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Reviewed by:
  • The Color of Sound: Race, Religion, and Music in Brazil by John Burdick
  • Daniel Gough
John Burdick. The Color of Sound: Race, Religion, and Music in Brazil. New York: New York University Press, 2013.

John Burdick’s compelling ethnography examines racial consciousness among musical communities of black Protestants in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Drawing on extensive interviews and participant observation [End Page 125] conducted since the early 2000s, the author investigates how performers of three distinct styles—gospel rap, gospel samba, and black gospel—engage racial identities through music making in religious communities that frequently understand worldly racism as a secondary concern within a colorblind spiritual order. The Color of Sound: Race, Religion, and Music in Brazil is a timely contribution both in Brazil, following a rapid expansion of evangelical congregations and the increased presence of the faithful in the public sphere, and to Anglo-American academia, where such developments have yet to attract widespread attention.

The author asks us to consider music and its influence in identity formation as a specific type of political action. Burdick, an anthropologist committed to politically engaged scholarship, explains that he arrived at the subject of this book because of music’s unique potential to mobilize racial consciousness. Such a mobilization is predicated on music’s role in shaping collective identities, which Burdick argues can be understood by attending to “how musical practices and discourses articulate and generate ideas and feelings about history, place, and the body” (19). If evangelical religious communities frequently eschew race as unimportant to the pursuit of salvation, might the symbolically rich, specifically located, and embodied musical practices of these communities necessarily address racial politics in a more immediate way? This question animates the book, as Burdick discusses how practitioners in these three stylistic communities construct ideas of musical history, place, and embodiment.

Situated within an ever-changing religious landscape, an immense and highly variegated urban fabric, an unprecedented period of economic and middle-class expansion, rhetorical shifts between class and race-based programs of political action, and the symbolic accumulation around the Brazilian production of local and global musical styles, these musical communities might be productively examined from several theoretical and thematic perspectives. However, black identity is the specific target of Burdick’s research, and he and his interlocutors consider its meaning, even in contexts in which it is not understood as the most salient insider category. Burdick limited his research to musicians that self-identify as negro or preto, both of which translate as “black” in English despite somewhat different historical and social valences. He also targeted musicians with connections to the Pentecostal, neo-Pentecostal, and Millennial Protestant traditions that have grown most rapidly in recent decades.

In chapter 1, Burdick provides a historical overview of gospel rap, gospel samba, and black gospel, describing the growth of each in Protestant communities during the past several decades. Since the early 2000s, Brazil’s evangelical communities have grown, both numerically and in terms of percentage of the population, at a rapid pace. The author tracks this process, describing the seemingly limitless growth of rehearsals, shows, and [End Page 126] gatherings of black Protestant musicians. In addition, he includes an ethnographic description of one contemporary performance of each musical style. Such ethnographic sections, both in this chapter and throughout the book, are perhaps the highlight of this work of scholarship offering detailed descriptions and insightful interpretations.

In chapter 2, Burdick looks specifically at gospel rap. He finds that gospel rappers, like their secular stylistic contemporaries, are focused on the hyperlocal realities of their specific neighborhoods, most frequently in São Paulo’s periferia (periphery). These neighborhoods have long struggled with economic and social exclusion, violence, underdeveloped infrastructure, and a lack of government services. They are also racially diverse communities, including within the local Protestant congregations. Gospel rappers are thus skeptical of ethnoracial essentialism as either a social reality or an aesthetic phenomenon. Burdick finds that most black gospel rappers understand the global history of the style in terms of shared conditions of poverty and reject the notion that there is a difference between the voices of white and black performers.

Burdick unpacks some of the highly...

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