Marcelo Kuyumjian
Mamolen Dissertation Workshop Alumnus 2018
Performing Samba: Aesthetics, Transnational Modernisms, and Race
My dissertation studies commercial recordings of samba from 1917 to 1974 and asks how racism, racial discourses, and racial identities impacted the aesthetic transformations of musical style during that period. I explore the process of incorporation of jazz elements by Brazilian musicians in two contrasting aesthetic projects: one that emphasized the connections between the two African Diasporic musical traditions, and another that appropriated jazz elements in the process of whitening samba. Identifying change as a constant characteristic of samba, my analysis then looks at the position occupied by black aesthetics in the processes of change.