Samba as the symbol of Brazil: An example of cultural restitution or adopted inter-ethnic identity?

In The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National identity in Brazil, Hermano Vianna explore the process through which Samba became “Brazil’s ‘national rhythm, its prime symbol of cultural nationalism” (xiii). As is the case with many other Latin music genres, Brazilians and samba scholars are preoccupied with the concept of authenticity: what is and isn’t samba, where and when did it originate, what is authentic samba instrumentation or dancing, etc. Vianna presents authenticity, national identity, cultural symbols, in this case, as they relate to Brazilian samba, as social constructions (xiii).

But how did these social and culturally based shared concepts come to be constructed? To answer this question, Vianna does not concern himself with trying to find, for example, the holy grail of the first recorded samba. Instead, he focuses on “samba’s transformation into a ‘national rhythm,’ when it was suddenly ‘discovered’ by the nation as a whole and adopted as a defining element of brasilidade or Brazilian identity” (10).

The conspicuous mention of “the nation as a whole” discovering samba, suggest the genre, or its musical predecessors, were previously part of the cultural heritage of only a portion of the nation’s population. It also suggests that Brazil is a heterogeneous society and Brazilians can act “as a whole” or they can act separately in sub-groups with individual ethnic identities. All of this qualities apply equally to the peoples of all other Latin-American countries. Furthermore, as we have seen in the case of Dominican merengue, the adoption of one sub-group’s music as “a defining element” of an entire nation’s identity is also a process that has taken place often throughout Latin America in the past.

In the case of samba, as in many other cases, the particular music/dance form in question often features African, rural, and/or lower class elements and was looked down upon by the upper/white/urban class before being taken up as the national rhythm. In Feijoada e Soul Foudd, Peter Fry asks a question of Brazilian samba that I would like to generalize to all of Latin America: Why have Latin Americans taken up national symbols and built popular culture around cultural items originally generated by dominated groups?. Fry suggests that “the conversion of ethnic symbols into national symbols masks a situation of racial domination” (as cited in Vianna 13). Thus, Latin preoccupation with and practice of syncretism (in this case with music, but why not also with religion, language, or any other cultural aspect?) is presented as a consequence of past and present oppression, perhaps as a way to avoid conflict or to restitute cultural value, and definitely as reflecting a need for a cohesive identidad mestiza or ethnically mixed identity.