Brazilian Soul and Argentinian Jazz

Style, Consumption and Racialized Identities in Argentina and Brazil

Abstract

This article analyses two musical examples of cultural consumption within the framework of racial construction in Argentina and Brazil, and their various propositions of “blackness” as examples of strategic controversial positions on “black” popular culture. In the first case, we will discuss how the concept of style as grammar or underlying cultural principle in African diasporic musical practice resulted in distinctive meanings associated with elitist consumption, which forms part of the commodification process of jazz music, both on a global and local scale. This process was accentuated by social conditions surrounding the invisibility and denial of the African presence in the country. In the Brazilian case in the 1970s, as a strategy to affirm black identity, a specific style, combining national and global references, revolved around the great soul dances developed in the outskirts and suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. This scene resulted in new acts of cultural consumption that destabilized stereotypes and brought together performance and political action around the idea of “blackness”.