Modernization and its discontents: discourses on the transformation of caipira into sertanejo music

Abstract

This paper intends to study how three journalists, while writing about caipira and sertanejo music, managed to articulate conceptions of roots and authenticity in support of a genre that would be considered as a genuinely Brazilian one. Throughout each one’s approach, it’s possible to notice an updating of the myth of three races, through different perceptions of brazil’s discovery and colonization present in social imaginary representations and used in the discourses of several intellectuals. Furthermore there is an analysis of their understanding of the transformations undergone by caipira music since the moment it began to be registered phonographically, from the 1920s up to the nineties. Through this analysis, it’s possible to notice that the vibrant v.8 n.1 elizete ignácio dos santos argument of the modernization undertaken by some heirs of caipira tradition as a process leading to a loss for the genre is not produced without making them assume a ambivalent position in this process.