A Country Critique of Brazilian Modernity. A Review of Alexander Dent's <em>River of Tears: Country Music, Memory, and Modernity in Brazil</em> (Durham, NC and London: Duke UP, 2009)

Authors

  • John Murphy University of North Texas

Keywords:

modernity, country music, memory

Abstract

When Alexander Dent arrived in Brazil in 1998, he was unaware of the existence of the rural genres that are the focus of this book. He had listened to bossa nova, MPB, Tropicália, death metal, forró, and techno, among other genres, but not música caipira and música sertaneja, the two genres under discussion here. Many readers may approach this book with a similar state of knowledge of the rural music of central-southern Brazil. For them and for experienced scholars of Brazilian music alike, this book has much to offer that is new on the level of content and interpretation. It investigates widely-held preconceptions of rural music: that rural lifestyles are disappearing, that the music is listened to primarily by rural migrants to large cities, and that since Brazilian country sounds so much like U.S. country there is little to learn about Brazilian culture from it. All will need to be rethought in the light of this work.

Author Biography

John Murphy, University of North Texas

John Murphy es Profesor y Jefe de la División de Estudios de Jazz en la Escuela de Música de la Universidad del Norte de Texas. Es autor de los libros Music in Brazil (Oxford, 2006) y Cavalo-marinho pernambucano (Editora UFMG, 2008).

Published

2010-09-01

How to Cite

Murphy, J. (2010). A Country Critique of Brazilian Modernity. A Review of Alexander Dent’s <em>River of Tears: Country Music, Memory, and Modernity in Brazil</em> (Durham, NC and London: Duke UP, 2009). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 8(1), 416–422. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/502

Issue

Section

Reviews: Literature and Cultural Studies