History of Brazilian Popular Music: Without Prejudice (Vol. 1)

Rodrigo Faour returns with this first masterful and comprehensive volume on the history of Brazilian popular music, from 1500 to the 1970s.

After exploring the Sexual History of Brazilian Popular Music (MPB) and the biographies of Angela Maria, Dolores Duran, Cauby Peixoto, and Claudette Soares, Rodrigo Faour embarks on an even more ambitious project: creating a panorama of Brazilian popular music from the late 15th century, when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, to the present day. In this first volume, the author delimits his study between 1500, with the contributions of Indigenous peoples, Portuguese, and enslaved people, and the turbulent 1970s.

In History of Brazilian Popular Music (Vol. 1) , Faour writes about a continental-sized country with a rich musical heritage and diverse cultures. He also examines the transformations in the production and consumption of popular music at various points in history, contextualizing them and relating them to the political, social, and behavioral changes Brazil has undergone and is currently undergoing.

Covering rhythms such as choro, samba, marchinha, waltz, frevo, samba-canção, caipira music, baião, bossa nova, sambalanço, coco, samba-enredo, Jovem Guarda, MPB, Tropicalismo, carimbó, partido-alto, soul, samba-rock, pagode, forró, sertanejo, brega, etc., this work does not privilege rhythms or artists; its proposal is to help the reader strip away aesthetic prejudices, presenting the maximum diversity of what has been produced in each region of the country, from the most naive and sentimental to the most revolutionary, experimental, and irreverent, without failing to mention the most representative successes of each artist in their time.

Including a 64-page color booklet, History of Brazilian Popular Music: Without Prejudice (Vol. 1) is an invitation to the reader to (re)discover Brazil through its musical expression, highlighting the diversity of production in each region that makes up the country.