Intersectional methods to study the intellectual production of a Black female samba composer

Abstract

We discuss the concept of love presented in a set of songs composed by Brazilian samba singer Dona Ivone Lara about romantic and sexual relationships. Popular music is a pervasive kind of media, reflecting ideas, values, power relations, practices, prejudices and privileges. Black music in the diaspora has been a counter-hegemonic space of knowledge production which provides insight into cultural, social, economic and political matters. To analyze the songs, we created a methodology which intersects themes and categories, reflecting upon the complexity of Black women's experiences depicted in Lara's intellectual production. Adopting an intersectional approach, we concluded that the combined oppressions of gender, race, age and class in Brazil have an important influence in the melancholic aspect of banzo in her songs. The results also show that love, for Lara, is not a fixed or permanent feeling, but a cycle, renewed and reinvented in practice and in constant motion.