Sean Stroud
The Defence of Tradition in Brazilian Popular Music
(Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008)
Review by Alvaro Neder

Stroud’s study “examines how notions of what constitutes Brazilian popular music have been constructed over a period of forty years or so since the mid 1960s” (p. 1). Under the “distinct impression” that “the influence of an essentially conservative group of writers and journalists . . . continues to exert a particular influence on public perceptions of a tradition of national popular music” (ibid.), the author aims to consider the role of these and other actors (the record industry, the broadcasting industry, the state, academics and individual researchers) who have shaped current notions of what is understood as Brazilian popular music, and what isn’t. One of his primary intentions is “to identify the influence of those actors in delineating the parameters of Brazilian popular music, and more particularly the construction of a tradition within the wider sphere of popular music as a whole, that is, Música Popular Brasileira (MPB), the socio/cultural/musical movement that has dominated the artistic scene in Brazil since the mid 1960s” (pp.1-2). Continue reading →