{"id":237942,"date":"2017-05-17T14:56:16","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T17:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=237942\/"},"modified":"2017-05-17T15:10:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T18:10:43","slug":"the-radio-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-radio-era\/","title":{"rendered":"The radio era"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UH Archive \/ Folhapress<\/span><\/a> Radio N\u00e1cional studio in 1952: orchestras, amateur musical hour and music idolsUH Archive \/ Folhapress<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

There is a gap in Brazilian academic and musical literature covering the years between the reign of the first generation of samba and the invention of bossa nova<\/em>. Historian and musician Theophilo Augusto Pinto, a professor at the University Center of Fine Arts in S\u00e3o Paulo, wrote a doctoral thesis shedding light on a little known and rarely studied aspect of the time \u2013 radio broadcasts recorded in the period between the end of World War II and the second half of the 1950s \u2013 highlighting the producers, radio broadcasters, arrangers and musicians who made history. Until now, according to Pinto, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Music and the Media (Musimid), associated with the Graduate Studies Program at Paulista University (UNIP) and the School of Communications and Arts at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (ECA-USP), research has been based almost exclusively on sound recordings (records), not on radio program reproductions. Completed in 2012 and defended in 2013, Pinto\u2019s thesis, entitled Gente que brilha quando os maestros se encontram \u2013 M\u00fasica e m\u00fasicos da \u201cera de ouro\u201d do r\u00e1dio brasileiro (1945-1957)<\/em> [People who shine when the maestros gather \u2013 Music and the musicians of the \u201cgolden age\u201d of Brazilian radio (1945-1957)], was recently published in book form under the same title by Editora Alameda<\/em>. Pinto is doing his post-doctoral work at UNIP, and he defended his thesis under the supervision of Professor Elias Thom\u00e9 Saliba of the School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at USP.<\/p>\n

On radio\u2019s impact as a means of disseminating information, Pinto says \u201ceither people read books or they count on the recollections of someone who was alive at the time.\u201d Pinto, who holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in music from ECA-USP, says radio broadcasts have not really been examined. The history of the most important means of disseminating music before television is noted more for the reputation of its radio theater programs, amateur competitions, elections of \u201cqueens\u201d and \u201ckings\u201d of radio and some of the hugely popular singers of the time, like Orlando Silva, \u00c2ngela Maria, Dalva de Oliveira and Cauby Peixoto.<\/p>\n

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Folhapress <\/span><\/a> Singer, composer and broadcaster Almirante (left<\/em>), singer Carmen Miranda and communications impresario Paulo Machado de Carvalho in 1955Folhapress <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Pinto looks at the role of radio as a means of bringing people together, through real-time programming (such as music, radio dramas and soccer). \u201cRadio\u2019s influence is very different from that of the recording industry,\u201d he says. \u201cThe songs have to be synced with speech, and producers are very involved.\u201d The most famous producer of the time, with a weekly show on R\u00e1dio<\/em> Tupi<\/em> in Rio de Janeiro, was Almirante (the stage name of Henrique For\u00e9is Domingues), who, in addition to being a host, was also a singer, composer and eventually a researcher on the history of Brazilian popular music.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheophilo Pinto\u2019s research is helping to bridge a gap in Brazilian historical research, which has still not focused as much as it should on the history of radio and television,\u201d says Professor Marcos Napolitano of the History Department at FFLCH-USP and member of Pinto\u2019s doctoral examination committee. \u201cBy drawing on many important documents, he connects the history of radio to the history of Brazilian music.\u201d To this end, since 2005 Pinto has listened to 1,081 music programs on the stations R\u00e1dio Nacional<\/em> and R\u00e1dio Tupi<\/em> (the most popular stations at the time), consisting of 4,861 songs, not including news, comedy and theater programs. The recordings belong in part to the catalogue of the Collector\u2019s Studios, a Brazilian publisher and site specializing in the history of radio and recordings from the 1940s and 1950s, which, in conjunction with archives at the Museum of Imagery and Sound (MIS) in Rio, has recovered more than 1,200 programs. Other recordings, also found at MIS, were digitized with the help of students at Anhembi-Morumbi University in S\u00e3o Paulo, where Pinto taught from 2001 to 2014, and are stored at the university\u2019s library.<\/p>\n

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Almanac of the R\u00e1dio Nacional from 1956<\/span><\/a> Audience for a live musical program on the R\u00e1dio Nacional in Rio de JaneiroAlmanac of the R\u00e1dio Nacional from 1956<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The title of Pinto\u2019s book fuses the names of two famous programs broadcast on R\u00e1dio Nacional<\/em> in Rio de Janeiro: People who shine<\/em>, produced and presented by Paulo Roberto (a pseudonym used by the physician Jos\u00e9 Marques Gomes), and When the maestros gather<\/em>, conceived and produced by Paulo Tapaj\u00f3s, who was also a composer. In the latter, the station\u2019s main maestros \u2013 including Radam\u00e9s Gnattali, L\u00edrio Panicalli and L\u00e9o Peracchi \u2013 demonstrate both versatility and virtuosity, creating original arrangements for different styles of music. Gnattali is one of the era\u2019s most well-known names, along with Almirante and the composer and broadcaster Ary Barroso. Notwithstanding his criticism of a certain style of samba arrangement influenced by jazz, Barroso, also author of Aquarela do Brasil<\/em>, coined the expression samba de casaca <\/em>[samba-of-the-coat-and-tie] to describe the clothing worn by the maestro when performing this music, which rendered it \u201cdignified enough to be performed on the stage of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s Municipal Theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

North american influence<\/strong>
\nPinto based his samba research on three pillars: an examination of its history, the presence of elements of Afro-Brazilian culture and foreign influences. In the first instance, his research challenged the prevailing notion that Brazilian music from the era preceding bossa nova<\/em>\u2019s esthetic revolution lacked sophistication. Jo\u00e3o Gilberto not only sang on the radio; he also imitated the style of Orlando Silva. \u201cHe also said that he started to become interested in the music by listening to Aquarela do Brasil<\/em> arranged by Radam\u00e9s Gnattali on the R\u00e1dio Nacional,<\/em>\u201d notes radio researcher Eduardo Vicente, professor in the Department of Film, Radio and Television at ECA-USP.<\/p>\n

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Folhapress<\/span><\/a> Carioca singer Orlando Silva is crowned the \u201cking of radio\u201d in 1953Folhapress<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

As for \u201cnegritude\u201d (or the \u201cconstruction of a notion of ethnicity in Brazilian music for the public of that era\u201d), also associated with soccer, an analysis of the historical context brings to light several hints of racial prejudice. On the one hand, Afro-Brazilians gained visibility as artists and athletes; on the other, they were also associated with the figure of the malandro<\/em>, which reinforced the stereotype of Afro-Brazilians as mostly vagrants. Because of this reductionist view, the author relates that during the era of the Estado Novo <\/em>term used to refer to the Get\u00falio Vargas regime 1937-1945), when the samba (a musical genre tied to Brazil\u2019s national identity) was associated with marginality and the bohemian lifestyle and thereby tinged with racial prejudice, a new door opened to what some broadcasters called a \u201cnew fever for folklore,\u201d when artists from Rio de Janeiro began to perform songs with rural themes, including some from other regions of Brazil.<\/p>\n

On a track parallel to that of \u201cfolkloric\u201d nationalism, the language of jazz began to penetrate some types of Brazilian music. The samba-can\u00e7\u00e3o<\/em> [samba-of-the-song], which began to spread more widely at this time, had the \u201cformal structure of a jazz song,\u201d observes researcher and musician Ivan Vilela, a professor at ECA-USP: \u201cThere is part A, which is sung, followed by part B, and then an instrumental interlude containing the melody from one of the two parts, then part A or part B, whichever was not sung, is played again, and then the music ends.\u201d There was also what social scientist Santuza Cambraia Naves called in his book O viol\u00e3o azul: Modernismo e m\u00fasica popular<\/em> [The blue guitar: modernism and popular music] (FGV Editora<\/em>, 1998) an \u201cesthetic of excess\u201d in the orchestral arrangements with a \u201cprofusion of brass\u201d associated with the North American genre.<\/p>\n

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Radam\u00e9s Gnatalli Archive <\/span><\/a> Maestro Radam\u00e9s GnattaliRadam\u00e9s Gnatalli Archive <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In the emerging \u201cfolkloric fever,\u201d the bai\u00e3o<\/em> spreading across the Southeast of Brazil also had to adapt to certain \u201ccanons,\u201d reflecting an \u201cethnocentric and culturally superior attitude\u201d of middle class consumers, according to Vilela. \u201cThe first recording of a song by Luiz Gonzaga and Humberto Teixeira, Bai\u00e3o<\/em>, by the group Quatro Ases e Um Coringa<\/em>, has a vocal arrangement typical of a Broadway musical.\u201d Pinto says the recordings to which he had access show that even at the time, the era was viewed as an interim period in which Brazilian music had questionable value, which led to the search for new genres and influences. This is also why Pinto believes that Brazilian radio during the golden age was ripe for invention. In circumventing a certain \u201ctechnological precariousness,\u201d broadcast radio in Brazil faced the daily challenge of maintaining \u201chigh quality programming despite limited available resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Book
\nPinto, T. A. Gente que brilha quando os maestros se encontram: M\u00fasica e m\u00fasicos da \u201cera de ouro\u201d do r\u00e1dio brasileiro<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Alameda, 2016, 308 pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research analyzes Brazilian music between samba and bossa nova ","protected":false},"author":483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[220,241,248],"coauthors":[796],"class_list":["post-237942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-communication","tag-history","tag-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/483"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237942"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=237942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}