"River of Tears" is the first ethnography of Brazilian country
music, one of the most popular genres in Brazil yet least-known
outside it. Beginning in the mid-1980s, commercial musical duos
practicing "musica sertaneja" reached beyond their home in Brazil's
central-southern region to become national bestsellers. Rodeo
events revolving around country music came to rival soccer matches
in attendance. A revival of folkloric rural music called "musica
caipira," heralded as musica sertaneja's ancestor, also took shape.
And all the while, large numbers of Brazilians in the central-south
were moving to cities, using music to support the claim that their
Brazil was first and foremost a rural nation.
Since 1998, Alexander Sebastian Dent has analyzed rural music in
the state of Sao Paulo, interviewing and spending time with
listeners, musicians, songwriters, journalists, record-company
owners, and radio hosts. Dent not only describes the production and
reception of this music, he also explains why the genre experienced
such tremendous growth as Brazil transitioned from an era of
dictatorship to a period of intense neoliberal reform. Dent argues
that rural genres reflect a widespread anxiety that change has been
too radical and has come too fast. In defining their music as
rural, Brazil's country musicians--whose work circulates largely in
cities--are criticizing an increasingly inescapable urban life
characterized by suppressed emotions and an inattentiveness to the
past. Their performances evoke a river of tears flowing through a
landscape of loss--of love, of life in the countryside, and of
man's connections to the natural world.
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