Jun 10–Jul 8, 2006
Música Popular Brasileira
Music Series
Brazil has one of the liveliest music scenes in the world. In Europe, however, we are familiar with only a tiny part of Brazil’s richly diversified music scene. Outside the centres such as Rio, São Paolo and Salvador, there awaits an entire continent of traditions and hybrid forms with indigenous, European, African, Caribbean and North American roots.
However, the stars of the music scene not only stand for art and culture, but also for social and political commitment. Brazilian popular music is one of the main instruments of enlightenment, criticism and reconciliation. Tropicalismo, with stars such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, exemplifies both the development of new, open forms of art and the struggle against the dictatorship during the 1960s. The conflicts and differences of a heterogeneous society built on immigration are channelled into a unique form of artistic creativity.
The music series Copa da Cultura, which coincides with the FIFA World Championship, presents these diverse and dynamic developments. From the well-known urban centres to the remotest towns and villages, from the great generation of Tropicalismo to the funk and rap stars, from the latest developments in bossa nova to samba and, last but not least, to the announced DJs, the Copa da Cultura music festival will be presenting this unique scene in Berlin on five successive weekends: from 10 June to 9 July 2006. Advising the House of World Cultures on the selection of groups will be Gilberto Gil and the anthropologist and music specialist Hermano Vianna.