“From the acropolis to Mangueira’s hillside favela”: samba’s afro-brazilianism in the controversy between Pedro Calmon and José Lins do Rego (1939)

Abstract

The article analyzes the controversy surrounding samba, waged between Pedro Calmon and José Lins do Rego, in the Rio de Janeiro press in mid-1939. The debate takes place at the moment Carmen Miranda travels to the United States, accompanied by Bando da Lua, to perform a series of shows that included a season on Broadway and presentations in the Brazilian pavilion, which had been set up for the Expo 1939 New York. Carmen and her group were preparing to take a sample of Brazilian culture to the biggest international music venue, at time when several nations would to show the world their culture and their technological advances. The controversy opposes two expressive intellectuals. On the one hand, Pedro Calmon, historian of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, a personality amongst the classicism of acclaimed authors and a supporter of racist scientific determinism, which was a 19th century inheritance. On the other hand, José Lins do Rego, one of the names of the “1930s romance novel”, supporter of the proposal modernist subversion of national letters and a disciple of the “regionalist traditionalism” elaborated by Gilberto Freyre. Under the context of the Estado Novo, nationalist cultural policy seeks to bring unity to the country by printing a popular identity to the nation, the controversy highlights different explanatory matrixes of Brazilian culture.