbel added lyrics to express the excitement of a flight abroad, thereby tapping into contemporary associations of the “jet set” and jet travel with bossa nova. While “jet set” has expanded in recent years to include a much larger population with the economic means to travel regularly, in the early 1960s, the phrase described a group of socioeconomically privileged socialites whose behaviors were

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  63 so extravagant that they captured the imagination of less affluent citizens. The New York Journal American gossip columnist Igor Cassini coined the phrase in the 1950s in reference to the organization of a social scene dependent upon jet travel, a recent and relatively exclusive innovation. Historians of flight mark the beginning of the “jet age” with the introduction of non-​stop flights between New York and London using the Boeing 707 on Pan-​American Airways in 1958.13 Jets became the pinnacle of passenger air travel. Thus, songs directly referencing “non-​stop” flights such as “Non-​Stop to Brazil” indexed the excitement of international travel, which in the mid-​1960s was still novel. The Gentle Rain’s association with the idea of the “jet set” extends to Judy’s character as someone with economic means from New York high society. That escaping to Rio de Janeiro to cavort with other expatriates was even an option for her links her to the jet setters who flaunted their lifestyle from expensive hotels. For many who critiqued their behavior, it was not the group’s wealth that was bothersome, but rather their lifestyle of exotic travel and loose fiscal attitudes. One critic framed everything that was wrong with the jet set by listing the bossa nova as just one of the many things these socialites would try without consequence: “The jet set thrived on the novel—​ from the bossa nova to monkey gland injections. They changed resorts as ladies change hats” (Howard 1963: 3). Due to the expense of air travel during the period, jets had an air of glamour. The fact that bossa nova was popular with a group of social elites traveling around the world recreationally gave the music additional sophistication and exoticism by association. For many onlookers, jet travel was merely an extravagant fantasy, just achievable enough to propel them to desire related trends. The desires of social climbers, like those portrayed in Vance Packard’s handbook The Status Seekers from 1959, were common though rarely expressed in polite conversation. Such aspirations were far from limited to the United States; even Brazilian bossa nova composer Antônio Carlos Jobim wrote a popular song connecting the music to jet travel, “Samba do Avião” or “Jet Samba,” tapping into travel fantasies and the economic optimism of the period just prior to the military dictatorship.

13 Other airlines tapped into the link between bossa nova and the “jet age” in the mid-​to-​late 1960s. Eastern Airlines hired Astrud Gilberto to sing its jingle “Fly Eastern.” For more on the connection between Astrud Gilberto and the “jet set” see Keightley (2015).

64  Bossa Mundo

Bossa Nova and Spy Games Other films from the 1960s extended bossa nova’s sex appeal to Cold War politics. In addition to the French spy comedy L’Homme de Rio (1964, dir. P.  da Broca), an English-​language standout is Sidney Lumet’s 1966 espionage thriller The Deadly Affair (loosely based on John le Carré’s first novel, Call for the Dead). It features a soundtrack by Quincy Jones, with a recurring theme sung by Astrud Gilberto. The story is set in London and details an investigation by an MI5 agent named Charles Dobbs (James Mason) into the mysterious death of Samuel Fennan, a Foreign Office official. The police and MI5 have ruled the death a suicide due to Fennan’s being under suspicion for having communist ties—​an accusation that Dobbs debunks in the film’s opening scene. Throughout Dobbs’s investigation, he confronts the sexual estrangement and infidelity of his wife Ann (Harriet Andersson). Early into the film, he learns of her relationship with Dieter Frey (Maximilian Schell), one of Dobbs’s treasured confidants from his time in Germany during the war. The audience discovers that Dieter was using his relationship with Ann to get intelligence about her husband’s whereabouts during the investigation. The climax of the film occurs when Dobbs lures Dieter into a public meeting with Elsa, Fennan’s widow, at a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. Dieter strangles her during the play’s infamous death scene (in which King Edward is killed by an anal fire probe) and escapes, propelling the film to a final confrontation. Dieter and Dobbs fight at a dock, where Dobbs ultimately kills him. As the film closes at the Switzerland airport, Dobbs meets Ann at the airport and husband and wife are reunited without further complication. Homosexual dysfunction lies just beneath the surface of the plot’s superimposition of a sexual and political betrayal between Dobbs, Ann, and Dieter. When Dobbs and Dieter see each other throughout the film, the tension is palpable. Dobbs touches Dieter multiple times in their first onscreen interaction. When Dobbs recognizes Dieter at Edward II, he runs to the restroom and vomits in a visceral display of betrayal and abjection. The detail of the play is also an important parallel to the plot. In Marlowe’s play, King Edward is betrayed by his closest confidants and the method by which he is murdered is a punishment with clear allusions to the king’s rumored homosexual proclivities. Finally, in the film’s violent confrontation between the two men, Dieter hesitates to fight, but Dobbs kills him in an unbridled rage. He immediately regrets this, and yells Dieter’s name in anguish. The infidelity

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  65 and homosexual subtext of the film are in keeping with the anxieties over postwar masculinity. Throughout The Deadly Affair, bossa nova appears most often during revelations of the betrayed intimacy and sexual panic at the center of the story.14 Given the meanings that bossa nova accrued in the mid-​1960s, that narrative choice was not accidental. Whenever Dobbs confronts his own sexual inadequacy or feelings of betrayal, the soundtrack features Gilberto’s voice singing “Who Needs Forever” backed by a string orchestra as diegetic music, or an orchestrated variation as non-​diegetic, often with wordless vocals. Both symbolize the growing tension between Dobbs, Ann, and Dieter. Through those narrative contexts, bossa nova accompanies adult preoccupations with betrayal on a geopolitical scale; Dieter’s betrayal is both personal and strategic, something common to Cold War espionage films. The score telegraphs the symbolic role of bossa nova in the film’s opening credits. The lush string orchestra and light, simplified bossa rhythm underscore a series of filtered, intimate images of Dobbs and Ann in their bedroom (see Figures  2.1–​2). The arrangement features musical approaches from Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom—​both the acoustic guitar and the clicks in the percussion section outline the samba beat while a saxophone improvises on top of a foundation of strings and rhythms; instruments such as wordless vocals and muted trumpets hint at the main melody of the soundtrack’s theme. The first instance of the soundtrack featuring Gilberto’s voice occurs approximately eleven minutes into the film, as we see Dobbs in his private sphere. He returns home in frustration just after learning that Fennan is dead, and hearing from his supervisor that he must visit the widow. At first, it is unclear if the music is diegetic until he closes the bedroom door to the bathroom, effectively muffling the sound of the recording. Gilberto’s Portuguese vocals get louder as Dobbs loosens his tie while looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. As Gilberto sings lyrics alluding to memory, especially “memórias” (reminiscences) and “lembranças” (memories), he looks to the ceiling and then off-​camera to his bedroom in anguish. By the time he opens the door to see his wife lingering on the bed, the volume has increased to the point where it competes with the dialogue in the mix. The rise in volume 14 Thanks to Harriet Barnes-​Duke for bringing this narrative function of bossa nova to my attention.

66  Bossa Mundo

Figures 2.1 and 2.2  Film stills from title sequence to The Deadly Affair (1967).

of Gilberto’s Portuguese vocals—​presumably unintelligible to the majority of the film’s audience—​happens just as Dobbs notices his wife, aligning the music with the film’s theme of sexual and romantic dysfunction. In effect, Gilberto’s vocals penetrate Dobbs’s consciousness and float between source and score, inspiring additional audience empathy. Here, the “fantastical gap” of the soundtrack between diegetic and non-​diegetic evokes conflict and emasculation with Dobbs’s trauma otherwise located only in James Mason’s performed anguish (Stilwell 2007). Whether or not the sound designers intended this psychological dimension is irrelevant—​it is the overall effect of the music in this moment.

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  67 As the scene shifts to the bedroom, Gilberto’s vocals and Jones’s arrangement shape the visual editing and, by extension, the introduction of a key relationship in the film. Ann is in the bed, the music is emanating from a record player off-​screen, and Dobbs explains why he must return to work in four hours. The music slips into the foreground, at times eclipsing the dialogue. When Ann asks when he will be back, he answers, “How long would you like me to stay away?” demonstrating full knowledge of his wife’s frequent infidelity, and then, “I’ll phone before I return.” The string section slowly rises chromatically in a musical gesture reminiscent of the backing strings in John Barry’s arrangement of Monty Norman’s “James Bond theme.” The music gives way to the rising string flourish when Ann looks at Dobbs as she raises her pillow and says, “Do you want to know who it is?” They share a long look over Gilberto’s wordless vocals. He then leans over to his wife on the bed and kisses her passionately and then pushes her away as he leaves to return to work. The music cuts out to the sound of a scratching record just before he returns to the bathroom and slams the bedroom door behind him. The music and editing of the confrontation in the bedroom are so closely aligned to the point of nearly “mickey-​mousing” music and action—​rising gestures in the backing score indicate where the focus of the scene should be and intensity in the volume of the music mirrors the emotional intensity of their dialogue.15 That the editor and the sound department took care to edit this scene’s overall design to Gilberto’s track further demonstrates the importance of bossa nova to the film’s narrative themes, especially as it underscores the crisis for Dobbs’s masculinity in his roles as husband and investigator. In a similar gesture, Jones’s bossa nova score complemented by wordless female vocals shapes the discovery that Dieter is Ann’s new lover. When Dobbs first sees Dieter, there is no background music as the two men embrace. He is overjoyed. It is in Dieter’s exit that Dobbs discovers that Dieter is one of Ann’s lovers. As the couple is alone, the clave begins to tap out the 3-​3-​2 (commonly notated as 𝅘𝅥. 𝅘𝅥. 𝅘𝅥) North American reduction of the bossa nova rhythm.16 15 “Mickey-​mousing” is a concept in film score and sound design to describe the nearly cartoonish ways action and sound can mirror each other that developed out of early Disney films. Critics often use the concept to critique rather than praise mirroring scoring and editing practices as overly cartoonish. 16 In Brazilian music, this rhythm is most common as a baião. However, many arrangements of bossa nova in North America employ the pattern, cutting off half of the 3-​3-​4-​3-​3 bossa nova rhythm. I use this rhythmic value to avoid describing the rhythm in Hispanic-​Caribbean terms of the tresillo even as that was the rhythmic pattern most common to North American jazz-​influenced arrangements of Latin-​ness. See Garrett (2008) and Sublette (2007) for more on the history of the rhythm in American pop music.

68  Bossa Mundo Dobbs says, “For the first time in—​what is it, seven years?—​he didn’t kiss you on the cheek; he kissed your hand . . . as if he had something to hide!” Jones’s arrangement moves away from lush bossa nova as hand percussion enters (presumably congas), along with quiet strings, as the two break into a heated argument. As Dobbs moves from anger to vulnerability, the bossa nova guitar enters followed shortly by flutes playing the main theme in their lowest range. Dobbs is upset not about the infidelity but rather Dieter’s betrayal. She confesses, “He never wanted me before,” and that he only expressed interest the previous day. As Dobbs asks, “Do you love him?” the strings give another flourish and get louder, competing with the dialogue. She says yes and then, “If I could love one man, it would be you, Dobbs.” Dobbs announces that he resigned from his department and that he wants to investigate Fennan’s death for his own satisfaction as a chorus of wordless female vocals enter the score at a high volume relative to the mix. The bossa nova disappears when Ann complains that he is more aggressive about his job than fighting for their marriage and returns again when Dobbs looks helplessly on as his wife sobs. In this scene, bossa nova functions as score. There is no sense that the characters can hear it in the room, and in every possible moment, bossa nova is identified with Dobbs’s inability to cope with Ann’s infidelity (what she calls her “nymphomania”), even when she begs him to kick her out or demand better of her. The link between the foreign-​sounding, Latin theme and the psychological effect of extramarital affairs on the film’s protagonist lends the music an additional level of Otherness; not only is it linguistic (Portuguese rather than English) in some instances, but it is also sexual. Dobbs is incapable of maintaining a healthy marriage even as he tries to convince himself otherwise. In this instance, bossa nova is not merely about sex; rather it represents lurid (even deviant) sex that goes against contemporary expectations for appropriate behavior by married men. Bossa nova nearly disappears from the score until just after Dobbs discovers beyond a doubt that Dieter is a communist spy. After that point, it switches to a broader representation over Dobbs’s psychological state and appears repeatedly as the tension ratchets up to the film’s final confrontation. In a scene directly following Elsa’s death by strangulation at the theater, Dobbs drinks in his house while listening to Astrud Gilberto on a record player. Soon, he is interrupted by a phone call relaying that Dieter is at the dock. The sound seamlessly switches between diegetic and non-​diegetic music as the camera cuts from Dobbs leaving his house to a shot of Dieter

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  69 burning evidence at the dock soundtracked to wordless female voices, percussion, and bass in double-​time. The bossa nova theme returns during the final confrontation between the two men as the topic shifts to Dobbs and Ann’s marriage. Dobbs complains that Dieter used her, and Dieter responds, “I only did what many other men with less justification have done to her already.” The score cuts out when Dieter shoots a police inspector dead and a fistfight ensues between Dieter and Dobbs, resulting in Dieter’s death after he falls off the dock and is crushed by a boat. Bossa nova scoring returns for the film’s final scene as Dobbs’s plane lands in Zurich. In that last iteration, it emphasizes bossa nova rhythms in the bass and hand percussion with strings and wordless female vocals before the saxophone fanfare crescendos to the film’s end. In each scene building to the final credits, bossa nova scoring relates directly to Dobbs’s dysfunctional relationships, either to his wife or to Dieter. However, as the film is about both a marriage and Cold War espionage, the music overlaps at times to emphasize how sex and geopolitics intersect through one man, Charles Dobbs. That the soundtrack utilizes either wordless female vocals in the score or Gilberto singing in Portuguese in the film’s diegesis further demonstrates a level of intentional linguistic estrangement.17 Brazilian music is not just entangled in sex, but it is a kind of sex that is slightly deviant, tangled up with both fantasy and dysfunction (in this case, representing impotence and queer subtext). Mason’s character is often tormented when he is accompanied by the bossa nova—​far removed from the self-​assured and performatively heterosexual investigator who devises the plan to lure Dieter out of hiding or who insults his effeminate boss at MI5 by calling him “a Marlene Dietrich.” The score only transforms the exotic sounds of bossa nova to something victorious as Dobbs finally reveals everything to his wife at the film’s close. That links between music, Dobbs’s frail marriage, and global politics is distilled in that bedroom confrontation scene between Dobbs and his wife that forms the basis of the opening credits. Bossa nova (as sung by Astrud Gilberto) is intimately seductive. It is also dangerous. The Deadly Affair shows that the transnational meanings of bossa nova were shifting to a heightened level of the exotic, which made it more marketable to Anglophone publics. There are no direct references to Brazil, 17 In the version of the song released on the original motion picture soundtrack, she sings in English.

70  Bossa Mundo cementing the transition of bossa nova to vague, exotic music to support onscreen action. The diegetic uses of Astrud Gilberto’s voice are the only times when the music stands out, which conforms to the cross-​marketing strategies of the era. The narrative placement of the song directed public attention to the record while the song directed attention to film, boosting sales for both media (Smith 1998). That it did so while presenting bossa nova as seductive lends further support to the style’s shifting meaning. Beyond her work in film, Astrud Gilberto exemplified bossa nova’s seductive capabilities in English-​language music markets. A Melody Maker record review headline from February 19, 1966, that read “Seduced by the Tender Gilberto” linked bossa nova, Astrud Gilberto, and seduction. Her photo was captioned “ASTRUD:  breathy style.” Beyond Astrud’s vocal approach, the music press frequently referred to bossa nova more generally as seductive and sensual. Even in 2000, it was bossa nova’s reputation as musical seducer through Astrud’s voice specifically that formed the subtitle for the English-​ language translation of Ruy Castro’s famous history of bossa nova—​“the story of the Brazilian music that seduced the world.” The photo used for the cover of the English edition originally featured João Gilberto facing front with the guitar on the beach and Astrud behind him, looking down, as part of the tropical background. Astrud Gilberto’s voice and bossa nova’s reputation as music for physical intimacy inspired one of the most iconic seduction scenes in spy film comedy. In the 1967 version of Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress) seduces Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) to the soundtrack of bossa beats and timbres. Throughout the sequence, Tremble dresses up in numerous spy disguises for Lynd. Although there is no Astrud Gilberto or Stan Getz on the soundtrack, they were crucial to how the scene came together. James McGrath, the director of the scenes involving Andress and Sellers in the film, played “The Girl from Ipanema” on set so frequently that, in his words, “Peter and Ursula, either consciously or unconsciously, moved in tempo to that tune” (quoted in Burlingame 2012: 64). When it was time to choose appropriate music, they sought something that would match the scene and the film’s overall comedic tone. Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the Dusty Springfield vehicle “The Look of Love” to musically represent Ursula Andress’s sensual appearance. Bacharach stated, “it wasn’t really a love theme as much as a kind of very understated sexual theme written for her body and face” (quoted in Burlingame 2012: 64). Later, Bacharach adapted the tune for the tenor saxophone. The

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  71 combination of breathy female voice and saxophone clearly drew on the formula that propelled the Getz/​Gilberto recording of “The Girl from Ipanema” to the heights of popularity. “The Look of Love” was extremely popular and was even nominated for an Academy Award. As Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold note, through the song, the James Bond “parody outclassed the original” by striking a balance between Tin Pan Alley structure and subtly exotic content common in Bond songs of the era (2015: 83). The resulting performance of “The Look of Love” at the awards ceremony that year helped propel another Brazilian musician, Sérgio Mendes, and his band Brasil ’66 up the Billboard charts for “pop” and “adult contemporary” the next year. The association of bossa nova to empowered women who seduce, either on film or record, is reminiscent of both the racialized sexualization of Brazilian women (e.g., the mulata) as well as the broader trope of the dangerous Latina femme fatale. The femme fatale’s seductive wiles were often accompanied by undifferentiated Latin music. The best-​known precedent to the above examples is in film noir and neo-​noir from the decade before, where musical Otherness (including Latin styles) was a code for danger (cf. Haworth 2014). Richard Corber (1997) argues that film noir, in particular, was a major site for expressing the postwar crisis in masculinity. It makes sense that noir portrayals of women influenced the spy genre. She was the best available archetype to use as a basis for a strong female character. Both of these films portray a hapless male protagonist who struggles to maintain control over his sexuality to the tune of seductive bossa nova music. The international intrigue was no more important than the deceit in the bedroom. The Deadly Affair and Casino Royale show some of the ways that bossa nova figured into the discourses of the Cold War during the mid-​1960s. Like many cultural texts from their time, they utilized music to express anxieties about the changes undergoing masculinity. The template set by these films in tying bossa nova to that network of adult sociopolitical concerns—​technological change, shifts in geopolitics and the breakup of the British Empire, and the social advancement of women and racial minorities—​also resulted in some humor. It should be little surprise, then, that the transformations of bossa nova through these soundtracks, especially as it appeared in Dusty Springfield’s “The Look of Love” and Sérgio Mendes’s recording of it later that year, had far-​reaching consequences for the legacy of Brazilian music in English-​speaking markets in the coming years.

72  Bossa Mundo

Brazilian Music as Easy Listening Of the bossa nova musicians who made careers in the United States, few compare to the sustained successes enjoyed by Sérgio Mendes. As a skilled pianist and member of the segunda turma or “second team” of bossa nova musicians, Mendes benefited from being in the thick of the musical movement as it took over the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. He was also among the first to mix bossa nova with other pop musical styles. He distinguished himself by leading jazz and bossa nova jam sessions that eventually led to the formation of Sérgio Mendes’s Sexteto. As Ruy Castro put it, “What they played wasn’t exactly the featherweight bossa nova played by Jobim, João Gilberto, Roberto Menescal, and Milton Banana, but a variation approaching bop that jazz columnist Robert Celerier of the newspaper Correio da Manhã termed ‘hard bossa nova’ ” (Castro 2000:  216). When concert promoter Sidney Frey heard Sérgio Mendes’s Sextet play their hard, instrumental variety of bossa nova, he invited them to perform in the Carnegie Hall showcase at the end of 1962. Like many of the musicians from the Carnegie Hall concert, Mendes established a career in the United States. His success, however, peaked later than that of his compatriots. While his first US releases enjoyed respectable sales, it was not until Mendes made the leap to the Latin pop corner of Easy Listening at A&M Records that he established a winning formula. He expanded his backing group from the trio Brasil ’65 to the septet Brasil ’66. That allowed him to create what became his signature style. With the addition of female vocalists Lani Hall and Bibi Vogel, a larger rhythm section, and a repertoire of songs in both English and Portuguese, Sérgio Mendes and his new label A&M Records created a successful formula. Mendes’s approach also complemented label-​mate and owner Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. When his group performed “The Look of Love” at the 1968 Academy Awards telecast in place of Dusty Springfield, Sérgio Mendes and Brasil ’66 reached broad US publics. By decade’s close, Mendes had released numerous top 10 hits and established himself as a cornerstone of A&M’s catalogue. His unmatched crossover success represented the apex of bossa nova’s popularity among adult contemporary listeners. Like many of the artists that dominated the Billboard album and singles charts in the mid-​to-​late 1960s, Mendes often had multiple albums competing for sales. What set him apart was that his albums appealed to multiple demographics. Look Around (1968) charted well on Billboard’s Jazz, R&B, and Easy Listening LP charts. The

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  73 single from the album, “The Look of Love,” was so successful that it became a top 5 hit. In the end, his version was more commercially successful than Dusty Springfield’s. Mendes’s arrangement of the song emphasized an upbeat and bright approach. It opens with a left-​hand bass vamp on Mendes’s piano before Janis Hansen enters with the vocals. As it builds to the bridge, trombones enter with fast rhythms aligning the song to jazz-​pop sound that continued into the 1970s, as exemplified in songs by Blood, Sweat & Tears. Bacharach and David’s bossa nova foundation (and its inspiration in Astrud Gilberto’s vocals) nearly disappears. It becomes a pop song with references to Latin music, rather than the reverse. Whatever stereotypical Brazilian musical elements were left in the recording likely escaped public attention through most listeners’ awareness. Mendes’s other hits with Brasil ’66 show some of this inclination to embrace US pop music approaches. His cover of Jorge Ben’s “Mas Que Nada” from 1966 peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart. The literal meaning of the title for “Mas Que Nada” is “but nothing” and better understood as a dismissal, akin to “whatever.” The lyrics are made up of Jorge Ben’s penchant for nonsense vocables as well as a meta-​description of the song’s subject matter—​a type of samba mix that makes people dance. At the time when Ben first wrote and recorded the song in 1963, the musical mixture evident in “Mas Que Nada”—​samba, rock, and the Pernambucan rhythm maracatú—​was uncommon. It was an important antecedent to the tropicalist approaches that emerged just a few years later. His lyrics state, “Esse samba/​Que é misto de maracatú/​é samba de preto velho/​samba de preto tu” [That samba/​that’s a mix of maracatú/​it’s the samba of the old black man/​your black samba]. The song was a hit in Brazil. Of the many versions of the song, the one by bossa nova vocal group Tamba Trio in 1963 is the most similar to Mendes’s Latin pop formula. It mixes vocal harmonies in the upper register over a tight, jazzy rhythm section with a prominent rock rhythm in the piano. Since neither of Mendes’s vocalists spoke Portuguese, Mendes wrote out phoneticizations of the lyrics.18 “Mas Que Nada” was so successful that it eventually became Mendes’s signature song. He recorded it again in 1989 and 2006, the latter incorporating will.i.am from the hip-​hop group the Black Eyed Peas. 18 This problem was not unique to Brasil ’66. Jason Stanyek has an extensive study of the problems non-​native Portuguese speakers have when they sing songs in the language (n.d.).

74  Bossa Mundo His success with “The Look of Love” also showed that Mendes’s recording of an iconic rock or pop hit could do better on the charts than the original recording. It was a widespread practice for musicians to record songs from other genres during this period, and pop hits have long inspired jazz musicians.19 However, the treatment of music associated with the counterculture by Mendes and other performers in the Latin pop subgenre pushed these songs into easy listening. In what is perhaps the most telling example, Mendes’s version of “Fool on the Hill,” originally by the Beatles, did better on the charts than any Beatles recording in the late 1960s. It spent six weeks at the top of Billboard’s Easy Listening chart and peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The song hails from what is perhaps the Beatles’ most psychedelic outing—​the 1967 film and EP Magical Mystery Tour. For that song’s compound meter in the verse, the main work of the simplified bossa nova approach moves from Mendes’s piano to an electric organ, this time opting to voice more of the polyrhythms in bossa nova’s foundation. While the studio recordings by the Beatles in the late 1960s represented the popular apex of the counterculture, Mendes’s music appealed to a different sensibility. In some respects, Mendes’s unabashed appropriation of British and North American countercultural songs to his Latin pop sounds represents a commercial, musical version of what Thomas Frank describes as the “conquest” of cool (1997). While leftist critics of the era bemoaned mass production and consumption, the counterculture embraced symbols of manufactured culture (e.g., the popularity of the Volkswagen Beetle or Warhol’s “factory” approach to creativity) through performative codes. While in many cases, the older generations missed the joke, Mendes’s music was a prime example of the generational divide easing. Mendes’s Latin pop exemplified the logical conclusion of what cultural critics worried were the effects of the mass production of cultural goods confronting generational divisions in taste while also appealing to youth. Through his tight musical formula, Mendes captured the attention of a broad cross-​section of publics, outpacing countercultural icons in sales and chart status and appealing to both the ironic consumption of the counterculture and fans of easy listening. The youth rebellion represented by psychedelic rock ’n’ roll was rearranged for a broader audience to blend into the pop repertoire with a Latin pop underpinning. 19 Jack Hamilton (2016) discusses diverging approaches in covers by Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin to discuss the intersections of race and gender.

Adult Contemporary Bossa Nova  75 Bossa nova’s transition from the cutting edge of popular culture to its reduction into adult tastes and sexual enticement would have long-​term effects for Brazil’s musical brand in the following decades. Its status as the seduction music of choice for film soundtracks and bachelor pads in the mid-​1960s would continue in audiovisual representations of the country. As film scholar Tunico Amâncio (2000) convincingly shows, many of the most damaging stereotypes about Brazil (and its music) in film would only get more pronounced in the following decades as Brazil and Brazilians came to represent a variety of sexual fantasies in English-​language films. A good example of this is the way the film Next Stop Wonderland (1998, dir. B. Anderson) uses bossa nova both as a framing device and as the music of seduction by a Brazilian rogue. The Brazilian musicians who fared the best at the end of the 1960s among English-​speaking publics were those who were willing to adapt bossa nova to adult tastes and pop music trends far removed from bossa nova’s origins in samba. While gigging jazz musicians will be the first to tell you that many bossa nova songs continue in the performed repertoire and in jazz education programs, what made the music so revolutionary as transnational popular music in the early 1960s had the opposite effect by the next decade. It largely lost its connections to contemporary trends in Brazil and abroad, and, like most musical styles that outlast their peak in popularity, the bossa nova that persisted was largely the purview of enthusiasts. It was no longer commanding the attention of the musical mainstream. The continued commercial success of bossa nova records as easy listening—​ a genre largely composed of what Mitchell Morris (2013) describes as “modest songs” due to not aspiring to the compositional “greatness” that occupies much of music scholarship—​cemented the music as something removed from the countercultural values of Anglophone rock musicians and their publics. By decade’s end, rock signaled artistic ambition. Indeed, it is no coincidence that when jazz musicians such as Miles Davis courted a younger generation through what would eventually be dubbed “fusion,” they did so by incorporating rock, funk, and the “hot” percussion of Latin music. As I show in ­chapter 3, Brazilian musicians taking part in that generative period of music-​making largely abandoned the aesthetics of bossa nova in favor of funk, R&B, and Afro-​Brazilian rhythms.

3 From Fusion to Funk Brazilian Musical Strategies of Racial Affiliation in the 1970s

It didn’t take long for Brazilian musicians to disavow bossa nova in their search for Anglophone audiences. After bossa nova had been exhausted as a cutting-​edge pop genre, many Brazilian musicians affiliated themselves with sounds that directly linked them to broader musical strategies of the African diaspora. These musicians produced musical expressions of a transnational racial consciousness that allowed them to redefine the limits of sounding Brazilian; and through that change they took part in broader political strategies of resistance that marked the decade. Expressions of Black pride were trendy in music and cinema despite pushback against civil rights advances at the state and local level.1 Brazilian musicians took part in a rising tide of racial consciousness including markers of racial Otherness, striking a balance that capitalized on stereotypes of ethnic and national identities. This strategy largely worked. By the mid-​ 1970s, Brazilian musical approaches that moved beyond bossa nova were so trendy that mainstream music publications offered advice on how to navigate these new sounds. Down Beat advised drummers that they ought to incorporate instruments from around the world, especially from Brazil, “to sprinkle in a little salsa on their cooking” (Galm and Fowler 1975: 36–​37, emphasis in original). Just a few months later, both New Musical Express (NME) and Melody Maker urged readers to pay attention to the booming US Latin and Brazilian music scenes. NME stated, “Seeing as how The Blues was last decade’s thing and R&B/​ Soul was last year’s thing and reggae was last month’s thing and salsa was last week’s thing, why not be the very first in your crowd to get into the new music coming out of Brazil?” (Stephens 1976: 50). Meanwhile Melody Maker commissioned John Storm Roberts to pen a monthly column called “Viva 1 Daub and Kronengold (2015) discuss the roots and cultural influence of blaxploitation films of the 1970s. For the influence of soul and blaxploitation on the 1970s salsa scene, see Flores (2016).

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.003.0004

From Fusion to Funk  77 Latin!,” featuring what the magazine termed “America’s new boom music.” For his first column, he mapped out the US Latin music scenes, locating salsa on the East Coast and rock musicians who had caught “the Brazilian bug” (such as Carlos Santana) on the West Coast (Roberts 1976). Unlike previous iterations, this version of a Brazilian music boom in the United States and the United Kingdom was propelled by authors conveying specialist knowledge with a side helping of exoticism. The subsumption of Brazilian music into the vague “Latin” category of the period meant that many publics were exposed to the music without necessarily directing their attention to it. The Brazilian boom described in this chapter was largely based on moments of intercultural music-​making. Studies of these phenomena often focus on interpersonal relationships and the locales through which these musicians interact (Stanyek 2004; Stanyek n.d.; Moreno 2004; Karush 2016; Borge 2018). I focus instead on the interface between their recorded output and the process by which it was mediated and received by a wider audience. Just because there was far more interaction and collaboration between Brazilian musicians who had relocated or were passing through New York and Los Angeles does not mean that audiences, journalists, and critics normalized them. On the contrary:  the mediation process continued to mark them as Others—​a process that has endured to this day (Beserra 2005; Beserra 2008). The story I detail here demonstrates how integrated Brazilian musicians were in the musical worlds that shaped the decade. That they did so largely off the radar for most publics is a testament to the expansion of viable routes for establishing careers in Anglophone scenes. The trendiness of Brazil in this period was linked to what it meant to be a Brazilian abroad. This process of incorporation occurred, in part, through the growing numbers of Brazilian expatriates fleeing the military dictatorship.2 Starting in the 1970s, Brazilian music stereotypes shifted to be more explicitly tied to a racialized Other. Artists such as Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Sérgio Mendes, Deodato, and others leveraged their exotic appeal through the sounds of Blackness, indigeneity, and, by extension, Latinidad.3 By mapping their Brazilian 2 Bernadette Beserra (2005) shows Brazilian immigrants in the United States regularly negotiate their identity as Brazilians alongside pressures to identify as Latinos—​a process that itself is fraught with imperfections around racial and ethnic identity. 3 This is part of a broader trend. Spanish-​language broadcasting and marketing surged in the mid-​ 1970s United States. Dávila (2001) argues that the formation of “Hispanic” and later “Latino” marketing categories represents a conflation of race/​class/​nation in the US imaginary of racially diverse persons from Latin America.

78  Bossa Mundo nationality onto racial discourses, they altered Brazil’s musical brand. They were musicians with links to the African diaspora through their nationality and musical practice as well as through discourses far more abstract, and they leveraged Brazil’s complex ethnic image in varying ways. Print media accounts at the time used such language as “rainforest,” “exotic,” “brown-​ skinned,” and “Latin” to describe their musical choices. Their strategy largely sidestepped the phenotypical essence of African diasporic identification by drawing from the other non-​European element in the triangular notion of Brazilian identity: the indigenous Brazilian.4 In fact, the reception of Milton Nascimento is a prominent outlier. He did not need to perform his ties to the African diaspora via indigeneity since he was unambiguously (and visibly) Afro-​Brazilian, in comparison with the others working within the jazz, fusion, and funk scenes.5 Even as his bel canto vocal approach was unmistakably linked to the Catholic church and Western Art Music, his skin color allowed him to fit into prevailing narratives of Black pride in such a way that he did not need to promote his musical accomplishments through a discourse of primitivity. By contrast, Brazilians with lighter skin, such as Sérgio Mendes, celebrated the sounds of the Brazilian Northeast by exaggerating the supernatural mysteries and “roots” of musical practices in the region. Airto Moreira and Flora Purim traded on their racial and ethnic illegibility through their musical approaches as well as in their press materials. Naná Vasconcelos and Egberto Gismonti combined the indigenous and African sounds from Brazilian music with experimental approaches from other parts of the world in an early version of “new age” music. Finally, Eumir Deodato embraced the Afro-​Futurism and slick sounds that were most closely linked to funk (and eventually disco)—​music with a clear Black foundation. Many musicians who thrived in the 1970s did so through tactics that mapped Brazilian indigeneity onto the African diaspora. This practice 4 Indigeneity in Brazilian discourse takes on a different character than in the rest of the Americas. Like many indigenous peoples, the indigenous Brazilian population experienced a catastrophic decline after contact with Europeans, making them less numerous and prominent than Brazilians of African or European heritage. There are still indigenous Brazilians largely isolated from the rest of the country in areas such as the Pantanal and the Amazon. Their protection is enshrined in the constitution even though systemic corruption often means government officials break promises. Mainstream Brazilian culture continues to treat the índio as a source for humor and play, especially in telenovelas, while the caboclo—​a person of indigenous and Portuguese heritage—​is an iconic spirit in some sects of Afro-​Brazilian religious ritual. As descriptors, both índio and caboclo carry negative connotations. Both terms, especially índio, can also be used positively, depending on what is at stake. For an excellent historical examination of Brazilian indigeneity, see Guzmán (2013). 5 See Pond (2005) for an analysis of the symbolic importance of Africaneity in the best-​selling fusion album of the period, Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters from 1973.

From Fusion to Funk  79 added new weight to what Robert Stam and Ella Shohat describe as the “Red Atlantic” (2012). Borrowing from Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, Stam and Shohat trace the experience of dispossession and genocide of indigenous culture throughout the Atlantic world (2012). While it may be tempting to categorize the tactics of these musicians as trading one type of Other for another, Brazilian racial identity has functioned in the twentieth century as more of a prism, allowing for ethnicities to coexist and mix in ways that sometimes obscure discrimination but also allow for more difference in everyday life (as discussed in this book’s Introduction). The role of indigeneity gets muddier when considering how these musicians employed folklore, stereotypes, and timbres from Brazil’s Northeastern region where mixture is most visible. Primitivism via indigeneity has fueled Brazilian notions of a national culture since the modernism of the 1920s.6 During the 1970s, the sounds of the Northeast also distinguished the Brazilian contribution to fusion, funk, and rock from other strategies of incorporating world music or drawing on African imagery. At times, the references to religious ritual from Brazil’s Northeast lent other Latin American artists—​such as Carlos Santana—​a sense of homecoming through their collaborations with Brazilian artists. For example, the promotional materials for Santana’s Borboletta (1974) dubbed it his “return to the old neighborhood,” linking the album’s Afro-​Brazilian content to the rising salsa aesthetic coming from New  York’s famous el barrio (neighborhood), the nickname for Spanish Harlem (Display Ad—​Borboletta, 1974). Unlike fusion groups that trafficked in the sounds and images of Others from India and the African continent such as the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters group, these sounds of a primitive, indigenous Brazil were propagated by Brazilians, even if they themselves did not identify as having indigenous or African roots. By virtue of being Brazilians, and the subsequent mapping of racial identity onto nationality, their use of the music from that country was unquestioned as being opportunistic or appropriative. The differing criteria for understanding race in Brazil, the United States, and, to some extent, the United Kingdom exaggerate how publics and intermediaries framed these musicians’ creative output, and, by extension, Brazil’s musical brand. They demonstrate a repositioning of national heritage as racialized—​imbued with the mysteries of geographic distancing that 6 As I  note in ­chapter  2, this largely circulates via the concept of anthropophagy, or cultural cannibalism.

80  Bossa Mundo comes with global musical circulation during the 1970s. All of this happened while Brazil itself was still under a military dictatorship.

Creativity, Censorship, and Wordlessness: The Brazilian Dictatorship and Music At the end of the 1960s, it dawned on many Brazilian citizens that the military would run the country for a lengthy period, which would become dubbed the anos de chumbo, or the Leaden Years, characterized by the continued limits on political expression. This was in part due to the passage of the Fifth Institutional Acts of 1968 (the result of what some scholars describe as “a coup inside the coup”), which led to the loss of fundamental human rights. Under policies that began under dictator General Emílio Garrastazú Médici, the late 1960s through the late 1970s saw a period of rapid economic growth even as the gap between rich and poor worsened. Beginning in 1974, General Ernesto Geisel took over from the previous generals and initiated a series of reforms to slowly allow limited political organization and elections—​called the abertura (or “opening”)—​even as many of Geisel’s actions continued with the heavy hand that preceded him, owing mostly to what historian Thomas Skidmore (1988) describes as in-​fighting between the hard-​liners and moderates who wished only to ease authoritarian practices such as censorship, torture, and domestic surveillance. This climate of censorship inspired divergent musical responses: some musicians expressed the country’s mood through new styles, while others opted to sidestep words altogether due to both censorship and a desire to take part in new jazz currents. The most successful genre with the Brazilian public was a style of sentimental romantic ballad (música romántica) exemplified by the success of former Jovem Guarda singers Roberto Carlos and Erasmo. The genre was often dubbed by the music press in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo as música popular cafona, roughly meaning “tacky popular music.” It later transformed into brega and was among the most widely heard styles during the period (Araújo 2002: 16). As the decade progressed, those musicians jettisoned the more rock-​oriented styles in favor sentimental romantic ballads borrowing from calypso and bolero, among other pan-​Latin American styles (Araújo 1988). From one frame of reference, brega and its related genres exhibit a type of cosmopolitanism often ignored by mainstream Brazilian music histories, mixing pan-​Latin styles with pop. Further, the dividing line between protest

From Fusion to Funk  81 music and brega was permeable, with many examples of musical exchange between artists of the counterculture and singers of romantic ballads.7 The middle-​class sonic palate expanded to include overt expressions of racial pride in Blackness. In addition to the founding of afoxés, Afro-​Brazilian groups that perform versions of the music and rhythms of Candomblé on the street in Salvador in the Northeast state of Bahia, the period saw the flourishing of soul, funk, and reggae through links to the Black Power movement coming from the United States. Many members of these scenes used the English word “Black” when describing their musical movement (Hanchard 1994; McCann 2002; Alberto 2009; Naves 2010). The Northeastern region grew in influence from MPB to rock-​tinged innovations, including acts such as Raul Seixas and the group Novos Baianos. Similarly, musicians such as Jorge Ben Jor, Ed Motta, Banda Black Rio, and Tim Maia experimented with the overtly “Black” sounds of funk and soul music. The popularity of samba de morro and samba afro from the previous decade continued into a spirited return to the sounds of samba’s roots, widely known as samba de raiz (“roots samba”). Many MPB and tropicália musicians returned from exile in the early 1970s to a creative climate stifled by government censors, harassment, and intimidation. Yet in many instances, poetic ingenuity proved the limitations on lyrical censorship, and covert protest songs flourished.8 In one iconic case, lyrical censorship yielded unexpected results for singer and songwriter Milton Nascimento. In 1973, government censors demanded that he change the lyrics to some of the songs on his album Milagre dos Peixes (Miracle of the Fishes). Nascimento responded by singing lyric-​less vocables, thereby befuddling censors through vocalized protest. Government censors still complained that the tone of Nascimento’s voice was too aggressive, but his record label, Odeon, released the album to moderate success (Holmes 2017). The live double-​album from 1974 (based on the studio release) sold even better—​as is often the case in Brazil—​and the subsequent tour was hugely popular. Notably, the live album came at the end of the Leaden Years, and perhaps symbolized the transition to the abertura. Holly Holmes argues that 7 For a good example, see “Como Dois e Dois,” written by Caetano Veloso. Roberto Carlos was the first to record the song, in 1971 (in a CBS studio in St. Louis), merging soul and romantic song styles. The same year, Gal Costa recorded the song for her live album, -​Fa-​Tal-​Gal a Todo Vapor. 8 An example of ineffective censorship was Chico Buarque’s samba “Apesar de Você.” It used the veil of a romantic conflict to protest the regime in 1970. By the time censors recognized the song’s subversive content, in 1971, it had already sold over 100,000 copies. Although the government halted sales and broadcast of the song, they failed to destroy the master recording.

82  Bossa Mundo the impact of its experimental instrumentation, powerful wordless vocals, and production techniques allowed listeners to experience strong affective responses to the dictatorship (Holmes 2017). As we will see, Nascimento’s ability to vocalize his protest through his powerful voice had the additional benefit of making his music easiest to assimilate for jazz musicians and fans seeking out new sounds from Brazil in Anhlophone markets. Other Brazilian musicians recording for English-​speaking audiences also utilized the aesthetic strategy of wordless vocals, but for reasons that had little to do with a climate of censorship. By the late 1960s, singing without words was not new. Jazz vocalists since Louis Armstrong had employed the technique to demonstrate their ability to improvise without the constraint of creating new lyrics on the spot. Similarly, early João Gilberto songs such as “Bim-​bom” and “Hô-​bá-​lá-​lá” highlighted meaningless, wordless vocals, in their chorus; however, Gilberto’s wordless singing was typically counterbalanced with clever lyrics that ridiculed the excessive melodrama of samba-​canção in the 1950s (Treece 2013: 72). The practice of Brazilian vocalists singing without words expanded, not simply to comment on the contemporary state of censorship in the Brazilian recording industry:  in many cases, it gave them an opportunity to take an internationalist stance when they were recording and distributing their music in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in some cases, Japan. Wordless vocals allowed many Brazilian artists, including Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Edu Lobo, Hermeto Pascoal, and Naná Vasconcelos, to move away from the dominance of the written word and shift audience attention to timbre, melody, and harmony (Treece 2013: 80). In terms of wordless vocals, Hermeto Pascoal’s influence on other Brazilian jazz musicians working in the 1970s and 1980s was immense. As an albino from the Northeastern state of Pernambuco, he was uncomfortable with the way that Brazilian musicians in the mid-​1960s sought to build a musical nationalism through idealizing the music of the Northeast. Over the years, Pascoal developed an idea of Brazilian Universal Music as a direct reaction to the valorization and nationalism that was rampant in dictatorship-​era Brazil, which Jason Stanyek argues drove some of the ways that Brazilian musicians in the New  York scene in the 1970s approached sounding “natural” through a type of political ecology (n.d.). These musicians were also not generally noted for their lyrical skills. As Andrew Connell (2002) has shown, the environment of protest in MPB effectively marginalized musicians whose interests emphasized instrumental

From Fusion to Funk  83 musical creativity over poetic lyrics, thereby giving them additional incentives to pursue careers in the United States. Unlike the exile of Veloso, Gil, and Buarque, these musicians did not flee persecution; rather, they left of their own accord to pursue creative opportunities and integrate themselves into a variety of music-​related careers and scenes. Their adventurous approach to timbre, rhythm, and harmony fit well within the musical climate abroad. When they chose to sing without lyrics, they connected trends in Brazilian music with new musical ideas in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Milton Nascimento’s Fusion Collaborations in Black and Red Milton Nascimento’s star was rising in Brazil. Alongside Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and other musicians from the MPB generation, he performed in TV Record’s MPB festival from 1965. Two years later, keyboardist and arranger Eumir Deodato recommended Nascimento’s song “Travessia” for the International Song Festival (FIC), which was broadcast on the Globo television network. Nascimento offered a remarkably different approach to Brazilian popular song than his competition by mixing jazz harmonies, vocal approaches from the Catholic mass, and folk material from Minas Gerais. Shortly after beginning his career in the United States in the 1960s, Deodato championed Nascimento’s songwriting and vocal talents, recommending him to record producer and key cultural intermediary Creed Taylor. Nascimento signed with Taylor’s label, CTI Records (a subsidiary of A&M records from 1967 to 1970), based on the belief that his unique vocal talents could reach international audiences.9 Nascimento released Courage in 1969 backed by Deodato’s lush string arrangements and a band that featured musicians associated with what would soon be dubbed “fusion,” including Airto Moreira, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams. The opening track, “Bridges (Travessia),” featured Nascimento singing first in English and then in Portuguese, a formula that echoed Taylor’s production choices for “Girl from Ipanema” on Getz/​Gilberto. Although many jazz musicians took

9 For more on Creed Taylor’s CTI Records, see Carson (2008).

84  Bossa Mundo note of Nascimento at that point, the album’s sales were disappointing with the wider English-​speaking public. Among the jazz musicians who admired Nascimento’s approach to songwriting were saxophonists Paul Desmond and Wayne Shorter. Desmond, most famous for his extended tenure with jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, released an album of Brazilian music on CTI Records in 1969 with Nascimento’s songs accounting for over half of the album’s tracks. When some of Desmond’s Brazilian material was released in a compilation for the British market in 1972, Desmond explained to Max Jones of Melody Maker how he understood Nascimento’s music: It’s not bossa nova, and I’m not sure how much is yet to come because of the political situation in Brazil. Milton Nascimento’s songs are . . . well it’s a pity you can’t really hear the lyrics in Brazilian [sic]. I understand that they’re comparable with those of somebody like Paul Simon, say, and that the lyrics are at least 50 per cent of the music. And the melodies are delightful. These songs are very politically oriented, and people that play music like that in Brazil these days are in immense difficulty. (quoted in Jones 1972: 62)

Desmond’s awareness of the stakes for popular musical expression during the dictatorship is remarkable given that both the United States and the United Kingdom supported the dictatorship and Anglophone musicians largely made no comment.10 Wayne Shorter’s investment in Nascimento’s music went far beyond adding his songs to his repertoire. He recorded a version of the second track from Nascimento’s Courage—​“Vera Cruz”—​for his album Moto Grosso Feio in 1970, but he also made a point of trying to see him live and bringing him to the United States. According to Michelle Mercer’s biography of Shorter, he and the rest of Weather Report so prioritized attending one of Nascimento’s 1972 shows in Rio de Janeiro that they ended their own concert early to get to the other venue in time to catch some of his concert (Mercer 2004: 168). Shorter’s reasons for being drawn to Nascimento’s music express, through differing racial affinities, the appeal of other Brazilian musicians working in the United States and the United Kingdom. Shorter stated, “I was moved by how Milton had moved away from bossa nova and away from the typical 10 James Green (2010) shows that many Brazilians assumed that Americans spending time in Brazil supported the regime.

From Fusion to Funk  85 Brazilian pop format. [. . .] He was not like Jobim—​he’s got more of an Indian or Amazonian or African element” (quoted in Mercer 2004: 167). The sentiment that Nascimento’s music was different from bossa nova expanded well beyond the jazz market. Shorter’s blending of Indian, Amazonian, and African in his praise of Nascimento shows how extensively primitivist discourses influenced Nascimento’s reception, even when collaborating with someone who demonstrated such great admiration for his music. In 1974, Shorter also helped pay for Nascimento, Wagner Tiso, and Robertinho Silva to travel to North America to perform with Flora Purim at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The three visiting Brazilian musicians then went to Malibu, California, where they joined Herbie Hancock, Airto Moreira, and others on Shorter’s Native Dancer sessions. Nascimento’s contributions would be so crucial that the album cover read “featuring Milton Nascimento.” The opening track of Native Dancer, “Ponta de Areia,” demonstrates the importance of timbre and asymmetry in Nascimento’s international recordings and performances. It begins with Nascimento’s doubled falsetto voice singing in unison with the piano in a 9/​4 time signature. The asymmetrical meter at a slow tempo creates a destabilizing effect, adding to what Martha Ulhôa describes as Nascimento’s penchant for a unique sense of time in comparison with other MPB artists (Carvalho 1995). The doubling of his vocals allows him to anchor the track, whether he soars in his highest range or descends to his chest voice. The moments when he dips to his chest voice (marked in bold in the following paragraph) stand out and emphasize the power of his interpretive choices as a singer; they generally occur at the end of every other line, giving his delivery additional formal unity and balancing out the asymmetry of the song’s meter. Ponta de areia ponto final Da Bahia-​Minas estrada natural Que ligava Minas ao porto ao mar Caminho de ferro mandaram arrancar Velho maquinista com seu boné Lembra do povo alegre que vinha cortejar [Wordless vocals] Maria fumaça não canta mais Para moças flores janelas e quintais Na praça vazia um grito um oi Casas esquecidas viúvas nos portais

86  Bossa Mundo While the song’s meter may be difficult for an embodied sense of time, the regular return of his chest voice on a lower pitch demonstrates that timbre is the organizing principle for his performance. Similarly, the overall arrangement of the track highlights the dominance of Nascimento’s vocals. For the first forty seconds, it is just Nascimento and Hancock’s piano in unison. Then Nascimento switches to his signature wordless vocals and the rhythm section joins to support him with a clear, bouncing groove. The rhythm section’s presence makes it easier to feel how the asymmetry of the meter comes around every two bars; and yet, once Nascimento returns to the lyrics—​“Maria fumaça não canta mais”—​Shorter has still not been heard. Indeed, for the first ninety seconds of the track, Shorter’s signature soprano saxophone sound is nowhere to be found. Once he does enter, the bouncing groove disappears and the track moves between sections of Shorter’s solo with and without rhythmic and textural accompaniment. Around three minutes in, Shorter plays the head on his own. Nascimento joins him with wordless vocals as they play the melody in unison. When Nascimento returns to the lyrics for the line beginning “Maria fumaça,” Shorter’s saxophone melodies shift into a supporting role. Thus, by virtue of singing in the beginning and end of the recording, and by the amount of time his voice is in the foreground, Nascimento dominates this famous example of intercultural music-​making. Native Dancer was a watershed for Brazilian music with critics and the press. Critics praised it for transcending the limits of language, race, and even the recording industry. In his July 1975 review of the album for Down Beat, Howard Mandel described Nascimento as “the gifted Brazilian vocalist/​composer/​lyricist” whose “expressive Portuguese seems not a foreign language but a universal tongue capable of transcending verbal expression.” In his description of “Lilia,” the album’s eighth track, Mandel notes the blending of timbres of saxophone and voice:  “Nascimento’s alto yodel is indistinguishable from Shorter’s soprano sound” (Mandel 1975: 18). For Mandel, Nascimento’s voice was an instrument: the words did not matter. In Ebony, Phyl Garland characterized Native Dancer as “a kind of music that reaches all the way back from Western European impressionism to the defiant intonation of Black America and the African-​ based rhythms of Brazil. The rich melodies are immediately inviting as Nascimento and Shorter weave hauntingly lovely vocal and instrumental variations” (Garland 1975:  28). A  year later, David Hollenberg of the new left-​leaning Mother Jones magazine described the album as a

From Fusion to Funk  87 “perfect illustration” of the rising trend of musical eclecticism that was coming to characterize jazz in the 1970s. Further, he cited the “genuine” music of Native Dancer as a rarity in the jazz record business of the period (Hollenberg 1976: 63).11 What united the reception of the album in the mid-​1970s was a projection of the political ideals of African American music-​making and ethnic diversity onto a collaboration that was but one of many examples of Brazilian musicians active in the fusion, rock, and funk scenes of the period. Most of the credit in these reviews goes to the agency and inventiveness they ascribe to Shorter. They praise Nascimento’s skill, but Shorter receives most of the creative credit. His role as intermediary, alongside the work of Creed Taylor, facilitated Nascimento’s reaching Anglophone publics. Some of the distance with which critics approached Nascimento’s role on the album connects to the exoticism and aesthetic distancing at play in the album’s title, “Native Dancer.” It is a Pan-​African collaboration, but it also draws on the imagery and fantasies of untouched, native music-​making, a trope of the Red Atlantic. The emphasis on the “dancer” in the album title is especially notable given Nascimento’s tendency to keep his body still during onstage performances.12 The “dancer” in question was referring not to Nascimento, but rather an unspecified woman.13 The example of Nascimento’s success in the United States via indigeneity shows that the discursive strategy of mapping the índio onto blackness circulated widely, especially when it joined the timelessness of primitivism with the Afro-​Modernity of Pan-​Africanism (cf. Hanchard 1999). The collaboration was so fruitful for both musicians that Shorter played soprano saxophone for “Ponta de Areia” on Nascimento’s release Minas in Brazil the following year. While Nascimento was clearly already becoming a cult figure among Brazilian music enthusiasts before collaborating with Shorter, his name among English-​speaking publics would thereafter be tied to Native Dancer.

11 Ed Morales describes Native Dancer as “the most successful jazz-​Brazilian fusion record ever” and that Nascimento’s music “had a profound effect on the fusion music community in the United States” (2004: 227). Greg Tate describes the album as “The kind of once-​in-​a-​lifetime production like Coltrane’s A Love Supreme that redefined the breadth and cosmopolitan scope of African American music” (Tate 2016). 12 Special thanks to Daniel Sharp for reminding me of this point. 13 Given the depictions of women that populated the album covers for Speak No Evil (1966) and Super Nova (1969), it is likely that the dancer Shorter was referring to a dancing woman perhaps from Brazil. Special thanks to Josh Rutner for this point.

88  Bossa Mundo

Sérgio Mendes’s Primal Roots Sérgio Mendes’s career was on a slight decline from the height of his bossa nova popularity. He was part of the first wave of bossa nova immigrants to the United States after establishing himself as part of the hard bossa nova scene. As recounted in c­ hapter 2, much of Mendes’s success in the mid-​to-​late 1960s relied on his adaptation of bossa nova to the emerging easy listening and adult contemporary formats. Thus, when bossa nova began to grow stale in the early 1970s—​and the name “Brasil ’66” no longer sounded up-​to-​date—​ he looked elsewhere to grow as a musician and businessman, a move he made official by way of a Billboard announcement that his band would be called “Brasil ’77” in July 1971. Over the next two years, much of Mendes’s output as a producer and bandleader—​culminating in the release of his album Primal Roots—​drew explicitly on the iconic status of Brazil’s Northeast region. As Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. argues, the iconic status of the Northeast was invented by the Brazilian elite as a project of nation-​building (2014). The region’s poverty and heightened prevalence of Afro-​Brazilian religious rituals lends it a heightened status in the country’s imaginary as an important locus of “roots,” folklore, and mysticism. In this section, I show that Mendes’s career choices used sounds from Brazil’s Northeastern region to evoke Afro-​ Brazilian currents in his music and alter Brazil’s musical brand. Changes had been afoot for Mendes before he tweaked his band name. In 1970, he replaced American vocalist Lani Hall (who famously sang Portuguese lyrics by learning them phonetically) with Brazilian vocalist Gracinha Leporace, who was by that point his wife (both Hall and Leporace were featured on Stillness, released in 1971). Soon he expanded his independence from A&M Records by establishing a few publishing companies and reinventing his band. As reported in Variety, he established Selva Music (BMI) and Station One (ASCAP) to “administer copyrights obtained from Brazilian song festivals” and Rodra (BMI) and Berna (ASCAP) to manage his domestic copyright.14 He also built his own recording studio in the basement of his home in Encino in the San Fernando Valley and began to produce other Brazilian musicians, such as Edu Lobo, and his old hard bossa nova 14 Mendes founded one company for each type of publishing rights management since ASCAP and BMI are competing performance rights organizations; both monitor the rights of members’ music in performance and broadcast. Ruy Castro explains that Brazilian artists sought to use Mendes’s US publishing houses due to previous negative dealings with US publishers in the 1960s (2000: 315).

From Fusion to Funk  89 group Bossa Rio (Sergio Mendes Expands Publishing Setup 1971). Famed critic Leonard Feather even described Mendes as a “businessman producer-​ manager-​tycoon” (Feather 1971: 21). He continued the trend and, by 1973, had expanded his entrepreneurship to include investments in a chicken franchise in Brazil and an attempt to market and sell a Brazilian fruit drink in the United States (Gelormine 1973: 60). Mendes’s work as Edu Lobo’s producer signaled his interest in different, more experimental directions. In his public statements about working with Lobo, he described the appeal of the Brazilian Northeast as part of his reason for investing in Lobo’s music. “Edu has something quite different from Brasil ’66,” he said. “He uses a lot of percussion on the record. The way he writes songs, it’s not a carioca type of thing, not a song from Rio like Jobim would write. It has its own flavor; he has captured the rawness, the earthiness that you find in the northern part of Brazil” (quoted in Feather 1971: 21). That appeal to rawness is in keeping with Brazilian attitudes about the Northeast that had been reinvigorated by the boom in popularity of Luis Gonzaga’s baião music across Brazil in the late 1940s and 1950s. Lobo was part of a coterie of segunda turma bossa nova musicians who were famous for adapting regional modes and rhythms in their music. That appeal to an essence of the working poor via regional mixtures and lyrical references to Brazil’s iconic Northeast region defined the early successes of the televised song festivals that were instrumental in the creation of the nascent genre of MPB in the mid-​to-​late 1960s and early 1970s (Ulhôa 1999).15 His song “Arrastão” (co-​written with Vinicius de Moraes) was famous for its groundbreaking performance by iconic singer Elis Regina in the first televised festival in 1965 (on TV Excelsior). When the bossa nova movement began to splinter after the military coup in 1964, Lobo politicized his music by embracing Afro-​Brazilian rhythms from the Northeast—​even as he was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro.16 Like other bossa novistas politicized by the dictatorship (e.g., Nara Leão), Lobo sought new, experimental venues for his music, such as the theater and international performing contexts. 15 Lobo’s interest in the sounds of the Northeast probably began much earlier since he, along with many other bossa nova musicians, had been so inspired by Gonzaga’s music that he started his music education on the accordion. See Castro (2000). 16 As Treece (2013) and Napolitano (2007) recount, one of the major factions of post-​coup bossa nova musicians sought to nationalize their music by looking to samba de morro and rhythms from the Northeast. With the exception of Baden Powell, the majority of the bossa nova musicians who made this move were middle-​class white Brazilians living in Rio de Janeiro.

90  Bossa Mundo Lobo had recorded and performed with other jazz musicians in the United States (cf. From the Hot Afternoon with Paul Desmond from 1969), but his work with Mendes was the first time that he was the featured artist for a US release. Thus, Mendes’s decision to champion Edu Lobo’s music for his first outing as a producer indicated a broader creative reorientation beyond his entrepreneurship. It didn’t hurt that Lobo hired many of the rising stars that would define the Brazilian presence in fusion: in addition to Gracinha Leporace, the album featured Hermeto Pascoal on flute and piano, Airto Moreira on percussion, and Oscar Castro-​Neves on guitar. Lobo represented a departure from Mendes’s patented blend of pop, rock, and “Latin” hits, even as Mendes adapted Lobo’s sound to make it marketable for the easy listening and adult contemporary publics. The album, Sérgio Mendes Presents Lobo, included a version of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” (Mendes’s cover of another Beatles tune, “Fool on the Hill,” had the distinction of outselling the original recording, as discussed in ­chapter 2). The overall approach on Sérgio Mendes Presents Lobo hinted at what was to come with Primal Roots. For example, the first track, “Zanzibar,” pairs the Northeastern timbres and rhythms of the viola caipira and baião beats on the triangle and drums with Brasil ’66–​style accents on the piano. The viola caipira is a plucked 10-​string lute and is named for its links to música caipira, a descriptive and sometimes derogatory phrase for rural music (depending on the tone of the speaker and context). The sound of this instrument instantly evokes a level of Northeastern nostalgia for audiences sensitive to the signs. It would be the equivalent of using a lap-​steel guitar or dobro to signal southern US vernacular traditions. (When Mendes recorded the same song for his 1971 release, País Tropical, he abandoned most of the Northeastern timbres.) There is also the persistent presence of Lobo’s wordless vocables on many tracks. As mentioned previously, wordless vocals were an approach that spread among Brazilian musicians wishing to express a type of musical internationalism. In this case, the vocables were closely linked to sounds and images from the Northeast. Without the presence of a foreign language (Portuguese) or accented English, the music was free to reach wider audiences. When he was promoting his work as Lobo’s producer, Mendes expressed some defensiveness when Leonard Feather asked him about the extent to which he had diluted Brazilian music in order to attain financial success: What is authenticity? [.  .  .] If you try to remain too pure, too ethnic, it becomes an intellectual trip [.  .  .] [M]‌y roots are Brazilian, and the

From Fusion to Funk  91 basic rhythmic element is still there, whatever the origin of the tune. Everything is international today. I don’t like to put a flag on music. The Beatles don’t play “English” music. By the same token, if you want to hear real Brazilian music, you’ve got to go through the Amazon. (quoted in Feather 1971: 21)

Through his defense of his musical approach, Mendes tied the prevailing discourses of Brazilian musical essentialism among Anglophone music press to the implied primitive roots of the hinterlands and Amazon—​a region far removed from most of the popular music developments in Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1972, Mendes released Primal Roots—​Raízes, for its release in Brazil—​ as an overt celebration of Afro-​Brazilian music from the Northeast. The first track, “Promise of a Fisherman” is rare in contrast with other Brazilian songs circulating during the period. Its only previous appearance in the United States was on composer Dorival Caymmi’s own recording. (It later appeared on Santana’s 1974 album, Borboletta.) Originally titled “A Promessa do Pescador” in Portuguese, the track is the longest on the album (at eight minutes) and features a heavy helping of hand percussion and references to rhythms tied to Brazil’s Northeast via Candomblé. Like other songs by Caymmi, the lyrics touch on subject matter closely tied to Bahia—​in this case, praising Iemanjá, the popular Candomblé orisha associated with the sea. Mendes’s arrangement featured whistles, chimes, hand claps, the pandeiro, and wordless vocals—​all hinting at the sounds of a processional in religious ritual. Primal Roots’ links to Afro-​Brazilian religious ritual are clearer with track 4, “Iemanjá,” composed by Afro-​Samba pioneer Baden Powell. Mendes’s creative choices show a forceful evocation of Northeastern musical textures. Powell limited his arrangement—​which appears on his 1969 album 27 Horas no Estúdio—​to finger-​picked guitar, hand percussion, and voice, singing wordless syllables and the word “Iemanjá” in unison with the lower notes on the guitar. By contrast, Mendes’s version builds on the spare foundation set by Powell and adds further indexes of the Northeast region. At first, the arrangement mirrors Powell’s, with Mendes’s voice singing along with the lower notes on the guitar. At around 47 seconds, the musical texture fills out with direct Northeastern musical timbres. Gracinha Leporace’s voice enters in unison with the viola caipira. The layers in the track build until Mendes’s piano enters, playing a riff in unison with the nylon-​stringed guitar. Leporace

92  Bossa Mundo and Mendes sing vocables in unison over that driving finger-​picking and hand percussion. Notably, the percussion never leaves the mix, and when the viola caipira enters, it is only on the right channel, while the hand percussion stays on the left. That production choice—​keeping clearly audible both the viola caipira and the percussion throughout—​demonstrates how deliberately the sounds of the Northeast dominate the song. This version of “roots” is explicit about its relationship to the percussive side of Afro-​Brazilian religion. Mendes’s production also fills in the rhythms that Baden Powell’s recording left to the listener’s imagination. Yet, like many other musicians working in the United States during the early 1970s, his embrace of the Northeast did not end with the musical material on Primal Roots; in fact, the method through which A&M Records chose to market the album drew on the folkloric roots of the region: an ad in Billboard described it as “Music steeped in tradition. Music founded on superstition. Music genuinely Brasilian. [. . .] An album that recreates the primitive sensuality of authentic folk and popular music of Brazil. Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’77, ‘Primal Roots’:  the album that makes it very clear why they’re called ‘Brasil,’ no matter what the year” (Display Ad—​Primal Roots 1972). While the album’s marketing did not result in substantial sales, it expanded its public to those looking for music that more prominently highlighted the Afro-​diasporic connection in jazz and popular music. Ebony critic Phyl Garland praised the album: “The taproot of black American music is African music [. . .] Though Mendes, who hails from a nation of ostensible racial amalgamation, has not ordinarily been identified as a black artist, this record is a tribute to the African sources in Brazilian music” (1973: 26). It is clear from how Garland unites African American music with what he calls Brazil’s “African sources” that Mendes’s gesture toward the Northeast was achieving the desired effect. A year later, however, Mendes abandoned the references to the Brazilian Northeast for his more conventional mix of bossa nova and pop—​including an English-​language version of “Águas de Março”—​for Vintage 74 on Bell Records. In his two-​star review of the album for Down Beat, Charles Mitchell lamented, “As for you, Sergio, you shouldn’t have shown your hand on Primal Roots, for now I know that you’re a fine musician. The stuff on Vintage 74 just won’t do after that one” (1974: 30). In spite of this response, Mendes continued to limit his attempts to align his music with “the taproot of black America” through an increased appeal to Rhythm & Blues in his Brasil ’77 sound.

From Fusion to Funk  93

Airto and Flora: The Power Couple of Brazilian Jazz Fusion In 1975, Billboard ran a brief news item announcing that Flora Purim was scheduled to perform with her husband Airto Moreira and Hermeto Pascoal at a federal prison. At the time, Purim was serving a sentence—​for cocaine possession with intent to distribute—​from an arrest in 1971. A day before her sentence began, she recorded her second album for Milestone Records, Stories to Tell, and by the time she was released from prison, she had won the Down Beat readers’ poll for “best female vocalist” for the third year in a row, beating out such giants as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. Her incarceration and subsequent legal troubles set the tone for her press coverage for the rest of the decade (Lake 1975). By 1976, when she was released, her talent was in such high demand that she was the top artist in Milestone Records’ catalog, and her records were also selling well enough as imports in the United Kingdom that the record label established domestic pressings (Dallas 1975). Not even prison could contain Purim’s immense talent. Moreira and Purim dominated the jazz world in the 1970s to such an extent that their combined recordings (including solo and session work) number well over one hundred. While Purim did well in Jazz Vocalist polls, Moreira so changed the game as a percussionist that Down Beat created a separate “Percussion” category in its polls starting in 1975, to properly situate his influence. According to Leonard Feather, their showing in the 1976 readers’ poll was the first time that a married couple won their respective categories (Feather 1976: 31). The first year that the “Percussion” category existed in the magazine’s polls, he handily won both the readers’ and critics’ polls. Early into the 1970s, his creative imprint was so iconic that musicians and critics referred to him simply as “Airto,” a status normally reserved for top rock and pop acts.17 Unlike the majority of Brazilian émigrés to the United States, the success of Purim and Airto represented a different approach to the sounds of Brazil—​ an approach that was due, in part, to their upbringing and relationship to Brazilian politics in the 1960s. Purim was born and raised in a Jewish family in Rio de Janeiro and she initially found success as an interpreter of bossa nova songs. By contrast, Airto presented as someone of clear Portuguese heritage, even though his parents were practitioners of Umbanda, a spiritist

17 I refer to him as “Airto” throughout this section to maintain the convention.

94  Bossa Mundo religion that melds the Afro-​Brazilian practice of summoning spirits with the continued worship of Catholic saints.18 At times, he claimed to be of both Portuguese and indigenous Brazilian stock (Williams 1972a: 53). Although he was born in the small town of Itaiópolis in the state of Santa Catarina, Airto’s family relocated on many occasions and he eventually settled in São Paulo.19 He established himself as a serious jazz musician in 1962 with the Sambalanço Trio, a group that aggressively merged the progressive jazz of bandleaders like Miles Davis and John Coltrane with a Brazilian perspective. After the trio disbanded in 1965, Airto experimented with a few groups before forming Quarteto Novo with Theo de Barros, Haroldo do Monte, and flutist and keyboard player Hermeto Pascoal.20 The Quarteto was influential for merging regional Brazilian sounds and jazz. They were the backing band for many Brazilian singers, including Purim. That adaptability made them a good fit for the protest song movement, which was using the televised song festivals to voice their dissent. In 1966 and 1967, the group backed protest singers such as Geraldo Vandré and Edu Lobo in their award-​winning performances. In the broadcast of the 1967 Record “Festival da Canção” performance of “Ponteio” by Lobo and Marília Medalha, the din of the enthusiastic studio audience is so loud that at times only Pascoal’s flute cuts through. Around the time that Airto was playing with the Sambalanço Trio, Purim was active in Rio de Janeiro’s bossa nova scene. In 1964, she recorded Flora e M.P.M. for Odeon. The album was largely a collection of bossa nova songs with the notable exception of “Hava Nagila”—​a song with Hasidic roots that Ashkenazi Jews often dance to at celebrations. After the 1964 coup, she found the climate of censorship unbearable. In 1967, shortly after she and Airto married, she moved to the United States. Airto followed a few months later.21 In interviews, Airto claimed that he was happy to stay in Brazil forever, but that the censorship of the dictatorship was suffocating for Purim (Cross and Coleman 2009: 78–​79). Airto flew to the United States at the end of 1967 to 18 In contradistinction with Candomblé, where the worship and possession ritual centers on animal sacrifice and the summoning of orishas (Yoruban deities), Umbanda practitioners summon ancestors and those who once walked the earth while continuing to praise orishas. Its development in Brazil began in the 1930s and was generally more “white” than Candomblé due to its links to the European spiritism of Allan Kardec. For an excellent study of Umbada practitioners and their music, see Gidal (2016). 19 For more on the different forms of cosmopolitanism in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, see Goldschmitt (2019). 20 The group was originally a trio. Pascoal was the last to join. 21 There is no clear picture of when exactly he made this move. Some sources state “by 1968,” while others state he moved in 1967. See Cross and Coleman (2009) and Williams (1972b) for an example of the contradiction.

From Fusion to Funk  95 encourage Purim to return with him to Brazil (without success). Soon after, both musicians found steady gigs—​Flora was tapped to work with pianist Duke Pearson, and later with saxophonist Stan Getz—​that made staying in the United States more attractive. Working with Miles Davis in his Bitches Brew band, Airto leveraged his identity as a Brazilian to navigate the racial politics of the era. Being Brazilian allowed him to skip Davis’s famous question, “Is he Black or White?,” during a period when some of Davis’s bandmates were invested in the politics of Black Power. According to Airto’s own words, “that saved me, because I’m White!” (Cross and Coleman 2009:  83). Moreira readily admitted that his background and upbringing from the South of Brazil made him even more white, given that the area is largely dominated by Italian and German immigrants. Indeed, alongside its low per capita percentage of Afro-​Brazilians, the region also has what sociologist Edward Telles describes as a low exposure of whites to non-​whites (2004: 204). Airto’s extensive use of wordless vocals in his recordings added further heft to his mapping of racial difference onto his nationality. As I note throughout this chapter, many Brazilian musicians working in the United States featured large sections of wordless vocals in their songs. Airto’s use of wordlessness was of a different character from that employed by Purim, who used her voice like an instrument with a vast timbral and melodic range. Alongside an occasional lyric, Airto’s solo albums in the 1970s prominently featured wordless singing and chanting. It is such a noticeable feature, in fact, that in an interview with Airto from 1989, Chris McGowan thought that the technique referenced indigenous Brazilian chanting. Airto corrected him, stating that he sang whatever came to his mind, and that it might have to do with his upbringing in Umbanda (McGowan 2014). The opening tracks from his first two solo albums demonstrate how Airto employed an adventurous approach to wordless vocals and percussive timbres. “Aluê,” from Natural Feelings (1970), was co-​written by Airto and Purim and features them both on vocals, as well as Ron Carter on bass, Sivuca on guitar, and Hermeto Pascoal on harpsichord. The song begins with some simple lyrics about the sun and sea in both Portuguese and in English. Purim and Airto then sing wordless vocals in unison using mostly chest voice as a bridge before Airto sings a nasal melody accompanied by Pascoal’s harpsichord. At times, his voice mimics twangy timbres akin to a jaw harp. Similarly, the song “Andei” by Hermeto Pascoal from Seeds in the Ground (1971) features a mix of Airto’s chest voice, shouts, yelps, and

96  Bossa Mundo melodic improvisations. The nasal tone of his vocal solo approximates the buzzy timbre of the berimbau while extending into a much broader melodic range.22 Airto’s facility as a percussionist outshines his vocal approach while also adding new melodic elements. He maintains the Brazilian core of his music through instruments that are so iconic they function as powerful sonic symbols of indigenous and vernacular Brazilian music. For these albums, released on Buddah Records, Airto embraced vocal timbres that most vocalists avoid, which had the effect of primitivizing his music. In the marketing blurb for Natural Feelings on Dusty Groove Records—​an online shop that specializes in rare music on LP and CD—​they describe it like this:  “One of Airto’s best albums ever—​and one we never tire of hearing! [.  .  .] The overall sound is quite rootsy, without many fusion touches at all” (Dusty Groove n.d.). That “rootsy” element was also at work on his second album—​its complete title being Seeds in the Ground: The Natural Sounds of Airto. The choice here was to fortify the connection between Brazilian timbres—​especially those tied to Afro-​Brazilian music—​as somehow more native, primal, and natural than the other possibilities for Brazilian music at the time, such as the legacy of the cool and laid-​back approaches that formed a foundation of bossa nova. These two examples also demonstrate the lyrical limitations of Airto’s early work, which upend the expectation that Brazilian music would be incomprehensible to English-​speaking audiences. Airto’s reasons for wordless singing contrast with those of a famed letrista such as Nascimento, who omitted lyrics as a creative, political choice, for Milagre dos Peixes. In a review of Identity (1975), produced by Herbie Hancock and released on Arista Records, Alan Heineman laments how ineffective Airto’s lyrics are on the first track: “In general, his vocals are sincere and emotionally pure, but the lyrics interfere:  moreover, when he needs a special effect, as on the quasi-​operatic vocal in Cambina, his awkwardness is painful,” and he later complains that “Airto’s vocals take the intensity down a peg or two” (Heineman 1976:  20–​21). That reviewers and fans noticed the awkwardness of lyrics in his albums demonstrates the lack of clear fit for his musical contributions beyond percussive inventiveness in the jazz fusion scene of the era. 22 The berimbau is a single-​stringed musical bow that has strong ties to Afro-​Brazilian musical practices. It most commonly appears in the percussive music accompanying the dance-​fight style capoeira, but many other musicians use the unique timbre of the instrument to index ties to Africa. For a detailed study of the instrument, see Galm (2010).

From Fusion to Funk  97 Because Purim was a trained vocalist with a wide range, she took singing without lyrics to new heights, employing not only scat syllables over smooth melodies, but also extended vocal techniques that spoke to the practice’s affinity with the countercultural spirit of experimentation of the early 1970s. Purim’s vocal adventurousness was part of the reason why she and Airto were tapped for the first incarnation of the famous fusion band Return to Forever when it was still known as “Chick Corea and Return to Forever,” or simply as Corea’s backing band. Although she did sing lyrics in her recordings with the fusion group, some of the breakaway hits from the first incarnation of Return to Forever were the ones where she employs melodious scatting and piercing cracks, sighs, and screams. A  good example of this is in the title track, “Return to Forever,” from the group’s first album, in 1972. At standout moments in the track, Purim alternates between singing in unison with Joe Farrell’s soprano saxophone and pushing her voice to the extremes of cracks and breaks in her highest range. Similarly, on “Spain,” the nine-​minute-​plus final cut from Light as a Feather from later that year, she sings the smooth, rising and falling contours of the main melody in unison with Farrell’s flute. Whenever the tune comes to the bridge, she and Airto shout and holler in approval, egging the group on as the bass drops out and the keyboard and flute play a fast-​paced, syncopated, and angular melody in unison. Purim gave the press many reasons for why she did so much scatting. In a 1977 feature on her in the Washington Post, she told Larry Rohter that it had to do with linguistic difficulties: “I couldn’t sing in English . . . and Americans didn’t want to hear Portuguese. So to avoid conflict, I chose not to sing lyrics at all. It evolved out of necessity, really” (1977: B8). A year earlier, she told John Rockwell of the New York Times that Pascoal was crucial in steering her toward her adventurous approach to her voice (Rockwell 1976:  30). Avid electric jazz fans of the time would have heard Hermeto Pascoal’s vocal improvisations on Miles Davis’s Live-​Evil (1971). Notably, Pascoal’s tenure with Davis was right around the same time that Airto, Purim, and Pascoal recorded Airto’s first solo album, Natural Feelings. Purim’s status as woman singer in front of the band meant that her scatting was interpreted differently than it was for other musicians discussed in this chapter. As many scholars of popular music and gender note, the lead singer is the member of the group who receives the most attention, for better or worse. That is especially the case for women. Purim’s wordless vocals were largely interpreted as the experimental fringe of scatting, since there was already a legacy of jazz vocalists—​such as Louis Armstrong and

98  Bossa Mundo Ella Fitzgerald—​doing so. It helped her case that she called her technique “vocalise.”23 In a 1972 review of Return to Forever, Richard Williams, writing for Melody Maker, took issue with Chick Corea’s lyrics as performed by Purim, due to the awkwardness of their Scientology content. He also noted that her “vocal improvising can grate against the overall sound of the instrument” (1972b: 36). Other music journalists, such as Fred Kirby, writing for Variety, described her as “splendid in English or Portuguese” (1976: 100). Her vocal approach also increased her recognizability in a crowded field. Billboard went so far as to describe her approach as instrumental to her success at winning jazz polls, stating that she “leans heavily on a personalized brand of scat singing” (“Flora Purim: She Scats to the Top” 1975). As either a point of controversy or an asset to her fame, Purim’s success was intricately tied up with her vocal agility that transcended the bounds of language. By contrast, Airto’s love of singing without lyrics fit within frameworks that operated in discourses of Otherness largely limited to men not known for vocal talent. He was in the company of rhythm section members who sang, moaned, and used other vocalizations during performances, even as they never billed themselves as vocalists. When they used their voices, it was most often received by audiences as an expression of jouissance in improvisation and performance. For example, Keith Jarrett—​Airto’s colleague from his work with Miles Davis’s band—​performed an infamous mode of improvisation; he sang, sighed, and wailed alongside the notes he played during his series of solo improvisatory concerts during the early 1970s (cf. Ake 2002:  104). Although the practice of male rhythm section members singing along with their improvised solos predates Jarrett—​extending back to pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell and bassist Slam Stewart—​he was particularly divisive with critics due to this practice.24 For men billed as instrumentalists first, their vocal practice was both an expression of creativity and also Othering—​either as an expression of ecstasy in Jarrett’s case or the unique Brazilian sonorities of the period for Airto and Pascoal. As Laudan Nooshin writes, the improvisation–​composition dualism not only serves to reify composition as the pinnacle of musical 23 In the jazz vocal tradition, a “vocalise” normally features a soloist adding words to an otherwise wordless instrumental solo. Purim was likely referring to “vocalise” from the Western Classical tradition. 24 Special thanks to Damian Evans, Wayne Marshall, Michaelangelo Matos, and Schuyler Wheldon for this context.

From Fusion to Funk  99 creativity, but it also renders many improvisatory traditions more primitive (2003). While a primitivist framework was certainly in play for how the vocal extemporizations of musicians like Airto were received by critics and fans, it is clear that they did not solely pursue vocal improvisation to promote themselves through such a lens.25 For example, Egberto Gismonti and Naná Vasconcelos, two prominent followers of Pascoal’s music, caught the attention of music journalists during this period for their unconventional attitude toward singing wordless melodies, with Vasconcelos fearlessly seeking fusions of styles of music from around the world. Their vocals were an important part of attaining a type of Brazilian universalist music for the rest of their careers even as critics did not know how to interpret what they heard (Ginsburg 1979). Some of the melodic material from Airto’s early solo releases has had an extensive reach in the global circulation of Brazilian music. The bridge of the final track on Fingers, called “Tombo in 7/​4,” has become an international signifier of the high energy of samba in Carnaval. A German electronic music group called Bellini renamed that section “Samba de Janeiro” to produce a samba-​house remake of the track in 1997. Their version of Airto’s song has appeared in video games and advertisements related to soccer. Such a worldwide success, albeit through the machinations of sampling and repurposing music for electronic dance music, is remarkable and shows that the internationalization that such figures as Pascoal championed in their musical approach could wind up working in the most unlikely areas, especially since the publics that encountered that song likely had no idea where it originated. Despite the influence of Airto and Hermeto among jazz aficionados, Purim received far more coverage in the press and was clearly the favorite with jazz fans and reviewers. In retrospect, the contrast between her dominance during the 1970s and rapid drop-​off of interest in her music in the 1980s more closely mirrors the career life cycle of a pop star. Early reviews of Purim’s performance style suggest a reason for this similarity to the common reception and trajectory for pop vocalists: initially, audiences and critics struggled to separate her voice and talent from the most recent example of a female Brazilian singer popular with English-​speaking jazz audiences—​Astrud Gilberto. The link between the two was indelible 25 Hermeto Pascoal’s reputation among jazz musicians and fans in the United States changed when he released Slaves Mass for Warner Bros. Records in 1977, his second LP in the United States. The album famously featured Airto “playing” two live pigs on the title track, something other percussionists viewed as a novelty (cf. Lackner 1977: 34).

100  Bossa Mundo in the eyes of the public, even as their creative approaches could not have been more different. Gilberto’s voice was famous for being breathy and laid-​back to the point of regularly singing flat, in contrast to Purim’s vocal improvisations. The most obvious example of Gilberto’s influence on the promotion of Purim in the United States appeared in a feature on Airto for Melody Maker, in which he tells the reporter of meeting Flora when “she was being groomed to be the next Astrud Gilberto” (Williams 1972a: 53). Ritchie Yorke’s review of Purim’s performance at the 1974 Montreux Jazz & Blues Festival encapsulates the challenges facing a Brazilian woman performing in the jazz world in the shadow of bossa nova: [Jazz organist Charles] Earland suffered in comparison with the act that followed him, Flora Purim, a Brazilian lady hot on the brown-​tanned heels of Astrud Gilberto. Flora, decked out in a bare-​backed multi-​coloured costume, was backed by her husband Airto Moreira on percussion [. . .]. Airto—​who apparently makes frequent forays into the Amazon jungle for audio inspiration and then attempts to recreate such sounds with his battery of percussion instruments and devices—​is the inspiration behind the direction of Flora’s music. Which is not to understate the lady’s personal appeal. She does amazing things with her voice, as well as boping [sic] her ass around, and it’s difficult to remain unmoved. (Yorke 1974: 45)

Despite the challenges for Purim to be taken seriously with the press, she built a reputation among musicians for attracting audiences. For example, the words “featuring Flora Purim” appeared on the cover art and advertising for numerous releases of the period (including Airto’s Seeds on the Gound), and her second solo LP was such a good seller that Milestone Records chose it as one of the few it re-​released in quadrophonic, alongside such rock acts as Creedence Clearwater Revival (Display Ad—​The Incomparable George Duke 1975; Display Ad—​The First Quad Releases 1976).26 Many fans and musicians respected her as a consummate musician, and since she was often out in front of bands such as early Return to Forever, she was far more visible, and divisive to audiences and reviewers. This meant that, due to her gender and stage presence, critics emphasized her looks and how she moved her 26 The display ad copy for George Duke’s Feel states, “. . . the magnificent album featuring Airto and Flora Purim.” (Display Ad—​The Incomparable George Duke 1975, emphasis in original.)

From Fusion to Funk  101 body. Even with her vocal dexterity center stage, reporters still objectified her in the long tradition of sexualizing women from Brazil. That she was so often described as “Airto’s wife” was a discursive gesture that by its very nature underplayed her talents and creative contributions. The simultaneous adulation and devaluation of Purim’s talents persisted most thoroughly in the consistent press coverage of her prison sentence and threats of being deported. In many of the articles about her music from 1976 onward, the journalist typically mentioned the prison sentence before anything else, further aligning her relationship to the music press with the narrative of legal troubles associated with pop and rock music. The focus on her legal trouble instead of the more typical objectification of women in the period speaks volumes to the control she managed to maintain over her image during that time. As the musicians who most clearly defined the Brazilian sound in 1970s fusion and jazz in the United States and the United Kingdom, Flora Purim, Airto, and their extensive network of friends traded on the power of new vocal and percussive timbres and their discursive links to Otherness to build new opportunities for Brazilian musicians. Considering that the music scene was largely dominated by binary understandings of race, this is remarkable, and they undoubtedly changed the game for what kinds of timbres circulated in jazz. Their approach and musical talents were so profound that they were tapped to record in a variety of genres, spanning rock, soul, funk, and fusion—​a testament to their influence during the period.27

Crossing into the Mainstreams of Funk and R&B In September 1972, Brazilian pianist Eumir Deodato entered the recording studio to work on his first solo album in the United States. For the session, he was joined by established studio musicians comfortable in a variety of musical idioms, including musicians as diverse as John Tropea on guitar (jazz, R&B, blues, rock, fusion), Hubert Lawes on flute (jazz, R&B, classical, fusion), Ray Barretto on congas (salsa), and Billy Cobham on drums (fusion 27 In addition to the music discussed in this chapter, some highlights of Airto Moreira’s guest spots during the 1970s include Stan Getz, Captain Marvel (Columbia 1975); Chicago, Chicago 13 (Columbia 1979); The Average White Band, Feel No Fret (Atlantic 1979); Joni Mitchell, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (Asylum 1978); Cannonball Adderley, Big Man: The Legend of John Henry (Fantasy 1975); and Grover Washington, Soul Box, Vol. 2 (Kudu 1973).

102  Bossa Mundo and jazz). The connection to fusion was made even more overt by the inclusion of two members of Return to Forever: Airto and bassist Stanley Clarke.28 The flexibility of these musicians turned out to be an asset. Through a combination of skill, luck, and zeitgeist, the session would result in the biggest hit of Deodato’s recording career. Prelude blended seamlessly into the sonic landscape of the 1970s United States. It rose on the strength of its hit single, “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” a jazz-​ funk cover of Richard Strauss’s tone-​poem that by the late 1960s was most famous as the score for two iconic scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The tracks on Prelude blended influences coming from African American popular music, including funk and psychedelic soul, with Brazilian and Cuban rhythms. However, what united the album’s aesthetic was its appeal as part of the jazz crossover that Creed Taylor established with CTI records, as mentioned earlier in this chapter.29 “Also Sprach Zarathustra” clocked in at just over nine minutes, lending it a quality that would allow it to flourish on dance floors in what would soon coalesce as disco. By the end of the decade, Deodato would be marketed regularly to disco DJs (Lawrence 2003:  328–​29). Perhaps anticipating the popularity of the track’s length, ads for the album targeted a younger demographic, boasting that buying Prelude in the 8-​track format was the only way to get the “full 9-​minute version” of the hit (Display Ad—​PYE 1973). The track owed its appeal across multiple markets to the catchy arrangement of a widely recognizable piece of classical music. Deodato attempted to replicate this formula with versions of other classical music “hits”: Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun” on Prelude (1973) and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess” on Deodato 2 (1973). Years later, as disco reached an apex of popular appeal, another classical hit would storm the dance floor: “A Fifth of Beethoven” by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. In spite of its groove and the participation of two Brazilian musicians on the recording, “Also Sprach Zarathustra” lacked direct indexes to Brazilian music. Any musical reference to Brazil, if there, was overshadowed by funk grooves and ripping brass hits.30 28 In his solo work, Stanley Clarke regularly demonstrated his foothold in funk bass techniques such as “slap and pop” on songs such as “Lopsy Lu” and “School Days.” 29 Deodato adapted the tune based on Taylor’s suggestion (Thus Spake Deodato 1973). 30 In a phone interview in 2012, Deodato told me that his approach to performing Brazilian rhythms on the keyboard resulted in the rhythms always informing his compositions, even if it was as subtle as a syncopation. He has also maintained this point throughout his career. See Freedland (1973).

From Fusion to Funk  103 No Brazilian musician working in US markets in the 1970s matched Deodato’s commercial success. “Also Sprach Zarathustra” reached number 2 on the Billboard “Hot 100” singles chart in 1973 (trailing Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly”), proving that Brazilian musicians could appeal to broad Anglophone publics. It also won a Grammy in 1974 for “Best Pop Instrumental Performance.” The track had long-​lasting appeal. In 1977, CTI reissued Prelude under the new title 2001 to leave no doubts about the album’s big hit. By decade’s end, Peter Sellers’s character “Chance” from the film Being There (1979, dir. H. Ashby) left home for the first time to a soundtrack of Deodato’s arrangement of “Zarathustra.” Meanwhile, Deodato’s reputation as an arranger and producer grew. At the dawn of the 1980s, he was producing platinum-​selling albums in R&B and Top 40 pop. Deodato’s career trajectory from jazz and bossa nova pianist to widespread success as an arranger and producer demonstrates how limiting the exoticism and Otherness of Brazilian gestures toward a kind of internationalist music was, even for crossover wizards such as Sérgio Mendes. While Airto and Sérgio Mendes positioned themselves for US markets via a discursive strategy invoking primitivism and indigeneity, Deodato got there by being a hit-​maker and helping Black musicians from North America score hits as well. His career trajectory during the period shows his increasing participation as producer and arranger, balancing pop and crossover with occasional returns to working with Brazilians, such as João Donato and Jobim—​roles that are just as lucrative in the recording industry while also being out of the spotlight. Pan-​ African musical affiliations and commercial success helped him solidify his career. Throughout the 1970s, Deodato moved toward what Eric Weisbard (2014) describes as one of the mainstreams of American pop: the pop radio format known as R&B. While R&B was limited by the radio segregation of the period, it reached broader publics than jazz or fusion. Deodato’s work with the R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire exemplifies his transition to working with R&B. From the beginning of their recording career, Earth, Wind & Fire had incorporated Pan-​African themes in their music, album art, and concerts. This included frequent allusions to Egyptian pyramids and outlandish dress, which Robert Walser (2004) argues extended the band’s sense of community and built a racially progressive musical politic. In 1973, the band closed their album Head to the Sky with a thirteen-​minute-​ long rendition of Edu Lobo’s “Zanzibar,” complete with wordless lyrics, featuring harmonies sung by Philip Bailey, Verdine White, and Maurice

104  Bossa Mundo White; the wordless vocals changed their meaning and now took part in the group’s eclectic approach to Black popular music. By the time the group worked with Deodato for their 1977 album, All ’N All, on Columbia Records, sources from across the African diaspora were at home in their music. The album featured two instrumental interludes titled “Brazilian Rhyme”—​one of which featured the melody from “Ponta de Areia” and the other, Toninho Horta’s “Beijo.” For those two tracks, as well as the hit ballad, “I’ll Write a Song for You,” Deodato arranged the horns and strings. All ’N All was a success, winning two Grammy awards as well as charting on the Billboard “Hot 100” singles and “Pop Albums” charts. The Brazilian interludes are part of the album’s extended success as source material for hip-​hop samples—​a sign of influence in that particular measure of musical intertextuality—​with the cover of Horta’s “Beijo” being the more popular as a source for samples. Deodato moved on from arrangement to record production for music marketed to Black and pop audiences. His approach to music production helped define the transition to a “post-​Disco” dance-​pop aesthetic for the platinum-​selling Kool & The Gang albums Ladies’ Night (1979) and Celebration (1980), both on De-​Lite Records. He was widely credited with their newly found success (cf. Ward 1986: 86). A year after Deodato’s breakthrough with Prelude, Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’77 followed his example and recorded music with an orientation to funk and pop, thereby turning away from the variation on samba, bossa nova, and references to the Brazilian Northeast that had previously formed the foundation of the group’s sound. It is no surprise that the career choices Mendes and Deodato made were so commercially effective on an individual level. They were acting in line with a period of individual exploration that led influential author Tom Wolfe to dub the 1970s the “me” decade. All of this occurred as the United States began to turn back from the progress brought about by the civil rights movement. In a decade widely credited with launching major music genres—​including reggae, afro-​beat, rap, funk, disco, and salsa—​Brazilian musicians were key players in how the period’s celebration of Afro-​diasporic music circulated. The musicians discussed in this chapter troubled musical boundaries and also reinforced them. The stories of how musicians from one corner of the world positioned themselves to thrive and eke out careers in another–​–​during the most difficult period of their country’s military dictatorship no less–​–​can teach us powerful lessons about prospering amid displacement and crisis. That they managed not only to take part in major musical trends, but indeed

From Fusion to Funk  105 to establish them, is remarkable. Unlike some of the other examples cited in this book, the Brazilian boom of the 1970s largely happened outside of the media coverage that accompanies large-​scale fads. These musicians accomplished much of that work behind the scenes in the closed circles of fusion, funk, and related genres. Their contributions to the sounds of the period, while substantial, were vague and Othering. The consequences of this would be a lack of differentiation of Brazilian music for widespread publics going into the 1980s. As the examples from this chapter show, Brazilian musical success among Anglophone publics owed much to the ways in which musicians leveraged their Otherness and musical affinities to Black music-​making in a musical market that was rife with segregation and a love of novelty. In a continuation of this narrative, the next chapter shows what happens when musicians attempted to work with representing their relationship to Brazil after the divisive and oppressive climate of the dictatorship finally ended.

4 Brazilian Music as World Music in  the Late 1980s In 1989, major developments for Brazilian music in English-​ speaking markets coincided in an artistic and social watershed. David Byrne’s new world music record label Luaka Bop, then a subsidiary for Sire Records (owned by Warner Bros.), released Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1, a compilation that would shape the Anglophone reception of Brazilian popular music for a new generation. The period also saw the rapid rise and fall of a Brazilian dance-​floor fad (the lambada) and the celebration of MPB artists as viable international stars. Finally, 1989 was the first year after Brazil’s Constituent Assembly drafted a new constitution (ratified in October 1988), paving the way for the first direct ballot presidential elections since the 1964 coup. All of this happened in the midst of a major period of emigration when an estimated 1.4 million Brazilians left due to economic and fiscal instability during the transition to a civilian government (Margolis 1995). Joshua Clover (2009) persuasively argues that 1989 was a landmark year, not just in terms of how historians talk about global politics with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but also for major alignments that informed popular music at the end of the twentieth century and beyond. For the international music industries, the turn to the 1990s marked the legitimacy of so-​called “world music” entering the Global North with formal institutional recognition alongside events in major cities in Europe and North America. Within five years, efforts of label owners, critics, and established rock and pop musicians in the United States and the United Kingdom built world music as a genre irresistible to critics, Grammy voters, and specialist magazines. Their efforts shaped which recordings circulated among Anglophone publics and valorized musicians and styles that did not receive much attention in their own countries. The integration of Brazilian music into the growing performance, distribution, and marketing networks of world music as a genre required adjustments to how musical labor interfaced with intermediation and curation. Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.003.0005

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  107 This chapter discusses the intervention of the new world music genre on Brazilian popular music at a defining moment in Brazilian history. The Brazilian middle class and intellectual left were finally free of the censorship and control of the military dictatorship at the same moment that dedicated routes for global musical dissemination formed. Much of the development of world music had little to do with what happened in Brazil’s politics. Yet the structural apparatus that formed around rock and pop stars seeking new sources of inspiration in Latin America, South Asia, and the African continent resulted in tensions between the music that circulated internationally and how that music reflected national branding efforts. Attitudes about brands were also changing during this period to reflect the increased valuation of such intangible, “soft” assets as image, reputation, and consumer loyalty—​the same assets that were being defined in Brazil’s efforts to redefine itself as a democracy. At the same time, the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon was a focus of environmental advocacy on the part of celebrity rock musicians in the buildup to the 1990 Earth Day celebrations. With this confluence of coverage in transnational media, Anglophone publics were newly paying attention to Brazil from multiple vantage points. I argue that the timing of the country’s emergence from a dictatorship just as the technological apparatus of global musical circulation was moving decisively to digital production and distribution had long-​lasting consequences for what kinds of music reached Anglophone publics and a lasting effect on the country’s brand. The result was considerable overlap between the kinds of music that Brazil’s intellectual Left valorized and the intermediation of English-​speaking rock and pop musicians and critics. The confluence of changes in Brazil’s politics and distribution technologies gave the MPB1 of the 1970s and the vibrant new musical mixtures from Salvador, Bahia, an outsized platform. Within five years of redemocratization, Brazil’s international musical brand would be linked either to the kinds of music that US-​ based rock and pop musicians tapped in their effort to revitalize their sound or that specialist record labels compiled to meet rising market demands. In what follows, I trace the development of Brazilian music within a world 1 MPB or Música Popular Brasileira (Brazilian Popular Music) changed over time. At this point, MPB consisted of a continuation of the protest music of the intellectual Left along with more experimentation with pop and rock approaches. MPB still appealed mostly to the middle-​class and the intellectual Left, but with the new government, its youth appeal diminished. While other genres and musicians managed to circulate in English markets (classical and avant-​garde musicians and composers, the heavy metal group Sepultura, etc.), these musicians did so outside of the world music distribution network that maintained the genre coherence of world music.

108  Bossa Mundo music framework through the examples of the canonizing effect of music compilations in contrast with attempts to market a short-​lived world dance craze (lambada) and Brazilian musicians participating in high-​ profile intercultural collaborations. First, however, I unpack the emergence of world music as a time-​bounded marketing category in this period.

World Music Discourse in the 1990s While the circulation of world music preceded the 1980s and 1990s, it was during this period that it attained industrial stability (Denning 2015; Erlmann 1999). As Simon Frith (2000) describes, world music got its name when British record executives recognized that there was a market, mostly made up of aging rock fans who were seeking out field recordings from former British and French colonies in Africa and Asia. These music industry power brokers met on a regular basis to form a business strategy to capitalize on the trend. Frith (2000) and Timothy D.  Taylor (1997) have noted the importance of discourses of authenticity in the marketing of world music to rock listeners. Jason Toynbee argues (2002) that world music worked by representing the meeting point of dialogical extremes—​modernity and primitivity, core and periphery—​that reinforced the pop music center of the mainstream in bidirectional musical flows. Thus the biggest successes were collaborations with established rock stars, reinforcing the dominance of rock and pop. The centers of the new world music market were the former colonial and neo-​ colonial powers of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States; world music was mass-​mediated popular music from outside the “norm” of Anglo-​ American, Canadian, and Australian taste, with an initial focus on music from “tropical” countries sung in any non-​English language (Guilbault 2001). It follows, then, that the first ethnographic accounts of the influence of the world music market were by scholars focusing on music in tropical countries of Africa and the African diaspora (Meintjes 1990; Guilbault 1993; Averill 1997; Erlmann 1996).2 That link to Africa and the diaspora is perhaps why the initial entry of Brazilian music in the world music market in the late 1980s and early 1990s emphasized rhythmic and harmonic complexity

2 Many specialists (Larry Crook, Christopher Waterman, Veit Erlmann, Steven Feld, and Gage Averill) contributed to the broader complex of the media industry coverage of their scholarly regions, especially through writing informed album reviews and liner notes.

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  109 above other musical qualities. Intermediaries such as record label personnel, music festival managers, critics, and magazine editors struggled to place Brazil discursively in distribution and marketing channels already in existence: hence the emphasis on a dance craze, collaborations, and compilations. Each pathway that Brazilian music took to find Anglophone publics uncovered fundamental ruptures in world music discourses of authenticity. What focused the attention of scholars and critics was the role that record labels and rock musicians played in mediating the music in question at the very moment when globalization was gathering steam in the public imagination. Collaborations between established rock stars and artists from the developing world were so common, in fact, that many commentators in the music press responded with cynicism. They noted the murkiness of power relations involved in collaborations alongside the speed with which new musical combinations and styles were catching audience attention. These critics were helped by new theoretical frameworks around the condition of modernity to critique the circulation of sounds from former colonial territories in new markets (cf. Jameson 1991; Appadurai 1996; Giddens 1990; Lipsitz 1997). In many of the periodicals consulted for this chapter, world music was a moving target that exaggerated the differences between rock and pop publics in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was still a nebulous marketing category; nobody in the music industry promotional apparatus knew the exact meaning of “world music” or how to capitalize on it. As a symptom of that confusion, compare the attitudes toward world music in the United States and the United Kingdom at the turn of the 1990s in two music magazines geared to audiences with discriminating tastes: Spin from the US and New Musical Express (NME) from the UK. By the late 1980s, both regularly covered world music, although their geographic foci diverged: Spin focused on roots reggae news under the heading “World Beat” in its gossip and news section, while NME dedicated its “Other Voices” column to mass-​ mediated music from Africa. Early in 1989, NME changed the name of its column to “World at One” and varied its coverage between stars of world music, jazz, and folk music. Less than two years later, NME abandoned the column and spread world music across its news, recording reviews, and concerts sections. By contrast, Spin steadily ramped up its coverage of world music and by early 1990 the magazine expanded further with a regular column while also shifting its geographic coverage to Latin America, the Caribbean, and more. That orientation to the Caribbean resembled the stance taken by the Los Angeles–​based world music magazine The Beat,

110  Bossa Mundo which extended outward from reggae and Afro-​pop to other Afro-​diasporic genres, a shift that happened halfway into its 1988 run (and that echoed its name change from The Reggae and African Beat earlier that year). By 1991, The Beat’s coverage of Brazilian music grew to the point of a dedicated special issue guest edited by Christopher McGowan, who that same year co-​ authored a Brazilian music textbook (as of this writing, in its third edition). Beyond a doubt, few in the rock press knew what to make of the incursion of world music into the musical mainstream and what kind of attention it deserved. That ambivalence by rock journalists was encapsulated by outspoken British music critics Paul Oldfield and Simon Reynolds, who railed against the colonialist gestures of world music collaborations: “But what all of these advocates of world music share is the belief that other cultures represent the ‘authenticity,’ and ruralness that the Western world has forfeited. [. . .] World music is supposed to be a post-​colonial phenomenon. Actually it’s a more refined form of colonialism, ideological colonialism” (1989: 31, emphasis in original). Many of the rhetorical flourishes of the column index the influence of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and point to future directions ethnomusicologists would take in critiques of world music. It bears noting that the main targets of Oldfield and Reynolds’s column were the rock stars (Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Sting, and David Byrne) who were making a visible effort to vaunt their favorite non-​ Western artists as unrefined raw materials—​a sentiment that Simon echoed and that Brazilian critics had noted since the 1960s (Taylor 2016: 99; Tinhorão 2015). They had a point. In what follows, I show how the growth of the international music market amplified the extremes of the mediation and confusion about Brazilian music in the Anglophone press.

Taste-​making in Brazilian Music Compilations So-​called “tastemakers” played a heightened role in the late 1980s. They exerted their curatorial prowess in record reviews, recommendations, and, perhaps most of all, shifting attitudes toward compilation albums. This was due, in part, to the influx of diverse popular music styles from what was then called the “Third World” or “the tropics” into Anglophone markets of the North Atlantic.3 A minor skirmish from 1991 in the “Letters to the Editor” 3 Although the colonialist terms “Third World” and “the tropics” have since faded from academic parlance, they were in wide use at this juncture.

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  111 section in The Beat exemplifies the importance of curation during this period. A  few months prior, the magazine had dedicated a special issue to Brazilian music, highlighting trends for world music watchers. Journalist and critic Chris McGowan served as guest editor; alongside articles on artists and regional scenes, he provided a list of recommended Brazilian music CDs, including albums by Gal Costa and Milton Nascimento as well as twelve compilations. His choices caught the attention of Bill Nowlin, the cofounder of Rounder Records, due to the omission of two Brazilian compilations from his label. He complained: We were surprised and dismayed that you did not include either of our two Brazilian discs in your listing of the “Brazilian Albums Readily Available in North America” on page 42 of the brand new issue [. . .] Brazil-​Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers (Rounder 5044)  and Brazil-​Roots-​Samba (Rounder 5045). Both were universally well-​received. Forró was even one of the five finalists in the world music category this year [sic]. Certainly a distinction. Why this oversight?4 (Nowlin 1991: 82)

In response, McGowan explained that there were many Brazilian music compilations available in the United States. He then added: Brazil-​Roots-​Samba is certainly a fine compilation, but I felt that samba was amply represented by several titles on our list and there were other areas of Brazilian music that needed to be covered as well. [. . .] As for Brazil-​Forró, it is an entertaining but unexceptional sampler album devoted to obscure and unimportant artists. The fact that it received a Grammy nomination does not make it a notable work. (McGowan 1991: 82)

The exchange highlights the new prominence of cultural intermediaries such as critics and playlist compilers in filtering through the booming world music market of the period. In this case, McGowan and other critics regularly reviewed albums featuring music that had been licensed from

4 At the time when Rounder released Brazil-​Forró, the “Best World Music” category did not exist. In his letter, Nowlin referred to the album’s nomination under “Best Traditional Folk Recording” for the 33rd Annual Awards ceremony in 1991. Prior to 1987, the category was “Best Traditional Folk or Ethnic Recording.” Brazil-​Forró lost to On Praying Ground by Doc Watson. For the 34th Annual Awards held in 1992, the Recording Academy introduced a new category, Best World Music Album. See Appendix 2 in Taylor (1997) for a list of nominations in the 1980s and 1990s.

112  Bossa Mundo independent and major record labels in Brazil for English-​language publics. In the case of Brazil-​Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi-​Drivers (often referred to as Brazil-​Forró), the album had been circulating in the United Kingdom and the United States for two years before it received a Grammy nomination. By contrast, the same year that Rounder released Brazil-​Forró, David Byrne began a multi-​year effort to highlight artists from Brazil (and other parts of Latin America), starting with a compilation of Brazilian MPB on Brazil Classics 1—​Beleza Tropical (referred to as Beleza Tropical throughout this chapter). That record followed the founding of Byrne’s world music label Luaka Bop Records (under Warner/​Sire) the previous year. In the years to come, the Brazil Classics compilation series gave curious listeners a starting point for exploring Brazilian music. Compilation CDs such as these demonstrated the first steps during the late 1980s and early 1990s of record companies’ promotion of Brazilian music beyond its core audience of enthusiasts. Their producers mediated between the general consensus about US and British markets—​where most rock audiences had limited exposure to the music—​and their own appreciation of Brazilian music while also aiming to please Brazilian music fans with a strong knowledge base. Of the two CDs, Beleza Tropical managed the difficult feat of mediating all three demands. Similarly, critics that championed this music balanced their own preferences, their desire to expand the public of Brazilian music in the United States, and the need to eke out a living in print media. This section highlights the changing role of cultural intermediaries in the late 1980s through the contrasting examples of two high-​profile compilations—​Brazil-​ Forró and Beleza Tropical—​alongside prominent music critics to explore how this new level of curation mediated Brazilian music for Anglophone publics. When David Byrne announced his first Brazil Classics CDs in February 1989, music critics interpreted the move through the context of his reputation as frontman of Talking Heads. When Talking Heads released Remain in Light in 1980, an album heavily influenced by West African music, they included a press release that contained a two-​page letter by Byrne encouraging critics to read scholarship on African culture. That didactic strategy largely yielded positive results.5

5 Theo Cateforis situates the appropriations of Africa in Remain in Light as part of punk and new wave’s anxieties about modernity (2011). Remain in Light’s incorporation of West African music is so iconic that Angélique Kidjo from Benin released an Afro-​Beat reworking of the album in 2018.

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  113 The track listing for Beleza Tropical was largely a celebration of MPB songs from the 1970s and early 1980s. Table 4.1 features the track listing. It includes three songs by Jorge Ben Jor, four songs by Caetano Veloso, three songs by Gilberto Gil, two songs by Chico Buarque, three songs by Milton Nascimento (he also appears on Chico Buarque’s “Cálice”), one song by Maria Bethânia and Gal Costa, one song by Lô Borges, and two songs by Nazaré Pereira. Table 4.1  Track listing for Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical (Luaka Bop Records), reprinted by permission. Track No.

Song Title

Featured Artist

Original Release Date

1

Ponta de Lança Africano (Umbabarauma)

Jorge Ben Jor

1976

2

Sonho Meu

Maria Bethânia, Gal Costa

1978

3

Só Quero um Xodó

Gilberto Gil

1973

4

Um Canto de Afoxé Para o Bloco de Ilê (Ilê Ayê)

Caetano Veloso, Moreno Veloso

1982

5

O Leãozinho

Caetano Veloso

1977

6

Caçada

Chico Buarque

1972

7

Cálice

Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento

1978

8

Equatorial

Lô Borges

1979

9

San Vicente

Milton Nascimento

1971

10

Quilombo, o el Dorado Negro

Gilberto Gil

1984

11

Caramba! . . . Galileu de Galileia

Jorge Ben Jor

1972

12

Caixa de Sol

Nazaré Pereira

1982

13

Maculelê

Nazaré Pereira

1982

14

Quiexa

Caetano Veloso

1982

15

Andar com Fé

Gilberto Gil

1982

16

Fio Maravilha

Jorge Ben Jor Toquinho

1971

17

Anima

Milton Nascimento

1982

18

Terra

Caetano Veloso

1978

114  Bossa Mundo Byrne’s music is nowhere to be found in the track listing. Yet, Byrne was so divisive a figure in the British press, critics still focused on his persona when reviewing the series. Mark Sinker, writing for Melody Maker, found the selection of songs on Brazil Classics difficult to take: Deliberately or not, he constructs the running order of this compilation of 15 years of Brazilian pop so that you feel as if you’re pushing through an empty, treacly jungle of oppressive sweetness, where nothing makes sense, where everything is poisonously orchidaceous. [. . .] He’s always taken his energy from the joke of what he is, the jerky, mumbling whiteboy [sic], admitting to obsession with a sound he doesn’t quite get (“get” as he puts it awkwardly). (1989: 35)

During this period, Melody Maker exemplified the British music press practice of producing reviews deeply invested in intellectual critical traditions without a shorthand ratings system so favored by the likes of Rolling Stone.6 However, it is striking that the review considered Byrne’s persona rather than engaging with the musical offerings on the album. The subtext here alludes to what Cateforis (2011) describes as Byrne’s performance of middle-​class white nervousness. NME featured an extended interview with Byrne by Jonathan Romney that expressed some of the anxieties of consuming world music. Between quotations from Byrne, Romney displays some suspicion about the motives of the CD while also highlighting the singer’s verbal quirks, more or less mirroring how the magazine covered Peter Gabriel’s collaborations with Senegalese world music artist Youssou N’Dour earlier that year (cf. Ridgers 1989; Brown 1989). At one point Romney wrote, “Someone as prominent as Byrne is bound to attract suspicion when he turns his attention to Third World music,” and again later, “At the moment, world music seems to be in a strange position—​attacked on the one side by the mainstream pop purists who are digging themselves into an entrenched position, and on the other, by the ideologues who warn us that it’s OK to listen to Third World music as long as we remember to feel guilty about it” (Romney 1989: 39). Here, the quandary of world music is mixed up with statements about Byrne. Early the following year, Mark Cooper of Q Magazine summarized the British critical response to Beleza Tropical: “Reviewers have [. . .] accused him of everything 6 Special thanks to Theo Cateforis and Eric Weisbard for reminding me of this point.

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  115 from cultural imperialism to racial theft” (1990:  37). He also noted that Byrne was “a little embarrassed to become a cultural ambassador” (1990: 38). Thus, the British music press was largely perplexed and focused on Byrne’s previous efforts to incorporate an Afrocentric stance in his music. There was simply no model for how to interpret a personal investment in Brazilian music on the part of a rock star. By contrast, Byrne’s compilations won over critics in the United States with aplomb. Rolling Stone reviewed the album twice that year and featured it alongside Brazil Classics 2: O Samba and Byrne’s solo debut Rei Momo in its year-​end retrospective (Fricke 1989). In the following two years, Rolling Stone largely relegated Brazilian music to its relationship to rock stars like Byrne, Sting, and Paul Simon. The approach that some other US publications took to reviewing Byrne demonstrates the rising influence of specialist world music reviewers as another mode of cultural intermediation. Spin tapped Julien Dibbell to cover Beleza Tropical within the context of growing rock musician interest in Brazil. The album received elevated treatment by being the anchor of the magazine’s inaugural world music column. Julien Dibbell praised the Brazil Classics series as “excellent” and noted that Beleza Tropical “introduced some of Brazil’s most sophisticated urban pop.” Later in the column, he quoted Caetano Veloso on Byrne’s projects: “I think there’s an ethical and aesthetic superiority in David Byrne’s stance because he—​who has a very particular and well-​defined vision of pop music—​tries to share in our vision. He seeks a dialogue with us” (Veloso quoted in Dibbell 1990: 89). At the time, Dibbell was based in New York, and his attitude was undoubtedly shaped by the community of Brazilian and Latin musicians that had been developing there for decades. Thus, Dibbell infused the column with a deeper perspective, lending the magazine’s world music coverage additional credibility. By contrast, Chris McGowan reviewed the album for Musician—​a magazine geared toward musicians and enthusiasts—​from the perspective of someone living in proximity to the record industry in Los Angeles. Of Beleza Tropical he writes: While the artists selected for Brazil Classics 1 are somewhat predictable (Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil are among the best-​known Brazilian musicians internationally, especially in Europe), the song choices here are unusual and inspired. [. . .] Brazil Classics 1 is

116  Bossa Mundo an invigorating and appealing collection that reflects the earthy sophistication and originality of Brazilian popular music over the last two decades. [. . .] In any event, Byrne is to be praised for giving us the unabridged stuff (what rock star has ever before presented a sampler of foreign music?). A Graceland (or Remain in Light) can be a valuable stepping stone to other musics, as well as an interesting cross-​cultural concoction. But it’s nice to hear the music directly from places like Rio, Bahia and Recife—​straight, no chaser. (1989: 86)

Here, McGowan treated Byrne as a curator, reviewing Beleza Tropical from the perspective of someone with specialist Brazilian musical knowledge. By contrasting it with Graceland and Remain in Light, he argued for why the album merited more attention. The elevated treatment of Byrne was shaped by the personalities of the main columnists covering the world music scene. Chris McGowan was rapidly becoming a Brazilian pop music authority. In addition to editing the special Brazil-​themed issue of The Beat and writing reviews for Musician, he would soon publish a coauthored textbook on Brazilian music for US novices, while also covering the business side of the Luaka Bop releases and the lambada for Billboard. Similarly, Julian Dibbell covered the record for Spin while writing a feature on Caetano Veloso for Musician—​both of which were published on February 1, 1990. Dibbell also wrote for the Village Voice, Newsday, and New York Times. A few years later, he wrote the foreword to the English-​language translation to Ruy Castro’s history of bossa nova before focusing more exclusively on his other interest, crime in the technology sector. These world music critics in the United States treated Brazilian music as a “beat” that they enjoyed, whereas the British coverage of Brazilian music (and world music in general) was spread among rock critics who had no investment in the music’s success. A close look at Brazilian music compilations during this period shows how the music was undergoing intermediation at multiple junctures. Byrne was the famous rock star who steeped himself in Brazilian culture; by the end of the year, even the most skeptical in the British music press took pains to distinguish his action from those of Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel (see Hennessey 1989). Intermediation shifted in the late 1980s to include producers, journalists, critics, and tour promoters. World music record label workers and music critics performed the lion’s share of the labor of promoting a subset of the vast swaths of music available to eager, nonspecialist publics. Due to

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  117 the introduction of digital recording and the accelerated pace of international dissemination via master recordings, the volume of music available to listeners increased substantially. For that reason, cultural intermediaries expanded to critic-​enthusiasts. They became tastemakers, joining compilation record producers to make the same recordings appeal to different publics, especially those seeking something novel. Prior to this moment, the most consequential industrial decisions for Brazilian music recordings and styles came from producers, dance academy instructors, musicians, and journalists—​key figures in previous chapters. The new visibility of the Brazilian music enthusiast as embodied in Byrne defied industry expectations. Although music compilations were not new, their presence changed in intensity. Compilation albums rose in influence starting in the 1960s mostly through the prominence of film soundtracks that stitched together preexisting music to complement the narrative. Film producers developed compilation soundtrack albums to capitalize on recent trends and mitigate the financial risk of putting out material that might no longer be in fashion by the film’s release (Smith 1998: 158). Thus, eclectic mixture allowed producers to hedge their bets. While world music compilations were narrower in terms of stylistic focus, they worked through a similar logic of giving listeners a sampling of the types of music that one might encounter, whetting musical appetites so that interested publics would crave more. It is surprising that compilation albums such as Brazil-​Forró and Beleza Tropical did so well among the key demographic for world music—​middle-​ aged white men—​especially when considering the importance of album coherence in rock discourse. Melissa Wong (2014) argues that the emergence of the album format has in practice become the foundational unit of the musical work concept within popular music discourse. This is due in part to the perception of authorial control of the musical act at the album’s center regardless of artistic freedom (Stahl 2012). The creative stamp of a musician as famous as Byrne could unify a compilation under an aesthetic of an author-​function that fit within a traditional rock framework even though the album was clearly not marketed as rock. That authorial control contrasted with how most world music compilations in this period were perceived, upending expectations around what styles of world music were viable at the time. Many world music compilations were slapped together based on the limited access a compilation producer gained from a single, local record company. They were often the result of enterprising executive producers or record

118  Bossa Mundo label owners seeking to minimize the risk of promoting non-​English-​language music that would ideally entice rock fans to buy more.7 That is precisely what happened with Brazil-​Forró. Gerald Seligman was the executive producer for the album (as well as many other Brazilian music compilations for US and British markets). He convinced Carlos “Carlão” de Andrade, the owner of the independent record label Visom, to license some of the regional forró music in his vaults for the United States.8 Carlão originally produced the forró records to raise money for the label that was largely focused on jazz and fusion. The musical aesthetics of forró and jazz-​fusion in the 1980s were distant.9 Seligman enjoyed forró, and he liked how the recordings in the Visom vault were, in his words, “real street roots forró,” so he offered to release those recordings instead of the jazz-​fusion that dominated the label’s catalog. According to Seligman, the album’s subtitle, “Music for Maids and Taxi-​Drivers,” came from Carlão’s dismissive comment about the style’s popularity among Brazilian working classes. Although Seligman attempted to use it ironically to refer to the class differences in Brazil, it had the overall effect of reinforcing stereotypes. Some of the negative reactions to the album by the likes of McGowan and others were the same qualities that Seligman most liked. In his liner notes, Seligman described the recordings as hidden gems by minor artists: “Forró musicians tend to earn little. Most, like Heleno and Toinho de Alagoas, hold other jobs and only play on weekends or when asked. Toinho was a janitor at a radio station in Recife before he began his own very modest career. Somebody must have heard him humming” (Seligman 1989). The cover features a woodcut by Marcelo Soares depicting a traditional forró trio each wearing the cancageiro hat—​the iconic hat of Northeastern identity associated with Lampião, the region’s bandit folk hero, and worn to great effect by forró icon Luiz Gonzaga (see Figure 4.1). The liner notes describe the three figures as wearing “native dress.” 7 Compilations would continue as a profitable practice at world music record labels such as Six Degrees Records, Hear Music, and Putumayo Records, which by the end of the 1990s targeted a differing market of potential world music listeners (Kassabian 2013; Goldschmitt n.d.). 8 Forró is an umbrella term for traditional rural dance music styles from the Northeast of Brazil that developed from migrant workers in the region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Traditional forró ensembles consist of accordion, a triangle, and a large drum called the zabumba; some forró musicians have adapted to technological changes, incorporating electric instruments such as guitar, bass, and keyboard instruments. The dance styles included in forró are varied even though many practitioners might not be able to name every style. Some forró dance styles include baião, coco, xamego, xaxado, and xote. See Silvers (2018) and Crook (2005) for good discussions of the style. 9 Some Brazilian musicians have adapted forró to jazz aesthetics. The well-​regarded accordion player Dominguinhos released a few albums collaborating with guitarist Yamandú Costa (Yamandú + Dominguinhos [2007] and Lado B [2010]).

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  119

Figure 4.1  Cover image from Brazil-​Forró (1989), featuring a woodcut of forró musicians’ “native dress.” Image courtesy Globestyle Records.

With an album title that gestured to Brazilian working-​class tastes and liner notes describing the musicians as impoverished, Seligman and Rounder Records tried to set forró apart from perceptions of Brazilian popular music as either polished, frenzied Carnaval music or akin to jazz—​the prevailing Anglophone perception about Brazilian music at the time. That aesthetic was effective enough for Grammy voters to nominate it in the “Traditional Folk Music” category.10 In essence, the nomination confirmed what recording academy members thought was viable “traditional folk music” and 10 Beyond the Grammy awards, folk music and world music were grouped together in the United States and the United Kingdom until Billboard disentangled folk and world music sales into separate charts in 1990.

120  Bossa Mundo valorized an album that sold while that discourse was still active. Seligman also performed a considerable amount of intermediation in the studio to make compilations work as unified albums. In our interview, Seligman eagerly noted that the recorded masters of Brazilian music were often on reel-​ to-​reel tape and he would then remaster the recordings to appeal to how he conceived of the Anglophone market while also equalizing the levels from track to track. The lead track on the album is a baião by Toinho de Alagoas called “Balanço da Canoa” or “Canoe’s Rock.” Seligman translated the title to the more catchy “Rock the Boat,” but he did not provide a lyrical translation for any of the songs. The recording features an electric bass, electric guitar, a drum machine, and a backing chorus of women in a call-​and-​response style. This is a more modern forró, but there is nothing remarkable about it. It teeters on the edge of forró estilizado or forró eletrônico, featuring electronic instruments and a typical forró vocal style. Brazil-​Forró did not just circulate through Rounder Records; it first found a market in the United Kingdom as part of a series on Globe Style Records called Accordions That Shook the World, showing one level through which licensing and curation extended to other record companies. A look at the domestic Brazilian market provides another view. These recordings were initially licensed by a record company that sought to leverage the popularity of forró to support the owner’s interest in jazz and fusion. Decisions such as those undertaken by Carlão to support his record label were typical of Brazil’s burgeoning independent record industry in the 1980s.11 Many of these compilation producers had to reconcile regional record production values with what they thought would work for Anglophone markets abroad. For Brazil-​Forró, a big part of the appeal came from Seligman’s enjoyment of the “street roots” sound of the recordings. The conception of a forró collection through a roots aesthetic made up for the diminished author-​function or artistic voice behind those recordings; Seligman had a limited catalog at his disposal for making the compilation. Within a year of the release of Brazil-​Forró, Seligman established himself as one of the top producers of Brazilian music compilations. In a 1990 review of some recent Brazilian releases in Rolling Stone, Martin Johnson praised Seligman’s efforts as an improvement on Bryne’s series because his CDs focused on lesser-​known Brazilian styles (Johnson 1990: 102). By the

11 For more on the history of Brazil’s independent record industry see Vicente (2014).

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  121 end of 1991, Seligman was living in Brazil with a permanent job at Polygram Records. While Brazil-​Forró overcame the absence of a strong author-​function through appeals to another rock value in “roots,” Beleza Tropical compensated through Byrne’s strong personality as well as an appeal to the notion of “classics” in the series title. In contrast to the independent music backdrop of Brazil-​Forró, David Byrne had the full weight of Warner/​Sire records behind him. That allowed him to get whatever recordings he wanted from the major Brazilian record companies including Warner, Philips, EMI, and more. He was also able to tap into a notion of “classics” that worked for both Brazilians and Anglophone audiences. Much of that fluidity also depended on the compilation track order. Alongside famous recordings of MPB artists resisting the dictatorship, such as Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento’s recording of “Cálice” and Gilberto Gil’s take on forró in “Só Quero um Xodô,” there are some unexpected choices that still work for the track order. The best example of this is the succession of songs that begin at track 11 (see Table 4.1). After establishing a foothold in beloved MPB recordings for the first ten songs, the album introduces “Caramba . . . Galileu da Galileia,” a lesser-​known track from Jorge Ben Jor’s 1972 album Ben. Following that, it features two tracks by Nazaré Pereira, a Brazilian artist based in Paris who was not known to most Brazilians. Then the collection returns to established hits from dictatorship-​ era MPB, closing with “Terra,” a song Caetano Veloso wrote in 1969 while under house arrest for producing music that was “threatening” to the government. For a Brazilian music enthusiast, the effect of including relatively unknown tracks such as those by Pereira alongside those of monumental importance to the dictatorship ending is surprising; it gives the impression that it was a collection that Byrne personally liked rather than a compilation that just happens to have substantial overlap with the music preferred by tastemakers and leftist intellectuals in Brazil.12 Yet, the album also reached beyond enthusiasts with aesthetic approaches that still resonate decades later. It opens with a funky electric guitar riff from Jorge Ben Jor’s “Ponta de Lança Africano” aligning with rock aesthetics. This same song was also the first track of Ben Jor’s iconic samba funk album África Brasil (1976) and has appeared in numerous compilations and playlists for 12 For a good example of how Brazilian musical canons worked during the dictatorship, see the songs featured in Jairo Severiano and Zuza Homem de Mello, A Canção no Tempo:  86 Anos de Músicas Brasileiras, Vol. 2: 1958–​1985 (1998). MPB, tropicália, and protest music songs receive the most space.

122  Bossa Mundo Anglophone markets. In contrast to the album artwork for Brazil-​Forró, Beleza Tropical features the image of an inverted, bronze-​skinned woman with her bare feet planted at the top edge of the image extending into a back sway as her hands reach toward a glowing, rippled surface (see Figure 4.2). In the upper-​left corner there are the words, “brazil classics 1” and on the opposite corner, “compiled by david byrne” in lowercase lettering against a light blue background. In their small typeface, the “classics” and “david byrne” highlight through contrast the merging of rock’s discourses of tradition and authorship; those words are understated but stand out in sharp relief. They are also easier to read than the “beleza TROPICAL” written with what look like blades of grass, tying the album to the earth consciousness of

Figure 4.2  Cover image for Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical (1989). Image courtesy Luaka Bop Records.

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  123 the era. Notably, there is nothing directly indexing Brazil as such—​just vague references to forests, Byrne’s creative vision, and inverted femininity. In keeping with an overall inviting tone, the album also features extensive liner notes by Arto Lindsay, an enthusiast and producer who worked with multiple MPB artists in the 1990s. Not only could publics demystify the words through direct translations, but they could also learn about such minutiae as potential double meanings and the importance of the tropicália generation to Brazilian music.13 The trajectory from production to reception of these two compilation CDs shows the expansion of cultural intermediation in a watershed moment for Brazilian music. They also demonstrate the transition to newer aesthetic priorities in world music; Byrne’s strategy succeeded due to its appeal to enthusiasts and novices alike. The next section traces how Brazilian music circulated through an older form of intermediation: dance.

Lambada, a Short-​Lived Global Dance Craze It took no time for entertainment media across North America to remark that record labels, artists, and the wider dance music infrastructure were rapidly maneuvering to profit off the lambada. Journalists across the country noticed the familiar signs of a fabricated fad through the gusto with which dance clubs and screenwriters attempted to promote an imported Latin dance craze. Richard Gold, writing for the entertainment trade journal Variety, was incensed by the clear opportunism of the lambada, featuring front-​page coverage of it under the headline “Scambada: Dirty Dancing All the Way to the Bank” (Gold 1990). He noted that the lambada was a naked effort to incite a money-​making dance frenzy—​a formula for financial success that had largely worked for dance trends in the postwar period through the coordination of record labels, dance studios, and the entertainment press (as discussed in c­ hapter 1). Brazilian media studies scholar Adonay Ariza argues that the global spread of lambada was the first time that new mixtures of Afro-​Brazilian music found international markets. He writes, “even though lambada [. . .] was not a plainly Brazilian musical form, it was what created the opening for 13 Later volumes of Brazil Classics feature liner notes from Brazilian music scholars Charles Perrone and Larry Crook.

124  Bossa Mundo the most commercial phase for Brazilian music in the world” (2006: 41).14 In his view, lambada solidified the demand and space for more world music that fulfilled desires for “tropical brushstrokes” of which music from the North and Northeast regions of Pará and Bahia fit the bill. I add that the travels of lambada in 1989 and 1990 also demonstrated the limits of what the music press and audiences understood about Brazilian music during this period. In contrast to some of the individual artists and albums that broke through, the treatment of the lambada returned to old tropes about Brazilian bodies as they relate to music with no need to be tied to just one artist or band. Lambada developed in Belém in the Brazilian state of Pará (the home of the mouth to the Amazon river) and then found an eager market in the Northeastern state of Bahia. The term “lambada” had circulated since at least the 1970s to connote a “licking” or “lashing” due to associations with taking a beating while dancing. The lambada style was a mix of carimbó from Pará and merengue from the Dominican Republic, with musicians such as Mestre Vieira producing lambada recordings as early as 1978 (Fryer 2000; Lamen 2013). As a descriptor for dance music, lambada continues to circulate in the Brazilian North and Northeast, as well as other parts of Brazil, at times absorbing other “tropical” or Caribbean rhythms such as zouk from the French Antilles and cumbia from Colombia.15 Following this point, Darien Lamen (2013) underscores the difference between the lengthy history of Caribbean dance styles in Pará under the lambada designation and the brief run of the lambada dance craze in the early years of world music. One version of lambada migrated from Belém to Bahia, where it formed part of the foundation of dance styles for the burgeoning Bahian axé scene, which was then in the process of consolidating and soon became nationally and internationally famous in the 1990s (cf. Henry 2010). The popularity of lambada in Bahia was also due to how well it resembled the more intertwined styles of forró dancing. During that era, a showy dance style called rala-​bucho accompanied forró electrônico. Forró dancing in general is intimate between dancing partners. In another variant, dança colada, the couple moves in time with interlaced legs and bellies pressed against each other as though their hips are “glued” (colada) together. Once the lambada 14 Translation by author. Original Portuguese: “Mesmo que a lambada não tenha constituído uma forma musical plenamente brasileira, acompanhada de uma dança bastante sensual, foi ela que deu abertura à fase mais comercial da música do Brasil no exterior.” 15 See Vianna (2011) for a brief discussion of local variant of lambada in the central state Mato Grosso called lambadão (big lambada).

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  125 arrived in Bahia, the dance became even more sensual. Since musicians in Salvador cycle through different genres such as axé and forró depending on the time of year to ensure they can eke out a living from their musical labor, it follows that those two genres provided a fertile, year-​round foundation for lambada (Packman 2011; Packman 2012). When French producer Jean-​Claude Bonaventure first saw the lambada dance while on holiday in Porto Seguro, Bahia, he recognized that the dance could be a success in the francophone world music market and formed the band Kaoma. The group included just one Brazilian (vocalist Loalwa Braz), while the rest of the musicians were seasoned veterans of the nascent francophone world music scene, including dancer Chyco Dru from Martinique and guitarist Jacky Arconte from Guadaloupe. Kaoma’s song “Lambada,” also known as “Chorando se Foi,” charted a route to success that betrays the darkest tendencies of profits in international musical circulation. It was a cover of a song that had been circulating in various forms in South America for years. It was first called “Llorando se Fue” and was written by the Hermosa brothers for their Andean folk music group in Bolivia, Los Kjarkas. In that version, the memorable melody was also played on the siku (Andean panpipes) in addition to being sung. The catchy melodic hook fueled the song’s wide circulation in South America in the 1980s. The first Portuguese version of the song was recorded by Márcia Ferreira in 1986. Notably, Ferreira’s arrangement borrowed many elements that worked for a cumbia version by the Peruvian group Cuarteto Continental, including transferring the melodic hook to the accordion and adding drum fills between vocal lines. Ferreira’s transformed version of the song was considered a lambada at the time. Kaoma’s recording used a melody, translated lyrics, and arrangement without crediting any predecessors under the direction of Olivier Lorsac, a French music impresario. He filed the song for French copyright protection under his pseudonym, Chico de Oliveira, shortly after offering the Hermosa brothers $140,000 for rights to the song (which they refused). Kaoma released the song and soon attracted widespread international attention. Thus, like many enterprising and ethically dubious musicians and producers before them, Lorsac and Kaoma were sued the instant that the song attained widespread success.16 In July 1990, the French courts upheld that the song was indeed created by the Hermosa brothers and 16 Industry watchers at numerous news outlets noticed Ferreira’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of her record label EMI, which was also the label for the Hermosa brothers as “Lambada” was being promoted in the United States.

126  Bossa Mundo Lorsac agreed to give the Hermosa brothers’ label, EMI, half of all royalties. The music press noticed these legal proceedings underway just as the song was about to be released in the United States. Kaoma’s single “Lambada” was a rousing success in France and other European markets. In France, it sold over 1.7 million copies and was the best charting single in 1989, dominating from late July through mid-​October.17 The single also topped the Eurochart 100, and was the biggest single in numerous individual European markets.18 (Compared to the European continent, the United Kingdom was late to join the lambada party—​the song only peaked at number 2 at the beginning of 1990 after entering the Top 50 singles chart the previous November, and the press largely ignored it.) By the end of 1989, Epic Records (then a part of CBS) prepared to market the song and dance for the US market hot off its success in Europe, which by the end of the year surpassed 4 million units sold. In a frenzy at the end of 1989, entertainment industry watchers in the United States began to publicly telegraph what they thought would be a massive trend, banking on the sex appeal of the dance and what they anticipated would be a massive appetite for public social dance in the wake of the popularity of the romantic dance drama Dirty Dancing (1987)—​which, in 1989, was still riding a wave of success as a top-​selling VHS tape with two successful soundtrack compilations, Dirty Dancing and More Dirty Dancing. The physical act of dancing the lambada involved the couple facing each other with their legs intertwined producing a racy, sexual energy for the ballroom dance crowd. Indeed, promoters of the trend dubbed it “Dirty Dancing with a World Beat” or, better yet, “Safe sex for the ’90s,” referencing anxieties around contracting HIV from unprotected sex. Yet lambada had nothing close to the staying power of other Latin and Caribbean dances that had charted a similar path, and much of this is due to timing (dance crazes in the United States tend to do well if they emerge during the summer months, not winter) as well as the naked attempt by Epic records and other record labels to make as much money off the dance as possible. The circulation of the lambada dance recalls the path of the bossa nova dance fad in the early 1960s, as discussed in c­ hapter 1. In both cases, the 17 The song was so popular that it was used in an Orangina television ad in France. One Brazilian musician living in France at the time explained to me that musicians living abroad learned how to play lambada by studying the tracks on Kaoma’s debut album. 18 The song’s success on a variety of European singles charts fit in with a potpourri aesthetic. Other European top singles that year included the megamix “Swing the Mood,” Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True,” and Lil’ Louis’s house classic “French Kiss.”

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  127 marketing effort rested on the unexpected success of one song followed by a frenzy for other musicians to “cash in,” as well as the widespread mobilization of dance instructors and attendant misunderstandings about the origins and meaning of the dance music. However, lambada was explicitly from a poorer, more tropical region of Brazil, which allowed the fad to traffic in new stereotypes discussed below. It also charted its path through Europe first, which was much more open to dance music than the United States. That meant that when lambada in the United States did not match the success elsewhere, it was widely understood to be a failure. A large part of the fad’s viability came from its ties to the lengthy history of linking music from “the tropics,” especially those that extend Caribbean styles, to sexual experiences of the Other. Part of lambada’s appeal at the turn of the 1990s had to do with the concerted effort on the part of northeastern Brazilian cities, such as Fortaleza (in Ceará) and Salvador da Bahia, to invest in the libidinal economies of tropical music during the country’s redemocratization efforts (Lamen 2014). It helped sex tourism that the music from the northeast of Brazil was already tapping into rhythms and musical approaches that recalled the circum-​Caribbean, such as the proliferation of samba-​reggae and merengue amalgams in axé music. The practical musical affiliations between working musicians in the Northeast of Brazil with styles linked to the Caribbean had the effect of tying the region to the widespread sexualization of women of mixed race and the music and dance that they embodied as an experience (Blanco Borelli 2016). Through the imagery and sounds of the lambada craze, the representation of the Brazilian Northeast in internationally oriented music had shifted from the 1970s. As noted in c­ hapter 3, the Brazilian Northeast has an important role in the Brazilian imaginary, especially in terms of how the country’s elites in the Southeast saw themselves as modern during the 1920s; the region is engulfed by stereotypes about poverty and “old-​fashioned” values (Albuquerque Jr. 2014). During redemocratization, cities in the Northeast embraced stereotypes about the sex appeal and availability of mixed-​race women—​they were mutually reinforcing trends of “sexy” dancing and catchy “tropical” musical styles. Thus, the location of where the French producers first witnessed the lambada dance had much to do with fantasies about exoticized bodies. Industry watchers had reason to believe that they could prop up lambada to long-​lasting success. Just a few years prior, a similar international dance fever broke out for zouk, a dance style from the French Antilles that spread

128  Bossa Mundo throughout Europe, Canada, and South America largely on the popularity of one group, Kassav’. Although zouk developed from many dance musical styles in the Caribbean, Kassav’’s intervention and popularity eventually made the group’s music synonymous with zouk as a whole, to the point that when people spoke about zouk as music, they were describing Kassav’ (Guilbault 1993). Kassav’’s popularity in France was why zouk took off as a world music genre. Their hit song “Zouk la sé sèl médikaman nou ni” from 1984 was responsible for the zouk explosion in the mid-​1980s. The group’s subsequent gold and platinum records eventually inspired a major multinational record label, CBS records, to sign the group to a recording contract in 1988 and released Vini Pou in the United States. This was just one year before Kaoma signed with Epic records (also part of CBS records) on the strength of a hit single. The similarities between zouk and lambada do not end with their relationship to France and CBS. Although the lambada coalesced as a dance as a result of its spread from Belém to other parts of the Brazil, it gained a foothold with the Brazilian public once it found an enthusiastic audience in Bahia and attained subsequent international success. Darien Lamen (2013) argues that residents in Belém feel a strong affinity to the Caribbean as part of a type of cosmopolitanism even as the city is in the interior of Brazil and three hours by boat from the open Atlantic. During the late 1980s, some lambada musicians embraced aspects of zouk. Thus, when Kaoma included some zouk tracks on their debut album, they both appealed to the zouk trend in Paris while also expressing some of the Caribbeanness at the heart of lambada. Like other tropical dance genres of the time, lambada had a transnational mixture at its core, making it especially pliable to an international market. The mutability at the heart of lambada also allowed for it to be more easily absorbed into a world music marketing infrastructure that had not yet fully coalesced. Since most of the attention journalists paid to world music focused on the actions of established rock stars that fit within an album-​oriented model—​something that a dance like lambada simply did not do—​the coverage of lambada was often juxtaposed against artists who were more respected. Thus, when Richard Gehr, the world music columnist for Spin, covered the lambada in 1990, he rightfully pointed out that Kaoma was capitalizing on the viability of world beat as a marketing category through the album’s name, World Beat. Similarly, when The Observer (London) reflected on the transition to the 1990s, they contextualized lambada amid musicians involving themselves in charities and global environmental activism:

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  129 Bob Geldoff applied his Band Aid to the Ethiopian famine just at the moment when pop’s pretensions to change the world had finally been abandoned. Through the £80  million total raised by the various Band Aid, Live Aid and Sport Aids is probably the price of the wing of one F-​111 fighter, the example was far-​reaching. The Anti-​Apartheid movement, Amnesty International, and Greenpeace among those garnering strong support from stars. The global nature of political and ecological problems and their stress on the interdependence of nations, has found other parallels in pop. [. . .] Paul Simon’s flirtation with South African music for Graceland and David Byrne’s accommodation of Latin and Brazilian forms for this year’s Rei Momo are prominent examples of an increasing process of hybridisation. The chart success of France’s Gipsy Kings, Zimbabwe’s Bhundhu Boys, and Brazil’s Lambada dance craze indicate a future where the points on the cultural compass are scrambled. (Doing the Biz 1989: A8)

Those comments reveal that journalists had difficulty parsing the difference between these contrasting examples of Brazilian music in the global music market. In the United States, the rapid rise and fall of lambada demonstrates how world music journalism was largely in its infancy and had not yet developed a reference for parsing a corporatized dance craze from intercultural collaborations and compilation albums that characterized world music for the rest of the 1990s. Lambada was superimposed onto routes established by zouk and the involvement of dance studios. Milo Miles of the New York Times described in a 1990 comparative review that lambada and zouk were taking part in the same network of distribution and association as part of the financial viability of world music more generally. He wrote: “Planning the future of world beat is now a growth industry, as a fine crop of releases of zouk, makossa, and lambada illustrate” (Miles 1990: H25). However, he noted with some pessimism that lambada’s chances of finding lasting success were not good: “Kaoma’s timing is off in this country, since dance fads most often thrive in summertime heat. Nevertheless, lambada could follow in the footsteps of the twist. Its polyrhythms surround a seductively languid and off-​center pulse that draws you back like a bowl of potato chips” (Miles 1990: H33). During the early months of its arrival in the United States, it seemed that lambada had enough appeal to spread from city centers to remote locations.

130  Bossa Mundo Like other fads before it, that expansion came with the loss in perceptions of exclusivity and prestige thereby diminishing consumer interest. For example, when the Los Angeles Times featured an article on the growth of clubs catering to novices with lambada dance class offerings in far-​flung locations like the San Gabriel Valley, author Edmund Newton was clear that there might be something “shameful and passe [sic]” with the trend expanding beyond the exclusive ballroom dance set. Yet he commented with wonderment about the global popularity of the song, “If lambada has marched triumphantly through the French Riviera and the Costa del Sol and even the newly liberated East Berlin, can the San Gabriel Valley be far behind?” (Newton 1990: J1). Newton was not the only reporter to note the historical importance of the fall of the Berlin Wall. When Billboard Latin music columnist Carlos Agudelo first covered lambada in January that year, he declared, “Funny thing, this lambada that promotes itself constantly, like no other music I know, and proceeds as if it is an entity and not the music it is made of.” He continued, “There are lambada dance classes. Dozens, if not hundreds of singers and musicians are doing lambada. It was played in Berlin during the lowering of the Wall” (Agudelo 1990: 72). The authors referenced the music’s spread past the falling Berlin Wall to highlight the magnitude of the popularity of the lambada craze. They also situated those comments amid observations on lambada’s faddish nature. The rapid ascent of Kaoma’s recording of “Lambada” to the top of the charts may have been a sign that the world was changing, but there was nothing new about Latin dances finding an eager audience and spreading to the suburbs. It was a familiar script—​the trope of taking a dance from the tropics and sensationalizing it for ballroom dances had been previously rehearsed not just by zouk, but also salsa and reggae from the previous decade. As Barbara Browning points out, much of the sensationalization of lambada was in keeping with French myths of Brazilian sexual abandon (1995: 136). Reactions to the faddish and commercial nature of lambada were extensive. For example, in an interview with Roy Wilkinson at Sounds, members of the band Sonic Youth negatively compared the “Madchester” rave-​rock scene coming out of Manchester in the early 1990s to the lambada in a move meant as an insult to both: “It is like the lambada. It’s contrived shit” (Steve Shelley quoted in Wilkinson 1990). Similarly, some Brazilians living in the United States were vocal in their frustrations over the outsized representational role of the music. Brazilian music journalist Ana Maria Bahiana told

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  131 the Los Angeles Times: “Brazilians are saying at last the world is paying attention to one of our cultural exports, but there’s also the general feeling that this is the ‘Carmen Miranda syndrome’ again: It’s the old story of foreigners going to Brazil and reaping a cheap profit. Those two Frenchmen were very clever—​ they tapped a dormant market” (quoted in The Brazilian Reaction 1990: T5). What upset many was the country’s depiction in the two films capitalizing on lambada that were released the same weekend in March 1990, The Forbidden Dance (1990, dir. G. Clark) and Lambada (1990, dir. J. Silberg). Both pushed a version of lambada history without care to accuracy. The Forbidden Dance was the more socially conscious of the two and falsified its historical origins, showing Indians in the Amazon dancing lambada and capoeira. One student at UCLA specializing in Latin American studies said, “The movie misrepresents Brazilian culture and history and mixes everyone up asif [sic] it doesn’t make a difference if you’re an Indian or an African” (The Brazilian Reaction 1990: 65). The director of The Forbidden Dance defended the misrepresentations in the films stating that “we are not saying this is authentic lambada, nor is this a documentary . . . it’s a fun movie, hopefully one that people enjoy as a fable” (65). Inaccuracies about Brazil in international film are so common that it is predictable that the director described it as a fable rather than acknowledging his role in perpetuating stereotypes. The plot for The Forbidden Dance follows the adventures of an Indian princess from the Amazon who moves to New York, where she gets a job as a maid, falls for her boss’s son, and they compete in a dance contest. When the princess discusses the lambada, she describes it as so sensual that it used to be forbidden, hence the film’s title.19 She also speaks publicly against the destruction of the rainforest and threat to her people by the fictional company Petramco. The film managed to combine aspects of a dance competition film with the exoticism and environmental activism of the day. Brazilian film scholar Tunico Amâncio cites The Forbidden Dance as one of many examples of international films that trade on tropes about the mystical powers of the Amazon (2000: 90–​98). Through the process of promoting the lambada as music and film plot backdrop, the internationalization process relied so heavily on fantasies about what “tropical” Brazil meant at the time. 19 As a demonstration of just how dependent the lambada craze was on the lambada song rather than Kaoma, the final dance scene in The Forbidden Dance featured Kid Creole and the Coconuts performing an English-​language version of “Lambada.”

132  Bossa Mundo After lambada reached publics all around the world, it returned to Brazil in a new form. Like most home-​grown cultural forms that become international fads, the world music version of lambada rose and fell in Brazil (Browning 1995: 135). By contrast, internationalization had a different set of consequences for a Brazilian musician whose rise in the world music industry paralleled lambada.

Margareth Menezes, The Global Diva from Bahia In December 1989, The Guardian introduced British readers to Margareth Menezes alongside the “lascivious dance craze” of the lambada, suggesting that they were both lovely ways to “usher in the last decade of a millennium” (Glanvill 1989:  33). As Rick Glanvill described Menezes’s new international fame, he compared her to the Brazilian dance: “Funk and jazz percolate through hi-​tech revamps of African-​derived local rhythms like afoxe (pronounced a-​four-​shay), just as Lambada pilfers from calypso, zouk and reggae. She has become one of Brazil’s most progressive, accessible artists. It’s a measure of her saleability that Byrne has chosen her as a scene-​stealing support for his shows” (33). Unlike its relative silence about the lambada and the single rising up the charts in the United Kingdom, the British music press eagerly discussed Menezes, especially in relation to David Byrne. For many critics, Menezes represented the opposite of Byrne’s famously awkward stage presence while also trafficking in the same fantasies about Brazil as the lambada except in this case without the garish baggage of lawsuits and dance fads. While other musicians from Bahia have since eclipsed her success both in Brazil and abroad, Menezes’s experiences in the United States and the United Kingdom while on tour with Byrne laid the groundwork for how late twentieth-​century Brazilian musicians with international ambitions would be treated by audiences and the Anglophone music press. Due to her links to the Brazilian state of Bahia, Menezes fit the trends in world music at the time while also standing apart. Unlike other Brazilians working in the international touring circuit in the late 1980s, such as Milton Nascimento and Gilberto Gil, Margareth Menezes was something new.20 At the time of her tour with Byrne, she was not yet a household name across 20 Gilberto Gil and Milton Nascimento were among the most prominent Brazilian musicians who regularly toured Anglophone markets at music festivals, “rainforest benefits,” and solo tours. Special thanks to Jason Stanyek for reminding me of this point.

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  133 Brazil. Her musical productions and arrangements did not conform to aesthetic conventions of MPB but rather formed part of a distinctly regional pop music style—​samba-​reggae in the emerging electronic hybrid style called axé, which at that point had come to signify a range of transnational black cultural values circulating in Bahia since the 1970s (Crook 2005: 222). Samba-​reggae was a rhythmically distinct percussion style that originated in the 1980s with Olodum, a bloco afro21 in Salvador that was famous for being open to musicians of all races (in contrast to the more militant Black consciousness of the first bloco afro, Ilê Aiyê) while also investing in the revitalization of the Pelourinho neighborhood. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, axé music was coalescing into a type of pop music that adapted songs from the blocos afro to smaller ensembles with electric instruments more appropriate for a concert stage than a Carnaval procession. Menezes rose to regional fame through her first hit song, a pop version of “Faraó (Divindade do Egito)” (known as “Faraó”) produced by Djalma Oliveira in 1987. That year, “Faraó” was the big samba-​reggae Carnaval song for Olodum and it fit the group’s ethos. Larry Crook argues that Luciano Gomes dos Santos wrote the song as “a call to Salvador’s black community to awaken to the possibilities of an Egyptian-​ like renaissance” (2005: 221). In a similar fashion to Carnaval theme songs for other groups around Brazil, it has been a common practice for singers to record pop renditions of bloco themes to encourage enthusiasm in the run-​up to Carnaval regardless of their affiliation. Despite the big hit, Menezes was unknown outside of Bahia. Yet, her musical approach and stage presence embodied just the kind of Bahian mixtures that would translate to the world music scene of the time; in her early recordings, she traversed Bahian lambada, zouk, and samba-​reggae, all genres with clear ties Caribbean musical exchanges.22 Thus the comparison between the lambada craze and Margareth Menezes in the English-​speaking press at the end of 1989 and beginning of 1990 was helped by the timing of her tour with Byrne and her repertoire.23

21 Blocos afro (pl.) are large Carnaval blocks or performing organizations that seek to be a racially conscious alternative to the mostly white musical environment that dominated the Carnaval processions in Salvador, Bahia. Prior to the emergence of the blocos in the 1970s, the options for racially conscious Carnaval festivities were mostly limited to afoxé organizations. For more on the racial politics of Ilê Aiyê and Olodum, see Rodrigues (1999), Armstrong (2002), and Tosta (2010). 22 Crook (2005) describes the creation of samba-​reggae as a mixture between the reggae emphasis on the “swing” of the upbeat with borrowed elements from samba and merengue from the Dominican Republic. 23 For an example of dense timing that year, see Robin Denselow (1989), which was a combined review of Kaoma’s World Beat, Brazil Classics 2: O Samba, and Menezes’s appearance on a lambada compilation. See also Pareles (1990).

134  Bossa Mundo In the late 1980s, Menezes’s star was rising, but her fame in Brazil grew exponentially after her tour with Byrne. He reportedly heard some of the records for her upcoming album Um Canto pra Subir in 1989 while he was immersing himself in Brazilian music and Afro-​Brazilian culture, an interest that resulted in a documentary film and his Brazil Classics compilation CDs. Byrne invited Menezes to support his tour for Rei Momo. She did not speak English at the time, but she did have international ambitions. She signed with the Mango imprint for Island Records for international releases while maintaining her contract with Polygram for the Brazilian market. When recalling her decision to go on tour with Byrne, Menezes stated: The beginning [of the tour] was really difficult. I didn’t speak English, didn’t know anyone, I was alone. I had to make a decision in less than a week and I had no idea what it was. [. . .] Some Latin musicians compete a little with Brazilian musicians, with MPB. So it was difficult to get those musicians to accept my work, how to play percussion, that potency of samba-​reggae [. . .] But with David it was easy, I was well received by him.24 (Guerreiro 2000: 231)

Although she did not describe it in her interviews, the tour also exposed her to the stereotypes of Brazilian women as the embodiment of exotic fantasies. For many reviewers, she confirmed Byrne’s inability to “get” the rhythms. Neil Spencer of The Observer (London) was colorful in his praise of Menezes’s contribution to the show: “Support comes from the superlative young Bahian singer Margareth Menezes, and no arse should leave unshaken” (1989: A14). The concert review from NME focused on Menezes’s dancing in contrast to Byrne’s stage presence: Never has enthusiasm so outweighed ability. During one of the band’s Byrne-​free interludes, he becomes so excited that he rushes out from the wings to dance with Margareth Menezes, complimenting her fluid, natural moves with the epileptic grace of a man wearing water-​filled firebuckets on his feet who’s just plugged his dick into the city’s central electricity grid. (Witter 1990: 37) 24 Translated by author from the Portuguese. Original quote: “O princípio foi muito difícil, eu não falava inglês, eu não conhecia ninguém, fui sozinha. Eu tive que tomar uma decisão em menos de uma semana, eu não tinha idéia do que era. [. . .] Alguns músicos latinos competem um pouco com os músicos brasileiros, com a MPB. Então foi difícil conseguir que os músicos aceitassem o trabalho e a coisa de tocar só percussão, aquela potência do samba-​reggae [. . .] Mas com o David foi fácil, eu fui muito bem recebida por ele.”

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  135 Many of the reporters who saw Menezes for the first time on this tour compared her to whatever opinions they had about Byrne. In the case of British critics—​who, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, were predisposed to disliking his project—​this often resulted in observations that had little to do with her music. Sometimes, this resulted in exoticizing language about her to make a point about Byrne. In a feature for The Guardian titled “On Safari with the Prof of World Beat,” Adam Sweeting exemplifies the futility of press outreach performed by Bryne’s touring band of Latin musicians: Several of Byrne’s musicians arrived early to play Educate the Press. Cafe, his burly percussionist, waxed euphoric (if slightly incoherent) about the enterprise. Trumpeter Angel Fernandez is halfway through writing a book about Latin music, and was full of facts. Margareth Menezes, Byrne’s guest vocalist who’s already a major star in Brazil, was somewhat upstaged by her cigar-​puffing interpreter, a perspiring, overweight figure with tie askew who could have stepped straight out of Graham Greene. (Sweeting 1989: 22)

Sweeting did not cover Byrne favorably, and his articles about Byrne’s music were often laced with biting sarcasm (cf. Sweeting 1992). In this case, the cadre of Latin musicians who came to meet him enthusiastically explained the context for what they were doing (Angel Fernandez as “full of facts,” etc.), including Menezes through the aid of an interpreter. Yet all of them were merely backdrop for a so-​called “Third World” experience. As a precursor to how Menezes would be received in the United States, Sweeting highlighted the physicality of the interaction—​in this case the interpreter’s sweat and weight caught the writer’s attention. Most of the language about Menezes came as a result of reporters trying to explain how she “stole the show” throughout his tour (a fact that Byrne himself readily admits)25 by being more lively or “authentic” in her stage presence. Writing for the New York Times, Jon Pareles referred to her “sinuous dancing” to entice readers to attend her solo shows in New York at the end of the year (1989: 29). Mike Joyce, writing for the Washington Post, also focused on Menezes’s dancing: “Compared with Menezes’ footwork, Byrne’s dancing left a lot to be desired—​gracefulness, for one thing—​and yet he was endearingly kinetic” (1989: C4). Tom Moon of the Philadelphia Inquirer employed naturalizing rhetoric when he stated Byrne should “get some coaching from

25 See Byrne (2017: 65).

136  Bossa Mundo his Brazilian backing singer, Margareth Menezes, whose vocals and dancing seemed as natural as breathing” (1989: C4). Although they found plenty to say about her body, reporters rarely wrote of her musicianship. They also had difficulty taking in her stage presence on its own terms. Instead she confirmed opinions about Byrne through contrast, often through the objectifying language of the sexy woman from Brazil. In 1990 she released two albums, one for Polygram called Um Canto pra Subir that included samba-​reggae, zouk, and Bahian lambada songs. It also featured “Dark Secrets,” a song she recorded for the soundtrack for Wild Orchid (1989, dir. Z.  King).26 In keeping with a nascent world music industry, her first album for Mango Records, Elegibo, was clearly geared toward an international market. Named after an ancient Yoruba city, Elegibo was a compilation of material drawn from her Polygram releases, Um Canto pra Subir and her self-​titled debut from 1988. The tracks underwent new mixes and production, including two tracks that were produced by David Byrne. The editions of Elegibo printed in Germany and the Netherlands also included “Dark Secrets” from Wild Orchid, appealing to differing tastes in world music. On September 8, 1990, Elegibo topped Billboard’s newly named World Music chart and dominated for sixteen weeks (with a total of thirty-​one weeks on the charts). Its success was fueled by the lead single, “Elegibô (Uma História de Ifã),” which featured synthesizers and a catchy hook. Her return to Brazil was greeted with enthusiasm. Thus, Menezes was the first Brazilian musician to attempt to leverage her success in the emerging world music industry back home, exponentially heightening the historical pattern of exchange between national and international fame that began with Carmen Miranda in the 1940s and continued through the international success of Sérgio Mendes and others. In the early 1990s, she was more well-​known in the world music touring circuit than she was in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. When Ricardo Pessanha asked Menezes about this phenomenon in 1991, she stated: I think big cities like Rio and São Paulo are more interested in foreign music, whereas foreigners are interested in our music. The public reaction 26 Wild Orchid was filmed in 1989, first released in Italy on December 22, 1989, and was released in the United States in April 1990. At the time of its release, the first cut of the film was deemed too sexually explicit to receive an “R” rating and had to be recut. The film was shot on location in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, and its depiction of Brazilian culture was so offensive that it received extended treatment in Amâncio’s O Brasil dos Gringos and its accompanying documentary, Olhar Estrangeiro.

Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s  137 abroad showed they’re hungry for new rhythms. After the tour with Byrne I did a two-​month-​long tour myself, with my band, and I saw that people are tired of rock. They want something fresh. Why are artists like David Byrne, Paul Simon, Sting, Al Jarreau looking for new rhythms? Because they are looking for creative renewal. [. . .] People like David Byrne are always willing to take risks. (quoted in Pessanha 1991: 47)

Here Menezes referred directly to the bifurcation of world music markets and what was popular in major cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. That division has been an important factor in how Brazilian musicians forge international careers, and it would only grow more tangled in the decades to come (and the subject of the final two chapters of this book). Ultimately, Menezes’s experience on tour with David Byrne set the tone for how critics would respond to other high-​profile collaborations, such as Paul Simon’s work with the bloco afro Olodum on “The Obvious Child,” from his album Rhythm of the Saints late in 1990. Menezes and Olodum both played key roles in valorizing new pop from Bahia during the same period when Brazilians were attempting to define musical ideals amid political changes. Indeed, as Bryan McCann argues, in the period following Brazilian redemocratization, the explosion of sub-​genres such as bloco afro–​inspired axé demonstrated the meeting point of marketing to Brazilian and international markets, with the success of Menezes and Olodum epitomizing the genre’s viability in world music (McCann 2008: 106). Thus, as reductive as the coverage of Menezes was to her dancing body, it was part of moment when Brazilian music was changing to accommodate world music, even if it was limited by her relationship to a prominent intermediary such as Byrne. Prior to 1989, most assumptions about Brazilian music among Anglophone publics were limited to previous success stories: samba, bossa nova, and jazz. However, the period between 1989 and 1990 was a watershed, and it encapsulated trends in world music discourse that continue. Lambada and the success of Bahian musicians such as Margareth Menezes and Olodum ultimately expanded the world music circuit to more diverse opportunities for what was acceptable under the rubric of Brazilian music. While lambada was quickly forgotten by world music enthusiasts, the fact that it traversed the route that it did exposes just how easy it was to revive old, exoticizing tropes. The dance continues as a vibrant style in local cultures across Brazil, and the melody of that lead single has reappeared in multiple examples of Afro-​Latin music, the most prominent example being “On

138  Bossa Mundo the Floor” by Jennifer Lopez in 2011.27 Similarly, much of the music from Menezes’s international debut circulated anew in the twenty-​first century courtesy of a 2008 remix by Relight Orchestra and its inclusion in the Zumba dance fitness program. The song has been remixed multiple times in the years since. Beyond recordings, Northeastern sounds, especially in the form of bloco afro ensembles, have become a standard part of Brazilian music and dance instruction in the Global North alongside folkloric Candomblé performance and capoeira in communities and universities.28 Yet the turn of the 1990s was also caught up in the period’s self-​conscious historicity. As an aftershave ad in 1990 demonstrates with a black and white photo of a man with the copy “Play it again. Samba,” it was easy to capitalize on the heightened prominence of Brazil, even if the ethos was not as uniform as in previous eras with a play on multiple pop culture references, in this case the classic line from Casablanca (1942, dir. M. Curtiz) and Brazilian music. Things were changing, and in many cases the magnitude of global shifts around the end of the Cold War and the threats to the environment were an inescapable part of how this music was received. Ultimately, the combined influence of Bahian musical trends and compilations by such cultural intermediaries as David Byrne had the effect of constructing a new canon of Brazilian music as world music, one that still exerts a strong influence today.

27 Wayne Marshall has repeatedly tracked the popularity of “Lambada” in the early twenty-​first century on his blog, Wayne&Wax, culminating in “Lambada Is a Feeling” (Marshall 2011)  that features a mega-​mix including versions of the song that track across Afro-​Latin America. http://​ wayneandwax.com/​?p=5492, last consulted May 16, 2019. 28 I participated in one such group called BatUCLAda during my PhD studies at UCLA in 2005–​ 2007 and in 2008–​2009.

5 Remixing Brazil Distraction and Retro Taste at the Turn of the Millennium

At the turn of the millennium, Brazilian music was so ubiquitous in global urban centers that it became normalized. Starting in the second half of the 1990s, middle-​class urban youth in cities such as New York, London, and San Francisco would have encountered Brazilian music through a few major conduits: some celebrated the unsung heroes of late 1960s Tropicália (such as Tom Zé and Os Mutantes)—​the latest trend among record crate-​diggers and indie rock musicians (cf. Harvey 2001). Others championed the latest DJs and producers out of São Paulo, who mixed bossa nova and samba with an electronica foundation. By 2003, some in the urban cognoscenti became fascinated by the blog-​driven interest in the latest flavor of global urban beats:  funk carioca. It circulated outside monetary distribution channels through free downloads and mixtapes, before eventually finding commercial release in compilations—​under bad licensing deals—​with names such as Brazilian Beats. By early 2006, the stage was set for Sérgio Mendes to make a comeback by collaborating with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and for Nike to bank its entire FIFA World Cup campaign on the Brazilian team and samba (cf. Goldschmitt 2011b).1 And yet, with all that millennial hype around Brazilian music, not many people actually noticed that what they were hearing came from Brazil. Like globally successful artists from other locations such as India or Mexico (cf. Marshall and Beaster-​Jones 2012; Madrid 2008; Kun 2005), some of the most successful new Brazilian musicians in the United States and the United Kingdom found their publics through new licensing and distribution routes. Their recordings functioned, effectively, as background music in retail stores, or what Leslie Meier (2011) calls “promotional ubiquitous music,” offering 1 Mendes’s collaboration with will.i.am was so effective that the two collaborated again for the soundtrack to the animated film Rio (2011, dir. C. Saldanha).

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.003.0006

140  Bossa Mundo novel sounds in a period where popular music increasingly relied on sampling, copying, and remixing sounds from the past. These recordings often appeared in audiovisual media such as film, television, and advertisements—​ media where music contributed to the affective foundation for other types of commercial activity. The media environment in US and British urban centers was saturated, and audiences regularly divided and spread their attention with long-​term consequences for stereotypes of Brazilian music and the country’s brand, especially regarding racial and national difference. The success of Brazilian music during this period cemented Brazil’s brand as evoking the nostalgia for bossa nova played on paradisiacal beaches with a touch of urban violence and poverty—​stereotypes that continue to circulate today. As these final two chapters show, media saturation and varying levels of attention among Anglophone publics often reinforced patterns of Brazilian musical success, thereby perpetuating stereotypes alongside new modes of musical expression. This chapter argues that the success of Brazilian music in a climate of increasingly crowded attention, distraction, and overstimulation altered the image and brand of Brazil in the global marketplace. Although I reference many internationally successful artists, I focus on the contrasting examples of Bebel Gilberto and Seu Jorge. Both found success through new distribution and licensing channels that privileged cut-​up and remixed Brazilian music with clear references to iconic images of a Brazilian past in the Anglophone imaginary; Bebel Gilberto’s music reveled in them while Seu Jorge simultaneously fed and subverted them. Their recordings circulated through multiple networks with consequences for how they related to publics in Brazil and abroad. That process was entangled, to varying degrees, with Brazil’s past and with its potential for future economic success. The trendiness of Brazil in the early 2000s was partly driven by its economic boom, which brought with it increased technological and socioeconomic mobility, in turn affecting musical circulation. With the election of Luiz Ignácio “Lula” da Silva in 2002 and his extension of the previous administration’s neoliberal economic policies, Brazil’s confidence was growing. That confidence brought new waves of investors, tourists, and membership in BRICS—​a term, first coined one year before Lula’s election, for certain rapidly developing countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which then became a trade association. Brazil’s growing economy translated into more investment in Brazilian commodities in the global marketplace. These included the international health fad around the açaí berry,

Remixing Brazil  141 the transformation of the lowly Brazilian flip-​flop sandal into high fashion, and the international distribution of one of Brazil’s most common beers, Brahma.2 This is to say nothing of the proliferation of Brazilian bikini wax salons, Brazilian jiu-​jitsu studios, and churrascaria-​style restaurants, all of which spread in tandem with Brazil’s strengthening international brand. For decades, Brazilian music fans have fretted over its use in contexts where it competes for listener attention, especially in the form of piped-​in background music in commercial retail and dining environments (Goldschmitt n.d.). During the period in question, Brazilian music was just one of many global music styles to circulate in the milieu of remix, sampling, and widespread licensing in audiovisual media and sonic branding; however, its frequent use in retail sonic architecture signaled kitsch more than other genres.3 Beginning with bossa nova’s turn to an adult market in the mid-​1960s (as discussed in ­chapter 2), the use of bossa nova as background music has been so extensive that it has even been the subject of its own film and television trope—​“the elevator in Ipanema”—​dating back to 1980, a time when bossa nova was a marginal genre that had yet to gain its retro sheen.4 For some fans, the use of bossa nova in these environments lessened its musical value. Bossa nova remixes proliferated in spaces of commerce, especially in trendy restaurants, airports, and coffee shops in urban centers in the United States and the United Kingdom, not to mention public radio, and soundtracks for film and TV. What does it mean when new, millennial versions of bossa nova circulate as electronic dance music remixes in retail spaces, hotel lobbies, and soundtracks, as the music of Bebel Gilberto often did during this period? Or when Seu Jorge’s performance of bossa nova-​tinged covers of classic David Bowie songs, appearing in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, is intended to demonstrate ironic cuteness? Critics concerned with musical value could argue that the examples of Bebel Gilberto and Seu Jorge that form the crux of this chapter were the result of the debasement and subsequent resuscitation 2 Açaí, a berry from the Amazon, became a health-​food fad that altered the country’s agricultural priorities. Brazilian flip-​flops, called havaianas (Portuguese for “Hawaiians”), once affordable to working-​class Brazilians, were now available in specialized retail outlets at nearly triple the price. Massive global beer conglomerate InBev acquired AmBev, Brazil’s top beer corporation, and started marketing an international version of Brahma, the standard lager beer that Brazilians drink estupidamente gelada (stupidly frozen) on hot days, with the slogan “Cerveja do Brasil” (Brazil’s Beer). Brahma is popular throughout Latin America; however, InBev promoted it in Los Angeles starting in 2008, most memorably with a billboard on La Cienega Blvd. 3 Muzak is one of many companies to serve that role. Muzak was acquired by one of its competitors, Mood Media, in 2011. 4 The scene was from The Blues Brothers (1980, dir. J. Landis). The trope often features Muzak-​style instrumental performances of bossa nova or the “Theme from Summer Place.”

142  Bossa Mundo of bossa nova and related genres at the turn of the millennium; however, I contend that although there are consequences for Brazilian music circulating in this way, such a notion of devaluation based purely on commercial context does not address the complexities of the late 1990s and early 2000s. What they offered to publics in the United States and the United Kingdom was both novel and familiar in a package that did not require intellectual work, foreign as it was. As I  note in this book’s Introduction, concerns about inattention have often accompanied industrial change. As the internet and web-​based exchange have grown in influence, the discourse on the so-​called “attention economy” reached a fever pitch around the same moment that new routes for musical circulation emerged. The economic metaphor for attention (and distraction) relied on conceiving of it as a scarce resource (cf. Goldhaber 1997). Thus, consumers “pay” for content on the internet through their attention to advertising. That misconception is not how tech companies afford to give away content. As the new tech economy developed at the turn of the millennium, the real scarce resources were the consumers themselves—​and their data. Attention was far from the only element of exchange. A key assumption of this book is that one person’s attention is not fungible in the way that other commodities are; rather, it is transindividual, participating in flows that incorporate digital actors and collectives, including nonhuman actors (Citton 2017). You cannot exchange your attention for someone else’s because attention is something that is contingent upon your context, especially your perception of social relations around you. In the context of attention to music at the turn of the millennium, a key theoretical intervention conceives of subjectivity through a framework that accounts for ubiquitous modes of listening. Anahid Kassabian describes how the digital mediation and portability of music encourages temporary states of subjectivity. She argues that these new modes afford listeners access to vast fields of connections and presentations that extend well beyond the bounds of the individual through a distributed subjectivity. This includes the absence of focused attention and the potential to be located in multiple places at once—​through online portable technology or through audiovisual media (2013). Much of the music discussed in this chapter operated at the edge of attention, competing with and being reinforced by other activities and stimuli, such as commerce and audiovisual media. Thus, Brazilian music in this period was located in the gaps between the familiar and the novel, leveraging past associations with iconic sounds and melodies in a new context.

Remixing Brazil  143 This increasingly crowded musical and media environment also accompanied new roles of taste curation that came with new, social uses of the internet. In ­chapter  4, I  discussed new cultural intermediaries and tastemakers that expanded from record label personnel to expert journalists, dance instructors, and musician enthusiasts. At the turn of the millennium, the category expanded once more to include bloggers (participating in emerging social media platforms on the internet thereby playing a crucial role in spreading global urban music) as well as a rapidly growing category of entertainment industry worker: the music supervisor. In the United States and the United Kingdom, music supervisors match existing musical recordings with other commercial content—​often in film, television, and advertising—​and balance the promotional and creative aims of the content with negotiating a synchronization license.5 Depending on the scope of the ad campaign or the prominence of the music, these deals can involve a type of co-​branding between music and audiovisual content where the music’s placement can positively or negatively affect the reputation of the artist. Timothy D. Taylor has highlighted the prominence of music supervisors and views their heightened status as part of a change in what Bourdieu termed the “new petite bourgeoisie” (2009; 2016). These supervisors act as cultural intermediaries by connecting the brand with new music, highlighting their skill at culling gems from increasingly dense volumes of musical material. Effective placement in an ad or television show can be responsible for “breaking” musical artists to new audiences that match a desired demographic. Music supervisors fulfill a creative function not unlike those of skilled DJs or music bloggers. Indeed, it is not much of a stretch to connect the curatorial role of “pitching” and negotiating synchronization licenses to that of featuring a new recording on a music blog. By the early 2000s, high-​profile music blogs served a crucial role in mediating urban music from the Global South. Circulating one’s music through routes crowded with a variety of musical and nonmusical content comes with risks, but it also has potential rewards. Even though listener attention is being pulled in multiple directions with new levels of intermediation, there is the chance of building to an accumulation of exposure that can help an artist’s music stand out. In what follows, I  detail, through the examples of the career trajectories of Bebel Gilberto 5 Synchronization licenses allow music to be synchronized to a moving image, including film, television, video games, and advertising clips.

144  Bossa Mundo and Seu Jorge, how the strategy of widely licensing recordings to accompany other forms of commerce and consumption exaggerated the challenges of musically branding Brazil to an increasingly connected and sensorily stimulated Anglophone public. Gilberto and Jorge contended with established stereotypes based on patterns of Brazilian musical success, especially the retro-​chic of 1960s-​era bossa nova. Sometimes they chose to play along with such stereotypes through retro aesthetics, while other times they resorted to tongue-​in-​cheek satire. The question that remains is how effective these strategies of individual and national representation can be when the brevity of technological trends and social media memes threaten to undermine whatever successes may come. In what follows, I trace the sociopolitical reasons for the widespread practice of remixing Brazilian music as electronic dance music. Then, I focus on how Bebel Gilberto and Seu Jorge negotiated balancing their position as rising international stars with their Brazilian identity.

From Crisis to Remix: The Brazilian Music Industry at the Turn of the Millennium The widespread practice of licensing Brazilian music for compilations and for synchronization in audiovisual media (and related listening contexts) occurred amid a crisis in Brazil’s music sector. Technological changes altered the relationship between musicians, record labels, and publics. This section explores the causes of widespread licensing of independent Brazilian artists within the context of shifting popular music taste at the turn of the millennium, which favored sampling and remix practices. Like other global popular music scenes destabilized by the influx of digital music production techniques and distribution (cf. Madrid 2008; Luker 2016; Bates 2016), the material and cultural changes resulted in a mixed bag of cosmopolitan ambition, innovation, and profit off stereotypes. In 2007, when I began the research that informs the core of this book, Brazilian music industry workers were reeling from a dramatic contraction in their industry, fueled by widespread file-​sharing, bootlegging, and illegal downloading, often lumped under pirataria or “piracy.” Years before the widespread adoption of the MP3 and file-​sharing services—​a practice that has transformed the social role of recorded music in the Global North (cf. Sterne 2012; Morris 2015)—​a vast network of illegal CD bootleggers, or

Remixing Brazil  145 “pirates,” created an unofficial economy of music distribution and content that appealed to working-​class Brazilians (Bishop 2004; Dent 2012). Digital music piracy emerged just as the record industry was staggering from the economic shocks of the end of the dictatorship, including rapid inflation and a sequence of massive economic packages designed to bring Brazil’s currency and debt under control (Vicente 2014). The growth of piracy was a major cultural influence that shaped listening habits and what kinds of music circulated—​it functioned as a new form of mediation. Piracy became so widespread and established among Brazilian music lovers that some musicians in emerging sub-​genres such as tecnobrega utilized the pirates to distribute and promote their music (Lemos and Castro 2008). Record labels responded to piracy with a short-​term strategy: as industry workers explained to me, record companies raised CD prices, temporarily allowing them to ignore the fundamental problem of losing their consumer base. By the end of the 1990s, profits from domestic CD sales in Brazil grew exponentially, to more than double those of vinyl the decade before, peaking in 1997. However, most of these profits could be credited to back-​catalog reissues and live recordings of MPB artists from the 1960s and 1970s6—​what Eduardo Vicente describes as the record industry’s conservative impulse (2014: 146). The wealthiest Brazilians continued to buy CDs until they gained access to broadband internet (banda larga) and file-​sharing software. When that one market segment ultimately abandoned CDs, it made the inevitable record industry crisis all the more dramatic. Independent record companies responded to the threat of financial collapse by licensing music for international distribution (including synchronization) and seeking new domestic revenue streams such as mobile downloads. As Roberto Ruiz of MCD World Music explained to me in 2008, “A festa acabou!” (“The party was over”) and many labels sought to make whatever money they could off their back catalog at bargain-​basement prices. Others, such as YBMusic, viewed the widespread licensing of Brazilian music as an opportunity to sustain the recording and promotion of new Brazilian music. YBMusic extended this to building relationships with other world music labels such as Sterns Music (UK) in ventures intended to make synchronization licenses easier to obtain while also giving their artists the freedom to 6 MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) at the turn of the millennium encompassed both musicians known for musically protesting the dictatorship (Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethânia, Milton Nascimento, Elis Regina) and also a younger generation of artists, including Marisa Monte, Maria Rita, and Lenine. See Moehn (2012) for a study of the MPB scene in Rio de Janeiro.

146  Bossa Mundo seek whatever international distribution deals they wanted (Goldschmitt 2011b; Goldschmitt 2014). Meanwhile, the major multinational record labels in Brazil at the time—​Sony, Universal, EMI, and Warner—​changed little, opening the door for independent labels to dominate these new trends. In the midst of that tumult, some independent record companies enjoyed more financial freedom to experiment with repertoire and international promotion through the inherited wealth from high-​profile families in the financial sector (cf. Goldschmitt 2014). In the case of Biscoito Fino, its financial strength and ongoing relationships with Brazil’s arts foundation, FUNARTE (Brazilian National Foundation of the Arts), and the country’s oil company, Petrobras—​ which has sponsored artistic and cultural endeavors—​ have allowed the company to function at times as a type of archive and repository of the Brazilian popular music tradition, releasing expensive box sets and reissues in keeping with middle-​and upper-​class urban musical values alongside albums by established samba and MPB stars. Trama, on the other hand, utilized its financial strength to take a more experimental and fearless approach to fostering international publics for its largely untested catalog of artists. Trama even opened an office in London, which allowed its employees such as Eduardo Ramos—​whom I interviewed in 2008 after he had left the company—​to maintain working relationships with foreign labels and distributors and promote Brazilian artists. Ramos estimated that he traveled to London over sixty times during his tenure with Trama. It makes sense, then, that Trama had better means to strategically promote new Brazilian artists and styles abroad—​especially from emerging musical movements—​ and to lead trends rather than simply follow them. They had the financial flexibility to do so. Trama was the most bold in promoting new, overtly electronic variants of urban Brazilian music, sometimes dubbed the “novos sons” (“new sounds”) in Brazil and abroad. Other labels followed suit, forming the template for how Brazilian music circulated at the turn of millennium. At the time, references to “new”—​sometimes “nü” or “nu”—​“now,” and “future” circulated among transnational DJ cultures. Brazilian “new sounds” mixed approaches from hip-​hop, electronic dance music (especially drum ’n’ bass), dancehall reggae, and rock with regional and national styles. This encompassed regional variants such as the manguebeat scene from Pernambuco as well as styles from the urban core in the south such as drum ’n’ bass. Brazilian drum ’n’ bass originated in a style called “jungle,” which developed from combining the influence of Jamaican sound system culture with the British rave music scene.

Remixing Brazil  147 Jungle featured sped-​up syncopated drum breaks, samples of ominous music and noises (e.g., horror film soundtracks), and an MC style from Jamaican dancehall music. Drum ’n’ bass musicians adapted jungle to a broader audience by replacing the ominous sounds and the references to Jamaican music (and, by extension, race) with approaches more conducive to pop radio, such as jazz and pop song forms.7 It broke into global scenes due to new networks of record circulation and regional MTV stations, with the scene that developed in the Zona Leste (East Zone) of São Paulo being among the most distinct (Fontanari 2006, 2013). The initial prejudice with which the São Paulo public reacted to drum ’n’ bass changed once the DJs garnered international attention and played in city center venues as opposed to the city’s periphery (Fontanari 2015). For example, DJ Marky, the most famous paulistano drum ’n’ bass DJ, received invitations to play parties all over Europe. Ivan Fontanari notes that much of what helped Marky initially stand apart was his physical engagement with his equipment along with his facial expressions (especially his smile), gestures that other São Paulo DJs stated were essentially in line with positive stereotypes about Brazilians, distinguishing him from sound-​focused accounts of London based DJs (2015: 151). That stereotyping also extended to other DJs who began to leverage the physicality of DJing to maintain international interest. That strategic essentialism resembled musical tactics employed by other electronic dance musicians that were ethnically or nationally marked as Others at the time (cf. Madrid 2008).8 By the late 1990s, domestic and international labels scrambled to release Brazilian electronic dance music variants. DJs and tastemakers such as BBC radio host Gilles Peterson began to feature old bossa nova records and samba funk alongside groove-​based jazz and soul records in chill-​out spaces.9 From a wider view, it conformed to the practice of DJs fueling interest in recording trends from the past through remixes, such as the lounge and exotica revival and acid jazz from the 1990s (cf. Lamen n.d.). Soon, some British-​based producers mixed bossa nova and samba with electronic dance music beats and effects. A good example of this approach is a 1995 track called “Samba 7 For more on the sociopolitical of jungle and drum ’n’ bass, see Hesmondhalgh and Melville (2001). 8 For Latin American perspectives on modernity and Otherness in cultural production, see García Canclini (1995), Yúdice (2003), and Netto (2009). 9 Peterson eventually produced multiple compilations (e.g., Gilles Peterson in Brazil, from 2004)  that featured bossa nova, and coauthored a 2011 coffee table book on bossa nova album artwork.

148  Bossa Mundo Magic,” by the London-​based electronic music duo Basement Jaxx. The track demonstrates how sampled and reworked Brazilian sounds appeared across electronic dance music genres and were not limited to just chill-​out spaces. It also highlights the rhythmic affinity between house music and samba: both genres rely on a regular, propulsive beat in the bass drum, which in house music is dubbed the “four-​to-​the-​floor” beat. Samba, meanwhile, alternates the steady bass drum beats with syncopated percussion, often highlighting the 3-​3-​2 pattern. House music piano riffs often utilize that bell pattern. The melody for “Samba Magic” sounds like a radical reduction of Carnaval samba, extending a snippet of a piano and percussion sample from Airto Moreira’s “Samba de Flora” from 1989. By the mid-​to-​late 1990s, many European and North American electronic dance music acts sought to meet the demand for these mixtures, some of which featured Brazilian members.10 During this period, British DJs and producers were important intermediaries and set trends for DJs in other international dance music scenes, especially those in Los Angeles and New York. Thus, a market had been established for adapting iconic Brazilian sounds to electronic dance music, and Brazilian artists and record labels soon strove to meet that demand. Some dance music record labels, such as Ziriguiboom, responded to rising demand by promoting Brazilian artists who fit into this emerging scene of samba and bossa nova with dance beats. Based in Belgium, the label was an imprint of Crammed Discs and was headed by Béco Dranoff, a Brazilian producer who had been living in New York since 1988. As Dranoff recounted to me in 2018, Ziriguiboom sought artists specializing in new mixtures of bossa nova and electronic dance music, which they called “the now sound of Brazil,” playing into the zeitgeist of the period. Ziriguiboom signed Brazilian artists who did not have recording contracts with Brazilian domestic record labels, thereby allowing those artists to skip the Brazilian musical infrastructure altogether and feed directly into the European and New  York dance music scenes. The first record that Ziriguiboom released was by a trio called Bossacucanova. The group was formed by Alexandre Moreira, Marcelinho da Lua, and Márcio Menescal. Menescal is the son of Roberto Menescal, one of the members of the bossa nova cohort of the late 1950s. Bossacucanova capitalized off that legacy by noting the relationship in their press materials for their first compilation album, Revisited Classics (1998), which reworked early bossa nova recordings, and by collaborating with Roberto directly for

10 Examples include Thievery Corporation, Da Lata, Moganji, Fila Brazilian, and Jazzanova.

Remixing Brazil  149 their second album, Brasilidade (2001). Their albums featured remixes of bossa nova songs with a variety of electronic dance music approaches and fit well under the “down-​tempo” designation. Dranoff ’s business relationships with US-​based world music labels and artists set new Brazilian music mixtures on a course to be linked to the global bourgeoisie and distracted listening ecosystems such as coffee houses, clothing shops, and restaurants. Ziriguiboom established a relationship with Six Degrees Records, a world music label out of San Francisco, which at the time was forging a distribution and promotional agreement with Starbucks coffeehouses. It was common in the late 1990s to hear Ziriguiboom’s releases in multiple distracted contexts, and the next section outlines how certain artists—​such as Bebel Gilberto—​played with those associations. Brazilian independent record labels in São Paulo responded to the rising popularity of electronic dance music by signing more DJs and electronic dance music producers, sometimes with specialist record labels. In 1998, Trama met the rising popularity of drum ’n’ bass and other types of Brazilian electronic dance music by founding its specialist label, SambaLoco, to record and promote genres of music that the wider recording industry in Brazil was largely ignoring. In addition to licensing one of its artists to Ziriguiboom, YBMusic formed a partnership with the São Paulo DJ/​producer collective Instituto (Rica Amabis, Tejo Damasceno, Daniel “Ganjaman” Takara, and Rodrigo Silveira) and established a specialist record label called Selo Instituto. Deckdisc, meanwhile, signed one of the members of Bossacucanova—​ Marcelinho da Lua—​to his own solo record deal. The São Paulo and global Brazilian electronica scenes developed in parallel with the changes in the Zona Sul (South Zone) MPB scene that Frederick Moehn documents in Contemporary Carioca (2012). The difference, however, was in how these musicians, mostly from São Paulo or abroad, viewed their relationship to Brazilian national traditions. Unlike the carioca MPB scene in the aftermath of the Brazilian dictatorship, these musicians and producers were not interested in changing the terms of MPB. They strove to participate in a global culture free of national traditions, although they certainly used references to brasilidade (Brazilianness, or a type of Brazilian essence) to gain currency in them. In many ways, 2002 was the turning point for bossa nova remix culture. That year saw two releases in particular that excited Brazilian audiences as well as audiences in the United States and the United Kingdom. One was Fernanda Porto’s self-​titled debut with Trama records, and the other

150  Bossa Mundo was Instituto’s compilation Coleção Nacional (National Collective) on Selo Instituto/​YBMusic. What made both of the albums work was their embrace of the São Paulo scene’s approach to combining rock, hip-​hop, manguebeat, and electronic dance music with national styles such as samba and bossa nova. Porto worked with XRS Land, Patife, and Marky while Instituto was a major focal point of São Paulo’s burgeoning independent scene and collaborated with artists from across Brazil’s various DJ cultures (funk, hip-​hop, manguebeat, and drum ’n’ bass). Porto’s album featured versions of MPB and bossa nova songs with a soft drum ’n’ bass core. The biggest single was a reworked version of the bossa nova song “Só Tinha de Ser com Você,” which was originally written by Jobim and Aloysio de Oliveira in 1964, at the peak of the bossa nova era. National Collective was released to international acclaim. By the time it received a licensing deal in the United Kingdom through Beleza Records in 2004, YBMusic had already licensed a remixed version of one of Tejo Damasceno’s collaborations with the baile funk act Black Alien & Speed for a Nissan television commercial, generating interest among urban music lovers in the United Kingdom. Both Porto and Instituto’s successes showed how cultural intermediation of Brazilian music abroad could expand what kinds of Brazilian music circulated within the limits of the strategic essentialism that followed these artists in the international market. In what follows, I investigate what happened to a Brazilian artist who sidestepped the Brazilian market altogether.

Bebel Gilberto’s Retro Remix By 2000, the growth of electronica remixes alongside the embrace of older Brazilian music by urban hipsters set the stage for the unprecedented international success of Bebel Gilberto. Gilberto was nearly unrecognizable with Brazilian audiences, but her international sales soon set records. As the first major breakthrough Brazilian artist of a new wave of a global network of labels and distributors, Bebel Gilberto was the model for similar musicians working in electronic dance music. Her blend of nostalgic bossa nova with electronic dance music appealed to attentive audiences, advertising executives, and music supervisors. Many people took in her recordings as the background music to some other activity, often in venues targeting the upper-​middle  class.

Remixing Brazil  151 Bebel Gilberto’s identity as a Brazilian musician typifies the experiences of a privileged brazuca, or Brazilian immigrant, in the United States. She overtly tapped into the success and familiarity of bossa nova in her recordings to appeal to her audiences, with some assistance from her musical pedigree and the familiarity of her last name. She was born and raised in New York City to João Gilberto and Miúcha (Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda), João’s second wife after his marriage to Astrud Gilberto failed. Miúcha is a bossa nova and MPB vocalist who comes from an extremely influential Brazilian family.11 Although Gilberto’s father was a hero to many Brazilians during the 1960s, he rarely traveled to Brazil once he established audiences in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. The Gilbertos did not spend much time in Brazil for a good reason: as mentioned in ­chapter 2, political events in Brazil pulled the music scene away from bossa nova. The military takeover of the government in 1964 rendered bossa nova’s thematic content out of touch with the national mood. Many bossa nova musicians emigrated to places where the style was still popular, especially the United States and Europe, with New York having the largest numbers of Brazilian immigrants. New York is also where Bebel Gilberto forged some of her most important musical relationships. She met Suba (Mitar Subotić)—​her main collaborator for her breakout success, Tanto Tempo (2000)—​after one of her father’s shows at Carnegie Hall. The two recognized their creative affinities, and she then decided to move to São Paulo’s artsy Vila Madalena neighborhood to work with him on the album. It was her first time living in Brazil for an extended period (Graça 2007). Tanto Tempo utilized a mixture of late-​1990s down-​tempo electronic dance music and New Age production techniques with an approach that relied on the pop-​kitsch of the early to mid-​1960s. According to Béco Dranoff, the album was a low-​budget affair at the time of its recording. Many Brazilian critics noted the album’s indebtedness to the success of bossa nova in the United States as lounge and easy listening in the late 1960s (Souza 2007; Neto 2002). Her record label commissioned numerous remixes for songs on the album as 12-​inch singles. That led to Tanto Tempo Remixes, a remix compilation for electronic music fans. By 2006, her album and remix strategy led to numerous albums circulating simultaneously. She never attained widespread success in Brazil, yet she inspired many musicians and record labels with her remix and audiovisual licensing strategy. 11 Her father was Sérgio Buarque da Holanda, a famous Brazilian historian, and one of her brothers is MPB star Chico Buarque.

152  Bossa Mundo By the mid-​2000s, there was a well-​worn formula featuring mostly female Brazilian singers backed by electronica DJs. Artists such as Katia B, Cibelle, and the group Zuco 103 joined Bebel Gilberto in finding immense success in Europe and Japan by combining standards from the bossa nova and 1960s MPB repertoire with electronic dance music production techniques. Tanto Tempo went on to be one of the best internationally selling Brazilian albums of all time, and among world music critics, Bebel Gilberto’s name soon became shorthand for upscale Brazilian electronica.12 The first song on Tanto Tempo, “Samba da Benção” by Baden Powell and Vinícius de Moraes, places the album firmly within the remix routes of the era. It was produced by Amon Tobin, a Brazilian electronic dance music producer who was living in Brighton, England, at the time. The entire backing track for the album version of “Samba da Benção” was originally titled “Nova” (from Tobin’s 1998 LP Permutation). It features a slowed-​down sample of “Non-​ Stop to Brazil” from the score to The Gentle Rain by Luiz Bonfá and Eumir Deodato. As discussed in c­ hapter 2, these two referents for bossa nova were instrumental in the style’s transition to adult sensibilities among Anglophone publics in the mid-​1960s. The album version of “Samba da Benção” appeared in numerous film and television settings, affirming a bossa nova nostalgia attached to its transnational circulation from the previous generation. Above all, it is the overt kitsch of the arrangements and repertoire on Tanto Tempo that allowed Bebel Gilberto to redefine what brasilidade could mean abroad at the turn of the millennium. The album includes her interpretation of “So Nice (Summer Samba)”—​an English-​language version of “Samba de Verão,” a peculiar bossa nova song due to its history and unconventional rhythmic approach. The song’s theme of summer, sand, and sea, while conforming to the international image of bossa nova of the 1960s, was at odds with the increasing politicization of Brazilian music at the start of the military dictatorship in 1964. When they released the song that year, songwriters Marcos and Paulo Sergio Valle risked alienation from their cohort of bossa nova musicians by refusing to politicize their music (Castro 2000: 276–​78; Napolitano 2007: 81–​109). The first verse focuses on a lovelorn protagonist’s perspective: 12 In 2003, Alex Robinson warned readers of the world music magazine Songlines that few in Rio de Janeiro would know “Bebel Gilberto’s electronic bossa atmospheres here” (Robinson 2003: 53). In a review of Aparelhagem by DJ Dolores in Songlines, Phil Meadley invokes Bebel Gilberto as a foil to Dolores’s darker sound (Meadley 2005a: 71).

Remixing Brazil  153 Você viu só que amor/​Nunca vi coisa assim E passou, nem parou/​mas olhou só pra mim Se voltar vou atrás/​Vou pedir, vou falar Vou dizer que o amor/​Foi feitinho pra dar Olha, é como o verão Quente o coração/​Salta de repente Para ver a menina que vem

You just saw love/​I never saw such a thing And you passed, never stopped/​but looked only at me If I return I will go behind/​I will ask, I will talk I will say that love/​was made to give Look, it is like the summer It burns my heart/​skips suddenly To see the girl that comes

This song fits with the sadness and alienation of many bossa nova songs. The allusion to summer is intended to express the overwhelming passion of new love. By comparison, the lyrics for the English version by lyricist Norman Gimbel describe an ideal companion in tame, simplistic language.13 Someone to hold me tight/​That would be very nice Someone to love me right/​That would be very nice Someone to understand/​Each little dream in me Someone to take my hand/​And be a team with me So nice, life would be so nice If one day I’d find Someone who would take my hand And samba through life with me

Through translation, the passion and longing of the Portuguese turns into a person who simply wants a partner with whom the protagonist can “samba through life.” In English, “Summer Samba” portrays a carefree and celebratory version of Brazilian life where all one needs is love and samba to be happy. 13 Unlike other bossa nova translations, the Valle brothers maintained control over the English version of the song.

154  Bossa Mundo Musically, “Samba de Verão” maintains the same harmonic sophistication of bossa nova that appealed to jazz musicians. Unlike other bossa nova songs, which often feature legato dotted-​quarter/​eighth-​note rhythms to complement the rhythmic reduction of samba’s syncopation, the melodic line for “So Nice (Summer Samba)” features a repeating motive of two straight eighth notes, followed by a quarter note. The melody moves against the syncopated rhythms of backing instruments in such a jagged way as to emphasize its rising and contrasting descending intervallic movements. Like many bossa nova songs, it can sound square without careful execution. The arrangement on Tanto Tempo emphasizes these qualities at 01:25 for the solo flute: it plays the melody’s rhythm straight in unison with the piano and when the flute alters the rhythm to triplet quarter notes, the piano gradually slows down to an echo by dragging the beat.14 That rhythmic dissonance emphasizes the song’s reliance on square and straight rhythms. This recording recalls the sound of Bebel’s father performing bossa nova with Stan Getz in the early 1960s, as well as other internationally popular Brazilian musicians from that period. Gilberto’s vocal timbre is soft and her approach is passive, bearing a striking resemblance to Astrud Gilberto’s sound in the 1960s. The cover art for Tanto Tempo and Tanto Tempo Remixes reinforces the association with Astrud and the pop-​art aesthetic of the 1960s, with Tanto Tempo featuring a gray and white reduction of a headshot of Bebel looking down (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2).15 According to Dranoff, these images were also easy to produce for the rapid pace of releases at the time. The use of the electric organ—​an instrument linked to 1950s and 1960s lounge culture, cool and soul jazz, and the blues—​stands out from the other tracks on Tanto Tempo. The organ is also reminiscent of international versions of bossa nova during the 1960s, including the successful recording “Summer Samba” by Walter Wanderley—​who famously used the electric organ—​from his LP Rain Forest (1966) as well Wanderley’s collaboration with Astrud a few months later in that same year. Recordings like “So Nice (Summer Samba)” take part in reinforcing the image held by American and European audiences of Brazil as a beach paradise with infectious rhythms tied to the early and mid-​1960s. The meeting

14 The piano, flute, organ, and celesta were all performed by Stuart Wylen. 15 The visual reference to Astrud Gilberto’s mid-​1960s albums was even more direct for All in One (2009).

Remixing Brazil  155

Figure 5.1  Cover image for Tanto Tempo (2000). Image courtesy Crammed Discs.

point of music, lovers, sun, beach, and cool breezes continues to be extremely marketable—​far removed from the realities of Brazil at the turn of the millennium (or in 1964, for that matter). The musical effects in “So Nice” demonstrate how musicians reinforce stereotype through production and performance to appeal to different audiences. It was the first song from Tanto Tempo to be licensed for television.16 For those who already had a deep appreciation of bossa nova songs, Gilberto provided them with kitsch musical aesthetics in a classy package of down-​tempo electronica. For those who generally only heard bossa nova in passive contexts where the sounds creep into consciousness, such as elevators and retail environments, this record provided a hip, updated version of already vaguely familiar sounds. The aesthetics of the song rely on a decoding process that differs depending on who is paying attention and to what degree. Those retro qualities do not call attention to themselves;

16 It appeared in the television shows Ed (2000) and Roswell (2001).

156  Bossa Mundo

Figure 5.2  Cover image for Tanto Tempo Remixes (2001). Image courtesy Crammed Discs.

rather, they rely on an acute awareness of the intricacies of bossa nova history through the near erasure of musical elements that are normally more difficult for uninitiated listeners to grasp, especially harmonic, rhythmic, and lyrical complexity. Its retro regression is also what sets it apart from the other tracks on Tanto Tempo: it is one of three songs not featuring subtle electronic dance music effects, and it is the only one with an instrumental arrangement that so closely matches cool jazz and lounge arrangements of bossa nova that were prominent in the United States of the 1960s—​with voice, piano, electric organ, flute, and drums. Those direct references to the 1960s place Tanto Tempo firmly in the realm of retro aesthetics. As an aesthetic strategy, retro flourishes among those from a privileged perspective who play with art’s reproducibility and the detritus of the past. In electronic dance music scenes, the version of retro that circulated in the 1990s started with the rediscovery of exotica and related

Remixing Brazil  157 retro space-​age Latin pop from the 1950s. Design historian Elizabeth Guffey links the term “retro” to the space race and argues that it circulated during the early 1960s due to the type of propulsion used in space flight: the “retro-​ rocket” became a central metaphor for the first two decades of the postwar period (2006). Guffey’s discussion of “retro” in art and design also implicitly critiques the avant-​garde, paralleling Dwight Macdonald’s complaints about “masscult and midcult” from 1960 (as discussed in ­chapter 2). References to “1950s and 1960s retro” often implicitly describe that period’s embrace of formulaic commercial products with no ambitions to be “art.” What makes “So Nice” and many other tracks from Tanto Tempo—​and its follow-​up, Bebel Gilberto (2004)—​the embodiment of retro is the music’s overall smooth patina and seeming lack of self-​awareness. It could cross into irony, but then the songs in question would cease to function as effective background music for global, and upwardly mobile audiences—​a crucial quality for Gilberto’s international success. Tanto Tempo was one of many Latin American electronic dance music hybrids that openly embraced retro. In another contemporaneous export, Nortec musicians from the US-​Mexico border played with so-​called “poor taste” and camp aesthetics in their music (Madrid 2008). In many cases, musicians and audiences transformed “low” taste into something newly relevant, thereby allowing everyone involved to sidestep the discourse of authenticity through retro nostalgia.17 Class hierarchies and notions of originality change when dealing with musicians from parts of the world that are separated from US popular culture through geographic and linguistic barriers. That is why the nostalgia for 1960s bossa nova exports (as expressed through “So Nice”) changed depending on how audiences first heard it. Its reliance on a simulacrum of the musical values of bossa nova intensified those gaps in perception and made it especially viable as what Michael Kelly from Six Degrees Records explained to me as “lifestyle music,” due to how easily it fit into a variety of background settings. Like other Ziriguiboom releases of the period, Tanto Tempo was also one of many successful Brazilian albums that traversed a global network of recording, licensing, and distribution. US audiences purchased it through Six Degrees Records, based in San Francisco. As is the case with much recent music, this album was recorded, produced, and mixed in such diverse locations as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, London, Brussels, and, for “So Nice

17 Taylor (1997; 2007a) analyzes strategies of inauthenticity and hybridity in world music.

158  Bossa Mundo (Summer Samba),” Los Angeles. While it is unlikely that the international recording process alone determined this song’s conception, its process was far from immune to the influence of a global music market and the changing status of Brazilians abroad. That mediation of identities—​ethnic, regional, national—​through the recording process is not unique to Brazilian music and, indeed, occurs regularly at the interface between musical production and commerce (cf. Meintjes 2003). Tanto Tempo’s success was not isolated and it inspired many secondary collections, such as Tanto Tempo Remixed, and some songs appeared on numerous remix compilations. The album’s electronic dance music aesthetics helped it appeal to advertising executives and music supervisors. As Timothy D. Taylor (2007b) describes, electronic dance music survived disappointing music industry expectations as the next “big thing” in the late 1990s by becoming a locus of advertising music, especially for car commercials. This was due to the increasing precarity of creative labor, as well as the decrease in opportunities for publics to hear new music on MTV, due to the expansion of the network’s original programing. Electronic dance music’s transformation from underground style to advertising music staple spread to other avenues of new media, especially in television, and film. By the time Bebel Gilberto and other similar artists began to distribute their music through an international network of labels and distributors, there was already a mechanism in place for their music to flourish. Much of the success of Tanto Tempo relied on its circulation through multiple media outlets. Tracks from the album appeared in the ambient soundtrack for movies, television shows, and commercials for many years following its debut. The film Closer (2004, dir. M. Mann) offers a stunning example: three tracks from Tanto Tempo serve as the diegetic background music for scene set an art opening, thereby reproducing a common use for the album as ambient noise for upper-​middle class cultural events in the United States and the United Kingdom. In such an audiovisual setting it becomes a simulacrum of retro chic for the global bourgeoisie in a dizzying level of semantic snowballing. The album has also been popular in shopping contexts and coffee shops due to Gilberto’s far-​reaching licensing agreements with Putumayo records and Starbucks’ Hear Music. That so many people came across Tanto Tempo in a variety of ubiquitous and distracted contexts presented a new problem of representation, specifically: what happens when a retro stereotype gets pushed into the background and becomes auxiliary to other experiences? What types of subjective

Remixing Brazil  159 experiences do retro kitsch versions of Brazilian music enable and disable when the attention ecosystem is crowded or even overloaded? Broadly speaking, crowded listening contexts rely on the sign-​value of media in retail spaces to attract patrons and appeal to their tastes while also expressing the core values of those retail outlets and media through branding (Sterne 1997). Contemporary listening tastes vary widely, but evidence suggests that the proliferation of promotional ubiquitous music takes part in shifts in consumer subjectivity; further, the constant exposure to ambient media allows some consumers to be aesthetically flexible, enabling different subjective experiences (DeNora and Belcher 2000). Tanto Tempo’s reliance on the sounds of an imaginary Brazilian past—​the kind that circulated in the promotion of bossa nova in Anglophone markets in the 1960s—​demonstrates the durability of the music’s links to retro kitsch stereotypes. Although it would prove to be a financially successful strategy in the short term, that association with retro kitsch rapidly dated the music, and audiences soon gravitated to other associations with different versions of Brazil’s past. Many businesses continue to license music like Gilberto’s for their shop locations; however, her appeal faded in favor of new versions of brasilidade less tied to retro kitsch and more closely tied to a raw simulacrum of the sounds from Brazil.

Seu Jorge and the Hipster Intimacy of Favela Chic One month after Nike launched its 2006 World Cup campaign, a musician from Rio de Janeiro named Seu Jorge performed at Coachella (short for Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival), an event famous for celebrating cutting-​edge (and hip) US popular music. During the previous year, Jorge appeared in a variety of mainstream news media outlets and played concert dates all over western Europe and North America (Boucher 2006; Ratliff 2005; Margasak 2005; Tsioulcas 2005; Gilbert 2005). As a sign of his rising fame, his 2004 album, Cru, competed with Bebel Gilberto: Remixed on Billboard’s World Music chart. The invitation to perform at Coachella depended on his circulation through numerous forms of media, including film and blogs; however, he was also indebted to good timing to pave the way for a growing international public. Through this process, Jorge promoted an image of Brazil that drew on his biography and his maintenance of an unpolished performance persona.

160  Bossa Mundo Jorge was originally from the favela (slum) in Belford Roxo, a suburb in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro state (northwest of Rio de Janeiro’s city center). Like many from an economically modest background, Jorge began to work when he was ten years old to help his family. After his brother was fatally wounded in an attempted bank robbery, Seu Jorge slipped into depression and was homeless for a time. That changed through the help of respected clarinetist Paulo Moura, who invited him to audition for a musical theater production at the state university’s (UERJ) theater company. Moura also gave Jorge his first musical instrument, the clarinet. Jorge excelled at stage performance and acted in over twenty productions. Those theatrical experiences went on to inform how he approached his career as a performer (Meadley 2005b). His first band, Farofa Carioca, utilized many theatrical elements in their shows, including actors and circus performers alongside musicians. By 2002, his fame was rising with the international release of his solo debut, Samba Esporte Fino, on Regata Records (which was heavily hyped by the taste-​making DJ magazine Straight No Chaser) and his prominent appearance on Mercelinho da Lua’s biggest hit, a drum ’n’ bass version of Chico Buarque’s MPB song “Cotidiano.” Through prominent film appearances, Jorge broadened his international public beyond fans of bossa nova remix and samba-​funk. He played the high-​profile part of Knockout Ned (Mané Galinha) in Fernando Mereilles’s City of God (Cidade de Deus) (2002), a film that featured Rio’s violent drug trade in the 1970s. His second major international film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004, dir. W. Anderson), was in English, and expanded his exposure among Anglophone publics. Jorge appears throughout the film as a guitar-​toting sailor named Pelé dos Santos. Although he rarely speaks, he sings Portuguese-​language covers of David Bowie songs at pivotal moments of the film. When Jorge received the call to join the film with the character idea in 2003, he had never heard Bowie’s music. During his 2017 series of Bowie tribute concerts, Jorge commented that “black guys in the favelas don’t listen to rock ’n’ roll.”18 While his music in The Life Aquatic effectively functions as a Greek chorus for dramatic effect, his character’s name is a clear homage and play on the iconic Brazilian soccer player Pelé. This combination of the two best-​known Brazilian cultural exports—​music and soccer (Pelé played for the New York Cosmos in 1975)—​indicates how the filmmakers chose to portray stereotypes from the understated stance common to all of

18 I attended his Bowie tribute concert in Portland, Maine, on September 25, 2017.

Remixing Brazil  161 Wes Anderson’s films. In this way, Anderson was an important intermediary that allowed Jorge’s music to reach a broad Anglophone public. Anderson’s filmmaking style came with consequences. Anderson’s use of racial stereotypes directly in his films has also been a source of many of the jabs critics levy at his work. For example, Jonah Weiner memorably stated: Anderson generally likes to decorate his margins with nonwhite, virtually mute characters: Pelé in Life Aquatic, a Brazilian who sits in a crow’s-​ nest and sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese; Mr. Sherman in Royal Tenenbaums, a black accountant who wears bow ties, falls into holes, and meekly endures Gene Hackman’s racist jabs—​he calls him “Coltrane” and “old black buck,” which Anderson plays for laughs; Mr. Littlejeans in Rushmore, the Indian groundskeeper who occasionally mumbles comical malapropisms. (2007)

This critique notes that racial and ethnic minorities lack power and agency in Anderson’s films. The detached and quirky humor he employs also reinforces power imbalances, while providing fodder for laughs. Christian Lorentzen points out the connection between twenty-​first-​century hipsters and Anderson’s treatment of non-​white characters: “Anderson and hipsters are too self-​conscious, too postmodern, to be racist. . . . [R]‌acism isn’t racism anymore it’s just breaking of taboo. We can poke a little fun at Filipinos and Sikhs and Arabs and Germans and people from Kentucky, and then all listen together to the ebony-​skinned Brazilian man on the deck of the Belafonte singing ‘Ziggy Stardust’ in Portuguese” (2005). Cinema scholar John Gibbs (2012) describes the inclusion of Seu Jorge’s Bowie covers as contributing to film’s overall “preposterous excess.” As a cultural intermediary, Wes Anderson filtered Seu Jorge through the unabashed whiteness of his narratives and style. Jorge’s visual and sonic Otherness supported a narrative depiction of whiteness, but with an ironic distance that rendered the gesture quirky. That reduction of ethnic and national difference helped to broaden Jorge’s appeal—​albeit with some baggage (see Figure 5.3).. More than any other career move, Jorge’s musical portrayal of Pelé dos Santos expanded his appeal to English-​speaking audiences. Hollywood Records featured many of Jorge’s performances on the official soundtrack for the film. His acoustic, Portuguese-​language Bowie covers were so popular with audiences that, within a year, he released a separate soundtrack-​related album called The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions Featuring Seu Jorge. The album

162  Bossa Mundo

Figure 5.3  Owen Wilson as Ned wears studio monitors and holds the microphone steady to capture Seu Jorge singing as Pelé dos Santos, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).

sold well and eventually reached the number 2 spot on the Billboard World Music chart. One notable feature of the album is that unlike most world music collections, the liner notes feature no translations of the Portuguese lyric. This silence with regard to Seu Jorge’s Portuguese translations was consistent with the film:  even with the subtitles on, they read “singing in Portuguese” whenever Jorge sings. In one of the film’s pivotal plot developments, Jorge sings “Life on Mars?” as part of an onboard recording session. Moments before the song starts, Zissou’s wife, Eleanor, reveals to Jane the reporter—​Eleanor and Jane being the two women involved in Steve Zissou’s love triangle—​that Ned could not possibly be Steve’s son because he “only shoots blanks.” At first the music sounds distorted, without any low frequencies, as if it were being broadcast through a tinny onboard intercom. The camera pans across a lengthwise bisection of the ship and stops on Jorge’s Pelé performing the song (Figure 5.4). This contrasts with the first time “Life on Mars?” appears. In that instance, Bowie’s chorus swells up just after Ned first declares that he might be Steve’s son at the premier of one of Zissou’s documentaries; Steve breaks off their conversation and walks away alone to smoke (and cope) on the deck of the ship’s bow. These two scenes show contrasting perspectives on an important plot point—​the would-​be father/​son relationship—​with Bowie’s original version paired with Steve Zissou’s perspective of fear and paternal longing, and Jorge’s version paired with Ned’s disappointed reality.

Remixing Brazil  163

Figure 5.4  Seu Jorge as Pelé dos Santos recording and broadcasting “A Vida em Marte (Life on Mars)” in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).

The differences between the two versions of “Life on Mars?” are numerous. Jorge’s deep and growly vocal range is nearly a full octave (a major 7th) below Bowie’s and instead of a rock band arrangement, he uses an acoustic guitar in a subtle accompaniment appropriate for a rock ballad. The most profound difference is in Jorge’s altered lyrics: whereas the original is about a girl’s impossible escape into the world of movies, Seu Jorge turns the song into an intimate meditation on lost dreams with Mars serving as the destination for a potential escape. It is common for composers and arrangers to subtly sacrifice lyrical accuracy (sometimes in the form of intentional mistranslations) in favor of poetic effect; however, Seu Jorge’s version of “Life on Mars?” fundamentally alters the song’s meaning and perspective. Jorge’s version expresses a personal desire to escape to Mars. Rather than using the third person (as in Bowie’s version), Jorge sings in the first person to describe his feelings and directly refers to a “you” (“você”), thus allowing for considerably more intimacy. In this version, the speaker bears more responsibility for the pathos and drama in the song’s melody. Instead of hitting a high point with action and irony as Bowie does (“Sailors/​Fighting in the dance hall/​Oh man!/​Look at those cavemen go”), Jorge entreats his lover to come closer for more intimacy before they leave (“Então vem cá, me dá sua lingua/​Então vem/​Eu quero abraçar você” [So come here, give me your tongue/​C ome on/​I want to embrace you]). Through these changes, Jorge’s version of “Life on Mars?” emphasizes the theme of lost dreams in Bowie’s song, thereby potentially making his entreaty for a better life more

164  Bossa Mundo meaningful. More than an hour separates the two versions of the song in the film, but the most recognizable parts of the melody were showcased in both, helping to lead audiences to connect the two moments. It is the only Bowie song to receive such extensive treatment in the plot—​a point also emphasized by the compiled soundtrack, which features both versions on opposite ends of the track listing. With its strong structural link to one of the film’s main themes, “Life on Mars?” makes the strongest case for Jorge’s meaning in the film. For those listeners with access to the Portuguese translations, Jorge’s version provides a powerful alternative:  he visibly performs alone in the film on an acoustic guitar without the audible presence of record studio magic, while Bowie’s performance has electric instruments, layered vocal textures, and serves as underscoring. Since Anderson has publicly stated that he was unsure of the accuracy of Jorge’s translations of Bowie’s song, one can infer that the change in the song’s meaning, and indeed in the pathos of the scene, was Jorge’s intervention (Anderson quoted in Winters 2012: 58). He had no reason to treat Bowie’s songs as revered classics since he had little familiarity with them prior to joining the film. By taking the international image of a country’s soccer-​playing musicians (much like those promoted by Nike’s Joga Bonito campaign in 2006)  and answering with a completely new invention—​a hipster Brazilian capable of expressing emotional heights, intimacy, and humor—​Seu Jorge took a quirky and subtly confrontational stance toward prevailing Brazilian stereotypes circulating in transnational media, which was only legible to those with the linguistic facility to comprehend. It operated on a register that excluded Anglophone publics; such subtlety was thus lost on the vast majority of people who saw this film. The different interpretation for Portuguese speakers allowed him to maintain his credibility with Brazilian publics. While his performance resembled Bebel Gilberto’s play with a retro simulacrum of brasilidade, Seu Jorge’s Pelé developed from a different version of Brazilian imagery that was at once emotively sincere and self-​aware—​ something only possible outside of retro kitsch. In the film, he does this by barely speaking and only accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar. In contrast to typical symbols of a retro Brazilian musical past through sambas or established bossa nova songs, Jorge answers (via Anderson) by reinventing familiar glam-​rock songs in a foreign tongue. This move was both bold and appealed to some publics who did not care for the renewed interest in bossa nova as remix music.

Remixing Brazil  165 The film’s soundtrack was well received by Anglophone critics and fans alike and set the tone for Jorge’s reception in US media. Positive reviews made it considerably easier for him to find an Anglophone public—​no small feat during a period largely dominated by musical evocations of a Brazil composed of beaches and bossa nova. Between the release of the Life Aquatic soundtrack and the The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions, Jorge recorded and released his second studio-​length album, Cru, Brazilian Portuguese for “raw.” For his many stops on his 2005–​2006 US tour, he often played the songs from The Life Aquatic to open his sets before delving into the musical style much more associated with him in Brazil: samba-​funk. (He is so well regarded in Brazil that he largely maintains an entirely different persona: that of a new samba ambassador.) That matched how Anglophone reporters and critics would mention his role in The Life Aquatic prior to discussing his new music. The aesthetic influence of The Life Aquatic permeated Jorge’s musical choices after his experience with the film. For many of the tracks on Cru, the arrangement is spare and demonstrates a rejection of studio production techniques. His vocals sound emotive, at times veering off-​key, and at others giving way to melismatic flights of fancy. Indeed, the lack of polish was part of the album’s charm: reviewers and critics noted its playful approach to production and lauded Jorge for his musical choices. Phil Meadley, for example, called the album’s lack of polish “introspective” (2005b). More to the point, the New York Times’s Ben Ratliff (2005) wrote, “The whole album ticks back and forth between a sense of craft and a hipster’s willful amateurishness—​ so much so that unless you see him live, you might not know how musical he really is.” In many respects, the album was a success because of its lack of overt studio intervention and for aligning itself with “indie” production sensibilities, where imperfection is read as genuine and authentic (Fonarow 2013; Dolan 2010). In the immediate aftermath of Jorge’s international success, the response of Brazilian critics was in keeping with the market bifurcation that has so complicated Brazilian musicians’ career trajectories throughout this book. They expressed concern that Cru’s production in France would contribute to the perpetuation of Brazilian stereotypes. One reviewer in Curitiba noted that Brazilians either love or hate him (“do tipo ‘amei ou odiei’ ”) due to his relationship to European tastes (Galão 2006). Jornal do Brasil printed two competing reviews to showcase Jorge’s mixed reception among critics. Famed music critic Tarik de Souza (2005) noted that Jorge’s talent managed to surpass the album’s “favela chic” aesthetic (referring to the Parisian nightclub of

166  Bossa Mundo the same name) in his effort to attain universal success. In response, Nelson Gobbi framed his interpretation and Jorge’s national and international personae through the image presented by the album’s cover art, a portrait of Seu Jorge made of confetti by famed Brazilian installation artist Vik Muniz, presenting a temptation to interpret him as “fragmentado” [fragmented] (2005). He found fault with the uneven album even as he admired its musical range. The album’s “raw” performance is what captured Gobbi’s attention in the end (“o disco é muito mais que batuque para francês ouvir” [the album is much more than drumming for the French]) (2005). Gobbi demonstrated that at least some of Jorge’s fans in Brazil were open to his new creative directions. In the year following Cru, Jorge expanded his Brazilian audience. He scored a huge hit by recording a Portuguese cover of Damien Rice’s “Blower’s Daughter” (renamed “É Isso Aí”) with Ana Carolina, which propelled him to new levels of fame, especially among MPB lovers (Caldeira 2005; Um Pé Lá 2005). His popularity was strong enough among the Brazilian middle class that by the end of the decade, he became the campaign spokesman for Riachuelo, a fashion company specializing in affordable jeans.19 After that breakthrough, some of the songs from Cru—​such as “Tive Razão” [I Was Right] and “Eu Sou Favela” [I Am Slum]—​soon attained the status of standards when they were interpreted in concert and on record by other established recording artists such as Adriana Calcanhotto and Paula Lima. Regardless of those extremes in critical reception, the temporal proximity of Jorge’s recordings for The Life Aquatic and the release of Cru mirrors many other similarities in the music’s production and instrumentation. The lead single, “Tive Razão,” exhibits continuities between The Life Aquatic and Cru. The overall production is spare, emphasizing acoustic instruments as opposed to the larger, fully electrified ensembles more typical of Jorge’s recordings. The studio mix also highlights the acoustic nature of the songs through the generous use of reverb effects, lending each voice and instrument a cavernous quality that draws attention to mistakes. The song opens with a funky riff in E minor on a cavaquinho, a four-​ stringed lute with metal strings (similar to the Hawaiian ukulele), common to samba and choro ensembles. Within four bars, Seu Jorge sings a wordless tune followed by subtle tapping on a wood-​block, a shaker, and a tamborim, 19 As an example, see https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=pVfVv8toYw0, last accessed August 25, 2017.

Remixing Brazil  167 a small frame drum common in samba ensembles. He is soon joined by an acoustic guitar and a synthesized theremin. The cavaquinho’s rhythm anchors the song in samba. Five bars in, Seu Jorge sings in a descending falsetto line on C about a quarter-​tone flat. He repeats the falsetto line—​again out of tune—​before settling into his normal, low vocal range, still without words. Jorge accompanies his low voice with an additional layer of vocals one octave higher (and in tune)—​the only other audible sign that Jorge has applied additional mixing to the track. The lyrics do not enter until a full minute and eight seconds into the track. By this point, Jorge has already established a deceptively spare texture that highlights its lack of vocal and instrumental polish. The lyrics about the dissolution of a relationship provide a potential clue for why the out-​of-​tune vocals persist. When Jorge sings the line beginning “Mas pra mim tá tranquilo,” he again quickly edges up to his falsetto, this time perhaps acknowledging the possible self-​deception evident at that point: “Mas pra mim tá tranquilo, eu vou zoar” [But it’s cool for me, I’ll chill]. He exploits the lack of vocal control in his upper register for expressive effect. The song’s speaker expresses a range of emotions, but the out-​of-​tune falsetto provides a window into a lack of emotional control. The (repeated) out-​of-​tune falsetto lines and the lack of instrumentation more common to his other samba recordings make the case that this track is as “raw” as the album advertises, both emotionally and in terms of lack of polish. For rock audiences, falsetto has the potential for intensifying the intimacy of a male voice. As Lauren Berlant (1998) has theorized, intimacy is always haunted by its potential failure to stabilize closeness while also bringing a sense of vulnerability and privacy. Seu Jorge’s upper register is a vulnerable one for him as a performer—​it is expressive but often out of tune. By accentuating vulnerability through studio manipulation, the recording feigns closeness and musical intimacy. His constant failure to stay in tune as he emotes potentially forges stronger bonds with audiences seeking an authentic “indie aesthetic.” This approach contrasted with the status quo of MPB recordings that had come to dominate in the 1990s and early 2000s as polished, studio-​friendly, yet uniform in approach. (Singer-​songwriter Joyce calls it MPB-​chata: boring MPB.) The melismatic, wordless phrases that open the song also open the album (as it is the first track), which helps make Cru more approachable to non-​Lusophone publics, contributing to its potential singability. In addition to the song’s popularity in Brazil, “Tive Razão” had the potential to reach publics who likely encountered Seu Jorge’s music through

168  Bossa Mundo other media. There are other wordless melodies through the album’s tracks, as well as a tongue-​in-​cheek Elvis cover. All of these qualities made Cru a more internationally inclusive record than his previous album, 2001’s Samba Esporte Fino—​an album that was hailed in Rio de Janeiro for revitalizing samba-​funk—​or his other later samba-​funk albums such as America/​Brasil (2007), Músicas Para Churrasco, Vol. 1 (2011), and Músicas Para Churrasco, Vol. 2 (2015). The self-​aware version of brasilidade that Jorge presented in The Life Aquatic recordings and on Cru, along with his compelling slums-​to-​success biography, allowed him to make a variety of career decisions without fear of losing his Brazilian fan base. Although his forays into new avenues of distribution and licensing are far more conservative than many of the other artists in this chapter, he has reached markets that otherwise rarely sought out Brazilian music. His international fan base, and his ability to appear both hip and authentic regardless of—​ or perhaps because of—​ technological interventions in the studio further demonstrate the persistence of an indie kitsch aesthetic as a simulacrum of brasilidade. It may have been a copy of a copy, filtered through the lenses of retro and indie aesthetics, but it appealed to hip and young consumers due to the ways that it tapped into the omnivorous consumer sensibility of the early twenty-​first century (Warde et  al. 2007). His broadening fan base and ability to appear simultaneously hip and authentic further demonstrated the persistent influence of stereotypes where what he did on film—​even if partially a joke—​had the potential for being the defining reference point for his career to come. Unlike many of his fellow Brazilians at the time, Jorge’s musical presence demanded a different kind of attention, even if it was largely dependent on ironic distancing. The artists discussed in this chapter exemplify different routes Brazilian musicians have taken to attain success in a rapidly changing international music market. The popularity of bossa nova remixes had a direct relationship to the approaches Bebel Gilberto and Seu Jorge took in their engagement with Anglophone publics. Their contrasting routes to success and openings for creative expression speak volumes about the persistence of bossa nova nostalgia in the period. The example of Seu Jorge, in particular, shows that even artists with the most creative freedom in Brazil could still be swayed by the demands of the market and audience attention abroad. The stereotypes of Brazilian music at the turn of the millennium, which grew from the success of samba and bossa nova in previous decades, took

Remixing Brazil  169 on a different shape. The retro kitsch and ironic approaches to brasilidade in this chapter could only exist in a world where representation overtakes reality in media and commerce, and where a plenitude of musical offerings and sensory overloading is the norm. As Brazilian artists fight for the attention of their global listeners in an increasingly crowded media market, they continue to navigate audiences that prefer smaller and smaller packets of information, whether in advertising, blog entries, or the brief moments where music appears in a TV program. In such a system, stereotypes thrive as often as they change. The next and final chapter details the ways that the independent music industry is breaking away from the persistence of stereotype in an attempt to alter Brazil’s musical brand, starting at the very moment when it began to receive more international attention than ever.

6 Constructing a New Music Industry Musically Branding Brazil in the 2010s

In 2011, London-​based record label Mais Um Discos set out to release Lucas Santtana’s critically acclaimed Sem Nostalgia (Without Nostalgia) for the Anglophone market.1 Label owner Lewis Robinson had created Mais Um Discos the previous year to repackage and promote new Brazilian popular music for Anglophone publics. The concept for Sem Nostalgia played with the iconic status of the voice accompanied by violão (acoustic guitar) in Brazilian popular music, especially since the era of bossa nova. All of its sounds were made by voice and guitar—​including melodies and harmonies as well as percussion and other effects. Through Santtana’s ingenuity, this limitation yielded surprising results, producing songs in such genres as mash-​up, carioca funk, “indie” rock, and of course bossa nova.2 In Sem Nostalgia, Santtana applied an innovative approach to the violão to take part in a “global bass” aesthetic.3 In songs such as “Super Violão Mashup,” Santtana manipulated the sounds of the guitar to make a beat-​heavy carioca funk track with sharp, siren-​like sounds and bass-​heavy beats that one might hear in a dance club. On the other extreme, Santtana converted Dom Um Romão’s 1970s Latin rock song “Amor em Jacumã” into an intimate, pop-​kitsch bossa nova (reminiscent of Caetano Veloso). Robinson anticipated that Sem Nostalgia would appeal to fans of global urban music genres in London and New York, but the album cover needed a few superficial changes to be legible abroad. Robinson negotiated for a standard release with repacking. The album cover for the original YBMusic 1 As Maurício Tagliari explained to me in 2010, Sem Nostalgia was one of YBMusic’s big hits that year and they pitched songs from it for a range of ad campaigns. 2 Santtana had been heavily involved in the MPB scene in Rio de Janeiro, where percussion innovator Marcos Suzano had pushed the bounds of the iconic pandeiro, the Brazilian frame-​drum with bells, through recording effects (cf. Moehn 2012: 45). In Sem Nostalgia, Santtana is following Suzano’s example for voice and guitar. 3 In 2010, Santtana used the language around “global bass” and “global ghetto tech” to promote some of his shows in São Paulo.

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.003.0007

Constructing a New Music Industry  171 release in Brazil of Sem Nostalgia in 2009 subtly referenced the cover design from João Gilberto’s landmark bossa nova album, Chega de Saudade (1959), and transformed it into a commentary on guitars and technology. It lifted and placed the retro typeface and coloring scheme from Chega de Saudade over colorful images of soundwave graphs. As Robinson explained to me in 2013, most international audiences would not understand the visual reference to João Gilberto, nor should they have to in order to enjoy the music. Thus, Robinson opted to market the album based on its unique approach to Brazilian urban sounds. The cover art for the Mais Um Discos version of Sem Nostalgia overlayed images of Santtana in front of the iconic Arcos de Lapa in Rio de Janeiro. (The location is also the setting of the video for “Super Violão Mashup.”) The three images are framed to look like a film still on celluloid with small snippets of the same scene on the right and left edges of the frame. The images are filtered through a brown hue, giving it a gritty patina to further establish the music as part of an urban music trend with possible links to the past. Robinson’s approach for marketing Santtana’s album to Anglophone publics was successful. When he and I spoke again in 2017, he stated that Sem Nostalgia had been the company’s best seller until 2016. If a listener outside of Brazil sought Santtana’s album on an online digital music service, they would be more likely to find the Mais Um Discos version than the one released by YBMusic.4 Yet as successful as Sem Nostalgia was among Anglophone publics—​doing well enough to support small tours of the United Kingdom—​it was never part of a “boom” of the sort covered in the rest of this book. Its success was modest by comparison, and it owed its extended viability in part to the expansion in the available digital music catalog that has characterized the streaming music era. Many publics who encounter the music of artists featured in this chapter do so with (at least some) intentionality. In place of a large-​scale fad, boom, or trend, the Brazilian artists who have found Anglophone publics in the 2010s have done so through a more dispersed approach than the watershed moments that characterized Brazil’s breakthroughs of the past. As a result of new mediation and distribution paths, and as part of a much larger available catalog, Brazilian artists have upended old expectations for how to find success abroad, resulting in the looser iteration of the country’s musical brand. At the time of this writing in 4 On streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, the Mais Um Discos version is the only one available, and on YouTube, they are the versions with the highest number of plays.

172  Bossa Mundo 2018, musicians working in urban genres such as EDM, pop, and hip-​hop are just as likely to represent the country abroad as are artists drawing on the nostalgia for bossa nova or other markers of “traditional” Brazilian music. Santtana’s album heralded a shift in how Brazilian music circulated among Anglophone publics; it was a clear break with the past, as indicated in the album’s title and international packaging, while at the same time referencing notions of a Brazilian tradition for those more knowledgeable of the culture.5 It demonstrated a mix of the different ways publics could engage with Brazil’s changing attitude to its musical past and present through new modes of circulation. That break relates to the country’s economy as well as to a fundamental transformation of how music circulates in the twenty-​first century. In what follows, I show how Brazilian artists with Anglophone publics have broken through, due in part to an explosion of musical diversity over the last few decades. Any sustained study of the branding of Brazil through music in the 2010s requires consideration of the socioeconomic environment in which this music is produced. Toward the end of 2009, Brazil reached a zenith of international confidence. In October of that year, Brazil won a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, followed by an image gracing the cover of the November 12 issue of The Economist of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue from Corcovado launching into the sky like a rocket with the words “Brazil Takes Off.” However, that optimism soon plummeted. The economy showed signs of weakness, which was made worse by the strains of ongoing preparations to host two major international sporting events: the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics just two years later. To make matters worse, the country had been besieged by social and political instability since 2013. That year, massive protests broke out in response to rising public transit costs and a lack of investment in basic social services, due in part to the government shifting resources to build new stadiums for the aforementioned events.6 A year later, a graft scandal unfolded involving the national oil company, Petrobras, which implicated nearly everyone in government as well as some of the region’s richest businessmen. Many ended up bankrupt or in prison.7 By spring 2015, impeachment proceedings began, which eventually removed Dilma Rousseff—​ Lula’s successor—​ from the 5 Some of Santtana’s choices would also have been legible with Anglophone fans of Tropicália (Harvey 2002). 6 For an excellent analysis of the negotiations between FIFA, the IOC, and Brazil, see Zirin (2014). 7 See Cuadros (2016) for more on the most famous of these, Eike Batista.

Constructing a New Music Industry  173 office of president. In July 2017, Lula was sentenced to nine and a half years of prison for crimes related to money laundering and corruption. Brazil was under the spotlight of global media attention as these scandals unfolded, inevitably tainting the experience of many musicians in their attempt to build international careers. In spite of that political and economic turmoil, a new crop of Brazilian musicians are reaching Anglophone publics and expanding which genres form the country’s musical brand. The following sections investigate how Brazil’s musical brand is changing through new types of mediation. In some cases, the country’s cultural policies have bolstered the diversification of Brazilian music circulating abroad. Brazilian musicians are exploring new models and corporate strategies for capturing the attention of Anglophone publics and eking out a living. In some instances—​when it is expedient—​ they might underplay their Brazilian identity, taking a fluid approach to the prevailing stereotypes of nation and race, only to return to old models of Brazilian musical success where commercially advantageous. Due to the role of corporate sponsorship in this process, these relationships evade public oversight, to the potential detriment of artistic freedom. As artists and the wider music infrastructure settle into new ways of doing business, it is clear that both continuity and change affect how Anglophone publics attend to the mediation of new Brazilian music.

Discourses of Diversity in Brazil’s Musical Brand In the twenty-​first century, the logic of national branding exerts pressure on Brazil’s music industry in both indirect and direct ways, and by extension shapes the mediation of Brazilian music abroad. The clearest way to see these connections is through government promotion and investment in music on an international level to strengthen Brazil’s national brand. As I note in this book’s Introduction, samba and the discourse of mixture have been the most enduring musical icons of Brazil’s brand over the last century. In the twenty-​ first century, other genres have had varying relationships with national identity and branding. Michel Nicolau Netto notes that some of the most popular regional styles—​especially sertanejo, which has been consolidating in recent years—​are not part of the country’s national musical brand, while others—​ such as hip-​hop and funk—​have become relevant elements in national identity due to the importance of these styles in the African diaspora (2016: 19).

174  Bossa Mundo Put simply:  Brazil’s brand of racial diversity in the twenty-​first century works well with so-​called “urban” genres resting largely on their evocation of Blackness and related discourses of diversity (cf. Netto 2014). A relevant association between samba, hip-​hop, and the African diaspora was on full display during the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics in London, where the flag was symbolically extended to Brazil for the 2016 games. The genres represented in that performance included such traditionally Brazilian sounds as a Carnaval samba bloco, capoeira, and samba-​related genres such as MPB and samba-​soul. The big breakout moment, however, was when carioca hip-​hop performer BNegão performed an update on “Maracatú Atomico” in homage to manguebeat legends Chico Science and Nação Zumbi.8 BNegão’s inclusion alerted many Anglophone media outlets to the vibrancy of Brazil’s hip-​hop scenes. Within a few years, Brazilian hip-​ hop artists such as Criolo, Karol Conká, and Emicida were routinely featured in important platforms such as The Guardian, Time, and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”9 Over the last two decades, Brazil has invested considerable resources into building its national brand. In addition to bidding to host major international sporting competitions, the government has also hired nation-​branding consultants. Countries generally invest in their national brand to grow the economy through attracting investors and tourists, drawing from the expertise of a transnational group of consultants, authors, and gurus that Melissa Aronczyk (2013) calls the “transnational promotional class.” Countries bolster their brand by investing in so-​called “soft power” assets, such as cuisine, film, and music, to leverage diplomatic power.10 Netto (2016) traces Brazil’s investment in rebranding to 2005, the year the Ministry of Tourism reporting board—​known as Embratur—​released a new logo for Brazil to attract international tourists. The logo was part of a broader rebranding plan called “Plano Aquarela: Marketing Turístico Internacional do Brasil” (“Watercolor

8 The song references the Pernambucan processional drumming style: the maracatú. Although the song was written by Nelson Jacobina and Jorge Mautner, Gilberto Gil released his own version of it in 1974. Chico Science and Nação Zumbí released their hip-​hop/​manguebeat version of the song in 1994. 9 The coverage of Brazilian hip-​hop in Anglophone news media was extensive after the 2012 Olympics. Time and The Guardian covered Criolo (Phillips 2014; Denselow 2015). The Los Angeles Times covered Criolo and Emicida (Bevins 2012). NPR’s “All Things Considered” featured an interview with Emicida (Garcia-​Navarro 2014). 10 For more on “soft power” and international relations in nation-​branding and its contrast with military power, see Joseph Nye (2004).

Constructing a New Music Industry  175 Plan: Marketing International Tourism of Brazil”).11 As one of many signs of the power of promoting Brazil through the logic of branding, it is significant that the country’s flag—​which circulates widely in the global market on havaianas flip-​flops and the national soccer team’s jersey—​was replaced by a logo in promotional materials. To get a sense of how much things have changed in Brazil’s international representation, consider which performers were chosen to perform at the L’Anée du Bresil in France in 2005, the same year Brazil hired the national branding firm. That event featured MPB, samba (and its related instrumental genre choro), indigenous music, and traditional regional styles mostly originating in the Northeast (axé and bloco afro). There was no hip-​ hop, funk, or indie rock. As the London 2012 Olympic handover ceremony demonstrates, Brazil’s musical brand has expanded considerably, even as many traditional genres persist in international contexts. Significantly, that same new openness to genres has spread to record label personnel. When I first began my ethnographic work in the independent Brazilian record industry, record label personnel were reluctant to move their international marketing and distribution efforts beyond what Olivia Hime of Biscoito Fino termed “a música de boa qualidade” (“the music of good quality”) (see Goldschmitt 2014). She used that phrase to describe music that appealed mostly to the old Brazilian left of the upper-​middle classes—​MPB, choro, and MIB—​the same genres that Marcos Napolitano (2001) argues were institutionalized through the confluence of televised music festivals and political polarization of the late 1960s. Record labels like Biscoito Fino maintain a niche international market share while other labels have labored to be marketable to urban audiences in the Global North by embracing more musical diversity. Over the last two decades, the Brazilian government has indirectly invested in promoting an eclectic range of genres abroad, especially in Anglophone markets, demonstrating a shift in the country’s musical brand toward urban styles in the African diaspora. The funding structure of the nonprofit BM&A (Brasil Música e Artes [Brazil Music and Arts]) stands out as an example of indirect cultural policy. BM&A has partnered with a variety of state and federal agencies, especially APEX-​Brasil (Associação

11 The plan’s title clearly references Brazil’s unofficial anthem, “Aquarela do Brasil” by Ary Barroso, known among Anglophone publics as “Brazil.” See Goldschmitt (2017) for the international circulation of that song in audiovisual media.

176  Bossa Mundo Brasileira de Promoção e Exportação [The Brazilian Trade and Investment Agency]) to promote greater diversity in the kinds of Brazilian music that circulate abroad. One of BM&A’s core functions for musicians is providing sponsorship for performances abroad. Artists and industry professionals can apply for travel grants to perform internationally, especially at major music festivals and conferences. Typically, if artists wanted governmental support for international travel (for a tour or a conference such as SXSW—​a collection of interactive technology, music and film festivals known as “South by Southwest”), they applied to BM&A. However, once Brazil’s economic troubles began to take hold, the money was delayed up to several months, sometimes causing the musicians to lose their engagement. These symptoms of national turmoil unfortunately damaged artist reputations abroad and worked against the goals of the organization. In 2008, when I first met the organization’s head, David McLaughlan, he gave me a copy of The New Brazilian Music, a 2-​CD compilation BM&A produced in 2007 for exclusive distribution through world music trade fairs such as MIDEM and WOMEX,12 as well as influential DJs, world music labels, and other cultural intermediaries such as taste-​making bloggers. The album promoted hip-​hop and R&B alongside regional music and pop. That compilation was impossible to find through any conventional outlet, effectively rendering it a musical business card for Brazil’s expanding brand. McLaughlan also explained that another core component of their role was to correct misinformation on music databases such as AllMusic.com to combat stereotypes and misrepresentations. Starting in the early 2010s, BM&A’s strategy shifted to more social media–​ savvy branding and to providing financial support to musical acts on international tours. It changed its public face to “Brasil Music Exchange,” with the objective of internationally promoting Brazilian musical artists. They promoted the diversity of musical artists through social media and music blogs. Brasil Music Exchange further cultivated new audiences in online music-​sharing venues such as Soundcloud by posting curated playlists—​ two examples being “An Introduction to Brazilian Pop and Rock” and “An Introduction to Brazilian Global Bass”—​that conform to Anglophone musical trends and are more accessible to connoisseurs seeking new international 12 MIDEM is an acronym for Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musical (International Disc and Music Publishing Conference), an annual conference in early June (following the Cannes Film Festival). WOMEX is short for World Music Expo. Although based in Berlin, the conference moves around European cities.

Constructing a New Music Industry  177 sounds. They also reached out to traditional world music audiences through print media. For example, in August 2013, Brasil Music Exchange released a compilation CD through the world music magazine Songlines. BM&A released four volumes of The New Brazilian Music series between 2007 and 2011, each encompassing a broader vision of Brazilian music than what had previously fallen under that rubric. The first volume included regional musicians, hip-​ hop and dance-​ pop stars, pop-​ rock musicians, and even immigrant community organizations; the volume four years later focused more overtly on the urban sounds coming out of São Paulo, demonstrating how the government, operating through BM&A, supported increased genre flexibility and mixture. Given all of these signs that Brazil’s musical brand is expanding, the brand still reliably falls back to discursive connections to race and diversity, even when they are indirect. Artists that evoke Blackness, urbanity, and musical mixture dominate the music that circulates in new media. That emphasis on the African diaspora is the logical extension of trends in promoting Brazilian music abroad for the twenty-​first century. However, it is also possible to interpret the emphasis on Blackness as an adaptation to tastes at home and abroad. The next section shows how some artists have matured within a musical and cultural policy landscape where certain types of genre experimentation are encouraged.

Troubling Genre in the 2010s In the summer of 2017, a new Portuguese-​language track called “Sua Cara” (Your Face) appeared on the Billboard Dance/​Electronic Music chart—​ the first song with Brazilian Portuguese lyrics to achieve that milestone since Kaoma’s “Chorando Se Foi (Lambada)” from 1989. As I  discussed in ­chapter 4, much of the groundwork for Kaoma’s success was laid by the circulation in the 1980s of music from the “tropics” within France and the United Kingdom. In the summer months of 2017, a different kind of “tropical” music was making inroads among Anglophone publics:  Luiz Fonsi and Daddy Yankee dominated the charts with “Despacito,” a success that was helped considerably by the song’s familiar reggaetón rhythm that had appeared across Top 40 pop in the preceding years. Unlike “Despacito” and the other Caribbeanesque hits on the charts, “Sua Cara” featured two Brazilian vocalists—​transgender diva Pabllo Vittar and pop funk sensation

178  Bossa Mundo Anitta. Vittar and Anitta brought a new type of Brazilian urban pop to publics throughout the Global North through their collaboration with Major Lazer—​an electronic music production group featuring Diplo, a producer known for his global dance-​floor cultural intermediation—​and the DJs Walshy Fire and Jillionaire.13 This isolated breakthrough demonstrated the many changes to the landscape of international mediation and success for Brazilian artists. The success of “Sua Cara” was more in keeping with contemporary Brazilian popular music trends than the breakthroughs studied in previous chapters. Previously, the mediation of Brazilian music in Anglophone markets occurred almost exclusively through a few iconic genres despite the diversity of musical practices across the country. While many mainstream cosmopolitan and transnational Latin and Afro-​Caribbean genres enjoy domestic popularity, there are numerous regional and diasporic genres that are often excluded from national narratives of popular music history and, by extension, branding (Reily 2000; Lorenz 2011; Lucas 2000). Available sales and consumption data indicate that the most popular and profitable genres in Brazil are little known to Anglophone publics (although such data are largely unreliable).14 Most indications point to the continued domestic viability of religious music and sertanejo—​a type of rural vernacular music, roughly equivalent to “country” in the United States. Sertanejo also competes on streaming platforms alongside funk and imported styles.15 The popularity of sertanejo music in Brazil has been leveraged by US-​based stars to gin up support, as was the case with country-​pop star Taylor Swift. In the lead-​up to her 2012 performance in Rio de Janeiro, she authorized a new version of

13 The song was credited to Major Lazer featuring Pabblo Vittar and Anitta, underscoring the mediation involved in its success. 14 Estimates on market-​share of piracy and illegal downloads varies, with some as high as 81 percent of internet users downloading illegally (IPEA 2012) and 76 percent of music consumers purchasing “pirated” CDs on the street (Fecomércio-​RJ and IPSOS 2012). For in-​depth studies on the development of music piracy in Brazil in the late 1990s and early 2000s, see Bishop (2004). A more recent in-​depth study shows that many Brazilian musicians are working with piraters to promote their music, and in many municipalities, they are even accepted by the police, since there is little evidence linking music piracy vendors to organized crime (Mizukami et al. 2011). 15 According to ABPD (Associação Brasileira de Produtores de Discos [the Brazilian Record Company Association]), nationally produced music garners just over two-​thirds of music sales (66 percent in 2009, 67 percent in 2010, 74 percent in 2011), with the rest being dominated by international imports (31 percent in 2009, 31 percent in 2010, 25 percent in 2011) and classical music (1–​ 6 percent). Audiences mostly spend their money, in descending order of most units sold, on religious music, sertanejo, pagode, rock and MPB, forró, Axé, hip-​hop, and funk. All figures are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Constructing a New Music Industry  179 her song “Long Live” featuring sertanejo-​pop star Paula Fernandes (and they performed the song together at Swift’s concert). The popularity of sertanejo is such that some Brazilian artists in other genres seek to expand their public reach through collaborations. Anitta is an excellent example:  although she regularly records in a pop-​funk style, she also appeals to fans of sertanejo in recordings such as her collaboration with Gustavo Mioto called “Coladinha em Mim” (A Little Stuck on Me) from early 2017. That same year she also collaborated with MC Nego do Borel and sertanejo artist Wesley Safadão on “Você Partiu Meu Coração” (You Split My Heart), mixing two of Brazil’s most popular styles: sertanejo and funk.16 Both collaborations demonstrate the genre-​crossing nature of Brazilian popular music in the 2010s. The experience of music consumption in Brazil results in more genre fluidity among artists. For example, regardless of stated musical preference, most Brazilians take part in the annual Carnaval and June/​July saint festivals—​known as the festas juninas—​where musical practices are more closely linked to regional genres (e.g., samba, samba-​reggae, axé, maracatú, frevo, forró). They also consume music through telenovelas, and songs that appear in the TV programming for the Globo network appeal to multiple demographics. Cross-​generational musical participation is on full display at many major concerts, where attendees can range from children to the elderly. While preferences and consumption patterns are linked to class, age, and locale, genre exposure and participation is considerably more fluid and expansive than metrics and grand narratives about Brazilian musical essences would otherwise indicate. While most Brazilian artists gravitate to one genre or another, some top pop artists demonstrate genre fluidity more akin to audience consumption patterns and the genre flexibility of top recording artists in the Global North. Thus, when a pop star from Brazil such as Anitta demonstrates stylistic flexibility, she does so in keeping with national and transnational trends for the most profitable pop. Genre fluidity is a keystone of Anitta’s recorded music activities to grow her audience and make the leap to international publics. Stylistically, her music spans sertanejo, acoustic pop, and funk, but it mostly maintains the dance-​ pop sound that dominates global Top 40. Anitta first rose to prominence as

16 The playful vulgarity of Wesley Safadão’s stage name (the Portuguese equivalent of “Naughty Wesley” or “Sleazy Wesley”) is in keeping with artist names and lyrics across many Brazilian genres in the 2010s.

180  Bossa Mundo part of the flourishing pop-​oriented carioca funk scene in 2013. Funk music has been a cornerstone of the global bass scene that emerged in the early 2000s through a confluence of urban music styles, easy access to music recording technology, and the appropriations of high-​profile American DJ/​producers such as Diplo, who propelled funk into global pop through his production of MIA’s “Paper Planes” in 2008. (He produced the documentary Favela on Blast the same year.) Carioca funk, so named due to its development in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, emerged in the late 1980s through a mixture of synthesized hip-​hop beats from imported recordings of a sub-​genre of North American hip-​hop called Miami Bass (Vianna 1988). For much of its history in Brazil, funk music has been subject to discrimination and negative stereotypes associated with its initial popularity in the favelas (cf. Yúdice 2003). By the time Anitta launched her pop-​funk career in 2013, however, the pop version of the style had shed some of that stigma, with songs exploding across Brazilian social media.17 Anitta has also collaborated with artists in other languages, exemplifying how new trends in Brazilian pop interface with those in major transnational popular music. She first garnered international attention when she performed a samba with MPB and Tropicália legends Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil for the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics. Starting in 2017, she began to break into Anglophone and Spanish-​language pop music charts. She collaborated with Australian hip-​hop star Iggy Azalea for the song “Switch”; her song “Vai Malandra” featured Detroit-​area hip-​hop artist Maejor rapping an English-​language verse, though the track was otherwise dominated by Portuguese. She also collaborated with Colombian reggaetón artist J.  Balvin on a few Spanish-​language songs. The collaborations with Balvin, in particular, demonstrate the increasing market power of Spanish-​ language music among Anglophone publics amid a tide of pop artists chasing the Latin music market.18 Balvin is but one of many artists to benefit from the viability of urban Latin music among Anglophone audiences.19 Anitta’s collaborations with Balvin have yielded high chart positions on Billboard’s “Hot Latin” chart, with “Downtown” peaking at 14 and “Machika” peaking at 10. Her lyrics only reference Brazil through mention of the favela, rather than 17 Anitta’s “Show das Poderosas” (Mighty Women’s Show) was released just a few months after Naldo Benny’s pop funk “Amor de Chocolate” (Chocolate Love) went viral. 18 Special thanks to Petra Rivera-​Rideau for this point. 19 Balvin followed the example of “Despacito” by featuring a verse by Beyoncé on “Mi Gente” in 2017.

Constructing a New Music Industry  181 the more typical strategy of appealing to the Anglophone marketplace via samba, axé, bossa nova, or even references to beaches. One way to interpret her collaborations across so many genres is that she has established herself as a new kind of global diva: instead of referencing stereotypes via traditional genres that differentiate Brazilian music, she follows the mold of pop artists who resist such appeals to tradition (and fit into the model of Diplo’s global urban musical appropriations). That genre-​fluid strategy has largely worked well. In 2018, alongside increased coverage of her music in Anglophone music news outlets, Netflix announced the launch of a TV show dedicated to Anitta for both Brazilian and international markets. Many of Anitta’s actions superficially resemble effective strategies used by other Brazilian artists breaking into Anglophone markets in the past. In a move that recalls Carmen Miranda’s tactics in the 1940s, Anitta is utilizing the most contemporary form of audiovisual entertainment—​here, a Netflix series—​to solidify her market dominance. Just like Brazilian artists from the 1980s, she is working with high-​profile cultural intermediaries such as Diplo, who has profited from carioca funk artists for over twenty years. Like many MPB, bossa nova, and samba singers over the past century, she sings across the linguistic divide. Anitta’s music primarily circulates on streaming services and in dance clubs. While other Brazilian artists such as Michel Teló (discussed in this book’s Introduction) have experienced the confluence of algorithmic and social media attention so crucial to viral popularity by chance, Anitta’s collaborations seem deliberately designed to rack up as many “streams” as possible, thereby increasing the likelihood that she will appear on playlists and be shared on social media. Indeed, her activities in 2017 alone point to a canny understanding of algorithmic attention in the 2010s. The two most successful genres on the Brazilian streaming charts are funk and sertanejo. It makes sense that she would attempt to mix them, and thereby increase her overall viability. By working across genres, she appeals to multiple publics while also increasing her overall market strength in streaming services. She is a contemporary artist with a global strategy focused on maximizing her exposure across media. A different form of genre-​fluidity characterizes a network of independent artists loosely based in São Paulo. At the end of 2012, Afropop Worldwide, a public radio program operating out of New York City, highlighted many of the artists from São Paulo in an episode titled “The Soul of São Paulo: Rock, Rap, and Future Music from the Endless City.” Due to the efforts of a few key

182  Bossa Mundo cultural intermediaries—​including the radio producer Marlon Bishop and Russ Slater, editor of the online South American culture magazine Sounds and Colours, Anglophone fans of global urban music began to focus on São Paulo just as notions of Brazil’s musical brand were shifting. They covered a group of musicians that traversed electronic dance music, hip-​hop, indie-​ rock, 1970s Afro-​beat, and more, dubbed by the Brazilian music press as the “novo momento” (new moment) or “nova cena” (new scene) that had been developing since the early 2000s. A good example of a “nova cena” artist who has gained international accolades is hip-​hop artist Criolo—​the stage name of Kleber Cavalcante Gomes. Criolo emerged from São Paulo’s hip-​hop scene in the 2000s when he won a series of rap battles. Upon the release of Nó Na Orelha (Knot in the Ear) as a free download in 2011, he broke through to other music publics. The album features many songs where he sings as well as raps, with arrangements that reference Afro-​beat, dub reggae, and brega music as well as some hip-​ hop songs. His ballad “Não Existe Amor em SP” (There’s No Love in SP), allowed him to cross over into the pop and MPB market and also catch some attention in Anglophone media. In addition to being featured in the Afropop Worldwide episode on São Paulo, that song also caught the attention of Time magazine a few years later (Phillips 2014). Most Anglophone reports of the song (and Brazilian hip-​hop artists, in general) emphasize the social critique in its lyrics rather than the music’s catchy melody or Criolo’s deep baritone singing voice. The song has continued to be popular among Brazilians and expats alike: at a 2015 show I attended in London, the Brazilians in the audience sang along as he performed it. In a parallel gesture to Anitta, Criolo’s genre-​traversing has taken place in collaboration with other musicians from across Brazil’s musical spectrum. Along with regular appearances with other São Paulo independent artists, he has collaborated with a variety of artists from other genres, including Caetano Veloso, axé superstar Ivete Sangalo, and samba mainstay Martinho da Vila. But the only genre crossings that captured Anglophone media attention have been his releases that foreground urban musical mixture, such as Nó na Orelha and the 2014 release, Convoque Seu Buda (Invoke Your Buddha), rather than his 2017 samba album, Espiral de Ilusão (Illusion’s Spiral). As Thiago Galletta (2016) notes in his ethnography of São Paulo’s independent music scene, much of the genre blending that flourished there could only have happened in a music economy that had moved on from traditional forms of revenue. As noted in the previous chapter, piracy and illegal

Constructing a New Music Industry  183 downloading had shifted the public’s habits away from direct purchases. That industry collapse afforded some musicians and record label employees the opportunity to consider different ways of making music and engaging their publics. These musicians were internet users, taking part in file-​sharing along with their publics, and thus they had access to a wider variety of artists from throughout Brazilian music history, taking an eclectic approach to mixture and notions of a musical tradition. A regular theme in my interviews between 2007 and 2015 was a desire to seize new possibilities beyond physical sales. As Galletta notes, the musicians in São Paulo balanced the values of specific local scenes with an overriding adventurousness toward mixture (2016: 104–​5). This notion of genre fluidity directly complements Frederick Moehn’s emphasis on genre mixture in his study of the carioca MPB scene from the 1990s and 2000s (2012). However, in the case of the São Paulo scene of the 2010s, the rapid pace of sharing on social media accelerated the genre crossing, and it also allowed for Anglophone cultural intermediaries to swiftly seize the opportunity to mediate the resulting music. Like Criolo, São Paulo–​based hip-​hop star Emicida licenses his music for international distribution through Sterns Music out of the United Kingdom.20 Sterns released Emicida’s Sobre Crianças, Quadris, Pesadelos, e Lições de Casa in 2016 under the translated title About Kids, Hips, Nightmares, and Homework. Although he has been less fearless about traversing Brazilian musical genres than Anitta and Criolo, Emicida has been vocal in the US press about referencing samba beats in his music (Garcia-​Navarro 2014). In 2018, he made a linguistic leap and collaborated with Ibeyi, the France-​ based duo with origins in Venezuela and Cuba. The resulting song, “Hacia el Amor” featured Ibeyi singing lyrics in English followed by Emicida rapping in Portuguese and Spanish over a catchy Caribbean dembow beat. Upon its release on YouTube and streaming music services, it received coverage in the high-​profile US-​based hip-​hop magazine Vibe, which referred to its multilingual lyrics as relaying the musicians’ “message of love” (Rosario 2018). Like Anitta and Criolo, Emicida’s circulation in Anglophone media demonstrates the increasing viability of artists pushing the boundaries of Brazil’s musical brand through new types of mixture that emphasize the Blackness of new urban musical genres. The next section expands on

20 Sterns has had close ties to the São Paulo scene since the early 2000s when the label took part in a YBMusic-​led initiative to facilitate the process of procuring synchronization licenses for filmmakers (Goldschmitt 2014).

184  Bossa Mundo challenges faced by Brazilian artists attempting to pursue Anglophone publics via streaming music services.

Finding New Markets and New Modes of Distribution One of the most obvious changes to occur in musical circulation and distribution over the last decade is that, in exchange for more flexibility and mobility with music, many listeners have jettisoned MP3s and CDs in favor of streaming services, accessed through computers or phones. Most of these services use the same catalog of music; the major difference between them is how each interface affects how users find new music—​what the tech industry dubs “music discovery.” These interfaces have brought new challenges for Brazilian musicians seeking Anglophone publics. My understanding of Brazilian music in new modes of distribution and promotion draws from my interviews with record industry personnel as well as my experience as a playlist curator. Intermediation is as present as ever for publics and musicians alike. While the interfaces and technologies have changed, the institutional structures from previous periods covered in this book have merely shifted their business models to suit the age. Algorithms and social media now direct the attention of publics, amplifying existing power structures with the occasional, unexpected musical breakthrough. These structures and technological affordances serve to reinforce the expectation that Brazilian musicians will promote a version of the Blackness and musical diversity that has become so central to the country’s musical brand. In early 2014, I worked as freelance playlist curator for Beats Music, then one of many streaming music platforms, which gave me a front-​row seat to how Brazilian music circulates in streaming services in the United States.21 Beats Music was developed to complement the Beats line of headphones, created by hip-​hop mogul Dr. Dre and record industry veteran Jimmy Iovine. During the months I worked for them, my task was to pitch and craft playlists for subscribers featuring Brazilian and Portuguese music, often under situational or genre-​driven themes (e.g., “Brazilian Beats for Running,” “Under The Influence: Bossa Nova,” etc.). Curated playlists in general were part of 21 Apple purchased Beats later that year. For more on the political economy of these services, see Goldschmitt and Seaver (2019).

Constructing a New Music Industry  185 the company’s strategy to drive user subscriptions. I was an intermediary, at times collaborating with independent record labels in Brazil to feature their artists on playlists.22 These experiences showed me how the expansion of intermediation and interface design affected how Brazilian music was finding listeners outside of Brazil and how that reflected on the country’s brand. When I crafted branded playlists, I often ran into problems locating the tracks I desired. The challenge had to do with the tracks’ availability (or lack thereof) in the catalog; while many Brazilian record labels have agreements to distribute their catalogs through digital services, many do not, opting instead to distribute their music through other means, most commonly through free downloads on their websites (often limited to Brazilian IP addresses). Sometimes a recording was tied up in disputes with publishers. However, the most frequent challenge had to do with the musical metadata within the catalog. Metadata is data about digital music encoded in the music file—​which is itself data—​and is most often refined during the mastering process. In general, the metadata is a mess for most musical genres because it is often a low priority in the mastering process; but the problems become more glaring when working with niche genres or artists who rely on accurate information to find audiences.23 In my experience with Beats, artists were regularly misidentified in the catalog, songs titles had typos, and Portuguese diacritical marks would be incorrect or gone altogether. The problem wasn’t just at Beats—​I have encountered similar challenges across other streaming digital music platforms. While the metadata errors do not affect the quality of the music being distributed, they impede the process of discovery for listeners looking for obscure artists—​a process that is increasingly challenging in general, amid the deluge of music now available in the international market.24 Many artists also compete for visibility through a streaming service’s featured playlists. On services like Spotify, these playlists function through what Nick Seaver and I describe as an “ensemble method” of curation—​combining aspects of algorithmic recommendation and a curator’s “hand-​ picked” selections. The reality is that whatever choices a curator makes cannot be divorced from machine learning, algorithms, and the user interface of the database. In my case, at Beats, metrics of algorithmic attention helped me 22 This was one of many freelance gigs I had at the time due to precarious employment as an early-​ career academic. 23 For more on the history of metadata and ID3 tags, see Morris (2015). 24 While metadata problems can be irritating and slow down listeners finding music by non-​ Anglophone and other niche artists, they are by no means the reason why streaming music companies curate branded playlists. The playlists are intended to attract and maintain listener loyalty.

186  Bossa Mundo to quickly evaluate new artists for their most popular tracks, especially if I had never before heard their music. In my collaboration with Seaver, we further critique the possibility that these platforms could be manipulated by record companies to favor certain artists as a twenty-​first-​century version of payola, the long-​standing practice of record labels paying DJs to promote their tracks (Goldschmitt and Seaver 2019).25 What has changed is that the process of licensing, playlist generation, and music recommendation is now obscured for most streaming service users. This is what Jeremy Wade Morris and Devon Powers argue are the drawbacks to transparency and user privacy that occur behind a slick interface designed to help users forget just how much control they are sacrificing over their music (Morris and Powers 2015).26 Behind the veneer of the user interface, Spotify and Apple Music negotiate with rights holders such as record labels for a variety of promotional deals. Playlist placement often translates to a significant bump in visibility and monthly streaming revenue for niche record labels and artists. With the rise of streaming music services, record labels that specialize in promoting Brazilian music to international markets on digital platforms have also appeared. A standout in this regard is Mais Um Discos, discussed previously in this chapter. Lewis Robinson, a British national, decided to found the label when he noticed that the Brazilian music that he encountered on his trips with his wife to her home in Belem was not readily available in the United Kingdom. The goal of Mais Um Discos is to promote and distribute acts that Robinson believes will appeal to urban audiences in London and New York. The label has produced numerous compilations and has also licensed a few Brazilian artists for widespread distribution in the United States and the United Kingdom, such as Lucas Santtana, as previously discussed.27 The label sells its catalog through Bandcamp, an independent digital retail service, while also working with streaming music services such as Apple Music and Spotify.28 In my experience curating playlists at Beats, selections 25 That kind of payola appears most obviously when artists feature on branded playlists upon a new release. When Drake released Scorpion at the end of June in 2018, Spotify “celebrated” by putting his face on every branded playlist across the service even when his music did not appear. Some users complained about the promotion (Stutz 2018; Peretz 2018). 26 See also Drott (2018). 27 These compilations generated a fair amount of buzz well beyond the niche market of Brazilian music enthusiasts. I reviewed one such compilation, Daora, for an online magazine focused on South American Music and Culture called Sounds and Colours in 2013, and another compilation called Rolê was reviewed in The Wire in July 2014. 28 Bandcamp differs from other services by encouraging customers to listen to entire tracks before committing to purchases. Purchases are then readily available to stream via the Bandcamp mobile app.

Constructing a New Music Industry  187 from Mais Um Discos compilations would often appear higher in my search results than those from the full-​length albums by the artists I was seeking. Through hidden search algorithms, world music compilations often receive a higher ranking in the search. In addition to compilations, Mais Um Discos has focused on promoting albums where there’s a “story” that Robinson can promote to international audiences. Some of these involve unexpected and transnational dialogues, such as the collaboration between Brazilian experimental pop artists Arnaldo Antunes and Edgard Scandrurra and Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté, and the second full-​length album by São Paulo–​based instrumental Afro-​ beat group Bixiga 70. Both of these albums have helped to break Brazilian music into new markets through high-​profile reviews in the world music press.29 One of the biggest international hits from Mais Um Discos was the 2015 collaboration between samba legend Elza Soares and core musicians in São Paulo’s indie music scene, including Kiko Dinucci of Metá Metá, Rodrigo Campos, Romulo Fróes, and members of Bixiga 70. The album, A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (Woman at the End of the World), was a huge success in Brazil before it was licensed abroad.30 Kiko Dinucci of Metá Metá had already established a professional relationship with Mais Um Discos when Metá Metá signed a licensing deal for their second full-​length album, MetaL MetaL, in 2014. Robinson relayed to me that he began to hear about the project before it had finished recording at Red Bull Studios in São Paulo. Robinson negotiated to license the album through the album’s producer, Guilherme Kastrup. Elza Soares was previously known among enthusiasts for her distinctive samba voice. The album received a favorable review by Philip Sherbourne at Pitchfork in June of that year, timed during the buildup to the 2016 Summer Olympics. Many of my contacts in the Brazilian recording industry described Pitchfork as the ideal venue for promoting independent Brazilian music (cf. Garland 2010). In contrast with magazines discussed in previous chapters, Pitchfork solely circulates online. Its demographic trends toward people in their twenties and thirties living in and near urban centers in the United States. In our conversation, Robinson stated that the impact of the Pitchfork 29 The collaboration between Antunes, Scandurra, and Diabaté garnered the attention of such disparate world music outlets as Afropop Worldwide, Down Beat, Songlines, and The Guardian when it was released through Mais Um Discos in 2012. The second studio album from Bixiga 70 received positive reviews from Sounds and Colours and Songlines and led to the group being invited to numerous jazz festivals around the United States and Europe. 30 In 2018, Elza Soares released a second album with Kiko Dinucci, Rodrigo Campos, Marcelo Cabral, and Romulo Fróes called Deus é Mulher (Deckdisc).

188  Bossa Mundo review was immediate: the day it was published, he saw a spike in downloads from Bandcamp. As of July 2017, the album was easily the company’s best seller. It received widespread publicity from such outlets as NPR and The Guardian. The album offered a refreshing alternative to “recommended Rio listening” playlists that emphasized bossa nova and samba leading up to the Olympics. In 2017, the company commissioned some DJs and producers to remix A Mulher do Fim do Mundo, continuing the practice of circulation via world music remixes that were so popular at the turn of the millennium (as discussed in ­chapter 5). The remix album features a variety of DJs from across the Luso-​Atlantic sphere as well as top-​bill British dance music personalities such as Gilles Peterson. As Robinson tells it, Peterson contacted Mais Um Discos, and, given that he is a well-​known taste-​making DJ who has put out many Brazilian music compilations as well as a coffee table book on bossa nova, it was an easy decision: “How could you turn down Gilles, you know?” When I asked Robinson about future projects, he said that he is changing his focus from hip-​hop and Brazil’s urban sounds to what he termed “heritage acts”—​that is, older Brazilian musicians with a clear story to tell. He said that such strong links to Brazil’s past were easier to market to Anglophone publics. His major follow-​up for Elza Soares is Dona Onete’s Branzeiro. As he said, “I’ve gone from making hip-​hop compilations to promoting 80-​year-​ old women. But they have a story.” Branzeiro (2017) is the second album by Dona Onete that Mais Um Discos has distributed, and Robinson is optimistic that it is getting some good press in Brazil as well as receiving Brazilian government funds to support her European tour. Another venue where Brazilian musicians have reached a broad international audience is through synchronization licenses in advertising, video games, and film. Corporations selling products somehow semiotically connected to Brazil have been more likely to use Brazilian music for their international campaigns and products (Goldschmitt 2011b; 2014). In general, the most notable examples of music licensing over the last decade have occurred in venues that reinforce long-​standing associations with Brazilian music. This is especially the case for the FIFA series of video games produced by Electronic Arts. It is no secret that Brazil is famous for its soccer; perennially featuring Brazilian artists on these games reinforces the association of Brazilian music (especially urban Brazilian sounds) with soccer. A wide range of Brazilian artists have licensed their music for these games, many of them young and independent in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. For record

Constructing a New Music Industry  189 companies such as YBMusic, the FIFA video games are a reliable source of revenue and many younger artists such as Tulipa Ruiz (discussed later in this chapter) first reached a substantial international public through them.31 The general trend in licensing Brazilian music for FIFA games has been toward musical approaches that hail newer, urban genres such as dub, indie rock, and hip-​hop as well as older, more stereotypical sounds. The artists who mix hip-​hop and funk with traditional Brazilian sounds dominate FIFA soundtrack placement.32 Placement in a FIFA game can help some artists gain further recognition at home in Brazil, as well. One example of a group that was already building an international public prior to their music’s appearance in a FIFA game is BaianaSystem, a Salvador-​based group that mixes a variety of Afro-​diasporic urban genres as well as some local timbres, especially Bahian guitar. The group was founded in 2009 and early on established a unique business model intended to bring together music for dancing with a clear social mission meant to diversify the music scene in Salvador. They also established clear ties with independent musicians in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, including Lucas Santtana and DJ/​producer Daniel “Ganjaman” Takara of Instituto (discussed in ­chapter 5). Within a year of the group’s founding, BaianaSystem began to receive invitations to play at events across Brazil and around the world. That trend continued, and in 2014, the group received invitations to play numerous shows in the United States. One track from their second full-​length album Duas Cidades from 2016 was licensed for the FIFA ’16 game. It was something of an irony, then, that in 2017 the group received the “Revelação” (“Best New Artist”) award from the Prêmios de Música Brasileira, as the group had, in effect, been regionally and internationally successful well before that point. Despite the influx of new technological possibilities, a persistent problem for Brazilian musicians seeking new markets remains: breaking through and capturing the attention of an Anglophone public when that public could just as easily listen to music in their native language. São Paulo–​based Afro-​beat group Bixiga 70—​named after the neighborhood of the same name—​receives regular invitations to play at jazz festivals in Europe and North America. 31 Tulipa’s first breakout single, “Efêmera” (2010), appeared on the FIFA ’11 game. 32 Some examples of Brazilian hip-​hop songs appearing in FIFA games include Karol Conká’s “Boa Noite” for FIFA ’14, her “Caxambú” for FIFA ’18, and Emicida and Rael’s “Levanta e Anda” for FIFA ’15. Examples of Brazilian electronic dance music and indie music in FIFA games include Zémaria’s “Past 2” and DJ Marky’s remix of MPB4’s “Agiboré.” See the discussion of Airto Moreira’s “Tombô in 7/​4” in ­chapter 3 for a more stereotypical example.

190  Bossa Mundo When I asked Maurício Fleury, the group’s keyboard player, why he thinks the group has done so well abroad, he described their music’s effectiveness at getting people to move and dance. Then he added, “instrumental music is capable of overcoming the language barrier and people can understand the music better” (“a música instrumental é capaz de [evitar] a barreira da língua e as pessoas [podem] entender melhor”). Similarly, in a short film that appeared on the band’s website, percussionist Romulo Nades stated that he enjoyed how “instrumental music has no borders” (“a música instrumental não tem fronteiras”).33 In other words, the members of Bixiga 70 believe their success in international settings comes from skipping the language barrier altogether. I would add that by avoiding any language—​as opposed to singing in English, which is also a trend among new Brazilian groups from Rio and São Paulo—​the group bypasses the fundamental problem that former WOMEX head and world music compilation producer Gerald Seligman relayed to me in February of 2017: a Brazilian group playing pop or rock songs in Portuguese is just not going to sell, because there is nothing to set the music apart for a world music market. As these examples illustrate, Brazilian music still has difficulty breaking through to new audiences due to some persistent problems around genre, infrastructure, and promotion, which are indirectly related to Brazil’s musical brand. It is difficult for listeners to engage with new artists if the information circulating about them in social media is incorrect. At the same time, prominent placement in a major international sporting event or synchronization to visual media such as advertisements or video games can boost sales through exposure. Still, the challenge of breaking through linguistic barriers and the general unwillingness of international publics to pay attention and invest in international artists unless they have “a story” or way of setting themselves apart in a crowded marketplace can lead some musicians to conclude that nothing has changed. As Pernambucan pop musician and world music touring veteran Alessandra Leão explained to me in 2015, the same people have controlled much of the world music circuit for decades and that is why Brazilian musicians are often forced to market themselves through narrow parameters. While the musical brand of Brazil may be diversifying, musicians still face the challenge of their work translating beyond the quick shorthand of samba and racial diversity. In the section that follows, I discuss



33 See https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=LqAzRxa0qCY, last accessed July 21, 2017.

Constructing a New Music Industry  191 the role of corporate investment in the expansion of Brazilian artists in Anglophone markets.

Co-​branding and Corporate Sponsorship The big hit in the run-​up to the 2016 Olympics that was A Mulher do Fim do Mundo was due, in part, to the increasing prominence of traditionally nonmusical corporations in the world of Brazilian musical production. Elza Soares and her collaborators recorded the album with the support of a patronage agreement from Natura Musical, a cosmetics and well-​being company, at Red Bull Station in São Paulo. Natura and Red Bull recently joined a long list of businesses involved in the production and promotion of some of the most internationally successful recordings from Brazil. There is nothing new about corporations seeking partnerships and patronage agreements with the arts. Nevertheless, corporate sponsorship and co-​branding has fundamentally reordered the priorities of what kinds of music receives financial and logistical support in recent years. Since the early 1990s, the role of corporate sponsorship in Brazilian cultural policy has been most visible through the frequent appearance of the Petrobras logo across multiple forms of media that have nothing to do with oil. One can easily observe the reach of Petrobras as a sponsor before a film’s opening credits, on artist websites, or listed on the back cover of CDs. For decades, Petrobras has been one of many businesses to devote a substantial amount of money to the arts due to the neoliberal reforms that were introduced in the period immediately following the end of the military dictatorship. Petrobras is an example of the state-​controlled assets that were privatized in the early 1990s while still maintaining a relationship with the government.34 At the end of 1991, the Brazilian government passed “A Lei de Incentivo à Cultura,” or “the cultural incentive law”—​also popularly known as “Rouanet’s Law,” for the former secretary of culture, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet. The law gives businesses tax incentives to invest in culture. In exchange for cultural patronage, the businesses pay less corporate tax and they get to have their name attached to outputs, thereby increasing public goodwill and

34 That relationship with the government came to forefront with the lengthy fallout of Petrolão (aka “Operation Car-​Wash”), the kickback scheme that engulfed Brazil’s political class and businesses, resulting in numerous convictions.

192  Bossa Mundo strengthening their corporate brand. Some of the first major corporations to take advantage of the new laws had been recently privatized, such as Banco do Brasil and Petrobras. Other joined, such as the banks Caixa and Itaú. As Thiago Galletta (2016) notes, the amount of corporate resources flowing to cultural production increased at regular intervals starting in 1995. Singer-​songwriter Tulipa Ruiz represents some of the ways that the “lei de incentivo” complicates Brazil’s national musical brand. Ruiz is most familiar to international audiences through the appearance of her song “Efêmera” in FIFA 2011, a video game produced by EA Sports for multiple gaming consoles. As evidence of her song’s extended reach to Anglophone video-​ game playing publics, it frequently appears in unofficial FIFA ’11 soundtrack videos on YouTube.35 For her next release, Tudo Tanto, she went with a different approach and opted for a more direct relationship with a corporate sponsor, in this case the Brazil-​based cosmetics company Natura. In exchange, Ruiz’s website promoted Natura with the words the words “Natura apresenta . . .” (Natura presents), allowing fans who visited the site to download the album free of charge (see Figure 6.1). That trend continued with her 2015 album, Dancê, but ended when Ruiz released Tu in 2017. Dancê was successful enough abroad that it was listed as a “Top 10” Latin Album in 2015 and won the Latin Grammy for “Best Contemporary Pop Album” in 2016 (Casillas et al. 2015). Natura forcefully asserted itself as a musical entity, a posture that has been imitated by other corporations asserting themselves in the Brazilian music market in the 2010s. These companies include those that specialize in alcoholic beverages (the beer company Skol, the beverage company Xiboquinha), energy drinks (Red Bull), shoes (Converse), and mobile telecommunications (Oi). These companies have attempted to extend the tax incentive of Brazil’s outsourced cultural policy by establishing music as a loss-​leader. There is a huge difference between banks and oil companies patronizing the arts through providing financial support and corporations setting up their own in-​house record companies, which is essentially what Natura and the beer company Skol (through its Skol Beats venture) have done. Among these, Natura is one of the most respected by Brazilian music industry workers for its posture with regard to Brazilian musical traditions.

35 Most of the commentary for FIFA soundtrack videos on YouTube is in English, and some of them log over 100,000 views; e.g., https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=5OcoU21x864, last accessed July 25, 2018.

Constructing a New Music Industry  193

Figure 6.1  Natura presents! Screenshots from Tulipa Ruiz’s website, tuliparuiz.com.br, accessed 23 July 2013, with instructions to download (“baixe aqui!”) as 320kbps MP3s. Image courtesy Tulipa Ruiz.

In 2015, I spoke with Heloisa Aidar, Ruiz’s manager until 2017, and the owner of the artist management company Pommelo, about the nature of her client’s relationship with Natura. She stated that for the most part the relationship was good. Her first contract with Natura stated that the music had to be available for free (via download) in exchange for the company’s financial backing. However, Aidar explicitly noted the limits with which artists receiving so much patronage would be comfortable criticizing their patron’s policies—​such as the exploitation of natural resources from the Amazon—​in music or speech. What Aidar described to me was just one of the ways that the “lei de incentivo” relied on a different kind of co-​branding between artist and

194  Bossa Mundo corporate brand. In his famous guide to the music industry, Donald J.  Passman (2011) cautions musicians against affiliating themselves with a brand that could harm their credibility among audiences. However, the music press has recently noted that even artists associated with North American indie rock—​ a genre that prides itself on its anti-​ corporate attitude—​are choosing aggressive licensing routes to bolster incomes and secure their ability to support themselves through music (Hopper 2013). In general, stories of co-​branding between artists and products through advertising tend to be framed in negative terms. This anxiety is one of many potential consequences for co-​branding between musicians and corporate entities, whether in the form of advertising partnerships or exclusive usage contracts for a device or platform. Generally, these arrangements are understood as business moves, but there are moments when such partnerships can expose the competitive risks at play when two brands come together. Recent pop music history is littered with examples of business relationships between musicians and major corporations working out poorly for both parties.36 There is a synergistic process at work when two brands join together, and those positive and negative forces often exist in tension with both entities only having limited control over the co-​brand. Yet it is clear from the examples in the Brazilian record industry that an effective partnership between musicians and other brands can benefit both the artist and the nonmusical product if handled with care. Since 2005, Natura has pursued music as part of a broader strategy to bolster its brand. Natura sponsors national and regional music festivals and compiles playlists available from their Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify profiles. Natura’s actions have also penetrated US and British publics in more direct ways. Natura was one of many corporate sponsors of the 2018 Brasil SummerFest in New York City. Vocalist Xênia Franco took public acknowledgment of her relationship with the corporation one step further by stating her affiliation with Natura in her press materials and also making an acoustic appearance at the Natura Brasil Nolita store in New York as part 36 One relatively recent example is the 2014 story surrounding Chipotle’s failed arrangement with Frank Ocean in an ad for the burrito chain’s mobile phone game. There was a small legal kerfuffle resulting in Ocean exploiting the failed arrangement by returning his advance payment only after taking a photo of it for his Tumblr feed. In this instance, Chipotle thought it had a complementary co-​ branding relationship. Ocean leveraged his choice to end that relationship into something that bolstered his own brand as an unconventional R&B artist operating in the musical mainstream. Part of the reason Chipotle was moved to sue Ocean is that his actions put Chipotle’s brand at risk. Another famous example was Pepsi’s doomed partnership with Madonna in 1989.

Constructing a New Music Industry  195 of the official 2018 SummerFest schedule of events. Thus, Natura’s relationship with Brazilian music is helping its brand in Brazil and abroad. Through these actions, they promote and redefine the national perception of what does and does not count as the Brazilian national essence (brasilidade), all as part of their brand. In 2013, their website stated that “Natura Music supports diverse initiatives that valorize the dialog between rhythms, revealing our Brazilian soul with creativity and artistic excellence,” and in 2018, they acknowledged the changes in the meaning of Brazilian music since their founding by stating that they would be “renovating their model to accompany the changes for music and the world and expand our relationship with the public.”37 Some of the artists associated with Natura—​such as the MPB singer Roberta Sá—​maintain their relationships with a larger record label while limiting their relationship with Natura to a broader association of “bem estar,” or well-​being. While none of the artists who work with Natura are listed on their website, most of those artists produce content that is exclusively distributed through Natura outlets on social networks or the company’s website. Tulipa Ruiz stands out for agreeing to the words “Natura apresenta” on her website. Even as many in the music industry believe that Natura is an important investor in music, they also say that the Brazilian government is essentially outsourcing its cultural policy. That has potential consequences. There is no public accountability for corporate sponsors except through sales of their products, and therefore citizens—​key stakeholders of cultural policy—​have no say in where these tax incentives go. This means that the degree to which negative stereotypes persist in music receiving a company’s patronage is out of the control of the state and the broader citizenry, even as it has consequences for Brazil’s brand. The power balance between the corporation and the artist is lopsided; the state, for its part, is absent, in pursuit of the neoliberal ideal of minimal state interference and cultural oversight. Public accounting is especially important in the wake of kickback scandals such as the one involving 37 Translated from the Portuguese, “O Natura Musical patrocina diversas iniciativas que valorizam o diálogo entre ritmos, revelando nossa alma brasileira com criatividade e excelência artística,” from “Conheça O Programa de Incentivo Música Brasileira,” http://​www.naturamusical.com.br/​conheca-​ o-​programa-​de-​incentivo-​musica-​brasileira, accessed June 15, 2013 (now offline, archived at http://​ archive-​br.com/​br/​n/​naturamusical.com.br/​2012-​11-​12_​639442/​). Translated from the Portuguese, “O Natura Musical surgiu em 2005 para valorizar a música brasileira. E, após mais de uma década de atuação, acompanhando as mudanças na música e no mundo, a plataforma embarca num processo de renovação de seus modelos, com o objetivo de ampliar sua relação com o público,” from “Natura Musical mudou. Porque a música mudou,” http://​ www.natura.com.br/​ naturamusical, accessed August 16, 2018.

196  Bossa Mundo Petrobras, which damaged the brands of many of the artists involved. In the end, however, struggling artists will take whatever support they can get. Overall, Tulipa Ruiz’s agreement with Natura was beneficial to her artistic vision:  rather than being tarnished by her co-​branded relationship, she benefited from it because the company’s mission of promoting national Brazilian musical styles—​and thus revealing the “Brazilian soul”—​further established her as legitimate. According to Aidar, the arrangement helped her win over audiences and even garnered her a Latin Grammy. Because the country lacks a functioning infrastructure to support independent music, the incentive laws fill the gaps even as they are fraught with problems. In that vein, Ruiz is one of many artists to take advantage of the recording studios at the Red Bull Station in São Paulo. Red Bull has a global strategy of opening studios in major cities—​most of which were also previous sites of the company’s Red Bull Music Academy events—​in order to establish a toehold in local urban music scenes. Ruiz and many others use Red Bull studios to record new music, and, in exchange, Red Bull can do whatever they like with the recordings. The company also requires credit in all national promotional materials. The ownership of the masters remains with the artist. Red Bull’s involvement with local music in São Paulo doesn’t stop there. The company regularly hires local artists and music industry innovators for month-​long residencies. When I toured the facilities in July 2015, I saw artists and producers working on multiple projects and putting on public events—​all intended to promote Red Bull alongside the local music scene. Starting that same year, the company also began a series of projects under the title “Red Bull Amphiko” which, according to its website, is a program for “social entrepreneurs who want to change their corner of the world.”38 Red Bull Amphiko drew heavily from Red Bull Music Academy’s and Red Bull Station’s example of leveraging the growth of urban music, specifically investing in artists who have worked with Red Bull Station and have also participated to varying degrees in social justice work in their communities (e.g., Lei de Dai and Evandro Fíoti). As of this writing, the Amphiko projects intersect directly with São Paulo’s hip-​hop scene, giving good press and support to such independent music business entities as Laboratório Fantasma, the music and fashion company headed by producer and manager Evandro Fióti. His company is famous for working with such São Paulo hip-​hop stars as Emicida—​Fíoti’s older

38 From http://​amphiko.redbull.com, accessed on July 23, 2017.

Constructing a New Music Industry  197 brother—​and Rael. In late June 2017, Red Bull Amphiko produced a video celebrating Fíoti’s company for having, in its words, “kickstarted a new wave of creative economies in the quebrada—​the local word for the hood.”39 The use of the language of creative economy here is striking, as it links Red Bull and São Paulo hip-​hop to Richard Florida’s ideas about “creativity” as a major driver for wealth in cities and their overall brand with investors.40 Red Bull, through its various initiatives, is treating hip-​hop—​a genre that until recently had been ignored as part of the country’s musical brand—​as fundamental to the potential of the urban community. In a sense, then, Red Bull Amphiko functions the way that many charitable non-​governmental organizations do: it fills the gap left by a government refusing to invest resources in the country’s poorest communities. A  for-​profit corporation behaving as a major patron of the arts and investor in “social entrepreneurship” to this extent could only happen in a country that has incentivized this behavior. While it may appear to be the same or an improvement on what happens in countries like the United States, where corporations also have a tax incentive to patronize the arts, the laws in Brazil exaggerate this behavior. As a result of Brazil shifting its cultural policy resources, corporations like Red Bull can have a tremendous impact on the country’s musical output and, through that, its national brand. Timothy D. Taylor has argued that the increasing importance of branding in music is part of the broader ways that neoliberalism shapes music-​making and consumption, pointing to the involvement of nonmusical brands in music as another way that we can see capitalism shaping culture (2016: 54–​ 58). As I have demonstrated throughout this chapter, the situation is more exaggerated outside of the United States, especially in the Global South. Just a few years ago, economists and investors celebrated Brazil as a potential economic superpower. Its status as part of BRICS—​as always about to arrive on the world stage (“land of the future . . . and always will be”41)—​means that maintaining the national brand often takes precedence over more comprehensive social investment, such as basic structural needs (e.g., desks in classrooms, hospital expansion projects, or even sustainable cultural policies 39 https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=btFbt1128co, accessed on Aug 17, 2018. 40 See Florida (2002) for the basic premise of the relationship between the creative class and city development. For a critique of “creative industries” discourse, see Ross (2007). See Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) for a thorough sociological study of creative labor. 41 This expression is a common humorous play on the title of Stefan Zweig’s famous book, Brazil: Land of the Future [Brasilien. Ein Land der Zukunft] (1941).

198  Bossa Mundo and investment). The cultural experience of neoliberal capitalism is different in the Global South, especially for recent democracies emerging from military dictatorships. Brazilian musicians and organizations feel the pressure not just to express brasilidade, but also to transcend their place in o terceiro mundo (the third world), and to earn a viable living apart from stereotypes. Routes to reaching Anglophone publics in the 2010s have far-​reaching consequences for Brazil’s brand. In the same era that the country invested resources into shoring up its national brand with large-​scale consequences for the country’s economy, major international music breakthroughs have become elusive for Brazilian artists. The prominence of Brazilian artists in FIFA video games reaffirms old stereotypes of Brazil—​soccer and samba. As a result of Brazil’s investment in major international sporting events in the 2010s (and its economic and political troubles starting in 2013), Anglophone publics are far less likely to pay attention to the country’s music outside the focus and immediacy of sports tournaments and related media. The artists who have managed to break through to US and British publics in the meantime have done so through canny licensing, as well as cross-​platform and co-​branding strategies that have made up for the gaps in the Brazilian government’s cultural policy. Despite the breakout success of artists such as Anitta and Elza Soares, they are often exoticized through their mediation, demonstrating how racial and national stereotypes of Brazil thrive in Anglophone media. Through these routes, the definition of what counts as cutting-​edge and vibrant Brazilian musical expression in Anglophone markets has changed. Even as the problem of breaking through a crowded musical market persists—​as the examples of BaianaSystem and Bixiga 70 show—​there are clear openings for Brazilian artists to nurture sustainable publics outside of the usual routes of world music festivals and compilations. While the strength of Brazil’s brand fluctuates, the successes of the musicians discussed above show that there are paths—​albeit uncertain ones—​for those wishing to expand their audience and at the same time challenge what it means to be a Brazilian musician in the world. What remains to be seen is how these artists will fare as the market continues to shift and expand.

Epilogue Toward the end of writing this book, I attended a concert that exemplified the extent to which Brazilian musicians must contend with stereotypes commonly found in the United States and the United Kingdom about their musical choices. In 2018, acclaimed jazz vocalist and composer Luciana Souza performed at Wellesley College with guitarist Romero Lubambo as part of a week-​long residency.1 The concert was titled “Brazilian Duos” to indicate that she would be drawing from her series of albums under the same name with her patented experimental spirit. Yet when she chose to perform a piece from her tribute to jazz vocalist Chet Baker, The Book of Chet, she apologized to the audience and said that it would be the only non-​Brazilian song in her set. But she stated that since she is a Brazilian, it still fit as a Brazilian musical performance. While it is typical for musicians in many genres to use onstage banter to prepare audiences or whet their appetites for anything unexpected, in that moment Souza raised a much larger issue. The question of what counts as Brazilian music was suddenly the focus of the concert. Brazilian musicians (and those from other parts of the world with similarly distinct musical “brands”) often negotiate how they fit under the rubric of Brazilian music, a categorization challenge that has vexed musicians in Brazil and abroad ever since the founding of the Republic in 1889. That effort has grown more contentious through the mediation of musicians, songs, and recordings abroad. Many of these musicians have found that they must “perform Brazil” even if they resist stereotypes when they market their music for Anglophone publics (cf. Albuquerque and Bishop-​Sanchez 2015). As I have shown throughout this book, the brand strength of Brazilian music is so powerful and attention is so complex that even the most acclaimed musicians express ambivalence about the need to define themselves with and against it. Yet Brazilian musicians and policymakers continue to rely on markers of racial difference to capture the attention of fickle international publics. This pressure has also been the inspiration for numerous recent documentaries about Brazilian music and media, including the documentary 1 The residency included multiple concerts, an open rehearsal, and guest lectures in the history of jazz and in a seminar on Brazilian music.

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries. K. E. Goldschmitt, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190923525.001.0001

200 Epilogue Beyond Ipanema and the ensuing series of the same name for the Globo television network in Brazil.2 It has been a contested terrain for musicians, fans, and cultural intermediaries for decades. The challenge of moving beyond Anglophone stereotypes of Brazilian music is daunting, especially when listener attention is couched as a zero-​sum game, as I described in ­chapter 5, and when the discourse of national branding has so thoroughly dominated the twenty-​first century in the latter-​day world music industry. This book has asked, How can we account for the persistence of stereotypes of Brazilian musicians working abroad at the same time that the country promotes a greater proliferation of styles and genres in Anglophone media? There is a reason why Ipanema and, by extension, bossa nova have been such enduring symbols of Brazil among Anglophone publics:  no other breakthrough of the postwar era has matched the popular cultural saturation of bossa nova in the 1960s. As a prominent offshoot of samba, bossa nova has been a key part of Brazil’s national brand since its revival at the end of the twentieth century. Bossa nova is also diffuse enough as a musical style that in certain contexts, it can evade the temporal specificity of the 1960s. Its perennial popularity among jazz musicians and pop stars wishing to signal “classy” nostalgia and Otherness has held strong even as bossatrônica has faded in and out of cultural influence. Musicians as varied as Jurassic 5, Jessie Ware, Damien Rice, Suzanne Vega, Robin Thicke, and Natacha Atlas have plumbed bossa nova to signal romance, mystery, and the exotic. Even Brazilian musicians more comfortable playing other styles often return to bossa nova and other stereotypical Brazilian sounds in their search for success abroad. Although there have been many moments when Brazilian music was trendy among Anglophone musicians, intermediaries, and broader publics, the breakthrough of bossa nova stands apart because of the international political and musical environment when it reached Anglophone public attention in the early 1960s. It appealed to many demographics and exemplified “cross-​over” in a period that was marked domestically by emerging divisions in class, race, and age (Appiah 2018; Gentry 2018). Due to the popularity of Orfeu Negro (1959, dir. M. Camus) in art house cinemas in the United States and the United Kingdom, the musical style was visually associated with Blackness, despite its origins in the Zona Sul (South Zone) of Rio de Janeiro

2 A parallel example from film studies is Olhar Estrangeiro [The Foreign Eye], Lúcia Marat’s 2006 documentary based on Tunico Amâncio’s academic monograph, O Brasil dos Gringos: Imagens no Cinema (2000).

Epilogue  201 among white Brazilian musicians before it shed some of those associations in the early 1960s. As I showed at the end of c­ hapter 1, news media geared to African American publics played up these racial connections, even going so far as to celebrate Afro-​Brazilian musicians such as Bola Sete above others. The previous success of Afro-​Cuban Latin jazz provided a template for US-​ based musicians and news media to receive and incorporate Brazilian styles into the jazz repertoire. The links between the cosmopolitan posturing of late-​1950s Rio de Janeiro, Latin jazz, and the African diaspora were a crucial reason why Brazilian music spread via jazz. Even though the “cool” sub-​genre was, by that point, largely associated with white musicians, jazz as a framework had developed through decades of associations balancing Blackness, primitivity, and sophistication, regardless of how much more financially successful white jazz musicians were. It takes only a brief reflection on the relationship between Brazilian music and rock to get a sense of what Brazil has signified to Anglophone publics since the early 1960s. Even though some teen rock and pop idols referred to the bossa nova in their song lyrics at the height of its cultural acclaim, those artists rarely incorporated bossa nova or samba rhythms into their music. It took until the 1970s for rock groups to convincingly incorporate samba and other Brazilian musical styles, and even then they did so largely in the background or as part of the “fusion” scene. Among Anglophone publics and musicians, rock and Brazilian music were largely antithetical. One explanation for this is the shifting racial discourse around rock ’n’ roll during the 1960s and 1970s. Rock ’n’ roll switched demographics in the 1960s away from African American musicians and fans to become a decidedly white musical genre by decade’s end (cf. Hamilton 2016). That had consequences for how rock music appropriated Latin styles in general. In the early 1960s, it was common to hear pop, rock, and soul music with Latin rhythms and melodies (Sublette 2007; Weisbard 2014; Pacini Hernández 2010). Yet there was a reason why Brazilian musical influences were most widespread among recordings not considered rock—​and for an older demographic—​at the height of the counterculture. Bossa nova was just too exotically feminine to fulfill that niche. By the early 1970s, Carlos Santana distinguished himself as the only Latin rock musician with widespread youth market success to incorporate Brazilian music alongside “hot” Afro-​Cuban and Argentinian approaches. Santana’s engagement with Brazilian music, however, was short-​ lived, and when he played with Brazilian musicians, those excursions were more in line with jazz fusion than rock.

202 Epilogue With the exception of the heavy metal band Sepultura (and a few samba-​ inspired moments on 1970s rock records, such as Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain” from 1979), Brazilian rock musicians have faced numerous challenges appealing to Anglophone publics unless they overtly play up stereotypes or play in settings by the open eclecticism of fusion. It is far easier for a Brazilian rock band to appeal to Anglophone publics if they reference some sort of Brazilian musical “essence”—​either by including samba motifs or through discourses of mixture—​thereby appealing once again to exotic tropes. Even though both rock and jazz developed in the African diaspora, Anglophone rock is glossed as too white to accommodate all of the links to Otherness that have colored Brazil’s musical brand over the decades. This is perhaps why fusion music was such an effective vehicle for Brazilian musicians living in the United States in the 1970s: it freely adapted musical and visual signifiers of the African diaspora and indigeneity in its promotional materials. Even when rock stars such as David Byrne incorporated Brazilian and Latin music into their sound in the late 1980s, they did so outside of rock aesthetics. That illegibility of Brazilian music within rock and its related genres has resulted in some unique miscommunications. The power of musical stereotype is so strong that when Brazilian musicians who play genres that have nothing to do with samba or bossa nova break through to US and British markets, some critics and cultural intermediaries wrongly refer to that musical output as samba rather than rock, pop, singer-​songwriter, or a variety of other genres these musicians might actually be playing.3 Due to racial stereotypes, notions of Otherness, and the global marketing of expressive culture, it’s easier to catch the attention of potential publics through samba and bossa nova. After decades of being ubiquitous in the global market, they serve as the most obvious shorthand for all of Brazilian creative expression. The insistence on samba and bossa nova as shorthand for Brazilian music is especially strong for women musicians. Ever since the breakthrough success of the album Getz/​Gilberto in 1964, critics have compared Brazilian women entertainers and singers to “The Girl from Ipanema,” drawing from Astrud Gilberto’s iconic status. Through my investigation of the demographic shift of bossa nova publics in the mid-​1960s away from countercultural youth and toward adults, I have shown the particular significance of Astrud Gilberto’s voice in that moment through her appearance in soundtracks and her 3 British and US press accounts reviews of electro-​punk band Cansei de Ser Sexy called their music “samba.”

Epilogue  203 serving as the behind-​the-​scenes model for seduction in films such as Casino Royale (1967). From the 1970s onward, that link to feminine sexuality and seduction would follow many Brazilian musicians in their encounters with the Anglophone press, including such critically acclaimed singers as Flora Purim at the height of electric jazz experimentation, and singer-​songwriter CéU in the early 2000s.4 Thus, when musicians such as Bebel Gilberto and Tulipa Ruiz draw on the imagery of Astrud Gilberto in their album artwork, promotional materials, and musical aesthetics, they feed the temptation for critics and publics to reduce Brazilian musical femininity to just one woman. The reduction of Brazilian music to a particular version of feminine sex appeal limits the kinds of attention publics pay to Brazil. That Otherness is due in part to the status of Latin jazz, and by extension Latin music writ large in Anglophone musical discourse and media. As numerous Latin jazz scholars have pointed out, the subordinate status of Latin jazz has been a crucial part of establishing a jazz canon through the telling of jazz history (Washburne 2012; Karush 2016; Borge 2018). The same can be said of pop and rock music history. With the exception of Elijah Wald’s How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, which spends an entire chapter on Caribbean music and Exotica in the 1950s pop music landscape, the subordinate status of Latin music is reaffirmed through its erasure in standard popular music histories of the last century from US and British perspectives. Further, when writers refer to Latin music—​or opt to not cover it at all—​ they often do so in order to make more space to explore pop music’s debt to African Americans, expressions of gender and sexuality, and conflicts arising from class divisions.5 What this relative silence about Latin jazz and Latin pop tells us is that, for many scholars and critics, they are niche categories, despite numerous instances of crossover success and popularity. Musical styles originating in Latin America have been ascendant for decades, and it makes sense that Brazilian musicians have embraced opportunities to work with musicians hailing from Hispanic Latin America, whether in the spirit of 1970s fusion, or through the genre and linguistic crossing as embodied in pop-​funk and hip-​hop artists in the 2010s. This is not new: Carmen Miranda played rhumba in the early 1940s, and many bossa nova musicians dabbled 4 Michael Astor referred to her as “The Girl from São Paulo” (2007) and Marc Margolis lumped her into a group of “girls from Brazil” (2006). 5 Recent pop music histories have improved in acknowledging Latin music, but they largely consign it to the category of “influence” within the broader narrative about race, class, and gender. See Powers (2017) and Stanley (2014).

204 Epilogue with other Hispanic Latin American styles. Of course, these musicians have sought opportunities to find Anglophone publics when the prevailing narratives about popular music in the United States and the United Kingdom reduce music from anywhere else as secondary or even invisible.6 As persistent as Brazilian musical stereotypes have been, it is tempting to view the recent genre fluidity and boundary-​pushing activities of some Brazilian musicians with a measure of optimism. Historical patterns of Brazilian musical fads in the postwar period show that consumer trends are difficult to predict. Taste patterns of middle-​class publics have grown increasingly omnivorous, disrupting the strictures around musical taste of previous generations (Warde et al. 2007). Ensuing changes in listening patterns have led to fundamental problems for categorizing music by traditional markers of genre. Further still, adventurous listeners can seek out expert cultural intermediaries on services such as Apple Music or music podcasts with a penchant for traversing stylistic boundaries. For those with the patience to wade through the endless deluge of musical content out there, there is a world of wonders to behold. Yet there is still a reason to be suspicious of Anglophone publics increasingly expanding their musical exposure in style and language. I  remain mildly pessimistic due to the fad life cycle of catching the attention of ever-​ expanding publics only to later be consigned to pop culture detritus. Many people across the Global North stop actively engaging in seeking out new music after they age out of youth culture (Straw 2002). Profit-​driven technology companies have increasing control over the music that appears in one’s YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music recommendations, and many musicians believe that they have no choice with distributing their music through these streaming services. As Safiya Umoja Noble shows, these same companies are complicit in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes, often through the power of largely invisible algorithms, viral attention, and the profit motive (2018). When combined with the nature of how music genre works in the twenty-​ first century, there is even more room for pessimism. Today, genre is still a fundamental means for delineating in-​ group/​ out-​ group dynamics—​ it’s just that the musical qualities have shifted. Or, to put it another way, these categories are about self and Other, whether marked by rhythm, style, or 6 For example, Troutman (2016) discusses the Hawaiian steel guitar as a foundational timbre in American music, yet it is often ignored in popular music histories.

Epilogue  205 timbre (Taylor 2014). It is no wonder that stereotypes and the shorthand of branding proliferate when it comes to classifying music from a country as musically diverse as Brazil for Anglophone publics; the feedback loop of mediation, attention, and national branding pushed stereotypes of musicians’ nationality to override other musical qualities, regardless of style fluidity. This was on display even before Brazil announced its rebranding with the “Plano Aquarela.” Beyond drawing from samba and related genres, Brazil’s musical brand trades on markers of racial difference to break through the crowded media marketplace. Since the 1960s, those markers have consistently referred back to the country’s myth of racial democracy and, by extension, the African diaspora. What would it take for those racial essences to fade in importance in order to make room for other qualities, such as harmonic and poetic ingenuity, youthful energy, or even mellifluousness—​prominent qualities that are currently downplayed in Brazil’s musical branding? As of this writing in 2018, scholars of Brazilian music face challenges (and opportunities) that were unthinkable when I first started this project. Brazil’s faltering economy and increasingly authoritarian environment has facilitated new modes activism and innovation among musicians who do not feel compelled to attract Anglophone publics. For example, at the 2018 Brasil SummerFest performance in New York’s Central Park, many of the musicians—​especially BaianaSystem—​took on an activist pose with a message was largely unintelligible to non-​Brazilians in attendance. When prominent musicians choose to address political tensions in Anglophone media, they often do so to explain the challenging creative environment at home.7 After news of the assassination of openly gay Rio de Janeiro councilwoman and activist Marielle Franco spread across Anglophone media in 2018, transgender artist Liniker Barros, with her band Os Caramelows, discussed the links between her popularity and stage presence and the political environment in Brazil in the aftermath of the assassination (Rothman 2018). Others, such as Emicida, have opted to emphasize ongoing class-​based discrimination and poverty in Brazil when they address politics in Anglophone media (Garcia-​Navarro 2014; Rosario 2018). For Brazilian musicians seeking to build an international profile, the situation at home forms the backdrop of what they create and how they promote it, even if the majority of their publics have little background 7 For example, Caetano Veloso explained to Ben Ratliff, “we are living hard times in Brazil [. . .] I never saw Brazilians so split as different groups, you know? So divided” (quoted in Ratliff 2018).

206 Epilogue knowledge of what has been transpiring politically. There is the potential that emphasizing Brazil’s political and economic troubles will only further marginalize the country, making the prospect of breaking free from damaging stereotypes more unlikely. Even still, it is possible to envision the coverage of these perspectives on politics at home as a positive development since it has so rarely happened in the past. Looking forward, it is unclear how Brazil’s musical brand of diasporic Blackness will fare as social media and streaming services grow in their importance in the mediation of music. This book has limited its emphasis of the recent past for studying the reach of Brazilian musicians among Anglophone publics via social media and streaming services. Further investigation would take a thorough look at the interface among mediation, genre, and attention to stereotype on these platforms. Given the ongoing scandal over researcher abuse of Facebook user data since 2016, scholars studying the relationship between musical stereotype and demographics will face new challenges obtaining workable data. There is, however, some cause to hope. In addition to the growing corpus of scholarship on Brazilian musical performance and deterritorialized listening in the United States and the United Kingdom (cf. Coimbra de Sá 2011; Pereira 2005), there are also signs that scholars working on the music side of the digital humanities will provide us with more robust challenges to the proliferation of stereotype in digital media. As we consider the interface of mediation, branding, and attention to stereotypes about Brazil going forward, we can only anticipate that musicians will continue to challenge our expectations as they have for decades. There have always been Brazilian musicians pushing the boundaries of these stereotypes, but few of them have broken through. Even today, with the resources available through streaming music services, many of the most innovative musicians are tough to find because they don’t conform to the well-​trod pathways to finding international publics. And yet they are there. If history is any guide, it will certainly be worth the effort to seek them out.

Bibliography Adorno, Theodor. 2002. “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening.” In Theodor Adorno: Essays on Music, edited by Richard Leppert, 288–​317. Berkeley: University of California Press. Adorno, Theodor W. 1976. Introduction to the Sociology of Music. A Continuum Book. New York: Seabury Press. —​—​—​. 2013. Aesthetic Theory. New York: Bloomsbury. Agudelo, Carlos. 1990. “Latin Notas.” Billboard, January 27, 1990. “Airto:  Natural Feelings (LP, Vinyl Record Album).” 1970. Dusty Groove. n.d. https://​ www.dustygroove.com/​item/​9445/​Airto:Natural-​Feelings. Ake, David. 2002. Jazz Cultures. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:  University of California Press. Alberto, Paulina L. 2009. “When Rio Was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil.” Hispanic American Historical Review 89 (1): 3–​39. Albuquerque, Severino J., and Kathryn Bishop-​Sanchez. 2015. Performing Brazil: Essays on Culture, Identity, and the Performing Arts. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Albuquerque, Jr., Durval Muniz de. 2014. The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Amâncio, Tunico. 2000. O Brasil dos gringos: imagens no cinema. Níteroi: Intertexto. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large:  Cultural Dimension of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2018. The Lies That Bind:  Rethinking Identity. London: Profile Books. Araújo, Paulo Cesar de. 2002. Eu não sou cachorro, não: música popular cafona e ditadura militar. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record. Araújo, Samuel M. 1988. “Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil.” Latin American Music Review 9 (1): 50–​89. Ariza, Adonay. 2006. Eletronic samba:  a música brasileira no contexto das tendências internacionais. São Paulo: Annablume. Armstrong, Piers. 1999. Third World Literary Fortunes:  Brazilian Culture and Its International Reception. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University. —​—​—​. 2002. “Songs of Olodum: Ethnicity, Activism and Art in a Globalized Carnival Community.” In Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, edited by Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn, 177–​91. New York: Routledge. Aronczyk, Melissa. 2013. Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity. New York: Oxford University Press. Astor, Michael. 2007. “The Girl from São Paulo Is CéU.” Washington Post, July 7, 2007. Averill, Gage. 1997. A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baraka, Amiri [LeRoi Jones]. 2010. Black Music. Reissue edition. New York: Akashic Books.

208 Bibliography Bates, Eliot. 2016. Digital Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul’s Recording Studio Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St. Louis, MO: Telos Press. Beaster-​ Jones, Jayson. 2016. Music Commodities, Markets, and Values:  Music as Merchandise. New York: Routledge. Benjamin, Walter. 2002. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Berlant, Lauren. 1998. “Intimacy: A Special Issue.” Critical Inquiry 24 (2): 281–​88. Beserra, Bernadete. 2005. “From Brazilians to Latinos? Racialization and Latinidad in the Making of Brazilian Carnival in Los Angeles.” Latino Studies 3 (1): 53–​75. —​—​—​. 2008. “In the Shadow of Carmen Miranda and the Carnival: Brazilian Immigrant Women in Los Angeles.” In Becoming Brazuca:  Brazilian Immigration in the United States, edited by Clémence Jouët-​Pastre and Leticia J. Braga, 57–​79. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Bevins, Vincent. 2012. “Brazil’s Hip-​Hop Scene Takes the Country by Storm.” Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2012. Bickford, Tyler. 2012. “The New ‘Tween’ Music Industry: The Disney Channel, Kidz Bop, and an Emerging Childhood Counterpublic.” Popular Music 31 (3): 417–​36. Billboard. 1962. “Strong Sales Potential: Jazz: Vince Guaraldi Trio ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind/​Samba de Orpheus,’ ” July 21, 1962. —​—​—​. 1965. “Spotlight Pick—​The Astrud Gilberto Album,” March 6, 1965. —​—​—​. 1972. “Display Ad—​Primal Roots,” July 29, 1972. —​—​—​. 1975. “Flora Purim: She Scats to the Top,” February 8, 1975. —​—​—​. 1976. “Display Ad—​The First Quad Releases,” May 1, 1976. —​—​—​. 1979. “Display Ad—​Borboletta,” October 19, 1979. Bishop, Jack. 2004. “Who Are the Pirates? The Politics of Piracy, Poverty, and Greed in a Globalized Music Market.” Popular Music and Society 27 (1): 101–​6. Bishop-​ Sanchez, Kathryn. 2016. Creating Carmen Miranda:  Race, Camp, and Transnational Stardom. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Blanco Borelli, Melissa. 2016. She Is Cuba:  A Genealogy of the Mulata Body. New York: Oxford University Press. Borge, Jason. 2018. Tropical Riffs:  Latin America and the Politics of Jazz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Boston Globe. 1966. “Display Ad 16—​2 Exciting Trips to Rio de Janeiro,” October 28, 1966. Boucher, Sarah. 2006. “Seu Jorge Sambas into the Music Hall.” The Wire (Portsmouth, NH), July 5, 2006. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brown, Len. 1989. “An Alien in the Real World.” New Musical Express, June 10, 1989. Browning, Barbara. 1995. Samba:  Resistance in Motion. Bloomington:  Indiana University Press. Buhler, James. 2014. “Gender, Sexuality, and the Soundtrack.” In The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies, edited by David Neumeyer, 366–​ 82. New  York:  Oxford University Press. Burlingame, Jon. 2012. The Music of James Bond. New York: Oxford University Press. Burns, E. Bradford. 1993. A History of Brazil. New York: Columbia University Press. Burns, Ken. 2000. Jazz. PBS. Byrne, David. 2017. How Music Works. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Bibliography  209 Calaznas, Ricardo. 2010. “Cada Vez Mais Popular, a ‘Beyoncé Do Pará’ Gaby Amarantos Traz Seu Tecnomelody Ao Rio.” O Globo, June 11, 2010, sec. Cultura. Caldeira, João Bernardo. 2005. “Não Sou Artista Sou Trabalhador: Desgostoso Com o Que Chama de Inércia Carioca, Seu Jorge Critica Os Políticos e a Imprensa e Aposta Na Criação Da Premeira Banda de Rock Negra Do Pais.” Jornal do Brasil, October 18, 2005. Carson, Charles. 2008. “‘Bridging the Gap’: Creed Taylor, Grover Washington Jr., and the Crossover Roots of Smooth Jazz.” Black Music Research Journal 28 (1): 1–​16. Carvalho, Marta de. 1995. “Tupi or Not Tupi MPB: Popular Music and Identity in Brazil.” In The Brazilian Puzzle: Culture on the Borderlands of the Western World, edited by David Hess and Roberto DaMatta, 159–​79. New York: Columbia University Press. Casillas, Andrew, Suzy Exposito, and Isabela Raygoza. 2015. “10 Best Latin Albums of the Year.” Rolling Stone (blog). December 30, 2015. https://​www.rollingstone.com/​music/​ music-​lists/​10-​best-​latin-​albums-​of-​the-​year-​38370/​. Castro, Ruy. 2000. Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World. Chicago: A Cappella Books. —​—​—​. 2004. Rio de Janeiro: Carnival under Fire. New York: Bloomsbury. Cateforis, Theo. 2011. Are We Not New Wave? Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Chase, Sam. 1962. “Saga of the Bossa Bath at Carnegie: Musicians Cost a Lot of Cruzeiros.” Billboard, December 22, 1962. Cheng, William. 2016. Just Vibrations:  The Purpose of Sounding Good. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Citton, Yves. 2017. The Ecology of Attention. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Clover, Joshua. 2009. 1989: Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This to Sing About. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coimbra de Sá, Natalia Silva. 2011. “Espetáculos Culturais Brasileiros Na Cidade de Nova York:  Múltiplas Perspectivas.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Salvador:  Universidade Federal da Bahia. Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press. commons, uncertain. 2013. Speculate This! Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Connell, Andrew Mark. 2002. “Jazz Brasileiro? Musica Instrumental Brasileira and the Representation of Identity in Rio de Janeiro.” Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, Ethnomusicology. Cooper, Mark. 1990. “Music, Maestro!” Q, February 1990. Corber, Robert J. 1997. Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Coss, Bill. 1963. “Caught in the Act.” Down Beat, January 3, 1963. Crary, Jonathan. 1999. Suspensions of Perception:  Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Crook, Larry. 2005. Brazilian Music:  Northeastern Traditions and the Heartbeat of a Modern Nation. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-​CLIO. Cross, Brian, and Eric Coleman. 2009. “Percussive Passion.” Wax Poetics, July 2009. Cuadros, Alex. 2016. Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country. New York: Spiegel and Grau. Cultural Cannibals, Seu Jorge & Almaz in Chicago—​Live + Interview (English Subtitles). 2010. http://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=SoWPF3-​_​IWY.

210 Bibliography Dallas, Karl. 1975. “Import Records: How Cult Figures Get Commercial.” Melody Maker, February 15, 1975. Danesi, Marcel. 2006. Brands. New York: Routledge. Daub, Adrian, and Charles Kronengold. 2015. The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Dávila, Arlene. 2001. Latinos, Inc.:  The Marketing and Making of a People. Berkeley: University of California Press. Davis, Darién J. 2009. White Face, Black Mask: Africaneity and the Early Social History of Popular Music in Brazil. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Dawbarn, Bob. 1964. “Beginning Bossa Nova.” Melody Maker, April 25, 1964. Dell’Antonio, Andrew, ed. 2004. Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing. Berkeley: University of California Press. DeMichael, Don. 1962. “Editorial: Bossa Nova—​Good and Not-​So-​Good Tidings.” Down Beat, November 8, 1962. Denning, Michael. 2015. Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution. New York: Verso Books. DeNora, Tia, and Sophie Belcher. 2000. “‘When You’re Trying Something on You Picture Yourself in a Place Where They Are Playing This Kind of Music’: Musically Sponsored Agency in the British Clothing Retail Sector.” Sociological Review, 80–​101. Denselow, Robin. 1989. “The Band That Felt It Was Time to Go: Rock/​Pop.” The Guardian (1959–​2003); London (UK), December 21, 1989. —​—​—​. 2015. “Criolo:  Convoque Seu Buda Review—​Brazilian Star Back with More Thoughtful, Diverse Hip-​Hop.” The Guardian (UK), January 15, 2015, sec. Music. Dent, Alexander S. 2012. “Piracy, Circulatory Legitimacy, and Neoliberal Subjectivity in Brazil.” Cultural Anthropology 27 (1): 28–​49. DeVeaux, Scott. 1991. “Constructing the Jazz Tradition:  Jazz Historiography.” Black American Literature Forum 25 (3): 525–​60. —​—​—​. 1997. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dibbell, Julian. 1990. “World Beat! Brazil Is Back.” Spin (Archive: 1985–​2000); New York, February 1, 1990. Dinerstein, Joel. 2017. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dinnie, Keith. 2015. Nation Branding:  Concepts, Issues, Practice. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Dolan, Emily I. 2010. “‘.  .  . This Little Ukulele Tells the Truth’:  Indie Pop and Kitsch Authenticity.” Popular Music 29 (3): 457–​69. Donoghue, Courtney Brannon. 2017. Localising Hollywood. London: BFI Publishing. Dorfman, Ariel, and Armand Mattelart. 2018. How to Read Donald Duck:  Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. New York: OR Books, LLC. Originally published 1971. Down Beat. 1959. “Candido—​Latin Fire,” August 20, 1959. —​—​—​. 1960. “The Other Side of the Coin—​Part 1,” April 28, 1960. Drott, Eric A. 2018. “Music as a Technology of Surveillance.” Journal for the Society for American Music 12 (3): 233–​67. Dueck, Byron. 2013. Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries: Aboriginal Music and Dance in Public Performance. New York: Oxford University Press. Dunn, Christopher. 2001. Brutality Garden: Tropicalia and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Bibliography  211 —​—​—​. 2016. Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in Authoritarian Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Dusty Groove. n.d. “Airto:  Natural Feelings.” https://​www.dustygroove.com/​item/​9445/​ Airto:Natural-​Feelings. Ebony. 1963. “Bossa Nova,” March 1963. Erlmann, Veit. 1996. “Global Imagination and World Music: Reflections on World Music in the 1990s.” Public Culture 8 (3): 467–​87. —​—​—​. 1999. Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination: South Africa and the West. New York: Oxford University Press. Fabbri, Franco. 2013. “Taboo Listening (or, What Kind of Attention?).” In Ubiquitous Musics:  The Everyday Sounds That We Don’t Always Notice, edited by Marta García Quiñones, Anahid Kassabian, and Elena Boschi, 161–​74. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Feather, Leonard. 1963. “Laurindo Almeida:  Blindfold Test.” Down Beat, February 28, 1963. —​—​—​. 1971. “From Bossa to Big Boss.” Melody Maker, February 27, 1971. —​—​—​. 1976. “Blindfold Test: Flora Purim—​Airto.” Down Beat, March 11, 1976. Featherstone, Mike. 2007. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Fecomércio-​RJ, IPSOS. 2012. “Pirataria No Brasil:  Radiografia Do Consumo.” http://​ www.fecomercio-​rj.org.br/​publique/​media/​estudo.pdf. Flanner, Janet. 1959. “Letter from Paris.” New Yorker, July 11, 1959. Flores, Juan. 2016. Salsa Rising:  New  York Latin Music of the Sixties Generation. New York: Oxford University Press. Florida, Richard L. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books. Fonarow, Wendy. 2013. Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Fontanari, Ivan Paulo de Paris. 2006. “Globalizing the Periphery:  Transnational Extensions and Local Tensions in a Global/​Underground Music Scene.” Echo: A Music-​ Centered Journal 8. —​—​—​. 2013. Os DJs da Perifa: música eletrônica, trajetórias e mediações culturais em São Paulo. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Editora Sulina. —​—​—​. 2015. “Mixing in the Global Margins: The Making of Brazilian Drum & Bass.” In Made in Brazil: Studies in Popular Music, edited by Marta Tupinambá de Ulhôa, Cláudia Azevedo, and Felipe Trotta, 148–​60. New York: Routledge. Font-​Navarette, David. 2015. “Bass 101: Miami, Rio, and the Global Music South.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 27 (4): 488–​517. Ford, Phil. 2013. Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Frank, Thomas. 1997. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Freedland, Nat. 1973. “Deodato Cooking with ‘2001’ Sound.” Billboard, October 27, 1973. Fricke, David. 1989. “The Year in Records—​Rei Momo, Brazil Classics 1, Brazil Classics 2.” Rolling Stone, December 14, 1989. Frith, Simon. 2000. “The Discourse of World Music.” In Western Music and Its Others:  Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondalgh, 305–​22. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fry, Peter. 1982. Para Inglês Ver:  Identidade e Politica Na Cultura Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.

212 Bibliography Fryer, Peter. 2000. Rhythms of Resistance: African Musical Heritage in Brazil. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. Gabbard, Krin. 1995. “Signifyin(g) the Phallus: Mo’Better Blues and Representations of the Jazz Trumpet.” In Representing Jazz, edited by Krin Gabbard, 104–​30. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Galão, Fábio. 2006. “O Caldeirão Sonoro de Seu Jorge:  O Cantor e Compositor Faz Apresentação Única Em Curitiba, Mostrando Seu Trabalho Marcado Pela Fusão de Samba, Funk, Rock, e Reggae.” Bonde, August 10, 2006. https://​www.bonde.com.br/​ entretenimento/​musica/​noticias/​o-​caldeirao-​sonora-​de-​seu-​jorge-​65256.html. Galeano, Eduardo. 1997. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York: NYU Press. Originally published 1971. Galletta, Thiago. 2016. Cena Musical Paulistana dos Anos 2010:  A “Música Brasileira” depois da Internet. São Paulo: Annablume. Galm. Eric A. 2010. Berimbau:  Soul of Brazilian Music. Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi. Galm, John K., and William Fowler. 1975. “How to Perk Up Percussion.” Down Beat, December 4, 1975. Garcia Canclini, Nestor. 1995. Hybrid Cultures:  Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Garcia-​Navarro, Lulu. 2014. “Emicida:  ‘People Sample What Is Nearest to Them.’” All Things Considered. NPR. Garland, Phyl. 1973. “Sounds.” Ebony, January 1973. —​—​—​. 1975. “Sounds.” Ebony, September 1975. Garland, Shannon. 2010. “Devido à Internet (Thanks to the Internet):  Music Blogs, Transnational Tours, and the Politics of Indie Music Circulation.” Presented at Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. New Orleans. Garrett, Charles Hiroshi. 2008. Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gehr, Richard. 1990. “World Beat! The Lambada Craze.” Spin (Archive:  1985–​2000); New York, April 1, 1990. Gelormine, Phil. 1973. “Mendes: Latin & Pop Make Such a Beautiful Marriage.” Billboard, August 11, 1973. Gentry, Philip M. What Will I  Be:  American Music and Cold War Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Gibbs, John. 2012. “Balancing Act:  Exploring the Tone of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 10 (1): 132–​51. Gidal, Marc. 2016. Spirit Song:  Afro-​ Brazilian Religious Music and Boundaries. New York: Oxford University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. Consequences of Modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Gilbert, Andrew. 2005. “Seu Jorge Does It All—​And Plays a Mean Samba, Too.” Boston Globe, September 9, 2005. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ginsburg, Steve. 1979. “New Acts: Nana Vasconcelos.” Variety, September 12, 1979. Gitler, Ira. 1962. “Cal Tjader.” Down Beat, February 15, 1962. Gitlin, Todd. 1987. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books. Glanvill, Rick. 1989. “Rhythm for Latin Lovers: Top of the Rock.” The Guardian (1959–​ 2003); London (UK), December 15, 1989.

Bibliography  213 Gobbi, Nelson. 2005. “Disco em questão:  Seu Jorge/​Cru:  Novo Solo Foi Feito Com Coragem.” Jornal do Brasil, August 27, 2005. Gold, Richard. 1990. “Scambada:  Dirty Dancing All the Way to the Bank.” Variety (Archive: 1905–​2000); Los Angeles, March 14, 1990. Goldhaber, Michael H. 1997. “The Attention Economy and the Net.” First Monday 2 (4). https://​firstmonday.org/​article/​view/​519/​440. Goldschmitt, Kariann. n.d. “Bossa Nova and Twenty-​First Century Commerce: Ubiquitous Music and the Branding of a Global Bourgeoisie.” In Brazil’s Northern Wave: Fifty Years of Bossa Nova in the United States, edited by Jason Stanyek and Frederick Moehn. New York: Oxford University Press. —​—​—​. 2011a. “Doing the Bossa Nova: The Curious Life of a Social Dance in 1960s North America.” Luso-​Brazilian Review 48 (1): 61–​78. —​—​—​. 2011b. “Joga Bonito Pelo Mundo, Guerreiro: Music, Transmedia Advertising, and Brasilidade in the 2006 World Cup.” Popular Music and Society 34 (3): 417–​36. —​—​—​. 2014. “Mobile Tactics in the Brazilian Independent Record Industry.” In The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Jason Stanyek, 1:496–​522. New York: Oxford University Press. —​—​—​. 2017. “From Disney to Dystopia: Transforming ‘Brazil’ for a US Audience.” In The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, edited by Miguel Mera, Ron Sadoff, and Ben Winters, 363–​74. New York: Routledge. —​—​—​. 2019. “From Rio to São Paulo: Shifting Urban Landscapes and Global Strategies for Brazilian Music.” In Sounds of the City, edited by Stephen Wagg, Brett Lashua, and Karl Spracklen, 103–​22. Vol. 2. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldschmitt, K. E., and Nick Seaver. 2019. “Shaping the Stream.” In The Cambridge Companion to Music and Digital Culture, edited by Nicholas Cook, David Trippett, and Monique Ingalls, 63–​81. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, Steve. 2009. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gorbman, Claudia. 1987. Unheard Melodies:  Narrative Film Music. London:  BFI Publishing. Graça, Eduardo. 2007. “Perfil/​Bebel Gilberto.” Edu Do Brooklyn. November 1, 2007. http://​edudobrooklyn.blogspot.com/​2007/​11/​perfilbebel-​gilberto.html. Green, James. 2010. We Cannot Remain Silent:  Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Greenberg, Clement. 1939. “Avant-​Garde and Kitsch.” Partisan Review, Fall 1939: 34–​49. Guerreiro, Goli. 2000. A Trama dos Tambores:  a Música Afro-​Pop de Salvador. São Paulo: Editora 34. Guerreiro do Amaral, Paulo Murilo. 2009. “Estigma e cosmopolitismo na constituição de uma música popular urbana de periferia: etnografia da produção do tecnobrega em Belém do Pará.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Guffey, Elizabeth E. 2006. Retro: The Culture of Revival. London: Reaktion Books. Guilbault, Jocelyne. 1993. Zouk: World Music in the West Indies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 2001. “World Music.” In The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, edited by Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street, 176–​92. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. —​—​—​. 2007. Governing Sound:  The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s Carnival Musics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

214 Bibliography Guzmán, Tracy Devine. 2013. Native and National in Brazil:  Indigeneity after Independence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hamilton, Jack. 2016. Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hanchard, Michael. 1999. “Afro-​ Modernity:  Temporality, Politics, and the African Diaspora.” Public Culture 11 (1): 245–​68. Hanchard, Michael George. 1994. Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945–​1988. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harvey, John J. 2002. “Cannibals, Mutants, and Hipsters:  The Tropicalist Revival.” In Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, edited by Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn, 106–​22. New York: Routledge. Haworth, Catherine. 2014. “‘Something beneath the Flesh’: Music, Gender, and Medical Discourse in the 1940s Female Gothic Film.” Journal of the Society for American Music 8 (3): 338–​70. Hayles, N. Katherine. 2007. “Hyper and Deep Attention:  The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes.” Profession, 187–​99. Heineman, Alan. 1976. “Record Reviews: Airto—​Identity.” Down Beat, April 8, 1976. Hennessey, Stewart. 1989. “Byrne’s Bottom Line on Rhythms for the World: Rock.” The Observer (London), December 24, 1989. Henry, Clarence Bernard. 2010. Let’s Make Some Noise:  Axé and the African Roots of Brazilian Popular Music. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Hesmondhalgh, David, and Sarah Baker. 2011. Creative Labour:  Media Work in Three Cultural Industries. London: Routledge. Hesmondhalgh, David, and Caspar Melville. 2001. “Urban Breakbeat Culture:  Repercussions of Hip-​Hop in the United Kingdom.” In Global Noise:  Rap and Hip-​Hop Outside the U.S.A., edited by Tony Mitchell, 86–​110. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Hirschkind, Charles. 2009. The Ethical Soundscape:  Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press. Hollenberg, David. 1976. “Confessions of a Jazz Junkie.” Mother Jones Magazine, October 1976. Holmes, Holly. 2017. “‘With a Voice Like a Gun’: Brazilian Popular Music, Censorship, and Strategies of Resistance during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship’s Anos de Chumbo [Leaden Years] (1968–​74).” In Researching Music Censorship, edited by Annemette Kirkegaard, Helmi Järviluoma, Jan Sverre Knudsen, and Jonas Otterbeck, 206–​42. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Hopper, Jessica. 2013. “How Selling Out Saved Indie Rock.” BuzzFeed. November 10, 2013. Houston, Bob. 1964. “Critics Choice Stan Getz Speaks Out . . . Sometimes I’m Sick of ‘Desafinado.’” Melody Maker, February 8, 1964. Howard, Peter. 1963. “Good-​Bye to the Jet Set!” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1963. Hunter, Bob. 1962. “Samba Jazz Blends Brazilian, American Negro Style of Music.” Chicago Daily Defender, September 18, 1962. Huyssen, Andreas. 1986. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. IPEA (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada). 2012. “Download de Músicas e Filmes no Brasil: Um Perfil dos Piratas Online.” Secretaria de Assuntos Estratégicos da Presidência da República.

Bibliography  215 Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Johnson, M. 1990. “Wrap-​Up.” Rolling Stone, no. 589 (October): 102. Jones, Max. 1962. “The Bossa’s Not So Nova.” Melody Maker, November 17, 1962. —​—​—​. 1972. “Jazz Scene:  Paul Desmond—​Gentle Man.” Melody Maker, December 2, 1972. Jornal do Brasil. 2005. “Um Pé Lá e Outro Cá,” July 27, 2005. Joyce, Mike. 1989. “Byrne’s Day at the Carnaval.” The Washington Post, November 18, 1989, sec. Style. Karush, Matthew B. 2016. Musicians in Transit: Argentina and the Globalization of Popular Music. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kassabian, Anahid. 2004. “Would You Like Some World Music with Your Late? Starbucks, Putumayo, and Distributed Tourism. Twentieth-​Century Music 1 (2): 209–​23. —​—​—​.2013. Ubiquitous Listening:  Affect, Attention, and Distributed Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keightley, Keir. 2011. “Un Voyage via Barquinho:  Global Circulation, Musical Hybridization, and Adult Modernity, 1961–​1969.” In Migrating Music, edited by Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck, 112–​26. New York: Routledge. —​—​—​. 2015. “Astrud Gilberto, Jet-​Set Superstar.” Presented at 18th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Campinas, Brazil. Kirby, Fred. 1976. “Flora Purim.” Variety, April 21, 1976. Klein, Naomi. 2002. No Logo:  Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New  York:  Random House LLC. Krims, Adam. 2007. Music and Urban Geography. New York: Routledge. Kronengold, Charles. n.d. “Bossa Nova in the History of Not Rock and Roll.” In Brazil’s Northern Wave:  Fifty Years of Bossa Nova in the United States, edited by Frederick Moehn and Jason Stanyek. New York: Oxford University Press. Kun, Josh. 2005. Audiotopia:  Music, Race, and America. Berkeley:  University of California Press. Lackner, Thomas. 1977. “Alex Acuna, Manolo Badrena, Lee Pastore.” Musician, Player, and Listener, November 1, 1977. Lake, Steve. 1975. “Year Out Year In: Tragedies . . . but Cecil Triumphs.” Melody Maker, December 27, 1975. Lamen, Darien. 2013. “Claiming Caribbeanness in the Brazilian Amazon:  Lambada, Critical Cosmopolitanism, and the Creation of an Alternative Amazon.” Latin American Music Review 34 (2): 131–​61. —​—​—​. 2014. “Sound Tracks of a Tropical Sexscape: Tropicalizing Northeastern Brazil, Channeling Transnational Desires.” In Sun, Sea, and Sound:  Music and Tourism in the Circum-​Caribbean, edited by Timothy Rommen and Daniel T. Neely, 267–​88. New York: Oxford University Press. —​—​—​. n.d. “Bossa Remixed: Tracing the Transnational Circuitry of the Bossa Nova Remix Economy.” In Brazil’s Northern Wave: Fifty Years of Bossa Nova in the United States, edited by Jason Stanyek and Frederick Moehn. New York: Oxford University Press. Lanza, Joseph. 2007. Elevator Music:  A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-​Listening, and Other Moodsong. Rev. and expanded ed. Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press. Originally published 2004. Larkin, Brian. 2014. “Techniques of Inattention:  The Mediality of Loudspeakers in Nigeria.” Anthropological Quarterly 87 (4): 989–​1015.

216 Bibliography Lawrence, Tim. 2003. Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–​1979. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lees, Gene. 1963. “Bossa Nova: Anatomy of a Travesty.” Down Beat, February 14, 1963. Lemos, Ronaldo, and Oona Castro. 2008. Tecnobrega: O Pará Reinventando o Negócio da Música. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano Editora. Lesser, Jeffrey. 1999. Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Strugle for Ethnicity in Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —​—​—​. 2007. A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–​1980. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Leu, Lorraine. 2006. Brazilian Popular Music:  Caetano Veloso and the Invention of Tradition. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Lipsitz, George. 1997. Dangerous Crossroads:  Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place. London: Verso. Lorentzen, Christian. 2005. “Captain Neato:  Wes Anderson and the Problem with Hipsters; Or, What Happens When a Generation Refuses to Grow Up.” N+1. January 6, 2005. Lorenz, Shanna. 2011. “Zhen Brazil’s Japanese Brazilian Groove.” In Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship, edited by Idelber Avelar and Christopher Dunn, 155–​71. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Los Angeles Times. 1963a. “Display Ad—​Penney’s Holiday Choice,” December 2, 1963. —​ —​ —​ . 1963b. “Display Ad—​ Short Sleeve Sweaters Have ‘Arrived’ on Campus!,” September 6, 1963. Los Angeles Times. 1990. “The Brazilian Reaction,” March 11, 1990, sec. Dance. Lucas, Maria Elizabeth. 1996. “Wonderland Musical:  Notas Sobre as Representações Da Música Brasileira Na Mídia Americana.” TRANS—​Transcultural Music Review 2: Article 8. —​—​—​. 2000. “Gaucho Musical Realism.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9 (1): 41–​60. Luker, Morgan James. 2016. The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in the Age of Expediency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lury, Celia. 2004. Brands: The Logos of the Global Economy. New York: Routledge. Macdonald, Dwight. 2011. Masscult and Midcult:  Essays against the American Grain. Edited by John Summers. New York: New York Review of Books. Madrid, Alejandro. 2008. Nor-​Tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Maguire, Jennifer Smith, and Julian Matthews. 2014. “Introduction:  Thinking with Cultural Intermediaries.” In The Cultural Intermediaries Reader, edited by Jennifer Smith Maguire and Julian Matthews, 1–​12. Los Angeles: Sage Publications Ltd. Mandel, Howie. 1975. “Record Reviews: Wayne Shorter Native Dancer.” Down Beat, July 17, 1975. Margasak, Peter. 2005. “Players:  Seu Jorge—​ Raw Brazilian Voice.” Down Beat, December 2005. Margolis, Mac. 2006. “The Girls from Brazil: A Crop of Silky New Vocalists Is Breaking Rules While Remaining True to the Country’s Musical Traditions.” Newsweek International, 2006. Margolis, Maxine L. 1995. “Transnationalism and Popular Culture: The Case of Brazilian Immigrants in the United States.” Journal of Popular Culture 29 (1): 29–​41. Marshall, Wayne. 2011. “Lambada is a Feeling.” Wayne&Wax (blog). April 12, 2011. http://​wayneandwax.com/​?p=5492

Bibliography  217 Marshall, Wayne, and Jayson Beaster-​Jones. 2012. “It Takes a Little Lawsuit: The Flowering Garden of Bollywood Exoticism in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” South Asian Popular Culture 10 (3): 249–​60. May, Elaine Tyler. 1988. Homeward Bound:  American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books. McCann, Bryan. 2002. “Black Pau: Uncovering the History of Brazilian Soul.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 14 (1): 33–​62. —​—​—​. 2004. Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —​—​—​. 2008. The Throes of Democracy:  Brazil since 1989. Edited by Nicholas Guyatt. Global History of the Present. New York: Zed Books. —​—​—​. 2018. João Gilberto and Stan Getz’s Getz/​Gilberto. Edited by Jason Stanyek. 33 1/​3 Brazil. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. McCracken, Allison. 2015. Real Men Don’t Sing: Crooning in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McGowan, Chris. 1989. “Records:  Various Artists.” Musician (Archive:  1982–​1999); Gloucester, August 1, 1989. —​—​—​. 1991. “Letters—​Missing in Action.” The Beat 10 (3), 1991. —​—​—​. 2014. The Brazilian Music Book: Brazil’s Singers, Songwriters, and Musicians Tell the Story of Bossa Nova, MPB, and Brazilian Jazz and Pop. Playa del Rey:  Culture Planet. McGowan, Chris, and Ricardo Pessanha. 2008. The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. McSiegel, S. Rosentwig. 1963. “The Really Real Story of the Origins of Bossa Nova.” Down Beat, May 9, 1963. Meadley, Phil. 2005a. “World Music: Favourite of the Favelas; Seu Jorge Escaped from Rio’s Shanty Towns to Become a Movie Actor and a Musician. He Tells Phil Meadley His Story.” The Independent (London UK), April 22, 2005. —​—​—​. 2005b. “DJ Dolores Aparelhagem:  The Brazilian Beatmeister Steps up a Gear.” Songlines, June 2005. Meier, Leslie M. 2011. “Promotional Ubiquitous Musics: Recording Artists, Brands, and ‘Rendering Authenticity.’” Popular Music and Society 34 (4): 399–​415. Meintjes, Louise. 1990. “Paul Simon’s Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning.” Ethnomusicology 34 (1): 37–​73. —​—​—​. 2003. Sound of Africa: Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Melody Maker. 1973. “Thus Spake Deodato,” April 28, 1973. —​—​—​. 1975. “Display Ad—​The Incomparable George Duke,” March 1, 1975. Mendes, Gilberto. 2005. “De Como a MPB Perdeu a Direção e Continuou Na Vanguarda.” In Balanço Da Bossa, e Outras Bossas, edited by Augusto de Campos, 5th ed, 133–​40. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva. Originally published 1968. Mendonça, Ana Rita. 1999. Carmen Miranda Foi a Washington. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record. Mercer, Michelle. 2004. Footprints:  The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter. New  York:  J. P. Tarcher/​Penguin. Miles, Milo. 1990. “World Beat Has Become An Industry: The International Rhythms of Zouk, Makossa, and Lambada Generate a Crop of Fine New Releases in Popular Music. Creating World Beat.” New York Times, January 21, 1990, sec. Arts & Leisure.

218 Bibliography Mitchell, Charles. 1974. “Record Reviews:  Sergio Mendes Vintage 74.” Billboard, July 18, 1974. Mizukami, Pedro Nicoletti, Oona Castro, Luiz Fernando Moncau, and Ronaldo Lemos. 2011. “Chapter  5:  Brazil.” In Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, edited by Joe Karaganis, 219–​304. New York: Social Sciences Research Council. Moehn, Frederick. 2008. “Music, Mixing and Modernity in Rio de Janeiro.” Ethnomusicology Forum 17 (November): 165–​202. —​—​—​. 2012. Contemporary Carioca: Technologies of Mixing in a Brazilian Music Scene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Monson, Ingrid. 2007. Freedom Sounds:  Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa. New York: Oxford University Press. Moon, Tom. 1989. “From Byrne, a Latin-​Laced Show.” Philadelphia Inquirer; Philadelphia, Pa., November 17, 1989, sec. Features Daily Magazine. Morales, Ed. 2004. The Latin Beat: The Rhythms and Roots Of Latin Music from Bossa Nova to Salsa and Beyond. New York: Da Capo Press. Moreno, Jairo. 2004. “Bauza-​Gillespie-​Latin/​Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Caribbean.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (1): 81–​99. Morris, Jeremy Wade. 2015. Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture. Oakland: University of California Press. Morris, Jeremy Wade, and Devon Powers. 2015. “Control, Curation, and Musical Experience in Streaming Music Services.” Creative Industries Journal 8 (2): 106–​22. Morris, Mitchell. 2013. The Persistence of Sentiment: Display and Feeling in Popular Music of the 1970s. Berkeley: University of California Press. Napolitano, Marcos. 2001. Seguindo a Canção: Engagamento Político e Indústria Cultural na MPB. São Paulo: Annablume/​FAPESP. —​—​—​. 2007. A Síncope das Idéias: A Questão da Tradição na Música Popular Brasileira. São Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo. Naves, Santuza Cambraia. 2005. “From Bossa Nova to Tropicália: Restraint and Excess in Popular Music.” In Imagining Brazil, edited by Jessé Souza and Valter Sinder, 251–​65. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. —​—​—​. 2010. Canção popular no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Negro Digest. 1963. “On Record,” May 1963. Neto, Alcino Leite. 2002. “Bebel Gilberto.” In Música Popular Brasileira Hoje, edited by Arthur Nestrovski, 42–​44. São Paulo: PubliFolha. Netto, Michel Nicolau. 2009. Música Brasileira e Identidade Nacional na Mundialização. São Paulo: Annablume. —​—​—​. 2014. O Discurso da Diversidade e a World Music. São Paulo: Annablume. —​—​—​. 2016. “Novas Forms de Associação entre Estado e Nação:  Marca-​Nação e a Desestabilização de um Hifen na Globalização.” Dossiê Capitalismo Cultura—​Arquivos do CMD 4 (2): 11–​33. New Musical Express. 1973. “Display Ad—​PYE,” June 9, 1973. New York Times. 1963a. “Display Ad—​B Altman & Co: If You Can’t Do the Bossa Nova, Wear It!,” June 23, 1963. —​—​—​. 1963b. “Display Ad—​Go Brickman, It’s Like Going to a Party,” June 16, 1963. —​—​—​. 1963c. “Display Ad—​Tamiment—​Bach, Bossa Nova, and the Yellow Moon,” September 18, 1963. Newton, Edmund. 1990. “It’s the Latin Rhythm of Lambada.” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1990, sec. San Gabriel Valley.

Bibliography  219 Noble, Safiya Umoja. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression:  How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: NYU Press. Nooshin, Laudan. 2003. “Improvisation as ‘Other’: Creativity, Knowledge, and Power: The Case of Iranian Classical Music.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 128 (2): 242–​96. Nowlin, Bill. 1991. “Letters—​Missing in Action.” The Beat 10 (3), 1991. Nye, Joseph S. 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs. Obama, Barack. 2007. Dreams from My Father:  A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Crown Publishers. Oldfield, Paul, and Simon Reynolds. 1989. “When All the World’s a Stooge .  .  .” The Guardian (UK), September 1, 1989. The Observer (London). 1989. “Doing the Biz . . .,” December 24, 1989. Pacini Hernandez, Deborah. 2010. Oye Como Va! Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Packman, Jeff. 2011. “Musicians’ Performances and Performances of ‘Musician’ in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.” Ethnomusicology 55 (3): 414–​44. —​—​—​. 2012. “The Carnavalização of São João: Forrós, Sambas, and Festive Interventions during Bahia, Brazil’s Festas Juninas.” Ethnomusicology Forum 21 (3): 327–​53. Pareles, Jon. 1989. “Sounds around Town: On New Year’s Eve: [Review][1].” New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast), December 29, 1989, sec. C. —​—​—​. 1990. “Review/​Pop; Lambada, Would-​Be Craze by Way of Paris:  [Review].” New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast), January 15, 1990, sec. C. Passman, Donald S. 2011. All You Need to Know about the Music Business. New York: Rosetta Books. Pekar, Harvey. 1962a. “Candido.” Down Beat, May 24, 1962. —​—​—​. 1962b. “Vince Guaraldi.” Down Beat, August 30, 1962. Pereira, Simone Luci. 2005. “O Nome, o Olhar e a Escuta da Cidade:  Memórias de Ouvintes.” In Música Popular Na América Latina: Pontos de Escuta, edited by Martha Ulhôa and Ana Maria Ochoa, 152–​74. Porto Alegre: Editora da UFRGS. Peretz, Sarah. 2018. “Spotify Users Push Back at the Over-​the-​Top Drake Promotion.” TechCrunch (blog). July 3, 2018. http://​social.techcrunch.com/​2018/​07/​03/​spotify-​ users-​push-​back-​at-​the-​over-​the-​top-​drake-​promotion/​. Perrone, Charles A. 1998. “Don’t Look Back:  Myths, Conceptions, and Receptions of Black Orpheus.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 17: 155–​77. Perrone, Charles A., and Christopher Dunn, eds. 2002a. Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization. New York: Routledge. —​—​—​. 2002b. “‘Chiclete com Banana’: Internationalization in Brazilian Popular Music.” In Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, edited by Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn, 1–​38. New York: Routledge. Pessanha, Ricardo. 1991. “Margareth Menezes.” The Beat 10 (2), 1991. Phillips, Dom. 2014. “The Rapper Criolo Tells the Story of a Changing Brazil.” Time, December 8, 2014. Piekut, Benjamin. 2011. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-​Garde and Its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pond, Steven F. 2005. Head Hunters:  The Making of Jazz’s First Platinum Album. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Powers, Ann. 2017. Good Booty:  Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music. New York: HarperCollins.

220 Bibliography Priore, Irna. 2008. “Authenticity and Performance Practice:  Bossa Nova and João Gilberto.” Song and Popular Culture/​Lied und populäre Kultur: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Volksliedarchivs 53: 109–​30. Ratliff, Ben. 2005. “Overcoming the Stereotype of Sexy and Sophisticated.” New  York Times, October 30, 2005, sec. Arts. —​—​—​. 2018. “Popcast:  Caetano Veloso on 50 Years of Music and Politics.” New  York Times, January 19, 2018, sec. Arts. Reily, Suzel Ana. 1996. “Tom Jobim and the Bossa Nova Era.” Popular Music 15: 1–​16. —​—​—​. 2000. “Introduction:  Brazilian Musics, Brazilian Identities.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9 (1): 1–​10. Ridgers, Derek. 1989. “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos.” New Musical Express, June 3, 1989. Roberts, John Storm. 1976. “Viva Latin!” Melody Maker, February 21, 1976. Robinson, Alex. 2003. “Sounding Out Rio de Janeiro.” Songlines, December 2003. Robinson, Sally. 2013. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press. Rockwell, John. 1976. “Flora Purim, Jazz Singer, on First Tour in 3 Years.” New York Times, April 14, 1976. Rodrigues, João Jorge Santos. 1999. “Olodum and the Black Struggle in Brazil.” In Black Brazil: Culture, Identity, and Social Mobilization, edited by Randal Johnson and Larry Crook. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications. Rohter, Larry. 1977. “Going beyond Jazz.” Washington Post, May 14, 1977. Rolontz, Bob. 1962. “Is the Bossa Nova the New Twist? After Start In Jazz, Fad Breaks in Pop.” Billboard, 1962. Romney, Jonathan. 1989. “Brazil Nut.” New Musical Express, March 4, 1989. Rosario, Richy. 2018. “Ibeyi, Brazilian Rapper Emicida Release ‘Hacia el Amor’ Video.” Vibe (blog). June 8, 2018. https://​www.vibe.com/​2018/​06/​ibeyi-​emicida-​hacia-​el-​ amor-​video/​. Ross, Andrew. 2007. “Nice Work If You Can Get It: The Mercurial Career of Creative Industries Policy.” In MyCreativity Reader: A Critique of Creative Industries, edited by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, 1–​41. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Rothman, Jonathan. 2018. “Liniker Is Claiming Space for Queer Brazilian Musicians.” NOW Magazine. July 11, 2018. https://​nowtoronto.com/​api/​content/​5d8e1b84-​8528-​ 11e8-​b464-​12408cbff2b0/​. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Sanjek, Russell. 1996. Pennies from Heaven: The American Popular Music Business in the Twentieth Century. New York: Da Capo Press. Sansone, Livio. 2003. Blackness without Ethnicity:  Constructing Race in Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Saul, Scott. 2003. Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Scott, Art. 1963. “Bossa Nova ad Absurdum.” Down Beat, January 17, 1963. Segrave, Kerry. 1994. Payola in the Music Industry: A History, 1880–​1991. Jefferson, NC Mcfarland & Co. Seidenbaum, Art. 1963. “Biggest Crowd Hears Jazz Monterey Style: Brookmeyer, Mulligan Soar Melodically with Two Horns under Hot Peninsula Sun.” Los Angeles Times, 1963. Seigel, Micol. 2009. Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Bibliography  221 Seligman, Gerald. 1989. “Liner Notes.” In Brazil-​Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers, Various Artists. Rounder Records CD-​5044. Shaw, Lisa. 2013. Carmen Miranda. London: BFI Books. Sheridan, Garth. 2014. “Fruity Batidas:  The Technologies and Aesthetics of Kuduro.” Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 6 (1): 83–​96. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. 1994. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism in the Media. New York: Routledge. Silvers, Michael B. 2018. Voices of Drought:  The Politics of Music and Environment in Northeastern Brazil. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sinker, Mark. 1989. “Brazil Classics One—​Various.” Melody Maker, March 11, 1989. Skidmore, Thomas E. 1988. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–​ 85. New York: Oxford University Press. —​—​—​. 1993. Black into White:  Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought. 2nd. ed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Originally published 1974. —​—​—​. 1999. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Jacob. 2004. “Seeing Double: Stunt Performance and Masculinity.” Journal of Film and Video 56 (3): 35–​53. Smith, Jeffrey Paul. 1998. The Sounds of Commerce:  Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia University Press. Souza, Tarik de. 2005. “Disco em Questão: Seu Jorge/​Cru: Um Talento Nada Descartável.” Jornal do Brasil, August 27, 2005. —​—​—​. 2007. “Bebel Gilberto e Joyce: Bossa & Eletrônica.” In Tem Mais Samba: Das Raízes À Eletrônica, 313–​15. São Paulo: Editora 34. Sovik, Liv. 2002. “Globalizing Caetano Veloso: Globalization as Seen through a Brazilian Pop Prism.” In Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, edited by Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn, 96–​105. New York: Routledge. Spencer, Neil. 1989. “Jive Talking.” The Observer (UK), December 17, 1989. Stahl, Matt. 2012. Unfree Masters:  Recording Artists and the Politics of Work. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stam, Robert. 1997. Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University. Stam, Robert, and Ella Shohat. 2012. Race in Translation:  Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic. New York: NYU Press. Stanley, Bob. 2014. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé. New York: W. W. Norton. Stanyek, Jason. n.d. Around the World Goes Around:  Performing Brazilian Music and Dance in the United States. —​ —​ —​ . 2004. “Transmission of an Interculture:  Pan-​ African Jazz and Intercultural Improvisation.” In The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz Communities in Dialogue, edited by Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble, 87–​130. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Stephens, J. Kit. 1976. “Nosebag.” New Musical Express, February 28, 1976. Sterne, Jonathan. 1997. “Sounds Like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architectonics of Commercial Space.” Ethnomusicology 14 (1): 22–​50. —​—​—​. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stilwell, Robynn J. 2007. “The Fantastical Gap between Diegetic and Nondiegetic.” In Beyond the Soundtrack:  Representing Music in Cinema, edited by Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard D. Leppert, 184–​ 202. Berkeley:  University of California Press.

222 Bibliography Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. 2016. The Sonic Color Line:  Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York: NYU Press. Straw, Will. 2002. “Consumption.” In Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, edited by Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street, 53–​73. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Stutz, Colin. 2018. “Spotify Subscribers Demand Refunds over Too Much Drake Promotion.” Billboard, July 2, 2018. https://​www.billboard.com/​articles/​columns/​hip-​ hop/​8463896/​spotify-​drake-​subscribers-​refunds-​scorpion-​playlist-​marketing. Sublette, Ned. 2007. “The Kingsmen and the Cha-​ Cha-​ Chá.” In Listen Again:  A Momentary History of Pop Music, edited by Eric Weisbard, 69–​94. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sweeting, Adam. 1989. “On Safari with the Prof of World Beat.” The Guardian (UK), December 16, 1989. —​—​—​. 1992. “Burned Out on the Road to Nowhere:  Adam Sweeting Traces David Byrne’s Musical Odyssey and, below, Reviews the Latest Rock Albums Rock/​Pop.” The Guardian (1959–​2003); London (UK), July 30, 1992. Tate, Greg. 2016. “Wayne Shorter.” In Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader, 16–​23. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Taylor, Timothy D. 1997. Global Pop: World Music, World Markets. New York: Routledge. —​—​—​. 2007a. Beyond Exoticism:  Western Music and the World. Durham, NC:  Duke University Press. —​—​—​. 2007b. “The Changing Shape of the Culture Industry; or, How Did Electronica Music Get Into Television Commercials.” Television New Media 8 (3): 235–​59. —​ —​ —​ . 2009. “Advertising and the Conquest of Culture.” Social Semiotics 19 (4):  405–​25. —​—​—​. 2014. “Fields, Genres, Brands.” Culture, Theory, and Critique 55 (2): 159–​74. —​—​—​. 2016. Music and Capitalism:  A History of the Present. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​. 2017. “Valuing Music.” In Music in the World: Selected Essays, 174–​99. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Telles, Edward E. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thompson, Marie, and Ian Biddle. 2013. “Introduction:  Somewhere between the Signifying and the Sublime.” In Sound Music Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience, edited by Ian Biddle and Marie Thompson, 1–​24. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Tinhorão, José Ramos. 2015. O Samba Agora Vai  .  .  .:  A Farsa da Música Popular no Exterior. 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34. Originally published 1969. Tosta, Antonio Luciano. 2010. “Resistance and Citizenship in the Songs of Ilê Aiyê and Olodum.” Afro-​Hispanic Review 29 (2): 175–​94. Toynbee, Jason. 2002. “Mainstreaming, from Hegemonic Centre to Global Networks.” In Popular Music Studies, edited by David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus, 149–​63. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Treece, David. 2013. Brazilian Jive: From Samba to Bossa and Rap. London: Reaktion Books. Troutman, John W. 2016. Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. Tsioulcas, Anastasia. 2005. “Cru.” Billboard, September 10, 2005. Tynan, John. 1958. “Review: Nat Cole ‘Cole Espanol.’” Down Beat, September 18, 1958. —​—​—​. 1962. “The Real Story of Bossa Nova.” Down Beat, November 8, 1962.

Bibliography  223 Ulhôa, Marta Tupinambá de. 1999. “Métrica Derramada Prosódia Musical na Canção Brasileira Popular.” Brasiliana,  48–​56. Variety. 1971. “Sergio Mendes Expands Publishing Setup.” Vazquez, Alexandra T. 2013. Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Veloso, Caetano. 2002. Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil. Edited by Barbara Einzig. New York: Da Capo Press. Vianna, Hermano. 1988. O Mundo Funk Carioca. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. —​—​—​. 1999. The Mystery of Samba:  Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil. Translated by John Charles Chasteen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. —​—​—​. 2011. “Technobrega, Forró, Labadão: The Parallel Music of Brazil.” In Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship, edited by Idelber Avelar and Christopher Dunn, 240–​ 49. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Vicente, Eduardo. 2014. Da Vitrola ao iPod: Uma História da Indústria Fonográfica no Brasil. São Paulo: Alameda Casa Editorial. Wald, Elijah. 2009. How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll:  An Alternative History of American Popular Music. New York: Oxford University Press. Wall, Tim. 2008. “Rocking Around the Clock: Teenage Dance Fads from 1955 to 1965.” In Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, edited by Julie Malnig, 182–​98. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. —​—​—​. 2013. Studying Popular Music Culture. Los Angeles: Sage Publications Ltd. Walser, Robert. 2004. “Groove as Niche: Earth, Wind & Fire.” In This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at the Experience Music Project, edited by Eric Weisbard, 266–​78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ward, Tom. 1986. “Everything Is Kool and the Gang.” Spin, October 1986. Warde, Alan, David Wright, and Modesto Gayo-​Cal. 2007. “Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness:  Or, the Myth of the Cultural Omnivore.” Cultural Sociology 1 (2): 143–​64. Warner, Gregory. 2017. Brazil in Black and White. NPR Rough Translation. Accessed May 13, 2018. https://​ www.npr.org/​ templates/​ transcript/​ transcript.php?storyId=542840797. Warner, Michael. 2005. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books. Washburne, Christopher. 2012. “Latin Jazz, Afro-​Latin Jazz, Afro-​Cuban Jazz, Cubop, Caribbean Jazz, Jazz Latin, or Just . . . Jazz:: The Politics of Locating an Intercultural Music.” In Jazz/​Not Jazz, 89–​108. The Music and Its Boundaries. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weheliye, Alexander G. 2005. Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-​Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Weiner, Jonah. 2007. “Unbearable Whiteness:  That Queasy Feeling You Get When Watching a Wes Anderson Film.” Slate Magazine. September 27, 2007. http://​ www.slate.com/​articles/​arts/​culturebox/​2007/​09/​unbearable_​whiteness.html. Weisbard, Eric. 2014. Top 40 Democracy:  The Rival Mainstreams of American Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Welburn, Ron. 1971. “The Black Aesthetic Imperative.” In The Black Aesthetic, edited by Addison Gayle Jr., 132–​49. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Wilkinson, Roy. 1990. “Sonic Youth: A Load of Tony Baloney.” Sounds, September 1, 1990. Williams, Richard. 1972a. “Preview of Chick.” Melody Maker, September 2, 1972. —​—​—​. 1972b. “Percussion by Airto Moreira.” Melody Maker, November 4, 1972.

224 Bibliography Wilson, John S. 1963a. “Brazilian Guitarist Goes from Bach to Jazz.” New York Times, April 11, 1963. —​—​—​. 1963b. “Paul Winter.” Down Beat, January 3, 1963. Winters, Ben. 2012. “‘It’s All Really Happening’:  Sonic Shaping in the Films of Wes Anderson.” In Music, Sound, and Filmmakers: Sonic Style and Cinema, edited by James Wierzbicki, 45–​60. New York: Routledge. Wisnik, José Miguel. 2012. “Águas de Março.” O Globo, March 31, 2012, sec. Segundo Caderno. Witter, Simon. 1990. “David Byrne: London Town & Country Club.” New Musical Express, January 6, 1990. Wong, Melissa Hok Cee. 2014. “A Matter of Record:  Ontology, Technology, and Historically Informed Performance in Rock Music.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge. Wu, Tim. 2016. The Attention Merchants:  The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads. New York: Vintage Books. Yorke, Ritchie. 1974. “Montreux Jazz & Blues Fest.” New Musical Express, July 20, 1974. Young, Masco. 1962. “The Grapevine.” New Pittsburgh Courier, December 8, 1962. Yúdice, George. 2003. The Expediency of Culture:  Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zirin, Dave. 2014. Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, The Olympics, and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Index Note: Tables and figures are indicated by t and f following the page number For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages.   2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. S. Kubrick), Seeds on the Ground: The Natural Sounds 102. of Airto (1971), 95–​96, 100–​1 See also Deodato, Eumir “Tombo in 7/​4,” 99   and wordless vocals, 82, 95–​96, 98 Adorno, Theodor, 5–​6 Alagoas, Toinho de afoxé, 132, 132–​33n.21 appearance on Brazil-​Forró compilation, Afro-​Futurism,  77–​78 118, 120 “Águas de Março” (Jobim) Albuquerque Jr., Durval Muniz de as background music, 14 on Brazil’s Northeastern region, 88 Mendes’s version of, 92 Almeida, Laurindo, 41 Agudelo, Carlos on the bossa nova fad, 43 on the lambada and the Berlin and claims of beating Byrd and Getz to Wall, 130 the Brazilian/​jazz mixture, 44–​45, Aidar, Heloisa 44–​45n.26 on the relationship between Tulipa Ruiz Alpert, Herb and Natura, 193–​94, 196 and the Tijuana Brass, 24, 72 Aimée, Anouk, 52. See also Homme et Une Amabis, Rica. See Instituto (São Paulo DJ/​ Femme, Un (dir. C. Leloush) producer collective) Airto (Moreira), 21, 77–​78, 93 Amâncio, Tunico and Deodato, 101–​2 stereotypes about Brazil in film, 75, 131 Identity (1975), 96 Amarantos, Gaby, 2–​3 and indigeneity, 93–​94 “Ex Mai Love” (from Treme),  2–​3 leveraging racial and ethnic illegibility, A&M Records, 72, 83–​84, 88–​89, 92 77–​78,  95 Anderson, Wes and Lobo, 90 and hipsters (and racism), 161 lyrical limitation, 95–​96 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 160–​ and Miles Davis, 95 65, 166, 168 and Nascimento, 83–​84 The Royal Tenenbaums, 161 Natural Feelings (1970), 95–​96 Rushmore, 161 pig percussion play (on Slaves Mass), treatment of non-​white characters in the 98–​99n.25 films of, 160–​61 and primitivism, 96, 103 Andersson, Harriet. See Deadly Affair, The Quarteto Novo, 94 (dir. S. Lumet) and Return to Forever, 97, 101–​2 Andrade, Carlos “Carlão” de “Samba de Flora” (sampled in “Samba and Brazil-​Forró, 117–​18, 120 Magic”),  147–​48 Andrade, Oswald de Sambalanço Trio, 94–​95 cultural cannibalism, 56, 56n.6

226 Index Andress, Ursula and “The Girl from Ipanema,” 70–​71 Anitta, 177–​81, 177–​78n.13, 183–​84, 198 “Coladinha em Mim,” 179 “Downtown,”  180–​81 genre flexibility/​fluidity of, 179–​81, 182 “Machika,”  180–​81 performance at 2016 Olympics (with Veloso and Gil), 180–​81 and sertanejo, 179, 181 “Show das Poderosas,” 179–​80n.17 “Sua Cara,” 177–​79, 177–​78n.13 “Switch,”  180–​81 “Vai Malandra,” 180–​81 “Você Partiu Meu Coração,” 179 anthropophagy. See cultural cannibalism Antunes, Arnaldo collaboration with Edgard Scandrurra and Toumani Diabaté, 187–​88, 187–​88n.29 appropriation. See also Byrne, David; Gabriel, Peter; Simon, Paul; Sting and commercial viability, 13 Diplo’s,  180–​81 Mendes’s, 74 Talking Heads’, 112n.5 Arconte, Jacky, 125. See also Kaoma Ariza, Adonay on lambada, 123–​24 Armstrong, Louis, 82 Aronczyk, Melissa on non-​tangible asset valuation, 15–​16 on the “transnational promotional class,”  174–​75 Atlas, Natacha, 200 attention “attention economy,” 8–​9, 142 to the attention of others, 9 hyper attention (Hayles), 8 listener, 2, 4, 35, 139–​40, 143–​44, 199–​200 as relational, 8–​9 audience expectation, 43–​44 Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (dir. J. Roach) and “Soul Bossa Nova” (Jones), 24n.1 authenticity Bola Sete and, 46–​47, 49–​50, 200–​1

Brazilian (baiana),  19–​20 and imperfection, 165, 167–​68 and the marketing of Primal Roots, 92 Mendes on, 90–​91 of Menezes (as opposed to Byrne),  135–​36 Native Dancer as “genuine” music (Hollenberg),  86–​87 and nostalgia, 157 and Seu Jorge, 167–​68 and world music, 108–​9, 110 axé, 124–​25, 127, 132–​33, 137, 175, 179, 180–​81,  182 Azalea, Iggy collaboration with Anitta (“Switch”),  180–​81   Babo, Lamartine “Canção para Inglês Ver,” 13–​14 Bacharach, Burt “The Look of Love,” 70–​71, 72–​73, 74 background music, 5, 5n.7, 35. See also Gilberto, Bebel “Background Music” (Marsh), 35 bossa nova as, 50–​51, 141 and irony, 156–​57 Muzak, 3–​5, 141n.3 and retail spaces, 14, 139–​40, 141–​42, 149, 155–​56,  158–​59 Bahiana, Ana Maria on Brazilian reaction to appropriation of their culture, 130–​31 BaianaSystem, 189, 198, 205–​6 in FIFA video game soundtracks, 189 Bailey, Colin on the practice of switching between swing and samba rhythms in Guaraldi’s group, 33–​34 Bailey, Philip, 103–​4 Balvin, J. collaborations with Anitta, 180–​81 collaboration with Beyoncé, 179 Banda Black Rio, 81 Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones) on clichéd genres, 34–​35n.17 Barouh, Pierre, 52, 53–​54. See also Homme et Une Femme, Un (dir. C. Leloush)

Index  227 as an important intermediary for Brazilian music in France, 53–​54, 53–​54n.2 Barretto, Ray, 101–​2. See also Prelude (1973) Barros, Liniker (of Os Caramelows), 205–​6 Barros, Theo de Quarteto Novo, 94 Barroso, Ary, 30–​31, 174–​75n.11. See also Jazz Samba (1962) Basement Jaxx “Samba Magic,” 147–​48 Batman as a reference in tropicália kitsch, 56 Beaster-​Jones,  Jayson on the social meanings of the brand,  15–​16 Beatles, The “Fool on the Hill,” 74, 90 “Hey Jude,” 90 Mendes on, 90–​91 Beats Music, 184–​87 bebop as a disruptor, 43, 49–​50 and racial resistance, 34–​35 Being There (dir. H. Ashby), 103 Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1 (1989), 106, 111–​14, 113t, 115–​16, 117, 121–​ 23, 122f, 134. See also Byrne, David Bellini “Samba de Janeiro” (f.k.a. “Tombo in 7/​4”),  99 Ben Jor, Jorge appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t,  121–​23 and Blackness, 81 “Caramba … Galileu da Galileia,” 121 “Mas Que Nada,” 73 “Ponta de Lança Africano,” 121–​23 Bennett, Tony, 59, 59n.9 Benson, George, 59 Berlant, Lauren on intimacy, 167–​68 Berlin Wall and lambada, 130 Bethânia, Maria appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t

Biscoito Fino, 146, 175 Bishop, Marlon, 181–​82 Bixiga 70, 187–​88n.29, 189–​90, 198 A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (2015), 187–​88,  191 Black Alien & Speed, 149–​50 Black Arts Movement, 47, 48 Black Atlantic (Gilroy), 78–​79 Blackness Black pride, 76, 77–​78, 81 and bossa nova, 200–​1 and Brazil’s brand of racial diversity, 173–​74, 177, 183–​84, 206 and exotic appeal, 77–​78 and Nascimento, 87 Black Orpheus. See Orfeu Negro (dir. M. Camus) “Blame it on the Bossa Nova” (Weil/​ Mann), 39 blocos afro, 132–​33n.21, 137–​38, 175. See also Ilê Aiyê; Olodum blogs/​bloggers, music, 139, 143, 168–​69, 176–​77 See also taste: tastemakers/​ tastemaking and Seu Jorge, 159 and tecnobrega, 2–​3 Blood, Sweat & Tears, 73 BM&A (Brasil Música e Artes [Brazil Music and Arts]), 175–​77 BNegão performance of “Maracatú Atomico” at the 2012 London Olympics, 174 Bola Sete, 43–​44 as an “authentic” bossa nova artist, 46–​ 47, 49–​50,  200–​1 Bonaventure, Jean-​Claude, 125. See also Kaoma Bonfá, Luiz. See also Orfeu Negro (dir. M. Camus); Gentle Rain, The (dir. B. Balaban); “Gentle Rain, The” (Bonfá) as a guitarist, 59n.9, 61, 62, 152 and the soundtrack of The Gentle Rain, 59, 61, 62, 152 and the soundtrack of Orfeu Negro, 29, 33–​34, 59, 59n.9, 61, 62 Borges, Lô appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t

228 Index Bossacucanova,  148–​49 bossa nova, 24, 52 and Blackness, 200–​1 and civil rights, 25–​26, 46, 47–​48, 50–​51 as a dance, 9, 26, 27, 37, 126–​27 as not a dance (Jobim), 45 the “end” of (March 31, 1964), 55–​56 as exotic, 52–​53, 54, 69–​70, 200, 201 and film, 59–​71 “hard” (Celerier), 72, 88–​89 and the “jet set,” 62–​63 as “lifestyle music,” 157 and Muzak, 4–​5 nostalgia, 152, 157, 168, 200 origins of, 27–​29 as (excessively) popular, 43–​44, 47–​48 and race, 20–​21, 26, 46–​49, 200–​1 and sadness/​alienation, 153 vs. samba, 27 and sex/​seduction, 54, 65–​66, 68, 69–​71, 75,  202–​3 Bourdieu, Pierre on cultural intermediaries, 9–​10 the “new petite bourgeoisie,” 143 Bowie, David. See also Jorge, Seu “Life on Mars?,” 162–​64 branding/​self-​promotion Brazil’s musical, 2–​5, 11–​12, 15, 25–​27, 77–​78, 79–​80, 88, 107, 139–​41, 143–​ 44, 171–​73, 178–​79, 183–​85, 197–​98, 199, 204–​5, 206 co-​branding, 143, 191, 198 as metonym, 16 social meanings of, 15–​16 brasilidade, 194–​95, 199 Brasilidade (2001 album by Bossacucanova) leveraging, 149 pressure to express, 197–​98 redefined (by Bebel Gilberto), 152, 164,  168–​69 re-​redefined (after Bebel Gilberto),  158–​59 self-​aware/​ironic (by Seu Jorge), 164,  168–​69 Braz, Loalwa, 125. See also Kaoma Brazil-​Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers (1989), 111–​12, 111n.4, 115–​23,  119f

and the reinforcement of stereotypes,  117–​18 breath and seduction (in Astrud Gilberto), 70 brega, 2, 80–​81, 182. See also tecnobrega BRICS, 140–​41,  197–​98 Buarque de Holanda, Chico appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t, 121 “Cálice,” 113–​14,  120–​21 “Cotidiano,” 160 exile of, 82–​83 and subversion (via “Apesar de Você”), 81–​82n.8 and TV Record’s 1965 MPB festival, 83 Byrd, Charlie, 24 “Desafinado” (Jobim), 30–​32, 31–​ 32n.12, 33–​34, 37–​38, 48, 57 “jazzifying” bossa nova melodies and harmonies, 45 Jazz Samba (1962), 30–​32, 33–​34, 35–​ 36, 37–​38, 50 and whiteness, 49–​50 Byrne, David, 110, 202 and authorial control, 117, 121 Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1 (1989), 106, 111–​14, 113t, 115–​16, 117, 121–​ 23, 122f, 134 Brazil Classics 2: O Samba (1989), 115, 134 dancing (in)ability of, 134, 135–​36 and Margareth Menezes, 132–​37, 138 press coverage (UK), 113–​15 press coverage (US), 115–​16 Rei Momo (1989), 115, 134 Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (1980), 112, 112n.5, 115–​16 use of non-​Western artists, 110   Cabral, Marcelo Deus é Mulher (2018), 187–​88n.30 Café (Edson Aparecido da Silva), 135 Calcanhotto, Adriana, 166 Caldato Jr., Mario, 1. See also “Todo Mundo” (“The World Is Ours”) Campos, Rodrigo Deus é Mulher (2018), 187–​88n.30 A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (2015), 187–​88,  191

Index  229 Camus, Marcel. See Orfeu Negro (dir. M. Camus) Candido Latin Fire, 36 carioca funk, 139, 170, 179–​80, 181 Carlos, Roberto, 80–​81 Carnegie Hall concert (November 21, 1962), 30–​31, 43–​45, 58, 72 Carolina, Ana “É Isso Aí” (cover of Damien Rice’s “Blower’s Daughter”) with Seu Jorge, 166 Carter, Ron and Airto, 95–​96 Casino Royale (dir. J. McGrath et al.), 70–​71,  202–​3 Cassini, Igor, 62–​63. See also “jet set” Castro, Ruy Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World, 70, 116 on Sérgio Mendes’s Sexteto, 72 Castro-​Neves,  Oscar and Edu Lobo, 90 Caymmi, Dorival “Promise of a Fisherman,” 91 censorship, 80, 94–​95 CéU,  202–​3 cha-​cha-​cha, 39–​40, 39–​40n.22 Cheias de Charme,  3–​4 Chicago Defender, The coverage of bossa nova, 47 Chico Science, 174 choro, 3–​4, 166–​67, 175 Cibelle,  151–​52 Citton, Yves on attention as relational, 8–​9 civil rights, 104 and bossa nova, 25–​26, 46, 47–​48,  50–​51 and jazz, 25–​26, 34–​35 Clark, Dick and the payola scandal, 42 Clarke, Stanley, 101–​2. See also Prelude (1973) and funk bass technique, 101–​2n.28 classical music, covers of, 102 Closer (dir. M. Mann) and Tanto Tempo, 158

Clover, Joshua on 1989, 106 Cobham, Billy, 101–​2. See also Prelude (1973) Coca-​Cola as kitsch for the tropicalists, 56 as sponsor of 2014 World Cup song competition, 1 Cole, Nat King, 36 Coleman, Ornette Free Jazz (1961), 50 collaborations with rock/​pop stars, 79, 108–​9, 114–​15, 137, 139n.1, 177–​79 Collor de Melo, Fernando, 56–​57 Comaroff, John and Jean on commercialization of racial difference, 17 compilation albums, 108–​9, 110, 117–​ 18n.7, 139, 144 Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1 (1989), 106, 111–​14, 113t, 115–​16, 117, 121–​ 23, 122f, 134 Brazil Classics 2: O Samba (1989), 115, 134 Brazil-​Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers (1989), 111–​12, 111n.4, 115–​23,  119f Brazil-​Roots-​Samba (1989), 111 and film soundtracks, 117 by Mais Um Discos, 186–​87 The New Brazilian Music series (BM&A, between 2007 and 2011), 176, 177 Conká, Karol, 174 Connell, Andrew on the environment of protest in MPB,  82–​83 consumption and branding, 197–​98 conspicuous, 9 ironic, 56, 56n.5, 74 of music in Brazil (and resulting genre fluidity among artists), 179 Corber, Richard on film noir and the postwar crisis in masculinity, 71 Corea, Chick Return to Forever, 97, 98, 100–​2 and Scientology, 98

230 Index corporate sponsorship, 173, 191. See also Natura; Red Bull; Petrobras “A Lei de Incentivo à Cultura” (“Rouanet’s Law”), 191–​92, 193–​94 Correy, David, 1, 2–​3. See also “Todo Mundo” (“The World Is Ours”) cosmopolitanism and the African diaspora, 200–​1 and bossa nova, 27, 28–​29, 30, 49–​50 and brega, 80–​81 and the Caribbean, 127–​28 and Native Dancer, 86–​87n.11 Coss, Bill on the 1962 Carnegie Hall concert,  43–​45 Costa, Gal appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t Crary, Jonathan on attention, 8 Criolo (Kleber Cavalcante Gomes), 174, 182,  183–​84 Convoque Seu Buda (2014), 182 Espiral de Ilusão (2017), 182 Nó Na Orelha (2011), 182 Crook, Larry on “Faraó” (dos Santos), 132–​33 Cru (2004), 159, 165–​68. See also Jorge, Seu “Eu Sou Favela,” 166 “Tive Razão” [“I Was Right”], 166–​68 CTI Records, 83–​84, 102, 103 Cuarteto Continental, 125–​26 Cugat, Xavier and claims of beating Byrd and Getz to the Brazilian/​jazz mixture, 44–​45 cultural cannibalism, 56, 56n.6 curation. See compilation albums; streaming services: playlists,   Daddy Yankee “Despacito,”  177–​78 Damasceno, Tejo, 149–​50. See also Instituto (São Paulo DJ/​producer collective) dance fads/​crazes, 25–​26,  108–​9 bossa nova, 9, 26, 27, 37, 126–​27 lambada, 9, 21, 106, 123

and payola, 42–​43 and race, 38–​39 twist, the, 24, 25, 37, 38, 39–​40, 129 dance remix, 21. See also remix Daub, Adrian on versions of “The Look of Love,” 71 Davis, Darién on performers adjusting to national vs. intercultural gaze, 17–​18 Davis, Miles and Airto, 95, 98 Birth of the Cool (1954), 34–​35 and fusion, 75 Live-​Evil (1971), 97 and race, 95 Day, Lynda, 59–​60. See also Gentle Rain, The (dir. B. Balaban) Deadly Affair, The (dir. S. Lumet), 64–​70,  71 DeMichael, Don on the bossa nova fad, 40–​41 Deodato, Eumir, 21, 77–​78. See also Gentle Rain, The (dir. B. Balaban); Prelude (1973) and Afro-​Futurism,  77–​78 “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (R. Strauss),  102–​3 Deodato 2 (1973), 102 and disco, 102 and Earth, Wind & Fire, 103–​4 and Kool & the Gang, 104 and Nascimento, 83–​84 Prelude /​ 2001 (1973), 101–​4 and the soundtrack of The Gentle Rain, 59, 152 “Desafinado” (Jobim), 30–​32, 31–​32n.12, 33–​34, 37–​38, 48, 57 Desmond, Paul From the Hot Afternoon (1969), 90 and Lobo, 90 and Nascimento’s music, 84 “Despacito,”  177–​78 DeVeaux, Scott on jazz and race, 49–​50 Diabaté, Toumani collaboration with Arnaldo Antunes and Edgard Scandrurra, 187–​88, 187–​88n.29

Index  231 Dibbell, Julien, 116 on Byrne’s Brazil Classics series, 115 dictatorship, Brazilian military, 80 Dinucci, Kiko, 187–​88. See also Metá Metá Deus é Mulher (2018), 187–​88n.30 MetaL MetaL (2014), 187–​88 A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (2015), 187–​88,  191 Diplo appropriations of global urban music,  180–​81 and the global bass scene, 179–​80 “Paper Planes” (MIA), 179–​80 “Sua Cara,” 177–​79, 177–​78n.13 Dirty Dancing (dir. E. Ardolino), 126 disco, 102 Donato, João and Deodato, 103 Donoghue, Courtney Brannon on film’s penetration into local markets, 12 double consciousness and Bola Sete, 46–​47 Doubt (dir. J. P. Stanley), 39 Down Beat readers’ poll Airto and Purim, 93 Drake appearance across Spotify when Scorpion was released, 185–​86n.25 Dranoff, Béco, 148–​49, 151, 154. See also Tanto Tempo (2000); Ziriguiboom (Crammed Discs imprint) Dru, Chyco, 125. See also Kaoma drum ’n’ bass, 146–​47, 149, 150, 160–​61 Dubey, Matt “The Gentle Rain,” 59, 62 “Non-​Stop to Brazil,” 62–​63 Dunn, Christopher on the “internationalization” of Brazilian music, 14 and the “Manichean divide,” 55–​56 on the pop-​kitsch of tropicália musicians, 56 on the televised popular song contests of Brazil, 6   Earth, Wind & Fire and Deodato, 103–​4

easy listening, 72 Ebony (magazine), 46–​40, 92 economy attention, 8–​9, 142 creative,  196–​97 identity, 17 Edward II (Marlowe) referenced in The Deadly Affair,  64–​65 electronic dance music, 141–​42, 146–​50 and advertising (Taylor), 158 Emicida, 174, 183–​84, 205–​6 and Laboratório Fantasma, 196–​97 Sobre Crianças, Quadris, Pesadelos, e Lições de Casa [About Kids, Hips, Nightmares, and Homework] (2016), 183 Erasmo,  80–​81 exotic, the and bossa nova, 52–​53, 54, 69–​70, 200, 201 and Brazilian rock, 202 exotica, 32–​33, 44–​45, 147–​48,  156–​57 and James Bond songs, 71 and lambada, 127, 131, 137–​38 leveraging of, 77–​78 limiting of, 103 and Menezes, 134, 135 and Native Dancer (Wayne Shorter album), 87   Fabbri, Franco on background listening as a type of taboo, 5n.7 fads. See dance fads/​crazes Farrell, Joe and Purim (in Return to Forever), 97 fashion and bossa nova, 25, 28–​29, 39–​40, 46 and Brazilian flip-​flops (havaianas), 140–​41, 140–​41n.2,  174–​75 and masculinity, 55 and Seu Jorge, 166 Feather, Leonard, 90 on Airto and Purim’s Down Beat readers’ poll wins, 93 on Medes’s business acumen, 88–​89 femme fatale, 71

232 Index Fernandes, Paula collaboration with Taylor Swift, 178–​79 Fernandez, Angel, 135 Ferreira, Márcia “Chorando se Foi,” 125–​26 FIFA video games, 188–​89, 198 and BaianaSystem, 189 and Tulipa Ruiz, 188–​89, 188–​89n.31 FIFA World Cup. See World Cup, FIFA film noir and the postwar crisis in masculinity, 71 Fíoti, Evandro, 196–​97 Laboratório Fantasma, 196–​97 Fitzgerald, Ella, 93, 97–​98 Fleury, Maurício, 189–​90. See also Bixiga 70 Fontanari, Ivan on DJ Marky and Brazilian stereotypes, 147 Fonsi, Luiz “Despacito,”  177–​78 Forbidden Dance, The (dir. G. Clark), 131, 131n.19 forró, 117–​18, 117–​18nn.8–​9. See also Brazil-​Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers (1989) Franco, Marielle assassination of, 205–​6 Franco, Xênia relationship with Natura, 194–​95 Frank, Thomas the “conquest” of cool, 74 Fred Astaire Studios and the bossa nova, 38–​39 Freed, Allan and the payola scandal, 42 Frey, Sydney, 72 on audience expectation at the 1962 Carnegie Hall concert, 43–​44 Freyre, Gilberto and the notion of “racial democracy,” 19 Frith, Simon on the origins of “world music,” 108 Fróes, Romulo Deus é Mulher (2018), 187–​88n.30 A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (2015), 187–​88,  191

Fry, Peter on the phrase “para inglês ver” (“for English eyes”), 13–​14 funk, 101. See also disco; R&B and Blackness, 77–​78, 81 carioca funk, 139, 170, 179–​80, 181 Stanley Clarke, 101–​2n.28 and Deodato, 77–​78, 102 Mendes and, 53, 104 samba-​funk, 147–​48, 160–​61, 165,  167–​68 fusion, 75, 79, 83, 93, 101–​2, 201–​2   Gabbard, Krin on filmic representation of men, 55 Gabriel, Peter, 114–​15 use of non-​Western artists, 110,  116–​17 Galletta, Thiago on the genre blending of São Paulo’s independent music scene,  182–​83 on the increase of corporate resources to cultural production, 191–​92 Garland, Judy and “Soul Bossa Nova” (Jones), 24, 39 Garland, Phyl on Native Dancer,  86–​87 on Primal Roots, 92 “Garota de Ipanema.” See “Girl from Ipanema” (Jobim) gaze male (and Astrud Gilberto), 58–​59 national and intercultural (Davis),  17–​18 Gehr, Richard on Kaoma’s capitalization on world beat, 128 Geisel, General Ernesto, 80 genre clichéd genres (Baraka), 34–​35n.17 fluidity, 177, 204 as gatekeeper, 204–​5 “Gentle Rain, The” (Bonfá), 59, 62 Gentle Rain, The (dir. B. Balaban), 59–​63 George, Christopher, 59–​60. See also Gentle Rain, The (dir. B. Balaban)

Index  233 Get Yourself a College Girl (dir. S. Miller), 58 Getz, Stan, 24. See also Getz/​ Gilberto (1964) approaching “Desafinado” burnout, 57 Big Band Bossa Nova (1962), 24n.1 “Desafinado” (Jobim), 30–​32, 31–​ 32n.12, 33–​34, 37–​38, 48, 57 as the focus of bossa nova press coverage,  44–​45 Getz au Go Go (1964), 57 Getz/​Gilberto #2 (1966), 57 and Astrud Gilberto, 58 “Girl from Ipanema,” 25, 30–​31, 55–​56, 57, 58n.8, 70–​71, 83–​84, 202–​3 Jazz Samba (1962), 30–​32, 33–​34, 35–​ 36, 37–​38, 50 Jazz Samba Encore! (1963), 57 “jazzifying” bossa nova melodies and harmonies, 45 and Flora Purim, 94–​95 Welburn on/​against, 48 and whiteness, 49–​50 Getz/​Gilberto (1964), 57. See also Getz, Stan; Gilberto, João “Desafinado” (Jobim), 30–​32, 31–​ 32n.12, 33–​34, 37–​38, 48, 57 “Girl from Ipanema,” 25, 30–​31, 55–​56, 57, 58n.8, 70–​71, 83–​84, 202–​3 Gibbs, John on the inclusion of Seu Jorge’s Bowie covers in The Life Aquatic, 161 Gil, Gilberto appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t, 121 as disrupter, 6 exile of, 82–​83 and kitsch aesthetics, 56 performance at 2016 Olympics (with Veloso and Anitta), 180–​81 “Só Quero um Xodô,” 121 and TV Record’s 1965 MPB festival, 83 Gilberto, Astrud, 202–​3 and The Deadly Affair,  64–​70 and Stan Getz, 58 and João Gilberto, 58, 70, 151

“Girl from Ipanema,” 25, 30–​31, 55–​56, 57, 58n.8, 70–​71, 83–​84, 202–​3 and the “jet set,” 62–​63n.13 “Samba da Benção,” 53–​54 and seduction, 69–​71 The Shadow of Your Smile (1965),  58–​59 and the soundtrack to The Gentle Rain, 59, 62 and Walter Wanderley, 154 “Who Needs Forever,” 65–​67 Gilberto, Bebel, 22, 140, 150, 202–​3 as background music, 141–​42, 150,  158–​59 Bebel Gilberto (2004), 156–​57 Bebel Gilberto: Remixed (2005), 159 “So Nice (Summer Samba)” [“Samba de Verão”],  152–​58 and Suba (Mitar Subotić), 151 Tanto Tempo (2000), 151–​59 Tanto Tempo Remixes (2001), 151, 154, 156f, 158 Gilberto, João. See also Getz/​ Gilberto (1964) and the birth of bossa nova, 27 Brazil’s Brilliant João Gilberto (1960), 30 “Desafinado” (Jobim), 30–​32, 31–​ 32n.12, 33–​34, 37–​38, 48, 57 Getz/​Gilberto #2 (1966), 57 and Astrud Gilberto, 58, 70, 151 and Bebel Gilberto, 151 and the jazz community, 50 and wordless vocals, 82 Gimbel, Norman “Non-​Stop to Brazil,” 62–​63 “Girl from Ipanema” (Jobim), 25, 29, 30–​31, 55–​56, 57, 58n.8, 70–​71, 83–​84,  202–​3 “the elevator in Ipanema,” 141 Gismonti, Egberto and indigeneity, 77–​78 Gitler, Ira on Cal Tjader’s In a Latin Bag,  36–​37 Glanvill, Rick on Menezes’s “saleability,” 132 global bass, 2–​3, 170, 179–​80

234 Index Gobbi, Nelson on Seu Jorge as “fragmented” but “raw,”  165–​66 Gold, Richard on the clear opportunism of the lambada, 123 Gonzaga, Luiz, 89, 89n.15, 119–​20 Gordine, Sascha. See Orfeu Negro (dir. M. Camus) Gorme, Eydie “Blame it on the Bossa Nova” (Weil/​ Mann), 39 Grant, Felix, 30, 30n.10 Guaraldi, Vince Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus, 32–​34,  36 Guffey, Elizabeth on the link between “retro” and the space race, 156–​57 guilt and listening to world music (Romney),  114–​15   Hall, Lani and Brasil ’66, 72, 88–​89 Hancock, Herbie. See also Native Dancer (1975) and Airto, 85, 96 Head Hunters, 77–​78n.5, 79 and Nascimento, 83–​84 Native Dancer, 85–​87, 86–​87n.11 “Ponta de Areia,” 86 Hansen, Janis, 73 Hawkins, Coleman, 47 Hayles, N. Katherine hyper attention, 8 Head Hunters, 77–​78n.5, 79. See also Hancock, Herbie Heineman, Alan on Airto’s awkward lyrics, 96 Heleno (Heleno dos Oito Baixos), 118 Hermosa brothers “Llorando se Fue,” 125–​26 Hime, Olivia, 175 hipness and cool, 34, 35 and Seu Jorge, 168 vs. fads, 25–​26

Hirschkind, Charles on publics and audio technology, 7 Hollenberg, David on Native Dancer,  86–​87 Homme et Une Femme, Un (dir. C. Leloush),  52–​54 homosexual dysfunction in The Deadly Affair,  64–​65 Horta, Toninho “Beijo,”  103–​4 Hunter, Bob on the roots of bossa nova, 47 Huyssen, Andreas on mass culture and the feminine, 49 Ibeyi collaboration with Emicida (“Hacia el Amor”), 183 Ilê Aiyê, 132–​33 I Love Lucy, 35–​36n.19 independent record companies, 145–​46 indigeneity, 19–​20, 77–​79, 77–​78n.4, 87, 93–​94, 95–​96, 103, 202 Instituto (São Paulo DJ/​producer collective), 149–​50, 189 Coleção Nacional [National Collective] (2002),  149–​50 Selo Instituto, 149–​50 intimacy and bossa nova, 27–​28, 31, 70–​71 in The Gentle Rain,  60–​61 of the male falsetto voice, 167–​68 and Seu Jorge, 163–​64, 167–​68   Jarreau, Al Menezes on, 136–​37 Jarrett, Keith, 98–​99 jazz and bossa nova, 24 and civil rights, 25–​26, 34–​35 cool, 33–​36, 34–​35n.17,  200–​1 free, 34–​35, 49, 50 fusion, 93 and gender, 49, 97–​98, 100–​1 hard bop, 24, 34–​35, 34–​35n.17, 48, 49 Latin, 32–​33, 35–​37, 200–​1,  203–​4 and race, 25–​26, 34–​35, 48–​50, 95 soul, 24, 34–​35, 48, 154

Index  235 Jazz Samba (1962), 30–​32, 33–​34, 35–​36, 37–​38,  50 “Desafinado” (Jobim), 30–​32, 31–​ 32n.12, 33–​34, 37–​38, 48, 57 “jet age,” 62–​63, 62–​63n.13 “jet set,” 62–​63 Jillionaire, 177–​78. See also “Sua Cara” Jobim, Antônio Carlos “Tom” after the release of Getz/​Gilberto, 57 “Águas de Março,” 14, 92 and the birth of bossa nova, 27–​28 on the Carnegie Hall concert, 45 and Deodato, 103 “Girl from Ipanema,” 25, 29, 30–​31, 55–​ 56, 57, 58n.8, 70–​71, 83–​84, 202–​3 and the jazz community, 50 and the Orfeu Negro soundtrack, 29 as the pride of Rio de Janeiro, 29 reception by the jazz press, 43–​44, 45 “Samba do Avião” (“Jet Samba”), 63 “Só Tinha de Ser com Você,” 149–​50 Johnson, Martin on Brazil-​Forró’s focus on lesser-​known Brazilian styles, 120–​21 Jones, LeRoi (Amiri Baraka) on clichéd genres, 34–​35n.17 Jones, Quincy on bossa nova as a fad, 24 “Soul Bossa Nova,” 24–​25, 24n.1, 39 soundtrack to The Deadly Affair,  64–​70 Jorge, Seu, 22, 140, 159 America/​Brasil (2007), 167–​68 and City of God [Cidade de Deus] (dir. F. Mereilles),  160–​61 covering David Bowie songs, 141–​42,  160–​65 Cru (2004), 159, 165–​68 “É Isso Aí” (cover of Damien Rice’s “Blower’s Daughter”), 166 “Eu Sou Favela,” 166 Farofa Carioca, 160 and fashion, 166 and intimacy, 163–​64, 167–​68 and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (dir. W. Anderson), 160–​65, 166, 168 The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions Featuring Seu Jorge (2005), 161, 165 “Life on Mars?” (Bowie cover), 162–​64

and Mercelinho da Lua (“Cotidiano”), 160 Músicas Para Churrasco, Vol. 1 (2011),  167–​68 Músicas Para Churrasco, Vol. 2 (2015),  167–​68 Samba Esporte Fino (2001), 160,  167–​68 self-​aware/​ironic brasilidade, 164,  168–​69 “Tive Razão,” 166–​68 wordless vocals, 166–​68 Jovem Guarda, 56, 80–​81 Joyce, Mike on Byrne’s and Menezes’s dancing, 135–​36 Jurassic 5, 200 Kaoma, 125–​26, 127–​28, 129, 132–​33n.23 “Lambada”/​“Chorando se Foi,” 125–​26, 130, 131n.19, 137–​38n.27, 177–​78 Kassabian, Anahid, 4–​5 on music and subjectivity, 142 Kastrup, Guilherme (producer of MetaL MetaL),  187–​88 Katia B, 151–​52 Keightley, Keir on the film score to Un Homme et Une Femme and easy listening, 53–​54 Kelly, Michael on bossa nova as “lifestyle music,” 157 kitsch Brazilian music as (in retail/​dining environments), 141 indie, 168 pop, 56, 56n.5, 151, 170–​71 retro, 54, 151, 152, 155–​56, 158–​59, 164,  168–​69 Konitz, Lee “Background Music,” 35 Kool & The Gang and Deodato, 104 Krims, Adam on scholars of popular music and Adorno,  5–​6 Kronengold, Charles the “not rock” aesthetic, 62 on versions of “The Look of Love,” 71 Kubitschek, Juscelino, 28

236 Index Laboratório Fantasma, 196–​97 Lai, Francis, 53–​54. See also Homme et Une Femme, Un (dir. C. Leloush) lambada, 9, 21, 106, 123, 137–​38 and the Berlin Wall, 130 as “contrived shit” (Shelley), 130 and film, 126, 131 vs. forró dancing, 124–​25 as “a lovely way to usher in” the ’90s, 132 and Menezes, 132–​33 origins of, 124 as “safe sex for the ’90s,” 126 and zouk, 124, 127–​28, 129, 130, 132 Lambada (dir. J. Silberg), 131 “Lambada”/​“Chorando se Foi” (Kaoma), 125–​26, 130, 131n.19, 137–​38n.27,  177–​78 Lamen, Darien on versions of lambada, 124 Larkin, Brian on techniques of inattention, 7 Latinidad,  77–​78 Latin jazz, 32–​33, 35–​37, 200–​1, 203–​4 Latino, 77n.2, 77–​78n.3 Lawes, Hubert, 101–​2. See also Prelude (1973) Leaden Years, the, 80, 81–​82 Leão, Alessandra on the challenges of differentiation in the world music circuit, 190–​91 Lees, Gene, 24 on Jobim’s dislike of publishers, 45 Leitte, Claudia, 1 Leporace, Gracinha and Mendes, 88–​89, 90, 91–​92 Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The (dir. W. Anderson), 160–​65, 166, 168 Lima, Paula, 166 Lindsay, Arto and Beleza Tropical,  121–​23 listening, structural, 4–​5, 5n.7. See also attention Lobo, Edu, 89, 89n.15 and Airto, 94 “Arrastão,” 89 and Desmond, 90 and Mendes, 88–​89, 90 and Quarteto Novo, 94

Sérgio Mendes Presents Lobo (1970), 90 and wordless vocals, 82, 90 “Zanzibar,”  103–​4 localization, 12 “Look of Love, The” (Bacharach/​David) Dusty Springfield’s version (used in Casino Royale),  70–​71 Sérgio Mendes’s version, 72–​73, 74 Lopez, Jennifer, 1 “On the Floor,” 137 Lorentzen, Christian on Wes Anderson and hipsters (and racism), 161 Lorsac, Olivier (a.k.a. Chico de Oliveira) and Kaoma’s “Lambada,” 125–​26 lounge/​cocktail music, 147–​48, 154 and bossa nova, 151, 155–​56 and jazz, 35 and Tanto Tempo,  155–​56 Lua, Marcelinho da “Cotidiano,” 160 as a member of Bossacucanova, 148–​49 Lubambo, Romero, 199 Lucas, Maria Elizabeth on the transnational media industries’ view of Brazilian music, 14 Lula. See Silva, Luiz Ignácio “Lula,” da Lumet, Sidney The Deadly Affair, 64–​70, 71   Macdonald, Dwight masscult/​midcult, 54, 55, 156–​57 Maguire, Jennifer Smith on the labor processes of cultural mediation, 10 Mahavishnu Orchestra, 79 Maia, Tim, 81 Mais Um Discos, 170–​72, 186–​88 compilations,  186–​87 Major Lazer, 177–​78. See also “Sua Cara” mambo, 35–​36n.19, 39–​40, 39–​40n.22 Mandel, Howard on Nascimento, 86–​87 manguebeat, 146–​47, 149–​50, 174, 174n.8 Mann, Herbie, 24 Marky, DJ, 147, 149–​50, 188–​89n.32 Marsh, Warne “Background Music,” 35

Index  237 masculinity and Black Nationalism (Piekut), 49 and bossa nova, 55 and Casino Royale, 71 and The Deadly Affair, 64–​67, 71 and film noir, 71 and The Gentle Rain,  60–​61 and James Bond (as played by Brosnan), 60–​61n.11 and jazz, 49 Mason, James. See Deadly Affair, The (dir. S. Lumet) Matthews, Julian on the labor processes of cultural mediation, 10 maxixe,  3–​4 McCann, Bryan on the marketing of Brazilian music nationally and internationally, 137 McGowan, Chris on Airto’s wordless singing/​chanting, 95 as an authority on Brazilian pop music, 116 on Beleza Tropical and David Byrne,  115–​16 tiff with Bill Nowlin (over omissions from a Brazilian comps recommendation list), 110–​12, 118 McGrath, James on the overplaying of “The Girl from Ipanema” on the set of Casino Royale,  70–​71 McLaughlan, David, 176. See also BM&A (Brasil Música e Artes [Brazil Music and Arts]) Meadley, Phil on Cru’s lack of polish, 165 Medalha, Marília “Ponteio,” 94 Médici, General Emílio Garrastazú, 80 Meier, Leslie “promotional ubiquitous music,” 139–​40,  158–​59 memory and loss in Un Homme et Une Femme, 52, 53, 65–​66 Mendes, Sérgio, 21, 54–​55, 71–​74, 88 “Águas de Março,” 92

on authenticity, 90–​91 and Brasil ’65, 72 and Brasil ’66, 24, 71, 72–​73, 88 and Brasil ’77, 88, 91–​92, 104 and copyright management, 88–​89, 88–​89n.14 “Fool on the Hill,” 74, 90 and funk, 53 “Hey Jude,” 90 and Lobo, 88–​89, 90 “The Look of Love,” 71, 72–​73, 74 “Mas Que Nada,” 73 and politics, 89 Primal Roots (1972), 91–​92 and primitivism, 88, 103 and race, 77–​78 Sérgio Mendes Presents Lobo (1970), 90 Stillness (1971), 88–​89 and will.i.am, 73, 139, 139n.1 Menescal, Márcio as a member of Bossacu canova,  148–​49 Menescal, Roberto and Bossacucanova, 148–​49 Menezes, Margareth, 132 on the bifurcation of world music markets,  136–​37 and David Byrne, 132–​37, 138 Elegibo (1990), 136 “Faraó,”  132–​33 and lambada, 132–​33 objectification of (in the press), 134,  135–​36 Um Canto pra Subir (1990), 136 and the Zumba dance fitness program,  137–​38 Metá Metá MetaL MetaL (2014), 187–​88 MIA “Paper Planes,” 179–​80 MIDEM, 176, 176n.12 Miles, Milo on lambada, 129 Mioto, Gustavo “Coladinha em Mim,” 179 Miranda, Carmen, 17–​18, 56, 136, 181,  203–​4 “Carmen Miranda syndrome,” 130–​31

238 Index Mitchell, Charles on post–​Primal Roots Mendes, 92 Miúcha (Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda), 58, 151, 151n.11 Moehn, Frederick, 149, 182–​83 on Brazil’s musical brand and racial diversity,  16–​17 on genre mixture, 182–​83 Monk, Thelonious, 98 Monobloco, 1. See also “Todo Mundo” (“The World Is Ours”) Monte, Haroldo do Quarteto Novo, 94 Moon, Tom on Byrne and Menezes, 135–​36 Moraes, Vinícius de, 28. See also “Girl from Ipanema” (Jobim) “Arrastão,” 89 and Ipanema, 29 and the jazz community, 50 “Samba da Benção,” 52–​54, 152 Moreira, Airto. See Airto (Moreira) Moreira, Alexadre as a member of Bossacucanova, 148–​49 Morris, Jeremy Wade on listeners’ sacrifice of control with streaming services, 185–​86 Morris, Mitchell on easy listening, 75 Motta, Ed, 81 Moura, Paulo and Seu Jorge, 160 Muniz, Vik cover art for Seu Jorge’s Cru,  165–​66 Murray, Arthur and the bossa nova, 38–​40, 60 Música Popular Brasileira (MPB), 6, 56–​ 57, 81–​83, 89, 106, 107–​8n.1, 112–​14, 113t, 121, 145n6, 149, 167–​68 music supervisors, 143 Muzak, 3–​5, 141n.3. See also background music   Nades, Romulo, 189–​90. See also Bixiga 70 Napolitano, Marcos on the televised popular song contests of Brazil, 6, 175

Nascimento, Milton, 83 appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t, 121 and asymmetry, 85–​86 “Cálice,” 113–​14,  120–​21 and CTI Records, 83–​84 and indigeneity, 86–​87 Milagre dos Peixes (1973), 96 and race, 77–​78, 86–​87 and Wayne Shorter, 84–​87 “Travessia,”  83–​84 “Vera Cruz,” 84 and wordless vocals, 81–​82, 85–​86, 96 nationality. See also branding/​ self-​promotion nationalism, 16–​17, 49, 55–​56, 82 as an overriding factor, 204–​5 and racial identity, 46–​47, 49–​50, 77–​79,  95 Native Dancer (1975), 85–​87, 86–​87n.11. See also Shorter, Wayne critical response to, 86–​87, 86–​87n.11 “Lilia,”  86–​87 “Ponta de Areia,” 85–​86, 87 Natura as a corporate sponsor of the arts, 191, 192,  194–​95 and Xênia Franco, 194–​95 and Tulipa Ruiz, 192, 193–​95, 193f, 196 Negro Digest, The coverage of bossa nova, 47 Netto, Michel Nicolau on Brazil’s brand, 17, 173–​75 new age, 77–​78. See also Tanto Tempo (2000) Newton, Edmond on the lambada dance fad, 130 Next Stop Wonderland (dir. B. Anderson), 75 Noble, Safiya Umoja on racism in streaming music algorithmic recommendation, 204 “Non-​Stop to Brazil” (Bonfá), 59, 62–​63,  152 Nooshin, Laudan on the improvisation–​composition dualism,  98–​99

Index  239 Nortec and taste, 157 Northeast region, Brazil’s axé, 124–​25, 127, 132–​33, 137, 175, 179, 180–​81,  182 bloco afro ensembles, 132–​33n.21, 137–​38,  175 cancageiro hat, 118 Candomblé, 81, 91, 93–​94n.18, 137–​38 forró, 117–​18nn.8–​9 and indigeneity, 78–​79 and lambada, 123–​24, 127 and Mendes, 88, 89, 90, 91–​92 and rock, 81 Novos Baianos, 81 Nowlin, Bill Rounder Records, 110–​11, 111n.4,  119–​20 tiff with Chris McGowan (over omissions from a Brazilian comps recommendation list), 110–​12 Obama, Barack and Orfeu Negro, 29 Ocean, Frank legal kerfuffle with Chipotle, 194n.36 Oldfield, Paul on the ideological colonialism of world music, 110 Oliveira, Aloysio de “Só Tinha de Ser com Você,” 149–​50 Oliveira, Djalma “Faraó,”  132–​33 Olodum, 132–​33, 137 Olympics 2012 Summer (in London), 174 2016 Summer (in Rio de Janeiro), 172–​ 73, 174, 180–​81, 187–​88, 191 Onete, Dona Branzeiro (2016), 188 Orfeu Negro (dir. M. Camus), 29–​30,  200–​1 controversy over, 29n.9 jazz interpretations of the music of, 32–​34 Os Caramelows, 205–​6 Os Mutantes, 139 and kitsch aesthetics, 56

out of tune, slightly. See also “Desafinado” (Jobim) Astrud Gilberto’s singing, 62, 99–​100 Seu Jorge’s singing, 165, 166–​68 pachanga, 39–​40, 39–​40n.22 Packard, Vance The Status Seekers, 63 Pareles, Jon on Menezes’s “sinuous dancing,” 135–​36 Pascoal, Hermeto and Airto, 93, 94, 95–​96 “Andei,”  95–​96 and Miles Davis, 97 influence of, 82, 99 and Lobo, 90 and Purim, 93 Quarteto Novo, 94 Slaves Mass (1977), 98–​99n.25 and wordless vocals, 82 Passman, Donald J. on the risks for musicians of brand affiliation,  193–​94 Patife, DJ, 149–​50 payola, 42–​43, 42n.25, 47–​48, 185–​86, 185–​86n.25 Pearson, Duke and Purim, 95 Pekar, Harvey on Vince Guaraldi’s Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus,  32–​34 Pelé,  160–​61 Pereira, Nazaré appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t, 121 Perrone, Charles on the “internationalization” of Brazilian music, 14 Peterson, Gilles, 147–​48, 147–​48n.9, 188 Petrobras scandal, 172–​73, 191–​92n.34,  195–​96 as a sponsor of the arts, 146, 191–​92 Phillips, Buddy, 46 Piekut, Benjamin on jazz and gender, 49 pigs as percussion (on Slaves Mass), 98–​99n.25

240 Index piracy, music, 144–​45, 178–​79n.14,  182–​83 and tecnobrega, 2 Pitbull and “Ai, Se Eu Te Pego,” 9 and “We Are One (Ole Ola),” 1 Pitchfork as an ideal venue for promoting independent Brazilian music,  187–​88 politics and entertainment, 3–​4, 11–​12 Fifth Institutional Acts of 1968, 80 identity politics and white masculinity,  60–​61 and mass-​mediated vernacular music,  4–​5 Mendes’s, 89 and middle-​class taste, 47 and resistance, 21, 76, 107–​8n.1, 121 Porto, Fernanda, 149–​50 Fernanda Porto (2002), 149–​50 Powell, Baden “Iemanjá,”  91–​92 “Samba da Benção,” 52–​54, 152 Powell, Bud, 98 Powers, Devon on listeners’ sacrifice of control with streaming services, 185–​86 Prelude (1973), 101–​4 See also Deodato Primal Roots (1972), 91–​92 “Iemanjá,”  91–​92 marketing of, 92 “Promise of a Fisherman,” 91 primitivity/​primitivism and Airto, 96, 103 and improvisation, 98–​99 via indigeneity, 78–​79 and jazz, 201 leveraging, 79 and Mendes, 88, 103 and Nascimento, 77–​78, 84–​85, 87 and world music, 108 Priore, Irna on Gilberto’s approach to samba microrhythms, 27

Purim, Flora, 21, 77–​78, 85, 93, 202–​3 and the censorship of the dictatorship,  94–​95 comparisons to Astrud Gilberto, 99–​100 Flora é M.P.M. (1964), 94–​95 and Stan Getz, 94–​95 “Hava Nagila,” 94–​95 leveraging racial and ethnic illegibility,  77–​78 and Pearson, 94–​95 press coverage, 99–​101 prison sentence, 93, 101 and Return to Forever, 97, 98, 100–​1 and wordless vocals, 82, 95–​96, 97–​98, 97–​98n.23   Quarteto Novo, 94   racial affiliation as a strategy, 76 racial democracy (myth of), 15, 17–​18, 19,  204–​5 racial diversity as part of Brazil’s musical brand, 15, 173–​74,  190–​91 Rael (Rael da Rima) and Laboratório Fantasma, 196–​97 Ramos, Eduardo on Trama Records, 146 Ratliff, Ben on Seu Jorge’s Cru, 165 R&B,  103–​4 “Red Atlantic” (Stam and Shohat), 78–​79 Red Bull Amphiko,  196–​97 as a corporate sponsor of the arts, 191, 192,  196–​97 studios, 187–​88, 196 Regina, Elis, 57 “Arrastão,” 89 and protest, 145n.6 Relight Orchestra, 137–​38 remix, 22. See also Gilberto, Bebel; Jorge, Seu bossa nova, 141–​42, 148–​50, 168 dance, 21

Index  241 of A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (2015), 188 Tanto Tempo Remixes (2001), 151, 154, 156f, 158 resistance cultural, 25–​26, 34 political, 21, 76 racial, 35 retro chic, 143–​44, 158. See also Gilberto, Bebel; Jorge, Seu Reynolds, Simon on the ideological colonialism of world music, 110 Rice, Damien, 200 “Blower’s Daughter” (covered by Seu Jorge), 166 Roberts, John Storm on “Latin” music as “America’s new boom music,” 76–​77 Robinson, Lewis, 170–​71, 186–​88. See also Mais Um Discos Robinson, Sally on identity politics and white masculinity,  60–​61 Rock Mafia (Tim James and Antonina Armato), 1. See also “Todo Mundo” (“The World Is Ours”) Romney, Jonathan on David Byrne and world music,  114–​15 Rouanet, Sérgio Paulo “Rouanet’s Law,” 191–​92 Rousseff, Dilma impeachment of, 172–​73 Ruiz, Roberto on the Brazilian record industry crisis,  145–​46 Ruiz, Tulipa, 192–​96 Dancê (2015), 192 “Efêmera,” 188–​89n.31, 192 in FIFA video game soundtracks, 188–​ 89, 188–​89n.31, 192 and Astrud Gilberto, 202–​3 and Red Bull Studios, 196 sponsorship by Natura, 192, 193–​95, 193f, 196

Tu (2017), 192 Tudo Tanto (2012), 192, 193f

  Sá, Roberta relationship with Natura, 194–​95 Safadão, Wesley Sleazy Wesley (stage name), 179n.16 “Você Partiu Meu Coração,” 179 samba vs. bossa nova, 27 and house music, 147–​48 as promotional tool for Brazil, 3–​4, 16–​ 18, 139, 173–​74, 198, 202–​3 and race, 16–​18, 19–​20 samba-​canção, 27, 27n.6, 31, 82 samba-​funk, 147–​48, 160–​61, 165,  167–​68 samba-​reggae, 127, 132–​33, 134, 136, 179 SambaLoco Records, 149 sampling being sampled as a sign of influence,  103–​4 Sangalo, Ivete collaboration with Criolo, 182 Santana, Carlos Borboletta (1974), 79, 91 and Brazilian music, 76–​77, 79, 201 Santos, Luciano Gomes dos “Faraó,”  132–​33 Santtana, Lucas, 186–​87 and BaianaSystem, 189 Sem Nostalgia, 170–​72, 170nn.1–​2 Saul, Scott on “freedom” in jazz music and African-​ American popular culture, 47 Scandrurra, Edgard collaboration with Arnaldo Antunes and Toumani Diabaté, 187–​88, 187–​88n.29 Schell, Maximilian. See Deadly Affair, The (dir. S. Lumet) Seaver, Nick “ensemble method” of curation,  185–​86 seduction bossa nova and, 54, 69–​71, 75, 202–​3

242 Index Seixas, Raul, 81 Seligman, Gerald, 117–​21, 189–​90. See also Brazil-​Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers (1989) Sellers, Peter and Being There, 103 and “The Girl from Ipanema,” 70–​71 Sepultura, 107–​8n.1, 202 sertanejo, 9, 173–​74, 178–​79, 181 leveraged by US-​based stars (e.g., Taylor Swift),  178–​79 Sete, Bola. See Bola Sete sexualization and bossa nova, 52–​53, 60–​62 of Brazilian women (e.g., the mulata), 19–​20, 71, 100–​1, 127 Shelley, Steve (of Sonic Youth) on the lambada as “contrived shit,” 130 Shohat, Ella “Red Atlantic,” 78–​79 Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, 18 Shorter, Wayne “Lilia,”  86–​87 Minas (1975), 87 Moto Grosso Feio (1974), 84 and Nascimento, 84–​87 Native Dancer (1975), 85–​87, 86–​87n.11 “Ponta de Areia,” 85–​86, 87 Silva, Luiz Ignácio “Lula,” da, 140–​41 prison sentence of, 172–​73 Silva, Robertinho and Wayne Shorter, 85 Silveira, Rodrigo. See Instituto (São Paulo DJ/​producer collective) Silver, Horace Welburn on, 48 Simon, Paul, 115 Graceland as a stepping stone to other musics (McGowan), 115–​16 Menezes on, 136–​37 and Olodum (on “The Obvious Child”), 137 use of non-​Western artists, 110, 116–​17 Sinatra, Frank, 57 Sinker, Mark on Beleza Tropical,  113–​14

Sivuca and Airto, 95–​96 Six Degrees Records, 117–​18n.7, 149,  157–​58 Skidmore, Thomas on the climate of censorship in Brazil, 80 Skol Skol Beats, 192 Slater, Russ, 181–​82 Soares, Elza, 198 Deus é Mulher (2018), 187–​88n.30 A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (2015), 187–​88,  191 Soares, Marcelo cover art for Brazil-​Forró, 118, 119f “So Nice (Summer Samba)” [“Samba de Verão”],  152–​58 “Soul Bossa Nova,” 24–​25, 24n.1, 39. See also Jones, Quincy Souza, Luciana and brasilidade, 199 Souza, Tarik de on Seu Jorge’s talent, 165–​66 Spain, Fay. See also Gentle Rain, The (dir. B. Balaban) speculation and national branding, 15 Springfield, Dusty “The Look of Love,” 70–​71, 72–​73 Stam, Robert on racial representation in Brazilian vs. US film, 18 “Red Atlantic,” 78–​79 Stanyek, Jason on nationalism and naturalness, 82 Status Seekers, The (Packard), 63 Stewart, Slam, 98 Stilwell, Robynn J. “the fantastical gap” between diegetic and non-​diegetic music, 53, 65–​66 Sting, 115 Menezes on, 136–​37 use of non-​Western artists, 110 streaming services, 184, 204 misinformation (in the metadata), 185, 185n.24 playlists, 3–​4, 9, 111–​12, 176–​77, 181, 184–​88, 185n.24, 185–​86n.25,  194–​95

Index  243 sacrifice of listener control, 185–​86 and twenty-​first-​century “payola,” 185–​ 86, 185–​86n.25 “Sua Cara,” 177–​79, 177–​78n.13 Suba (Mitar Subotić), 151. See also Tanto Tempo (2000) Sweeting, Adam on Byrne’s touring band of Latin musicians, 135 Swift, Taylor and the leveraging of sertanejo, 178–​79 tackiness. See also dance fads/​crazes and the bossa nova album rush, 41–​42 brega (“tacky”) music, 2, 80–​81 música popular cafona (“tacky popular music”),  80–​81 Takara, Daniel “Ganjaman,” 149 See also Instituto (São Paulo DJ/​producer collective) and BaianaSystem, 189 Talking Heads Remain in Light (1980), 112, 112n.5,  115–​16 Tamba Trio, 73 Tanto Tempo (2000), 151–​59 in Closer (dir. M. Mann), 158 cover art, 154, 155f “Samba da Benção,” 152 “So Nice (Summer Samba)” [“Samba de Verão”],  152–​58 taste “adult” (and bossa nova), 26 “bad/​poor,” 56–​57, 56n.5, 157 Brazilian,  56–​57 as capricious, 2–​3 commodification of, 54 consumer (and cultural intermediaries),  9–​10 “good,” 26–​27,  42–​43 middle-​class, 47, 204 tastemakers/​taste-​making, 2–​3, 42–​43, 110, 143, 160, 176, 188 US vs. UK, 54 working-​class,  119–​20 and “world music,” 108 Taylor, Creed. See also CTI Records as producer, 31, 57, 83–​84, 87, 102

Taylor, Timothy D. on branding in music, 197–​98 on electronic dance music and advertising, 158 on the marketing of world music to rock listeners, 108 on music supervisors, 143 tecnobrega, 2–​4, 145 tecnomelody,  2–​3 Teló, Michel and the viral success of “Ai, Se Eu Te Pego,” 9, 181 Thicke, Robin, 200 Three Caballeros, The (1944 Disney film), 46 Tinhorão, José Ramos on the domination by Anglophone markets,  13–​14 Tiso, Wagner and Wayne Shorter, 85 “Tive Razão,” 166–​68. See also Jorge, Seu Tjader, Cal, 53–​54 approach to Latin jazz, 36–​37 “Samba da Benção,” 53–​54 Tobin, Amon, 152 “Todo Mundo” (“The World Is Ours”), 1–​4 Toynbee, Jason on world music, 108 Trama Records, 146–​47, 149–​50 transcription, inaccurate, 31, 45 Treece, David on bossa nova’s “ecological rationality,” 28 Tropea, John, 101–​2. See also Prelude (1973) tropicália, 6, 56–​57, 56n.5, 81–​82, 121–​23 Truffaut, Françoit Tirez sur le pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player), 35 twist, the, 37 and the bossa nova, 24, 25, 38, 39–​40 Tynan, John on Nat King Cole’s “gutless” take on Latin jazz, 36   Ulhôa, Martha on Nascimento’s penchant for a unique sense of time, 85

244 Index Umbanda, 93–​94n.18 Airto and, 93–​94, 95   Valle, Marcos and Paulo Sergio, 152, 153n.13. See also “So Nice (Summer Samba)” [“Samba de Verão”] Vandré, Geraldo and Quarteto Novo, 94 Vargas, Getúlio, 28 Vasconcelos, Naná and indigeneity, 77–​78 and wordless vocals, 82, 98–​99 Vega, Suzanne, 200 Veloso, Caetano appearance on Beleza Tropical compilation, 113–​14, 113t, 121 on Byrne’s Brazil Classics series, 115 collaboration with Criolo, 182 “Como Dois e Dois,” 80–​81n.7 as disrupter, 6, 121 exile of, 82–​83 and kitsch aesthetics, 56 and Orfeu Negro, 29 performance at 2016 Olympics (with Anitta and Gilberto Gil), 180–​81 “Terra,” 121 and TV Record’s 1965 MPB festival, 83 Vicente, Eduardo on the record industry’s conservative impulse, 145 video game soundtracks, 3–​4, 188–​89, 190–​91. See also FIFA video games Vila, Martinho da collaboration with Criolo, 182 virality, 8–​9, 181 Vittar, Pabllo, 177–​78, 177–​78n.13. See also “Sua Cara” Vogel, Bibi and Brasil ’66, 72   Wald, Elijah How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll,  203–​4 on the payola scandal, 42n.25 Walser, Robert on Earth, Wind & Fire’s progressive musical politic, 103–​4

Walshy Fire, 177–​78. See also “Sua Cara” Wanderley, Walter “Summer Samba,” 154 Ware, Jessie, 200 Warner, Michael on publics and attention, 7 “We Are One (Ole Ola),” 1 Weather Report and Nascimento, 84 Weiner, Jonah on Wes Anderson’s use of non-​white characters, 161 Welburn, Ron against bossa nova (and Stan Getz),  48–​49 White, Maurice, 103–​4 White, Verdine, 103–​4 Wild Orchid (dir. Z. King), 136, 136n.26 will.i.am and Sérgio Mendes, 73, 139, 139n.1 Williams, Richard on Chick Corea’s Scientology, 98 Williams, Tony and Milton Nascimento, 83–​84 Wilson, John S. on Paul Winter’s bossa nova music, 41 Winter, Paul, 41 Wisnik, José Miguel on world music in retail environments, 14 WOMEX, 176, 176n.12, 189–​90 Wong, Melissa on the role of the album format, 117 wordless vocals, 81–​83, 90, 95, 98 Airto’s, 95–​96, 98 in Earth, Wind & Fire’s Head to the Sky,  103–​4 João Gilberto’s, 82 Gismonti’s,  98–​99 Jarrett’s,  98–​99 Jorge’s,  166–​68 Lobo’s, 82, 90 in Mendes’s “Mas Que Nada,” 73 on Mendes’s Primal Roots,  91–​92 Nascimento’s, 81–​82, 85–​86, 96 Pascoal’s, 82 Purim’s, 82, 95–​96, 97–​98, 97–​98n.23

Index  245 in the soundtrack of The Deadly Affair,  65–​69 Vasconcelos’s, 82, 98–​99 World Cup, FIFA, 139 2014 song competition, 1–​4 “World Is Ours, The.” See “Todo Mundo” (“The World Is Ours”) “world music,” 21, 106 and authenticity, 108–​9, 110 the bifurcation of world music markets (Menezes),  136–​37 challenges of differentiation in the world music circuit, 190–​91 and guilt, 114–​15 ideological colonialism of, 110 and the lambada, 123–​24 and marketing (to rock listeners), 108 origins of, 108 press/​scholarly coverage of, 108–​10

and primitivism, 108 in retail environments, 14 and taste, 108 Wu, Tim on cultural intermediaries as “attention merchants,”  9–​10 XRS Land, 149–​50 YBMusic, 145–​46, 149–​50, 170–​71, 183n.20,  188–​89 and FIFA video games, 188–​89   Zé, Tom, 139 Ziriguiboom (Crammed Discs imprint), 148–​49, 157–​58. See also Tanto Tempo (2000) zouk, 124, 127–​28, 129, 130, 132–​33, 136 Zuco 103, 151–​52 Zumbi, Nação, 174