Africa in Brazil? Samba, History, and the Allure and Challenge of Diaspora

Rather than taking the African origins of samba as a given—as scholars and fans often do—Marc Hertzman examines how diasporic connections were both imagined and silenced by Brazilian musicians, writers, and historians, who put forth competing versions of the music’s roots almost as soon as it became a recognizable, celebrated form during the 1920s and ‘30s. Of particular interest is the surprising, even paradoxical, lessons about the relationship between race and nation that we find by exploring the long, fascinating “history of samba’s history.” Marc Hertzman is an assistant professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University and the author of Making Samba: Race, Gender, Music, and Intellectual Property in Brazil, 1880s-1970s.

This event is sponsored by the Forum on Migration and Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race as part of the Migration, Race, and Ethnicity lecture series.