THE JUDGMENT OF THE STRANGER IN THE COURT OF BRAZILITY

Uses and Abuses of Jazz in the Writings of José Ramos Tinhorão and Tárik de Souza (1960-1970)

Abstract

Drawing on Bourdieu, and Bakhtin and his Circle, I examine the place of jazz in the midst of the institution of the notion of “musical Brazilianness”, between 1960 and 1970. To do so, I analyze the practice-discourses of Tinhorão and Tárik de Souza, paying attention to their interpretations and interventions in the music scene of the time. In the understanding that these mediators played an important role in the formation of national musical thought, I argue that the polyphony and polysemy that they helped build around jazz, resulting from a nationalist musical project, helped to establish a shifting meaning for Brazilian Jazz. At the end, I comment on a possible deviation from this logic in current instrumental projects and in the field of jazz cultural mediation.