Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil

Two. Beyond the Punishment Paradigm, Popular Entertainment and Social Control after Abolition

2 Beyond the Punishment Paradigm Popular Entertainment and Social Control after Abolition Around Christmas in 1889, far from the bustling streets of Rio de Janeiro, a man was arrested for disturbing the peace in Rio Novo, a small town in the state of São Paulo.1 The perpetrator, José Antônio Piranha, had been hosting a “noisy fandango” replete with drums and singing. Displeased with the fine imposed on him, Piranha contested the charges. While he acknowledged holding the event at his house, Piranha argued to the town council that he should be absolved of any wrongdoing because other residents , including the well-­ known captain Antônio Gabriel, had done just the same. In fact, Piranha claimed, others exceeded his own transgressions by playing jogos de búzio (probably a religious ceremony involving shells) and truques, a card game. In response, the officer who levied the fine claimed that Piranha was mistaken and that in other homes individuals “only played ditties that are Christmas Eve pastimes.” At Captain Antônio’s house, the officer explained, revelers played nothing more than a “merriment called samba, which does not appear to me to be prohibited by our codes, which specifically refer to fandango.”2 While the officer appears to have been unfamiliar with the “merriment called samba,” he had seen or heard enough of it to distinguish it from fandango and illicit religious practices.3 The officer’s defense of Captain Antônio is remarkable. By suggesting that samba was not just a permissible practice but also grounds for refuting charges of wrongdoing, his actions represent a total inversion of the widespread belief that before it became popular, samba was a tar- 32 Chapter Two get of, not a shield from, police abuse. With this enticing incident as a starting point, we may begin to explore the punishment paradigm—the widely held but rarely researched idea that samba was directly and systematically repressed before it ascended to the level of national symbol. In the process, we will fill in economic and social contexts necessary for understanding Brazil’s early twentieth-­ century music market and forge a more precise understanding of the challenges that Rio de Janeiro’s black musicians faced as slavery, the monarchy, and the heyday of the barber-­ musicians faded into the past. The Punishment Paradigm Shot in unknown circumstances sometime during the 1930s or 1940s, this photograph depicts a familiar and seemingly straightforward scenario, described in the caption: “João da Baiana paid with prison time for the ugly ‘crime’ of singing samba and playing pandeiro.”4 (See figure 1.) The accompanying newspaper article traces samba’s origins and tells the story of João da Baiana, the musician pictured behind bars. No details about the photo are provided, but the article’s author uses it as an example of an earlier period when samba was said to have been prohibited, a period that looked archaic from the vantage point of the “new” Brazil, where samba had become a part of national identity and racism was said to be a thing of the past. In interviews conducted throughout his life, João da Baiana recalled being arrested and harassed by the police, and nearly every time he described how authorities confiscated and destroyed his pandeiro before hauling him off to jail. Considered together with the photograph—where he holds the instrument while standing behind bars—the interviews raise interesting questions. Was the moment captured on film exceptional? Had he been arrested for something unrelated to music, and somehow smuggled the pandeiro into jail? Was the image staged? If it would be misguided to take the disjuncture between image and interview as an indication that João da Baiana was simply lying or misremembering during his interviews, or to suggest that he and other musicians were never harassed or abused by authorities, the contrast does provide a clear invitation to question literal readings of the punishment paradigm and to explore the paradigm’s multiple meanings and uses. While this particular photo and article tell a specifically Brazilian story, the image also speaks to larger American histories. Before samba and 33 Beyond the Punishment Paradigm other forms of “black music” became accepted as national symbols they are known to have been repressed. Samba’s rise has been explained in a number of ways, but the starting point is always a period of punishment that is said to have...