Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship (review)

The last 20 years have witnessed an increase in the articulation between citizenship discourses and popular cultural practices in Brazil as part of the gradual recuperation of the concept of "the citizen" there since the end of military rule. Once seen as the mute object of a repressive state pedagogy, "the citizen" has increasingly come to be understood as an individual entitled to rights and public resources, with culture playing a key role as "expedient" in this process (Yúdice 2003). Music-making in particular has come to represent an alternative, more participatory forum in which historically marginalized members of society can claim, redefine, and exercise citizenship rights and form alliances, however tenuous and conflicted, with the state, NGOs, private sector companies, and the mainstream media.

The introduction and 18 core essays comprising Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship explore participation in popular music as "a practice constitutive of . . . citizenship itself" (p. 7), as well as a mechanism for fostering broader social and political inclusion in a society with precarious access to education and literacy. The contributors grapple with issues familiar across the humanities and social sciences, including hegemony, performativity, hybridity, space and place, media representation, and cultural consumption. The collection is not characterized by any single approach, but includes lyric- and performance-based analyses, ethnography, and anecdotal reflection. Two chapters focus on popular music's articulation with state power during the early twentieth century, and two take up the intersection of "the popular" and "the political" during the military dictatorship. The remaining chapters deal with more recent musical expressions (such as pagode baiano, tecnobrega, and funk carioca) from Brazil's geographical and social peripheries. Guided by a similarly progressive impulse toward pluralism and decentralization, the volume draws together contributors of various professional and disciplinary backgrounds, more than half of whom are based in Brazil. Unfortunately, however, the monolingual nature of the edition will likely restrict its accessibility for many Brazilian readerships who would have much to contribute to these discussions.

This collection offers a counterpoint to recent studies of popular music that have privileged the transnational and postnational. The editors explain that "While . . . post-national perspectives can indeed serve to critique narrow nationalisms, . . . [o]ur premise is that the construction of citizenship . . . takes place primarily within national boundaries even as it is informed by international and postnational discourses and practices" (p. 7). Given this dialectical return to the national, the lack of substantial discussion of the Ministry of Culture's ambitious overhaul of national cultural policy in dialogue with international "copyleft" movements is arguably the volume's most striking lacuna.

The central premise of this collection—that music can serve to foster greater social and cultural inclusion within Brazilian democratic society—necessitates a critical interrogation of the notion of inclusion itself. Hermano Vianna's essay most directly broaches the issue and while it is ironically the second shortest in the volume, it warrants specific mention here. Vianna identifies a fundamentally patronizing and undemocratic tendency behind the presumption that the center has exclusive authority to include or recognize the cultural activities of the periphery. Yet his thoughtful critique of hegemonic mechanisms of inclusion arguably does not go far enough. Moreover, the collection as a whole misses an opportunity to interrogate the academy's agenda in legitimizing certain forms of cultural citizenship over others, as well as its important and ever-changing role in shaping cultural politics and policy in Brazil.

Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship is a significant contribution to the discussions of the Latin American social movements, cultural politics, and participatory democracy that have been taking place in the academy, policy circles, and among grassroots movements over the last 20 years. The international currency of cultural citizenship discourses, together with the present proliferation of musical expressions from Brazil's peripheries, make this a timely publication, and its rich case studies will be of interest to scholars in cultural studies, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and related disciplines.