![]() I learned Portuguese while working toward a Master's degree at Georgetown back in 2008/09, which is also when I began traveling to Brazil. My name is Victoria Broadus and I'm currently living in Washington, D.C., pursuing a PhD in History at Georgetown University. Main sources for this post: Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Model Brazil by Bryan McCann A Canção no Tempo: 85 anos de músicas brasileiras by Jairo Severiano and Zuza Homem de Mello and Desenvolvimento Econônomico e Reformas Institucionais no Brasil, by Salvador Werneck Vianna. For more on this theme, the best source is Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil by Bryan McCann. ![]() Other such sambas are “ Acertei no milhar” (Wilson Batista and Geraldo Pereira, 1940), “ Chico Brito” (Wilson Batista, 1950) and “ Escurinho” (Geraldo Pereira, 1955). Residents became increasingly cut off, economically and socially, from the rest of the city below. This situation, combined with reduced state control over popular culture, made space for Afro-Brazilian sambistas from the favelas, like Geraldo Pereira and Wilson Batista, to create hits with popular songs scoffing at the government’s rhetoric and laying bare the tragic realities of life in the hillside slums. Throughout the 1940s, as favelas expanded on Rio’s hillsides, the government repeatedly promised and failed to deliver basic services. By the time Vargas returned to power in 1951, his reign was too tenuous to exercise the same kind of control over music, and the stark contrast between samba-exaltação’s celebration of Brazil’s beauty and harmony and the dire situation of Rio’s hillside favelas made these celebratory sambas more and more laughable. These sambas portrayed the idealized image what it meant to be Brazilian that Vargas wanted people to believe in and for a decade or so, with Vargas’s help, such patriotic sambas dominated the genre.īut Vargas was deposed in 1945, and under Eurico Dutra’s presidency from 1945-1950, the government withdrew from popular culture. One of the ways he did this was by heavy-handedly promoting samba-exaltação, patriotic sambas like Ary Barroso‘s seminal “ Aquarela do Brasil” that exalted Brazil’s natural beauty, cultural richness and purported racial harmony. While in power from 1930 – 1945, Vargas supported and exploited the expanding broadcast industry in Brazil to build his popularity. In the late 1940s Ary Barroso remarked, “I am not a sambista, Geraldo Pereira is a sambista.” Above, Geraldo Pereira.Įxpressing his frustrations through sharply critical popular sambas, Pereira was one of the most notable composers who reclaimed samba from the state that had largely co-opted it during Getulio Vargas’s dictatorship. But in spite of Vargas’s populist rhetoric about the boons of this economic planning office, Geraldo Pereira, an Afro-Brazilian sambista who grew on Morro da Mangueira, was highly skeptical of how this new agency would help him, so he wrote this sarcastic song about it. Shortly after taking office in 1951, he announced the creation of a new government agency for economic advisement and planning. In 1950, Getulio Vargas, populist president-dictator of Brazil from 1930 – 1945, ran for and won back the presidency. “…To stick her breasts in the madame’s kitchen” literally means to work in the kitchen, and just to clarify, the cats are cracking up laughing from joy because they’re no longer going to get eaten, thanks to the Ministry of the Economy. Image via .įirst a few notes on the translation: N ega is a term of endearment in Portuguese, featured in this post it refers to the singer’s wife. #Nega song samba meaning crack#The cats are the ones that’ll crack up laughing Now I’m going to get my nega, cause I like her so dog-gone much Off to Copacabana, to stick her breasts in the madame’s kitchen Life was so tough that I sent my nega so fetchin’ I’m going to go get my nega to come live with meīecause I’ve seen there’s no more danger, she’s not going to die of hunger Mister President, thank God I’m not gonna eat any more cat The Ministry of the Economy seems like it will solve things Mister President, well that’s just what the people wanted ![]() Mister President, your Excellency has shown that it’s for real ![]()
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