Between work and orgy: the samba shuttles in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

During the first Getulio Vargas government, antinomical values ​​ circulated socially, such as those involving the cult to methodical and regular work and the refusal  to it. This is also portrayed in the musical production of that period, which, in one way or another, took an active part in the discussion which was then installed and that oscillated between the affirmation of the work and the glorification of batucada (bohemia).  The disavowal of the idleness date back to the your early colonial period, but, historically, it has never ceased to live with its opposite. After all, not all popular music composers were caught in the net of the exaltation to work spread by the laborism ideology, if not by members of the national artistic front. Dissonant speeches redappeared  here and there, showing that divergences and differences can never be totally silenced. That's what this article intends to evidence, by treating songs (especially samba) as a historical document and investigate part of the music recordings in Brazil of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Finally, what one finds is that, despite the strong censorship of State agencies (particularly the DIP – Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda) during the “Estado Novo” (New State dictatorship), it was not enough that once broke up the close bonds between samba and malandragem, however great they were ambiguities and contradictions expressed themselves within their own field of Brazilian popular music.