I seek to expose the ramifications of nostalgia used to further nationalist and commercial ends.
But where there is nostalgia, there is also a sense that the present is somehow unraveling. That is to say, the nostalgic mode is not my only companion here; echoes of a turbulent, apocalyptic mode periodically erupt as well. It is within the apocalyptic mode that Lirinha whips his audience into a frenzy with foreboding talk of the end of the world, or that a bitter feud between families of musicians underscores the volatility of being received as heritage. When family members slice their estranged relatives out of old photographs with razor blades or use microphones to shout bitter accusations rather than to entertain, they do so with a violent intensity that tears the picture postcard of nostalgia.
Organization of This Book
The first half of this book begins in the 1990s, tracing the emergence of samba de coco in Arcoverde as an emblematic cultural tradition and the rise of Cordel do Fogo Encantado as mutationist pop performers drawing tourists to the city. It chronicles the moment in which public and private initiatives enshrined rural musical practices as heritage and marketed them as popular culture.
Chapter 1 illustrates the provincializing process that samba de coco underwent as a genre, as musicians in Arcoverde accrued sponsors and began to perform as heritage. I explore how a markedly Afro-Brazilian musical form became an unlikely emblem of a city within the predominantly white and mestiço interior backlands. I also establish Cordel’s initial posture of homage, which imbued the project with restorative nostalgia, a mode in which the musicians would later lose faith.
Chapter 2 explores the two museums that opened following a feud between two samba de coco families. I chart how the rise of samba de coco as a municipal emblem led to competing exhibitions of tradition. I outline how the Calixto and Lopes families documented their claims to the increasingly lucrative crown of local tradition. Focusing on the artifacts displayed and stories told in the two museums, I explore how the samba de coco families used homemade museum displays to make themselves visible (and audible) within the public sphere.
Chapter 3 explores the career trajectories of Coco Raízes and Cordel during the 2000s. Coco Raízes staged and choreographed samba de coco as the group became incorporated into Arcoverde’s São João Festival and participated in circuits of regional roots music performance. Cordel in contrast, distanced itself from other regional, traditional groups as it shifted between genres, sponsors, venues, and audiences. As the band members questioned notions of folkloric tradition, they experimented with embodying on stage the bandits and millenarian figures who loom large in the history of the region. Eschewing sanitized, reassuring celebrations of place and tradition, Cordel deployed visceral Artaudian screams and Brechtian alienation effects to evoke a history of violence, drought, and hunger.
Chapter 4 explores how Cordel and the samba de coco musicians both inhabit and unsettle nostalgic modes of representation by examining the production of a television documentary about samba de coco and the MTV video produced by Cordel. I accompany the filming of a television documentary by TV Globo and interpret how editorial choices excised modernity from its depiction of Arcoverde, distancing musicians from the Brazilian here-and-now. In the MTV video, members of Cordel make the claim that both their roots in Arcoverde and their present longing for their hometown from afar are equally central to who they are, acknowledging the weight of tradition while justifying their move away from Arcoverde.
The second half of the book is an ethnography of the events that followed the entrance of samba de coco into the circuits of state sponsorship and the music industry. I focus on the São João Festival, as well as year-round tourism, to render a portrait of Arcoverde as a canonized periphery where contemporary struggles over citizenship and social inclusion play out through musical performance.
Chapter 5 centers on the 2004 São João Festival. It explores how the layout of the festival places musicians performing as heritage within developmentalist narratives of progress. I show how the hierarchical arrangement of stages displays a movement from primitive to modern, from past to present. I outline the range of performances that took place on these stages, some festooned with palm fronds and others outfitted with state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems. The multiple roles that musicians play as star performers, party hosts, souvenir craftspeople, bartenders, and waitstaff reveal the complexity of their position as entrepreneurial culture bearers.
The ambiguous status of samba de coco musicians is also a theme in chapter 6, in which I focus on new forms of cultural tourism. Encounters with visitors attracted to Arcoverde as a cultural tourist destination play out with a push and pull of intimacy and social distance. Visitors are encouraged to dance samba de coco, as long as they can’t do it as well as the professionals. At an upscale folklore-themed restaurant, crêpes are named after local musicians. Staged “rehearsals” with visitors blur the line between outsider and insider. A samba de coco musician’s dream of building a mud house replica of his childhood home as a tourist destination unravels when he returns to the rural site for the first time in a half century.
Chapter 7 is an elegy chronicling the dissolution of Cordel and the splintering of Coco Raízes as the 2000s came to a close. Based on follow-up ethnographic research undertaken periodically between 2005 and 2013, it charts the role of Arcoverde within a changing Brazilian cultural landscape during the presidency of Lula da Silva, a Pernambucan who grew up just down the road in Garanhuns. I detail changes in the São João Festival, examine Cordel’s spectacular performance at the opening ceremonies of the 2007 Pan American Games, and describe the expansion of samba de coco tourist infrastructure as government funds sponsor the transformation of the Calixto house into a cultural center.
In the epilogue, I argue that the story of Arcoverde allows us to listen carefully to a postauthoritarian moment. It chronicles how redemocratization and the expansion of citizenship coexist in tension with neoliberal efforts to profit from tourist destinations. Both traditionalist and mutationist musical groups in Arcoverde have been reassessing the Brazilian national question during a moment of cultural reckoning. And neither those supposedly being “rescued” nor those doing the “rescuing” feel comfortable with their roles in this heritage drama. Instead, both are reaching beyond this older script and into new territory, where what it means to be Brazilian is being explored.
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
Staging Tradition
A week after the Associação Respeita Januário meeting, I drove to Arcoverde. The BR-232 highway running from Recife to Arcoverde had been recently repaved. Its lanes were doubled, reducing travel time to Caruaru, a city located 120 km from the capital. Billboards along the road advertised musical traditions to tourists. Caruaru, the largest city along the route, is a popular destination for the Saint John’s Day celebration in June known as São João. It is touted as one of the largest, oldest São João celebrations in the Northeast. Every year festival events such as quadrilha line dancing in colonial garb are televised throughout the region. Caruaru also promotes pipe-and-tabor groups called
