Open AccessIn Praise of Improvisation in Brazilian Soccer: Modernism, Popular Music, and a Brasilidade of Sports
Author(s) -
Bernardo Borges Buarque de Hollanda
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
critical studies in improvisation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1712-0624
DOI - 10.21083/csieci.v7i1.1229
Subject(s) - praise , improvisation , folklore , modernism (music) , popular music , art , literature , legend , identity (music) , poetry , jazz , national identity , parade , history , aesthetics , art history , visual arts , politics , political science , law
This essay presents a discussion on Modernist discourse about Brazilian soccer during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Though extant in disperse and incidental form, it is possible to compile a series of references about the Brazilian soccer phenomenon among the Modernist authors of São Paulo (Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, and Antônio de Alcântara Machado) and the Regionalists of the Northeast (Gilberto Freyre and José Lins do Rego). Based on poems, short stories, chronicles, and essays, this paper seeks to show how, starting in 1940, the Modernist discourse enthroned soccer in its project of constructing a Brazilian culture and identity. To do so, it seeks to show how the discourse of a Modernist Brazilianess (brasilidade)—already present in popular music and folklore during the 1920s—gave soccer its legitimacy in the cultural and artistic environment of the 1940s.