The chronicle-song by Chico Buarque

Abstract

Our work investigates Brazilian songwriter Chico Buarque’s appropriation of elements found in columns or chronicles by writers such as Rubem Braga, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, João do Rio, Carlos Heitor Cony, Machado de Assis, in his songwriting process. In order to do so, this present work focuses on cultural and literary studies, which predict the interconnection among media, literature and society, based on symbolic correlations between the literary genre chronicle and the verses sung by Chico Buarque. Chico Buarque, when appropriating specific elements from prose production in his songwriting, resembles the literary procedures of our greatest chronicle writers. That approach can be easily seen at times when Buarque performs in his lyrics the work that would be typically considered to be that one of a newspaper column writer. After a brief discussion about Music, song and lyrics, the following chapter “Chronicle: facets and dialogues” brings a brief history of the twentieth century critique, emphasizing the idea of the chronicle as a literary genre. At another moment, we’ll be dealing with the novel Estorvo, considered to be an extended chronicle. In the chapter “The Chronicle-Song of Chico Buarque”, we’ll be analyzing some of his songs. To guide the analysis of the conflicts between chronicle and song, we’ll be using chronicle genre classifications as presented by José Marques de Melo, comparing them with the ideas conceived by other critics such as Antônio Cândido, Davi Arrigucci Jr. and Massaud Moisés. In the chapter “Analyzing the Corpus”, we’ll be studying Buarque’s lyrics referring to the literary chronicle genre. Finally, we realize that the songs created by Chico Buarque can be seen as song chronicles, once they represent a sub product of people’s social and cultural experiences on a daily basis.