Category: brazil
Event Start:
Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 4:30pm
Location:
Center for Ethnomusicology, 701C Dodge Hall
Race, Nation, and José Maurício Nunes Garcia
by Marcelo Campos HazanRespondent: Kristy Riggs
The compelling life story of José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830), the mulatto son of freed slaves who rose to become chapelmaster of the Rio de Janeiro cathedral, has engaged Brazilian popular and scholarly imagination for many generations. This paper examines the interrelated discourses of race and nation as they articulated with posthumous representations of Garcia and his music in specific political contexts. The aim is to illuminate the shifting ways in which race and more specifically miscegenation was interpreted in Brazil and how these changing interpretations intersected with nationalist ideologies of cosmopolitan conformity and national singularity signified by Garcia’s music.At the dawn of the Republic (1889), a historical image of Garcia as “the Brazilian Mozart” was already widespread, one that crucially influenced and reflected the consolidation of the German canon in Brazil. The elite’s reliance on cosmopolitan cultural models, which established both difference within and sameness across national boundaries, was accompanied by a profound concern with the country’s racial configuration. In accord with evolutionist and determinist thought, many believed that Brazil’s backwardness vis-à-vis civilized (and civilizing) Europe sprang from the miscegenation of its population. How the intellectual elites reconciled the Germanic excellence of Garcia’s art with the African inferiority of his mixed blood is addressed in the first part of this paper. As Brazil entered the twentieth century, miscegenation, previously blamed for the country’s supposed stunted development, began to be significantly reappraised. The populist Vargas regime (1930-1945) promoted mestiçagem as a source of national pride, a strategy that successfully neutralized dissent while creating a generalized sense of belonging. The second part of this work examines the shift from exclusive to inclusive nationalism, and how Garcia’s music came to be racially reinterpreted as genuinely Brazilian, rather than essentially German.
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Event Start:
Monday, February 9, 2009 - 12:00pm
Colloquium and Lunch DiscussionWEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9 (lunch seminar), 12 pm
Dr. Elizabeth Travassos
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
"Lists of words, inventories and enchanting rites in Brazilian popular song"
Event Start:
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Location:
701C Dodge Hall
The presentation will address social conflict from the perspectives opened by ongoing research projects being carried out in marginalized areas of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
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