Latin America & the Caribbean - Travel Essays & Descriptions - General & Miscellaneous, Brazil - History, Brazilian Music, Brazil - Travel, Social Conditions - Latin America, Popular Culture - General & Miscellaneous

Why Is This Country Dancing?

Name: Why Is This Country Dancing?
Author: John Krich
ISBN: 9780671768140

by Krich, John

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Overview

Follow the music and get to the beating heart of Brazil! From the programmed mayhem of Carnival to the pounding drums of cult priestesses, from the cowpoke ballads of the drought-stricken Northeast to Rio's sophisticated pop tunes, John Krich sings beyond the stereotypes to evoke a culture of transcendent pleasure. Using musical expression as the entree to a complex and contradictory society, the iconoclastic author of Music in Every Room and El Beisbol takes us on an unforgettable journey to the heart and soul of South America's most diverse country. Krich's "one-man samba" moves through travelogue, political reportage, ethnography, in-depth interviews, and playful, sumptuous prose. Born of a lifelong passion for the music of Brazil that began with "The Girl from Ipanema," this eyewitness account describes the roots of styles influencing world music today. Along the way we are plunged into the frenetic folklore of Brazil's major Carnivals; taken on a guided tour of Afro-Brazilian religious sects; sent out along back roads to colonial outposts echoing with song - only to end up in the Amazon rain forest on a hilarious search for the origins of the lambada. And we are introduced to the country's musical heroes, including the grand old man of bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim; Bahia's folk poet Caetano Veloso; the irrepressible champion of black rights, Gilberto Gil; pop vocalist Milton Nascimento; Carmen Miranda's legendary songwriter, Sinval Silva; as well as a generation of unknown sambistas who play for love alone. Welcome, then, to Brazil, where, as Krich observes, "there's always more and most, even of less." How can the nation with the greatest wealth of usable land, coastline, and coffee also have the most unequal distribution of wealth and the highest external debt? With millions of homeless children on the street and hundreds killed annually by death squads, how can Brazil remain a realm "organized for joy"? Why is this country dancing? That is the quest

Music echoes on every page of this superb portrait of South America's most diverse country, by the author of El Beisbol and Music in Every Room. This remarkable book is both a vivid look at a vast land, where the cult of pleasure lives side by side with grinding poverty, and the first in-depth study of the music and musicians of the most musical country on Earth.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Over the course of three years during the late 1980s, Krich ( El Beisbol ) traveled from Rio to Sao Paulo to Sao Luis to Bahia to Recife to tiny Exu to create this uneven travelogue. In keeping with Brazil's famed fertility, each town has its own sound: some, such as samba , bossa nova and lambada , are well known; others, like carimbo , forro and baiao , are not. Most are represented in mini-discographies after each chapter called ``Music to Read By.'' Those three years translated into three carnivals as well, in Bahia, Recife/Olinda and Rio, though Krich participates in the latter, as most Brazilians do, only through the overwrought television coverage. But it is the musicians who steal the show, men mostly who have combined music from Brazil's European, aboriginal and, above all, African roots with lyrics from the country's experiences of poverty, segregation, dictatorship and torture. Brazil is colorful enough (witness Alma Guillermoprieto's straightforward but interesting book, Samba ) without Krich's hyper-tinted prose, a collection of the pleonastic (``decadent decay''), the scatological (`` samba of the `Turd World' '') or just simplistic (``Brazilian television, like Brazilian culture, is fixed somewhere around the third grade.''). (Feb.)

Library Journal

To answer the question posed by the title, Krich offers a thoroughly captivating exploration of a nation's soul through an examination of its music. His encounters with such notable musicians as Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil communicate the centrality of music in Brazilian culture. A unique offering is the discographies at the end of each chapter, which provide access to the rhythms described in the preceding pages. Why Is This Country Dancing? not only serves as a superb introduction to the sounds of samba, forro, and frevo but it initiates the reader to this vast nation's language, history, and socioeconomic conditions. This work is certain to appeal to a broad audience and is highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-- Stephen Newcomer, Los Angeles P.L.