Defining a Nation

Brazil is an old country, with a history as changeable as its climate, as rich as its gold mines and as variegated as its plant life. In some respects, Italy and Germany, for example, are much younger, having arrived at their present unified identity less than a century and a half ago. But in the matter of music as a naturally social action as opposed to music as an actively cultivated pursuit, European nations lay claim to a much longer lineage.

So much of what ‘we’ – with English-speaking, European and North American mindsets – regard as Brazilian music is comparatively recent in origin, and our understanding of it commensurately shallow. For string players, pernambuco is a wood, and a useful one, but for Brazilians the name covers an entire region of their country, nine million strong – and thousands of miles east of the Amazon, where the world’s horrified gaze is presently directed.