Mário de Andrade, the Other Way Around: Popular Music and “National Unconsciousness”

Abstract

In 1928, in his Ensaio sobre a Música Brasileira, Mário de Andrade lays the grounds for the creation of a nationalist school of music composition, arguing for the incorporation and elaboration of Brazilian popular music –its folklore, or rural music, as opposed to urban popular music– in a classical setting, aiming at creating a distinctly national “artistic” music. This enterprise would dominate the Brazilian music scene until the 1940s, but eventually lost ground within academic settings with the advent of experimental avant-garde trends after the 1950s, and is generally considered a failed attempt. Nevertheless, I argue in this article that the process that would eventually lead to “national unconsciousness” continued in another field –that of urban popular music itself. In it, composers such as Tom Jobim, Edu Lobo, Egberto Gismonti, Hermeto Pascoal, who had Brazilian popular music as their “vernacular” music, went through the path prescribed by Mário de Andrade, but in the opposite direction –by appropriating elements of Western art music to create a rich, sophisticated and unconsciously national popular music. I use quotations from some of these musicians to demonstrate that it was precisely their spontaneous sense of belonging to Brazil and their vernacular mastery of national musical traditions that allowed them to approach so-called “highbrow” procedures and values without the risk of losing their popular character. This, I argue, was what Mário de Andrade failed to see: that popular music might become “artistic” in its own terms