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Folks & cowboys: aesthetics of Brazilian country music.

© Copyright by Victor Aquino, 2001, 2006
WEA Books & Publishing Inc.
Monroe, LA USA

All rights reserved. Inquires should be addressed directly

to World Editions of America, Books & Publishing Inc,
94 Elm St, Monroe, Louisiana 71201 USA

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 Contents

Why country music? (by Ana Maria Barreira) 5

Foreword 7

Part One 15

The roots of new Brazilian country music 17

Part Two 45

Brazilian pop-music in the 70s of the XX Century 47

Bibliography 105

About the author 107

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5
 Why country music?

It’s amazing how every day we may find curiosities

about life and circumstances around us. This book is part of
these discoveries. It argues the problem of the social contacts
whose nature transforms them into social change.
Starting from a real case the author shows some
mutations in Brazilian folk music. This music, knew as
“musica caipira”, is a typical kind of folk music of the State
of Sao Paulo, as well as in other some regions of the country
side of Brazil. It has largely changed in the last twenty years
because of contacts in the orange market with the United
States.
This study by Victor Aquino shows a case whose
means of change must be understood as possible anywhere.
The original as well as native kind of regional music, so
common in a part of Brazil, has changed under external
influences. Folks & Cowboys is the better way for
understanding what it happened.
The book also approaches the question of popular
music from radio programs. The data of one search carried
through for the author in years 80 of the XX Century prove
as the urban musical preferences already had been also guided
for foreign productions.

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 The music is ever a context where art, culture and
human nature interact. Popular music is also an excellent
tool for looking about. Country music the most appropriate.
Why country music?
I think because it’s a kind of music whose expression
refuses limits, aesthetical consequences, concepts and forms
without links with the nature. Country music is a natural
music, or a natural way for knowing better culture and life of
our Civilization.

Ana Maria Barreira

GEMODE / CEAQ / Université Paris V

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 Foreword

The year 1985 saw the completion of a research

project dealing with the universe of popular music in Brazil.
This project was initiated in 1979 and was part of a
discipline entitled “Record Production” in the publishing
course of the University of Sao Paulo. Two years after the
termination of the project, one highly explosive conclusion
stood out clearly.
The research had found that (a) access to recording
technology was restricted (b) the corresponding industrial
record production sector was limited and (c) the record
distributors operated in a market tightly controlled by the
international labels. And so the conclusion was that these
factors, in practice, hindered the release of any product outside
of the control of the recording companies.
Before discussing the matter in relation to the term
“manipulation” one should point out the significance of the
field of study since it was defined above as “the universe of
popular music”. Firstly this description gives the impression
that it is something more important and complex than it
really is.
Secondly, if one confines the area of such field of study
to its precise dimensions existing at the time, there is only a

8
partial comprehension of the problem. This is because during
the time when it was being carried out, the research was
studying a market where the disc jockey was the principal
means of record diffusion.
Up to the Eighties, when it was unusual to consider
the effects of the technological changes on the horizon and
which shortly began to occur, the phonographic market was
rigorously focused on the production of new titles. This meant
that it was the domain of the record companies and only they
had the power of decision when it was a question of selecting
which music, which artists, which records to be released.
After release, the whole commercial process followed
involving distribution, promotion, publicity and playing of a
new phonographic product. To discuss the last three stages of
this process, however, is to speak of one unique essential
activity for success. Until the Eighties these last three stages
comprised widespread and repeated playing of each record on
radio programs and these constituted the main marketing
tool.
This system, based especially on the constant
repetition of the same titles at different times on radio
programs became the most effective tool, not only for
phonographic product commercialization but also for
consolidating the record market.
The radio was transformed in Brazil and in the whole
world into the mainspring of popular music
commercialization.

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 It was for this reason that the radio came to offer an
opportunity for developing a special sort of programs that,
starting in the United States, took hold of record diffusion in
the whole world. These programs were known as “hit
parades” and everywhere they broadcast the list of the “most-
played music” or the “most-sold records”. These were
programs where the voice of a charismatic presenter carried
convincing arguments in respect of all these lists of
“preferences”, of the “most-listened-to” music.
Since the beginning of the forties the presenter would
acquire the same notoriety as the artists and music that he
divulged in his program. And so it was that this kind of
program, under the conducting of the disc jockeys, emerged
and came to structure the record market.
In Brazil it was no different. In Sao Paulo, where
historically the principal Brazilian record market is located,
this situation contributed towards consolidating a market,
which in 1985 was rich in examples and aspects for study.
That year, when the research in question was being finished,
may be considered the threshold of a change, which would
affect things in the future.
The technological transformation, which yielded, a new
phonographic product, the compact disc, would also modify the
market, would alter the consumer pattern, would create new
production conditions, and would generate a recording
autonomy for artists, producers, groups and composers. All
these factors contributed towards renovating completely the

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system of record promotion and deeply alter radio programs in
the whole world.
Brazilian culture, principally in the last ten years, has
had a close relationship with the social communication media.
Among these the radio stands out indisputably both as a
generator of expectations as regards cultural production and,
at the same time, as a disseminator of what is produced. It
has not only been programs based on musical insertions but
also those made up of other content that has always made the
radio an indispensable vehicle of communication in Brazilian
life.
Independently of the rise or fall of audiences, public
opinion has been interested in the quality of radio programs.
This book is not an essay on the radio; nevertheless it
brings together two texts that arose from studies focused on
radio diffusion. The first, incidentally, features very well the
question of the diffusion and the transformation of a music
genre, which is mostly dependent on the use of the radio. The
second, as it says, deals with research work on the record
market which was carried out from 1979 through 1987.
These two texts might appear to be unconnected but only
apparently so. In fact, when the record market was being
studied, on analyzing the way in which power and control
were used in the record release process, the presence of the
foreign element in this market had already been perceived.
As time passed, people came increasingly to realize
that the American presence in Brazilian popular music has

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much less to do with the structure of the record market than
with other influences. By the way, the first text attempts to
relate the circumstances that unleashed these influences.
Basically it deals with the transformations which have taken
place in Brazilian country music since the start of the orange
trade with the United States.
In a sense, the present essay is intended to be a record
of a study which traces record production before the
technological transformation of this market. Simultaneously,
the essay will analyze the change in an important music genre,
Brazilian sertaneja music, due to the influence of a very
similar foreign genre.
The essay is divided into three parts. The first part
entitled “Some roots of Brazilian country music” is dedicated
to the study of the influence of American country music on
Brazilian country music (sertaneja music). The second part
deals with the formation of the phonographic market as
perceived from a study of the hit parades and the legislation
which governed radio programs in Brazil at the time. The
third part consists of tables that set out the data from the
research.
While this work was being compiled for publication,
the person who suggested it, Julio Martinez, passed away. He
was a man concerned with culture and its importance on the
formation and development of the New World and his was
the incentive for this publication. Cuban by birth he had lived
in the United States since the Forties and he exercised intense
cultural activity in the States of New York and New Jersey.

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 Treading confidently along the paths of Hispano-
American popular culture, he distinguished himself especially
as a writer and newspaper editor within the respective
communities. To some extent, Julio Martinez anticipated the
idea of cultural influence and the modification of cultures,
based on presuppositions about human curiosity and
expectations. As he himself wrote, at various times in La
Razón, that vigorous Latin-spirited newspaper published in
New Jersey, “Cultural contacts between people from different
worlds are sometimes much more important than their own
cultures”.
He decided to publish this Folks & Cowboys on a
night in the beginning of January 2000. On that occasion, he
was taking part in a noisy dinner with young Jamaican
musicians in the Mi Bandera restaurant. He had just read
the text that comprises the first part of this book. Then he
asked if it might be possible to join it with another text that
he was already acquainted with and turn it into an essay on
the influences received by the Brazilian music.
On the following day, settled already in “The Book on
Trailer” in Moonachie, he began to work frenetically (quite
in his style) on the editorial format of the work. He still had
time to make numerous telephone calls and also, as was his
way, push invitations for two lectures by the author on the
subject.
Carrying his oxygen equipment and breathing with
difficulty but even so walking lightly and driving his heavy
Buick himself, he had ideas regarding everything connected

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with music, musical production and the immense Latin artist
continent within the United States. He lamented deeply his
little knowledge of the Brazilian reality that he considered the
“sweetest side of the New World”.
A month after he had begun to organize the
publication of the book, Julio Martinez did not come, unlike
his usual custom, to one of the Saturday afternoon meetings at
354 West 45th Street in Manhattan. On this very day he
would have had his first opportunity to hear a Brazilian
country music band.
The first consequence of his passing has been the
modification of this foreword.

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15
Part One

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17
 The roots of new Brazilian
country music

As had never happened before, the years 1983 and

1985 had extremely severe winters that destroyed a large part
of the orange plantations in the United States. Perhaps it is
normal for the ordinary person not to realize how important
and serious an occurrence of this kind is.
Distant from calamities like this and living far from
the regions directly affected, many people even imagine that
such happenings do not directly affect their own lives. The
media with its resources of systematic particularization of the
facts contributes towards having a strong sensation of distance
from the facts. The distance is induced by the localization and
this causes very erroneous thinking.
Most of the time we think that tragedies, accidents,
conflagrations, earthquakes, hurricanes, which happen in
faraway places will not affect our lives. Almost always the
things we watch on television each new morning, for us, do not
go beyond the news program. Practically nobody realizes that
profound changes could not result from an item on the news,
nor does it matter whatever item it may be.
Incidentally, the majority of these changes are often not
perceived, even when they are gradually incorporated into our

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daily lives. Afterwards when some time has gone by and they
have been incorporated into our culture, our habits, our
customs, the changes and things, which resulted from them, do
not even remind us of what brought them about.
The above-mentioned winters of intense cold and heavy
snowstorms that devastated unexpectedly the principal orange
growing region of the United States of America did more
than raze the orange plantations. As a result of these
misfortunes, actions had to be taken that went much beyond
just the measures for recuperation of the orange plantations
affected.
Even before the first half of the Eighties decade, the
imminence of extensive losses, because of shortage of oranges
on the American market, were anticipated. The orange is a
fruit used to produce, among other things, the juice
customarily drunk at breakfast time each morning by
millions of consumers in the United States.
Has anyone ever asked what willed happen if, during
a long period, rice was missing for Japanese cooking? If there
was a shortage of the ingredients used for making Mexican
tortillas?
Or indeed, if there was a shortage of coffee in Brazil?
Not only in Brazil but also in a large part of the world. Also
of much greater consequence than the commercial loss, another
problem would descend on the cultures of the places concerned,
affecting customs and thus forcing a change in attitudes and
behavior.

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 The shortage of any food item in any culture where it
is customarily consumed brings with it a change in attitudes
and behavior. Consequently every change is something that
causes discomfort, insecurity and non-conformity. However,
the same force that promotes and sustains changes that are
negative equally consolidates deep-rooted habits by which
human beings are identified and characterized.
Naturally these habits support millionaire markets
involving the hourly replacement on shelves in all the world of
items that maintain unaltered the traditional levels of food
consumption. And so this must have been the first
preoccupation of the United States orange growers in the
Eighties. Not only the growers but also all the other traders,
distributors and processors of the fruit, in the face of the
modifications that very soon began to occur in the market.
Concomitantly to the shortage of oranges, prices began to rise
indicating a lack of the fruit and its by-products. And the
situation was becoming worse.
Just as worried about the shortage as the others,
businessmen saw that, besides the disappearance of the
merchandise, the extinction of large part of the market was
imminent. Should the market go away, a rich source of
business would disappear and eliminate future profits?
Perhaps as the result of this last preoccupation there
would be developments as follows. Probably having in mind
replacing the product by oranges from new plantations in more
appropriate regions the businessmen in this sector considered
looking for other geographical regions as an option for large

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scale replanting. A search resulted in the discovery of the
interior of the State of Sao Paulo in Brazil as appropriate for
orange growing. Negotiations began immediately for the use of
the land, the corresponding cultivation, and the preparation of
young orange seedlings, diverse supplies, in short, all the
necessary technology to, from then on, put the market back on
its former level.
There are two things right at the beginning of the
process that evidenced contact between different cultures. The
first one refers to the high mobility of the financial sector in
support of the initial agricultural work and the ensuing
industrial activity. The second was the intense movement of
American professionals and technicians with relevant
experience.
Clearly, as well as the movement of the personnel
engaged in the activities of the sector, we need to take into
account their physical contact with all the others who by
reason of business or otherwise were in the region. But one
contact at least is incontestable. It is the personal relationship
established by reason of professional activities. The technical
skills transmitted then are absorbed, generating operating
procedures that are incorporated as they had been planned
and desired. At the same time personal friendships can be
initiated.
Whenever persons of diverse origins come together and
whatever may be the nature of the contact, exchanges are
made and the result always depends on the intensity of the
interest involved. These exchanges are not exclusively

21
determined by business reasons. The affections, the interests,
the expectations, and the desires of each one involved always
reveal values which are added to the cultures of both.
The complex commercial interchange in the orange
business between the two countries brought diverse persons
near to each other. These persons, in strange surroundings
ended up by interacting in situations where they had common
tastes, affections and expectations. It was precisely a region in
the interior of Brazil, transformed into an orange cultivation
area, which became the scenario of new intercultural relations.
In the region of the State of Sao Paulo that had been chosen
for orange cultivation there had always existed habits and
tastes very like those in some interior regions in the United
States.
Although their cultures are specific, the tastes of the
two regions came close in that context, causing a convergence
of values related to land, life in the open air, animals, nature,
and music of a style, shall we say, “regional”. Moreover it is
in music where we find more frequently, references to those
native or nature elements. The ways of expressing sentiments,
the extremely personal tone of the lyrics, the atmosphere of
simplicity, and above all the bucolic side of human relations
are frequent in a type of music so characteristic of some
American regions. Equally they are also common in the
music of some regions of Brazil such as the interior of the
State of Sao Paulo. It must be acknowledged that this
peculiarity, coincidentally brought nearer persons who, because
of orange production, came into frequent contact.

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 As well as the direct contact between professionals of
the area, we should also take into account the contacts that
took place spontaneously outside work and which contributed
fundamentally to the increase of knowledge of each about the
culture of the others. This getting together is owed especially to
ordinary people, on the farms, in the small towns, in beer-
shops, in clubs, in hotels, at festivals. Indeed at festivals and
what were the festivals like in the interior of the State of Sao
Paulo, for example, until this “contact” came about? Well,
they were typical country festivals with crowds of girls and
boys and couples who went to hear music, dance and court.
Or, indeed, up to that time, still in the Eighties, what
were the cowhands’ festivals like, the so-called “festas do peao
de boiadeiro”? Are they still the same today? Or, indeed,
have the modifications they suffered transformed them into
something very different? Why? The replies to these questions
stem from sole evidence.
This evidence states that the modification of the
Brazilian “sertaneja” music, as well as the aesthetic elements,
is a clear referential of contact with American country music.
But it was not only this contact that occurred from the
Eighties onwards that bring cultural contributions to
Brazilian popular music.
In the preceding decade, for example, due to specific
legislation governing Brazilian broadcasting, there was a
similar phenomenon. Because of an attempt by the government
to impose a national flavor on radio music programs or
simply to keep jobs for Brazilian artists, it was obligatory to

23
include a minimum percentage of Brazilian music composed
by Brazilian authors and recorded in Brazil.
A case which happened in the Seventies was narrated
in the book “Mercado da Musica: Disco e Alienacao”
(Correa, 1987). The work, published on the initiative of the
editor, Kardec Pinto Vallada, then proprietor of Expert
Editora in Sao Paulo, made it possible to divulge part of the
research carried out by the University of Sao Paulo on the
subject of the phonographic market and the hit parades.
The present book could well be a new edition of the
same. However, the incorporation of new material has
substantially altered the proposition and the conclusions of the
first book. This new material deals with the modifications
undergone by Brazilian regional music and is based on
research by the same University a number of years later.
Several authors – Waldenyr Caldas in an example –
have faithfully portrayed the mosaic formed by composers and
interpreters of the regional music of Brazil. Waldenyr Caldas
author of “Acorde na Aurora” is the foremost author. The
rescue of the origin – the primitive and fundamental origin of
the “sertaneja” genre – taking the pair of singers Tonico and
Tinoco as starting point, which Caldas developed, is perhaps
the most exponential work by a Brazilian author, available
on this subject.
It would have been wholly productive if similar works
about this music genre in Brazil had also concentrated on the
cultural aspects instead of, as the great majority did, occupying

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themselves with characteristics, music titles, authors of lyrics,
singers’ names, bands, producers’ labels, and so on. Caldas’s
work, on the contrary, not only gave a definitive description of
the genre and the reasons why it exists, but also establishes
consistently the relations between its roots and the
environments in which it evolved.
The caboclo culture, the caipira culture, or the
native culture (or any other name it is wished to ascribe to the
rural cultural context in Brazil or whatever country)
represents the spontaneity of a more basic social organization.
However the description “caipira” in the interior of Sao
Paulo State is uncomfortably constraining and embarrassing.
The expression is not always well understood. A succession of
authors has studied the matter. Works on the subject of
Brazilian roots in general become “classics” in Brazilian
academia. The roots are studied in order to understand the
failures of history, the origins are studied to understand the
nature of culture, the roots are studied to define behavior
patterns, the roots are studied to try to propose alternative
political paths etc.
Classical works like those by Gilberto Freyre, Darci
Ribeiro, Egon Schaden, Vianna Moog, Buarque de
Hollanda, Milton Santos, and more recent ones have been of
assistance to many secondary writers who come, one after
another, trying to explain Brazilian culture. It is worth
remembering that, as much in the field of the social sciences as
in that of fiction, there has been more or less a single concern:

25
- to understand the social and cultural formation of a country
whose physiognomy is not very well defined.
Nowadays to understand the significance of the term
“caipira” is no more so important. Today it is equally or
more important to understand the significance in the light of
the reasons that made the caipira himself not to like to be so
considered. One of the reason lies in the process of
urbanization that Brazil has been going through in a
disorientated and completely uncontrolled way for the last fifty
years. This same process, arising from a mistaken
development option as well as drawing entire populations to
the cities, created a highly negative concept of the rural
environment.
Perhaps the chief explanation of the problem of the
cultural rejection of the auto-denomination “caipira” lies in
the following supposition. If the rural environment is
disqualified, the human being who lives in it is also
disqualified. Therefore it is easy to understand why nobody
wants to be classified according to the characteristics of the
environment where he lives, or lived.
It may be perceived, in such circumstances, that he
prefers to be classified or identified by something that calls to
mind the big city, the urban life or any other thing that
represents – even though in stereotype – “development”. The
countryside, the small holidays, or the interior become
synonyms of “backwardness”.

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 Lamentable though they may be, these are the ideas
that became rooted in the Brazilian interior regions, and
which transformed the term “caipira” into something
extremely negative. Significantly the songs of that time,
listened to mainly by the humblest people of these regions, were
synonyms of extreme bad taste.
Up to the Seventies, principally, double acts of singers
like Tonico and Tonico, Millionario and Ze Rico, Leo
Canhoto and Robertinho, performed in front of audiences who
earned low wages and had little education. These audiences
were nearly always made up of the humblest people. They
lived in the interior of the State of Sao Paulo or inhabited the
poor suburbs on the outskirts of Sao Paulo city.
A change that occurred in the profile of these audiences
suggests three things that can explain it. The first of these
refers to a change in the style of the music itself. The second,
to a new crop of composers or the emergence of new musicians.
The third, to the incorporation of aesthetic values from
another culture.
Of course it is evident that the change in style is partly
because the music had incorporated a new aesthetic. But the
change in style must be understood as a separated
phenomenon considering that it resulted from external contact
and occurred in co-related ground. This ground, not
necessarily musical, was created by the professional close
contacts during the development of the orange plantations.

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 Going back in time a little and journeying on the
map, we find a number of Brazilian artists who also made
contributions to the change in the direction of regional music.
Sometimes, for diverse reasons other than those being
discussed here, the majority of these musicians contributed in
a very special way. One remembers the personal style of some
who, often distant from the interior of the State of Sao Paulo,
stamped a new tendency on the taste of the music audiences of
that region.
Luis Gonzaga is a case in point. Gonzaga was a
musician born in the northeast of Brazil. He put himself
forward as a singer and since the Forties was acclaimed by
audiences all over the country. For decades he was one of the
most charismatic figures in Brazilian popular music.
In the beginning, as a regional musician he interpreted
the characteristic sentiment of the northeast. With the passing
of time, however, he broke away from the kind of music he
had always sung and went beyond the region of his birth to
transform regional music genres into the public preference of
all Brazil.
Of course, inasmuch as in the great capital city of Sao
Paulo, an enormous contingent of people from the northeast is
concentrated, his initial audience was owed to this factor.
However, the growth in the numbers of his audiences and fans
resulted, above all, from the bucolic content of the lyrics, so
close to the taste of humble people.

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 From the Sixties onwards, mainly because of the
increase in television auditorium programs, the opportunities
for new artists to come on the scene were greater.
Subsequently, with the “explosion” of FM radio broadcasting
and with the continuous expansion of the phonographic
market, good opportunities for launching new artists became
greater still.
And so, fed by many and lasting innovations,
strengthened by a change in style more appropriate to
contemporary times, and giving a visible indication of the
incorporation of new features, not only musical but also stage
effects and costume, the Eighties saw the emergence of a new
Brazilian music.
This music, rooted in the former sertaneja music,
adapted to the style of Middle West American music, and
recalling somewhat the primitive side of both, finally in
practice became consolidated as a music genre. Without
exaggeration, this genre could be called “Brazilian country
music”. That is what it is.
But it is still difficult to give a true account of the
mixing of the ingredients from Brazil and the United States.
In any event it represents a great incorporation of values, of
both countries, originating in the simple way of interpreting
life, the world, nature, things.
Using the term in its most pejorative sense, it may be
said that “the most caipira side of Brazilian culture is this
mania of copying genres and styles from other countries just

29
because it is thought that everything in the country of others is
always better or nicer, so that, little by little, that which is
produced culturally in Brazil is not accepted any more…”
Who does not remember (if old enough) what
Brazilian radio programs were like thirty years ago and how
they changed since the so-called “explosion” of frequency
modulation and the distribution to exploit it? Practically
every song with Portuguese lyrics went off the air. It was a
time of English songs. But these songs should not be criticized
because of the idiom. After all, five or ten years before, in the
middle of the Sixties, practically only Italian music was
heard. And nobody thought it was bad.
Certainly long-range radio broadcasting, with not so
large audiences and a refined urban music panorama aimed
at a higher class of listeners, was losing ground to a music
genre which, again, was imported. The “bossa-nova” genre
(which to some extent was internationalized) left the stage in
the middle of the so-called “jovem-guarda” music movement.
It gave way, first, to the “novos bahianos” movement and
then to “tropicalismo” so gradually the radio was invaded by
the sounds of the countryside.
Of course these sounds shared the audiences with the
“imported” sounds. However, sometimes not so imported.
Quite a number of composers and singers adopted
Anglo-American names like Johnny Black & Kid
Holydays, George & Jefferson, Tony & Jerry, Christian &
Ralph and so on. Morris Albert, for example, author of

30
“Feelings” also belongs to this time. Even today no one in the
United States knows that he is a Brazilian artist, although
many people know this music.
What might appear to be the establishment of a
division of universes, in the Seventies, definitively separating
urban music and rural music, was nothing more than the first
illusion of the phonographic market. Following that, an
apparent urgency on the part of the recording companies to
take advantage of provisions in the legislation, ended up by
opening space for a second illusion. The legislation required
radio programs to include a certain percentage of music
recorded in Brazil by Brazilian artists. The apparently urban
taste for songs of American genre and style together with the
obligation to include music recorded in Brazil resulted in
many Brazilians going over to record in English. This was
the first time there was an urban pop space out of reach of the
native musical aesthetic.
These two market illusions gave rise to a fatal mistake
on the part of those who were then thinking that the
separation of urban music and rural music was at last
consolidated. As a result of this many people took the stance
of rejecting all music production from the interior of the
country. In Rio Grande do Sul, for example, right in the
Sixties, people were very clear about the distinction in style of
the different types of music. This reference to the southernmost
Brazilian State is certainly indispensable to this work. It is
felt that this State was the first scenario where one could
clearly verify the co-existence of diverse types of music, and

31
where production was not -- until that time – affected by
aesthetic likes and prejudices.
The standardization of taste arising from an aesthetic
preference almost always unleashes an explicit manifestation
about that which does not meet its specifications. Yet
whenever the preferences of the several parties are maintained,
co-existence of different things in the same category of listeners
leads to a cultural enrichment of the society where this co-
existence continues.
Monteiro Lobato, a Brazilian journalist and writer,
who devoted all his life to the exaltation of “caipira” values
in the regional culture of the State of Sao Paulo, was the
inspirer of numerous characters in the cinema, theatre,
literature, and even marketing. But one of these characters
became transformed into a stereotype. And because of this, the
writer, who was immortalized for revealing, promoting and
improving the native values of this regional culture, would end
up producing unconsciously, contrary to the very objectives of
the project, the pejorative meaning of the term “caipira”.
By the creation of the character Jeca-Tatu, precisely in
order to propagate the idea of change, Monteiro Lobato would
end up subverting the idealization of a human being who,
living in a state of misery, discovers one day, that in order to
change, he must enroll in the ranks of progress and well-
being. The character became known all over the country
because Jeca-Tatu was used in a famous publicity campaign
for a tonic wine, “Biotônico Fontoura”, recommended for

32
combating mental weakness, psychological low spirits and
physical anemia.
“Jeca-Tatu” was a character created to disseminate the
idea of contrast between backwardness and progress. Or,
again, to call attention to the necessity of apprenticeship and
re-education if a person wants to change culturally and
socially. But “Jeca-Tatu” became consolidated as a
stereotyped character. This happened because he stood for a
pattern of backwardness that needed to be changed. Of course,
it was a pattern that was linked intrinsically to the Brazilian
rural environment at that time. Soon, a conclusion, also
stereotyped, was drawn from the idea that “if the rural
environment was backward and needed changing, then it was
good not to be in the rural environment…”
Not always is the objective of the solution of a problem
well understood if the “image” which represents it is itself not
well defined. Just as a description of a reality, however faithful
it may be, does not always result in a positive “image”. Even
though the effort of cultural valorization is transformed into a
gigantesque work of consolidation of the image itself.
In the case of Brazilian culture it has been like that.
The constant comparison with other realities, perhaps because
of their more advanced development, always brings on a
natural sensation of “inferiority”. This results in a desire to
be much nearer the other than with the reality it is being
compared with.

33
 The caipira element, arising from basic influences in
the interior of the State of Sao Paulo becoming culture, was
always the principal ingredient of the cultural enrichment of
the region.
Meanwhile the capital of the State was becoming a
cosmopolitan city, due to a convergence of people of diverse
origins, customs and European-influenced artistic production.
As a result people came to look upon the interior as
secondary. Though the term “caipira” had been a sign of
authenticity it now came to be also a reference of
backwardness.
It should be remembered that the campaign elaborated
by Monteiro Lobato clearly showed that for anyone to change
and flee from misery and backwardness it was necessary to
leave behind every habit that made him a backward person.
He must change his attitudes. He must learn to live according
to standards of hygiene, organization, and culture,
appropriate for progress. This is what the Monteiro Lobato
character managed to do when he abandoned his primitive
way of life.
However, when he adopted a posture centered on
progress and by progress changed completely his life and the
life of his family, Jeca-Tatu” disqualified his own origin. This
disqualification, evidenced by the confrontation of attitudes
(before and after) made it clear that the change occurred under
the influence of progress. Now, progress was in the capital of
the State, in its cosmopolitan character, in its cultural
pluralism and not in the monolithic culture of the interior,

34
which as the diffusion process showed was the cause of
backwardness.
Actually, the absence of a later project, pointing out
that the change had happened due to a courageous, typically
caipira attitude, helped the stereotype to overcome the
character and give the term “caipira” pejorative connotations.
In order to understand this representation better, we must go
to Rio Grande do Sul and see in that ambience what is the
significance of their term “grosso”.
“Grosso” in spite of being associated with some other
cultural values, means the same thing as “caipira”. Therefore
they are synonyms. Without taking into account the
geographical distance that separates the States of Sao Paulo
and Rio Grande do Sul, the term “grosso” and
“caipira” mean exactly the same thing. Cultural origins,
ethnic formation, all these differences have not got the least
importance. What matters is the sense of nativism and
cultural authenticity.
The difference between the two terms, nevertheless, is in
the way people in Rio Grande do Sul understand the
“grosso” attribution as something associated with
spontaneity, authenticity, and the trademark of a human
being who possesses the traits of his place of birth. A “grosso”
person, especially in the case of a man, is an authentic, brave,
determined, sincere, objective person who is, above all, faithful
to his own roots. So whoever is truly “grosso” likes to be and
to be noted as such.

35
 But you cannot say a person born in the State of Sao
Paulo and likewise endowed with the same qualities of
authenticity, sincerity, objectivity, courage and committed to
his roots that he likes to be called “caipira”. Nevertheless, in
the last few years there have been very great efforts, principally
by the major television networks, to change this concept. After
all, this region of Brazil has become the second biggest market
in the country for goods and services. The first is this same
interior added to that of its capital.
There is yet another character to be mentioned who
comes from another region of this country. He inhabits the
interior of the State of Minas Gerais. The “mineiro” as he is
called, has much of “caipira” and something of “grosso”.
As regards the first aspect of the comparison, he is much like
the inhabitant of the State of Sao Paulo, in being of an
apparent physical fragility, by his personal characteristic of
docility when dealing with other persons, and by his wary and
sagacious air so common to both. In the second aspect of the
comparison, he is somewhat like the inhabitant of Rio
Grande does Sul, principally by his frankness and by the
authenticity of his verbal expressions.
The three characters have one common trait: a
predilection for regional music, which they especially prize and
perform as a way of holding on to the roots of their culture.
All of the three regions have always been rich in the
generation of values connected with popular music. Rio
Grande do Sul, however, during many years stood firm as the

36
most differentiated region of the country in respect of the
production of these values.
In the Forties and Fifties there was the so-called
“explosion” of medium waves on Brazilian radio. Generally,
from the time of the second term of office of President Getulio
Vargas, when the concession of medium wave radio
frequencies took in practically the whole country, a dual
phenomenon occurred in music promotion. Firstly, over a
large part of the national territory people in many places had
contact only with foreign music. Secondly, because regional
music gained in the radio its main means of becoming still
more popular and consolidating itself in people’s taste.
Rio Grande do Sul, the native State of the above-
mentioned president, was eminently privileged by the
concession of broadcasting stations. Already densely
populated, that State benefited greatly from its level geography
without many physical obstacles and, above all, by having an
audience made up of inhabitants many of whom was
descendants of European immigrants. Divided into a large
number of municipalities, it was the region best rewarded in
this sector.
Of course other States also got their radio stations.
But Rio Grande do Sul, more than any other could, due to
its audience and music production characteristics, use this
fundamental means of reinforcing its standard of regional
music. And with the radio, during thirty years, more or less,
Rio Grande do Sul lived the best moments, the degradation,
and the redemption of its musical values.

37
 Previous to the radio, it was the custom of the
inhabitants of that State to listen to music, sing and play
some instrument at parties and family reunions. Or, even,
just participate in events where live music was the most
appropriate means of preserving the social custom and the
contact with their musical roots.
The coming of radio offered a new way to preserve
these customs and made possible a more permanent contact
with such music. However, the use of radio program time
requires a lot of recordings. For this reason and because
regional music titles were scarce, the broadcasting stations
became targets for products of doubtful quality.
Much material, dressed up as regional music, was
really nothing more than casual composition just to fill space.
Anyone who was suitably and well publicized became an easy
success.
The big dilemma of Rio Grande do Sul, of its music,
of its artists, in the Fifties and Sixties was principally the
abundance of recordings that had not the least justification in
regional culture. This was why one of the most representative
composers and singers of the region, Pedro Raimundo, came to
be outshone by another more or less contemporary artist:
Teixeirinha. The latter, thanks to the careful administration
of his career, always presented a list of very up-to-date records,
unlike others who only recorded sporadically.
It happens that Teixeirinha was not what could be
called a composer and singer of the legitimate music of Rio

38
Grande do Sul. Very popular, initially among the ordinary
workers of the capital and medium-sized towns of that State,
he began making a kind of music that was characterized by a
sentimental appeal of widespread repercussion, principally in
bars and houses of prostitution. After that, and being a
success before audiences in the entire region, he began to
promote shows in cinemas and clubs in the interior. Very
soon he would reign absolutely as the principal artist in the
south of Brazil. He would be so until his death, when he
enjoyed popularity even in other countries of Latin America
and Africa and in Portugal.
But Teixeirinha would always be accused of
misrepresenting the regional music of Rio Grande do Sul.
Because of him or because of his success a large number of
rtists like him would fill and fill space in local radio
programs, and disfigure more and more the old regional music
of Rio Grande do Sul.
In the Sixties and Seventies, the youth of Rio Grande
do Sul were, for the first time, interested in international
music movements. Regardless of where they were born,
whether in the interior or in the capital, these young people
attached great importance to what was happening abroad.
The Hippie Movement and everything that was
produced from then on, stimulated interest. Likewise, groups
of international repercussion like the Beatles or the tardy
presence of Elvis Presley motivated the involvement of the
region’s young people. In practice, this interest and
involvement almost completely separated the young people of

39
the interior and the capital of Rio Grande do Sul from the
regional music produced in that very State.
Due to the increasing interest in the music pouring
forth out of the media, and also immersed in the “bossa
nova” and “jovem guarda” national movements, these young
people expended themselves listening to stuff far distance from
their cultural roots. We must also take into account that the
expansion of television since the middle Sixties contributed
enormously towards the mixture and confusion that was
produced throughout the world and in Brazil. This would
begin to baffle audiences as regards the aesthetic authenticity
and good taste of what they were hearing and watching.
Thanks principally to television, to the Brazilian
popular music festivals, and to material in the press dealing
with the ways this cultural production might take, these
matters were discussed even in the interior of Rio Grande do
Sul. It was probably the release of the film, Tropicalia, in the
territory of the Novos Bahianos music group, that also
brought the reality of Rio Grande do Sul towards a
redemption of its own origin. By the way, it would be
practically impossible to speak of such music trends without
speaking of the Novos Bahianos, without speaking of
Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Maria Betania,
and all the others who contributed to the formation of
Tropicalism.
The purists will not like us to allude to this matter.
“How so” they will say, “What has the Novos Bahianos and
Tropicalism to do with the regional music of Rio Grande do

40
Sul?” Well, it is very simple. The diffusion and the taste for
Tropicalism right at the time of debate and contestation and
the Hippie Movement would light a flame and rescue the
authentic origins of the different regional cultures. Tropicalism
itself is a kind of cultural redemption. This spirit of the
times, therefore, is the background to the launching of the
foundations of Nativism or the movement for the native music
of Rio Grande do Sul.
This regression vogue, which reached its highpoint in
the Seventies and Eighties, was very important for the rebirth
of native music, just as it was equally important for a
reawakening of the regional dream. However, totally bereft of
interest on the part of the big media, it became circumscribed
more as a specific something of a distant region than as a
movement of national ambit.
All along, a regional music of, shall we say, national
dimension, continued be produced in the region as it was in
other regions of the country including the interior of the State
of Sao Paulo. It must not be forgotten, of course, that other
States were also producing. These States, such as Goias,
Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Parana,
and Santa Catarina have to be included in the music
production scenario. It was, principally, thanks to a specific
type of audience, that the production spread and became
widely known in all the national territory.
This contribution is owed especially to the truckers, to
the truck drivers who, since the Seventies came up from the
southern States to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. They

41
brought the mode of country style music called” without
frontiers”. This style was so-called due to the cassette tapes
that included music of other composers and not only composers
from those regions the truckers came from.
The listeners, especially those who were constantly
driving throughout the interior and State capitals of Brazil
were not only acclaiming a personal taste for such recordings,
they were also emissaries of the generalization of the style.
Everything that up to then was known as sertaneja began to
show other reflexes. Some of them, incidentally, had no
historical or cultural reference whatever. The Seventies and
Eighties, mainly the latter, had an abundance of
incorporations of kinds that were very different to any that
had been heard and classified until then.
We also owe to the truckers – those freight carriers
from the south – the re-interpretation of the music genre
marked, according to some, by an accentuated “kitsch” bad
taste. Leaving aside any exaggeration, it has to be admitted
that the diffusion of this music by this specific contingent
contributed greatly to the dissemination of a certain standard
of taste. From the angle of the predominant taste, of course,
there was a preference, of some influence, for music recorded by
Teixeirinha and Pedro Raimundo. After all, they were all
from the same region.
And so, truck traffic beyond Sao Paulo and Rio de
Janeiro increasingly going northward and northeastward,
would bring the same music taste to other regions also. More
so, it would bring it into contact with other genres which

42
belong historically to the so-called “culture center” of the
country. These also were culture genres, in every way connected
to the cultural origins of the Brazilian north and northeast.
We are not speaking, of course, of the aesthetic-type links
between them. In this connection, it should be mentioned that
the fact they were classified as “kitsch music” always kept
these genres far from the cultural programs on television and
radio, at least until the Seventies.
If, on the one hand, truck traffic, by means of its
central character, the truck driver himself, brought all these
genres together, on another it made a mixing. During all the
Eighties, while the first physical contacts were being made
between the American Middle West and the interior of Sao
Paulo, other events were happening which involved sertaneja,
or regional, music in the Brazilian center-south. The first of
these events is the rise of Nativism in Rio Grande do Sul. It
appeared in the middle of a wave of non-conformism with the
distortions of the local music genre. But there was a problem
due to it being a movement of a more political complexion
than one resulting from spontaneous cultural currents. It was
political because the initiative was tied to the decision of
individuals acting alone or in groups. Being like this, in less
than a decade it had lost all its effect.
Under pressure by happenings of such magnitude, by
the necessity of innovating, and by the rise of artists until then
unknown, the television programs, much more than radio
programs, started to give space to this genre of music.
Naturally it is not difficult to conclude that the new sertaneja

43
music that originated in the State of Sao Paulo would begin
to gain ground.
Numerous names have become known from the
Eighties on and it can be seen that the greater part of them
were influenced by American country music. The commercial
and agricultural exchange due to the orange trade, the
cowhands’ festivals, the sertaneja music meetings, and
everything that was happening transnational was a motive for
increasing this cultural contact.
It is very true that this influence was far from that
which prevailed in the Seventies and Eighties when Brazilian
artists were singing their songs in English. Now the influence
has become one of the styles. And although singing in
Portuguese, they have all begun to seem more like singers of
American Middle West music than of Brazilian caipira
music.
About this time, shops selling American country
articles began to appear. The former wide-brimmed, dark and
battered felt hats worn by cowhands began to be substituted
by the well-known cowboy hats. There are boots with high
heels and pointed toes, big leather belts, showy buckles,
fringed jackets, and countless items which have transformed
the clothing of cattle ranch workers into something never
before worn in any region of Brazil. While the contacts, the
parties, the festivals, the fairs, and all the commercial
similarity were happening, without anyone realizing it, the
former cowhand festivals were also changing into authentic
American rodeos.

44
 It has been through these events in which, since the
beginning, American horse riders and breakers have
participated, that the acculturated music has spread and
draws elect audiences in town and country. This happened
first in the State of Sao Paulo. Subsequently the music spread
throughout the entire country, crossed the borders and
nowadays is heard from the Argentine pampas to the
Peruvian mountains, from the dry brushwood of Brazil’s
northeast to the Paraguayan marshes.
When this music genre is heard, there is cultural
contact and the effects become ingredients of the contact so that
people are enriched still more, without losing their identity.
The commercial pretext that gave rise to the enlargement of a
fruit market and opened the doors of a different country to the
American country style, contrary to what could be foreseen,
ensured the emergence of a new music genre in Brazil. This
genre may look like the other but it can be said that it is as
Brazilian as the rest of the country’s genres.

45
Part Two

46
47
 Brazilian pop-music in the
70s of XX Century

All the outward signs are that music (as much as

TV, literature and the cinema) occupies a prominent position
in the importation of canned entertainment which, at least in
recent times, has ravaged Brazilian culture. This “canned
work”, under no obligation except equating low cost with
mass sales to make rapid, high and increasing profits,
generally becomes identified with significant segments of the
population.
Such business, without suffering the least legal
restraint, besides being incompatible with the financial
capacity of its consumers, makes still more difficult the
situation of the national composer and artist whose
opportunities of work are thus diminished.
When it is stated that the public identified with
“canned music” does not have a compatible financial capacity,
one is putting forward, by reason of the excessive number of
releases and considering the characteristics of the record
consumer (according to data supplied by the record
companies), the hypothesis of a consumption which is not
matched to the acquisitive power of the consumers.
As will be seen in the following, the record market
possesses particular characteristics which, by their nature,

48
establish a controversial consumption scenario, in which the
consumer is what least interests the record companies. This is
because for them, the consumer is no more than sort of
finishing a process whose touchstone has been the
incorporation of foreign values.
The root of a good part of these distortions is not
difficult to find since it lies in the system of “packages”
adopted by the record companies. This is a peculiar kind of
mercantile transaction, which mirrors other types of cultural
importation and for a long time the record companies have
found in it a way of reinforcing the contents of a product on
sale, in the name of fashion or the tastes of the times.
The record market has changed within this panorama,
which is foreign to Brazilian culture, and one thing is certain:
the recording industry develops pertinent marketing which,
thanks to the evolution of its sales, has made it a continuous
means for the diffusion of imported values.
This incorporation, in its turn, begins with the
diffusion and propaganda of the recorded music, using a
communication complex where the broadcasting station is the
link with the entire chain. Examples shoot out from various
branches, demonstrating the surprising strength of canned
music. In 1976, for example, the music most played on the
so-called hit parades, by the broadcasting stations in Sao
Paulo, was “She’s my girl”. The singer, the author himself,
was Mauricio Alberto from Rio de Janeiro, and made known
to the public under the pseudonym, Morris Albert.

49
 When the possibility of full time activity in the
University of Sao Paulo occurred, nothing seemed more
opportune than the development of a research project in the
pop music field. However an insufficiency of primary data to
make a survey of the situation possible meant that new forms
of investigation had to be sought in order to obtain data able
to redefine the truth of the matter.
It was for this reason that some research carried out by
students since 1979 (in the Record Production / Audiovisual
Resources discipline) were availed of, in order to establish the
evolution of the market under study.
As will be seen, the results, up to a certain point,
coincided with suspicions that the phonographic industry
contributes to the incorporation of foreign values into
Brazilian culture. Of course, nothing can be said regarding
the consequences of this incorporation for in the long run only
time can tell what they’ll be. Nevertheless the high rate of
repetition of foreign music, of versions and imported styles
(typically rock) helps us to foresee the future result of all this
sort of “imitation” of foreign values. From a rather personal
point of view, I would venture to say that foreign music will
not be as harmful as the mannerisms brought in by the music
genre in question.
And speaking of mannerisms, what immediately
comes to mind are the numerous bands we find today in the
Rio–Sao Paulo circuit whose great attraction is a certain
form of representation. They don’t appear to be Brazilian at
all, although the music, the artists, the performers and the

50
scenarios are national. Incredible though it may appear, it
was not the genre that made them popular but their way of
presenting the genre to the public. This was certainly not
modeled on national examples.

The reality

If you take into account the number of records released

monthly and compare it with the number that reach the
hoped-for success and further, if you verify the percentage of
foreign music and versions among them, you will see that the
Brazilian market is not the most promising for anyone who
desires a career as a performer or singer of popular music.
Although big and apparently in good shape, it looks
as if the national phonographic market is somehow
unconcerned with any other evolution beyond that of profits
which are sizeable and accrue in large amounts to the record
companies themselves.
As we know, the musician himself has little control in
this field and is at the mercy of the accounting of the music
entrepreneurs.
Another aspect that should be taken into account
concerns the origin of this market which is controlled by the
sound entrepreneurs, the record companies. The majority of

51
these represent foreign interests in Brazil. Warner (WEA),
Odeon, CBS, RCA, Philips, for example, are widely
represented in Brazil and sometimes by more than one label.
Since the interests of these companies are purely commercial,
the utilization of the creative and innovative talent of
Brazilian artists is difficult since it is the genre labels and the
popular taste that prevail in commercial competition.
The record companies have never given any kind of
incentive to the production of typically national music, because
an investment in this field, besides being commercially risky,
would be quite costly and profits would not flow in with the
customary speed as in the case of their usual releases. For this
reason, the path that has to be followed by typically national
composers and performers is very difficult especially in the case
of bands.
It is no secret that the record companies have not in the
past been interested in bands because of the difficulties of
promoting them and the high cost. But now, in these changing
times and with the dissemination of rock there is a place for
bands. On the other hand, it may be seen that the bands that
play genuine Brazilian music continue not to have recordings.
In addition to the above, another matter, also of vital
importance for the stability of the record market, has been
operating unaltered for decades: record promotion on the
radio. And when it is said that it has been operating
unaltered year after year, reference is being made to the fact
that programs are structured so as to support releases and
promote sales of new titles indiscriminately.

52
 In some ways, record and radio have marched together,
historically, to such an extent that it may be supposed that
radio broadcasting companies have an understanding with the
recording industry. In other words, it could be said that it is
very probable that if one of them is studied, the findings would
concern the other as well.

The problem

In this panorama of multiple and growing influences,

besides the known material data here discussed, respecting the
record market, another matter, of a subjective nature, emerges
whatever the circumstances in which titles are imported. This
matter does not arise from importation in itself but from the
ambience it creates. In other words, it is the same as saying,
for example, that a foreign music record, recorded again in
Brazil might have little influence on the consumer.
However, recording the title is not the only aspect since
the record producer is part of a whole context of radio
broadcasting. For example, the title goes on to be heard on
radio by numerous prospective, latent or potential purchasers
who, through attitudes common to all, reveal another
important phenomenon, that is, mannerisms for relating to
the music.

53
 It is not easy to define these mannerisms. That is so
because as you know, it involves attitudes peculiar to a certain
kind of audience, the sort of gestures they make and the
postures they adopt even the way they listen to music.
For them, listening to music is more than just
listening, strictly speaking, one can observe that in the young
segments of the audience (probably the greater part of the
audience) be it in “discotheques”, record shops or in the
auditoriums of radio or TV, the consumer of recently recorded
music customarily behaves like his idols, wearing clothes and
accessories that class him with all the other followers of the
same musical “genre”.
And so a relationship arises which is not likely to go
away and which is of real importance in the study of the
phenomenon called “hit parades”. This relationship concerns
three fundamental relationships. These are (a) between record
company and radio broadcaster; (b) between radio broadcaster
and record consumer; and (c) between record company and
record consumer.
As far as can be seen, it is in the relationship between
record company and radio broadcaster that divulgence of a
new release starts, considering that no other means of record
promotion seems to be more effective or more utilized than the
radio. In the same way, it is the relationship that exists
between the radio and the respective audience that guarantees
the efficiency of diffusion on the radio so that every release is
preceded by a series of playing, and these make the music
more accessible to the public.

54
 Finally the links between the record company and the
public are always made by the artist or by the radio
broadcaster and they establish the commercialization space for
the record and ensure that it is bought.
Typically, in any one of the above contacts, all of them
aimed at selling records, other aspects (that are not just about
the record itself) are given prominence. These aspects
emphasize gestures, clothes, postures and vocal expressions. In
other words this means that the record market has a
substantial dependence on all these attributes.
The mannerisms we referred to have a lot to do with
them. It is like highlighting a whole set of non-musical
symbols, which, however, as well as the music, determine the
survival of a genre since they are manifestly a big identity
factor between record consumers and the respective artists.
In this connection, there are three problems to be
resolved. The first concerns the relationship between the record
company and the radio broadcaster and more needs to be
known about this. What we know is that there has been little
change in the music diffusion programs, the so-called hit
parades in relation to music programs in general.
It might even be said that the structure of these
programs passed from radio to television unaltered, in the
form that they have been presented for decades. A second
problem, related to the interaction between the radio
broadcaster and the record consumer requires an urgent
solution. What really is the purpose of the hit parades? Do

55
they just give an indication of the preferences of the listeners,
or could they be understood as merely an instrument of new
record divulgence.
Lastly a third problem, which is in the area of the
relationship between the record company and the record
consumer, requires more appropriate evaluation. About his,
to what extent does the artist act out, (for the record
company), exclusively, his role as performer. Or, to what
extent (for the consumer) does he become confused with his
interpretation and give rise to an ambience of complete identity
in the world of staging, consuming and profit (for the record
company).

The research

In 1979 an opportunity presented itself of being

involved simultaneously with two disciplines: Record
Production and Audiovisual Resources, given in the
Publishing graduation course and Structure of the
Phonographic Market given in the Communication Science
post-graduation course.
This opportunity made it possible to carry out
continuous research on releases and record audiences in Sao
Paulo, and discern, although somewhat indistinctly, way of
determining the true structure which, besides serving the

56
interest of the recording companies, serves to keep unaltered
the involvement in which a new record is released and
acquired.
At that time, a systematic search was begun for
empirical data in order to elaborate a true picture giving the
structure of the record market, as it really is. For what
generally occurs is a tendency to accept as correct and without
questioning the data proffered by the record companies
themselves.
In the event, simply by following the evolution of the
hit parades and comparing sales in the city of Sao Paulo it
was shown that both have a lot in common, however an
inverse relation came to light: first there is divulgence on the
hit parade in order to, subsequently, sell the record. In other
words, this establishes a manipulation of the market.
It was, therefore, the above-mentioned manipulation
that contributed to the choice of our proposed theme. Once the
project was accepted, we looked for a form of continuous
research on this business where the titles of the recordings
change, the artists change but the structure of production,
diffusion and commercialization remains the same. Basically,
since the appearance of the “Morris Albert” recordings, we
have seen a transformation of the market, mainly as regards
foreign music.
Since then and up to the present, the continuous
inclusion of imported titles has undergone a change concerning
the content of the music. Previously, the versions and

57
adaptations as well as the foreign music produced here in
Brazil, just tried to distinguish a liking for music coming
from abroad. Today, this class of music has given place to
foreign music, strictly speaking, and to Brazilian. We now
see that the imported (principally in respect of the genre in
question of both) exerts much greater external influence on
Brazilian music than before.
Then with the initial data to hand, collected since the
second semester of 1979, we attempted to evaluate the
evolution of the phonographic market by delineating the
amount of importation as well as the alternatives that remain
for the Brazilian artist who is more and more pressured by
external influence. A case in point, for example, was that so
talked-about event the Rock in Rio Festival which was held
in Brazil when we were finishing our research project. A
craze of recent times is the importation of groups from abroad
and, if Rock in Rio was not enough; there was the explosive
promotion of another imported group, the Menudo, who gave
numerous shows all over Brazil.
Generally speaking, the data collecting begun in
1979, was recently resumed in order to carry out the present
project. With reference to the hit parades in particular, the
research indicated that radio is linked to the record market
and is its principal means of promotion. Although the data
obtained may show just the day by day facts of the radio-
record company relation, the sales of new records at various
urban locations evidences that they come precisely after the hit
parades.

58
 More than this, the promotion of records does not stop
here. It goes further, with all the means available including
discotheques, shows and other kinds of spectacle like “Rock
in Rio”. This not only serves to divulge new music, but
becomes the great promotional mainspring of a certain genre
very much in vogue at the time, and it is also useful for
promoting other recordings, other artists etc.
The data collected served to demonstrate that
importation in the field of pop music is frequent and is
harmful to the national artist. It reduces his space which was
never adequate and it is spreading throughout this whole
music genre, and contaminating Brazilian culture in an
undesirable, artificial and highly compromising way.
Rock in Rio, for example, which was held at the end
of the current research, presented an opportunity for new
research on the records played on the hit parades. The same
picture was revealed as before on researching new releases and
sales in the record shops. This new research in 1983 was
carried out in the same locations as those decided on in 1979.
Also in order to characterize the panorama of radio playing
on the hit parades better still, we specifically obtained the total
number of playing of foreign music and of Brazilian music on
radio programs in Sao Paulo.

59
Controversial market

Since the renunciation of Janio Quadros and the

political turbulence aggravated by a coup d’état in 1964, the
recording industry and other sectors of the economy have
entered into serious depression. This depression, in its turn,
ended up by reflecting on the quality of the product offered by
the record companies who, among other measures in order to
adapt to the new times, withdrew the classical records from
their stocks, mainly because these are the most expensive to
keep in stock and whose sales, traditionally, involve costly
and complex promotion (Cornea, 1977, 4-7). In addition to
this and other typical ingredients of the economic crisis, there
would be a retraction of the record market (as a result, so to
speak, of the crisis) a censorship factor and an adhesion
factor.
Regarding the censorship factor, because of the laws”
set up to guarantee the dictatorship, not everything was
permitted. The registration of countless manifestations was
hindered or they had to be reformulated. Of course, the record
did not escape. No other times were as abundant in restriction
of liberty as the years of those last decades. As regards music,
as in the entire cultural panorama, the censorship had a
generalized action and was imposed without any criteria. If
indeed any criteria could be established for this kind of
activity. Some time ago, the magazine Som Tres wrote that
“the cutting and prohibiting criteria are variable and ample,

60
guaranteeing to all factions democratically, the “right of
inclusion in the don’t do list” (Bahiana, 1979, 58-63).
The adhesion factor, very prevalent in periods of
repression, when there are attempts to put the communication
media at the service of arbitrary regimes, could not but be
present in Brazil during this time. As can still be
remembered, during the Medici period various bands and
artists emerged who, even individually, sang the marvels of
this country. This was the case, for example, of the duo
Antonio Carlos and Jocafe, with their records of “patriotic
exaltation”. No other word can describe this kind of
material, except “adhesion”. Moreover, when explaining this
“other side” of artistic creation, one has to agree with the
author who wrote about “composers who think that the only
duty of an artist is to fawn upon or flatter, the public taste”,
inasmuch as “this is the best way to delude the public and not
to respect them” (Campos, 1974, 168).
Perhaps it was a close connection between censorship,
the economic recession and artistic mediocrity that limited
creativity and obliged the public to be satisfied and accept
peacefully what, since the 60s was offered them. At the same
time, the sales structure previously set up which was mainly
based on radio programs (and more recently, with the support
of television music programs), acts as real market support,
where repetition and insistence on the same title, lead
audiences to practically learn by heart everything they hear as
a kind of consumer self convincing, directed towards the final
purchase of certain records.

61
 Besides, it should be said the music repetition strategy
which starts in radio broadcast programs, is a means of
divulging the music product but it also serves to make known
the titles which are insistently repeated. As can be seen in
Tables I and II, the percentages of foreign music played in
AM and FM broadcasts in Sao Paulo city are alarming. It
is evident that these percentages are very significant, are not
unconnected with this.

TABLE I

1979: FM Radio Broadcasters (Sao Paulo)

Rates of Brazilian and foreign music

Broadcasters Brazilian music Foreign music

Bandeirantes 52.4 44.1

Difusora 25.7 73.6
Excelsior 25.4 74.5
Jovem Pan 24.3 74.8
Record 24.5 75.3
Transamerica 27.3 69.5

Average 29.9 % 68.6 %

As it is seen, with the exception of Globo Radio,

whose total playing give an index of 92.5 % of Brazilian
music, other broadcasters are between 50.1 % (Difusora) and
89.3 % (Record). Even so, these figures take into account
both AM and FM frequencies.

62
 TABLE II

1979: FM Radio Broadcasters (Sao Paulo)

Rates of Brazilian and foreign music

Broadcasters Brazilian music Foreign music

America 69.6 30.4

Bandeirantes 80.2 19.8
Capital 70.9 27.6
Cultura 50.8 48.1
Difusora 50.1 49.4
Eldorado 51.6 46.9
Excelsior 52.4 47.5
Gazeta 83.4 14.5
Globo 92.5 7.4
Jovem Pan 57.6 41.7
Mulher 84.2 9.2
Record 89.3 9.7
Tupi 86.6 11.9

Average 70.7 % 29.3 %

As it is seen, one frightening percentage of foreign

music is played: 75.3 % (Record). The minimum as also can
be observed is Bandeirantes, with 44.1 %. When any of these
percentages is compared with the “redundancy percentage” of
music played in the same program, the data is more curious.
As seen in Table III, Antena Um by itself, in FM
broadcasts is responsible for 82.1 % of repetition of foreign
music, against 17.9 % of Brazilian music.

63
 It can also be seen in this table and what is more
serious, that there is a numerical and irreparable superiority
of these indexes of repetition of foreign music. This is the same
as saying that redundancy playing was the way that
radiobroadcasters found to get around the legislation
respecting restriction of abuses due to the super-valorization of
foreign music.
TABLE III

1979: FM Radio Broadcasters (Sao Paulo)

Playing time in Brazilian and foreign music

Broadcasters Brazilian music Foreign music

Antena Um 17.9 82.1

Bandeirantes 53.5 46.5
Difusora 38.1 61.9
Excelsior 11.9 88.1
Jovem Pan 25.0 75.0
Transamérica 23.4 76.6

Average 28.3 % 71.7 %

From these findings, we ventured to doubt the eventual

criteria used for giving value to national principles and
material, which are built into current legislation aimed at
guaranteeing a minimum frequency for Brazilian music in
radio programs.
Of course resources available for producing programs
where the law is circumvented are at the disposal of any

64
broadcaster. For the same reason, it was feared that the
present research work would lead along merely utilitarian
paths full of statistical findings when the problem is very
different.
One must agree with the principle that “bourgeois
social science has studied mass communication in a systematic
and utilitarian way, which contributes to data
manipulation,” which can always have a different conclusion
rather than that wished for (Gonzales & Mayor, 1976,
55).
In truth, a project like the present one, offers evidence
of a practice that can be measured and at the same time,
denounces the connivance of the inspectors. The losses, which
cannot fail to occur, continue to be debited to the account of
Brazil’s own culture, with no hope of solution.

A market panorama

When carrying out the first market research in 1979,

it was found, among the other things, that the main center of
record sales in Sao Paulo city was the central region itself
comprising Sao Joao, Duque de Caxias, and Ipiranga
avenues as well as the streets adjacent to Republic Square,
namely Barao de Itapetininga and 7 de Abril. As may be
seen in Table IV, 33.8 % of the volume was sold in this
region and this included 20.8 % of the total of LP sales. The

65
two densest regions next, in terms of sales were Osasco and
Pinheiros, respectively, with 18.2 % and 14.3 % of record
sales.

TABLE IV

1979: Rates of record sales by product specification

and commercial area

Area LP Cmpt Tape Dbl Alb Total

CENTRO 20.8 6.5 5.2 1.3 -- 33.8

OSASCO 7.1 8.5 2.6 -- -- 18.2

PINHEIROS 9.1 -- 3.9 -- 1.3 14.3

MALLS 10.3 -- -- -- 10.3

JARDINS 5.2 -- 2.6 -- -- 7.8

ITAIM 5.2 2.6 -- -- -- 7.8

S. AMARO 6.5 1.3 -- -- -- 7.8

Total 64.2 18.9 14.3 1.3 1.3 100

Probably due to the continuing economic crisis, the

research work carried out in November and December of
1984, as can be seen in Table V, has the data inverted. The
existing record shops in the urban shopping centers of

66
Iguatemi, Ibirapuera, Morumbi and Eldorado, indicate that
28.8 % of record sales is affected in these places. And
although the central region still represents 18.6 % of sales,
the Augusta and Jardins streets area follows with 17.3 %
and Itaim-Bibi with 13.9 %.
This is the same as saying that the season is important
since it was before Christmas and the New Year, when
purchases of these products tend to be greater. The data shows
that in the regions indicated more money still circulated in
spite of the crisis.
TABLE V
1984: Percentages of record sales by product
specification and commercial area
Area LP Cmpt Tape Dbl Albm Total

CENTRO 6.4 3.2 5.3 3.7 -- 18.6

OSASCO 2.3 1.4 -- 2.9 -- 6.6

PINHEIROS 1.4 0.6 -- 3.5 -- 5.5

MALLS 18.2 -- 3.3 -- 7.3 28.8

JARDINS 12.1 -- 2.9 -- 2.3 17.3

ITAIM 8.5 -- 4.5 -- 0.9 13.9

S. AMARO 3.7 1.8 2.1 1.1 0.6 9.3

Total 52.6 7.0 18.1 11.2 11.1 100

It is clear that the record is a superfluous product.

Principally when it is a time of crisis, unemployment, and
devaluation of currency. Perhaps because of this, the season is
also representative of this type of acquisition and of the

67
attributes we are trying to establish, as peculiar to a certain
part of the population. As it is known, the months of
November and December preceded the “Rock in Rio
Festival”. In order to prove, still much more, what it is
intended to establish in relation to music being used as a
means of generalizing a “genre” of doubtful origin, the role of
this event as a cohesion agent to bring together this “genre”,
particularly as it involved significant sections of the public,
should be stressed.
It is not intended to be critical only by the criterion
that the incorporation of foreign music be it by the recordings
which are sold nowadays, be it because it is a genre atypical to
Brazilian culture, and does not represent a spontaneous
cultural ebullience. The criticism we intend to make involves
more details especially because this musical genre or the foreign
music itself has become a commercial tool.
In truth, “it is in unfavorable judgments that it is
necessary to be still more prudent, since besides being
substantially ephemeral and fragile, human opinions are not
devoid of passion” (Cande, 1970, 248). Moreover, no matter
what taste or color, as the ancients used to say, the role of the
new music should be given prominence.
This music which emerged in the last six years (after
much experience with “foreignisms”, adapted and translated)
became a neutralizing element to lessen social tensions. It
seems to be a typical national anesthetic against the chronic
“no future” outlook, especially for youths. It is worth saying
that the lower quality of the most part of the compositions

68
offered the opportunity to divert attention from what was
really happening in the country.
Looked at in this way, it is not difficult to imagine
that this whole situation is at the service of someone or some
cause. Voluntarily or involuntarily, whether you want it or
not, this “social anesthesia” by means of “Rock in Rio”
festivals or the very boring “Menudo” shows, corroborates a
situation of total external dominance. It is as if admitting
that “in our times imperialism makes use of artifices to hide
its real intentions and the true aim of its ideology” (Grachev
& Yermochkin).
An evidence of the earthquake provoked by the rock
festival is associated with the music played on radio
broadcasting stations in Sao Paulo city before the festival was
held. As can be verified in Table VI, 65, of 6090 playing
on the radio in the period between December 1984 and
January 1985 just before that festival, 69.45 % were foreign
music and 30.55 % were Brazilian music.

TABLE VI

December 1984 – January 1985:

Sao Paulo Broadcasters’ music audience
Total of playing Foreign music Brazilian music

6,090 4,230 1,860

100 % 69.45 % 30.55 %

69
 Again we discover that the volume of “imported” is
far greater than that of Brazilian music. Worse than that, is
to see in Table VII, in only one day, at the same time as the
last days of “Rock in Rio”, the Radio Imprensa played
52.49 % of foreign music against 47.51 % of Brazilian
music.
It is worse because while the other previous findings
referred to a group of broadcasting stations, in a period of
more than 60 days, this one referred to a single broadcasting
station in only one day. It is not difficult to suppose, therefore,
that the facts testify to a situation very little favorable to
national values.

TABLE VII

January 1985:
Music Audience for Radio Imprensa, Sao Paulo
Total of playing Foreign music Brazilian music

261 137 124

100 % 52.49 % 47.51 %

70
The radio diffusion panorama

As can be seen in Table VIII, in 1979, only 58.3 %

of releases were national music. And this refers to records
produced in Brazil, so 41.7 % of them were records of foreign
music made in Brazil.
It is worth remembering that Brazilian labels like
Som Livre, Top Tape and WEA had more foreign releases
than Brazilian. Moreover, PolyGram, Polidor, GTA and
Phonogram released only foreign titles.
Accordingly, if you consider that the big sales of Som
Livre, for example, account for numerous releases, more than
50 % being foreign, it has to be concluded before anything else
that such importation is good business.
Now there is something else to point out. Som Livre is
a part of the Globo Television communication system, which
covers the majority of the major national events. “Rock in
Rio” was one of them. The communication media have
possibilities of diffusion much the same as in 1979. On the
one hand, the business efforts of this television network are
concerned with profits. On the other, they have to consider the
preferences of the greater part of their audience.

71
 TABLE VIII

Label % Foreign Brazilian Personal Other

SOM LIVRE 15.5 80 75 77 78

ODEON 14.2 35 107 111 31
RCA 9.1 -- 91 91 --
TOP-TAPE 7.1 36 35 40 31
PHILIPS 6.5 30 35 65 --
WEA 6.5 52 13 42 23
POLYGRAM 5.2 52 -- 36 16
COPACABANA 4.1 15 26 41 --
CBS 4.1 16 25 41 --
RGE 4.1 -- 41 41 --
CONTINENTAL 4.1 -- 41 41 --
CHANTECLER 2.6 13 13 26 --
K-TEL 2.6 13 13 -- 26
TAPECAR 2.6 13 13 13 13
YOUNG 2.6 10 16 -- 26
POLIDOR 1.3 13 -- 13 --
GTA 1.3 13 -- -- 13
PHONOGRAM 1.3 13 -- 13 --
SOM MAIOR 1.3 -- 13 13 --
ELDORADO 1.3 -- 13 -- 13
EMI 1.3 -- 13 -- 13
EPIC 1.3 13 -- 13 --

TOTAL 100 41.7 58.3 71.7 28.3

It is all a snowball effect, where promotion depends on

consumption and this is pressured according to what
determines tendencies, which, in their turn, arise from the
promotion of the products in the market. This is because this
intricate net depends fundamentally on an external support,
able to prove that record sales are determined by the radio, in
the so called hit parades.
A very interesting aspect, already evident as the time
of the first research as can be seen in Table IX, is that some

72
bands later on would obtain great notoriety. That was the
case of Queen who, considering the volume of records sold
during the second semester of 1979, alone was responsible for
6.9 % of sales. In this connection, Commodores, Rainbow
and Bee Gees along with singers like Barbara Streisand,
Patrick Diamond and Johnny Rivers already represented
about 41.7 % of foreign titles against only 58.3 % of
Brazilian ones.

TABLE IX

Singer/Composer Brazilian Foreigner

VARIOUS SINGERS 17.4 10.9

SIMONE 8.3 --
QUEEN -- 6.9
RITA LEE 5.9 --
COMMODORES -- 5.8
BARBRA -- 5.7
STREISAND 4.9 --
GAL COSTA 4.5 --
BETH CARVALHO – 4.3
RAINBOW 4.2 –
GERALDO VANDRÉ -- 2.7
PATRICK DIMON -- 2.4
BEE GEES 2.3 –
KÁTIA -- 2.1
JOHNNY RIVERS 2.0 –
LUIZ GONZAGA 1.9 –
JOANNA 1.5 –
ROBERTO GALENA 1.5 –
TIM MAIA 1.4 –
AMELINHA 1.3 –
IVAN LINS 1.1 1
OTHERS -- 0.9

Total 58.3 % 41.7 %

73
 On the one hand, these sales were ascertained by
simple and direct information at the sales points, and on the
other, it was found that practically, the same titles were being
played on the radio. Curiously, however, what you might
expect, that is, first playing then selling, does not happen in
any hypothesis. What indeed you find is the contrary.
Taking Table X, one finds the record titles which
would be sold about five days afterwards, as checked by
market research. And we might add that in Table X appear
the Queen band, the Commodores, Rainbow and the Bee-
Gees along with Barbara Streisand, Patrick Diamond,
Johnny Rivers and others (around 20.0 % of playing).
Among these others, with a lesser number of playing
each, are the Tramps, Peaches & Herb, Dire Streets, Focus,
Jimmy “Bo” Horne and Michael Zapper. Incidentally during
that period of 1979, a singer called Simone is seen to be the
most played by the radio stations in Sao Paulo, with 8.3 %
of playing.
The Queen band alone obtained a satisfactory place
for its record company (6.9 % of the total). And it is well to
point out that with regard to the records of various authors/
singers (28.3 % of the total), and other singers with only one
playing in the same period (20.0 %), it was found that
almost half of the playing were foreign music.

74
 TABLE X

Singers/Composers %

VARIOUS SINGERS 28.3

SIMONE 8.3
QUEEN 6.9
RITA LEE 5.9
COMMODORES 5.8
BARBRA STREISAND 5.7
GAL COSTA 4.9
BETH CARVALHO 4.5
RAINBOW 4.3
GERALDO VANDRÉ 4.2
PATRICK DIMON 2.7
BEE GEES 2.4
KÁTIA 2.3
JOHNNY RIVERS 2.1
LUIZ GONZAGA 2.0
JOANNA 1.9
ROBERTO GALENA 1.6
TIM MAIA 1.5
AMELINHA 1.4
IVAN LINS 1.3
OTHERS 20.0

Total

Of course, nobody doubts any more that the hit parade

fulfills a fundamentally important role. When all is said and
done, it is the hit parade that continues to publicize new
records. Table XI, which shows the frequency of playing on
the hit parades for each record company, serves to establish the
intervention and the degree of participation of each label in the
matter. The record company Odeon, for example, stands out

75
with 25.83 % of the playing. And as perceived, its
participation is more or less constant in almost all
classifications.

TABLE XI
Frequency and classification in hit parades: by
record company on radio broadcasters in the city
of Sao Paulo

Label Class. 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

Odeon 25.83 20.83 20.83 45.83 20.83 20.83

RGE/ 18.30 4.16 16.66 12.50 29.16 29.16
Fermata
Copacab. 17.50 25.00 20.83 16.66 20.83 4.16
Polygram 16.66 16.66 16.66 16.66 16.66 16.66
RCA 13.33 25.00 12.50 8.33 4.16 16.66
CBS 2.50 -- 8.33 -- -- 4.15
S. Livre 1.66 4.16 -- -- -- 4.16
WEA 1.66 -- -- -- 4.16 4.16
Top-tape 0.83 -- -- -- 4.16 --
Continent. 0.83 -- 4.16 -- -- --
CID 0.83 -- -- 4.16 -- --

Next in the table are FERMATA (18.33 %),

Copacabana (27.50 %) and PolyGram (16.66 %). It ill
not be difficult to understand why. In Table XVIII or in
Table XIX, only one can understand the reason. The first of
these tables for example, depicts that in 207 playing,
PolyGram has 10.0 % and Fermata 9.0 %, which, in other
words, corresponds to almost half (18 playing of foreign
music) by the first record company, and almost the total (28

76
playing of foreign music and versions) by the second record
company.
All this shows that audiences are permanently
“inoculated” by artificial divulgence suggesting that the records
played in the hit parades as the preferences of the public are a
big sales success. In reality, what happens is precisely the
contrary: It is nothing more than crude convincing of the
consumer to buy the records played in the hit parades. There
is yet another aspect to the matter. That is, the consumers
themselves are made use of by structuring traditional radio
programs of the hit parades kind, in order to promote general
involvement with specific titles. So it is all the same thing
anyway.

The product panorama

As a product, the record, more than any other is

characterized by rapid consumption, immediate satisfaction of
taste and by the speed at which the market becomes saturated.
In other words, any record that is released, and as
simultaneous sales promotion campaigns get under way, exerts
a paradoxical influence on the consumer, that is, the
satisfaction derived from buying the record is soon succeeded by
a feeling of saturation (due to this satisfaction). This comes
about through the profusion of sounds created and recreated
with simultaneous releases.

77
 These persistently suggest a necessity to listen to and
possess new titles. Nevertheless a record is a product like any
other and requires special care in its elaboration. This begins
with the design of appropriate packaging for each title. It is
not necessary to say that the cover, as in the case of any other
product packaging, plays a fundamental role in its
presentation. And this almost immediate satisfaction, which
stimulates the acquisition of new titles, is not much different,
so to speak to the pleasure which is felt by a consumer of any
other product when he buys it.
However here it is fitting to make an observation of
critical character. A record because of its intrinsic
characteristics is included in the category of non-durable goods.
The only ownership dominance experienced by the consumer
lies in the fact that, when purchased a record constitutes an
instrument for the satisfaction of a transitory pleasure.
The same pleasure, by the way, has been described by
some authors as a way of momentary satisfaction of necessity.
The opposition between this transitory satisfaction and the
consequent loss of pleasure due to the void left by the search
for other goods, as Scitovsky, suggests, opens a way to another
paradox.
In reality the concentration of pleasures in bourgeois
society is linked more too combating boredom and
stimulation, mainly of the dream, than to satisfying basic
physiological necessities (Hirschman, 1983, 31-35). Because
of this same motive, when a similar principle is admitted, one

78
is also forced to admit that bourgeois society is made up of
paradoxes.
So “what distinguishes the industrial society and
especially the western capitalist one is anarchy, irrationality,
unpredictability, in short, its incredible possibilities of
disruption” (Marcondes Filho, 1983, 80-81). The simple
fact that “tons” of records are being commercialized
nowadays, all over the country, whose nature reveals a genre
previously consecrated by no cultural implication for the society
that consumes it, in itself, reveals an atypical superfluity.
All the same, the fact that its sales justify a
permanent commercialization of this superfluity arises because
the artificial necessity for the product is stimulated on the
basis of the continual satisfaction of a pleasure which is lost
when the latest title is acquired. For this reason, it is also
fitting to study further the 3 items, which comprise this cycle:
consumption, satisfaction and saturation.
The first one can be identified by the product package
itself, on the cover. For this, one must observe the evolution of
this cover during the course of time. Previously there was only
the title of the work, the source and name of the author or the
artist who made the recording. Gradually, however, a series of
other things were included on it. These, in turn, ended up
being transformed into the main appeal of the product, and
often were totally dissociated from its true content
(Weidemann, 1969, 37).

79
 The second item, connected with the consumption of
this product, directs our study to the question of alienation in
the bourgeois society. Marx used to criticize religion, as being
the redoubt where man, victim of social and economic
circumstances, tries to conceal his unhappiness. Right or
wrong, this principle shows that at least, besides religion, there
is another form of “escape” from the real problems faced by
man in the bourgeois society. Man is a product of his own
environment and has available redoubts created by his way of
life for the purpose. (Noce & Riestra, 1975, 77-79). The
State, in its turn, connives with these forms of alienation,
typical of capitalist society, so that the respective structure
functions to offer an apparent solution to such problems.
Finally, the third item, which comprises the meaning
of the saturation of the satisfied necessities, is also a
consequence, so to speak, of capitalist society. There is a sort
of chronic tendency towards accumulation through the
development of consumption. Explaining this, the consuming
capacity of salary earners, “is not fixed at the level of their
subsistence”, and this always leads to the necessity to consume
beyond the real capacity of their salaries. This seems to have
been the true tonic of the consuming society.
In reality, the whole process of saturation starts from a
dynamic principle, established from the necessity to consume
and the satisfaction obtained by the acquisition of non-
durable goods (Perroux, 1970, 110). So, as everything
shows, the record fulfills its role in the capitalist society and
this explains the reason for the nature of its contents not being

80
compatible with the cultural values of this society, since it is
only good for the purpose of serving as a “refuge” for escape
and evasion.
The phenomenon cannot be explained however by
logic. Of course, the whole industrial set-up of the consumer
society is organized to make the dissemination of the
superfluous possible. The sound which is recorded and
commercialized in Brazil or in any other capitalist country,
today, has only one single referential which is that of serving
the cravings for the satisfaction of a provoked necessity.

Record market:
Consumption and alienation

The industrial and commercial schemes of the

recording companies which, for the most part of the times,
collide with the ideas of artists and performers were set up to
yield profit. Because of this, when a new artist enters the field,
he has to follow paths governed by arbitrary parameters of a
commercial nature, and this determines his work. The result
of all this, as might be expected, can be seen in the record
shops and discerned by the persistent repetition on the radio,
where diverse titles of “canned music” of different labels
attract attention by the abundant quantity of playing.
The rare exceptions, some hallowed names in authentic
popular Brazilian music, manage to keep a certain

81
commercial autonomy, but then they are given less
broadcasting time. After apparent success, they almost always
fall into anonymity and truly important works founder.
Sometimes however, through a lapse of the “bureaucrats of
cultural industrial”, they manage to stay a long time in the
market, the productions themselves being self sustaining. It is
a problem that occurs in the entire world, but which tends to
be worse in countries like Brazil, due to industrial dependence
in this sector, therefore the record companies’ involvement with
the commercialization of “imported sound” means that spaces
are filled which, in other circumstances, would be reserved for
Brazilian artists.
An option that some Brazilian musicians have been
experimenting with for some time, are independent
productions. They finance their own recordings and then
attempt the respective commercialization. It is indeed probable
that on account of a momentary valorization of instrumental
music by the recording companies, some of these projects come
to deserve the so desired success. But most of these productions
are low cost since the musicians generally record without onus
and have to wait until the product is sold before they are
remunerated for their work.
Recently, for example, some instrumental cooperatives
have come on the scene. These also are a means of
guaranteeing success and commercial achievement. As a
matter of interest, along with other not very successful
attempts, appears the “Cooperativa Paulista de Rock” which
was founded in September of 1982 and which until now

82
comprises the A Chave do Sol, Harpia, Abutre, Salario
Minimo, Centurias, Anthro, Gozo Metal and Ecclipse
bands. An admirable commercial initiative of this cooperative
is a phonographic label named “Barato Afins” responsible
for the release of 7 LPs. An initiative, which in less than
three years has had commercial success and popularity among
the followers, so to speak, of this music genre in Sao Paulo.
The great lesson to be drawn from this kind of
initiative is none other than that it only corroborates the idea
of cultural “inoculation” by foreign values. This is because
especially this cooperative is taking advantage of the space left
by the incorporation of the above mentioned values vis-à-vis
this scale of consumption. It is clear that the result could not
be otherwise. Taking the advantage of the space generated by
the adoption of a non-Brazilian “genre”, but amply diffused
by the commercial schemes of recording companies, this
cooperative is taking advantage of the consumer avidity for
such taste, to commercialize by jumping on the bandwagon of
the “mannerism” previously referred.
Naturally, the vacuum left by the initiatives and the
commercial experiments of the recording companies, who in
the last six years, have opened space for the generalized
consumption of a non Brazilian genre, it is now easier also
for isolated initiatives whose main market appeal lies in this
genre. It is clear that more than anything else, its purpose is
extremely compatible with serving as escape and alienation in
a capitalist society.

83
Statistical evidences

As can be seen in Table XII, taking 51 titles, the

playing on the hit parades in 1980, reveal that 11.7 % were
versions and 23.6% were foreign music. But Table XIII,
also reveals that in 1981, taking 120 playing on the hit
parades 12.5 % were versions and 20.8 % were foreign
compositions. These data show that the presence of the
imported element is constant in Brazilian radio programs.

TABLE XII

1980: FOREIGN MUSIC & BRAZILIAN MUSIC

Percentage for 51 different titles

Brazilian Foreign Versions

33 12 6

64.7 % 23.6 % 11.7 %

TABLE XIII

1981: FOREIGN MUSIC & BRAZILIAN MUSIC

Percentage for 120 playing on Hit Parades

Brazilian Foreign Versions

80 25 15

66.7 % 20.8 % 12.5 %

84
 Following this idea, we have again more data which
show, for each recording company, this natural tendency to
maintain their production in line. In the same way in Table
XIV, it may be perceived which are the recording companies
that offer less records of Brazilian music for playing on the
radio.
Here, as we already had the opportunity to mention,
RGE / Fermata appears again with the insignificant figure
of 0.83 % of Brazilian music. And in Table XV, we find
that it alone is responsible for 12,5 % of the foreign
compositions played in the same period.

TABLE XIV

1980 - 1981: FOREIGN MUSIC & BRAZILIAN MUSIC

Percentage by record company on the hit parades

Brazilian music

Label Titles Playing %

RGE /Fermata 9 25 20.83

Polygram 4 19 15.83
Copacabana 8 17 14.16
CBS 6 13 10.83
Som Livre 2 2 1.66
Top Tape 1 1 0.83
Odeon 1 1 0.83
CID 1 1 0.83
RCA 1 1 0.83

Total 33 80 66.63

85
 TABLE XV

1980 - 1981: FOREIGN MUSIC & BRAZILIAN MUSIC

Percentage by record company on the hit parades

Foreign music

Label Titles Playing %

Odeon 5 15 12.50
Cobacabana 1 3 2.50
Polygram 1 2 1.66
RGE 1 1 0.83
WEA 1 1 0.83
RGE / Fermata 1 1 0.83
CBS 1 1 0.83
Som Livre 1 1 0.83

Total 12 25 20.81

And it is clear; it could not be different, since the same

recording company offered in that period 5,0 % of the versions
played on the hit parades as can be seen in Table XVI. It is
to be noted that this percentage is practically half of the
volume of this type of music, ascertained in the research. In
1982, this picture did not change and the tendency continued.
In Table XVII, taking 207 titles we find that 66.7
% were Brazilian music, 23.3 % foreign music and 10,0 %
versions. An observation should be made here. Out of nearly
20.0 % of Brazilian music played daily, almost the total was
comprised of Roberto Carlos recordings. This artist, however,
would deserve another research regarding the origin, nature

86
and characteristics of his compositions in order to establish the
true patterns, inherent (or not) in Brazilian culture, contained
in his music.
In addition, the sum of the percentages relative to
foreign compositions and versions, is a figure of 33.3 % or
rather half of that in respect of Brazilian compositions of
which, as mentioned, about 20.0 % are compositions of
Roberto Carlos, and therefore highly controversial.

TABLE XVI

1980 - 1981: FOREIGN MUSIC & BRAZILIAN MUSIC

Percentage by record company on the hit parades

Label Titles Playing %

RGE / Fermata 2 6 6.00

Odeon 2 5 4.16
RCA 1 3 2.50
CBS 1 1 0.83

Total 6 15 12.49

In 1982, for example, as can be seen in Table XIX,

Roberto Carlos appeared in first place with 14.22 % of
playing on the hit parades. However it should be pointed out
once again, he gained this classification thanks to 38 different
titles.
This serves to show that the above-mentioned singer
has been a highly profitable commercial proposition for his

87
recording company – CBS, by the fact that his production has
reached the objectives compatible with the content of his work.
That is, full of appeal to an artificial reality, without
any cultural density. It can also be seen in the same Table
that the rating of foreign music in this period (32.9 %) is
almost half of the Brazilian. This is because just one foreign
music next below the position of Roberto Carlos, “Shake
your Groove Things” has 13.53 % of the total.

TABLE XVII

1982: FOREIGN MUSIC & BRAZILIAN MUSIC

Daily Audience on Sao Paulo Radio

Brazilian Foreign Versions

207 72 31

66.7 % 23.3 % 10 %

Already in 1983, everything became a little bit worse.

Table XX shows that, while 46.5 % of the playing on the
hit parades were Brazilian music, 40,5 % were foreign.
Things are still more serious when you add to this rating
13.0 % of versions, therefore in fact; the true rating becomes
53.5 % of foreign music and versions.
Because deep down, they are the same. Moreover the
most frequent music Coisinha Estupida (Little Stupid

88
Thing), is nothing more than an adaptation of the same
foreign music. And just this one was responsible for 13.04 %
of the playing.

TABLE XVIII

1982: Record Company participation percentage

General data for Sao Paulo Radio Audiences

Playing
Label

% Brazilian Foreign Versions

CBS 26.0 66 5 4
Polygram 20.0 43 18 --
RCA 15.0 26 9 11
Odeon 11.0 22 3 8
RGE/Fermata 9.0 3 21 7
Copacabana 5.0 26 -- --
WEA 4.0 9 8 --
Continental 3.0 5 -- 1
Polidor 2.0 2 -- --
K-Tel 2.0 -- 2 --
Top-Tape 1.0 -- 2 --
Som Livre 1.0 4 1 --
CID 1.0 -- 3 --

Total 100.0 207 72 31

89
 TABLE XIX

1982: Participation Percentage

(Record Company / Artist)
From 8 – 10 times played on radio per month

Titles Playing % Music

Roberto Carlos / CBS 62 14.22 Brazilian

38 different titles
Peaches & Herb / 59 13.53 Foreign
Polygram
“Shake your groove
things”
Alcione / Polygram 53 12.15 Brazilian
3 different titles
Benito di Paula / 53 12.15 Brazilian
Copac.
3 different titles
Chic / WEA 51 11.69 Foreign
“Good Times”
Tim Maia / Odeon 47 10.77 Brazilian
2 different titles
Vanusa / RCA 43 9.86 Brazilian
2 different titles
Sérgio Reis / RCA 35 8.02 Brazilan
“Menino da Porteira”
Tony Benett / CBS 33 7.56 Foreign
“Smile”
Brazilian/67.1
Total 433 100.00
Foreign/32.9

90
 TABLE XX

1983: Participation Percentage

(Record Company / Artist)
From 4 – 7 times played on Radio per month

Titles Playing % Music

Jane & Herondi / RCA 27 13.04 Version
“Coisinha Estúpida
Wando/ Copacabana 25 12.07 Brazilian
“A Gazela”
Jimmie Davis 25 12.07 Foreign
“Someone to Care”
Ray Charles / London 25 12.07 Foreign
“If you go away”
Silvio Brito/ Polygram 21 10.14 Brazilian
“Filho da Corrente”
Roberto Leal/ RGE 19 9.17 Brazilian
“N. Sra. Do Rosário”
Bianca / RGE 17 8.21 Brazilian
“Rever meus pais”
Christian / RGE 17 8.21 Foreign
“Lies”
Patrick Hernandez / CID 17 8.21 Foreign
“Born to be alive”
Other 14 6.76 Brazilian
Brazilian/46.5
Total 20.7 100.00 Foreign /40.59
Version /13.0

In 1984, when relevant data was obtained by

researching each hit parade program 1-3 times monthly, it
was found that the greater volume of interpreters was always
concentrated in Brazilian records. In Table XXI, this fact is
registered. While 21 interpreters correspond, precisely, to 21

91
titles played in the case of Brazilian music, the same does not
happen with foreign music.

TABLE XXI
1984: Participation by title, record company,
singer and playing
From 1– 3 per program
Characteristics Singers Labels Titles Playing

Brazilian
Compositions 21 17 21 27

Foreign
Compositions 13 5 18 58

Versions 9 11 15 24

Total 43 33 54 89

There are 13 interpreters for 18 different titles. This,

by itself, already serves to show that Brazilian artists are
devalued by the recording company, who is only concerned with
him just because he sings the music it wants. Also in this
Table, it can be seen that among 89 playing, 38 are of
foreign music and 24 of versions. And of the 54 titles played,
21 were Brazilian, 18 were genuinely foreign and 15 were
versions.
These consumption statistics, taking them as
representation of radio programs in Sao Paulo from 1979 to

92
1984, show that there is a gradual dominance of foreign
music. And this is a dominance that began to become
aggravated in 1983, when the number of playing came to
denounce the playing of more foreign music.
It is clear that according to what was articulated
before, if this music is being played, it is because either it is
being sold or what is much worse its sale is being stimulated.

The “Agony” of Brazilian music

There is nothing more suggestive to initiate discussion

of the theme than to remember the musical contest held in
1980, entitled “MPB Shell 80”, promoted in Rio de Janeiro
and transmitted to the whole country by the Globo network.
What attracted the most attention at the winding up of the
contest was the suggestive title of the winning composition
“Agonia”.
Without decrying the merits of any of the others, for
certainly there were numerous contestants that could have
gained popular acclaim, the winner came to serve as a symbol
for the existing state of truly Brazilian music.
The award served to make it very clear that the agony
since then unleashed, represents the ruin of all the values
which sustain national creation., thanks to the means and the
resources put at the disposal and at the service of the

93
promotion of foreign values, which are present today more
than ever in the artistic scenario, inoculated by the euphoria of
“Rock”. Commercial speculation centered especially on the
appeal and propaganda of the mass communication media,
where what is more apparent is the “copies” unleashes
reinforcements so that copying and imitating continue, of the
international music genre as well.
The record market has grown tremendously in Brazil
so that it is today the fifth biggest in the world music market.
It loses out only to the United States, Japan and Germany.
It is in this background of burgeoning that the imported
sound finds its best place in detriment to the national.
Research carried out by Phonogram in 1976 revealed that
while the market for Brazilian records increased by 47 %,
the market for foreign records grew 76 %. Therefore, there are
strong economic reasons to justify the recording companies’
greater interest in imported matrices.
Thus while a national release has to sell a minimum
of 12,000 copies not to show a loss, a release of imported
music pays for itself with less than 5,000.
As is seen, the roots of this constant dependency which,
among other things, produces artistic mediocrity lie in
problems of economic nature, as always. In April 1977, the
catalogue of the WEA recording company had 48 foreign
releases as against only 6 national. The market philosophy of
such recording companies explains their kind of preoccupation
with releases of the genre. A multinational company’s

94
investment for a multinational release can be as much as one
million dollars.
Certainly none of them expects to get back the
investment from one specific country. After all, they have the
entire world … and who ends up paying for this, in Brazil’s
case, is Brazilian music.
The appearance of alternative labels, independent of
the traditional recording companies, however paradoxical
though it may seem, is also responsible for narrowing the
market for Brazilian music. In truth, however well-
intentioned they may be, principally the releasers of records
connected with the radio broadcasting stations, they always
end up at the mercy of the divulgence methods of the big
recording companies as well as of the commercial structure of
the big record distributors, the majority of whom, represent the
interests of the recording companies. And so it goes on.
If the widening of spaces for urban popular music is
difficult, imagine what it is like for regional music. It is not
that the market is insufficient, which is the case, for example,
of a whole series of kinds of northeastern music but they will
inevitably disappear. In other times in Brazil there were
opportunities to preserve a little folklore, through direct
apprenticeship. In this way, each one would end up learning
something by heart and later on, involuntarily, would
transmit it to others. Today, this apprenticeship is unpractical
because the time of each person in society in filled up with
other duties, and this practice of devoting some time simply for
listening is also compromised by other impositions.

95
 One perceives that there is a virtual negligence on the
part of the government to avoid distortion in the field in
question. After all the record is an adequate means of
registering culture as well as for the preservation of
phonographic work. If nothing is done by the State, inevitably
the greed, avarice, rapaciousness and commercial voracity of
the recording companies will eventually exterminate national
talent completely. In the vacuum left, Rock and other non
Brazilian genres will surely remain, and these are always
effective in the process of cultural alienation in which
expressive parts of the urban population are involved.

Gateway of an illusion

If on the one hand the record has, up to the point, been

studied as a way of social getaway exploited commercially
because it is a big and good business, it should also on the
other hand be examined from the viewpoint of the artist who
most times is also a victim of the process. “The fact that the
recording companies are much sought out by aspirants to the
artistic life, seems to manifest a belief in the possibilities of
social ascension that the record industry offers.
This is indeed true if we observe that practically all
singers exhibit an appearance of an easy life with numerous
trips abroad, luxury cars and big houses. Thus the aspirants
are looking for an opportunity, not to show their artistic

96
value, but rather through this value, find the gap through
which to penetrate this easy and romantic life which is shown
to them everyday on the radio, on television and in the news
columns of magazines and newspapers. This life of an idol
must mean for them a great opportunity of social ascension
and you can perhaps infer, that the more aspirants there are,
less are the chances of ascension in society, at least with
reference to the social level to which the majority of these
aspirants belong” (Jambeiro, 1975, 21-22).
Almost all the producers in diverse recording
companies have a real “allergy” to those people who they
disrespectfully, call “Perus”. The aspirants to the artistic life
by way of the record after they discover their way to the
recording companies, rarely give up and submit themselves to
all sorts of humiliation, in order to, in exchange, obtain the
supreme award: record a compact.
It is certain that the record is a getaway for the great
masses of listeners and an illusion for a certain minority who
desire stardom. The result is that the record becomes a highly
lucrative instrument for the minorities who exploit this kind
of business. Typical residue of the capitalist economy, nobody
doubts that the record fits in very well with the necessities of
social anesthesia and economic profit.
It is one more dilemma in this country divided between
the indefiniteness of government action, unsuccessful in
controlling similar anomalies. It is a residue resulting from a
policy of economic expansion begun by Getulio Vargas and
continued by Juscelino Kubitschek, in the vain euphoria of

97
attracting international interests to Brazil. Solutions of this
type designed for other sectors of economy catch unprepared, a
fragile society at the mercy of other interests (Ribeiro, 1972,
236).
The non-existence of a global policy, with lasting effects
on sector policies, including measures of adjustment and
collateral compatibility efforts, such as an education policy
compatible and adjusted to a proper economic policy, serves as
a motive to use and abuse the fragility of an unassisted
population by companies uncommitted to national objectives.
In the vacuum of this omission, “the expansion of the great
industrial companies in the center of the south endangered the
generation of the necessary wealth” (Cunha, 1973, 46-47),
causing uncontrolled consumption with reflexes on the popular
economy and on the consumers’ consciousness.
It must not be forgotten that traditional production
processes are subject to changing technology, which will have a
still greater effect on the present economic structure. For
example, it will be almost no use to think of a market reserve
for the information sector without taking into account the
human element. And the record market is situated right in
the center of these problems.
At the same time as we are debating the question of
the space given to (and taken from) local artists, as well as
the respective reflexes on local consumption, the evolution of
technology already anticipates automation, inclusive, in the
field of music production. What is to be done?

98
 After so many years of arbitrariness, clearly until the
institutions become settled and mature, there aren’t conditions,
immediately, to advocate solutions for much greater future
problems. “Indeed, since time immemorial, man has adapted
things that he finds and transformed them into means of
expressing the language of music” (Moraes, 1979, 68).
The advent of synthesizers should cause much more
apprehension than enthusiasm since, besides subverting the
workings of the labor market they will certainly also subvert
the creation process. The artifices of capitalist society to create
dreams, or to find getaways, go hand in hand with the
evolution of history itself.

Music, radio and records:

Brazilian cultural dilemma

Generally speaking, it may be said that the structure

of the phonographic market is compatible with the economic
system in force. That is to say it adjusts itself in a coherent
and ordered manner with other market segments. It cannot be
said, however, that this structure meets the demands of society,
principally as regards access to culture.
The phonographic market in Brazil, based on data of
research carried out in a big urban center like Sao Paulo, is
seen to adapt to the very demands of its own structure. The

99
data suggested that all the apparatus of record
commercialization is centered on radio and television
broadcasts, practically, the only dependence submitted to by
this millionaire market.
The dispute, up to three years ago between Brazilian
music and foreign music, has practically ceased to exist, if you
take into account that from that time until now, the excess of
imported titles played on the radio programs, shows that there
is no dispute whatsoever. Foreign music has won.
There is no government control whatsoever over the
production of the recording companies who are quite content
with the rapid return on their investments. Such investments
are made according to traditional market formulas and the
production of an “easy sale” title is justified, whatever it may
be. Its cultural nature does not matter, even if it does not have
any.
Although “imitation” of a genre may be called a form
of cultural colonization, not to imitate it does not mean
redemption. What happened in Europe, for example, in the
decade when Jazz took hold (Berrendt, 1975, 353), does not
apply to the case of national rock fusions. Here, much more
than rock itself, the role taken by the artist, considering his
behavior on stage, reflects his cultural compromise with the
imported genre, and bears out that there is domination in the
field of music as in any other.
Furthermore, this domination is tied to three distinct
factors: a) one which is determinant arising from the situation

100
established by market conditions. b) one which is conditional
upon reality, considering the social characteristics of the
consumer. c) one which is coincidental with the political system
due to the State’s omission.

A determinant factor

As they say, every problem is related to the economic

structure. Noise control, or sound industrialization, like any
other capitalist initiative turns first to profit considerations
before heeding ethical or cultural precepts. In a “repetitive”
economy, technological progress hardly takes place just because
of any innovations which it is hoped will bring social benefits
or create welfare for people.
The record industry, like any other enters into world-
wide agreements between the principal record manufacturers so
as to avoid, more than anything else, the effects of competition
(Attali, 1977, 255-256).
In this connection, the phonographic industry can take
advantage of the situation in Brazil for interaction with the
consumer. Brazil for more than 20 years has been
campaigning in industrial circles with the intention of
attracting foreign capital and factories. It would be a big
mistake to picture the importation of technology, of capital or

101
of innovations, as a social revolution capable of benefiting the
country.
Like the iron revolution or the steam engine, the new
technologies do not bring social benefits if they are used
without control or without planning to determine the true
necessity of their existence (Mercier, Plassard and Scardigli,
1984, 175). And this picture tends to become still worse if
the said “development” is due to imported industrial activity.
The fact is that because of a highly favorable
environment, the record industry on setting up in Brazil
without the least control, avails of appropriate conditions for
expansion, and is developing without the least social criteria
and is about to imperil, as it does, local performers and as a
result the registration and preservation of Brazilian culture.
It is not because it is booming that you can justify the
existence of this market, far from and totally divorced from
cultural necessities.

The conditional factor

The Brazilian consumer, aware of the characteristics it

is wished to impute to him, is not a person isolated from a
consumption process, determined by an economic structure
belonging to his reality. However you cannot but question the
role of the State, and the non-existence of government

102
programs, which leave him at the mercy of the indiscriminate
action of the market.
Record companies like the other segments of the
industrial sector, design their products and put them on sale,
just like a cigarette factory, for example. Music has been dealt
with like a consumer product, treating the national creative
capacity, authors and interpreters, just as an extension of this
product, so as to make them part of a marketing system,
harnessed to publicity campaigns, with disperse reflexes
throughout all the communication network.
In this way, the phonographic consumption is not
restricted to the contents of the records produced, but integrates
an entire universe of external elements which appeal to and
stimulate the consumers. It would be as if to say, it is a
market conditioned by values foreign to Brazilian culture and
incorporated in it as a form of marketing strategy.
In this sense, you should not forget the recent
production of the event called “Rock in Rio Festival”. It
brought together in a bizarre way foreign and national artists
in a strange harmony of genres and styles. You could even say
that, apparently, the genre was not important, since the main
interest centered on the “epic music”.
Nevertheless, the apparent consumer endorsement of
this cultural leveling guaranteed the continuity of a system
where national and foreign artists work side by side,
apparently interpreting similar compositions, is the authors
international, be they Brazilian.

103
 No innovation comes from this kind of initiative as
would be expected. The above mentioned guarantee, obtained
in sight of the whole national audience, only ratified the
reasons for maintaining the special structure of the already
known market.

The coincidental factor

It is customary to say that, recently, the phonographic

market has undergone a positive evolution due to the
appearance of the so-called “selos” characteristic of
productions independent of the recording companies. Almost
all of them are owned by big radio or television networks and
they show a high growth rate, having evolved from 1976 until
now, more than 25%.
Although opinions vary, in one point they are
coincident mainly in respect of the opening of a parallel
market which arose in function of recordings for soap opera
sound tracks (Sao Paulo, 1980, 130). One label stands out
specially Som Livre of the Globo television network that has
a different title for each soap opera.
However, while those less informed are in the habit of
praising this apparent “opening” of the market, it is worth
pointing out that far from being evidence of democratization
in the phonographic industry, such reality even denounces the

104
aggravation of the conditions of dominance, bias and cultural
debasement. And as we know, it is not the big corporations of
social communication (and much less, at Globo Television
Network) that are the most deserving to be examples in this
respect.
In reality, this evidence arises out of a coincidental
factor, so to speak, with the ruling political order. Although
the tendencies for change may really be much more visible
today, what has been inherited from a past much
compromised with arbitrage, mainly in the field of
communication, makes work for change a long and arduous
task.
Almost all the systems of concession, use and control of
electronic communication in Brazil are favorable to the
exercise of monopoly and so compromise the objectives of a
sector completely dissociated from social reality. For this
reason, in view of a structure compatible only with the
capitalist economic structure itself, and the systems which
make it up, the objectives of the communication monopolies
tend to identify themselves and strengthen themselves mutually
with the objectives of other monopolies which use
communication to expand. And the phonographic industry is
one of them. It would be childish to ignore the consequence of
a similar structure, directed exclusively towards internal
growth.

105
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Campos, A. Balanço da bossa e outras bossas. Sao Paulo,
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 About the author

Victor Aquino is a doctor in sciences, faculty and

researcher at the Art and Communication School, in the
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he had been in charge
as dean and other positions before 2000.
He has written books and papers on communication,
fashion, art and culture. Lecturing in French, German,
Spanish and Portuguese universities, he has also supplied
cultural studies founded on roots of the art and the
knowledge.
Born in the extreme South of Brazil he has particular
standpoints about life, culture and all kinds of human
expression.

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