In 1992, James Woodall was asked to write an article about a Brazilian musician he'd never heard of, called Chico Buarque. He discovered that Buarque was a national hero in his native country and that interviewing him was a bit like a Latin American interviewing Paul McCartney. Woodall fell under Buarque's spell and began an affair with Brazilian pop music which has lasted to this day. His new passion took him to Brazil and in particular to Rio de Janeiro, world capital of Carnival and samba. Over several visits, he met with Chico Buarque, discovered the city's immodest beach culture and took part in Carnival. He met Chico Buarque's great contemporary, Caetano Veloso and other stars. Picking up Portuguese on the hop, he learnt a great deal about Chico Buarque's life and about the strange and dangerous city where he lives. This book is as much a hymn to Rio de Janeiro as it is to the music that beats at its heart.

River of Tears is the first ethnography of Brazilian country music, one of the most popular genres in Brazil yet least-known outside it. Beginning in the mid-1980s, commercial musical duos practicing música sertaneja reached beyond their home in Brazil’s central-southern region to become national bestsellers. Rodeo events revolving around country music came to rival soccer matches in attendance. A revival of folkloric rural music called música caipira, heralded as música sertaneja’s ancestor, also took shape. And all the while, large numbers of Brazilians in the central-south were moving to cities, using music to support the claim that their Brazil was first and foremost a rural nation. Since 1998, Alexander Sebastian Dent has analyzed rural music in the state of São Paulo, interviewing and spending time with listeners, musicians, songwriters, journalists, record-company owners, and radio hosts. Dent not only describes the production and reception of this music, he also explains why the genre experienced such tremendous growth as Brazil transitioned from an era of dictatorship to a period of intense neoliberal reform. Dent argues that rural genres reflect a widespread anxiety that change has been too radical and has come too fast. In defining their music as rural, Brazil’s country musicians—whose work circulates largely in cities—are criticizing an increasingly inescapable urban life characterized by suppressed emotions and an inattentiveness to the past. Their performances evoke a river of tears flowing through a landscape of loss—of love, of life in the countryside, and of man’s connections to the natural world.

Brazilian Popular Music, or M‘sica Popular Brasileira (MPB), developed in the mid 1960s as a response to the re-thinking of Brazilian national identity following the establishment of the post-1964 military regime. A leading figure in MPB at this time was Caetano Veloso, and it is his music and its reception that form the focus of this book. A leader of the Tropicalist movement, Veloso sought to initiate a critical debate on Brazilian Popular Music and the political and ideological foundations which underpinned its aesthetic. Lorraine Leu examines Veloso's musical and vocal styles, revealing the ways in which they play with traditional expectations between the performer and listener, and argues that they represent an important response to the severe censorship and repression of the military regime.

Language is Music focuses on making learning foreign languages fun, easy and affordable for anyone with a desire to communicate effectively with people around the world. By applying over 100 simple tips to things you already do, such as listening to music or surfing the Web, you can experience the joy of "fluency" in any language without having to study abroad or spend money on private tutors. In Language is Music, Susanna Zaraysky masterfully shares her listening methods so that anyone can have fun learning any language. With over 100 tips and 100 free or low-cost Internet resources, you will learn how to use daily activities, such as watching T.V. or listening to music; conversation partners; and attendance at cultural events to become a masterful speaker of any tongue. "Learning foreign languages is like learning to sing a song or play music," says self-made linguist Susanna Zaraysky and author of Language is Music. Zaraysky has what you might call "an ear" for languages, having used music to successfully learn English, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Serbo-Croatian-all with excellent accents. Advance Praise for Language is Music "I love it! I think it will help people who want to learn, and those who are curious about additional language learning. Many people want to learn a language but are frightened, or disappointed by the courses they have taken. Reading Language is Music will encourage them to try again, on their own and with friendly supporters." -Dr. Elba Maldonado-Colon, Professor Department of Elementary Education Bilingual Program, San Jose State University LET IT JUST ROLL OFF YOUR TONGUE. With lyrical insight and solid experience, Susanna Zaraysky, author of Language is Music, provides easy steps for learning a language. Gone are the boring, disconnected strategies that most of us remember from school. You've never learned a language this quickly and easily. Zaraysky's methods embody fun, connection, rhythm, and above all...music. -Suzanne Lettrick, M.Ed Educator and Founder of The Global Education and Action Network "Forget dictionaries and phrase books . . . Susanna Zaraysky's easy-to-use guide to language learning is indispensable for any serious language learner wanting to become fluent--not just conversationally proficient--in another language. Language is Music will teach you how to make language acquisition a part of your daily life, and to recreate the kind of total-immersion environment necessary for fluency. Highly recommended reading for aspiring polyglots. Pick up this book and you too will be all ears!" -Justin Liang, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Marshallese, intermediate Spanish Back in France, I spent many years learning "academic" English in school. But I progressed much faster when I forced myself to listen to the BBC or not look at the subtitles when watching an American movie. I wish I had Susanna's book with me then. It's full of creative ideas and practical tips that are indispensable complements to the traditional methods of learning foreign languages -- and it's coming from someone you can trust, she speaks so many of them! -Philippe Levy, French native speaker This book is great. It showed me another aspect and a new approach of learning a language. I will put the book to good use. As a foreign English speaker, I spent many years at school learning English and did not make much progress. A lot of the tips that I read in this book, I learned them with time. However if I had read this book earlier, it would have made my life much easier and I would have saved so much time. I am going to apply the tips in Language is Music into learning a third language: Spanish. This time, I am sure I will make huge progress much faster. Not only is Language is Music useful in acquiring a foreign language, but the resources and websites in the book are valuable for someone who wants to travel abroad. -Fabien Hsu, French native speaker

On the eve of the Pacific war (1941-45), there were 198,000 Japanese in Brazil, the largest expatriate body outside East Asia. Yet the origins of this community have been obscured. The English-language library is threadbare while Japanese scholars routinely insist that life outside of Japan was filled with shock and hardship so that, as one historian asserted, 'their bodies were in Brazil but their minds were always in Japan'. This study redraws the world of the overseas Japanese. Using the Japanese-language press of Brazil, it explains the development of a community with its own, often aggressively independent or ironic views of identity, institutions, education, leisure, and on Japan itself. Emphasising the success of Japanese migrants and the openness of Brazilian society, it challenges the perceived wisdom that contact between Japanese and other peoples was always marked by hostility and racism.

Edited by Stuart Baker, Gilles Peterson.

The ethnomusicologist Frederick Moehn introduces a generation of Rio-based musicians who build on the música popular brasileira (MPB) of previous decades, but who have yet to receive scholarly attention. This generation, the "children of the dictatorship," reinvigorated Brazilian genres such as samba and maracatu through juxtaposition with international influences, including rock, techno, and funk. Moehn offers vivid depictions of Rio musicians as they creatively combine and reconcile local realities with global trends and exigencies.