Summary

Coming from the dictatorship period known as Estado Novo (1937-1945), the Brazilian identity became tied to an idea known as "racial democracy", a concept first elaborated by the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. The myth of racial democracy regarded Brazilian culture as a somewhat harmonious amalgam of African, Indigenous and European influences, in contrast to the flagrant segregation in the USA. Around the same time, in 1928, Oswald de Andrade wrote the Antropophagic Manifesto, in which Oswald sees Brazil as a place that cannibalizes other cultures, creating its unique synthesis. While the Antropophagic Manifesto still carries a post-colonial potential (with Brazil devouring its colonizers), the idea of Racial Democracy is greatly challenged by sociologists nowadays, as it falsely denies racial tension in Brazil. On the contrary, the myth of racial democracy obscures an extremely violent dynamic that is still in progress today, allowing for an unpunished perpetuation of racial violence, while benefiting from the immeasurable cultural contribution of African descendants. The idea of racial democracy was widely reinforced by the state apparatus, and it became one of the main strategies for the white elite to maintain a status quo through turbulent social-economic landscapes and jarring inequality. Now it becomes clear to a new generation of sociologists and anthropologists, how the forging of Brazilian identity is operated by whiteness. To speak about whiteness in the Brazilian context is then to question the formation of this identity, and to look at how this idea of Brazil obscures the Afro-Brazilian protagonism. That becomes particularly evident when looking at the emergence of one of the most popular Brazilian musical genres abroad: the bossa nova, which emerged from a white middle-class background, thru the mimicking of afro-brazilian rhythmic patterns in the guitar's right hand, allied to the harmonic colours of jazz and a smooth signing. Tropicalia, on the other hand, with its anthropophagic attitude, inaugurates a whole new set of questions, where Brazilian identity exists through a paradox, in mutation, incorporating avant-garde elements and electric guitar with "traditional" Brazilian music. Finally, the rise of Funk Carioca, in the two-thousands, comes in parallel with the diminishing of extreme poverty where, for the first time in Brazilian history, access to consumer goods and economic development was experienced by peripheral communities. First, shocked by the vulgarity of its lyrics and the rawness of this music coming from the slums, the style was stigmatized by the middle class, to finally become an industry.