The African Presence in Brazil : Slavery, Resistance, Miscegenation and Strategic Popularization of Afro-Brazilian Music Culture

Abstract

This thesis intends to investigate the history of slavery in Brazil, its effects on the demographic, psychological and political reality of Afro-Brazilians, and most essentially: how representations of Afro-Brazilian music and culture that were de-valorized, persecuted and outlawed for such extended periods of time became appropriated by the powerful, white Brazilian communities and subsequently became the quasi-official symbols of Brazilian culture. This research also focuses on Samba as one of these appropriated cultural symbols that, as the focus of Hermano Vianna's book, The Mystery of Samba, made an "unexplained leap from infamous outcast to (virtually official) national emblem, a transformation conventionally mentioned only in passing..."(12).