“Singers of the Miracle”: Musical Boosterism and the Marketing of Patriotic Authoritarianism in Dictatorial Brazil

Abstract

Abstract: Over twenty-one years in power, the Brazilian military dictatorship sought to secure a degree of popular legitimacy outside of competitive electoral politics. One of the ways it did so was by cultivating a demonstrative, uncomplicated sense of patriotism. This article examines that strategy by focusing on the trajectory of Dom and Ravel, a musical duo that became synonymous with the regime’s flag-waving boosterism before fading when they no longer served official interests. I seek to understand the group as a short-lived media sensation, drawing on newspaper and magazine coverage to situate them within the broader context of the regime’s patriotic authoritarianism. The duo’s fate allows us to draw some substantive conclusions about the dictatorship’s efforts to legitimize itself through patriotic propaganda. First, I argue that artistic output explicitly backed by the regime failed to escape association with the military government. Second, that the group’s success was ultimately short-lived because the type of patriotism the regime sought to inculcate in the population held limited lasting appeal in a nation that remained woefully unequal and politically divided throughout the period of military rule.