{"id":229,"date":"2020-12-10T13:16:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T18:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/perrone\/?page_id=229"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:58:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:58:53","slug":"tropicalia-counterculture-and-the-diasporic-imagination-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/perrone\/publications\/brazilian-popular-music-and-globalization\/tropicalia-counterculture-and-the-diasporic-imagination-in-brazil\/","title":{"rendered":"Tropic\u00e1lia, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Tropic\u00e1lia, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in Brazil<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Tropic\u00e1lia, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in Brazil<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Christopher Dunn<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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About the article:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In Brazil, mesti\u00e7agem is inextricably linked to the national imagination while hybridity may be associated with an insurgent diasporic imagination.\u00a0 This paper demonstrates that the national-popular paradigm for cultural production began to break down in the late 1960s during the cultural movement known as tropicalismo which posited a fragmented and heterogeneous view of Brazil.\u00a0 Attacked by the military regime and the left-wing opposition alike,the Tropicalists posited a critical re-evaluation of Modernism of the 1920s.They defied the dominant “national-popular” paradigm for cultural production, which conceive Brazilian culture as a reservoir of national “authenticity” and as an expression of the nation’s unique mesti\u00e7o identity,\u00a0 suggesting instead a fragmented “hybrid-multicultural” paradigm to challenge the universalist ideology of brasilidade, and privileging individual subjectivities not readily subsumed by class. Tropicalism was an “archaeological dig” into the “ruins of history” which uncovered the “margin\u00e1lia” of Brazilian society and revealed the radical disjunction between modernity as a cultural project and modernization as a socio-economic reality. In the wake of the tropicalista movement, a cultural politics of difference emerged in the early 1970s which was particularly manifest in popular music.\u00a0 Since then, Afro-Brazilian music has absorbed influences from African-American soul and funk, Jamaican reggae, African pop, and more recently, rap music.\u00a0 New hybrid forms of musical expression have accompanied an increasing awareness of racial discrimination and violence in Brazilian society.\u00a0\u00a0 Transnational cultural products of the African Diaspora have led to the creation of hybrid counter-cultures in Brazil which also defy the dominant national imagination based on mesti\u00e7agem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Two US LPs:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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\"BenUSA\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Christopher J. Dunn is Professor at Tulane University, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese (Chair) and in the African and African Diaspora Studies Program. He is also an affiliate of the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related Links<\/h4>\n\n\n\n