A negra essencialização do samba

Abstract

Samba’s identification with the Brazilian black ethnicity figurates as somewhat immediate and unquestionable, as if it existed since the “origins” of this musical genre. What is ignored, however, is that such representations began to be asserted in the 1970s. The Civil Rights movements in the US and the valorization of black ethnicity in Brazil led some artists to favor the interpretation that turned Samba into an expression of a black cultural “purity.” I analyze the conditioning elements of the path followed by agents engaged in the making of this argument, such as Candeia and Nei Lopes. This view is still accepted and fashionable today.