Travel Blog

Palavra Cantada (Enchanted Word) played last night at the Brazilian Film Festival in Miami Beach. It is a documentary about the connection between words and music in Brazil, and includes interviews with Tom Ze, Chico Buarque, Maria Bethania and others along with archival footage of Joao Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Dorival Caymmi, Gilberto Gil, etc.

There is a lot of talk (sometimes too much talk and not enough music) about why the song has flourished in Brazil. One theory is that written literature never really took hold, that Brazil has more of an aural culture. A man named Lenine offers an eloquent soliloquy - accompanied by a song - on the beauty of Brazilian Portuguese. (It is my favorite language to listen to, followed by Russian and Italian.)

There is some wonderful black-and-white footage of early 20th Century Rio - crowded trams, elegant buildings, bare bones carnivals, nascent slums. Sambas, someone says, used to be written about the favelas, but no longer because the slums have changed, turned to violence. (Due attention is paid to rap.) Bossa Nova, someone claims, took the samba and discarded its extremes. "Bossa Nova is the heart of the samba."

Toward the end, Chico Buarque wonders if the song is on its way out. He mentions techno music as something that may supplant this art form that perhaps had its golden age in the 20th Century. This caught me by surprise. I have been so concerned about the book that it hadn't occurred to me to worry about the song.