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Title: Samba by Alma Guillermoprieto ISBN: 0-679-73256-X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.91 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An Essential Background Into Samba
Comment: If you are interested in learning the true roots of Samba and Brazilian Carnaval(and not just the obligatory blurbs that you see in guidebooks), then this book is an absolute must for you to read. Alma Guillermoprieto does a superb job describing the rich religious, historical, and socioeconomic roots of Brazilian Carnaval and Samba - both of which have become famous around the world, yet remain remarkably poorly understood.
Guillermoprieto writes in a very engaging, enjoyable style, which occassionally seems more like an engrossing novel than a non-fiction work. If you have ever been curious to learn more about Brazilian culture, this is the book to start with!
Rating: 4
Summary: An excellent read and fairly good information.
Comment: I'm not a musicologist and couldn't tell you if the music info here is 100% accurate. As someone who's lived in and studied Brazil for 11 years however, I found the author's descriptions of favela life to be very well done. There's information here I've never seen elsewhere. Her musicology may leave a lot to be desired, but to say her opinion on race and cultural issues in Brazil is flat-out wrong strikes me as the opinion of someone with a nativist axe to grind. Perhaps some readers originally thought this book's primary focus /was/ samba when they bought it. That is not the case: it's a well written amateur ethnology of favela life. Be forewarned. Read this book if you want a decent (if necessarily superficial) introduction to the life of the urban poor in modern Brazil. For samba, specifically, or a more advanced analysis, I suggest Hermano Vianna's Mystery of Samba or anyone of a number of academic works on Brazil, starting with Freyre's "Masters and Slaves" or Da Matta's "Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes."
Rating: 5
Summary: A Social History of Black Brazil
Comment: Guillermoprieto is both a skilled writer and a serious scholar. That combination makes this erudite, and exceedingly detailed study of the black underclass in Brazilian society both readable and engaging. She employs an inductive approach, using the culture surrounding the Samba and Carnival in Rio as a base for exploring the status of blacks in Brazilian society and the many contradictions and ironies in light of their prevailing influence in all levels of Brazilian culture.
The story is fascinating and the author admirable, because in order to learn and effectively represent the culture of the Samba and black Brazilian society (which she pretty effectively demonstrates are in many ways largely synonymous) she not only joined a Samba club in order to participate in Carnival, but also moved into the favelas of Rio.
Guillermoprieto depicts the injustice of the blacks' fate in Brazil in a dispassionate, yet also very poignant and sympathetic manner. She allows the compelling facts to represent themselves without embellishing them with personal assessments, which makes her writing that much more powerful.
This is really a great book: a fascinating story about the complex organization and serious part of the Brazilian economy that the Samba and Carnival comprise, and a distinctive and holistic representation of black Brazilian society and the rest of that nation in its reflection.
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Title: Dancing With Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution by Alma Guillermoprieto, Esther Allen ISBN: 0375420932 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Mystery of Samba : Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil by Hermano Vianna, John Charles Chasteen ISBN: 0807847666 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Narcocorrido : A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas by Elijah Wald ISBN: 0060505109 Publisher: Rayo Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Paper Tangos by Julie Taylor, J. M. Taylor ISBN: 0822321912 Publisher: Duke University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil by Chris McGowan, Ricardo Pessanha ISBN: 1566395453 Publisher: Temple University Press Pub. Date: 25 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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