Tropical Travels: Brazilian Popular Performance, Transnational Encounters, and the Construction of Race 9781477312803

Citation preview

T ropic a l T r av el s

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joe r. and teresa loz ano long series in l atin american and l atino art and culture

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tropical travels Brazilian Popular Performance, Transnational Encounters, and the Construction of Race

Lisa Sh aw

universit y of tex as press

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Austin

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Copyright © 2018 by University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2018 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). L i br a ry of Congr e ss C ata l ogi ng -i n-P u bl ic at ion Data

Names: Shaw, Lisa, 1966– author. Title: Tropical travels : Brazilian popular performance, transnational encounters, and the construction of race / Lisa Shaw. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017009439 ISBN 978-1-4773-1278-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4773-1479-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4773-1280-3 (library e-book) ISBN 978-1-4773-1279-7 (non-library e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Performing arts—Brazil—History—19th century. | Performing arts—Brazil—History—20th century. | Popular culture—Social aspects— Brazil—History. | Brazil—Race relations. | Blacks—Race identity—Brazil. | Performing arts—Brazil—African influences. Classification: LCC PN2471 .S44 2017 | DDC 792.0981—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009439 doi:10.7560/312780

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For m y pa r e n ts, L ill i e a n d Joh n A rt h u r Je sse

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Con t e n ts

Acknowledgments ix I n t roduc t ion

1

C h a p t e r 1. Afro-Brazilian Performance on Rio de Janeiro’s Popular Stages from the 1880s to the Long 1920s 28 C h a p t e r 2. The Rio de Janeiro–Paris Performance Axis in the

First Decades of the Twentieth Century: Duque, the Oito Batutas, and the Question of “Race” 69 C h a p t e r 3. The Teatro de Revista in Rio de Janeiro in the Long 1920s: Transnational Dialogues and Cosmopolitan Black Performance 92 C h a p t e r 4. The Cultural Migrations of the Stage and Screen Baiana, 116

1889–1950s

Conclusion

147

Notes 153 Bibliography 215 Index 225

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Ack now l edgm e n ts

I woul d l ik e to t h a n k the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust for awarding me a senior research fellowship that enabled me to carry out the research that underpins this book. This project also received significant institutional support from the University of Liverpool, not least funding for research trips to Brazil, and I am grateful to colleagues in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures for their support. I am particularly indebted to Professors Eve Rosenhaft and Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool), Dr. Maite Conde (Jesus College, University of Cambridge), and Professor César Braga-Pinto (Northwestern University) for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of sections of this book, in addition to their constant encouragement and enthusiasm for this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Lucía Tennina (Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET) for assistance with archival research in Argentina; the staff at the University of Texas Press, particularly Kerry Webb and Angelica Lopez-Torres, for their expert guidance and patience; and the anonymous readers of the manuscript, who provided me with extensive feedback at various stages, which undoubtedly improved the quality of this book. My various trips to Brazil, often for extended periods, would not have been possible without the support and friendship of Sarah Roughley, Sarah De Los Rios, Max Salisbury, Marie-Louise Banning, Fiona Harvey and her lovely “boys,” Ian Jesse, and Gaynor, Antony, Laura, and Tom Gardiner. The manuscript was completed in the delightful surroundings of Fazenda Inglesa, Petrópolis, in Rio de Janeiro state. I will always be grateful to Ana Beatriz (Bia) Renter, Miguel Bichara, and Maria Rita Fernandes Martins (and, of course, Godah) for providing me with the most idyllic writer’s retreat, the Casa do Fachoalto. I am also extremely fortunate to have been able to count on the love and support of my family and Leonardo Barbosa Anesio since this project began, not to mention the companionship of Eddie, Choco, Carmen, and Messy, meus queridos.

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introduction

Negrismo is the great fashion of the moment. Paris has gone crazy, for many months, over a negra revue company. And Josephine Baker, an authentic negra, is today one of the most fascinating popularities on the French boulevard. Now London wanted to see a black company. And ordered it from Paris. It was the City of Light that organized, to send to London, the Bataclan Negro. This curious troupe is going to England to perform the revue “Pessoas Negras,” which was a huge hit in Paris. It is a company of authentic pretos. But we [Brazilians], who have De Chocolat here and his tribe, should not be envious of Paris or London. . . . True negros, we also have here—and the best. careta , 11 december 1926

focus and scope of this book This book takes as its focus popular performance in the city of Rio de Janeiro from the fi nal decade of the slavocracy that underpinned the Brazilian empire, and was only fi nally abolished in 1888, through the fi rst half of the twentieth century. It considers the performance of music, dance, and revue theatre, principally in the popular venues of Brazil’s thencapital city, the center of the country’s entertainment world throughout the period in question, interrogating the impact of cross-border dialogues with imported performance traditions, in particular as regards representations of racialized identities.1 It aims to illustrate the importance of the port city of Rio de Janeiro—characterized by the transience, fluidity, and mobility of its residents and visitors—as a nexus in transnational performance circuits, and to highlight the role of often little-known popular performers as vectors of intercultural exchange. There is a continuing

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figure 0.1. A scene from the revue Guerra ao mosquito (War on Mosquitoes [1929]), written by Marques Porto and Luís Peixoto, showing Brazilian performers in blackface inspired by the US minstrelsy tradition. Courtesy of FUNARTE/ CEDOC.

tendency in historical studies to take the nation-state as a point of departure, and to privilege nationally constructed categories of analysis. A focus on the transnational, however, entails acknowledging the “entanglements, networks and relationships that cross national boundaries and then asking where this widening of the view takes us in terms of what we really want to know about the past.”2 Taking the lead from the work of Rosenhaft and Aitken, in Tropical Travels: Brazilian Popular Performance, Transnational Encounters, and the Creation of Race, I seek to explore the significance of the transnational by paradoxically placing “a new emphasis on micro-histories, and particularly biography, in order to elucidate global entanglements and trends by tracing the ways in which they are worked out at the personal and local level.”3 I examine transnational migrations, both physical and imagined, and their legacies within popular culture in order to illustrate how the transnational may lead to a re-visioning of the national, particularly regarding issues of racial identity. My intention is to understand the transnational processes through which notions of race and nation have emerged in Brazil, trac-

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ing the ongoing process of negotiation of the meanings of these concepts, and the shifts in attitudes back and forth throughout the period in question. By thinking transnationally, we illuminate the “specific mechanisms by which class, race, nation, and other social categories are constructed and the process of their construction occluded.”4 One of my central arguments is that post Abolition, and throughout the First Republic (1889– 1930), black and mixed-race artists adopted a series of strategies to gain acceptance and ensure commercial success; these were modified over time, ranging from attempts to “whiten” their star texts, to physical and metaphorical journeys beyond Brazil’s borders, tapping into a transnational entertainment world, as will be discussed in chapter 1. As I go on to argue in chapter 2, only by envisioning samba as a transnational, Afro-diasporic creation, indelibly marked by its contact in the early 1920s with “black” Paris, were members of the Brazilian elite persuaded to transform it into the ultimate symbol of national identity in the 1930s. In chapter 3 I illustrate how in the long 1920s the creators and performers of Rio’s teatro de revista (the local variant of vaudeville)—an important forum for creating a foundation for the emergence and celebration of Afro-Brazilian culture in the Vargas era—participated in and contributed to the development of a transnational performance community. They were linked to a circuit of entertainment capitals by a shared aesthetic cosmopolitanism, incorporating what I term “transnational metonyms of modernity and cosmopolitanism” and drawing on cosmopolitan blackness in their representations of black Brazilian subjectivity. The impact of performers such as Josephine Baker was clear to see on the stages of Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s, not least in a range of copycat artists (as discussed in chapter 1), but Baker was equally eager to participate in multilateral processes of cultural exchange, adopting the performative guise of the Brazilian baiana, a chameleonic persona with a transnational history, whose whitening by Carmen Miranda—often seen as a retrograde step in terms of black agency, the fiction of racial democracy, and the representation of national identity—enabled a sanitized blackness to be playfully performed at home and abroad, as I argue in chapter 4, allowing blackness to emerge as central to Brazilian-ness. The scope of this book provides continuity to and dialogues with Micol Seigel’s seminal study of the process of transnational racial construction between the United States and Brazil in the 1920s, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States, which focuses on “less visible encounters that shape our interconnected world,”5 and travels that “are more likely to be fl ights of fancy than travels by

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land or sea.”6 Tropical Travels considers the creators and performers of Brazilian popular culture in the 1880s–1950s period as what Seigel terms “border-disrespecting units” and views them, as well as their counterparts in various nations, as “far-flung people who imagine themselves in community.”7 Tropical Travels extends the scope of Seigel’s work by examining how Brazilian popular culture participated in dialogues and exchanges with countries other than the United States, particularly France, but also Portugal and Argentina, and played a key role in transatlantic circuits of performance traditions throughout the period in question. Its aim is to consider how popular culture drew on transnational currents to construct new ideas about, and representations of, racial identity in Brazil. According to J. Lorand Matory, “National identities and national cultures have always been formed in a transnational context and have always crosscut alternative symbolic geographies,”8 as he has illustrated with regard to candomblé. This Afro-Brazilian religion has thrived and grown because of strategic verbal and ritual performances of assimilation and differentiation, of hybridization and purification, that draw on a circumAtlantic repertoire of references and are incomprehensible outside the context of the priesthood’s centuries-old and ongoing participation in a circum-Atlantic movement of people, commodities, texts, recordings, photographs, and ideas.9

This book situates itself within Atlantic history, the subdiscipline within historical studies that emerged after World War II in recognition of the limitations and biases of imperial history. In the view of Ana Lucia Araujo, an Atlantic perspective continues to require “the use of multidirectional and transnational approaches in the analysis of the interactions among Europe, Africa and the Americas, rather than the traditional examination of the relations between the center and the periphery.”10 Inspired, in part, by Paul Gilroy’s pioneering The Black Atlantic (1993),11 this book aims to use the Atlantic metaphor and “let the sea flows take the lead.”12 Unlike Gilroy’s vision of the black Atlantic, with its focus on the Northern Hemisphere, Tropical Travels explores a more nuanced circuit of transatlantic dialogue and exchange with Brazil, more specifically the port city of Rio de Janeiro as one of its key southern nodes.13 It thus also speaks to current debates on race and its construction, from which Brazil is still marginalized, and aims to counteract what Livio Sansone calls “analytical ethnocentrism,”14 adding a diachronic perspective to his work on cultural ethnicization in Brazil. This study seeks to fill a lacuna in existing scholarship regarding Brazilian popular performance abroad in a historical context,

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how such performance has been inflected by issues of race, and the role of cross-national diasporic connections that artists have created.15 This book focuses on the period between the 1880s and the 1950s— an era that witnessed the rise and fall of racial determinism—in order to reflect the freedom of expression and creativity unleashed by the gradual dismantling of the institution of slavery, which paved the way for fi nal abolition in 1888. It also seeks to chart the subsequent diachronic shifts in discourses and attitudes regarding black culture and identity, how these were informed by transnational currents and wider hegemonic discourses, and their impact on national self-defi nition and performance.16 Prior to Abolition, as Camila Cowling has written in relation to Rio de Janeiro and the Cuban capital of Havana, “These were ‘African’ or ‘black’ cities whose daily functioning depended on armies of enslaved and free laborers of color, and where an observer walking down a single street might hear multiple African and European languages being spoken.”17 Cowling notes that in both cities “slavery’s ending both invoked specific new forms of ‘racialization’ and, as an integral part of this process, involved renegotiating the meanings of ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’—for white men and women as well as for those of color.”18 For Brazilian intellectuals, black Brazilians, no longer slaves after 1888, became Africans, “an alien and polluting menace,” a label that persisted throughout the First Republic.19 Despite the fact that no legal segregation was written into the republic’s constitution or twentieth-century legislation, and irrespective of the absence of clear-cut, inflexible racial categorizations, post-emancipation society throughout the period focused on in this book, and at all levels, was marked by discriminatory attitudes and practices premised on racial ascription, as has been extensively documented. 20 As Joseph L. Love argues in relation to Belle Époque Rio de Janeiro (1898–1914), with its newly unveiled improvements in sanitation, public works, and architecture: Rio’s new face could not mask an inconvenient reality: given that some very large share of the population of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil as a whole was nonwhite—perhaps half, though nobody knew for sure—and given that many, perhaps most, politically aware Brazilians tended to believe nonwhite populations were innately incapable of achieving the same level of development as white ones, how could Brazil succeed against Argentina or any other country perceived as white?21

For most of the nineteenth century the Brazilian elite believed that miscegenation was the cause of degeneracy and their country’s backwardness, but toward the turn of the century there was a major U-turn in official

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policy, with whitening through miscegenation now becoming the genetic solution to the nation’s perceived ills. 22 In the 1910s in particular, national identity was reassessed by Brazilian intellectuals in the context of neighboring Argentina’s “immigrant-fueled Europeanization.”23 Mainstream society in Brazil’s capital still tended to view the proliferation of black food vendors—including the quitandeiras discussed in chapter 4—as a “social disease, especially in places where they had continuously territorialized sections of the city.”24 In the 1920s such racist views persisted and manifested themselves in the realm of popular entertainment. According to the black musician Pixinguinha (1897–1973), for example, in the silent cinema era black musicians could play in the “second orchestra” in the lobby, but not in the “fi rst orchestra,” which accompanied the fi lms. 25 The press continued to conflate blackness with criminality, and musicians were forced to adopt a variety of strategies to distance themselves from demeaning stereotypes. The soccer teams of Rio de Janeiro continued to discriminate against Afro-Brazilian players, with the club Vasco da Gama, in 1923, causing outrage among rival teams—whose players came from the white elite— by emerging victorious from a local tournament with a winning combination of black, mixed-race, and white players. 26 Against this backdrop of de facto prejudice toward Afro-Brazilians, the 1920s also witnessed the cultural revolution known as Brazilian Modernism, which awakened an interest in the nation’s popular culture and folklore among Brazil’s elite. 27 Concurrently, black intellectuals in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro “hailed the importance of racial mixture in the formation of Brazil’s population; highlighted African inflections in Brazilians’ language, music, and temperament; and celebrated the role of black women—and their sons—in shaping a Brazilian family marked by interracial fraternity.”28 Such changing attitudes among the intelligentsia were equally reflected in the Regionalist Movement in literature based in the northeast of the country and led by sociologist Gilberto Freyre, who valorized the indigenous and African contributions to national culture, and proclaimed miscegenation a central tenet of Brazilian identity and an incalculable asset. 29 The publication of Freyre’s seminal work, Casa grande e senzala (1933) (published in English as The Masters and the Slaves [1946]) coincided with policies introduced by the regime of President Getúlio Vargas (1930– 1945) to co-opt popular culture, particularly Afro-Brazilian cultural manifestations, as proof of the nation’s “racial democracy.”30 With Vargas’s ascension to power by military coup in 1930—bringing the First Republic to an end—and particularly after the establishment of his nationalist-

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authoritarian Estado Novo (New State) in 1937, Afro-Brazilian urban popular culture became much more visible, losing its “connotations of polluting menace” and undermining “the formal and informal discriminatory policies of the First Republic.”31 The process by which elements of Afro-Brazilian culture were transformed into national symbols was intensified during the Vargas years, although the regime focused on the nation to the exclusion of race, thus further marginalizing the emergence of black voices.32 The decision to extend the scope of Tropical Travels to the 1950s reflects the importance of Afro-Brazilian popular culture to the policies implemented by the regimes of President Vargas (1930–1945, 1950–1954) and the impact of the rise of the entertainment and culture industries during the Vargas years, not least the radio, the record industry, and the talking cinema.33 In the aftermath of World War II, the dominant discourse among both black and white thinkers in Brazil was one of racial democracy rather than of harmony or fraternity, reflecting the ascendancy of democracy in Brazil and in much of the West. In this new era, racial democracy was seen among Afro-Brazilian intellectuals such as Abdias do Nascimento not as a reality but as a “consensus about what Brazil could rightfully become in an era of redemocratization and expanded participation.”34 Racial discrimination continued in the latter half of the 1940s and into the 1950s, nonetheless, despite the fact that its prohibition was finally enshrined in the Constitution of 1946. The following year the black US social scientist Irene Diggs was barred from entering the Hotel Serrador in Rio de Janeiro, and in 1949 Nascimento himself, along with actors belonging to his Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN, discussed in more detail below), was prevented from entering the Hotel Glória in the same city—just two of several documented high-profi le cases. The Afro-American dancer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham met with the same fate when attempting to enter the Hotel Esplanada in São Paulo in 1950.35

the problem of r ace: nomencl ature, mutabilit y, and performativit y It should be stated from the outset that this book is underpinned by a fi rm belief in the fallacy of racial essentialism, but recognizes the existence of racialized bodies as a sociological fact. Consequently, the terms “race,” “racial,” and “racialized” will be placed in quotation marks when necessary to stress that they relate to a cultural construct used to create a biological fiction in specific historical-social contexts. These terms will be

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used without quotation marks elsewhere to reflect de facto normative categories of (self)-identification premised on such characteristics as phenotype, skin tone, and genealogy, which were nonetheless often challenged and rendered unstable in popular performance. A major concern of this study is how perceptions of race were negotiated within popular performance in the city of Rio de Janeiro during the era in question, and how these issues engaged with wider transnational trends. In the words of Edward E. Telles: Race is important because people continue to classify and treat others according to societally accepted ideas. The idea of race has had enormous influence in the evolution of modern societies, including Brazil’s, and it has had negative consequences for its victims. I can empathize with a concern that the use of the term “race” reifies social distinctions that have no biological value, but race continues to be immensely important in sociological interaction, and therefore sociological analysis must take it into account. 36

Furthermore, the ascription of Afro-Brazilian or black identity and ancestry, and the use of traditional Brazilian racial nomenclature, must be problematized before embarking on any interrogation of racialized performance in Rio de Janeiro. As Davis writes, “Applying English-speaking cultural sensitivities to other cultures does not necessarily help scholars, particularly when trying to describe the internal dynamics of a given culture. This is particularly true when translating Brazilian racial terminologies related to blackness.”37 Brazilian racial taxonomies are notoriously fluid and unstable, and embrace multiple and overlapping terms that do not have precise English translations.38 This was certainly no less the case in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, as those of African descent sought to establish their identities. As Thomas E. Skidmore writes: Nineteenth-century Brazil already exhibited a complex system of racial classification. It was pluralistic, or multi-racial, in contrast to the rigidly bi-racial system of North America. The half-million slaves who were freed in 1888 entered a complex social structure that included free men of color (of every shade). Skin color, hair texture, facial, and other visible physical characteristics were the determinants of the racial category into which a person would be placed by those he met. The apparent wealth or status of the person being observed, indicated by his clothes and his immediate social company, also influenced the observer’s reaction, as indicated by the

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Brazilian adage “money whitens”—although the instances observed usually applied to light mulattoes. The sum total of physical characteristics (the “phenotype”) was the determining factor, although perception of this might vary according to the region, area, and observer. 39

The complexities of identificatory nomenclature continued into the fi rst decades of the twentieth century, when the Afro-Brazilian newspaper Progresso (established in São Paulo in 1928) targeted the terminology of race itself, leading the way in using the term negro to refer to people of color that it held in high esteem, ranging from Haile Selassie to Josephine Baker, although it still used the commonplace term preto for general discussion.40 According to Seigel, “[T]he descendants of Africans in Brazil in the 1920s called themselves and each other a broad array of terms. They used negro, de côr, de classe, preto, pardo, mulato and other color terms, and all the terms for white shades as well, of course—and many refused racial or color identifications at all, sometimes successfully.”41 Tropical Travels takes its lead regarding racial terminology from Seigel, who uses the terms “Afro-Brazilian,” “Afro-descended,” and sometimes “black” (the latter for reasons of readability) to refer to those of African heritage, and sometimes refers to “elites” rather than “whites” “in a nod to the imperfect convergence of race and power.”42 In doing so, it also follows the example of Davis, who favors the term “Afro-Brazilian” to refer to those who identify themselves with black culture and ancestry but may physically represent a wide range of skin tones. As Davis emphasizes, in the Brazilian context, “racial” designation may change depending on who is doing the looking and who is doing the defi ning.43 So-called mulato identity in Brazil further complicates categorization, with this “neither black nor white”44 status facilitating social mobility and greater commercial possibilities in the Rio de Janeiro entertainment world of the fi rst half of the twentieth century.45 Throughout this book, the terms mulato and mulata will be used in Portuguese to reflect their common currency and unproblematic status in Brazilian society, unlike the etymologically similar English-language adjective and noun. Furthermore, it must also be remembered that the mythical rhetoric of racial democracy unhelpfully blurs the distinctions between ethnicity and class in Brazil, masking the fact that black performers continued to suffer from economic and social exclusion well beyond the immediate post-Abolition period, with Rio de Janeiro remaining highly stratified from a “racial” and class perspective.46 The following example illustrates some of the complexities and contradictions inherent in racial nomenclature in Brazil and underlines the

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fact that racial identity is not only relational and contingent, but a construction that is highly dependent on its spatial and temporal context.47 The performers who formed part of the Companhia Negra de Revistas in 1926–1927 (discussed in chapters 1 and 3) clearly self-identified as negros or blacks, with the title of their fi rst production, Tudo preto (All Black), using the alternative term preto, which conventionally refers to very dark skin. As Melo Gomes and Seigel write, “The Companhia Negra recognized language as a site of struggle, and occupied it bodily.”48 Yet many of these same performers would reappear a few years later as part of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira in 1930, suggesting that they interpreted the term negro as referring to anyone of African descent, even mulatos of mixed European and African heritage. An advertisement for one of the company’s revues proudly marketed them as “30 artistas mulatos,” and their female stars as “mulatas do outro mundo” (mulatas from another world). Equally, the artistic reinvention of these performers reflects the fluidity and performativity of “race,” highlighting that it can be based on phenotype, skin tone, or an assumed sociocultural identity, as well as underscoring the arbitrariness of taxonomies of racial ascription. It must also be acknowledged that such taxonomies are further complicated by the fact that their meanings shift over time. For example, in late nineteenth-century Brazil, following Abolition, preto and negro were synonyms for a liberto (freed slave), and pardo referred to a person of African descent of any skin shade who had never been enslaved.49 The inherent performativity and potential mutability of “race” is further evidenced by the mulata identity acquired by Josephine Baker on arrival in Brazil. As examined in chapter 4, the Afro-American star was aligned in the Brazilian public’s imagination with the homegrown stage performer Araci Cortes, commonly referred to as a mulata assumida, a term that implies a lighter-skinned woman of mixed-race heritage who could sometimes “pass” for white but who embraces her African roots. The friendship between Baker and Cortes was emphasized in Rio’s press, thus attenuating the “blackness” of the North American star and packaging her potentially subversive sexuality as akin to that of the celebrated Brazilian mulata. Tropical Travels is grounded in Victor Turner’s understanding of the relationship between lived existence (“the mundane, everyday sociocultural processes”) and “cultural performance; namely, that this relationship is not “unidirectional and ‘positive’—in the sense that the performative genre merely ‘reflects’ or ‘expresses’ the social system or the cultural configuration, or at any rate their key relationships—but that it is reciprocal and reflexive—in the sense that the performance is often a critique, di-

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rect or veiled, of the social life it grows out of.”50 A central concern of this book is to explore the discursive practices of racialized performativity on Rio de Janeiro’s popular stages between the 1880s and 1950s, acknowledging a debt of gratitude to Judith Butler’s pioneering conceptualization of gender performativity, which provides a useful frame of reference. 51 As Butler so helpfully puts it, “gender proves to be performance—that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed.”52

r acialized performance in pre and post-abolition rio de janeiro During the colonial period and until at least the 1850s, many Africans, Afro-Brazilians, and mixed-race musicians were enslaved and working as barbers in the port cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. Some of these so-called barber-musicians “possessed and performed a dizzying array of skills, including hair cutting, shaving, bloodletting, surgery, dentistry, and entertaining customers by playing any number of musical instruments.”53 In the nineteenth century, slave musicians and bands also popularized the lundu genre and were a source of income for their owners in Rio de Janeiro. 54 As Davis explains, “Throughout the period of slavery, black musicians had fi lled local homes, plantations, and public forums with music that enthused locals and international travellers.”55 Abolition heralded a new dynamic as black entertainers emerged of their own free will in the circus and, in particular, the teatro de revista—a theatrical tradition that has been described as “a mixture of vaudeville, operettas, circus acts, and political cabaret.”56 Hertzman argues that after Abolition, “popular entertainment served as Brazil’s most visible and public stage for black men.”57 But emancipation from the shackles of slavery did not bring about any significant shifts in terms of racial hierarchies. By the turn of the century, and into the fi rst decades of the twentieth century, a performer’s skin color was a major factor in determining commercial success, as Hertzman has documented in relation to the nascent music industry in Rio de Janeiro. Thus Afro-Brazilian roots were sometimes masked with the help of makeup, hair wax, and clever photography. 58 The musical genre of samba, in particular, became associated with composers and performers of Afro-Brazilian descent, as has been extensively documented, 59 and thus became entwined with wider defi nitions of blackness. As Robert Stam writes, “In postabolition Rio de Janeiro, blacks found jobs not only

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as dockers, artisans, factory workers, and clerks, but also as performing artists in the circus, vaudeville, cabarets, and café-theatres. One of the earliest protests against racial prejudice occurred in 1904 with complaints that a Rio theatre was discriminating against blacks in its hiring practices.”60 For the elite it was difficult to accept black bodies as representations of national culture, giving rise to demeaning, racist comments on the performances of Afro-Brazilian artists in the elite-oriented satirical press. Despite their commercial success, for example, in 1908 the mulato duo Os Geraldos (discussed in chapter 1) were referred to by the critic Jota Depê, in the highbrow publication O Degas, as a “dueto beiçudo” (thick-lipped duo) who had presented an inferior vision of Brazilian art abroad; the accomplished black clown and revue writer Benjamin de Oliveira (also discussed in chapter 1) was described in the same article as an “impoverished mind” who could only memorize his lines by using slang and colloquial language.61 Until the late 1920s, Afro-Brazilian performers were notable for their absence from the teatro de revista, and white performers continued to depict them as antimodern, anachronistic legacies from the colonial era who spoke defective Portuguese. With the creation of the Companhia Negra de Revistas in 1926–1927, however, black Brazilian performers were given a voice in this medium that, for the fi rst time, did not draw on an apocryphal, demeaning “black speak” but instead aligned itself with developments in cosmopolitan “black Paris” (as examined in chapters 1 and 3). This did not mean that racist attitudes among the elite toward AfroBrazilian performers were a thing of the past, but there was undeniably an increased openness to black popular culture as a direct consequence of its contextualization within transnational currents and show business vogues. The baiana performance archetype (the focus of chapter 4) emerged as an invention of Rio de Janeiro’s teatro de revista during the First Republic and was traditionally performed by women of European descent. Gradually, however, in the late 1920s and 1930s the role was opened up to three women of partial African ancestry: Otília Amorim, Júlia Martins, and the stage mulata par excellence, Araci Cortes.62 Amorim, although considered a mulata actress, was seen as less overt and more refi ned in her performance style than Martins and was referred to in the press as a good-looking morena. This identity—associated with a dusky skin tone, long wavy hair, and European features—paradoxically enabled her to play a “real” mulata rather than a caricatured version on stage. As well as performing in this role, she was able to take on more cosmopoli-

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tan ones, such as the leader of a group of flappers (melindrosas) in the revue Gata, baeta e carapicu (1928).63 There can be no doubt that AfroBrazilian women in Rio in the early twentieth century, particularly those toward the darker end of the skin tone spectrum, faced much greater challenges than their male counterparts in pursuing a career in entertainment. Hertzman points out that while black male performers had few official structures through which to promote or protect their interests, they did have options and opportunities largely unavailable to black women such as Déo Costa,64 whose short-lived career is discussed in chapter 1. As Davis writes in relation to the 1930s, “Marketability and pervading social conventions worked against women in general .  .  . but they also worked against blacks and poor people.”65 Black female performers were thus triply marginalized, and it is no coincidence that the light-skinned, self-styled mulata Araci Cortes reigned supreme on the proscenium of the teatro de revista.66 Lighter-skinned mulatas had the advantage of being able to perform blackness while maintaining the privileges of whiteness. As examined in chapter 4, this performative device would be consummately developed in the 1930s by Carmen Miranda, who would prove “compelling to audiences hungry to see themselves as modern, but desperate to celebrate what they perceived was part of an authentic hybrid cultural tradition distinct from that of Europe and the United States.”67 It was only in the late 1940s that societal shifts began to permit greater employment opportunities for Afro-Brazilian women in the entertainment sphere.68 The phenomenon of blackface performance in Brazil, although undoubtedly much less common than in the United States, has never been systematically studied and is thus examined in chapter 1. Prior to Abolition, formally trained white musicians often fused their music with what they considered African characteristics, adapting the lundu genre, for example, for salon performances that were complemented by caricatures of slave life, creating performances of “musical blackface.”69 As Hertzman writes, “As they did elsewhere in the Atlantic world, white performers in Brazil donned black paint to sing about slave life.”70 During the nineteenth century, black male characters were disparagingly portrayed by whites as speaking with lisps, and Afro-Brazilian women were represented as libidinous sexual objects.71 Yet by the early 1880s, white abolitionists were performing as Afro-Brazilians in mock coronation ceremonies of African kings in the carnival of the city of Recife, part of a wider strategy of using racialized performance to further their cause.72 During the First Republic and beyond there were well-known isolated traditions of blackface per-

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formance, usually linked to specific popular songs with lyrics that allude to Afro-Brazilian characters. These include “Boneca de piche” (Tar Doll) (discussed in chapter 1) and “Nega maluca” (Crazy Black Girl), recorded on disc in 1950 by the white singer Linda Batista, who promoted the song by wearing thick blackface makeup.73 As Davis illustrates, from the 1920s to the 1950s, white recording artists and radio stars such as Carmen Miranda literally and figuratively “utilized black masks as a way to demonstrate that they were authentically Brazilian. . . . In their performances, on and off the radio, and in their recordings, white performers unapologetically sang about black characters and took on black personalities, including the mulata or mulato, the malandro, the street smart trickster, or the Bahiana, the street vendor from the northeastern city of Salvador.”74

the emergence of bl ack consciousness post abolition Black consciousness and activism emerged during the First Republic, centered on the city of São Paulo, where the Afro-Brazilian press took hold, and black organizations—ranging from social clubs to political groups— emerged in the early twentieth century. Black-run newspapers and groups were instrumental in asserting pride in Afro-Brazilian contributions to national history and the forging of the nation, most prominently via the figure of the Mãe Preta (Black Mother), who represented the millions of black women, both slave and free, who raised and often nursed white children.75 As George Reid Andrews writes, “The Black Mother was often cited in the black newspapers as a symbol, not just of the sacrifices that black people had made for Brazil, but also of the powerful ways in which Euro- and Afro-Brazilians were linked in a common destiny. And indeed, what could be more compelling than the symbol of mother’s milk, in this case the milk of black mothers shared with white children?”76 A campaign for a monument to the Mãe Preta also gathered strength in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1920s. On 3 May 1926 the black lay brotherhood of Nossa Senhora do Rosário e São Benedito dos Homens Pretos held a mass in the city in support of the project that was attended by people of varied social classes and racial backgrounds, and gained front-page illustrated coverage in the newspaper A Notícia, which played a major role in the campaign. Those in attendance included members of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, whose revue Tudo preto culminated, not coincidentally, with the number “Apotheosis to the Black Mother.”77 According to Alberto, this “choice suggests the broad resonance of the symbol of the Mãe Preta among Rio’s population, elite and nonelite alike.”78 A

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twenty-six-year-old Gilberto Freyre went to see the revue with a group of fellow intellectuals and later recounted the profound impact that its samba music, under the direction of the Afro-Brazilian Pixinguinha, had on him.79 Between 1910 and 1935 some twenty Afro-Brazilian newspapers were set up in the city of São Paulo, along with several in Campinas and other urban centers. This black press was a typical example of what Michael Mitchell has termed an “opinion elite”80 in that “Black newspapers were not commercial endeavors run by professional publishers and journalists. They were partnerships and collectives of young working men (joined, in rare instances, by young women), who were part of the Afro-Brazilian bourgeoisie.”81 This press placed an emphasis on Afro-Brazilians’ “mastery of European-based culture” and “refi nement” through the publication of their poetry and prose crônicas (journalistic essays).82 The dominant discourse within the black press in the 1920s was the emphasis on the centrality of Afro-Brazilian people to the Brazilian nation, rooted in the historical contributions of African slaves and their descendants to the construction of colonial Brazil. Black writers used sentiment to demand symbolic inclusion and reparation, and to override any sense of AfroBrazilian “foreignness.”83 Black press writers also celebrated the vogue for non-Brazilian black performance in Paris and beyond, with a theatre critic for the newspaper Progresso announcing with delight that “Blacks are in vogue in the City of Light.”84 As Seigel has shown, the black press in Brazil was bound into transnational networks, with a piece in São Paulo’s Clarim d’Alvorada in 1926 declaring that the success of Afro-descendant artists in Paris and the innovations of the Companhia Negra de Revistas in Brazil were proof that “the era belongs to us.”85 In São Paulo, AfroBrazilians created the nation’s fi rst and only race-based political party, the Frente Negra Brasileira, in 1931, an unprecedented form of activism in Brazil, which despite existing for only six years, “achieved important successes that had an enduring impact on race relations and race politics.”86 In 1944, Abdias do Nascimento and Alberto Guerreiro Ramos set up the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN) in Rio de Janeiro.87 This groundbreaking theatre group reflected its leaders’ high-culture intellectual tendencies and became the city’s most visible and well documented postwar black activist organization, publishing its own newspaper, Quilombo (1948–1950), and adopting an indirect cultural approach to combating racism.88 Another important contributor to the fostering of black consciousness via the theatre was Solano Trindade, a Recife-born poet, theatre director, black activist, and defender of Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions

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who moved to Rio in the early 1940s, where he collaborated with the TEN. Trindade criticized the theatre group, however, for its elitist approach and failure to embrace the povo (ordinary people) and went on to create his own Teatro Popular Brasileiro in the late 1950s. As Paulina Alberto writes, “It was not, like Nascimento’s, an ‘experimental’ theatre with a strong academic component but a theatre that focused on portraying aspects of black Brazilian culture as part of a broader Brazilian povo.”89 In practice, as in previous decades, Rio de Janeiro’s neighborhood sports and recreational clubs, and the carnival associations known as samba schools, made up mostly of Afro-Brazilians, continued to be a much more important and popular focus for race-specific sociability and, unlike the TEN, “did not make race and antiracist activism explicit conditions of membership.”90

the port cit y of rio de janeiro: a nexus in circuits of cultur al exchange The First Republic ushered in a period of rapid transformation in Brazil’s then-capital city.91 Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Rio de Janeiro was probably the largest black city in the South Atlantic, having been the Brazilian port that received the highest number of African slaves and, post Abolition, the main destination for former slaves and their descendants fleeing the drought-stricken northeast and the agricultural lands of the Paraíba River valley, by then in decline. Rio was also a magnet for foreign immigrants equally attracted by the employment possibilities of this burgeoning urban metropolis.92 The population of the city went from around 500,000 in the fi nal third of the nineteenth century to just over 900,000 in the early 1910s.93 At the dawn of the twentieth century, Rio was the third major port of the Americas, behind only New York and Buenos Aires. As Nicolau Sevcenko illustrates, during the Belle Époque, European ships (principally French) brought new fashions in clothing and furniture, but also news of the latest plays and books, and new modes of behavior, leisure pursuits, and philosophical ideas, all eagerly devoured by a “highly urbanized society thirsty for prestigious models.”94 Port facilities were modernized during the urban reforms implemented during the Rodrigues Alves administration (1902–1906), most famous for creating the Avenida Central (now Avenida Rio Branco) and improvements in sanitation. Bruno Carvalho states: Efforts to modernize the city also clearly imposed a spatial redistribution of its population—mimicking the Haussmannization of Paris. We

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may say that it was a large-scale and unprecedented urban intervention to a great degree predicated on the elimination or reduction of the contact between social classes and “racial” groups, forcing those who did not fit the desired “civilized” and “modern” mould into the city’s outskirts and favelas.95

Despite these attempts to minimize social contact between different ethnic and economic groups, Rio was becoming an intensely multicultural city thanks to waves of immigration, with poor new immigrants from Europe, in particular, sharing the urban space with former Afro-Brazilian slaves and their descendants. As Carvalho has shown, the sphere of popular music, as well as that of prostitution, attested to this vibrant multicultural mix and “multiracial sociability.”96 He has analyzed what he terms the “spatial porosity” of the city, the “multiple layers” of its cultural history, and its “palimpsestic landscape,”97 highlighting the unfi xed boundaries between different historical layers, and the convergence of diverse social and ethnic groups in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century. Tropical Travels considers how this porosity extended to boundaries and relationships between foreign and domestic performance traditions and their practitioners, particularly those engaging with “racial” representation. Population growth in Rio went hand in hand with the expansion of leisure, and the city center became a magnet for popular theatres, music venues, and the fi rst cinemas. In the interwar period, the mass European immigration to the bustling port city that accompanied the quest for modernity gave rise to cafés, cabarets, bars, restaurants with performance spaces, and itinerant circuses.98 As Davis writes, “After dark, prostitutes descended upon the ports like vultures, joined by drug hustlers, malandros, and a host of performers and musicians whose raw talent merged in countless social spaces that have been lost to history.”99 While acknowledging the city’s centrality to intellectual debates and negotiations concerning issues of race and nation, I chose to focus on Rio de Janeiro in this book in an attempt to rediscover some of the popular artists who animated these lost spaces, which also reflects the city’s emergence and consolidation as the center of Brazil’s burgeoning entertainment industry. The status of Rio de Janeiro as a thriving port throughout the historical period in question is key to understanding the city’s role as a hub within circuits of transnational exchange involving both people and ideas. From the time of Brazilian independence in 1822 to the 1870s, there was a significant flow of Brazilians to France via the port of Rio de Janeiro.100 The Franco-Brazilian connection was particularly strong among the elite

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but also embraced the movement of merchants and artisans, and those of mixed race. Steamship lines linking Brazilian ports such as Rio with their French counterparts were established in the early 1850s, although such travel was not cheap or easy, with the transatlantic voyage taking a month. Gradually the number of steamship lines proliferated, facilitating shorter trips to Europe. Seen as the epitome of modernity and civilization, France—and particularly Paris—offered Brazilian visitors, who tended to stay for a year or so due to fi nancial restrictions, the opportunity to acquire considerable status. As Barman writes, “They acquired cultural and social attributes that allowed them, on returning to Brazil, to exert considerable influence over other groups—power that they used  to obtain preferred occupational positions and to legitimate their claims to a greater share of economic resources.”101 Those who gained positions of influence on their return became “interpreters to Brazilians of the civilized world that flourished on the other side of the Atlantic.”102 As all of the chapters in Tropical Travels illustrate, the same was true of popular performers and purveyors of forms of Brazilian popular culture who had passed through Paris, thus acquiring cultural capital. Afro-Brazilian performers came in contact with Afro-diasporic performance in Paris as well as at home in Rio, where Francophone artists were frequent visitors. Conversely, “Few African American performers made their way to Brazil prior to World War II, and few Afro-Brazilians would travel to the United States until the dismantling of segregation in the 1960s.”103 Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French culture prevailed as the dominant model in Brazil and its capital, far outweighing the influence exerted by Portugal (the former colonial power) or even the United States, with the French education system serving as a template for its Brazilian counterpart, to give just one example.104 Under the slogan “O Rio civiliza-se” (Rio is becoming civilized), the Rodrigues Alves administration “pursued Civilization by material change along modern European (i.e., French) lines,” with improvements in hygiene and the layout of the city center, which hinged on the creation of the Avenida Central.105 As Jeffrey Needell writes, elite culture was modeled on FrancoEnglish “aristocratic urban culture,”106 and in the pre–World War II era, in particular, the Franco-Brazilian cultural alliance was paramount. The realm of elite culture in both France and Brazil benefited from the artistic ferment generated by the Rio-Paris axis, particularly as a consequence of the physical journeys across the Atlantic made by members of the Brazilian Modernist movement of the 1920s, including painter Tarsila do Amaral and writer Oswald de Andrade. Furthermore, the boundaries between

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elite and popular culture were highly permeable and deliberately transgressed by the likes of Tarsila and Oswald (as they are referred to in Brazil) and their French interlocutors, the avant-garde poet Blaise Cendrars and the classical composer Darius Milhaud. For example, in 1923, at the invitation of the Brazilian ambassador, Oswald lectured at the Sorbonne, where he stressed the influence of black music on modernity, and Cendrars was credited by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre as one of the (two) major forces behind the valorization of homegrown black culture among the Brazilian elite. Milhaud—who lived in Rio between 1914 and 1918 as a member of the French diplomatic service and was introduced to all varieties of Brazilian music by the classical composer Heitor VillaLobos (who was acclaimed in Paris before being recognized in Brazil)107— became an acquaintance of the Afro-Brazilian popular musician Donga, as did Cendrars. (One of the Oito Batutas [a group discussed at length in chapter 2], Donga was co-creator of the composition “Pelo telefone” [On the Telephone], registered in Rio’s National Library in 1916 and often referred to as the fi rst officially designated samba.) After returning to Paris, Milhaud composed various works inspired by Brazilian melodies, including “Le boeuf sur le toit,” (a musical quotation of “Bull on the Roof”), a piece by one of the Oito Batutas.108 Such exponents of high culture who traveled to Brazil “cemented the Franco-Brazilian bonds,”109 and despite the fact that the technological innovations that gave rise to the music industry in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1920s and 1930s came from the United States, there can be no doubt that French intellectuals played a central role in highlighting the contribution of popular musicians in general and AfroBrazilian musicians in particular.110 Much less is known about the circuits of cultural transmission, particularly at the level of popular performance, between Rio de Janeiro and other South Atlantic port cities. As Seigel underlines, “Inter-peripheral or ‘south-south’ encounters are the hardest to trace—a situation that justifies greater historical attention to them, not less.”111 The steamship route between Rio and Buenos Aires, for example, greatly facilitated the movement of popular performers, including Afro-Brazilians, between these two entertainment centers from the late nineteenth century onward. As Seigel continues, “Like Paris, and much more than other South American capitals, Buenos Aires hosted inter-American encounters.  .  .  . In Argentina’s port capital, travelling Brazilians, North Americans, and other foreigners could take in one another’s sights and sounds, whether or not they went on to travel in the United States or Brazil.”112 Many of the performers discussed in this book took advantage of

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the relative proximity of Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro and the availability of affordable travel. Geraldo Magalhães and Eduardo das Neves (whose careers are explored in chapter 1) performed in Buenos Aires in the 1910s, and the ballroom dancers Duque and Gaby traveled to the Argentine capital and Montevideo in 1916 following their success in Paris (discussed in chapter 2). After the First World War, a very regular popular theatrical circuit emerged between Rio and Buenos Aires, and the Sociedade Brasileira de Autores Teatrais (Brazilian Theatre Writers’ Society), known as the SBAT, established in 1917, was instrumental in promoting this mutual exchange. The organization’s publication, the Boletim da SBAT, shows a busy circuit of artists moving to and fro between the two port cities,113 as well as visits to Rio by Argentine journalists, writers, and actors. In the 1920s the publication also reported on visits by Brazilian troupes to Argentina, including that of Leopoldo Fróes and the Trolo-ló company of Jardel Jércolis.114 At the end of the decade, two artists from the world of popular entertainment in Argentina—the comic actor Palitos (Pablo Palos) and his brother Esteban Palos, a talented tap dancer and choreographer—would make their mark on Rio’s teatro de revista after arriving in Brazil as members of a troupe led by the Portuguese impresario Antônio Neves.115 Brazilian musicians were much in evidence in Buenos Aires in the 1920s and 1930s. For many, the Argentine capital—along with the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo—was the ideal stage on which to trade on their experiences in Paris and/or hone their skills for an international palate. Upon their return from Paris in 1922, the Oito Batutas performed in Buenos Aires (as discussed in chapter 2). In the 1930s the mixed-race musician and composer Josué de Barros, who had earlier set out to forge an artistic career in the French capital,116 performed in the Argentine capital for a total of six years. In March 1936, the Rio newspaper A Noite published a short interview with Barros and reported that he had fi rst traveled to Argentina with a group of fellow Brazilian entertainers in 1933 after winning a competition to represent the nation. In the interview Barros recounted that, accompanied by his two sons and daughter, he had been performing sambas, marchas (carnival marches), and other exclusively Brazilian genres on the main radio stations in Buenos Aires, stating, “In the great metropolis on the River Plate typical Brazilian music is heard everywhere, with pleasure and interest,” being enjoyed by all social classes.117 Romeu Silva, a saxophonist and bandleader referred to in more detail below, accompanied Carmen Miranda on one of her visits to Buenos Aires in 1937 and spent several months there performing on the El Mundo and Belgrano ra-

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dio stations. A journalist writing in the magazine O Cruzeiro in 1936 referred to Brazilian radio stars such as Carmen Miranda as having been struck down with “Argentinitis.”118 By the mid-1940s, Brazil’s four leading male singers—Francisco Alves, Mario Reis, Orlando Silva, and Sílvio Caldas—had all established themselves in the Argentine market.119 The Vargas regime sponsored the consolidation of cultural links with Argentina, especially via the radio and popular music, and after implementing his authoritarian New State in 1937, Vargas funded the program “Hora do Brasil” (Hour of Brazil) in Buenos Aires via the El Mundo radio station on Thursday and Saturday evenings. Financial backing from the Brazilian government faltered, however, and Brazilian musicians were gradually replaced by locals, including a large number of European immigrants who claimed they were well acquainted with Brazilian music.120 Thanks to the busy steamship route between Rio and Lisbon, by the 1920s there was a long-standing tradition of individual Brazilian artists and theatrical revue writers making the journey across the Atlantic. Various Brazilian comic performers were familiar to Portuguese audiences, but the transatlantic crossings made by these individuals were far outweighed by traffic in the other direction. Touring Portuguese revue companies capitalized on the fact that by the beginning of the 1920s approximately a fi fth of Rio’s population was composed of Portuguese immigrants who provided a ready-made audience well versed in the performative traditions of the popular theatre back home. The fi rst Brazilian revue company to perform in Portugal, however, was the Tro-lo-ló, led by Jardel Jércolis, which enjoyed considerable success for three months in 1933 (as discussed in chapter 3). The next Brazilian company to make the journey to Portugal was that of the actress Renata Fronzi and her husband, César Ladeira, in the 1950s.121 In contrast, Portuguese popular theatrical companies performed regularly in Rio de Janeiro in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century, largely for the considerable immigrant community composed of their compatriots. Such companies took back with them across the Atlantic to Lisbon performance archetypes that regularly appeared on the popular stages of the Brazilian capital, such as that of the baiana (examined in detail in chapter 4). Brazilian musicians and performers, including the mixed-race singer Geraldo Magalhães (discussed in chapter 1) and the bandleader Romeu Silva, traveled to Portugal in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century. Silva, an astute impresario, persuaded the Brazilian government to fund his foreign excursions to promote Brazilian musical culture abroad, and in 1925 he performed his jazz-inflected sambas and choros in various venues in Lisbon, Oporto, and other Portuguese

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figure 0.2. Advertisement for performances

in Rio de Janeiro by the French Ba-ta-clan company’s jazz band, led by Liverpool-born Gordon Stretton. Correio da Manhã, 23 October 1923, p. 14.

towns.122 Silva was evidently at pains to distance himself from the “black” associations of jazz, declaring to a Rio newspaper in 1923 that his JazzBand Sul-Americana was “an elegant group, presentable in any salon of Carioca [Rio] society. No monkeyshines or debauchery, unlike a certain French or [North] American orchestra currently playing here. We are artists, not clowns.”123 After the end of the First World War, Rio de Janeiro’s popular performers and audiences were exposed to the artistic influences of a steady stream of visiting black performers from Europe and North America who traveled to Buenos Aires and Montevideo regularly and often included the Brazilian capital in their performance itinerary. A case in point was

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Gordon Stretton (figure 0.2)—the stage name of William Masters (1887– 1982)—a black British musician of mixed Jamaican and Irish ancestry, born in Liverpool, who became a successful jazz musician in Paris and subsequently in Buenos Aires in the 1920s and 1930s.124 On their fi rst visit to Rio in 1923 the Parisian revue company the Ba-ta-clan included an orchestra of so-called negros americanos led by Stretton, variously billed as the Jazz-Band do Ba-ta-clan, the Jazz Band Gordon Stretton Ba-ta-clan, the Jazz-band Gordon Stretton, or the Jazz Band Norte Americana da Bata-clan.125 On 31 August 1923 the Rio newspaper A Noite included an advertisement for the Jazz Band Gordon Stretton at the elite Assyrio restaurant, where they were contracted to play every night from half past midnight until 3 a.m.126 On 30 September 1923 the Correio da Manhã published an item entitled “The Gordon Stretton Jazz Band continues to be a monumental success at the Central,” which illustrates their fame and popularity in the city: “There is no one in Rio, for sure, who has not heard of the Jazz Band Gordon Stretton, of the Ba-Ta-Clan, the best group of musicians that have ever visited this capital city.”127 A photograph of the Jazz Band Gordon Stretton was published in the Gazeta de Notícias on 6 October 1923 in which they are all striking typical jazz poses, and all but one of them appears to be black.128 The band then went on to play at the Cassino-Teatro Fênix in Rio in November 1923.129 Stretton made the most of the commercial opportunities open to him in the Brazilian capital. While the Ba-ta-clan was still performing in the city, he was appearing at the Cinema Central alongside “the kings of the world’s tap dancers from the Ba-ta-clan,”130 the Afro-American performers Douglas,131 Jones, and Marie Cook,132 in what was described as “the BA-TA-CLAN’s only number for families.”133 Stretton was a master of reinvention, going on to perform “characteristic North American songs and dances” as a solo artist at Rio’s Cinema Central,134 and it would appear that he fi rst did blackface performance in the city on 13 December 1923 (see figure 0.3, an advertisement in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Imparcial). Back in Britain, after seeing a performance by Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels featuring the white minstrel performer Eugene Stratton in 1903, he adopted the stage name of Gordon Stretton and went on to experiment with blackface performance himself. He clearly saw the potential of racialized performance and was acutely aware of transnational performance vogues.135 The transnational interactions of Afro-descendent performers and the interplay of racialized performance traditions that took place in the entertainment nucleus of Rio de Janeiro in the fi rst half of the twentieth century are supremely illustrated by Stretton’s return to the city from Ar-

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figure 0.3. Advertisement

featuring Gordon Stretton in blackface. O Imparcial (Rio de Janeiro), 12 December 1923, p. 14.

gentina in June 1931. Accompanied by his jazz band, he teamed up with the Afro-American child star Little Esther, an acrobatic dancer who was billed in the local press as “Josephine Baker’s legitimate successor.”136 Delighting local audiences familiar with Hollywood imports, Stretton performed an impersonation of Al Jolson at Rio’s Eldorado Theatre, singing “Sonny Boy” and “My Mammy,” the latter in duet with Little Esther.137 Preempting Josephine Baker’s adoption of this Afro-Brazilian persona in Rio in 1939 (as examined in chapter 4), Little Esther also performed in the city as a baiana during this tour.138

organization of this book Chapter 1 provides an overview of the presence of Afro-descendent performers in Rio de Janeiro from the 1880s to the 1920s. A hub in transat-

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lantic and inter-American shipping routes and performance circuits—the two went hand in hand—the port city of Rio provided a wealth of opportunities for free black Brazilians to improve their fragile economic position via entry into the local entertainment business. Likewise, with its steady influx of steamship passengers, Rio offered visiting performers a chance to capitalize on the interest in jazz and other “black” musical and dance idioms among local audiences, particularly in the 1920s. Chapter 1 aims to illustrate, by examining several individual case studies, the range of performative strategies adopted by Afro-descendent entertainers of varying skin tones and phenotypes to negotiate the problematic terrain of “race” and black subjectivity. Examining how these representations were received by the critics and the public alike, in some cases well beyond Brazil’s borders, this chapter also explores vernacular and imported forms of blackface during the period in question, a little-known aspect of racialized performance in Brazil. Chapter 2 examines the performance axis between Rio de Janeiro and Paris during the fi rst decades of the twentieth century, more specifically the artistic careers in the French capital of the white ballroom dancer and show business impresario Duque (Antônio Lopes de Amorim Diniz) and the Oito Batutas, a band whose membership was predominantly AfroBrazilian. In this period, Duque popularized a sanitized version of the maxixe dance, transforming it into a short-lived vogue, and the Oito Batutas introduced the samba into Montmartre’s cosmopolitan musical mix. This chapter illustrates how the racial associations of Afro-descendant culture and its purveyors were manipulated quite differently in each case for Parisians and visitors to the city, with Duque’s maxixe being “whitened” by being aligned with Argentine tango, also very much in fashion, and the Oito Batutas and their samba repertoire being contextualized within metropolitan Afro-diasporic idioms, not least jazz, and the reigning négrophilie. My intention is to show how these transatlantic return journeys by Duque and his maxixe, and the Oito Batutas and their samba, respectively, inflected the racial dimension of debates about Brazilian national identity, as well as led to shifts in performance traditions back in Brazil. As Davis underlines, to perform in Paris “was symbolically important in Brazil not only for one’s career but also for the acceptance of the type of music one performed.”139 Chapter 3 focuses on the teatro de revista in the 1920s and early 1930s, exploring how Brazil’s vaudeville tradition dialogued with transnational performance trends, and illustrating how its creators and performers were part of a transatlantic and inter-American artistic circuit

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that was evidenced in their embracing of a cosmopolitan modernist aesthetics. This chapter seeks to show how the reopening of channels of communication and renewed opportunities for the movement of people and ideas after the First World War led to rapid and dramatic shifts in the format and content of Rio’s theatrical revues. This was particularly striking in the depiction and negotiation of local and national identities, and their racial dimensions on stage. Until the 1920s Afro-Brazilian subjectivity in the revue theatre had been restricted to white actors playing patronizing and often demeaning black stock figures on stage, such as the malandro hustler, performers of the martial art capoeira, and seductive mulatas.140 From the mid-1920s, however, Afro-Brazilians emerged as performers themselves, and what in this chapter is termed “a cosmopolitan black subjectivity” emerged. Swept in by transnational currents, the Companhia Negra de Revistas and its subsequent splinter companies were the fi rst composed entirely of self-identifying Afro-Brazilians, capitalizing on the international vogue for cosmopolitan models of racialized performance. As Seigel writes, “the Companhia Negra de Revistas, and its debut play, Tudo Preto (All Black), marked a transnational, Afro-diasporic milestone in Carioca [Rio] and Brazilian national culture.”141 Chapter 4 traces the development of the baiana, a racialized performance archetype that underwent significant shifts in representation and meaning between the 1880s and the 1950s.142 The baiana was one of a collection of stock types—which also included the Portuguese immigrant, the mixed-race malandro hustler, the civil servant, and the matuto (or hick)—that characterized the teatro de revista from the 1910s as the medium sought to create a sense of identification with its increasingly diverse audience. This chapter highlights how these changes within the representation of the baiana on Rio’s popular stages were brought about by cross-border encounters that resulted either from physical journeys by the baiana persona beyond Brazil or by the arrival of imported performance traditions. It focuses on the baiana of the teatro de revista, with its diverse urban audience, and that of Rio’s upscale casino shows, analyzing the adoption of this stage persona in the 1930s by Josephine Baker and Carmen Miranda, two exemplary human vectors of transnational exchange. The central argument is that Baker’s casino baiana is quintessentially transnational, drawing on the star’s cultural capital and cosmopolitan cachet to render the persona palatable for elite white audiences. (As Davis points out, in this era very few black Brazilians had the opportunity to perform in elite venues such as the Urca Casino despite the fact that “Afro-Brazilian-based and inspired rhythms and icons were sta-

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ples in the nightly performances.”)143 Baker, like the Oito Batutas, gained “personal power and legitimacy” as a consequence of her performances in and associations with Paris, a power that she could transform into a creative force.144 Chapter 4 also explores Carmen Miranda’s stylization of the baiana prior to her departure in 1939 for Broadway and, soon after, Hollywood, described as “an ambiguous enactment of femininity that looks white but acts black.”145 Miranda became synonymous outside Brazil with the baiana persona, now stripped of its Afro-Brazilian associations to become a metonym for a generic Latin American identity. The chapter concludes by considering how Miranda’s Hollywood version of the baiana affected representations of the archetype in Brazilian cinema in the late 1940s and 1950s. The conclusion of Tropical Travels synthesizes the main arguments of the preceding chapters, illustrating their relevance to Brazilian culture since the 1950s and suggesting how this research might profitably inform future studies of Brazilian popular performance and its racial and transnational dimensions, as well as providing a framework for similar research in other historical and/or geographic contexts.

a final note on l anguage Throughout the book I have provided my own translations of the original Portuguese, Spanish, and French texts unless published translations were available. I have chosen to provide the titles of theatrical revues, films, and songs in their original language (predominantly Portuguese) and to provide an English translation. In instances where there is no direct, accurate English equivalent for terms—for example, carioca, baiana, malandro, and so on—I have provided an explanation and then used the original term in italics to avoid repeated unwieldy paraphrasing. As explained above, I have used the terms mulato and mulata in Portuguese to reflect their common currency and unproblematic status in Brazilian society, and where necessary I have left negro/a or preto/a and other racial nomenclature in the original Portuguese for reasons of clarity. I have modernized the original Portuguese spelling of both common and proper nouns.

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Ch a p t e r 1

afro -bra zilian performance on rio de janeiro’s popul ar stages from the 1880s to the long 1920s

Deixamos as patroas Artistas boas Vamos ser; Cheias de alacridade E com vontade de vencer Seremos as estrelas Chics e belas A dominar Mostrando que a raça Possui a graça De encantar We’ve left our female bosses behind Good performers We’re going to be; Full of verve And with the will to succeed We will be the stars Chic and beautiful To take over Showing that our race Has the charm To enchant T h e ly r ics a bov e a r e from the opening chorus of the theatrical revue Tudo preto (All Black) performed by Brazil’s fi rst Afro-Brazilian theatrical company, the Companhia Negra de Revistas, in 1926.1 They succinctly celebrate the new-found freedom, pride, and excitement of women

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whose horizons were previously limited to domestic service and who now found themselves at the vanguard of popular performance in Rio de Janeiro by virtue of their raça in the context of the transnational vogue for négrophilie ricocheting between Harlem and Paris (the international beacon of chic for Brazilian audiences) and far beyond. 2 Despite considerable commercial success, the company disbanded after just a few months, leading to outspoken displays of engrained racism in certain sectors of the press. On 14 September 1926, for example, the regular column dedicated to the local entertainment scene (“Scenas e telas”) in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper A Rua disparagingly referred to the company’s success by mentioning “a commonly heard phrase of late: ‘Já foste ver os pretos?’ [Have you been to see the blacks yet?].” Calling the company’s pretos “the biggest joke in the world,” the anonymous columnist wrote: “In Paris black artists perform; here our busboys and cooks were performing . . . there was a slight difference. . . . Today, fortunately, the Company is falling apart. Thank goodness! We will soon have our cooks back at home. . . . This joke will soon be over.” This chapter explores the historical evolution of the representation of black subjectivity in the popular entertainment venues of Rio de Janeiro between the 1880s and the long 1920s, illustrating the tensions and contradictions that persisted throughout this period as Brazilian journalists, 3 authors, politicians, theatregoers, impresarios, and especially performers contributed to the creation of a national identity more receptive to AfroBrazilian cultural traditions, and one that drew on transnational circuits of performance. The following discussion is underpinned by an understanding of “blackness” as both an identity based on family lineage and perceived phenotype, and a performative identity that can be adopted, exaggerated, played down, or discarded at will. The chapter examines several examples of popular performers identified as having varying degrees of African heritage who were active on the popular stages and in the city’s cabaret venues. Various notable Afro-Brazilian pioneers regularly performed in the circo-teatro (circus-theatre), the teatro de revista, cabarets, chopps (beer halls), and cafés-cantantes (cafés with live entertainment) in Rio between the 1880s and the 1930s. These included Benjamin de Oliveira and Eduardo das Neves, the two most famous examples of the so-called palhaço-ator (actor-clown) tradition from the turn of the nineteenth century. Information about the lives and careers of such pioneers is often sketchy, so this chapter draws in particular on the scant references found in newspapers and periodicals from the time, especially the Rio press, to develop a clearer picture of how they positioned themselves

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within the popular entertainment business and strategically used “race” to create their star personae. It also charts the geographical migrations of these pioneering individuals, where appropriate, and illustrates their role as vectors for the transnational exchange of “racially” marked performance traditions. Where relevant and documented, this chapter provides evidence of the role of journalists and show business power brokers in the careers of the performers that it discusses,4 acknowledging that newspapers, and particularly the columns by bohemian cronistas who frequented live entertainment venues in the city’s “underworld hotspots,” played a pivotal role in popularizing, panning, or simply choosing to ignore artists and their creations. 5 A further concern of this chapter is how Afrodescendant performers, as well as whites and blacks performing in various kinds of blackface in the 1920s, represented “race” within the city’s popular performance spaces, how these representations were mutually influential, and how such performances were received both critically and among the populace, especially in relation to questions of national and transnational identity. It is widely accepted that “whiteness” and theories of whitening played pivotal roles in the consolidation of the First Republic (1889–1930) in Brazil.6 However, the role of “blackness” in the development of popular cultural forms—and, by extension, expressions of an inchoate sense of national identity—has been relatively underexplored.7 The Afro-Brazilian performers discussed below deserve greater prominence for their trailblazing contributions to the evolution of ethnically marked performance in Rio and, in several cases, in other parts of Brazil and far beyond the nation’s borders. In tracing their artistic careers, this chapter seeks to identify the performative strategies they adopted to negotiate the problematic terrain of “race.” Hertzman has argued that Afro-Brazilian musicians in this era “adapted multiple strategies to distance themselves from demeaning stereotypes of favelados [shantytown inhabitants] and lingering assumptions about blackness and vadiagem [vagrancy],” overturning racist assumptions in many cases.8 As discussed below, these strategies extended to other kinds of popular performers and took the form of specific choices of musical and dance repertoire, and the adoption of certain dress codes and discourses. Ultimately this chapter seeks to illustrate the evolutionary shifts in terms of the agency of Afro-descendant performers and the representation of “race” in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery and throughout the First Republic, tracing the changing performative tactics of individual performers and foregrounding landmark moments. These shifts and turning points will be mapped onto wider transnational cur-

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rents relating to racialized performance to emphasize the centrality of the latter to the popular culture of Rio de Janeiro throughout the era in question. As we will see, performative strategies to “whiten” black performers such as Benjamin de Oliveira and Eduardo das Neves via the foregrounding of social status in the initial post-Abolition decades partially gave way to conscious adoptions of “racialized” performance for foreign audiences by the likes of Plácida dos Santos and Geraldo Magalhães, enabling them to capitalize on their European cachet and transnational credentials on their return to Brazil, thus giving respectability to their racially marked bodies and performances. The cultural capital of a Parisian artistic career, or simply associations with the performative vogues of the City of Light, enabled a black Brazilian performer like Le/De Chocolat—the fi rst to adopt a racially and transnationally inspired stage name—to turn his back on overt “whitening” mechanisms (albeit retaining an urbane, refi ned persona) and profit from the artistic developments ushered in by the Harlem Renaissance and “Black Paris” in the 1920s. In his career as a performer and show business impresario, he foregrounded performative blackness to acquire transnational prestige. In the promotion of his acts, he emphasized their embeddedness in wider circuits of cosmopolitan black performance, yet offensive racist views continued to be expressed— albeit under the guise of satire—in the elitist press. Nevertheless, the success in 1926 of Le/De Chocolat’s Companhia Negra de Revistas, the fi rst self-identifying Afro-Brazilian theatrical company, was without doubt a landmark moment—one that notably opened a window of opportunity for the performance of black female subjectivity on stage that seized the baton from Josephine Baker, the vector of transnational exchange par excellence. The emergence of Afro-Brazilian female stars Déo Costa, Rosa Negra, and Ascendina Santos in 1926–1927 was a direct consequence of the tumulte noir in Paris, and Brazilian audiences made sense of their performances within this context, even if they would soon be eclipsed by the lighter-skinned, self-styled mulata Araci Cortes, whom even the elitist satirical press would accept as brasileiríssima (ultra-Brazilian).9 By the latter half of the 1920s, nevertheless, the topic of “race” had taken root in the entertainment world, as reflected in the 1929 theatrical revue Mãe Preta (Black Mother), written and performed by whites, but which explicitly engaged with this issue, as well as the borrowing of the conventions of US blackface minstrelsy. If the anachronistic representations of slave life by the Companhia Mulata Brasileira in the early 1930s signified a retrograde move welcomed in more conservative quarters, the impact of the incursions of modernist, transnational black performance in the 1920s was

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to prove indelible, setting fi rm foundations for the evolution of racialized performance in the decades to follow.

ben jamin de oliveir a and eduardo das neves Benjamin de Oliveira (1870–1954), who was born in the state of Minas Gerais to a slave mother and a black father employed to catch fugitive slaves,10 ran away from home to join the traveling circus at the age of twelve. Multitalented, he became best known as a clown, actor, and mime artist whose career took fl ight in the late 1880s. Over the next thirty years he was one of the leading stars of the circo-teatro and teatro de revista in Rio de Janeiro, “arenas with substantial overlap and cross-fertilization.”11 The audiences of both the circus and the revue theatre were an eclectic social and racial mix, with varied cultural tastes and backgrounds. Perhaps to cater to this heterogeneous public, Oliveira developed a varied performance repertoire, sometimes appearing in “whiteface,” wearing powdered wigs and white makeup to portray an array of white characters,12 causing considerable impact in the press. However, roles such as the Afro-Brazilian capoeira street fighter João Sé in the 1911 circus show Tiro e queda (Shot and Fall) were more typical. He made his name in the Spinelli Circus in Rio, where he performed as a clown and for which he wrote a number of very popular revues and short plays in which he starred, some termed farces but others dramas.13 These included O diabo negro (The Black Devil),14 the “drama” O lobo da fazenda (The Farm Wolf),15 and the religious play A Família Sagrada em Bethlem (The Holy Family in Bethlehem), the latter performed on Christmas Day, 1912.16 The economic success of the Spinelli Circus was thought to be due in large part to Benjamin de Oliveira’s contributions.17 Such was his status in the popular entertainment world that he was afforded a half-page feature and large photograph in the highbrow magazine Revista da Semana in 1908 (figure 1.1).18 This article credited him with having invented the genre of the farsa (farce) and making the circus a more respectable venue that attracted members of the elite. His upper-class associations were equally reinforced by his aristocratic demeanor and attire in the accompanying photograph and the following tribute: “Thanks to the welcome innovation by Benjamin de Oliveira now one can frequent the circuses, principally the Spinelli Circus, which is patronized by important families and gentlemen, who go there every night to applaud the farces.”19 Oliveira evidently referred to himself as an artista-buffo (comic artist)20 and was portrayed as supremely respectable in even elite sectors of the press. The Repub-

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figure 1.1.

Photograph of Benjamin de Oliveira published in the highbrow magazine Revista da Semana, 5 July 1908, p. 20.

lican newspaper A Imprensa referred to him as “the glorious and honest artist”21 in what appears to have been a common strategy adopted by such publications to counterbalance a problematic ethnic background and attendant humble beginnings. He starred as an Amerindian character in Os guaranis (The Guarani Indians [1908]), 22 a silent fi lm he also directed that was based on a circus show he had headlined in. 23 Oliveira is credited as being the fi rst black actor in Brazilian cinema, but perhaps tellingly, his screen career was brief, and he appeared in just two more films in minor roles in the sound era. 24 He went on to establish his own theatrical company in 1914. 25 The issue of his skin color was attenuated in the press by emphasizing his aristocratic bearing but is nevertheless ever present; he was referred to as retinta (jet black) in contrast to a blonde female star, for example, in the weekly satirical magazine O Rio Nu on 27 May 1916. The use of such adjectives to stress the relative darkness of performers’ skin tones and implicitly cement Brazil’s centuries-old pigmentocracy was a common practice among white journalists, as discussed in more detail below.

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The musician, singer, songwriter, circus clown, and entertainment entrepreneur Eduardo das Neves (1874–1919) was another highly visible black performer on Rio’s popular stages at the turn of the century. 26 He and Oliveira owned a popular circus troupe in Brazil for which they both wrote and performed sketches and musical numbers. 27 Neves, described as an “audacious entrepreneur, who embraced wealth, capitalism, and the promises of inclusion within the republic,”28 moved from the circus into the nascent recording industry. He was particularly associated with the modinha genre, and some of his hits appeared in the Trovador moderno (Modern Troubador) collection with “other boys of good taste” in 1898. 29 The following year he was billed as “the eccentric Eduardo das Neves” in a show at Rio’s Teatro Recreio.30 Featured among his recordings are lundus with “racially” marked titles such as “Pai João” (Father John [the Brazilian equivalent of “Uncle Tom”]), “O entusiasmo do negro mina” (The Enthusiasm of the Black Slave), and “O malandro” (The Black Hustler), all recorded on the Odeon label—the fi rst between 1904 and 1912, the latter two between 1909 and 1912. 31 At some time between 1902 and 1905 Neves published his second collection of lyrics and verses, Trovador da malandragem (Troubadour of the Rogues), 32 which was reissued in 1926. Throughout the pages of this collection, which combine love songs with satirical and patriotic pieces, he daringly refers to himself as a crioulo, thus underlining his skin color and masculinity, and reappropriating a previously derogatory term associated with the slave past. 33 However, his “race” was masked or at least diluted in the marketing of the collections featuring his sheet music. His work was brought together with that of mixed-race performer Geraldo Magalhães (discussed below) in a songbook entitled O canto de modinhas brasileiras (Singing Sentimental Brazilian Love Songs), for example, which describes Neves as the “extremely popular Brazilian clown” and itself as “an elegant, well-printed volume.”34 Another advertisement for this songbook refers to the pair as “two famous troubadors,”35 and another promotes its “elegant colored cover and fi ne portrait of the intelligent Eduardo das Neves.”36 Reviews of his live performances equally foreground his intellect and refi nement, in contrast to other circus acts: “the clown Eduardo is intelligent and witty without being pornographic like most clowns.”37 His choice of the sentimental modinha as his preferred genre distanced him from his ethnicity, 38 as did clever marketing and his associations with refi nement (with class overriding “race”). As Hertzman puts it, “Despite and because of his business acumen, Neves struggled against racialized assumptions about wealth, ownership, and authorship.”39

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figure 1.2. Demeaning

caricature of Eduardo das Neves. O Malho, 16 June 1917, p. 41.

In other sectors of the press, notably the satirical magazines O Malho and Careta, for example, the issue of his “race,” the elephant in the room, was broached in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, further evidencing the prevailing pigmentocracy and the availability of racial stereotypes as an easy source of humor for an elite readership. An item in O Malho praises Neves as follows: “Recognizing that national coal is better than its foreign equivalent, we are going to send to Europe, to make him well-known, the legitimate troubadour, Eduardo das Neves.”40 The same publication included a conventional caricature of a guitar-playing black hillbilly to represent Neves in a cartoon that bore no resemblance whatsoever to his actual appearance or demeanor (figure 1.2),41 as seen in photographs that he submitted to the press (including O Malho) for publication. Well-dressed black men like Neves were ridiculed in printed cartoons and in caricatured stage performances by whites, “depicted as comical and out of place in their fancy clothes.”42 To promote his tour of the southern states of Brazil and a subsequent visit to Buenos Aires, for example, Neves sent such a photograph to O Malho, published on 6 January 1917, in which he is wearing a tailcoat and monocle and carrying a top hat (figure 1.3).43 The illustrated magazine Careta represented Neves via throwaway racial clichés that would have reinforced its readers’ sense of superiority, and mocked the performer’s efforts to infuse his star text with respectability. In reference to his famous song “Santos Dumont” in praise of the eponymous aviator’s achievements, which included the line “a Europa curvou-se ante o Brasil” (Europe bowed down to Brazil), the publication imagines Neves saying, “A Oropa curvou-se ante o Brasil” (Urope bowed down to Brazil), resorting

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figure 1.3. Promotional

photograph of Eduardo das Neves. O Malho, 6 January 1917, p. 44.

to a stock depiction of “black speak” (common in the teatro de revista)44 to keep him in his place. His “race” never goes unnoticed, even if it is not explicitly mentioned.45 Hertzman calls performers such as Eduardo das Neves and Benjamin de Oliveira “litmus tests for its [the nation’s] racial fears and fantasies.”46 He continues: “[S]kin color was mutable, and it could be altered with makeup, artists’ renderings, and nicknames. But that hardly made it insignificant.”47 Although in certain quarters ridicule of the aspirations of performers such as Neves and Oliveira was still seen as fair game, it is clear that at the turn of the century these pioneers, on the one hand, and Rio’s audiences and journalists, on the other, tacitly agreed that Afro-Brazilian subjectivity could be rendered commercially viable by adopting certain codes of dress and behavior, and the creation of a star persona that centered on a discourse of elegance, respectability, and intelligence, essentially foregrounding “class” over “race.” Both performers were aware of the need to generate their own “star texts” and were in the habit of supplying Rio de Janeiro’s newspaper offices with press releases, letters, and interviews.48 A strikingly similar performative strategy can be seen in the

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case of the mixed-race performers Plácida dos Santos and Geraldo Magalhães (discussed below), whose star texts required further tailoring for international audiences. Unlike Neves, however, neither shied away from performing musical genres synonymous with Afro-Brazilians.

pl ácida dos santos and ger aldo magalhães The mixed-race performer Plácida dos Santos (ca. 1853–1935) began her career at the end of the nineteenth century singing modinhas, lundus, maxixes, and cançonetas, as well as delivering comic monologues,49 in cabarets and cafés-cantantes in Rio. In one interview she claimed that she had been the fi rst person to perform Brazilian music in Paris.50 Her repertoire embraced imported European genres and those with Afro-Brazilian origins, including “adorable lundus and little Portuguese fados.”51 Notably, she performed maxixes and lundus in Paris in 1889 and adopted the persona of the Afro-Brazilian baiana in these and other performances. 52 The Martinican female singer Dzelma allegedly saw Santos perform at the Teatro Santana in Rio and encouraged her to try her luck in Paris, where she was invited by a theatre critic to appear alongside two well-known French performers, Pollis and Theresa, at a benefit concert for which she was billed as a black performer. Audience members were said to have been taken aback when, instead, they saw an elegantly dressed woman who appeared to be “white.” The following day she was taken on at the Folies Bergère, where she danced a stylized version of the maxixe. 53 On her return to Rio in late 1890, 54 Santos performed alongside Geraldo Magalhães and Jenny Cook at the Alcazar Parque.55 She also performed at the Eden Concerto, billed as a “distinguished genre chanteuse,” the use of French terminology reminding audiences of her Parisian success. 56 In what appears to have been an attempt to “whiten” her star persona and endow her with high status, she was often described in the press as “intelligent” and appeared on the bill with a cosmopolitan lineup. At Rio’s Café-Cantante Moulin Rouge in August 1901, at a “soirée de gala” (gala evening) held in her honor, for example, she shared the stage with Mlle. Florence Schubert, described as an English singer, and a certain Mlle. Kelly. Santos’s repertoire for this performance included the new song “As mentiras” (Lies), given additional cultural capital by the fact that the lyrics were translated into Portuguese “by an illustrious diplomat.”57 Santos’s sophistication was underscored by her associations with Europe, particularly Paris. In 1903 the satirical publication O Rio Nu described her as a “gentil mulatinha” (genteel little mulata) who can speak

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French, 58 and announced that she was to travel to Milan to perfect her singing. 59 Snippets of French were also worked into items about her, which referred, for example, to “todo o seu ‘savoir faire’” (all her “savoir faire”) and wished her “bonne chance” (good luck) in her forthcoming performances.60 Santos performed in Rio alongside artists with Parisian cachet such as Gaby D’Armouville and Maria Lino,61 and her own sojourn in the French capital was repeatedly alluded to in press coverage; she was described in 1901, for example, as the “acclaimed creator of the national cançoneta genre in the café-cantantes who had such great success in Paris,”62 and as the “captivating [dengosa] Plácida dos Santos, a Brazilian woman who was such a hit in Paris.”63 The adjective dengoso/a and the corresponding noun dengo, both of African etymology,64 are often used to describe the stereotypically seductive and wily mulata/baiana;65 here dengosa implicitly alludes to Santos’s ethnicity, attenuated here by her European credentials and elsewhere by her demeanor. Santos was known in Rio for playing the stock types of the revistas do ano,66 including “her inimitable baianas” (figure 1.4).67 As explored at length in the introduction and chapter 4, the ethnically marked baiana was typically played by white actresses in the teatro de revista, with the notable exception of the lightskinned mulata Araci Cortes in the 1920s (discussed below). Although Cortes is often seen as a pioneer in this respect, it would seem that Santos, who played the baiana in the revue Pega na chaleira (Grab the Kettle) in November 1909,68 in fact paved the way for her. An important difference between the star personae of these two performers, however, is social class, an indication that attitudes toward mixed-race female performers had shifted, perhaps occasioned by a changing audience demographic, in the space of two decades. Whereas Cortes was known for her workingclass origins and risqué performances (deemed by some as vulgar), Santos was depicted as a genteel, well-traveled grande dame of the popular stage. In 1910, Santos decided to retire from her artistic career with two farewell performances in the Brazilian capital, one at the Teatro Apolo and the other at the Cabaret-Concert. That year she was crowned queen of the elite Democráticos carnival club in recognition of her career and popularity.69 In January 1910 she also played the part of Fortunata, the hick mother from the state of Minas Gerais,70 in Artur Azevedo’s famous revue A capital federal (The Federal Capital) at Rio’s Teatro Apolo.71 Toward the end of the year Santos was top of the bill as a cançonetista (singer) at the Cabaret-Concert on Rua Senador Dantas, where the press made much of her performance of the national anthem with a new set of lyrics by Osório Duque-Estrada.72

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figure 1. 4 . Photograph of Plácida dos Santos in a baiana costume. Revista da Semana, 10 June 1900, p. 7.

The mixed-race Geraldo Magalhães (1878–1970), born in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, began his career as a singer (referred to in the press by the respectable term cançonetista) in the chopps and cafés-dançantes of Rio, becoming well known in the city. The baritone’s theatre debut was at the Salon de Paris on the fashionable Rua do Ouvidor, where he performed a repertoire of lundus and cançonetas. The journalist João do Rio, in a newspaper crônica of 1905, referred to him with a hint of mockery: “Influenced by the cafés-dançantes, Geraldo left behind the serenades to wear a tuxedo and use a monocle in a chopp on the Rua da Assembléia.”73 With Nina Teixeira, who like Magalhães was mixed-race and hailed from Rio Grande do Sul, he formed a duo in 1905 called Os Geraldos.74 Written reviews of their performances and photographs of the duo reveal that Geraldo’s stage attire was characteristically a top hat, tailcoat, and monocle, and that Nina favored elegant dresses, often brightly colored and decorated with sequins,75 suggesting they were attempting to temper their clearly visible Afro-Brazilian ancestry via their

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sartorial choices (if not in their repertoire, which featured prominently the maxixe, of Afro-Brazilian origin). The use of the diminutive in the following newspaper item also serves to attenuate any potentially negative association with their ancestry, while also tacitly reinforcing racial hierarchies via infantilization: “two sprightly mulatinhos who know how to dance the maxixe with a skill full of effects.”76 Like Plácida dos Santos, the Geraldos took their racially inflected repertoire beyond Brazil’s border, traveling to Mexico in 1908 and then later that year to Paris, where they were billed as the mulatos gaúchos (a reference to their native state, Rio de Grande do Sul) and maxixeiros (maxixe dancers). In a letter from Paris published in Rio in 1908, Xavier de Carvalho wrote that Os Geraldos “had conquered Montmartre,”77 and the press in Rio noted in March 1909 that Geraldo “was a big hit in Paris with his maxixes.”78 His perceived sophistication was undoubtedly enhanced by his stay in Paris; on 8 April 1909 the fashion supplement of O Malho—entitled “Rio chic”—announced the return of the duo from Europe—“[Geraldo] is returning with attitude, rempli de soi meme [sic], as a Parisian would say”—and stated that he had learned how to dress and wear gloves in Europe (the journalist being unable to resist a tongue-incheek, racially premised put-down).79 It was in Paris that the duo released, to great success, the tango-chula “Vem cá, mulata” (Come Here, Mulata), which they had recorded three years earlier back in Rio on the Casa Edison label. This hit emphasized Nina’s ethnicity, with Geraldo addressing her with the title line, to which she retorted, “Não vou lá, não!” (No, I’m not coming!). In 1909 the duo traveled to Portugal, where they proved to be a hit,80 making them hot property among entertainment professionals when they returned to Rio. In 1910 they began recording there on the Victor label.81 In 1912 they returned to Lisbon and Paris, again performing to great acclaim.82 They clearly capitalized on their international credentials to promote their act, with the Os Geraldos being described in the daily Rio newspaper A Noite as “truly internationalist,”83 emphasizing their recent performances in Paris as well as Lisbon.84 After splitting from Nina Teixeira in 1913, Geraldo formed a new partnership with the white Portuguese performer Alda Soares, and they marketed themselves as duetistas luso-brasileiros (a Luso-Brazilian duo). In 1915 they returned to Brazil from another “successful season in Europe” and performed the maxixe “O smart e a baiana” (The Street Smart and the Baiana), as well as singing the duet “A minha francesinha” (My Little French Girl).85 On the Lisbon stage, and presumably in Paris and Buenos Aires, Magalhães evoked a performative “blackness” in his songs. For example, in the open-

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figure 1.5 .

Photograph of Geraldo Magalhães published in the elite magazine Fon-Fon!, 26 April 1913, p. 37.

ing verse of his composition “Preto não é bom” (Black Is Not Good), released on the Odeon label and performed in the hit Portuguese revue of 1927–1928 O sete e meio (Seven and a Half),86 he uses Josephine Baker to give status to black identity: “Don’t you want a black man [preto], girl? / Think about what you’re saying / That Baker, Josephine / Has been a hit in Paris!”87 Geraldo was clearly seen as negro in Portugal, with his costar in O sete e meio, the Portuguese actress Beatriz Costa, referring to him as “the negro singer and dancer, so popular amongst the Portuguese.”88 Like Benjamin de Oliveira and Eduardo das Neves, the star texts of both Plácida dos Santos and Geraldo Magalhães foregrounded for Brazilian audiences their sophistication and intellect to counterbalance and outweigh their mixed-race backgrounds. Santos is variously described as an “excessively good criatura [soul],”89 “highly intelligent,”90 an “elegant actress,”91 and “of aristocratic appearance. Serious, correct and upright.”92 The latter description appears in a comic poem entitled “Plácida dos Santos,” whose opening lines discreetly reference her ethnicity but again offset it against her refi nement: “Dark [morena], the color of the jambo fruit / Polite, intelligent.” Her gender perhaps required further emphasis of such attributes than was the case for her male counterparts, such as Magalhães, who nevertheless relied on dressing like a gentleman and underlining his transnational prestige (figure 1.5). In both cases these pio-

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neering mixed-race stars were able to transport to European cities, via emerging transnational performance circuits, musical/dance genres with Afro-Brazilian roots, particularly the maxixe, and on their return to Brazil this cosmopolitanism was emphasized in their star texts. By referring to their successes in Europe (and Paris, in particular) and their appearances on stage in Rio alongside “exotic” foreign attractions, as well as stressing their pseudo-aristocratic bearing, they were increasingly “whitened” to appeal to elite audiences.

joão cândido ferreir a (le/de chocol at) The cultural capital acquired via a career in the French capital, however brief and perhaps even apocryphal, was not lost on the Afro-Brazilian performer João Cândido Ferreira (1887–1956), who was born in the northeastern state of Bahia but whose career took fl ight in the variety theatres of Rio de Janeiro.93 He initially adopted the stage name “Jocanfer”—based on the three elements of his real name—and emphasized his black identity, premiering as “João Cândido Ferreira [Jocanfer], eccentric singer, monologuist [PRETO]” at the Cinema Teatro (53, Rua Visconde do Rio Branco) in November 1909.94 Advertisements in other mainstream newspapers for his appearances at this Rio de Janeiro venue also point out in parentheses that he is preto (black), which he and the event’s promoters evidently saw as endowing him with novelty status.95 By 21 November 1909 he had moved venues and was appearing at the Cinematógrapho Santana (40–42, Rua Santana), billed as “João Cândido Ferreira (O Jocanfer) singer, monologuist, eccentric (preto). Unknown genre. Songs and monologues: A success at the Eden Cosmopolita in Buenos Aires.”96 On 15 February 1912, the São Paulo Spanish-language newspaper Diario Español announced the “Marvelous triumph of the admirable Brazilian caricaturist ‘Le Chocolat’—The greatest hit in the cabarets of Buenos Aires.”97 The addition of transnational credentials to his emerging star persona may well have been a commercial ploy designed to add respectability to this self-identifying black performer, who, unlike the artists examined above, accentuated his ethnicity rather than being forced to play it down. One way of doing so was to team up with a white performer, which he did with the singer Boneco to form a double act. Like many other comedy duos that followed in Brazil and beyond, they derived humor from oxymoronic physical characteristics, in this case skin tone and phenotype. Together they performed lighthearted duets at the Teatrinho do Passeio Público (figure 1.6).

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figure 1.6. Publicity photograph

of the duo Jocanfer and Boneco. O Malho, 23 July 1910, p. 41.

By September 1910, when he was appearing at the Teatro São José in Rio, Ferreira/Jocanfer had changed his stage name to Chocolat or Le/De Chocolat (and significantly not the Portuguese equivalent, “Chocolate”) to further capitalize on his ethnicity and also add a touch of French sophistication.98 This seems to have been a defi nitive move, and by 1912 he was being referred to as “the well-known Chocolat, cheerful comic.”99 An astute master of reinvention in terms of the content of his stage acts, Ferreira clearly had an awareness of the commercial potential of transnational associations, with his name change implying links to Parisian “cosmopolitan blackness,” a concept discussed further in chapter 3.100 He may well have been aware of the black clown known as Chocolat, who, along with his white English partner Footit, was one of the most popular clowns in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century.101 In 1912, Ferreira performed as Chocolat in the north of Brazil, in São Luiz, capital of the state of Maranhão. In the local publication Pacotilha of 19 October he was referred to as a machiettista (caricaturist) and “Toujour’s Chocolat [sic],” and on 30 October as “Le Chocolat—Le noir qui fait rire tout le monde [The black man who makes the whole world laugh].”102 The recourse to French (even when grammatically incorrect) alludes again to his supposed transnational connections and conveniently distances him from his Bahian origins, coating him with Parisian stardust. His star text underlined his sophistication and good manners, as well as his Francophone stage name: on 11 November 1912, for example, he published a gracious

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open letter in Pacotilha titled “Aos maranhenses” (To the People of Maranhão) thanking the locals for their hospitality, and he stylishly signed off as “Le Chocolat.”103 Like many of his contemporaries, Ferreira continuously introduced innovations into his performance repertoire to ensure commercial success, inspired by the acts he shared the stage with, no doubt, and also perhaps by the cinema since many of the venues where he performed combined fi lm screenings with live cabaret and variety performances. By 1912 he was well known in Rio and São Paulo as a “famous improviser” with a vast repertoire104 and was also billed as a cançonetista (singer) on arrival in São Luiz,105 where he performed as part of a duo known as Os Guayanases with fellow singer Iracema. On 19 October 1912 Pacotilha featured an advertisement for Os Guayanases including a full rundown of the program, and on 21 October the newspaper ran a front-page review of their debut in São Luiz in the column “As diversões” (Entertainment): “To an impressive audience, on Saturday at the Palace Cinema premiered the artists Le Chocolat and Iracema, who delighted the audience, especially during the improvisation section. Yesterday, these artists attracted large numbers to that entertainment venue, where they are still proving a hit.”106 Despite such rave reviews, an incident took place in the town of Juiz de Fora in the state of Minas Gerais in July 1913 that reflects the tensions that surrounded black performance in Brazil at this time. More specifically, the incident sheds light on how Le Chocolat/Ferreira was received by elite white audiences. The Juiz de Fora publication O Pharol reported on 23 July 1913, in the column “Visitas” (Visits): “Le Chocolat, comique excentrique,107 is an extremely interesting artist who will debut on Friday at the Pharol Cinema, and in the company of the charming singer, Rosina Milano, another attraction, visited us yesterday, for which we are grateful.”108 The same publication reported on 27 July 1913 on his very successful debut the previous day at the Pharol Cinema: “On stage, Le Chocolat, the witty eccentric comic.”109 The front page of this newspaper subsequently covered what would appear to be a case of racism in response to Le Chocolat’s act; on 8 August 1913, it reported that a few days previously, his performance at the same cinema had met with the vociferous disapproval of a small group of university students. At the end of the fi rst act they whistled and banged their walking canes on the floor “making a deafening noise” and forcing families to flee from the venue in fright. The young men then left the cinema, only to return in a larger group to “cause a disturbance.” The police arrived and the students fled into the street, where shots were fi red and a couple of bystanders incurred injuries. The

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columnist lamented, “We are in a cultured city, which no longer tolerates such uncouth scenes, only befitting troublemakers.”110 Undeterred, Ferreira was back in São Luiz in January 1914, appearing at the Palace-Theatre111 and then as part of the Chocoracy Duo at the Cinema São Luiz,112 where he also performed some solo numbers. His partner in this duo was a woman called Aida Juracy, and together they performed a range of genres of song and dance, including the Afrodescendant maxixe. They were billed as family entertainment and as having a totally new repertoire.113 In September 1914, Ferreira was once again proving his versatility in the city of São Luiz, this time as a conjurer and a drag artist.114 A key source of creative inspiration was clearly the other acts that he shared prosceniums and backstage life with. In early February 1915, he was performing in the Teatro São João in Salvador da Bahia (which also screened fi lms), where he was appearing alongside the Italian trapeze artists Les Brancas, one of whom, Mimi Branca, was also a singer. Le Chocolat went on to duet with her, as reported in A Notícia on 8 March 1915.115 In his later life, Ferreira often referred to a successful professional sojourn in Paris, claiming to have performed at the Moulin Rouge and become a friend of Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier. There are many holes in his version of events, such as chronological inconsistencies, and though he claimed to have been highly paid for his performances in Paris, he evidently did not return to Rio a well-off man.116 There is certainly a hiatus in references to him in the Brazilian press between March 1918 and January 1921;117 Barros claims that Ferreira returned to Brazil in 1920 and probably only performed in down-market venues in the French capital given that the great vogue for black performance was centered on jazz performed by US musicians.118 Ferreira later often referred to the influence that Josephine Baker’s Revue nègre had on his artistic aspirations, but Baker did not appear on stage in Paris until 1925. Irrespective of the veracity of Ferreira’s claims, it is undeniable that he drew a great deal of inspiration from the black performance trends that were causing a sensation in Paris and sending shock waves through transnational performance circuits. If he did indeed travel to the French capital around 1919 or 1920, he must surely have come into close contact with fellow Brazilian performers, not least the dentist-turned-ballroom-dancer Duque (discussed in more detail in chapter 2).119 He is known to have collaborated with Duque several times in Brazil in the mid to late 1920s, and on 13 March 1925 the liberal São Paulo state daily newspaper Correio Paulistano reported on the debut that night at the Antártica Casino in São Paulo of

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Brazilian dancers Duque and Gaby “with the famous troupe, to which belong artists like the always acclaimed improviser and singer De Chocolat, the excellent troupe of backlands guitar players, ‘Os Batutas.’”120 When he took over as artistic director at the newly opened variety theatre in São Paulo city center known as the Lanterna Mágica in 1928,121 De Chocolat appeared as top of the bill in the opening night’s show alongside some ten other artists, and it was announced that he would launch in São Paulo “the most curious novelties from the light theatre in New York, Paris and Buenos Aires.”122 But De Chocolat’s most audacious creative endeavor, and the most telling evidence of his desire to tap into transnational “racialized” performance circuits, was the formation of the Companhia Negra de Revistas in 1926 and subsequently the Ba-ta-clan Preta company the following year.123

the companhia negr a de revistas and the ba-ta- cl an preta Clearly with his eye on the tumulte noir in the French capital, most notably Josephine Baker’s groundbreaking performances in the Revue nègre, in 1926 De Chocolat established the fi rst Brazilian revue company formed exclusively of performers who self-identified as black, the Companhia Negra de Revistas.124 In doing so, he was astutely tapping into a wider transnational trend, which since the success of Sissle and Blake’s Shuffl e Along in the United States in 1921—a production that Baker herself joined in August 1922—had seen the increased popularity of revues with black casts in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, usually featuring a core of Europe-based African Americans. De Chocolat cofounded the Companhia Negra de Revistas with the white Portuguese set designer Jaime Silva, and when its creation was announced in June 1926, the daily newspaper A Noite noted: “With Jaime Silva being a colorful man and De Chocolat a man of color, this company will have a very special colorfulness. And it is precisely because of its colors that the new company will be the focus of widespread attention.”125 On 25 September 1926 the Correio Paulistano reported the following under the title “Communiqués: The Director of the Companhia Negra”: Having headed for Europe, [De Chocolat] had the occasion to see in Paris the Black Company that was performing at the ‘Folie Berger’ [sic] and developed close associations with members of the Company led by the ‘negra star’ Josephina Baker. The success of Josephina’s performers in Paris influenced De Choco-

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lat’s thinking, even more so when he found out that the Company had set off for New York. Thus he returned to Brazil fi xated on the idea of also creating his own Black Company. In Rio, conversations with Jaime Silva, the acclaimed set designer known throughout Brazil, resulted in the formation of the cast of preto performers. De Chocolat and Jaime Silva had great difficulty in bringing together the scarce colored artists but one day the sensational news of the debut of the Companhia Negra de Revista [sic] spread throughout Rio, which finally could appreciate and repay the efforts of these two artists.126

As will be examined in detail in chapter 3, the Companhia Negra de Revistas clearly signified an attempt on the part of its two founders to create a vernacular equivalent to the Revue nègre and to capitalize on the vogue for “black” performance in Paris. De Chocolat seems to have been aware of the commercial potential of aligning himself and his newfound company with the groundbreaking innovations in “racialized” performance centered on Paris and, in particular, Baker (the self-styled “Ebony Venus”), with the female members of his troupe being billed as “deusas de ébano” (ebony goddesses).127 Perhaps this influenced his decision to spice up his own star text with repeated references to his fi rsthand experiences in the French capital—which appear for the fi rst time in press items promoting the creation of this company. He astutely marketed his acts as being up-to-date representatives of the latest trends circulating among the transnational performance spaces of cosmopolitan metropolises, and the press often assisted in such strategies; the Jornal do Brasil, for example, compared the black female stars of the Companhia Negra de Revistas—Rosa Negra, Dalva Espíndola,128 and Jandira Aimoré—to the AfroAmerican performer Florence Mills, helpfully reminding readers that the latter was a star of the Harlem Renaissance.129 De Chocolat clearly judged the mood of his home audiences shrewdly, and the Companhia Negra de Revistas went on to enjoy considerable success, giving some four hundred performances across six different Brazilian states. By October 1926, however, the company had split in two, with De Chocolat and the AfroBrazilian bandleader Pixinguinha130 going on to form the Ba-ta-clan Preta, a troupe that once again sought to capitalize on transnational “black” performance traditions. On 17 October 1926 the Correio Paulistano announced that the Ba-ta-clan Preta, led by De Chocolat, was to premiere at the Santa Helena Theatre in São Paulo, with Déo Costa (discussed further below) as lead actress, “trinta e seis figuras retintamente pretas” (thirty-

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figure 1.7. Grande Otelo as a child star of the teatro de revista. Para Todos, 19 March 1929, p. 24.

six jet black figures), and its “own jazz band.”131 On 7 November 1926 the same newspaper reported on the Ba-ta-clan Preta, describing De Chocolat as the “creator of negro theatre in Brazil.” It lists the main cast as including: “estrela [star]—Déo Costa,” “soubrette—Dalva Espíndola,” and “divette—Georgette Seixas,” as well as other features such as the “Jazz-Band do Azeviche” (Jet Black Jazz Band) led by Alfredo Vianna (Pixinguinha), and the black musician from São Paulo Bonfiglio de Oliveira. According to this announcement their fi rst production was to be Na penumbra (In the Twilight), a revue written by De Chocolat and the white popular composer Lamartine Babo.132 The Correio Paulistano described the Ba-taclan Preta as having “16 morena dancers and 10 retintamente pretas [jet black ones],”133 reflecting the prevailing hierarchy of perceived ethnic ori-

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gins and the fact that Afro-Brazilian performers themselves were now using such descriptions to gain cultural capital. There was a widespread preoccupation in the press with skin color and the authenticity of its relative gradations, suggesting that Brazilian performers had to be sufficiently dark skinned to qualify as “black” performers in a transnational context. Elite-oriented satirical magazines picked up on this trend, with the São Paulo–based weekly O Sacy, for example, commenting in relation to the Ba-ta-clan’s female star, Déo Costa: “we can only say that the ‘star’ of the company has nothing black [negra] about her. She is a little mulatinha ‘coffee with milk French-style,’ and much lighter skinned than her sister, Araci Cortes, who is the star of a white company in Rio.”134 Such color gradations or rankings were common in mainstream press items promoting the Ba-ta-clan Preta, with its “12 mulheres de ébano [e] 12 mulheres de azeviche” (12 ebony women [and] 12 jet black women).135 On 19 November 1926, O Sacy featured two separate items in its regular theatre column “Camarins e camarotes,” both of which illustrate this concern among critics and audiences alike.136 The fi rst reports on the two black Brazilian theatre companies performing in São Paulo, one at the Casino Theatre and the other at the Santa Helena, and celebrates, with tongue fi rmly in cheek, the fact that “our theatre has been well and truly blackened, such is the force with which the de cor [colored] companies are springing up everywhere.” The second item endorses, in a similarly ironic tone, supposed complaints about the relative blackness of the members of De Chocolat’s company, especially in comparison with visiting troupes from abroad that embraced much darker performers among their ranks. The author suggests that, at best, De Chocolat’s company could call itself mascava (brown, as applied to sugar), insinuating that the lack of commercial success was linked to this racial factor. On 26 November 1926 the same publication reported that the company had replaced Déo Costa, a mulatinha, and transferred her “Venus de Jambo” (Jambo Venus) moniker to one of the blackest actresses in the troupe.137 The reviewer in question takes some delight in stating that in comparison with this new Jambo Venus, the performer Rosa do Norte, De Chocolat himself looks almost pink and could call himself “de Marfi m” (ivory- colored). O Sacy clearly delighted in exploiting what its elite white readership would have seen as the comic potential of AfroBrazilians daring to flaunt their black skin on stage. The mainstream press equally reported the ongoing debates surrounding the performance of “race,” often endorsing deeply engrained reactionary views. On 17 November 1926 the Correio Paulistano commented on

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the success of Brazil’s two black theatre companies in São Paulo138 and went on to talk about the heated discussions generated by these performances, both positive and negative: “for better or for worse, the blacks [a negrada—a colloquial collective noun with pejorative overtones] were discussed.”139 The prevalent racism that black performers continued to face is implicit in an item about the Ba-ta-clan Preta published in the Jornal do Brasil in October 1926, which states that the company “is really formed by colored [de cor] members, but, this is not to its detriment, since among its cast there are names of real value.”140 In an attempt to silence the company’s detractors, De Chocolat was at pains to emphasize the respectability of its members; in an interview with the newspaper A Pátria, he declared: “The little blacks [pretinhos] in my company are, in their entirety, docile, intelligent, polite and disciplined. It has actually moved me to see such examples of discipline and dedication.”141 Once again decorum and intelligence were used, in this case in a collective star text, to attenuate any negative associations inherent to Afro-Brazilian performers, as was the case with earlier black and mixed-race performers such as Eduardo das Neves and Plácida dos Santos. Well-known white columnist Benjamin Costallat was equally forthcoming with his praise and eager to endorse Afro-Brazilians as representatives of national identity: “the blacks [negros] of this Company do not perform negra art, but the very best Brazilian art.”142 Other journalists, however, revealed entrenched racial prejudice, as the following example from the elite periodical Fon-Fon! published in August 1926 illustrates:143 It was a revue company, a company made up of authentic blacks [negros], who had deserted our domestic service to take to the stage on the Avenida. A black orchestra, black jokes, black chorus girls [“black girls”] displaying their negra nudity. . . . Was it really necessary that our theatre stooped to such a level as this, for someone to think of organizing a company de negros to perform in the very heart of the city?144

In addition to repeated ironic laments about the lack of domestic staff caused by the entrance of Afro-Brazilians into the world of popular entertainment, racist stereotypes about the sexuality and body odors of black men and women were openly voiced in the elitist satirical magazine O Malho, which conducted a fictitious “visit” to the Rialto Theatre, where the Companhia Negra de Revistas was performing, and recommended the installation of “de-odorizing chambers” that could overpower the foul smell of cockroaches.145 The same publication went on to recommend that audience members take gas masks to the company’s performances.146

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déo costa, rosa negr a, and ascendina santos Déo Costa was marketed as the star attraction of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, its “outstanding feature,”147 and subsequently of the Ba-taclan Preta. This “negra actress,” as she was repeatedly described in the press,148 played the lead role in the Ba-ta-clan Preta’s production Na penumbra (In the Twilight) and was De Chocolat’s business partner in the Déo Costa and De Chocolat Theatre Company.149 In the advertisement that appeared in the Estado de São Paulo on 11 November 1926,150 Costa is nude and in a very risqué pose to foreground her correlation with Josephine Baker, known for shocking audiences by exposing her flesh in celebration of the black female body. As explored in more detail in chapter 4, Baker had been “whitened” for Brazilian audiences and marketed as a mulata, as the following description of the star in the elite publication Careta attests: “Parisian eyes are, in fact, being presented with a mulata with striking Anglo-Saxon features.”151 A self-styled Brazilian “Jambo Venus” was evidently deemed to have considerable audience appeal; when Déo Costa was replaced in the Bata-clan by Rosa do Norte, the moniker was passed on to the new star of the company in a move that, as Hertzman observes, reflects the interchangeability of black female bodies in Brazil at this time.152 De Chocolat announced this in the press, explaining that Costa “was replaced, to the obvious pleasure of the audience, by the new actress Rosa do Norte, who, for that reason, inherited the nickname, justified furthermore by her physical characteristics, of ‘Jambo Venus,’ which had been loaned to that negra artist only for theatrical purposes.”153 In an audacious open letter to the press, published in the same edition of O Jornal, Déo Costa eloquently voiced her opposition to the transfer of her stage name,154 as commented on in the satirical periodical O Sacy.155 Costa’s outspoken public riposte was coincidentally published in O Jornal alongside an item that reveals the cultural capital inherent in the “Jambo Venus” title and the context of the increasing awareness of transnational black performance trends; a report on the imminent arrival in São Paulo of the black jazz band of the Champs-Élysées Theatre in Paris notes: “This jazz band is really noteworthy. In Paris its success was tremendous. It contributed, to a great extent, to the colossal success of the company in the City of Light whose star was Josephina Blaker [sic], the famous negra actress.”156 The band’s cosmopolitan “black” credentials are stressed, with the item reporting that it was composed of seven pretos and had already proved a hit at the Teatro Maipo in Buenos Aires.157 More significantly, the Brazilian press excitedly reported throughout November 1929 on the forthcoming visit to Bra-

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zil by Josephine Baker herself. O Paiz’s announcement of her appearance at the Urca Casino, which featured an art deco–style caricature of the star, states: “All Rio will flock to the Casino and all over the city people will be talking about nothing but the Ebony Venus.”158 The shock waves of Baker’s trailblazing performance of “blackness” in Paris were clearly evinced in the Brazilian press, especially during her visits to the country in 1929 and 1939.159 In 1929, however, the oppositions and inconsistencies inherent in displaying black bodies on stage were still very much in evidence; on the same page as O Paiz’s announcement, for example, an item advertising a revue at the Teatro Trianon entitled Mãe Preta (Black Mother), written by Paulo de Magalhães, reports that three white performers (Jaime Costa, Lygia Sarmento, and Teixeira Pinto) were playing the lead roles, “all playing types that are not white,” and the content of the revue evidently engaged, albeit lightheartedly, with the issue of “race,” reportedly a hot topic. The item continues: “In just a few more days, the memorable problem of the races, confronted and displayed without the seriousness that has characterized discussions of the issue up to now, will animate all conversations in Rio.”160 Another female member of the Companhia Negra de Revistas was Rosa Negra. She had fi rst appeared in the revue Pirão de areia (Sand Gruel), written by Marques Porto, in April 1926 at the Teatro São José in Rio, leading a group of so-called black girls (the English term “girls” being used to refer to members of the chorus) in the performance of the number “Baiana, n’aime tu?” and another called “Ascendinices” (referring to the Afro-Brazilian star Ascendina Santos, discussed in more detail below).161 Rosa Negra was depicted in the press as a star who was “discovered” by the revue writer Marques Porto in the Bar Cosmopolita, one of many chopps in Rio that hosted variety shows. Porto had been sent there as a talent scout by the theatrical impresario Pascoal Segreto, who was keen to fi nd a talent such as Santos to appear at his São José Theatre. Rosa Negra was showered with praise by the Jornal do Brasil in July 1926: “Can there be anyone who has not heard of ‘Rosa Negra’? She is a lively little black woman [negrinha], elegant and coquettish, that countless times has performed for our public, sometimes singing in cabarets, sometimes appearing in theatres.”162 In August of the same year she joined the Companhia Negra de Revistas, performing a “Charlestonesque number” and appearing alongside Dalva Espíndola in the numbers “Jaboticaba afrancesada” (Frenchified Jaboticaba [a small, dark-skinned fruit]) and “Banhistas” (Bathers). Some critics referred to her as “the Mistinguett brasileira” (Brazilian Mistinguett), comparing her to the star of the

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French company Ba-ta-clan, and others called her “the Brazilian Josephine Baker.”163 Ascendina Santos enjoyed a similarly brief but triumphant artistic career on Rio’s popular stages and at her height was described as “the black [negra] female artist, who is the greatest new attraction in the popular theatre in 1926.”164 Santos, a former cook, fi rst came to the public’s attention with the Companhia Carioca de Burletas playing a small role in the revue Ai, Zizinha! (Oh, Little Zizi!), staged by Segreto at the Teatro Carlos Gomes in Rio in January 1926. Although she appeared alongside established white artists such as Manoelino Teixeira and Júlia Vidal, she evidently stole the show and was described in the press as the estrela negra (black star).165 In this revue she played a character of her own creation that clearly toyed with the issue of “racial” representation: Clara Branca das Neves (Clara Snow White).166 De Chocolat announced that the star would feature in the debut performance by the Ba-ta-clan Preta in São Paulo, but for some reason this did not happen.167 Her short-lived star status (between 1926 and 1927) allegedly earned her a lucrative contract that rivaled those of leading white-skinned female performers,168 but this did not prevent the press from persisting in the use of demeaning “racial” terminology, and she was regularly described as being negra como azeviche (black as jet).169 The journalist Mário Nunes, under the pseudonym “Mari Noni,” wrote a particularly cruel piece in the satirical O Malho, supposedly in response to colleagues comparing Santos to the Gioconda: “Ascendina Santos, in our opinion and that of João Luso, Rafael Pinheiro and Lafayette Silva [theatre critics], who are knowledgeable on the subject and whose enthusiasm is considerable, has the Gioconda’s smile, that static, inexpressive, idiotic smile of the famous painting in the Louvre.”170 Santos performed in Juiz de Fora with the Companhia Arruda, returning to Rio in 1927 to perform in the Democrata Circus, a backward step in professional terms that appears to have marked the end of her show business career.171 O Malho also created a fictitious interview with Santos that made fun of her humble background and supposed ignorance, drawing on the well-worn clichés of Afro-Brazilians speaking grammatically incorrect Portuguese and being sexually promiscuous, as the following excerpt illustrates: “I wanna prove that us black, in Brazil, are really here, in fact! And let’s forget that stuff about only Portuguese man liking us! My dressing room, in the theatre, is always full! With Portuguese, Hitalians, Hispanish and lotsa Brazilian. . . . You don’t have to be a artist. . . . Any ol’ cook knows that only too well!”172 Such overt racism to-

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ward black performers was particularly vehement in relation to women. Despite her success, Santos was not deemed worthy of consideration in a competition held by the Gazeta de Notícias newspaper to fi nd the readers’ favorite actress, as its response to an undoubtedly fictitious “Albino Gomes” reveals: “The votes that you sent us in favor of Ascendina Santos will not be counted. That dear soul [criatura] is not an actress.”173 However, a journalist for the Correio da Manhã wrote that this actress “promises to cooperate efficiently in the uplift of national theatre,” evidencing the contradictions and tensions surrounding the issue of “race” expressed in the mainstream press and reflecting the wide range of societal views.174

otília amorim and ar aci cortes As will be examined at length in chapter 4, the archetype of the baiana was traditionally played on stage by white women, even foreigners, with one or two notable exceptions, including Plácida dos Santos (discussed above), the mixed-race Otília Amorim (1894–ca. 1970), and the self-proclaimed mulata Araci Cortes (born Zilda de Carvalho Espíndola, 1904– 1985). Amorim was the star of Rio’s Teatro São José in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and billed in 1921 as the “charming étoile” of the revue Esta nega que me dá (That Black Woman Who Gives It to Me).175 She was known for playing the mulata/baiana (an often interchangeable archetype),176 including “some tasty Brazilian mulatas” in O pauzinho (The Little Stick),177 a baiana in the revue Flor de Catumbi (Flower of Catumbi [a district of Rio]) at the São José Theatre in 1918,178 and the role of Regina in Meu bem, não chora! (My Darling, Don’t Cry!),179 going on to reprise the archetype in O laranja (The Stooge) and Mão na roda (Hand on the Wheel) in 1925.180 In the latter she performed a particularly popular number titled “A baiana.”181 Amorim also enjoyed a fi lm career, playing ethnically marked roles such as an indigenous Brazilian in Ubirajara (1919) and Maria, a “cria da fazenda” (plantation slave)182 in Alma sertaneja (Soul of the Backlands [1919]).183 (Like Benjamin de Oliveira, who played indigenous characters in the silent cinema, ethnic “otherness” in relation to hegemonic “whiteness” enabled Afro-Brazilian and mixed-race performers to adopt fluid identities.) Within the teatro de revista another mestiça (mixed-race woman), Araci Cortes, was waiting in the wings to eclipse Amorim’s success as the archetypal performative mulata/baiana. Cortes, the daughter of a Spanish immigrant father and a mother of Afro-Brazilian descent, made her fi rst appearance on the stages of Rio in 1921. Throughout the 1920s and

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figure 1.8.

Advertisement for the Companhia Mulata Brasileira’s revue Batuque, cateretê e maxixe, featuring racial caricatures reminiscent of US minstrelsy traditions. A Noite, 15 December 1930, p. 8.

1930s she became synonymous with the mulata/baiana, and her close associations with this interchangeable stock type are reflected in a famous 1934 cartoon by Alceu Penna.184 Her mixed-race physical appearance meant that she did not need the blackface makeup worn by the whiteskinned women who were traditionally given this role, but her lighter skin tone and visible European ancestry undoubtedly permitted her to play the baiana without causing controversy. Cortes’s star text drew on her connections with Afro-Brazilian identity, not least her family background and the fact she was raised in the working-class Rio district of Catumbi, where the black musician Pixinguinha was also from, and some of her earliest appearances on stage were alongside Benjamin de Oliveira. Cortes was known for courting scandal, and like Josephine Baker she used her body in provocative ways (such as in a famous nude photograph of her posing behind a strategically placed guitar). As Darién Davis writes:

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“Cortes constantly broke the social rules of proper gender decorum in public and in private. She made her body central to her performance and celebrated publicly and privately her connection to Africaneity and to Afro-Brazilian performers such as Benjamin de Oliveira.”185 By the mid-1920s Cortes was one of the biggest stars of the teatro de revista, fi rst performing with the company of the São José Theatre and subsequently the Tro-lo-ló company.186 As a singer, dancer, and actress, she was a major attraction and was seen as intrinsically Brazilian (brasileiríssima)187 because of the stock types she played and also the homegrown musical genres she performed, particularly the samba and the maxixe. A review of a show involving performers from the São José company but performed at Duque’s dance hall on the upmarket Rua do Ouvidor in December 1923 describes Cortes as “singing and dancing in an extremely Brazilian way,”188 and she was often referred to as “the most Brazilian of our actresses.”189 In 1930 she was described as follows: “Araci Cortes, the queen of the samba and the maxixe, is expressively Brazilian. She embodies one of our most characteristic types—the mulata.”190 Cortes became equally well known for her mastery of imported dance genres such as the fox-trot, the black-bottom, and tap dancing—the latter being all the rage in Rio in the late 1920s, as reflected in the number of dance schools specializing in it that popped up in the center of the city.191 She also became well known for her performance of the so-called nu artístico (artistic nude),192 seen as compatible with her mulata identity, but something that would have been unthinkable for a woman with more of an “African” phenotype. It was repeatedly stressed that she was mixedrace: “Araci Cortes, the consummate and intensely captivating [dengosíssima] mulata.”193 The exposure of her uber-Brazilian mixed-race body was largely appreciated in the press; in the magazine Careta, for example, a reviewer commented on the revue in which she was performing at the time as follows: “Fortunately, there at the São José Theatre is Araci Cortes, a substantial national dish, for whose nudity there is no diaphanous cloak.”194 The outrage expressed in the Catholic publication A Cruz about such performances by Cortes was premised on morality in general and not obviously issues of race.195 The star text of Araci Cortes, which hinged on her mixed-race body, clearly illustrates how over the course of the 1920s the accepted notion of Brazilian national identity acquired a distinctly darker hue, undoubtedly influenced by the celebration of “exotic” female artists within transnational performance spaces. Her physical embodiment of the nation’s history of miscegenation enabled her to both trade on and contribute to the

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transatlantic circuits of “racialized” performance. In 1933 Cortes took her stage baiana to Lisbon as the star of the Tro-lo-ló theatrical company, the fi rst Brazilian company to visit Portugal.196 Once they had completed their professional obligations in Lisbon and Oporto, she and the company’s director, Jardel Jércolis, as well as the female star Lódia Silva, traveled to Spain and Paris. In the French capital Cortes appeared in a series of shows at the Chez Les Nudistes cabaret, where the posters announced “La célèbre folkloriste brésilienne Araci Cortes.”197 On her return to Rio she was accorded the status of a transnational star, promoted in press advertisements as “recently arrived from Europe,”198 and was much in demand in the theatre, on the radio, and as a recording artist.199 Such cosmopolitan credentials undoubtedly cemented her status as the personification of “Brazilian-ness” in a nation seeking to identify itself as modern.

gr ande otelo Best known for his lengthy film career, particularly as half of a comic duo with the white-skinned Oscarito in the popular chanchadas (musical comedies) that dominated fi lm production in Brazil in the 1950s, 200 Grande Otelo (literally, Big Othello, the stage name of Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata [1915–1993]) was an important figure within “racialized” performance in Rio’s popular theatre in the mid-to-late 1920s and subsequently in more upscale venues such as the Cassino da Urca. 201 He fi rst appeared on stage in 1926 as a child star with the revue company Companhia Arruda–Otília Amorim in Nhá moça (Little Missy), performed at the Teatro Rink in Campinas, in the state of São Paulo. That same year he debuted with the Companhia Negra de Revistas, then touring in São Paulo, and proved to be a hit with audiences at the city’s Apolo, Mafalda, and Antártica Theatres. He traveled to Rio in 1927 with Jaime Silva’s re-formed Companhia Negra de Revistas, 202 appearing in the revue Café torrado (Roasted Coffee) at the Teatro República. On the day of the debut performance the newspaper Correio da Manhã published the following item: The company brings with it a star attraction who alone could ensure its success. He is a little black [negro] artist, six years old, who has astonished all audiences with the precociousness of his talent. His name is Othelo and such is his development and the verve with which he sings and performs, that some journalists from other states have called him the greatest performer in the Portuguese language. 203

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The company went on to perform A revista das revistas (The Revue of Revues) later that month, prompting the newspaper A Manhã to describe Otelo, who played the role of compère in this revue, as a “Little 7-yearold black boy [Pequeno Pretinho], but a GREAT ACTOR, who every night is rapturously applauded.”204 The following day the same publication encouraged its readers to see for themselves the talents of the revue’s star attraction: “No one should fail to go to the República Theatre before the company fi nishes its run there, to admire and applaud this extraordinary artist who is astounding everyone with the precociousness of his outstanding talent.”205 As a result of his popularity Otelo was soon appearing as a solo act at the Cine Teatro Central in Rio, billed as “child prodigy” and “the smallest artist in the world” (figure 1.7). 206 When the Companhia Negra de Revistas broke up, Otelo went back to São Paulo and almost traveled to Paris with Abigail Parecis’s theatrical company. In 1929, Paris came to him instead; on 18 November he shared the stage with Josephine Baker at the Teatro Cassino in the show Casamento de preto (Blacks’ Wedding), and they performed the duet “Boneca de piche” (Tar Doll). 207 By his own account he then lived in a children’s home for a few years and did not return to show business until 1935. In 1939, now an adult, he appeared in the musical revue Urca’s balangandans (Urca’s Amulets), at the Cassino da Urca alongside Elisinha Coelho, Cândido Botelho, and international artists, a token black face sanitized by the presence of his white costars, just as he would be in his comedy fi lm career as part of a series of double acts alongside white performers, and rendered nonthreatening by his performative infantilization, which drew on some of the techniques of the US blackface minstrelsy tradition. 208 As discussed in chapter 4, on 10 May 1939 he appeared on stage at this elite venue with Josephine Baker once more, together with a dozen or so black backing performers, to reprise the racially marked popular show they had performed together in Rio ten years earlier, Casamento de preto. 209

the companhia mul ata br asileir a The mixed reception received by the Ba-ta-clan Preta in São Paulo, as Tiago de Melo Gomes has argued, 210 was partly due to local visions of brasilidade that placed greater emphasis on rural folklore (what Nicolau Sevcenko has termed nativismo sertanejo [backlands nativism]), 211 in contrast to De Chocolat’s metropolitan, cosmopolitan representations of blackness that featured urban and often imported popular music. These local specificities in terms of expectations of and receptiveness to cer-

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tain visions of black subjectivity were reflected in the performances of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira, which was formed in São Paulo in 1930 but also performed in Rio. The troupe was composed of many of the same performers who had formed part of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, such as Rosa Negra and Índia do Brasil, 212 and also included a female performer called Jandira Aimoré. 213 According to Tiago de Melo Gomes, the company used a “folkloric-regionalist” imaginary to sell its “products,” rather than “identity,” which was possibly a consequence of its São Paulo roots. 214 The company premiered in São Paulo on 21 November 1930 with the revue Batuque, cateretê e maxixe (three dance styles), which featured a scene of a slave party in a rural setting (see advertisement for this revue, figure 1.8). This return to anachronistic, romanticized depictions of black subjectivity could not have differed more from the self-conscious alignment of the Companhia Negra de Revistas with modernity and transnational blackness. Certain sectors of the press welcomed this return to such clichéd bucolic representations, including a reviewer from Rio who wrote: “This group is well directed, and not involved in ridiculous imitations of foreign things incompatible with the nature of the Company, on the contrary, it explores regional aspects, episodes and Brazilian music, almost always from rural areas.”215 This reviewer is clearly making a direct comparison with the innovations introduced to Brazil by the Companhia Negra de Revistas. The “característico da Companhia” (nature of the Company) is clearly a euphemism for “race,” and as Gomes points out, the message is that Afro-Brazilians are incompatible with representations of cosmopolitan modernity and should return to depicting a folkloric vision of brasilidade 216 and essentially “know their place.” (The following anecdote underlines the pervasiveness of racial prejudice. In 1931 João Felippe, a member of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira, was reported to the police by a neighbor for allegedly being involved in witchcraft. He was arrested but soon released when it was discovered that the “black rooster” inside his rented room was made of paper.)217 Jandira Aimoré told a reporter that she wanted to travel “abroad, to Argentina, to Europe. They say that there they like mulatas very much, so I want to see if that is true.”218 It would seem that her dream came true, as the troupe performed in Portugal in June 1931. Their show was positively reviewed in the Lisbon publication Notícias Ilustradas, which published several photographs, including one of a mixed-race woman dressed as a baiana. 219 The star of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira was Índia do Brasil, said to have been a cousin of Araci Cortes, whose star text drew on her indigenous roots, further proof of the fluid nature of “racial” identities and re-

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lated nomenclature in Brazil during this era and beyond. 220 Brasil had previously appeared in a leading role in A revista das revistas (The Revue of Revues) with Jaime Silva’s relaunched Companhia Negra de Revistas at the República Theatre, alongside child star Grande Otelo (as discussed above). 221 She later played the baiana in the revue Mascarados (Masked) at the São José Theatre in Rio in February 1928222 and was known for her samba dancing skills, being referred to as “the black [negra] star and fi rst-rate samba dancer”223 and a “devilish samba dancer.”224 One journalist writing in the Correio da Manhã newspaper in February 1931 describes the members of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira as “legitimate coffee with milk, English-style many of them; several Brazilian-style,” once more reflecting a preoccupation with gradations of skin tone and the degrees of “authenticity” that pigmentation bestowed on the performers concerned. 225 He continues, in relation to their revue Deixa eu morá com você (Let Me Live with You), written by De Chocolat:226 “Everything in the new revue is Dark [Moreno]; some lighter, some darker [mais escuros], but all give the impression of having been born at night. De Chocolat, the author, is really the color of cocoa.”227 In relation to this revue, on 4 February 1931 the Correio da Manhã reported that the costumes were being made in the atelier of Mme. Suzana Deprete, “recently arrived from Paris, with the costumes having been designed by a master craftsman whose name cannot be divulged because of a contract that he has with a large advertising company.” The item also reports that the Cuban rumba “promises to be one of the most successful numbers.”228 The following day, the eve of the premiere of Deixa eu morá com você at the República Theatre, the Correio da Manhã announced that the Companhia Mulata Brasileira planned to tour several Brazilian states after carnival, and that this revue, “staged with such luxury and paraphernalia,” would be their last one at this theatre for the time being. The newspaper said that it was set to be the best of their three revues to date, blessed with “luxurious costumes . . . consummately created.”229 There were clearly some concessions to modernizing trends within the teatro de revista in terms of costumes and set design, as these reviews attest, but an advertisement for the company’s fi rst revue, Batuque, cateretê e maxixe, is striking for its use of “racially” inspired caricature (figure 1.8), particularly the demeaning exaggeration of physical characteristics that has obvious parallels with the traditions of blackface minstrelsy in the United States. The impact of the imported performance traditions of minstrelsy in Rio’s popular entertainment circles will be examined in the following section. Also of note is the advertisement’s use of clichéd, “racialized” terminology—morenas den-

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gosas—a marketing strategy that was also used to publicize this revue in another newspaper advertisement that referred to the female cast as “mulatinhas dengosas e feiticeiras. Carinhas do outro mundo. Girls cor de chocolate” (captivating, bewitching little mulatas. Cuties from another world. Chocolate-colored chorus girls). 230

bl ackface performance in rio As César Braga-Pinto has identified, a systematic history of blackface performance by whites in highbrow theatre in Brazil is long overdue, and the same could be said of the teatro de revista. The bibliography on blackface in the United States is extensive231 and provides a useful analytical framework, but it must be borne in mind that the meanings of superficially similar performance traditions in Brazil are culturally specific and locally rooted, although undoubtedly inspired and inflected by transnational currents in various cases. Although black characters in elite Brazilian theatre in the nineteenth century were most likely played by white actors, it is not entirely clear whether they adopted some kind of black makeup on their faces and bodies. 232 Some of Rio’s audiences were familiar with the US minstrelsy tradition, since on 23 August 1869 Emperor Dom Pedro II himself attended a performance by Christy’s Minstrels, whose members adopted blackface, 233 and the White Lilies, an amateur minstrel troupe, performed at the Teatro Gymnasio in Rio in October 1881. 234 Within the teatro de revista at the turn of the century, however, blackface performance was predominantly aural, with white performers mimicking what the elite deemed to be “black” speech patterns. 235 Although blackface performance by white actors using heavy dark makeup was a dominant feature of the Cuban comic theatre of the same era, including particular parallels in terms of the portrayal of the mulata, 236 in Brazil, examples of white performers in blackface were relatively rare. In the 1920s, however, several little-known male revue performers adopted blackface makeup. In 1924, in the number “Jazz Band,” part of the revue Secos e molhados (Dry and Wet Goods), by Luís Peixoto, white performers appeared in US minstrel– style blackface with white rings painted around their eyes and aping jazz poses, evidencing a familiarity with North American performance traditions among the creators of Rio’s teatro de revista (figure  1.9). 237 Similar makeup was worn by the white actor João Martins in the revue Diz isso cantando (Say It with Songs [1930]), written by the white playwright Oduvaldo Vianna (figure 1.10). Vianna is said to have imported the idea of blackface minstrelsy into the Brazilian teatro de re-

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vista following his visit to New York in 1929, drawing on the prestige of idioms emerging from cosmopolitan entertainment hubs, and he was clearly fascinated with “black” performance, having asked Grande Otelo to perform for him and a group of intellectuals in the 1920s.238 Vianna was evidently not the fi rst to import elements of minstrelsy into Brazilian performance, and Al Jolson’s performance in the film The Jazz Singer (1927), a huge hit in Brazil, undoubtedly inspired these innovations in racial representation in the late 1920s. Although Jolson did not appear in blackface in his third feature-length fi lm, Say It with Songs (1929), it is interesting to note that Oduvaldo Vianna used the Brazilian translation of the fi lm’s title—Diz isso cantando—for the title of his 1930 theatre revue, additional evidence that he was well acquainted with Jolson’s screen performances. Furthermore, a photograph of the cast of the revue Guerra ao mosquito (War on Mosquitoes [1929]), written by Marques Porto and Luís Peixoto, clearly shows they too were wearing blackface makeup, with Pinto Filho even adopting the exaggerated white lips of North American minstrelsy (see figure 0.1 in the introduction). 239 A song written by the popular white composer Ari Barroso, “Boneca

figure 1.9. Photograph of actors in US-inspired blackface performing in the sketch

“Jazz Band,” part of the revue Secos e molhados (Dry and Wet Goods [1924]), written by Luís Peixoto. Courtesy of FUNARTE/CEDOC.

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figure 1.10. João

Martins wearing blackface in the revue Diz isso cantando (Say It with Songs [1930]). Courtesy of FUNARTE/CEDOC.

de piche” (Tar Doll), was performed by João Martins and Araci Cortes in duet in the revue Diz isso cantando240 and would subsequently be performed by whites in brown- or blackface throughout the 1930s. 241 On 4 January 1939, for example, white-skinned Carmen Miranda performed “Boneca de piche” in the official Dia da Música Popular (Popular Music Day) celebrations at the Estado Novo’s annual Rio trade fair, the Feira de Amostras. In a photograph taken during this performance, she can be seen on stage with the singer and radio presenter Almirante, her face clearly darkened with exaggerated makeup. The song was to be performed in the fi lm Banana da terra (Banana of the Land [1938]) by Carmen Miranda and Almirante, both appearing in blackface on a set depicting a stylized colonial slave quarters. Due to a dispute over copyright payment, however, the song was withdrawn at the eleventh hour; nonetheless, the existing sets, costumes, and dark makeup were used for the performance

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figure 1.11.

Carmen Miranda and Almirante performing the song “Pirulito” in blackface in the film Banana da terra. Photograph published in the Rio newspaper Diário Carioca on 4 February 1939 (p. 7) to advertise the forthcoming film.

of a replacement song, the marchinha (carnival march) “Pirulito” (Lollipop) by Braguinha and Alberto Ribeiro (the fi lm’s scriptwriters). Photographs used to advertise this now lost fi lm clearly show Miranda and Almirante in the Brazilian version of blackface, respecting the conventions for the performance of the song “Boneca de piche” (figure 1.11). 242 As mentioned above, the “Boneca de piche” duet was also performed by Afro-Brazilian actor Grande Otelo and Josephine Baker at Rio’s Urca Casino in 1939 in the show Casamento de preto (Blacks’ Wedding). 243 Film scholar Catherine L. Benamou describes Grande Otelo as being “well known for his charismatic rendering of the Brazilian equivalent of ‘tomming’ and ‘hybrid blackface,’”244 and Grande Otelo himself refers to the tradition of blackface performance of this particular song in an interview with Jairo Severiano and Elisete Cardoso recorded at the Museu da Imagem e do Som in Rio on 24 October 1985.

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concluding remarks Blackness can be a performative identity and/or a phenotype, and this chapter has examined how a range of popular artists with varying degrees of phenotypical blackness chose to perform their Afro-Brazilian identity during the period between the 1880s and the early 1930s. The strategies adopted by these performers when molding their star personae, and the mixed reactions they received in the press, reveal the stresses and strains underlying Brazilian society in the decades following Abolition. Eduardo das Neves and Benjamin de Oliveira were praised in an item about the decline of the popular theatre in Brazil published in A Notícia in 1909. 245 The same newspaper, however, made clear the prejudice surrounding such black performers. In an article about government reforms for the National Institute of Music two years earlier, a journalist wrote, “Just imagine Benjamin de Oliveira or Eduardo das Neves singing in ‘Aida,’ even in translation, and you will have a more or less approximate idea of the impression artists with imperfect diction and tottering gesticulation would create in such a serious work.”246 In the 1910s and early 1920s the issue of black Brazilian performers was equally divisive, particularly when they proposed to travel abroad and thus were deemed representatives of the nation. On 10 May 1912, for example, the Rio de Janeiro newspaper A Noite published on its front page an article entitled “Fine Propaganda! A Fiendish Company,” with the subtitle “A band composed of Brazilian blacks [negros] and mulatos is being put together to go to Paris.” Not satisfied with displaying a troupe of Brazilian black [negro] and mulato musicians and dancers, on the stages of the cafés-concerts of Paris, they intend to go as far as presenting them in public, in the streets, as advertisements, accompanied by street urchins and simpletons, offering them up to the Parisian public’s curiosity, who will of course applaud them, like they would a band of trained monkeys. Undoubtedly the company is counting on the great success of its troupe, but it is also without doubt now that their diabolical plans have been discovered that the company will be prevented from doing so, not only due to a formal refusal, which of necessity our national artists will make, but also by the public authorities, who will not consent to this vile exploitation, demoralizing for our name in Europe.

The following day Rio’s Gazeta de Notícias published a response by Paulo José entitled “O instante—patriotismo,” which takes issue with the indignation expressed in relation to Afro-Brazilians playing, singing, and

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dancing the maxixe in Paris alongside Portuguese artists also performing characteristic songs and dances from the island of Madeira. 247 José defends Brazil’s black performers in France, where he says they are all well received, and “no one there feels any revulsion to negros and there are negros who represent their homeland much better than many whites.” He stresses that this kind of performance is precisely that, performance, and not an expression of national identity: “no one, take note, no one in civilized capital cities deems theatrical companies to be representative of their respective countries.” He reminds readers that it was North American mulatos who introduced the cakewalk in Europe, and that the black American clown Chocolat got rich in Paris. He adds, in a reference to Geraldo Magalhães, “As far as I know, no one in Paris considered Brazil to be debased because Geraldo earned his money there, by singing.” As examined in chapter 2, at the dawn of the 1920s, strikingly contradictory attitudes regarding black performance were clearly evidenced by the mixed reception given to the Oito Batutas in Brazil, particularly before their success in Paris. The band proved so popular that the waiting room at Rio’s Palais Cinema filled up every day with people just wanting to hear them play, yet there were numerous cases of scandalized members of Brazil’s elite voicing their protests about a group with four black members playing in this upscale venue. This did not prevent the band from being invited to perform a show entitled “Uma noite no sertão” (A Night in the Backlands) at the Conservatório Dramático e Musical in São Paulo in 1919, nor from appearing at the aristocratic Automóvel Clube in the same city. Furthermore, in 1920 they were invited to perform for the king and queen of Belgium at a picnic hosted by the Brazilian government, and in 1921 they paraded in the Rio carnival with the elite carnival society Tenentes do Diabo. Their visit to Paris in 1922 polarized opinions in Brazil, yet on their return they performed in pavilions at the centenary exhibition of Brazil’s independence. They then went on tour in Argentina, where they enjoyed considerable success, scheduling additional shows and recording twenty pieces of music on the Victor label, including sambas, maxixes, choros, tanguinhos, polkas, and marchas. 248 Back in Rio in 1923, with a modified lineup, they were contracted for a season by Rio’s upmarket Assyrio venue. The transnational vogue for black performance prompted by the Harlem Renaissance and particularly by the success of the Revue nègre in 1925 occasioned a historical shift in elite attitudes in Brazil. These were perhaps predominantly motivated by a desire on the part of critics, journalists, and white middle- and highbrow audiences to be seen as modern and cosmopolitan themselves by consuming and endorsing such “ra-

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cialized” performance. Melo Gomes notes that the fi rst production of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, Tudo preto (All Black), proved to be a significant commercial success, running from 31 July to 1 September 1926, a long run by the standards of the day, and he argues that there seems to be no real evidence of racial prejudice against the company. When performed in São Paulo, this revue was very well received by the local press, which rarely gave much space to Rio’s teatro de revista. 249 Nevertheless, when it came to representing Brazil abroad, age-old prejudices and fears came into play once more, as foregrounded by the campaign waged by the Sociedade Brasileira de Autores Teatrais (SBAT) to prevent the Companhia Negra de Revistas from performing in Argentina in 1927. SBAT was the fi rst organization established to protect the copyrights of those who wrote for the theatre and composers. In practice, as Hertzman has shown, SBAT favored the protection of rights of theatre writers over those of popular musicians and often made the distinction between high and low art in racial terms, considering circus theatre in particular with disdain. 250 A 1928 edition of the organization’s Boletim included an article that used the term mambembe (a word of Kimbundu origin generally applied to itinerant Afro-Brazilian troupes) to refer to theatre groups who avoided paying the dues required to perform works by SBAT’s members.251 As Hertzman writes, “The equation of Afro-Brazilian theatre with amateurism and the evasion of authors’ rights payments resonated with deep-rooted and longlasting assumptions about blackness and authorship. The article ran at a particularly auspicious time, just after the brief heyday of the Companhia Negra de Revistas.”252 The following item was published in the organization’s official publication, the Boletim da SBAT, on 7 July 1927: Mr. Bastos Tigre reports that having been brought to his attention that the impresarios Jaime Silva and Avellar Pereira intend to take to Argentina and Uruguay the Companhia Negra de Revistas, which would discredit our country, the SBAT, as behooves it, will take urgent steps to prevent this affront to our civilization. Among the fi rst measures to this end, a commission has been appointed composed of Mr. Marques Porto and Aarão Reis to personally go in search of Mr. Jaime Silva, one of the impresarios of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, and convince him to desist from his plans. Should he insist on pursuing them, the SBAT will have to take more effective measures.

On 12 July 1927 the same publication reported: “Mr. Marques Porto confi rms that there has been a pleasing outcome to the case of the trip by the Companhia Negra de Revistas abroad, and that the trip will no longer

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take place, as promised by Mr. Jaime Silva.”253 A token Afro-Brazilian presence on the popular stage could traditionally be tolerated, but not a troupe composed almost entirely of those of African descent, especially when it came to performing for foreign audiences. For majority white audiences in Brazil, black Brazilians on stage lacked the cosmopolitan allure of the foreign black theatre performers from New York and Paris who had begun to arrive in Brazil and were billed in promotional material as “authentic” and “original.”254 By the beginning of the 1930s, the advances made by the Companhia Negra de Revistas and the Ba-ta-clan Preta had been replaced by a return to timeworn, clichéd representations of a dehistoricized black subjectivity, as seen in the performances of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira. The window of opportunity for plugging in to the transnational currents of modern, cosmopolitan black performance had narrowed again. 255 This only applied to Brazilian black bodies, however, since foreign Afro-descendant performers continued to be afforded kudos and cultural capital. This was clearly illustrated in the official reception held by the US ambassador in Rio to welcome the North American black star Little Esther in 1931. 256 Invited guests included the elite of carioca society and President Getúlio Vargas himself, who is said to have expressed to Little Esther’s manager, Sydney Garner, “his great pleasure at seeing such capable colored American artists in Brazil.”257 Times were continuing to change in Brazil in terms of the acceptance of racialized performance, with the transnational advances of the mid to late 1920s sowing the seeds for the success, both at home and abroad, of the mixed-race—albeit light-skinned—Araci Cortes, held up as a symbol of “Brazilian-ness” par excellence, and that of Carmen Miranda’s baiana in the decades to follow.

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Ch a p t e r 2

the rio de janeiro–paris performance a xis in the first decades of the t wentieth century: duque, the oito batutas, and the question of “race”

Brazilian popular culture flowed readily back and forth across the Atlantic in the 1910s and 1920s, undergoing surprising appropriations in France, providing typical examples of the process called transculturation, and generating redefinitions of identity on both sides of the Atlantic. Brazilian, no less than French, popular culture was being refashioned by the back-and-forth flow. hermano vianna, the mystery of samba: popul ar music and national identit y in br a zil

Bu il di ng on t h e grou n dbr e a k i ng wor k of Hermano Vianna, this chapter examines the bidirectional transatlantic currents within the realm of popular performance that linked the French capital to the city of Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the nineteenth century and throughout the fi rst decades of the twentieth. It begins by outlining a range of examples of performers and performance traditions that moved back and forth between the Old and New Worlds in this period, before focusing on the role played in this circuit of mutual exchange by a white Brazilian dentist turned ballroom dancer known as Duque (literally “the Duke”; his real name was Antônio Lopes de Amorim Diniz). Duque popularized in Paris and far beyond a sanitized, “whitened” version of the maxixe,1 a dance traditionally associated with black Brazilian dancers and musicians. The chapter then examines a group of predominantly Afro-Brazilian musicians, the Oito Batutas, known in France as Les Batutas or L’Orchestre des Batutas, who performed in Paris between February and August 1922 in nightclubs and private parties on the initiative of Duque. 2 It explores how Afro-Brazilian popular culture and its performers, even before they embarked on a voyage across the Atlantic, were influenced by artistic developments in Paris, and how on arrival in Europe they were translated for a white European audience. It argues that the maxixe and the samba,

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although both Afro-Brazilian in origin, were translated quite differently for Parisian audiences, the former as a sophisticated “white” dance style aligned with the Argentine tango, and the latter as a musical expression of the metropolitan African diaspora, capitalizing on the reigning négrophilie and, in particular, the vogue for US jazz. Via an examination of the impact that their Parisian sojourn and the cultural interactions it led to had on the Oito Batutas, both in terms of their musical repertoire and their visual style, this chapter situates their self-representation in Paris within dominant discourses surrounding black US musicians and the African continent. It illustrates the extent to which the transatlantic return journeys by Duque and his maxixe and the Oito Batutas, respectively, were instrumental in molding debates about Brazilian national identity, particularly from a “racial” perspective. In his seminal study of the conundrum surrounding samba’s “invention” as Brazil’s national music, Vianna explores the various factors behind the genre’s evolution from repressed rhythm of the poor Afro-Brazilian inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (shantytowns) in the 1910s and early 1920s to becoming a symbol of the Brazilian nation, consumed by the masses and the elite, and promoted abroad with great patriotism, thanks to the rise of the radio and record industry.3 He concludes that the invention of samba as Brazil’s “national” music involved many different social groups, most importantly its black samba composers, but also members of the white elite, intellectuals (most notably the sociologist Gilberto Freyre), politicians, erudite poets, classical composers, folklorists, millionaires, a US ambassador, and a number of French citizens, among others.4 Vianna alludes here to some of the key players in the transatlantic migration of the Oito Batutas, whose roles will be explored in more detail below. Taking as its point of departure Vianna’s acknowledgment of the varied agents associated with samba’s consecration as national music, this chapter aims to highlight the central role played in this process by transatlantic currents. It argues that it was only thanks to dialogues with “black” Paris that AfroBrazilian cultural forms such as the samba could be accepted by the Brazilian elite as quintessential elements of a homogenizing “national” culture in the 1930s. It concludes that the fact that Freyre’s notion of “racial democracy” was to underpin the conceptualization of national essence, denominated by the neologism brasilidade (Brazilian-ness), during the regime of President Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945) was a direct consequence of Afro-Brazilian popular culture’s complex interactions with black diasporic “racial” performance. Informed by Micol Seigel’s consummate study of the history of interhemispheric cultural dialogues between Brazil and the United States, this chapter addresses the gap in scholarship that

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she identifies in relation to the sociocultural landscape of Rio in the 1920s, which “reveals aspects of transnational exchange that scholarly and other critical observers have yet to assimilate fully.”5 As Vianna has documented, the arrival in Paris of Duque and his version of the maxixe and of the Oito Batutas and their samba rhythms represented just two examples of the bidirectional flow of Brazilian popular culture between the French and the then-capital of Brazil in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century. Variety acts and the popular revue theatre were a particularly fertile medium for the promotion of intercultural dialogue between Rio de Janeiro and Paris at the turn of the century and throughout the early 1900s.6 In 1889 the Brazilian actress Plácida dos Santos performed the maxixe on stage at the Folies Bergère in Paris,7 and in 1899 the English-born “French” variety star Jenny Cook, billed as a “Parisian singer”8 and a self-styled “eccentric singer,” took the maxixe back to South America in her performances of song and dance at Rio’s Teatro Recreio before continuing on to Buenos Aires.9 In 1908 the maxixe returned to Paris with the arrival of the so-called mulatos gaúchos, the dancers Geraldo Magalhães and his partner Nina Teixeira.10 As discussed in chapter 1, in 1926 João Cândido Ferreira, better known by his stage name Le Chocolat (or De Chocolat), founded the Companhia Negra de Revistas, Brazil’s fi rst all-black theatre company, clearly drawing on the vogue for black performance in Paris. The company’s debut play, Tudo preto (All Black), was replete with references to Paris and the city’s black artistic expressions.11 In 1929, the year in which Josephine Baker, aptly described by Seigel as “a vector of US-Paris-Brazil cosmopolitanism and cultural exchange in her own right,”12 fi rst arrived in Brazil, it was similarly no coincidence that the Companhia Mulata Brasileira was established.13 These Atlantic crossings, both physical and metaphorical, within the realm of popular theatrical performance, in the 1920s in particular, stimulated reassessments of the place of black Brazil within national selfdefi nition, and engagement with artistic developments in Paris clearly created a space for Afro-Brazilian performers on the stages of Rio de Janeiro. It is evident, however, that some years earlier the performance space of ballroom dance had already begun to articulate complex and often contradictory ideas about the role of “race” in the conceptualization of the Brazilian nation on both sides of the Atlantic.

duque and the ma xixe in rio and paris Antônio Lopes de Amorim Diniz’s stage name, Duque (the Duke), emphasized this ballroom dancer’s self-styled elegant, pseudo-aristocratic de-

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meanor, perhaps as a mask to conceal his rather humble origins, as well as those of the dance style that he promoted. After moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1906 from his native Salvador, state capital of Bahia in northeast Brazil, Duque created sophisticated but rather staid choreographies for Brazilian dances, especially the maxixe, until then frowned upon as a genre of the predominantly Afro-Brazilian lower classes. On his arrival in Paris in 1909, Duque performed in theatres and cabaret clubs with several dance partners, including Maria Lino, a well-known ItalianBrazilian performer in the teatro de revista, and two French women, Arlette Dorgère and Gaby.14 Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Parisians were introduced to a variety of imported dance styles, including the tango (transported to Europe by Argentine expatriates in the late nineteenth century), the cakewalk and the Boston from the United States, and polkas and other dances from all over Europe. The arrival in Paris of Duque and the maxixe (often then spelled mattchiche) coincided with a new vogue for the eponymous Brazilian musical genre, and by 1913, Duque’s name and/or photograph adorned the covers of sheet music, composed by Brazilians and foreigners, of what was also referred to as the Brazilian tango.15 His performances in the city were widely advertised and reviewed in the local press, where his various monikers included “the king of tango,”16 and “the creator of the Brazilian maxixe.”17 On 2 November 1913, for example, the French publication Le Frou-Frou announced that the dance instructor and his delightful partner, Mlle. Gaby, were about to “unveil a new Brazilian tango and a previously unseen maxixe” at the Théâtre Impérial.18 In 1914–1915 he founded the Dancing Palace in Paris’s Luna Park, where he starred alongside Gaby and a so-called “Hawaiian Orchestra”; he also contracted the Brazilian classical musician Nicolino Milano, who had been working in Lisbon for the Portuguese royal court, to give local “Brazilian” color to the performances of the 120 or so musicians under his direction.19 On 19 March 1914, the newspaper Le Gaulois announced that Duque and Gaby were soon to “dance their famous Brazilian maxixe, accompanied by the maestro Nicolino Milano.”20 In 1915 Duque opened a dance academy in the French capital and another in Rio de Janeiro. Pictured in his trademark top hat and tails, he was even featured on postcards that were widely available from Parisian tobacconists. 21 Duque also popularized the maxixe in New York, 22 and in 1915 and 1916 he and Gaby performed in various venues in Rio de Janeiro (examined in more detail below) as well as in Montevideo and Buenos Aires. 23 The Rio newspaper Correio da Manhã reported in January 1916 that “the dancers Duque and Gaby continue to be successful with their

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dances at the Teatro Nuevo, attracting the best of Buenos Aires society to that venue.”24 The term maxixe emerged in Rio de Janeiro as a way of referring not to a specific choreography but rather to a new sensual style of performing conventional social dances (particularly the polka) that added rhythmic complexity and accented hip movements. The maxixe style, which emerged in the 1870s, thus challenged accepted social norms by adopting body movements associated with African traditions and being closely associated with marginalized black and mixed-race Brazilians who frequented the dance halls of the Cidade Nova (the so-called New City)—the working-class districts of Rio’s city center. 25 As Hertzman writes, “The sensuous hip movements associated with maxixe and the music’s association with Mangue, the city’s red-light district, made the music an ideal vehicle for delivering long-standing stereotypes about race and sexuality.”26 The maxixe’s presence in the teatro de revista sparked fierce controversy among the white elite, with the dance often being equated with pornography. 27 Its risqué choreography was described as follows: The complete rotation of the hips involved releasing the pelvis, essential for the dancing partners to fit perfectly together. . . . In reality, the maxixe’s choreography implied for the fi rst time the acceptance of something that until then had been repressed by panniers, tails, and corsets: the existence within the human body of the so-called “lower parts,” represented by the stomach, genitals and buttocks. 28

The status of the maxixe in Brazil, however, was to change radically as a direct consequence of Duque’s success in Paris, which was enthusiastically received by the Brazilian press, unsurprisingly given his white skin, patrician bearing, and the more respectable version of the maxixe that he promoted. An article in the newspaper Jornal do Brasil on 11 January 1914, entitled “Paris Adores the Maxixe,” describes Duque as “our compatriot, who turned the Brazilian maxixe into a subtle and enchanting art form, with which he conquered elegant Paris.” It continues: “Duque and Gaby, joined together in a single harmonious movement, fascinate, unsettle and entrance the patrons of the Dancing Palace.”29 The periodical FonFon! featured a photograph of the president of France, Raymond Poincaré, attending the inauguration of this venue, further evidencing its elite status and, by extension, that of Duque, its artistic director.30 Traveling fi rst-class on the steamship Tubantia, Duque and “Mlle. Gaby” returned in September 1915 to Rio, where they were greeted on board by “a le-

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gion of friends and admirers.”31 Upon their arrival the duo and their performances were synonymous with elite (white) sophistication and cosmopolitanism (figure 2.1); their fi rst professional appearance was at a special event for the local press held at the upmarket Assyrio restaurant in downtown Rio, 32 where the audience included “countless high-society families.”33 A few days later they participated in a “party anxiously awaited by our elegant world,”34 held at the Teatro Lyrico. They performed to a full house, and their dancing was introduced via erudite talks by the poet Luís Edmundo (“Dance across the Ages”), the playwright Bastos Tigre, and the columnist João do Rio (“História do Duque”), the latter described as an “edifying narrative.”35 In an advertisement for a subsequent top-of-the-bill performance at the Pathé Music Hall in Rio, a photo of Duque and Gaby striking an elegant pose is accompanied by a caption that refers to the duo as “world celebrities.”36 Similarly, the newspaper O Paiz, in a multilingual mishmash, describes them as “a great attraction de tout Paris” and “the latest hit in several capital cities in the Old World.”37 A one-page item on Duque and Gaby, accompanied by two full pages of photographs of the couple in a variety of dance poses, was published in the erudite magazine Selecta on 15 September 1915.38 It reports that during the previous four years, Duque was one of the most sought-after figures in the French capital, where he was called upon to organize elegant gatherings such as a party for the “famous Princess of Murat.” His venue, Dancing Palace, we are told, was frequented by nobility and millionaires, and he taught Grand Duke Paul of Russia how to dance. In addition to dancing for aristocrats and diplomats in Rome and sovereigns and heads of state in other European locations, he received a host of important awards, including the gold medal from the Commercial Association of Paris. The duo’s transnational credentials clearly earned them status and cachet; at the end of September 1915 they were the main attraction at an afternoon tea dance at the Assyrio, publicized as being held for Rio’s high society.39 To a packed house at the Teatro Lyrico, Duque and Gaby “danced magnificently for the enraptured audience,” particularly their Brazilian tango (“which Duque was obliged to perform an encore of, such was the enthusiasm, the frenzy of the applause”).40 The issue of nomenclature here is worthy of a brief aside. During these performances in Rio in 1915– 1916 the maxixe was reintroduced to Brazil with the sanitized and whitened name of tango brasileiro (Brazilian tango) or maxixe de salão (salon maxixe);41 The former equates the dance style with Brazil’s “white” neighbor, Argentina, the latter with the cosmopolitan milieu of Parisian dance halls. Advertisements for Duque and Gaby’s appearance at the Pathé Mu-

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figure 2.1. Promotional

photograph of dancers Duque and Gaby published in the elite magazine Fon-Fon!, 5 February 1916, p. 34.

sic Hall list the dance styles they will perform as the “Argentine tango,” the “fox-trot (‘the latest US trend’),” and the “Tango Brasileiro ‘ou maxixe de salão.’”42 (In addition to reimporting the maxixe from across the Atlantic, Duque looked to North America for further creative inspiration, also performing a so-called “caricatured one-step” called a furlana—the name of an Italian folk dance—at this venue.)43 An advertisement for a dance academy established in downtown Rio by “Professor Jardel Gercoli [sic], recently arrived from Europe,”44 promotes a range of dances, including what it terms maxixes parisiens. The use of the French language in reporting on Duque and Gaby’s appearances in Rio was also clearly designed to underscore their Parisian credentials; a review of their show at the Teatro Lyrico declares that “Duque and Gaby dance with admirable savoir faire,”45 and he is described as possessing “an elegance sans pareil in the steps he dances.”46 In early November 1915, Duque and Gaby took their urbane version of the maxixe to São Paulo accompanied by the writer João do Rio.47 On 9 November 1915 the daily newspaper, the Correio Paulistano, reported as follows: “The illustrious man of letters will give, at the Municipal The-

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atre next Thursday, a literary talk, introducing the dancers Duque and Gaby to the public. These two famous artists, introduced into Europe, to the applause of the most sophisticated audiences, the picturesque and seductive dance that is the maxixe.”48 The item went on to state that the “brilliant writer” João do Rio would be talking in his lecture about “the languorous elements of Brazilian dance, magnificently executed by our most applauded performers.”49 On 14 November the same newspaper ran another long article by the wellknown journalist entitled “Brazilian Music and Dance,” which included a review of Duque and Gaby’s performance at São Paulo’s upscale Municipal Theatre. 50 He begins by emphasizing Duque’s contribution to the dissemination of Brazilian popular music and dance in Europe, where he “turned the maxixe into a small work of art.” Rio describes his own last trip to the continent, when “everywhere I went there was Duque, there was Brazil, there was the maxixe.” He claims to have seen “ladies” dancing in London to the strains of the composition “Gostoso” (Lovely) by Aurelio Cavalcanti, and to have heard another maxixe, entitled “Vem cá, mulata!” (Come Here, Mulata!) being played by a hotel dance band in Athens, along with a Brazilian carnival tune in Constantinople.51 In his assessment of Duque and Gaby’s performance at the Municipal Theatre in São Paulo, Rio foregrounds the influence of Paris via direct references to the city and the use of a French loan word: Duque’s dance is a veritable creation, it is a maxixe that contains all the steps and moves of Brazilian dances, sprinkled with the grace and elegance of Paris. . . . After Duque danced, I was not surprised by the widespread “envoutement” that had inspired, three years earlier, all women and men, both young and old, to try the same moves as Duque. On top of the sensual crater of the American maxixe sparkles the effervescence of the spirit of Paris.

In early January 1916, Duque and Gaby set sail from the Brazilian port of Santos to Buenos Aires, 52 where, according to the press back in Rio, they were a tremendous success at the Teatro Nuevo, attracting “the best of Buenos Aires society.”53 Once again their elitist dimension was foregrounded, with journalists reporting on the farewell reception that they were given in the Argentine capital at the elegant Tabarin restaurant, attended by members of Buenos Aires high society.54 On their return to Brazil they performed at the Trianon in Rio in February 1916, where in addition to their version of the Argentine tango they performed the maxixe

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de salão for a highbrow audience that included the minister of foreign affairs, Lauro Müller, and the so-called minister of Brazil in Argentina, Dr.  Souza Dantas. 55 During the 1916 carnival, Duque organized several balls at the Assyrio for an elite clientele, such as the soirée rose-blanche, where gentlemen were required to wear black tie. 56 The duo went on to appear in the town of Juiz de Fora in the state of Minas Gerais in March of that year before appearing in Vitória, the state capital of Espírito Santo, and then setting sail for the northeastern states of Pernambuco, Alagoas, and Bahia.57 In the latter’s capital, Salvador, the duo hosted a formal dinner “which was attended by Bahian intellectuals,” and at which eighteen speeches were delivered by the likes of Senator Campos França. 58 The Correio Paulistano announced that the duo would be appearing alongside the Brazilian skater Gentil at the 26 May 1916 opening of a new venue aimed at “the elite of the city of São Paulo”: the Skating Palace, in the Praça da República in downtown São Paulo. Once again, the duo and their sanitized maxixe were deemed fitting for the white elite: “Private boxes and tables, which constitute the most elegant seats in the house, are almost all taken by the cream of high society.”59 The Rio press announced that two thousand members of the São Paulo elite had seen this performance and “deliriously applauded the famous dancers.”60 (The same item reports that Duque, Gaby, and Gentil would be going on to Buenos Aires and New York, underscoring their transnational, cosmopolitan status.)61 By late June 1916, Duque and Gaby were performing again at Rio’s chic Assyrio restaurant, in a show that required the audience (described as “all our elegant citizens”) to wear black tie,62 and at the city’s Teatro São Pedro, where they danced “the maxixe, just like it was danced by them in Paris, where it was an extraordinary hit.”63 Duque and Gaby’s Parisian cultural capital led to invitations to star in the cinema, and they received top billing for the short film Entre a arte e o amor (Between Art and Love, dir. Robert Blake [pseudonym of Mac Lauren]), which was made by the Anglo-Brazilian Cinematographic Company in Rio and set in the Brazilian and French capitals. This fi lm, promoted as a “marvelous passionate drama in six acts,”64 was fi rst screened in Rio on 16 November 1916 at the upscale Avenida Cinema, which was advertised in the press as “fashionable” and “elite.”65 The dancing duo also appeared on screen alongside the black boxer Jack Johnson in a fi lm by Catalan director Ricardo de Baños entitled Fuerza y nobleza in Spanish and released in Portugal in November 1918 under the title Força e nobreza (Strength and Nobility). Announcements about Duque and Gaby’s involvement in this fi lm were published in the Correio da Manhã,66 and the newspaper

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published an advertisement featuring a photograph of Johnson and describing the production as a “fi lm of sensational adventures and great emotions.”67 Nevertheless, not all sectors of the Brazilian elite found Duque’s Parisian maxixe entirely devoid of pornographic qualities, as Saroldi explains: “[It was] a maxixe to be danced wearing tails and an evening dress, that gave only a very distant reminder of the daring eroticism of its origins. But even so it was suggestive enough to incur the reproaches of respectable family men and the civilian and religious authorities.”68 An article by the Jornal do Brasil newspaper’s Paris correspondent, Fernando Mendes de Almeida Júnior, illustrates the fact that this new version of the dance was not universally lauded back in Brazil: “Duque, the dance teacher, wanting to transform the maxixe into a series of more or less academic, more or less eccentric steps, did not realize that in doing so he completely deformed it, rendering it, if not unrecognizable, then at least extremely grotesque and charmless.”69 By 1921, Duque had returned to Paris, where he took part in a modern dance championship. Wartime restrictions on public gatherings had driven dancers underground to clandestine clubs, but with the end of the confl ict some older dance halls and dance styles, such as the tango and the maxixe, came back to life.70 The maxixe, like the tango, was what the French termed a “new dance” or “exotic dance.”71 Over time the maxixe and its musical accompaniment came to be referred to as the samba in ballroom dancing circles in Paris and beyond. Chasteen explains how even prior to being exported to Europe, the maxixe and samba enjoyed considerable overlap and far from clear-cut generic boundaries: A man and woman who faced each other inside a circle were dancing samba. But if the couple moved into close embrace, they were dancing maxixe. A second difference was that maxixe had modern, urban connotations in contrast to samba’s traditional, rural ones. Finally, the word maxixe suggested a more transgressive mood. . . . no surprise, [either], that samba, with its connotations of wholesome, back-to-theland traditionalism, ultimately won out as a label for Brazil’s national rhythm.72

In particular, with the arrival in France in February 1922 of Les Batutas (known as the Oito Batutas back home in Brazil), the maxixe rhythm gave rise to a faster variant that coexisted with jazz rhythms imported from the United States, which came to be known in Europe as the samba.73 The transatlantic journey of this band, predominantly identified as Afro-

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Brazilian in both the Brazilian and French press, sparked even more heated debates in Brazil about national identity than Duque’s maxixe had done some ten years earlier. Yet, just as the maxixe had been reevaluated back home as a direct consequence of its passage through cosmopolitan Paris, the samba that the Oito Batutas introduced to Europe would be equally transformed upon its return to Rio, paving the way for samba’s canonization as the “national” rhythm in the 1930s.

the oito batutas in rio: afro - br a zilian music(ians) and white elite responses Two Afro-Brazilian musicians—known by their nicknames Donga and Pixinguinha—were the leading figures within the Oito Batutas.74 They had begun their musical careers as members of a band called the Grupo Caxangá and became well known to audiences in Rio de Janeiro as a result of the Spanish flu epidemic, which befell the city in 1919 and led to a shortage of musicians to entertain cinemagoers. Isaac Frankel, manager of the Cine Palais, one of the most fashionable cinemas in Brazil’s thencapital city, had seen performances during carnival by the Grupo Caxangá, who wore the typical sertanejo costumes of Brazil’s rural northeastern peasants.75 He approached Donga and Pixinguinha with an offer of employment, asking them to choose another six of the nineteen members of the band to form a new lineup, which Frankel named the Oito Batutas (the Eight Aces),76 and they fi rst performed in April 1919.77 As Alencar writes, implicitly alluding to the incongruity of Afro-Brazilian musicians adopting another Brazilian racial identity on stage, “many people went to the Palais Cinema to see the group, whose members and original repertoire made them something of a novelty.”78 They performed in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais in 1919 and 1920, then took their brand of entertainment to northeastern Brazil in 1921. As Hertzman writes, “Across Brazil, the Batutas were hailed as expressions of the sertão and described as a ‘truly national’ band that possessed an innocent, soulful, and sensual kind of savagery.”79 Their popularity and success were widely reported in the local press, and they entertained, with their mix of urban and rural Brazilian rhythms, an elite audience that included millionaire entrepreneur Arnaldo Guinle, who is said to have employed them for private performances at his home in Rio.80 It was Guinle and Duque who masterminded the visit of the Oito Batutas to Paris in 1922, together with the politician and diplomat Lauro Müller, who “conferred on the trip its quasi-diplomatic nature.”81 The band had come to Duque’s attention during a return trip he made to Rio de Ja-

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neiro when they accompanied him at the upscale Assyrio venue, the fi rst time that the band had performed music for dancers.82 As Alencar writes, “One night at the Assyrio, Arnaldo Guinle was very receptive to Duque’s suggestion that he sponsor a trip by the Oito Batutas to Paris.”83 In 1921, Duque had taken over as artistic director at the elegant Shéhérazade cabaret club in the Parisian district of Montmartre, where Guinle was a frequent visitor, and the two became friends. Bastos writes: What united these personalities was their fascination with the ensemble’s music, their belief in Brazil as a country with a mission to perform in the international sphere, and their conviction that music—Brazilian national music, folk-inspired, made by blacks and then at the core of elegant Carioca bohemia—constituted the essence of this mission.84

The Oito Batutas’ departure for Europe on 29 January 1922 exercised the minds of Brazilian journalists and cultural commentators.85 A certain A. Fernandes, writing in the Diário de Pernambuco, claimed he did not know whether to laugh or cry, and failed to understand how the Brazilian government could allow to be shown in Paris “an affected, negroid and ridiculous Brazil.”86 Such openly racist reactions had been presaged a few years earlier when the band—with its four black members (Pixinguinha, Donga, China [or Chininha], and Nelson Alves) and its repertoire that included Afro-Brazilian rhythms—fi rst played in the elite venue of the Cine Palais.87 The classical musician Júlio Reis, for example, told the newspaper A Rua that the music of the Oito Batutas was “inappropriate for the educated ears of aristocratic moviegoers” and stated that he was “ashamed” of their scandalous presence in this upscale cinema.88 The writer Benjamim Costallat famously defended the Batutas’ trip to Paris in a crônica (journalistic essay) published in the Gazeta de Notícias on 22 January 1922.89 Vianna, however, argues that Costallat may have exaggerated the extent of this racist backlash, citing as evidence the numerous leading figures who voiced their support not only for the group’s trip to Paris, but also their invitation to play at a lunch reception hosted by Brazil’s president, Epitácio Pessoa, for the king and queen of Belgium during their official visit to Brazil in 1920.90 They were also to perform at the US embassy and General Motors Pavilion during the centenary celebrations of Brazil’s independence in 1922 after their return from Paris.91 Indeed, the newspaper A Pátria, the day before the band set sail, praised their artistic mission as “one of the most legitimate expressions of our culture,” commenting that this “very Brazilian and harmonious” group

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would be missed, but that their trip was a source of joy for their countrymen.92 Yet despite such displays of support, it cannot be denied that tensions around the “racial” question continued throughout the 1920s to dominate debates and decisions concerning the movement of Brazilian popular culture abroad. On the day the Oito Batutas began their journey across the Atlantic, the newspaper A Noite warned that there would be idiots who disapproved because of the “racial” background of this band “of color.”93 The highbrow satirical magazine A Maçã published an invented interview by columnist José Fortunato with one of the Batutas who did not travel to Paris, Antônio Feliciano do Espírito Santo, “mocking his presumptuous name and noble title, contrasting them with his humble occupation and office furnishings. It imputed simian proportions to his pedicular digits. . . . Sealing its message, the magazine adorned this lesson in racial character with a cartoonish ink sketch of a blackface clown holding a banjo.”94 Such concerns proved legitimate when, in 1927, Manuel Bastos Tigre, writer and president of the SBAT (Brazilian Theatre Writers’ Society), opposed a tour to Argentina by Brazil’s fi rst all-black popular theatre company, the Companhia Negra de Revistas, which in his view would have resulted in “discredit to our country [and an] attack on the rules of civilization.”95 Prompted by the reigning vogue within Parisian show business, the ambitious triumvirate of Duque, Guinle, and Müller saw the opportunity to position the Oito Batutas alongside black North American musicians and their rhythms, particularly jazz. Ever with his eye on the commercial possibilities of translating Brazilian popular culture for European audiences, even before the outbreak of the First World War, Duque had approached the talented guitar player and composer Josué de Barros to work in a club that he was planning to establish in Paris to be called Cabaret Brasil, which never came to fruition.96 By 1922, however, Duque had carved a niche for the maxixe/samba rhythms in the French capital, and his local celebrity afforded him access to a series of platforms for promoting his more recent “discovery,” the Oito Batutas.97

locating the oito batutas in “bl ack” paris in 1922 North American black musical and vaudeville talent was in evidence in Paris decades before the Revue nègre, starring Josephine Baker, caused a sensation at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1925. As Jackson writes, “By the time jazz players arrived, black American musicians and white musicians playing black music had already been entertaining French audi-

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ences with minstrel songs, ragtime, and cakewalks.”98 By 1925 the French capital had its own version of the Harlem Renaissance, with all the nightclubs of Pigalle having at least a few black musicians in their orchestras, and at the Casino de Paris (16, Rue de Clichy), where jazz was regularly featured from late 1918, when Louis Mitchell appeared with his Jazz Kings, the orchestra was composed entirely of black musicians by the mid 1920s.99 This ostensible receptivity to expressions of black popular culture and therefore implicitly to their performers was, however, restricted to particular national communities within Paris’s black diasporic population. As Berliner illustrates, between 1919 and 1931 the exotic black Other was in vogue in Paris, but provoked both negative and positive responses and stereotypes.100 He shows how French representations of the black Other in the 1920s were overwhelmingly demeaning, based on primitive and often grotesque stereotypes;101 he argues that by late 1921, just when Les Batutas (as the Oito Batutas would be known in the French capital) were about to arrive in Paris, postwar exoticism was fluid: “Who the nègre was imagined to be—a grand enfant, a husband, an angry rational other— would be as contested as French identity, which in fact the black other refracted.”102 Tolerance was something of a myth, with the warm welcome from Parisians being experienced by only a relatively small number of African Americans as a consequence of being US citizens, perceived to be a great civilization. In contrast, in the French imagination, black Africans had only a rudimentary civilization and were thus open to ridicule.103 How then were black Brazilians seen? How did the Oito Batutas, drawing on Duque’s expertise and show business savvy, strategically position themselves within such confl icting discourses? How did they exploit their physical and aural alterity and yet maintain a safe degree of distance from notions of the “uncivilized” black African? Parisian audiences fi rst witnessed performances by the Oito Batutas at the chic Shéhérazade cabaret club, under the artistic direction of Duque. Performances there were advertised widely in the local press, with Le Petit Parisien and Comoedia featuring the same item promoting “this extraordinary Brazilian band, unique in the world, with its rousing gaiety, made up of virtuosos nicknamed the kings of rhythm and of the samba.”104 In such advertisements, presumably drafted by Duque (who gave himself explicit credit for bringing these artists from Brazil), their musical skills were lauded, and the fact that they were not a jazz band was foregrounded.105 By May 1922 they were the star attraction at his next entrepreneurial venture, Chez Duque (17, Rue Caumartin).106 From 1 June they

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also performed at another, open-air venue opened by Duque, La Réserve de Saint Cloud (Boulevard Senard), where they appeared on the same bill as Bernard Kay’s American Jazz-Band.107 Their physical presence in the same venue as these US jazz musicians, where they came into frequent contact and presumably communicated via their music, created the most conducive of environments for transnational black cultural dialogue between two groups from different diasporic communities united in a transatlantic and inter-American circuit of exchange via the nexus of Paris—or perhaps more specifically, Montmartre. This encounter thus begs further investigation and critical thought, and the most obvious way of evaluating its impact is via the evolution of the musical repertoire favored by the Oito Batutas. Bastos has analyzed the presence of Les Batutas in Paris via detailed examination of primary source material from a range of French newspapers and magazines as well as relevant sources from Brazil. He focused on their musical repertoire in particular, concluding that the campaign to promote them in the French capital hinged on depicting their musicality as entirely distinct in terms of its “racial”-national identity, uniquely Brazilian, and congenitally rhythmic and percussive. Bastos goes on to explain how their samba was marketed by drawing on the popularity of jazz, and yet its unique quality was equally asserted: “it is evident that samba was the group’s trademark, and that this musicality was understood in a contrapuntal relationship with jazz, thus being simultaneously related to and distinct from it.”108 In relation to the band’s chosen repertoire in Paris, Cabral writes, “It was only Brazilian music, partly to preserve their originality in a city full of musicians from all over the world, principally the USA and the Caribbean.”109 Their playlist at Chez Shéhérazade included several different Brazilian musical styles, including the choro and the marchinha (carnival march) “Fala baixo” (Speak Softly) by Sinhô, which had been the big hit at the 1922 Rio carnival.110 But it was the sambas “E vem vovó” (Here Comes Grandma”) and “Les Batutas,”111 composed in response to Parisian audiences’ fondness for joining in the chorus, which proved to be the biggest hits.112 Although Cabral states that the group’s repertoire was the same in Paris as it had been in Brazil, with just the addition of “Fala baixo” and other new songs written in Paris,113 it is clear that an emphasis was placed on the samba in Europe. The Grupo Caxangá, from which Les Batutas arose, was formed in the context of a vogue for preindustrial music in Brazil, including genres such as the sentimental modinha and the canção sertaneja (backlands ballads), with lyrics that exoticized rural Brazil. The members of Grupo Ca-

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xangá all dressed as sertanejos (northeastern peasants) in leather clothes and cangaceiro (bandit) type hats. The “typically Brazilian” within Brazilian popular culture in the fi rst two decades of the twentieth century was considered to be anything linked to the sertão and the rural world, and Arnaldo Guinle funded two trips by Donga and Pixinguinha into the interior to search for traditional folk songs to be included in an anthology of Brazilian popular music.114 The Oito Batutas, even on the eve of their departure for Paris, were associated with the bucolic modinha, as is reflected in Benjamim Costallat’s famous column in defense of their trip to Paris: “They will take in their guitars the singing soul of Brazil: the modinha. They will take with them the true Brazilian music, which has still not been contaminated by foreign influences.”115 In São Paulo in 1921 their show was billed “A Night in the Sertão” and featured a range of musical styles (according to the program, tango, samba, embolada, choro, sapateado sertanejo, and various poems by Catulo da Paixão Cearense set to music). But on arrival in Paris the following year it was the emerging national rhythm, samba, that became their calling card. According to Floresta de Miranda, Arnaldo Guinle’s private secretary, whose letter from Paris was published in O Paiz on 25 February 1922, “The Batutas are not presenting themselves here as exponents of Brazilian musical art (which would be ridiculous) but, rather, as specialists and introducers of our samba, which is already being warmly received.”116 On the eve of their Parisian premiere, the French newspaper Le Journal announced, “This extraordinary Brazilian band, unique in the world, with their boisterous gaiety, composed of virtuosos known as the kings of rhythm and samba, are playing every day at tea and dinner time at the Shéhérazade, 16, Faubourg Montmartre. . . . Under the direction of Duque.”117 When interviewed by the Museu da Imagem e do Som (Museum of Image and Sound) in Rio de Janeiro about the music they played at the Shéhérazade, Pixinguinha replied, “Only Brazilian music, because before us there was a very good six-piece band, with a violin, cello and everything. So we stuck to what we knew: samba, choro, maxixe. We didn’t dare to play a waltz.”118 The influence on their subsequent musical development of their offstage interactions with jazz musicians in Paris has been the focus of much discussion, particularly in the case of Pixinguinha, who began playing the saxophone after encountering the instrument in the French capital.119 But perhaps more important than the debate about the degree of influence that jazz exerted upon the group are the reasons for their subtle reinvention in Paris. Their focus on performing samba in Paris clearly drew on the popularity of the genre as a dance hall rhythm that emerged from the maxixe, but it equally suggested a con-

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scious foregrounding of this urban, modern music at the expense of the rural, folkloric styles that had dominated their repertoire in Brazil. Drawing on samba’s Afro-Brazilian origins, Les Batutas commodified their blackness in Paris, basking in the reflected “heat” of African American jazz rhythms.120 As Radano argues, at the turn of the twentieth century, what he terms “Black music’s propulsive and seductive ‘hot’ rhythm” was viewed as the defi ning characteristic of African and African American musical performances, with black musicians essentialized via a perceived “natural rhythm” with obvious racist overtones of primitivism and licentiousness. Nevertheless, this widely propagated view afforded a new sense of racial pride, and in the United States this “exalted hotness in turn supplied the creative and economic basis of an emerging urban subculture of black professional musicians, whose traditional proclivities toward performance were soon marketed as expressions of a racially inherited rhythmic gift.”121 It would appear that the Oito Batutas likewise adopted elements of this stereotype in their Paris performances, as reflected in their predominant choice of samba as their generic calling card. A consideration of the evolution of the group’s visual style, as evidenced in photographs taken prior to and following their European sojourn, sheds further light on their strategic self-positioning in Paris. An article entitled “The 8 Batutas Embark Tomorrow for Europe” published in the Rio newspaper A Noite was accompanied by a photograph showing all eight musicians wearing the typical rustic dress of the sertanejo peasant, posing for the camera in possession of their traditional instruments (figure 2.2).122 Under the headline “Regional Brazilian Music in the Old World: The 8 Batutas Return Today from Paris,” the same newspaper announced the group’s return to Brazil alongside a different photograph (figure 2.3);123 the band is again pictured in a mixture of standing and seated positions, directly facing the camera, but on this occasion they are all dressed in black dinner suits, white shirts, and bow ties, and although their instruments remain the same, they are now accompanied by Duque, asserting himself as bandleader and elegantly attired in tails. Other photographs taken after their return to Brazil evidence their adoption of typical jazz poses—as well as jazz instruments such as the saxophone and trombone—and urbane attire (figure 2.4). Was their adoption of the visual style and musical influences of jazz merely a commercial survival mechanism, designed to associate them with the favorably viewed US musicians? Or was this conscious alignment with Afro-Americans also a way of distancing themselves from any associations with black Africa? One can assume that Duque’s entrepreneurial zeal and familiarity with Parisian nightlife directly informed the sartorial choices of the band af-

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figure 2.2. Promotional photograph of the Oito Batutas announcing their forthcoming trip to Paris. They are all dressed as sertanejos (northeastern peasants) in leather clothes and cangaceiro (bandit) type hats. A Noite, 28 January 1922, p. 6.

figure 2.3. Photograph of the Oito Batutas. According to the caption, it was taken in Paris, as the presence of Duque (far right) would appear to confirm. A Noite, 14 August 1922, p. 6.

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figure 2. 4 . Photograph of the Oito Batutas after their return to Brazil from

Paris, evidencing their adoption of typical jazz poses—as well as jazz instruments such as the saxophone and trombone—and urbane attire. Photograph from the Augusto Malta “Personalidades” Collection, courtesy of the Museu da Imagem e do Som, Rio de Janeiro.

ter their arrival in France.124 Although they were wearing sertanejo costumes before they left for Paris, evidently within a short time that visual style was replaced by black tie, which complied equally with the predilections of the fashionable and bourgeois patrons of Montmartre, a quartier that awakened after the First World War with a new aura of sophistication, largely thanks to new-style nightclubs and cabarets, many owned by Americans, which were “fi lled with foreigners and pleasure-seekers for whom jazz was a crucial element of the clubs’ atmospheres.”125 As Jackson writes, “The bourgeoisie again came to this part of Paris, but now, far from being the source of ridicule, evening dress was expected or even required as people rolled up to the clubs in limousines or the taxicabs that were replacing the horse-drawn carriages on the city’s streets after the war.”126 The slick, cosmopolitan style adopted by the Oito Batutas in Europe, coupled with their musical repertoire, permitted them to appeal not only to Parisian jazz fans but also to the sizeable and lucrative community of US tourists passing through the city who already loved jazz and were likely to delight in a South American band who looked like jazz musicians but offered a new “exotic” twist. Miller’s defi nition of blackness as a dialectic between performer and audience helps to equally nuance the shifts in self-representation displayed by the Oito Batutas in Paris.127 The fact that they maintained this new visual style on their return to Rio later in 1922 likewise illustrates their desire to appeal directly to the Brazilian elite, as well as more popular audiences. There is ample evidence to

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suggest that elite white Brazilians celebrated the associations between the Oito Batutas and Afro-American musicians in Paris, and thus were receptive to their repositioning in Brazil as cosmopolitan, Afro-diasporic performers, far removed from their previous incarnation as musical interpreters of rural, preindustrial northeastern rhythms. As Floresta de Miranda wrote in an open letter to a Frenchman living in Brazil who had criticized the choice of Les Batutas to represent the nation abroad: “The great orchestras in Paris .  .  . are the jazz bands of black North Americans, and it doesn’t seem to me that the great republic suffers any eclipse as a result.”128 Seigel writes, in relation to members of the Brazilian elite, “They quickly realized that the Batutas could be used to set Brazil and the United States on the same plane, a prestige-winning comparison long a treasured project of Brazilians seeking to coax from foreigners the recognition they thought warranted by Brazil’s dominance in the Southern Cone.”129 After returning from Paris, the Oito Batutas signed a contract with the Teatro Empire in Buenos Aires, where they performed between November 1922 and April 1923, recording in the Argentine capital on the Victor label. They were billed there as a “group of typical Brazilian musicians that has gained vast prestige”130 and traded on their perceived cosmopolitanism. Despite failing to receive fi nancial backing from the Brazilian government, the band was a hit in Buenos Aires and helped break down many tacit “racial” barriers. As the Argentine newspaper La Nación reported the day after the Oito Batutas made their debut at the Teatro Empire: [They performed] native Brazilian music . . . tropical songs and dances in which have been mixed, with strange results, the voluptuous cadences of the Portuguese fado . . . with the furious rhythms of African dances. A kind of almost savage sensuality forms part of these violent movements. . . . The impression one gets is that this group is pleasant and out of the ordinary, at one and the same time.131

As this review illustrates, these Brazilian musicians were appreciated by Argentine audiences for their perceived “tropical exoticism,” which clearly stemmed from their “racial” ascription, as revealed in the references to African dances and “savage sensuality.”

concluding remarks Upon their arrival in Paris in 1922, the Oito Batutas found themselves at the interface between black Latin American and European cultures, but

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also between African American and African cultures. Caught in this multifaceted encounter, they were required to redefi ne their collective subjectivity, translating their music and visual style for a new audience in a complex negotiation of their identity. They and their music had to be black enough to capitalize on jazz mania, but sufficiently distanced from both the uncivilized connotations of black Africa and the banality of sanitized white culture.132 Parisian audiences played a central role in shaping how Afro-Brazilian culture was essentialized and articulated by both Duque and the Oito Batutas, just as back in Brazil, samba was not created in isolation by poor blacks in Rio de Janeiro in the 1910s, as Vianna has shown, but rather from a process in which people of varied races, classes, and nationalities participated, “if only as active spectators who encouraged musical performances.”133 If the maxixe was whitened for Parisian audiences, the same cannot be said for the music of Les Batutas, however. The band’s performance of “race” via both musical and visual cues illustrates how they were obliged to negotiate their black male subjectivity in Paris, remaining reassuringly different without straying into the terrain of primitive Other. As Radano and Bohlman argue, it is possible to articulate and even conceptualize the most basic differences between Self and Other through musical choices.134 The emphasis on Afro-Brazilian yet metropolitan samba sought to trade on the parallels with jazz, but both genres had to pick their way through a complex terrain of racially inspired prejudices. Jazz was inherently contradictory in the French imagination— epitomizing modernity and cosmopolitanism, yet simultaneously evoking black Africa and its connotations of backwardness and barbarism (even when performed by whites).135 The music of Les Batutas could have been interpreted as just another example of black music, and its performers thus associated directly with sub-Saharan Africa. As Jackson writes, “La musique nègre, as many French saw it, contained certain special qualities peculiar to all black people because of its beginnings on the Dark Continent. . . . The rhythm that distinguished jazz was linked directly to its African past because, some asserted, rhythm was part of life in Africa and therefore ingrained into black musicians throughout the world.”136 Les Batutas thus had to walk a fi ne line between perceived African primitivism and white banality (hence the conscious distancing of their music from Argentine tango). With their visual style, specifically their sartorial choices, they sought not only to emulate that of US jazz musicians but, more importantly, to assert their cosmopolitanism and modernity. On their return to Rio the members of the Oito Batutas were able to draw on their experiences in Paris to act as de facto cultural mediators

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for Brazilian audiences. They performed their Parisian musical repertoire in a revue by the visiting French theatrical company Ba-ta-clan, which proved to be a great hit.137 A Noite (23 August 1922) made the following announcement: The management of the Ba-ta-clan, in order to give a more national flavor to a Brazilian sketch to be included in one of the revues in their repertoire, has just contracted the “Oito Batutas” to work on it. The acclaimed musicians will include the repertoire that was the greatest hit in Paris.138

Madame Rasimi, the troupe’s director, also employed Duque as choreographer for this number, and he and Gaby appeared on stage with the Oito Batutas at the Teatro Apolo in São Paulo between performances by the Companhia Leopoldo Fróes.139 As a solo artist, Pixinguinha became a key vector for the assimilation of transatlantic performance traditions, going on to become the bandleader of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, itself inspired by the Ba-ta-clan. Acceptance by the Brazilian white elite of performances of black popular culture by Afro-Brazilian subjects was far from an overnight occurrence, however, as reflected in the racist reactions to the visit of the Oito Batutas to Paris in 1922 and the thwarted attempt by the Companhia Negra de Revistas to perform in Argentina in 1927. Nevertheless, it is clear that the passage of the Oito Batutas through Paris led to increased acceptance of their musical performances on both popular and elite stages back in Brazil. Seigel notes how their “rising star was boosted by their Parisian success, thanks to Brazilians’ confidence in French taste,” citing as evidence of their newfound prestige the invitations they received to participate in “two particularly fertile spaces of transnational encounter and continued cultural innovation”: namely, the General Motors Pavilion and the US embassy during Rio’s elaborate centennial exhibition, and their collaboration in Rio with the Parisian revue troupe Ba-ta-clan.140 Furthermore, in September 1923, Duque organized a high-society charity evening at Rio’s Teatro São Pedro. At this “elegant party”—which combined performances of dance, music, poetry, and song, and attracted members of the city’s upper social echelons sporting black tie and evening dress—Duque and Gaby performed the closing number, an “admirable maxixe” that was proudly announced as having been composed by the Oito Batutas.141 During the Vargas regime (1930–1945) elements of Afro-Brazilian popular culture, particularly the samba, would become the quintessential

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symbols of Brazil. Just as in the realm of erudite culture, a French avantgarde poet, Blaise Cendrars, taught his elite friends from Rio to “discover” their nation through its black culture, as Vianna has cogently argued;142 Duque and the Oito Batutas drew on their prestige as the toast of Paris to take back to Brazil a choreography and a musical style that, thanks to their mediation through the cosmopolitan French capital, now epitomized the aspirations of the modern Brazilian nation.143 As this chapter has argued, the “discovery” of samba by young Brazilian intellectuals in the 1920s and its simultaneous transformation into national music were primarily a consequence of its transatlantic two-way voyage. Appropriations by the national government of black cultural markers were only possible as a consequence of Parisian negrophilia. By visualizing samba through a transnational lens, contextualized within 1920s “black” Paris and the African diaspora more broadly, members of the Brazilian elite were more readily persuaded to accept it as the symbol of national identity par excellence in the 1930s.

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Ch a p t e r 3

the teatro de revista in rio de janeiro in the long 1920s: transnational dialogues and cosmopolitan bl ack performance

Todo mundo sabe quem é Josephine Baker! Até a grande Mistinguett Comigo é sopa, não se mete! . . . Eu sou divina, eu sou grande Eu sou a própria alma do jazz-band! Everyone knows who Josephine Baker is! Even the great Mistinguett With me it’s simple, don’t mess with me! . . . I am divine, I am great I am the very soul of the jazz band! lyrics from the song “l ady ukulêlê,” performed in the re vue champagne in rio de janeiro, 1927

T h is ch a p t e r e x a m i n es the teatro de revista in Rio de Janeiro in the long 1920s through a transnational prism, giving due recognition to the status of Brazil’s then-capital, described as “one of the 1920s’ many scintillatingly cosmopolitan cities,”1 as a node within transatlantic and interAmerican circuits of performance traditions. 2 It argues that the transformations that took place within the format and conventions of the teatro de revista in the aftermath of the First World War were directly occasioned by the renewed possibilities for bidirectional transatlantic and inter-American travel, and the movement of people and ideas that this gave rise to. The central hypothesis is that the teatro de revista of the 1920s and 1930s relied heavily on what has been termed “lived cosmopolitanism” and only fully makes sense when viewed within a transnational frame. It contends that the creators and performers of Rio’s teatro de revista were early twentieth-century precursors of those that we today term “cosmopolitans” in that they displayed “an attitudinal or dispositional

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orientation” toward engaging with a plurality of cultures.3 By conceiving of this local creative community as part of a much wider transnational one, this chapter illustrates that cosmopolitanism among the non-elite is far from a solely contemporary phenomenon.4 It proposes that the omnipresent cultural and linguistic diversity wrought by travel, immigration, and the new media in the world today—what has been termed “ordinary” or “everyday” cosmopolitanism5 —was, in fact, an inherent feature of the milieu of Rio’s teatro de revista in the 1920s and 1930s. This chapter proposes that the creators of the teatro de revista announced their membership of this imagined transnational performance community via recourse to what are here termed transnational metonyms of modernity and cosmopolitanism. It is based on an understanding of transnational circuits as those that, unlike international networks, render irrelevant and metaphorically dismantle geographical borders between nation-states rather than simply traversing them. It also puts forward the concept of “cosmopolitan blackness” to better understand the shifts within the performance of Afro-Brazilian subjectivity on Rio’s popular stages in the 1920s. Since Vertovec and Cohen’s seminal study of 2002, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice,6 the concept of cosmopolitanism has been helpfully nuanced, with a greater focus on how forms of “lived cosmopolitanism” are experienced by different groups and individuals “in the micro-scale of everyday life interactions in concrete times and places.”7 This research situates itself within this recent shift of analytical focus, which typically adopts an “empirically-grounded approach that looks at cosmopolitanism as something people do.”8 It aims to broaden existing scholarship on “lived cosmopolitanism,” which has a predominantly contemporary focus, by adopting a historical perspective, and to counterbalance the attention given within Latin American studies to highbrow literary cosmopolitanism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by focusing a lens on the cosmopolitan outlook, competencies, and aesthetic stances of the creators of popular stage performance in Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s and 1930s. As Camilla Fojas argues, the Latin American modernista novelists of the turn of the century were selfstyled cosmopolitans who looked to Europe as the original source of and shorthand for modernity, and their texts “activate a cosmopolitan attitude by persuading the reader to be a bit more open, more modern, and more amenable to difference.”9 This chapter presents the argument that a strikingly similar intention existed among the writers of the lowbrow theatrical revues of Rio in the interwar period, who looked to both Europe and North America for inspiration. Scholarly works have tended to study the Brazilian teatro de revista

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in a sociocultural vacuum, making only passing reference, at best, to its links with popular theatrical traditions in other countries. One notable exception is the work of Tiago de Melo Gomes on the subject of the fi rst all-black popular theatrical troupe, the Companhia Negra de Revistas, in which he clearly illustrates the cultural axis between Paris and Rio de Janeiro in the mid to late 1920s, and points to the inevitable commonalities between the various national manifestations of popular theatre as a form of mass culture in this era.10 This chapter seeks to follow the lead of Melo Gomes and Flora Süssekind, who have explored how the revues of the early twentieth century and latter half of the nineteenth century, respectively, engaged with and articulated issues of both carioca (Rio) and national identity. Süssekind has argued that in the revistas do ano of the late nineteenth century, which summarized the main events of the year as it drew to a close, the city of Rio de Janeiro was itself a protagonist. These revues, she argues, invented a different way for spectators to look at the urban space they inhabited.11 Melo Gomes illustrates how the writers of revues in the early twentieth century continued to chronicle daily life in Rio, where the national character and the restructuring of identities in the urban context were a central concern.12 As Maite Conde has written, “The revistas effectively staged and helped make sense of the disorienting modernization of Rio, performing as it were a mediatory pedagogy between the reality of the city and its imaginary place in the individual’s mental life.”13 Acknowledging that the theatrical revues of the 1920s and 1930s articulate the negotiation of local and national identities, this chapter builds on this scholarship by arguing that the increasingly transnational profi le of the teatro de revista in the interwar period nuances and complicates ideas about identity at both the level of local community and nation.

the tr ansnational origins and evolution of rio’s teatro de revista The Brazilian teatro de revista was intrinsically transnational from its very inception, a descendant of the French vaudeville tradition of the eighteenth century. When the theatrical revue fi rst emerged in Brazil in the middle of the nineteenth century, it took the form of the revista do ano, which originated in France.14 From there it spread to other European countries, including Portugal, and it was the Portuguese variant—which placed less emphasis on choreography and musical numbers, and more on social and political critiques—that was initially reproduced in Brazil. The

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introduction of Lei Lopo Vaz (Lopo Vaz Law) in Portugal in 1886 prohibited revue writers from caricaturing public figures, especially politicians, so they looked again to the French tradition by incorporating mythological and allegorical figures, and this formula, in turn, influenced the Brazilian teatro de revista. As Rebello notes, until the 1930s most of the successful Portuguese revues traveled to Brazil,15 and these constant visits helped to cement the similarity between the two national variants. The influences of both the French and Portuguese revue theatre were still much in evidence at the turn of the nineteenth century and in the fi rst decades of the twentieth. Until the First World War, the Brazilian variant featured two stock characters borrowed directly from the French tradition—the compère and commère (male and female comperes) whose function was to link together the various quadros (scenes or sketches) and comment on current events in the city of Rio. In terms of personnel, in this era the Portuguese contribution was significant, with considerable numbers of Portuguese nationals working on stage and behind the scenes in both the elite and popular theatre, compensating for the lack of theatre schools in Brazil. Despite their “national” origins, Portuguese and Brazilian troupes were often, in fact, composed of a mixture of Portuguese and Brazilian performers.16 Although the First World War interrupted the movement of Portuguese theatre companies across the Atlantic to Brazil, by the 1920s this tradition had been fi rmly reestablished, but they were now increasingly in fierce competition with homegrown companies.17 On 12 November 1926, for example, the Rio newspaper Folha da Manhã reported on two Portuguese impresarios, António Macedo and Oscar Ribeiro, who had organized tours to Brazil by Portuguese theatrical companies the past two years. The article announced forthcoming performances by the Companhia Portuguesa de Revistas at the Antártica Casino.18 This Portuguese troupe had played at the Teatro República in Rio in July and August 1926.

shifts in the revue format: the impact of tr ansatl antic voyages and inter-american cultur al migr ations in the 1920s In the aftermath of the First World War, the structure of the revista in Rio began to change, distancing itself from the traditional Luso-French model. The figures of the compère and commère gradually disappeared as revue writers began to adopt a format of unconnected quadros interspersed with an increasingly eclectic range of musical and dance num-

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bers.19 Nonetheless, the carioca revue maintained its inherently transnational dimension as a consequence of influences from abroad brought by the resumption of transatlantic travel. In the early 1920s, two foreign companies in particular proved to be highly influential: the French Ba-taclan, led by Madame Rasimi, 20 and the Spanish troupe Velasco, 21 both of which introduced a new format, the féerie (extravaganza), in which fantasy elements predominated. Both companies performed in Brazil in 1922, proving to be a huge success and leaving audiences dissatisfied with the tired structure of Brazilian revues. These two foreign troupes brought with them a greater emphasis on set design, lighting, choreography, costumes, and glamorous female performers; introduced the more revealing outfits that enhanced the latter’s physical appeal; and gave the women star billing on promotional material. 22 In their wake, Brazilian companies began to promote a new female body aesthetic, with fuller figures giving way to svelte bodies, and chorus girls no longer covering their legs with unflattering thick hosiery. In the revue Lua nova (New Moon), by Ernesto Rodrigues, Felix Bermudez, João Bastos, and Henrique Roldão, the character Modernista is described in the stage directions as a “type of masculinized woman, but wearing very little,” who proceeds to show off her biceps and muscular thighs, claiming that her body shape is due to playing football (soccer), playing tennis, fencing, and rowing. (In addition to her love of sports and athletic physique, the character’s modernity is reinforced by her use of Anglicisms.) In the revue Oooh! (1927) the number “Tenistas (Tennis Players),” presumably performed by a suitably attired female chorus, similarly celebrates modernity: “With an eager eye / We play / Skirts in the wind / Swift steps.” Other foreign companies who performed in Rio sought to exploit the popularity of the Ba-ta-clan, charging higher prices for tickets in exchange for what they claimed to be the novelties of “French” theatre.23 The Brazilian press heaped praise on the performances of foreign companies, viewing those of their fellow countrymen as pale imitations, at best, and pornographic at worst. The Correio da Manhã on 3 June 1922 announced the imminent arrival in the city of the Parisian company the Bata-clan, following their success, even among high-society ladies, in Buenos Aires: “Artistic performances based on elegance, costumes, light and sound, the Ba-ta-clan’s revues are for the most sophisticated public, and the most demanding in terms of morality.”24 On 27 June the newspaper again emphasized the appeal of this foreign company among society’s upper echelons: “all the elite of Buenos Aires’s elegant society, the best of the city’s aristocracy, rushed to applaud and openly consecrate, enthusiasti-

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cally, the Bat-ta-clan company.”25 Similarly, in early October 1925, Brazilian critics commented on the sophistication of the performances of the company of the Casino de Paris, in marked contrast to their attacks on the “pornography” of homegrown troupes. 26 Brazilian companies endeavored to introduce innovations to ensure commercial success in the face of such foreign competition; the traditional Companhia do Teatro São José, for example, underwent a process of modernization in the mid-1920s with the introduction of scantily clad chorus girls, luxurious sets and costumes, and more sophisticated humor. 27 The revamped company’s fi rst production, Pirão de areia (Sand Gruel [1926]), featured the Afro-Brazilian Rosa Negra “e as ‘black girls’” (and the black chorus girls), as well as “luxurious Asian costumes the likes of which have never before been seen, even in the Velasco or Ba-ta-clan revues.”28 In this revue the compère proudly announces: “The female artists no longer paint themselves black—they are authentic pretas [black women]).” (The subject of Afro-Brazilian performers in the teatro de revista is discussed further below.) In addition to the direct impact of performances by visiting foreign theatre companies in the 1920s, Brazilian revue artists and writers began to travel abroad, thus coming in contact with the latest popular theatrical trends. 29 Unsurprisingly, Paris proved to be a particularly popular and influential destination. In the early 1920s, the revue writer Luís Peixoto returned from a long spell in the French capital, where he learned the technique of lowering a screen or closing the curtains for the purpose of scene changes, with a sketch or variety act being performed in front of the curtain to entertain the audience.30 On his return to Rio he also abandoned the tradition of opening a revue with a prologue featuring celestial and mythical characters, opting instead for one that introduced the audience to the company members, more modern music, a faster pace of action, and a more elaborate mise-en-scène. 31 Having arrived in Paris in 1914, the revue-actor-turned-impresario Jardel Jércolis spent some ten years performing in variety shows in the city and traveling in Europe and beyond before returning to Brazil in 1924.32 His fi rsthand experience of modernist trends in Europe led him in 1925 to establish the company Tro-lo-ló, the fi rst in Brazil that openly modeled itself on its European counterparts and aimed to compete with visiting troupes for more elite audiences.33 Jércolis declared that his inspiration came from Montmartre and London’s Piccadilly, 34 and the company was billed as being “in the style of Parisian revues.”35 The Tro-lo-ló’s productions sought to differentiate themselves from the lowbrow revues performed in and around Rio’s Praça Tiradentes and to attract the discerning public that frequented more upscale venues

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on the Avenida Central.36 Jércolis successfully combined sophisticated elements—for example, sets designed by the filmmaker Luís de Barros (who had studied in Rome and Paris) and the Frenchman Georges Boettgen, more extravagant wardrobe designs, and more elaborate lighting—with Brazilian and specifically carioca elements37 such as traditional parodic humor and local cultural references. According to Antunes, the company’s sets were clearly influenced by Florenz Ziegfeld and the shows of the Casino de Paris, mixing the national with the cosmopolitan.38 The revues it performed were given short, memorable titles such as Fla-flu 39 (1925) and Zig-zag (1926).40 Despite its snappy, jazz-age-style title, Zig-zag poked fun at more erudite aspects of modernity; it featured the number “Vitória do futurismo” (Victory of Futurism), in which the comedian Augusto Aníbal played a futurist poet who declares, “I write poems without grammar, meter, rhyme, and also without poetry.” He continues: “The bakeries had already discovered the shrimp pie without shrimp: futurism goes even further; it makes the shrimp pie without shrimp or pie.” Luís de Barros, in turn, went on to form the Ra-ta-plan company in 1926, which (as the sonic associations of its name indicate) was even more intent on copying the Parisian model epitomized by the Ba-ta-clan than the Tro-loló41 and staged what it termed “modern revues” inspired by London, New York, and Paris.42 Antunes notes how the Ra-ta-plan emphasized set design and featured the nu artístico (artistic nude), pleasing elite audiences at the Teatro Cassino with its progressive format.43 Thus when the Ba-taclan visited Brazil again in 1926, several critics in Rio commented that the company had ceased to be a novelty since local companies were now following its lead and had gained in prestige.44 The incursions of Hollywood cinema proved to be another factor that gave rise to formal changes in Rio’s revue theatre of the 1920s. Despite the apparent threat posed by the movies to the commercial survival of popular theatre, the 1920s proved to be a boom time for the teatro de revista, which found ways to coexist and mutually promote the silent cinema. For example, in the mid-1920s, Rio cinema theatres such as the América, the Íris, and the Ideal combined fi lm screenings with the performance of short musical plays known as revuettes.45 Nomenclature was clearly influenced by US English, with the term coristas falling into disuse in favor of “girls” (a term also used widely in Paris) and the corresponding “boys,” and the traditional “orchestras” becoming known as “jazz bands.”46 Holly wood’s greatest impact, however, was felt in the realm of music and choreography. US musical genres such as the fox-trot, ragtime, shimmy, the Charleston, and jazz, as well as tap dancing, became commonplace in the revues

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of the 1920s.47 Antunes notes how by the end of the decade it was not unusual for entire revues to be inspired by Hollywood fi lms48 in addition to individual quadros or sketches and musical numbers. For example, the Tro-lo-ló revue Oooh! of 1927, written by Manuel Bastos Tigre and Geysa Bôscoli, featured the song “Haroldo Lloyd,” inspired by the (almost) eponymous Hollywood actor’s famous spectacles: “Today it is the fashion / Celluloid specs / Like Haroldo Lloyd, like Haroldo Lloyd.”49 Imported North American musical and dance genres were not only performed but also provided topics for discussion in the revues, whether in the dialogue or in song lyrics, and were either praised or lampooned.50 A fox-trot performed in the 1929 revue Às urnas (Off to Vote) began: “Gud bai / Blaque boton queque uoque / Les ingenues de New York” (a pseudophonetic transcription of “Goodbye / Black-bottom, cakewalk / The ingenues of New York”). Sung by the female star of the Tro-lo-ló company, Araci Cortes, this number ended with her performing a tap dance, a genre that she had perfected and which had become de rigueur in revues of this era.51 The teatro de revista continued to play a major role in promoting local popular music such as choro and maxixe, and especially carnival samba and marchas, 52 but in the 1920s these Brazilian genres rubbed shoulders on stage with an increasingly eclectic mix of foreign rhythms. 53 Melo Gomes has documented how the archive of the Pascoal Segreto Company, which established numerous entertainment venues in Rio de Janeiro and beyond from the turn of the century, 54 evidences the dominant presence of US music: of 530 pieces of music used in its revues, the most common genre was the fox-trot (160), followed by samba (87), and marcha (83). There were 226 examples of Brazilian rhythms, as opposed to 201 North American ones, 78 European, and 25 from other parts of Latin America. 55 This coexistence of imported and domestic rhythms and dance styles gave rise to a range of hybrids, including the “samba–black bottom” performed by Araci Cortes in the revue Oooh! (1927). 56

“cosmopolitan bl ackness” on the stages of rio The 1920s witnessed dramatic transformations in terms of the representation of black Brazilian subjectivity within the teatro de revista, and a central argument of this chapter is that this was a direct consequence of the entrance of local writers and performers into an imagined transnational performance space that brought them into contact with their counterparts in Paris and New York with the aid of what Seigel terms “transnational mental maps.”57 The impact of the tumulte noir and Josephine Baker’s

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performances in Paris was soon felt across the Atlantic in Brazil58 and led directly to the performance of what can be termed “cosmopolitan blackness” by Afro-Brazilians on the popular stages of Rio de Janeiro. By strategically plugging into a transatlantic and inter-American circuit of modernist aesthetics, black Brazilian performers were rendered increasingly acceptable to a white, elite Brazilian audience. Prior to the arrival of the Ba-ta-clan in Rio in 1922, attitudes were very different; when the company gave an earlier performance in Paris which included a number about Brazil that featured a black performer, it led to official complaints being launched by the Brazilian consul and a government representative. 59 When the Ba-ta-clan made its debut in Brazil in 1922, the company brought with it Afro-American performers and a black British musician named Gordon Stretton.60 In Rio the company invited the Oito Batutas—composed of several Afro-Brazilian musicians, including the legendary Pixinguinha— to perform a number in their revue V’là Paris in August 1922. As discussed at length in chapter 2, the Oito Batutas had just returned from six months performing in Paris alongside Afro-American jazz musicians, a trip widely reported in the Brazilian press and that endowed them with considerable cultural capital. The Ba-ta-clan’s alignment of imported metropolitan black performers with their local Brazilian counterparts undoubtedly led to the paradigm shift that enabled the latter to build on this association by foregrounding their cosmopolitan blackness. Prior to the 1920s, Rio’s teatro de revista was characterized by the structuring absence of black Brazilian performers and a long-standing tradition of white artists appearing in “brownface,” particularly women in the role of the mulata/ baiana.61 Since the 1880s, black culture had generally been represented on the popular stages of Rio de Janeiro in the form of Afro-descendant local dance genres and styles of music performed by white artists.62 On the rare occasions that black performers appeared on stage, they were relegated to infantilized and/or ingenuous subaltern roles.63 By early 1926, however, the São José Theatre Company, which for many years led the way for popular theatre in Rio, was made up of thirty-six so-called girls alongside another ten who were specifically billed as “black girls,” and the presence of the black female body was clearly seen as an audience draw.64 In 1926 De Chocolat and Jaime Silva decided to form the Companhia Negra de Revistas, whose members self-identified as black and that brought together performers already known in popular entertainment circles such as Rosa Negra, Pixinguinha (as bandleader), Jandira Aimoré (Pixinguinha’s future wife), and Dalva Espíndola (sister of Araci Cortes) (figure 3.1). This decision signified a self-conscious alignment with

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figure 3.1. The Companhia Negra de Revistas. Careta, 14 August 1926, p. 36.

black Paris and paved the way for the renegotiation of the place of AfroBrazilians both in the entertainment business in Rio and within wider debates about Brazilian identity.65 De Chocolat wrote the company’s debut revue, Tudo preto (All Black), which they performed at Rio’s Teatro Rialto, and he also played the lead role of compère.66 The company sought respectability via associations with Parisian modernity and cosmopolitanism, valorizing Afro-Brazilian culture by aligning it with transnational currents in the realm of black performance in the face of overt racism on the part of Brazil’s white elite, who deemed black Brazilians on stage as at best inappropriate and at worst grotesque.67 As the character Benedito, a black Bahian, comments in Tudo preto, “[B]lacks [o preto] are in fashion,” asserting the emerging trend of associating black culture, particularly that of Salvador da Bahia, with brasilidade.68 Thus, obvious allusions to France’s popular stage abound in Tudo preto, whether in the form of a direct reference to the black revue troupe of Louis Douglas in Paris,69 or in the song that forms the centerpiece of the quadro “Jaboticaba afrancesada” (Frenchified Jaboticaba Fruit) and is sung by “a French singer wearing a luxurious costume decorated with feathers”: Sou a Mistinguett brasileira A cançonetista festejada Cheia de graça, eu sou brejeira Sou jaboticaba afrancesada Com esta graça parisiense

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I am the Brazilian Mistinguett The celebrated singer Full of charm, I am a tease I’m a Frenchifi ed jaboticaba fruit With that Parisian charm

The retention in Tudo preto of the traditional compère went hand in hand with the incorporation of other stock types from the teatro de revista tradition such as the character of the almofadinha, a pretentious dandy. The mere fact that these types were played by black performers, however, inevitably opened them up to new readings. The black dandy in the revue typically spouts English slang terms for effect but is accompanied on stage by “black girls” wearing ultramodern trousers; in Tudo preto he embodies the cosmopolitan black man, in contrast to historical representations of Afro-Brazilians within popular culture as synonymous with the colonial era and the rural world. Just as Parisian revues incorporated foreign black performers such as Josephine Baker to enhance their exoticism and cosmopolitan appeal, the Companhia Negra de Revistas looked to the African diaspora to add a similar distinction to Tudo preto;70 there are innumerable references in press reviews to a cast member called Miss Mons, sometimes said to be from Barbados but on other occasions from the United States—but in either case, clearly seen as representative of the “exotic” black Other.71 The Companhia Negra de Revistas went on to perform in the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo with considerable success.72 Nevertheless, by October 1926 the company had split in two, with its biggest names, including De Chocolat and the musician and bandleader Pixinguinha leaving to form the Ba-ta-clan Preta. It was not only this new troupe’s name that sought to assert direct links with Parisian performance traditions.73 When it premiered in São Paulo on 11 November, the Ba-ta-clan Preta advertised itself with a large image of its female star Déo Costa, naked and wrapped in black sheets, with the caption “A Vênus de Jambo” (The Jambo Venus), an obvious allusion to “the Ebony Venus,” as Josephine Baker was known. Costa came to be widely referred to in the press by this moniker.74 Furthermore, the Ba-ta-clan Preta performed a summarized version of two revues, Tudo preto and Na penumbra (In the Twilight), and gave the production the title of A revista das revistas (The Revue of Revues)—another direct reference to the French Ba-ta-clan company, which performed the Revue des revues in Brazil in 1926.75 As Seigel writes, in these troupes “Afro-Brazilian performers set themselves in a

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Parisian tradition, explicitly to identify as ‘black.’”76 Jaime Silva, in turn, sought to align his revamped Companhia Negra de Revistas with US representations of contemporary blackness, hiring the Afro-Brazilian child star Grande Otelo as a novelty act, undoubtedly influenced by the popularity of young black Hollywood stars such as Allen Clayton Hoskins.77 This was not the only case of the Brazilian teatro de revista looking to US performances of blackness for inspiration, with a number of revues in the late 1920s adopting the characteristic makeup and costumes of North American blackface minstrelsy (as discussed at length in chapter 1),78 and the Tro-lo-ló company contracting Afro-American performers (discussed in more detail below). Although both the Companhia Negra de Revistas and the Ba-ta-clan Preta had ceased to exist by the end of 1928, they undoubtedly inspired the creation of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira in 1931 (also discussed in chapter 1). Their influence can also be traced in individual sketches and numbers performed by companies that began to embrace black performers; for example, the revue Deixa essa mulher chorar! (Let That Woman Cry! [1931]), written by the Quintiliano brothers, featured the number “Minha favela” (My Shantytown) starring Araci Cortes in duet with Sílvio Vieira, but more significantly, accompanied for the fi rst time by Afro-Brazilian popular musicians from the favela playing alongside the orchestra, and Ari Barroso on the piano.79

tr ansnational metonyms of modernit y and cosmopolitanism In the immediate post–World War I period, modernity was associated with a series of changes and novelties in daily life in the Western world, including the cinema, the automobile, new dances, shifts in gender relations, new fashions that seemed to diminish the differences between the sexes, bathing in the sea, and the increased presence of women in public spaces.80 This was no less the case in 1920s Rio de Janeiro, and thus such features of modern life are highlighted in the texts of the teatro de revista of that decade (figure 3.2). In Tudo preto, for example, “black girls [chorus girls] in swimsuits” sing, “We are delicate bathers / We are celebrated flappers,” and refer to themselves as “futurist bathers.” Similarly in Secos e molhados (Dry and Wet Goods [1924]) there is a reference to “bathing in the sea” in the beachfront Rio district of Flamengo, and in Cachorro quente (Hot Dog [1928]), by A. Lúcio and A. Arruda, one scene opens with a “group of bathers,” and there are references to the shock caused by the exposure of the female body. As Susan Besse writes, “What it meant

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figure 3.2. Photograph of Afro-Brazilian chorus girls from the Companhia Negra

de Revistas. Careta, 14 August 1926, p. 36.

to be a ‘feminist’ was an issue of great contention in the late 1910s to 1930s in Brazil,”81 and it is thus no surprise that feminismo (feminism) is a topic for discussion between the characters Ele (He) and Ela (She) in the 1928 revue Charleston. Transnational modernity is indexed in Rio’s popular theatre via references to Paris and metonyms for the city, including jazz, Josephine Baker, the Folies Bergère, champagne,82 the Ba-ta-clan, its creator Madame Rasimi and performers Mistinguett and André Randall, and the French language itself.83 Jazz music (as well as its characteristic instruments) is a recurrent motif that evokes the cosmopolitan modernity of cities such as Paris and New York; in the revue Secos e molhados, for example, the stage directions for a prison scene describe the character Banana entering with a “jazz-band and oito batutas”—surely a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the group Oito Batutas (discussed in chapter 2)—and a photograph from the number “Jazz Band” shows seven men in blackface with the comically exaggerated white-rimmed eyes of minstrelsy in a clear parody of the Oito Batutas, and the jazz invasion more generally (see figure  1.9). Similarly, in Oooh! (1927) the number “Saxophone” celebrates cosmopolitan modernity: “I like the saxophone / How cheerful it makes me / When I listen to jazz,” and in the revue Rataplan (1925) the character Cupido likens love to a “mad, riotous Jazz Band, which ends when you don’t expect it.”84 Parisian ladies’ fashions are held up as the epitome of cosmopolitan chic, particularly the vogue for short hair, the so-called à la garçonne style. In the revue Pirão de areia (Sand Gruel [1926]), for example, the chorus sings: “The little head, flapper-style [à la garçonne] / Of

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women, exposes / Their charming little neck / Since good things are made to be seen.” This trend is also referenced in Secos e molhados, which features the song “Saia curta” (Short Skirt), celebrating the arrival of shorter hemlines from the French capital. In the same vein, a reference is made to women’s cosmetics and “little boxes of powder, the latest model from Paris” in the revue Rataplan (1925) by Antônio Torres. In Tudo preto, written by De Chocolat for the Companhia Negra de Revistas, the number “Moda parisiense” (Parisian Fashion) comments on the vogue for women in Paris to wear tuxedos and how this has been imitated in Brazil: “In Paris the great fashion / That has just emerged / Has obliged all the ladies / To wear a tuxedo.” This number was performed by two women and a man, all wearing tuxedos. In the second verse the lyrics make it clear that anything that comes from Paris has cultural capital and is instantly deemed acceptable, unlike homegrown trends: “If fashion were created here / The man in the street would feel like booing / But since it comes from Paris / The man in the street tells us to imitate it.” Above all, women are seen as the vectors for the introduction of modernity; for example, in Guerra ao mosquito (War on Mosquitoes [1929]) the number “As meninas do Brasil” (The Girls of Brazil) celebrates contemporary urban life in the form of “nossas melindrosas” (our flappers). After describing “As jovens de Paris” (The young ladies of Paris), the song continues: Our flappers / Are, however, sweeter, sexier / . . . Among the most modern / When it comes to crossing a pair of legs / Only the national version will do / It’s phenomenal / There’s no one like her!” The charms of Paris are also extolled in the closing scene of the revue Rio-Paris (quadro 16, entitled “Rio ou Paris?” [Rio or Paris?]),85 but those of cosmopolitan Rio de Janeiro are clearly seen as more than a match as the characters Carioca and Paris praise their respective cities. The former says to the latter: “[H]ere in Rio are loads of things that Paris has never had. Do you have any Copacabana beach there? Corcovado mountain? Niemeyer Avenue?” In this revue, mixed-race Araci Cortes performed the quadro “O choro das mulatas” (The Choro of the Mulatas), whose lyrics defend Brazilian culture and refer to the success in Paris of “Josefi na Studebaker” (a comic pun on the name of a US car popular in Brazil at the time). Allusions to metropolitan blackness, as personified by Josephine Baker—even when comically undermined by mispronunciations such as this—demonstrate an abrupt and dramatic transformation in the representation of Afro-descendant subjectivity in the teatro de revista that is clearly due to the prestige afforded to black performance by the tumulte noir in Paris. The number “Lady Ukulêlê” from the revue Champagne re-creates Baker using homegrown tal-

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ent. The stage directions describe a Hawaiian paradise shaded by banana trees, with dancers dressed in typical attire and playing banjos. On stage there is a swing decorated with tropical flowers, and “sitting on it is Josephine Baker, naked, wearing just a loin cloth of bananas and with her breasts covered in flowers.” She begins to sing: “Josephine Baker is finally here / All the way from the Folies Bergère / I am here, in the flesh / My debut is a great hit! / I am the black [negra] star from Paris, / Who is very happy to be here.”86 (Baker’s name would continue to be a watchword for cosmopolitan blackness and modernist stage performance in the revues of the 1930s, as discussed below in relation to the Tro-lo-ló company.) One of the most common metonyms for modernity employed by revue writers in the 1920s was that of the Ba-ta-clan company itself. The impact and controversies caused by the performances of Madame Rasimi’s troupe in Brazil in 1922 and 1923 led to its name entering the zeitgeist. Brazilian theatre companies began to describe themselves as “Ba-ta-clan style” in advertisements,87 and in January 1924 a homegrown troupe called Petit Ba-ta-clan performed revuettes at the Teatro Íris in Rio;88 musical acts marketed themselves as a “parody of the Ba-ta-clan’s Jazz Band”;89 shoe manufacturers designed “Ba-ta-clan styles”;90 a local Rio football team adopted the name Bataclan;91 and neologisms derived from the name found their way into journalistic discourse. In 1925 a critic of the influence of foreign, especially Parisian, vogues in Brazil’s teatro de revista, for example, referred to the “bataclanization of national theatre, so poor that it spends its time translating Argentine plays.”92 In revue texts such references to the Ba-ta-clan came to stand metonymically for Parisian modernity in general, and female nudity in particular.93 In the revue O jazz-band (1923) by Ruben Gill, the stage directions describe the allegorical character América as a “blonde woman, very attractive, dressed in tights and wearing a red and white striped tailcoat and blue waistcoat, with white stars. She will not be wearing trousers, she will be a ba-ta-clan América.” Here the term ba-ta-clan is clearly a byword for the use of costumes that expose the female body on stage,94 as is also the case in the revue Demi garçonne (Half Flapper [1924]), by Luís Leitão, in which the stage directions for the opening scene “Inferno-céu” (Hell-Heaven) state: “Fantasy hell. As the curtain goes up ba-ta-clan-style she-devils dance and sing.”95 Similarly, in Verde e amarelo (Green and Yellow [1925]), by José do Patrocínio Filho and Ari Pavão, when the character Pindoba asks if French women will feature in his new revue, the reply is, “French women only Ba-ta-clan flavor, and we are now seeing in the streets a more transparent Ba-ta-clan than in the theatre.” At this point in the revue “Mme. Rasimi

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and the Ba-ta-clan chorus girls enter dancing,” wearing “only an elegant silk chemise” and a hat and scarf.96 The revue Pirão de areia (Sand Gruel [1926]), by Marques Porto, pays tribute to the changes wrought within the teatro de revista in the wake of the Ba-ta-clan’s performances in Brazil. The compère declares: “It was Madame Rasimi / Who brought here for us / The montage that seduces / The ideal lighting effect / Novel costumes / Pretty, smiling little faces,” and the fi nal lines of the closing apotheosis emphatically state, “In a word what is good around here / Is the work of Rasimi.”97 Several revues incorporated the name of Madame Rasimi’s famous company into their very titles in what was undoubtedly an attempt to cash in on its popularity with local audiences. These include A mulata do Bata-clan (1923), by Manoel de Souza and José Pereira, and Francesinha do Ba-ta-clan (1923), by Gastão Togueiro. Souza and Pereira’s revue captures the controversy sparked by the French company’s performances in Rio,98 and act I, scene I, begins with the eponymous mulata, Fabiana, reading aloud from a newspaper: “It should not be allowed in a capital city like ours that a company like the Ba-ta-clan comes to perform, it should be considered an affront to our civilization.” This prompts her to angrily throw down the newspaper and exclaim, “Everyone is talking about it, but everyone goes to see it. . . . The Ba-ta-clan must be so lovely!” This winsome twenty-two-year-old dreams of seeing the troupe, so in an effort to woo her, one of her various admirers, a sixty-year-old married man and seasoned seducer named Fogaço, promises to take her to a performance. Characters express the polarized reception of the French company,99 but ultimately the revue ends with a positive celebration of Madame Rasimi’s troupe in the form of “A Ba-ta-clan Scene” featuring Venus (surrounded by cast members representing Hearts), Cupid with bow and arrow at the ready, and the chorus exclaiming, “Long live pleasure! / Long live love!” The revue Francesinha do Ba-ta-clan (Little French Girl from the Ba-taclan), fi rst performed at the Teatro Carlos Gomes in Rio when the Ba-taclan company was also on stage in the city, similarly reflects the polemical status of the French troupe, which here gives rise to confl icts between husbands and wives. The Brazilian character Clarinda reinvents herself as the supposedly French chorus girl Clarinette (a name clearly inspired by Mistinguett, who is referenced in the text) in order to join the Ba-ta-clan. With a creative neologism this “delicious little French girl,” as one of her many admirers refers to her, declares, “Parisienfiquei-me” (I Parisianified myself). Later she sings, “I am almost Mistinguett,” mixing French and Portuguese in an effort to conceal her true identity so that she can travel

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to Paris and perform with the Ba-ta-clan.100 She articulates the differing value judgments given to domestic and foreign troupes and performers: “No one gives importance to the national industry. . . . But just add a foreign produce label and everyone believes in it!” Enchanted with the Brazilian capital, several members of Madame Rasimi’s troupe stayed on in the city after their visits in 1922 and 1923.101 Their presence gave rise to the idea to put on a Parisian-style revue in French in Rio, with sketches, songs, and critiques all written in French, to be performed alongside fi lm screenings at the newly opened Cine Capitólio in Cinelândia. The so-called revuette Comme à Paris, written by José do Patrocínio Filho and George Boettgen, proved popular with audiences102 and relied heavily on allusions to cosmopolitanism to assert its credentials as ultramodern and “European,” explicitly referencing Paris and, more specifically, Randal, Madame Rasimi, Maurice Chevalier, and Yvonne Vallée in its text. The city of Rio is represented in this revue as more than an equal to the charms of Paris,103 and as a node in an increasingly farflung transnational circuit directly linked to Paris, New York, and now even Tokyo via the medium of radio. The radio-telephonists sing: “Radio! Radio! / C’est l’nouveau truc épatant / Radio! Radio! / Pour s’fair’user le tympan . . . / Paris, New-York et Tokio / Nous envoyent tous leurs echos / À Rio! À Rio! / À Rio!” The readiness of carioca audiences to accept and be entertained by the French language is also reflected in the widespread use of borrowings from and code switches into French in revue texts from the 1920s, primarily designed to add a touch of Parisian sophistication.104 In the revue Pirão de areia, for example, in the quadro “Praia” (Beach) the chorus sings, “De maillot / Comme il faut / Despimos a saia / Para os encantos da praia” (De maillot / Comme il faut / We take off our skirts / For the charms of the beach),105 and in Guerra ao mosquito Parisian performance trends are alluded to in a song that draws on French and English titled “Josephina Backer”: Josephina Backer / Josephina Backer / One beautiful face / Everybody lake / Go on, boy / I am not going de beice! . . . / Et lorsque par foi mon ˘ mon petit bidon / I make you esplode / You are affont monkraumir / O tiçon! . . . / Josephina Backer / Josephina Backer / Che comes from Paris / Hot dog with sauscisse / O mi dear / O mi dear / Josephina Backer / Josephina Backer / I’m not getting involved / I’m not getting involved.

Here the misspelling/mispronunciation of the star’s name also suggests a tongue-in-cheek critique of the reigning Francophilia, or at least a self-

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deprecating suggestion that foreign imports cannot be successfully assimilated wholesale into Brazil. “French” is rendered comprehensible to the audience by a reliance on Portuguese syntax with the odd substitution of easily identifiable words similar to their Portuguese counterparts, and attempts to evoke a French accent phonetically. In Secos e molhados the French character Mimi says, “Je non posso prejudiqué mon contracte!” (Je non cannot damage mon contracte), and in Francesinha do Bataclan the would-be “French” Clarinette exaggerates the pronunciation of the letter r, a stock linguistic device to emulate a French accent, giving rise to, for example: “Non querro non” (instead of “quero” [I want]), and “Estou esperrando a senhorra” (instead of “Estou esperando a senhora” [I am waiting for you]). Revue writers exploited the comic potential of linguistic misunderstandings, and in Secos e molhados the French character Mimi declares, “Il fé chou!,” to which the humble Portuguese Pordulas replies, “Já fechou! E fechou cedo hoje” (It’s already closed! It closed early today). Here bilingual wordplay serves to humorously contrast the sophistication of French imports with the stereotypical stupidity of the Portuguese immigrant. Yet examples of supposed French refi nement are sometimes also held up for ridicule. In Secos e molhados, for example, the prison guard gives his full name as “Horacio Barzac Moliére,” mocking two heavyweights of French literature. The mispronunciation of Balzac’s name here reproduces one of the most common features of the imagined “black speak” attributed to Afro-Brazilian characters in the teatro de revista, namely the substitution of the letter l for r.106 Later, when Pordulas tries to order champagne for Mimi, he is asked if he would like “Viuva Clicot” (the chic French brand Veuve Clicquot being hilariously transformed into “Widow Clicot” in the mouth of the lowly Brazilian waiter).

jardel jércolis and the “tr ansnational” revues of the early 1930s The Tro-lo-ló company was established in 1925 by Jardel Jércolis, a white actor and writer born in Rio de Janeiro in 1894, and José do Patrocínio Filho,107 the journalist and diplomat son of the illustrious mixed-race abolitionist José do Patrocínio (1854–1905).108 Both Jércolis and Patrocínio Filho had lived in Europe and had readily absorbed the stage performances they witnessed and participated in.109 The Tro-lo-ló was a transnational phenomenon from its very inception, combining influences from European and US performance traditions, and the cosmopolitan dimensions of the troupe continued to be foregrounded throughout the 1930s. The company’s 1934 revue Alô! Alô! Rio!? (Hello! Hello! Rio!?) drew on

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associations with both Parisian and Hollywood show business: advertisements announced that the female star Lódia Silva would be wearing outfits brought over from the French capital and created by the famous music hall costume designer Max Weldy, who had worked for the Ba-ta-clan company and had dressed both Josephine Baker and Mistinguett; and the comic actor Palitos, in the number “Ondas curtas” (Short Waves), imitated Stan Laurel (as well as Brazil’s President Vargas).110 In performances in Rio de Janeiro in 1936, after touring Portugal and Spain, the company introduced a novelty: De Lorena, promoted as the former partner of Mistinguett,111 and thus inherently a transnational star if only by association. With the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, and the effects these had in Brazil, there was a slump in ticket sales for the teatro de revista in Rio, prompting artists and theatrical companies to travel abroad in search of commercial salvation. On 7 October 1929 the Tro-lo-ló company premiered in Buenos Aires, performing the revues Prueba real and Rio-Paris. The Argentine press praised their “sabor típico brasileiro” (typical Brazilian flavor), with the newspaper La Calle emphasizing the exoticism of Rio-Paris and the “color and rhythm of Brazil.”112 Both reviews contained numbers based on “racialized” performance, namely “Black and White” (in Prueba real) and “Jura mi negro” (in RioParis, and described as “folklore brasileño”).113 Their subsequent revue, Llamaradas (Outbursts) featured the number “El negro que tiene . . . corbata blanca” (The Black Man Who Has . . . a White Tie).114 The Argentine press stressed the sensual, exotic appeal of Brazilian female performers, especially black women and mulatas, in whose veins ran “ardent tropical blood.”115 The Buenos Aires newspaper El Mundo described the AfroBrazilian performer “Perla [Rosa] Negra [sic]” as follows: “she doesn’t do anything, doesn’t sing, doesn’t dance . . . but she is black.”116 On one of their return visits to Rio, the Tro-lo-ló company brought with them some dozen Argentine chorus girls.117 The Portuguese singer Luís Barreira epitomized the cross-border and transatlantic mobility of the teatro de revista and its performers; he joined the Tro-lo-ló company in Buenos Aires, where he had lived for three years and enjoyed considerable popularity. He moved with them to Rio before returning to Argentina.118 The leading Brazilian male crooner of the day, Francisco Alves, also joined Jércolis’s company and was billed as “the Brazilian Gardel” in the Argentine press.119 In the 1930s the Tro-lo-ló made several more trips to Argentina, taking back with them to Brazil the Argentine singer Carlos Cobia, the female dancers Oterita de Naya and Violeta Murray, and the popular actress Pepita Cantero.120 During their tour of Portugal in 1933 the Tro-lo-ló

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played up to local expectations for “sabor típico brasileiro,” performing the revue Salada de frutas (Fruit Salad), which celebrated samba, carnival, and the “mulata boa” (hot mulata) in its title song, as well as Brazil’s mythical natural abundance (“Land where everything grows: / Corn, coffee, sugar and bananas!”). Act II of this revue opened with a celebration of beach culture in Brazil, with the number “Banhos de sol” (Sun Bathing) including the following lyrics: “It’s the fashion now to show / dark skin [cor morena] / tanned by the summer sun. . . . Right there on the beach / Sun bathing / Is dazzling.” This was followed by the number “Minha favela” (My Shantytown), whose lyrics praise a humble neighborhood. An imagined “black speak” is evoked in the number “Maleque namoradô” (Womanizing Lad), a duet between a male and a female in which the man refers to himself as “teu negro frajola” (your dashing black man) and alludes to his “cabelo ruim” (rebellious hair). The Tro-lo-ló also performed their revue Desfile tropical (Tropical Parade) in Lisbon, which opened with a celebration of samba in the number “Na Pavuna,” a reference to a neighborhood in Rio that was a traditional samba stronghold. The final number of this revue, entitled “Mãe Preta” (Black Mother), again recreates an apocryphal, grammatically flawed “black speak.” The song ends: “But the revenge of them blacks / Let anyone say what they likes / Is that God makes them white / But on them soles of the foot.” Reviews of performances by visiting Brazilian theatrical companies, whether in Argentinian or Portuguese newspapers, evidence the fact that local audiences wanted allusions to what were deemed to be “typical” Brazilian—and especially Afro-Brazilian—tropes such as samba, carnival, the mulata, Rio, and Bahia. When such elements were deemed to be lacking, reviewers complained vociferously. What pleased foreign audiences was what Antunes terms “the exotic flavor of ‘Brazilianness,’” and this was emphasized in the set designs of the Tro-lo-ló company,121 which featured “tropical” motifs such as palm trees. The performance of brasilidade for foreign audiences involved a complex negotiation of Brazil’s national self-defi nition and local expectations, not least in relation to its “racial” dimension. Some local newspapers in Argentina and Portugal praised the Brazilian-ness of Tro-lo-ló’s performances (especially the music and the presence of mixed-race women on stage), but others criticized the “tendency toward internationalism.”122 When the company performed in Uruguay in 1931, for example, the great novelty of the company was a black woman of Cuban origin, Mercedes Blanco, who danced and sang rumbas,123 her performance of “race” helping to fulfi ll the expectation and demand for Brazilian “Other-ness.”

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The company, which changed its name several times during the 1930s, made several visits to Argentina, Uruguay, and Portugal throughout that decade, bringing local performers back to Brazil. On returning from a tour of Argentina and Uruguay in November 1931, the troupe was given a heroes’ welcome, with cars provided by the Liga Brasileira de Propaganda Patriótica to take its stars through the city, and the public turned out in droves to greet them. The company was now a mix of Brazilian and Argentine performers, including the so-called chansonnier Juan Daniels, who sang the latest US hits from Hollywood cinema in English. In 1932 the company was rebranded as the Grande Companhia de Espetáculos Modernos (Great Company of Modern Shows), and publicity campaigns emphasized its cosmopolitan credentials, not the least of which was the presence of international stars.124 Jércolis contracted singers, musicians, and dancers of various nationalities for this new company, including the “Spanish” sisters Mary and Alba Lopez (who were actually Argentine), the “French-Russian” dancers Lou e Janot, and a female German dancer, Herta Reiprich.125 On 10 January 1933 Rio’s Correio da Manhã published an interview with Jércolis about his trip to Portugal,126 and on the 24 January the same newspaper announced that Jércolis had a meeting with President Vargas to discuss his company’s upcoming tour of the European country.127 Jércolis claimed that the company would be promoting the Brazilian nation in Portugal, and in the interview he explained that the Brazilian government had paid for fi fty return tickets for the company members.128 A notable feature of the Grande Companhia’s new lineup was the prominence given to Afro-American performers. In 1932 the company performed the revue Angú de caroço (Lumpy Oatmeal) at Rio’s Teatro Carlos Gomes, and publicity gave top billing to the “Black Stars,” subtitled “demons of dance,” a group of six male dancers led by a certain Willie Thompson, and a female singer named Adolfi na Acosta (also sometimes referred to as Costa or Cuesta). She was credited as being from the Roxy in New York and having appeared in King Vidor’s 1929 movie Hallelujah. Acosta was described as an “authentic American” who specialized in the blues, and she was also referred to as “the nightingale of the troupe”129 and “the ebony soprano”—recalling one of Josephine Baker’s monikers, repeatedly adopted by dark-skinned women performing in Brazil.130 The Black Stars were by all accounts the major attraction and described as “the theatrical hit of the moment.”131 A review of Angú de caroço noted that the troupe “has been attracting a lot of excitement in Rio at the moment, principally with its astonishing tap dances by the black Willie Thompson and the black singer Adolfi na Acosta.”132

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The troupe went on to perform at the Cine Odeon as one of the attractions that accompanied the screening of the fi lm África selvagem (Up the Congo [1930], distributed by Sono Art-World Wide Pictures)133 and subsequently appeared at the Cine Fluminense.134 They were then contracted by the theatrical impresario Nicolino Viggiani (who was responsible for taking Josephine Baker to Brazil in 1929)135 to tour throughout Brazil and then, reportedly, in Europe.136 Between 1931 and 1932 the Tro-lo-ló contracted an Afro-American tap dancer, Randall Chocolate, to be one of its international novelties, and in a play of mirrors this US performer imitated his French namesake, the theatrical actor André Randall, when touring with the company in Portugal, Spain, and France, appearing with them at the Chez Les Nudistes nightclub.137 Seeking to cash in on Josephine Baker’s popularity in Brazil, Jércolis contracted the female performer Cidália Mattos, described as a morena from Bahia, to perform with Tro-lo-ló at Rio’s Teatro Fénix, where she imitated Baker’s dancing on stage and proved to be a “magnificent copy of the Ebony Venus.”138 Similarly, Jércolis incorporated black Brazilian artists into his evocations of metropolitan performance, where they could stand for cosmopolitan blackness; the Afro-Brazilian pianist Nonô was one of the lead musicians in the company’s Jazz-Symphonica band, for example, and traveled abroad with the troupe.139 Via the incorporation of black performers, whether homegrown or imported, Jércolis sought to align his revues with US cultural practices, especially jazz, and the transnational performance of blackness more widely. Grande Otelo, the black Brazilian vaudeville talent, had been a child star, following the Hollywood vogue, with the revamped Companhia Negra de Revistas of Jaime Silva. He went on to become a member of the Companhia Jardel Jércolis between 1934 and 1937.140 When he fi rst performed with them in Rio in 1935, the newspaper Diário Carioca included the following caption next to his photograph, in which the young man appears in the elegant attire of tails: “the black [preto] Otelo, the new attraction that the Jardel season is going to introduce at the Teatro João Caetano.”141 The foregrounding of his skin color reveals that the appearance on stage of black Brazilians was still a novelty,142 and that such performers were “exoticized” as if they were visiting foreign acts. In the 1935 revue Goal! he performed the number “The Great Otelo,” which directly referred to the desired associations between black Brazilian artists and US performance traditions. In caricatured “English” he began by singing: “Ai have dzi pleijur ou presenting mai self tu di / veri distinguich o’diens. Ai am the Great / Otelo, the most popular artist from Arlem, / New York. Ai reli admair dis cantri.” To the

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dual rhythms of samba and jazz, he delivered the song while taking off his tuxedo to reveal the characteristic striped T-shirt of the malandro (mixedrace hustler) and broke into a samba dance.143

concluding remarks Rio de Janeiro’s teatro de revista emerged in the nineteenth century out of theatrical traditions imported from France and Portugal, but it went on to develop a very particular Brazilian and, more specifically, carioca identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, depicting the specificities of culture and life in the city. In the 1920s, however, the creators of the teatro de revista—blessed with the opportunity to come face to face with the latest trends in popular performance thanks to increased transatlantic and interhemispheric mobility for both people and cultural products such as movies, music, and dance genres—consciously entered a transnational performance space that allowed them to dialogue with their counterparts in other modern metropolises and to imagine themselves as part of a farflung community bound together by a modern, cosmopolitan aesthetics. Here again this chapter draws on Seigel’s defi nition of transnational (as distinct from international or global) as a term that refers to phenomena, in this case popular theatre performance, for which national borders are not the most pertinent containers, and which are “unconfi ned to—both greater and lesser than—the nation-state.”144 It also returns to a proposed defi nition of transnational circuits as those that, unlike international networks, render irrelevant and metaphorically dismantle geographic borders between nation-states rather than simply crossing them. By considering Rio de Janeiro’s teatro de revista of the 1920s from this perspective, and underscoring the local tradition’s knowing engagement with a transnational creative imaginary, this chapter has sought to foreground the cosmopolitan credentials in this era not just of Rio’s metropolitan capital city, but also its popular entertainers.145 It thus contributes to a greater understanding of the transnational nature of non-elite everyday life in the city between the wars, and to giving a heightened visibility to cross- cultural encounters involving subjects who would on the surface appear to enjoy little agency. Thanks to the voyages of people, traditions, ideas, and fashions to and fro across the Atlantic and within the Americas, Rio’s revue writers, promoters, performers, and backstage personnel, as well as audiences, enjoyed a metropolitan cultural literacy that enabled them to call on a repository of references to a wider transnational entertainment world, in particular what has been termed here “transnational metonyms of moder-

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nity and cosmopolitanism.” The teatro de revista, from its very inception in Rio, articulated notions of identity at both a local and national level. In the 1920s this was no less the case, with the emergence of self-identifying “black” Brazilian troupes and individual performers fi nally granting a voice to vast swathes of the population that had historically been ignored on stage at best or comically stereotyped at worst. Rio’s teatro de revista of the 1920s, however, was less concerned with issues of local or national self-defi nition than with a perceived transnational sense of belonging to a diasporic entertainment community, reflecting the city’s newfound cosmopolitan status and its centrality to a network of metropolitan sites at the cutting edge of the performance of modernity. The primary conclusion expressed in this chapter is that the creators and performers of Rio’s teatro de revista in the 1920s participated in and contributed to the development of a borderless transnational performance community and were united with their counterparts in Paris, New York, Buenos Aires, and beyond by a shared aesthetic cosmopolitanism. But what is the broader relevance of this case study for understanding inter war Atlantic modernity? How might its fi ndings profitably inform future research into transnational cultural networks, including those of the Black Atlantic? This chapter illustrates how the assertion of modernity within popular performance required, in addition to a questioning and/ or rejection of tradition, the conscious foregrounding of affi liations that transcended and at times rejected national and/or local identities in favor of more fluid, creative, and dynamic transnational allegiances. Such affi liations were signaled in Rio’s teatro de revista by the deployment of transnational metonyms of modernity and cosmopolitanism, which manifested themselves, for example, in the themes and allusions of revue texts, casting choices, and the use of linguistic code switches, innovative costume styles, and new genres of musical and dance numbers. Nowhere was this modern, cosmopolitan worldview more in evidence than within the performance of Afro-Brazilian subjectivity. The strategic adoption of what has been referred to here as “cosmopolitan blackness” by hitherto marginalized black performers in Rio in the 1920s gave them the degree of estrangement from their own history and national situation required of a cosmopolitan commitment.146 This enabled them to give prominence to their Afro-descendant transnational affi liations on stage and thus override, albeit temporarily, the racist, discriminatory restrictions imposed on them via hegemonic national discourses.

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Ch a p t e r 4

the cultural migrations of the stage and screen baiana , 1889–1950s

I’m a little cheerful baiana All coy and friendly The first woman In this land of Brazil I’ve a certain sway when I walk And swing my hips That makes any elegant guy Fall in love with me. lyrics of song performed by the baiana char acter in the re vue tudo preto , performed in 1926 by the companhia negr a de re vistas

What does the baiana have? She has a silk turban She has gold earrings She has a gold chain She has a cloth shawl. . . . She has decorated sandals And has charm like no one else! lyrics of the song “o que é que a baiana tem?,” performed by carmen mir anda in the film banana da terr a (1938) and by josephine baker on the stage of the cassino da urca in 1939

T h is ch a p t e r ch a rts the evolution of the iconic baiana persona within popular performance in Brazil from 1889 until the 1950s and focuses on the shifts in her representation that were occasioned by crossborder encounters, either as a consequence of the arrival in Brazil of im-

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ported performance traditions and their exponents, or of voyages beyond Brazilian shores by the baiana herself. Although baiana literally means “a woman from the northeastern state of Bahia,” Melo Gomes and Seigel have noted that the term “would come to carry a heavy burden of signification,” and the baiana archetype that emerged in popular culture and found its way into the consciousness of Rio de Janeiro was essentially a carioca (Rio) invention.1 The figure of the baiana has a long history in Brazilian popular culture. Her typical outfit was traditionally worn by the black female street vendors of the city of Salvador, the capital of Bahia and the main port of entry for African slaves during the early colonial period. Their characteristic attire was essentially a synthesis of diverse African traditions in the city—a fashion that was developed by both enslaved and free black women incorporating elements of Portuguese colonial dress styles. 2 Street vendors, or quitandeiras, 3 both free and enslaved, mostly older Afro-Brazilian women, were commonplace on the streets of Rio during the nineteenth century and throughout the First Republic (1889–1930). As Rosa has examined, these “socio-economically active matrons” were highly performative in their day-to-day activities, foregrounding their Africanicity via their attire and “the coolness of their swayed-walk,” thus fostering “the emergence of a positive and coherent image of and for Afro-Brazilians, even though gendered and racial roles were not subverted.”4 The terms quitandeira and baiana became synonymous on the streets of Rio, and by the 1920s the latter had become more common. 5 Such was her omnipresence in the cultural cityscape of Rio that by the 1880s the baiana had become one of the stock characters of the city’s teatro de revista. As Rosa writes, “Though often ridiculed, persecuted, or exoticized, in the end the baiana figure became a popular leitmotif within the collective imagination of Brazil’s modern capital.”6 By 1939, when Carmen Miranda performed the baiana on Broadway and subsequently in Hollywood, real-life baianas could be found not only selling food on the streets of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, but also leading the rituals of the Afro-Brazilian religion candomblé; they also appeared in the ranks of Rio’s so-called samba schools (escolas de samba), the neighborhood carnival groups, paying homage to the Bahian women such as Tia Ciata (Hilária Batista de Almeida, 1854–1929)7 who were responsible for bringing samba from the northeast of Brazil to the capital and subsequently to the rest of the nation in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century. As part of the state’s increasing co-option of carnival in Rio, the Vargas regime made it compulsory to include a wing of baianas in each parade in homage to Tia Ciata and her local counterparts.8 Thus a figure

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that, to the elite of the First Republic, had represented “a carrier of physically and morally contagious African traits” came to stand specifically for “Bahia’s African cultural treasures, and more broadly, for Brazil’s newly valorized African traditions.”9 This chapter begins by examining the portrayal of the baiana within the teatro de revista and related cabaret performances, charting the representational shifts that took place between 1889 and the 1930s. It explores, in particular, how contact and interaction with foreign performance traditions and artists impacted the evolution and interpretation of this emblematic figure in popular culture, focusing on Josephine Baker’s adoption of the baiana persona on stage in Brazil. It then considers how Carmen Miranda—like Baker, a human vector of transnational exchange—transformed the persona for Broadway and Hollywood audiences, and how her celluloid baiana was then interpreted and reworked by the Brazilian fi lm industry in the late 1940s and 1950s.10

the shifting representations of the baiana in the teatro de revista during the first republic (1889–1930) The baiana (referred to by Rosa as an “auto-exotic” figure),11 played by a white actress pretending to be black, was one of the fi rst archetypes of the teatro de revista, inherently associated with Rio de Janeiro. During the First Republic, the term baiana was variously used to refer to the aforementioned quintandeiras and quituteiras (purveyors of home-cooked delicacies), as well as the so-called tias baianas, priestesses (mães-de-santo) of the Afro-Brazilian candomblé religion who were also closely linked to the emergence of samba and street carnival in the neighborhoods that composed so-called Pequena África (Little Africa).12 Tia Ciata was the most influential baiana matriarch, one of a group of women who had fled Bahia due to police persecution and established themselves in that area of the city.13 This multitasking cook and mãe-de-santo was also a party organizer (baiana festeira) who hosted gatherings at her home near Praça Onze square for an eclectic group of musicians that gave rise to the samba “Pelo telefone” (On the Telephone).14 She also hired out typical baiana attire to theatres, carnival clubs, and revelers,15 thus playing a pivotal but little-known role in popularizing the archetype far beyond Little Africa and cementing the baiana as a performative guise. Melo Gomes and Seigel have argued that within the teatro de revista, the baiana stock type was conflated with the figure of the mulata, which had less to do with a perceived phenotype than with a mythical sexual allure and perceived loose morality.16 In their view, on the popular stages

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of Rio during the First Republic, the generic label mulata “could mean a woman who used her body in a performative, sexualized way, regardless of her racial mixture,” drawing on a long-standing tradition of the eroticization of women of African descent in general.17 This stock type was synonymous with the rhythms of the samba and maxixe and their corresponding dances with sensual moves.18 The characteristically devious, lascivious, and illiterate mulata (often given the generic name baiana in revue scripts themselves) formed part of a traditional cast of stereotypical figures from Rio’s urban landscape that also included the Portuguese immigrant, the streetwise malandro hustler (associated closely with male mulato identity), and the uneducated rural migrant. These types— especially the mulata and her male counterpart, the malandro—personified the nation in the teatro de revista of this era.19 Like the other “Othered” types, the mulata/baiana was clearly also intended to be laughed at for her supposed ignorance and lack of education, but equally mocked for her pretentiousness and desire to better her lot in life, all clearly consequences of her low social position, the legacy of colonialism and slavery. Throughout this popular theatrical tradition, this figure was associated with “incorrect” speech characterized by replacing the letter l with the letter r, exaggerating the double ss at the end of words, and inappropriately using “difficult” words and her own unwittingly comical neologisms for effect.20 Thus blackface performance was both visual and aural, with white performers mimicking what the elite deemed to be “black” speech patterns. 21 As this chapter illustrates, however, the baiana of the teatro de revista in this era was not necessarily interchangeable with the figure of the sexualized mulata, as has been suggested. Representations of the stage baiana in terms of characterization, costume, song lyrics, and reception in the print media create a more nuanced picture that problematizes the conflation of the two gendered figures. It is tempting to wonder if Tia Ciata’s active participation in hiring out baiana costumes to stage performers inspired, at least in part, the incorporation of a playful, carnivalesque fl irtatiousness within more matronly theatrical baianas, who nevertheless were still distanced from the younger, overtly objectified mulata archetype that continued to feature heavily in popular song. 22 Performed by young women in both cases, however, it is not surprising that the distinctions between the two stock types came to be blurred over time and that the labels of baiana and mulata often appear synonymous in the scripts of theatrical revues into the 1920s, reflecting the slippery, problematic nature of representation and the importance of sociohistorical contexts and nuance to our understanding of racial taxonomies. 23 One virtual constant until the 1920s was the casting of white women,

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often of European origin, in the roles of baiana and mulata. In March 1890 the revue A República (The Republic), by acclaimed playwright Artur Azevedo, starred the Greek soprano Ana Menarezzi as Sabina, a character based on a real-life Afro-Brazilian quitandeira in Rio. Melo Gomes and Seigel, who refer to Sabina as a “proto-baiana figure,” note that “if Menarezzi whitened Sabina, Sabina blackened Menarezzi, who adopted the ‘typical’ accent of an uneducated Afro-Brazilian, and the typical clothing.”24 In 1892 the Spanish actress Pepa Ruiz took on the role in the revue Tim-tim por tim-tim (Down to the Last T), a production by a visiting Portuguese company, which reflects the transnational border crossings of the baiana (discussed in more detail below). Even in the 1920s the pale-skinned Lia Binatti, a woman from the south of Brazil who was of Italian and German ancestry, often played the role of the baiana on stage. 25 These white-skinned women were transformed into apocryphal Afro-Brazilian women with the aid of elaborate costumes of frills, lace, and necklaces based on those of the quitandeiras. Sometimes their faces were also darkened with makeup to lend credence to their performances, in addition to their adoption of an imagined “black speak.” The ethnic trajectory of the stage baiana did shift, however, in the 1920s, the decade in which Araci Cortes, the daughter of a Spanish immigrant father and a mother of Afro-Brazilian descent, became the most famous baiana of the teatro de revista, having made her fi rst appearance in 1921. 26 Her mixed-race looks meant that she did not require the blackface makeup used by some of her pale-skinned predecessors. Nonetheless, one can assume that it was the physical traces of her partial European origins that made her presence on stage in this role acceptable. As the 1920s wore on, Brazilian theatres began to showcase the dancing skills of the Afro-Brazilian inhabitants of Rio’s favelas (shantytowns—which were the setting for a number of productions). In the revue Pirão de areia (Sand Gruel [1926]), for example, the black female performer Rosa Negra (literally, Black Rose) was billed as dancing with eight “black girls” (these English words were often used to refer to the female chorus). 27 This shift in the permissible representations of black female subjectivity on stage in the 1920s was undoubtedly linked to wider transnational trends, but also to the changing nature of the audiences of the teatro de revista in this decade. Until then, audience members had been overwhelmingly drawn from the middle and upper classes, but to enjoy continued commercial success, companies were now obliged to appeal to both elite and poorer spectators, drawing from a much wider spectrum of racial as well as socioeconomic backgrounds. The emergence of De Chocolat’s Companhia Negra de Revistas in

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1926, whose members all self-identified as negro or black (with the exception of cofounder Jaime Silva, a white Portuguese set designer), met with heated debate in the mainstream press around the issue of Brazil’s selfrepresentation (see figure 3.1). Some journalists drew a marked distinction between the troupe’s “grotesque” performances and the “ultra-civilized” Revue nègre with its US star, Josephine Baker. 28 A particularly scathing review of their fi rst production, Tudo preto (All Black), in the newspaper A Rua, referred to “the poor girls exhibiting on stage very skinny black legs covered in white marks [which] made you feel nauseous.”29 Against a backdrop of such white anxieties about blacks representing Afro-Brazilian identity on stage, and of audiences who expected to be entertained by the familiar types of the Brazilian revue theatre, the Companhia Negra de Revistas was faced with the dilemma of how to deal with ostensibly patronizing racial stereotypes in their productions. The company’s response was to continue to feature the baiana figure, played by either Araci Cortes’s sister, Dalva Espíndola, or one of two other Afro-Brazilian actresses, Rosa Negra and Djanira Flora.30 In Tudo preto, a coquettish but far from overtly sexualized baiana sings a song in which many of the clichés associated with her stock type feature, but which nonetheless asserts her dignity, agency, and patriotic role: “I’m a little cheerful baiana / All coy and friendly / The fi rst woman / In this land of Brazil / I’ve a certain sway when I walk / And swing my hips / That makes any elegant guy / Fall in love with me.”31 It is clear that to stray far from established norms of racial representation, tacitly approved by the white elite, would have been a difficult task and a move that might have jeopardized commercial success among an audience who were overwhelmingly of white European descent. As Melo Gomes and Seigel argue: Embracing the conventions of popular theatre, Tudo preto was uninterested in deviating from the recognizable types and predictable slapstick humour proven to draw and satisfy audiences. Even so, the play offered profound ideological interventions, including a pointed critique of the absence of blackness on the popular stage and advocacy for the restitution of that lack. Furthermore, it opened to discussion questions which were previously rarely entertained, brought Afro-Brazilians together in a context in which those questions were made possible, and, most simply and perhaps most powerfully, articulated an Afro-Brazilian identity in an ideological context that powerfully discouraged such identification. 32

Nevertheless, it is important to note that, in addition to the baiana, Tudo preto included “black chorus girls in swimsuits” who danced and per-

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formed a song that self-reflexively referred to them as “delicate bathers,” “celebrated flappers,” and “futurist bathers.” The lyrics and evidently skimpy costumes equated these Brazilian black dancers with metropolitan modernism and endowed them with cultural capital and new possibilities for self-identification that both engaged with transnational racialized performance and foregrounded youth and gender at the expense of race (figure 3.2). In this musical number, the limited options for black Brazilian female subjectivity—most notably the objectified mulata—are clearly challenged and momentarily extended via the adoption of performance traditions that arrived in Rio de Janeiro via transatlantic and interhemispheric cultural migrations of people and ideas.33 Similarly, although the company’s performance of the baiana archetype may seem, at fi rst sight, retrograde, the very presence of a black woman performing the baiana on stage naturally alters the implications of the lyrics of the song that she performs, which can be seen to assert a pride in Afro-Brazilian identity and the contribution made by African slaves and their descendants to the formation of the Brazilian nation. The reiteration of the baiana’s legendary sexual potency and playful lasciviousness, rather than serving to demean and essentialize black Brazilian women, instead underscores the enduring importance of this figure, however formulaic her representations, within Brazilian popular culture and as an emerging symbol of national identity. It is tempting to interpret the representation of the baiana figure by self-proclaimed Afro-Brazilian women as an example of “black blackface” performance, but given that the very nature of blackface implies the ability to change identity, to put on an obvious mask, to adopt a guise that can be slipped in and out of at will, 34 such an interpretation proves problematic. These women were constrained by the archetype of the mulata/ baiana, whereas blackface performance opens up opportunities to unfi x identities and create alternative personae that are visibly ephemeral.35 As a consequence of their perceived phenotype and its implicit class position, together with their Brazilian nationality, the adoption of the baiana persona by the female performers in the Companhia Negra de Revistas is not a case of blackface masking, wherein the process of masking is more important than the mask itself and the mask can be put on or taken off at whim.36 Because these performers were not sufficiently distanced from the real-life black women on whom this stereotype was modeled, they could not slip in and out of the mask, nor could they assert the process of masking or the performative nature of their version of the baiana. It must not be overlooked, however, that the black chorus girls of the Companhia Negra de Revistas appeared on stage in Tudo preto as self-defi ned “cel-

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ebrated flappers” and “futurist bathers,” explicitly aligning themselves with both their black and white counterparts on the popular stages of New York and Paris, and most obviously the epitome of black modernist performance, Josephine Baker herself. In doing so, they distanced themselves from the archetypes of Afro-Brazilian female subjectivity and were able to “unfi x” their identities, to “create alternative personae that are visibly ephemeral,” and to adopt a different guise or mask at will, to borrow from North’s analysis of blackface performance. 37 These chorus girls were seeking to be modern “by acting black.”38 Just as Josephine Baker drew on her transnational credentials to distance herself from blackness, these black Brazilian futurist flappers dialogued with transatlantic and intercontinental performance traditions in order to open up the possibilities for Afro-Brazilian self-representation, however short-lived. By the end of 1927 the Companhia Negra de Revistas had ceased to exist, and by 1936, in the revue É batatal! (It’s Spot On!), a white actress was once again playing the role of the baiana, 39 reestablishing the dominant tradition that was tantamount to blackface performance of black female subjectivity, as Carmen Miranda and Josephine Baker would illustrate in 1939.

casino baianas in the l ate 1930s: carmen mir anda and josephine baker On 10 May 1939, in the elite venue of the Cassino da Urca in Rio de Janeiro, Josephine Baker took to the stage alongside the Afro-Brazilian comic performer Grande Otelo (figure 4.1). Together they performed an act entitled Casamento de preto (Blacks’ Wedding) that included the song “Boneca de piche” (Tar Doll),40 representing the bride and groom in question, and accompanied by a dozen or so black performers and musicians (including the samba composer Geraldo Pereira). For the fi rst time in its history, the stage of this elite venue (where Afro-Brazilians were not permitted to enter via the main door) was occupied solely by Afro-descendant artists, although the black presence was only acceptable as a folkloric caricature,41 and thanks to the transnational currency and cosmopolitan modernity encapsulated by Josephine Baker’s presence. Dressed in the costume of the baiana matriarch, she proceeded to perform the song “O que é que a baiana tem?” (What Does the Baiana Have?) in Portuguese, having taken lessons from the Brazilian singer Elisa Coelho.42 Baker’s performance clearly took its lead from that of Carmen Miranda, who sang this very song, wearing the same type of baiana costume, in the musical comedy Banana da terra (Banana of the Land [1938]) (figure 4.2). On 24 May

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figure 4 .1. Advertisement for Josephine Baker’s show at the Cassino da Urca in Rio de Janeiro. A Noite, 26 May 1939, p. 2.

1939 the Rio newspaper A Noite published a sketched likeness of both Baker and Miranda dressed in their respective versions of the baiana costume (figure 4.3).43 Banana da terra was the hit fi lm of the carnival period of 1939, released in February of that year, as was Miranda’s recording of the song “O que é que a baiana tem?” This was the fi rst movie in which Miranda appeared in what would become her trademark Hollywood baiana outfit.44 Shot by Wallace Downey’s newly founded studio Sonofi lmes in 1938 for release during the carnival of the following year, Banana da terra was Miranda’s last Brazilian fi lm.45 Distributed by MGM in Brazil, it premiered at the Cine Metro-Passeio in Rio’s city center on 10 February 1939 and included two musical numbers performed by Miranda. The fi lm’s comic plot was essentially a construct to string together the various musical numbers. The story begins on the fictitious Pacific island of Bananolândia (Bananaland), which is faced with the problem of a surplus of bananas. The island’s prime minister (played by comic actor Oscarito) suggests that the queen of Bananolândia (played by the singer Dircinha Batista) go to Brazil to sell the surplus, and she promptly arrives in the Brazilian capital in

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figure 4 .2.

Carmen Miranda performing “O que é que a baiana tem?” in the Brazilian movie Banana da terra (1938). Screen shot.

figure 4 .3. Sketches of Josephine Baker (left) and Carmen Miranda in baiana costumes. A Noite, 24 May 1939, p. 2.

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the midst of its legendary carnival celebrations. The action then centers on the cosmopolitan setting of Rio’s casinos and radio stations, facilitating the inclusion of a range of musical performances. Despite performing just two musical numbers in the fi lm, tellingly it is still Carmen Miranda’s name and photograph that take center stage in the production’s publicity material. Miranda’s screen baiana in Banana da terra had far-reaching impact. Immediately following the film’s premiere in 1939, hundreds of men took to the streets of Rio wearing versions of the star’s baiana costume. There had been a long tradition of cross-dressing in Rio’s carnival, with men borrowing clothes from their female relatives to dress as fake baianas or other drag guises, but in the 1939 carnival these men were clearly taking their lead from Miranda’s screen baiana. As Green notes, gay men only began to dress as baianas after seeing her performance in this fi lm, instantly recognizing her camp quality and availability for parody.46 Equally thanks to Miranda’s performance of “O que é que a baiana tem?” in Banana da terra, the largely unknown regional term balangandã (sometimes written balangandan)—which appears in the lyrics and refers to the Afrodescendant religious amulets worn by the baiana priestesses of the candomblé religion—entered the everyday vocabulary of Brazilians all over the nation.47 In August 1939 a stage production entitled Joujoux e balangandãs (Trinkets and Amulets) was performed at Rio’s Teatro Municipal to raise funds for the charitable work of Brazil’s fi rst lady, Darcy Vargas, a sure sign that the ethnically loaded term had now gained national respectability and resonance. The show culminated with the performance of the song “Nós temos balangandãs” (We Have Amulets) by a group of white women in caricatured baiana costumes (figure 4.4). Female members of Rio’s elite dressed as baianas to attend the show, as a small ad in the Correio da Manhã on 23 July 1939 attests: “Joujoux e Balangandans—for this party an elaborate stylized baiana costume, made of gold sequins, is for sale.”48 The same newspaper reports on 30 July 1939 that after the show ended, members of the audience and amateur performers headed to the Urca Casino and improvised some of the numbers from the show on stage there.49 Just a few weeks later the Brazilian press was advertising a forthcoming show at the Cassino da Urca with the anglicized title “Urca’s balangandãs,” billed as “the voice and the music of Brazil for tourists.”50 The “exotic” term balangandã had clearly captured the zeitgeist and had become a metonym for Miranda’s baiana persona, which in turn was emerging as a marker of Brazilian identity, albeit a highly ironic one fraught with obvious contradictions, not least for the country’s “white” elite. Mi-

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figure 4 . 4 . White women in baiana costume performing the number

“Nós temos balangandãs” (We Have Amulets) from the show Joujoux e balangandãs (Trinkets and Amulets) at Rio’s Municipal Theatre. Correio da Manhã, 28 July 1939, p. 14.

randa’s version of the baiana further nuanced the figure’s meanings, however, and fi nessed its suitability as a national symbol that could be readily exported. The elements of difference that she introduced to the performative archetype in her performance in Banana da terra and on the stage of the upscale Cassino da Urca (white skin; European phenotype; the sexy bare midriff; hip-hugging, bias-cut satin skirt; attention-grabbing, lightreflecting fabrics; a knowing self-referentiality; and so on) had nothing to do with real-life baianas like Tia Ciata, who thus remained untarnished by Miranda’s sexualized persona. Concomitantly, Brazilian national identity, both at home and abroad, remained untarnished by any associations with African blackness or phenotypical signifiers. Miranda’s baiana instead encapsulated aspects that were increasingly gaining national prominence and thus ripe for commodification, including exoticism, tropicality, and hybridity, asserting Brazil’s specificity and difference but fi rmly within a white, Western tradition. 51 The fi lm Banana da terra was not the cinematic debut of the baiana, however; in the 1933 Hollywood movie Flying Down to Rio the AfroAmerican actress Etta Motten played the part of a Brazilian baiana wearing a very realistic version of the outfit, and in the Brazilian carnival fi lm Alô, alô, carnaval! (Hello, Hello, Carnival! [1936]), the actress Heloísa

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Helena appears in this traditional dress. Flying Down to Rio was so successful in Brazil that it is quite likely that Carmen Miranda and the producers of Banana da terra saw it and were perhaps influenced by its representation of the baiana. In November 1938, in a performance at the Urca Casino witnessed by the Hollywood star Tyrone Power, Miranda wore a baiana outfit designed by the illustrator, cartoonist, and fashion designer J. Luiz (better known as Jotinha) and adopted visibly darker facial makeup than she had in Banana da terra, fi lmed earlier that month. Trading on the landslide success of this fi lm, Miranda went on to perform “O que é que a baiana tem?,” written by Dorival Caymmi, at the Cassino da Urca in February 1939. It was this performance that attracted the attention of a particular member of the audience, the US show business impresario Lee Shubert, who promptly offered Miranda a contract to perform on Broadway.52 In a famous photograph taken at the casino in 1939 before her departure for New York, Miranda is dressed as a baiana and is again clearly wearing brownface makeup, as was the tradition when performing certain sambas that dealt with Afro-Brazilian characters in their lyrics, such as “Boneca de piche.”53 On 4 May 1939, Miranda set sail for New York, vacating the stage of the Urca Casino in time for Josephine Baker’s arrival a few days later. Rio’s casinos allowed elite audiences to feel a connection with the Casino de Paris by featuring international stars. Carlos Machado, a dancer who had lived in Paris and worked with the well-known star Mistinguett, became the master of ceremonies at the Cassino da Urca in 1940, and he created the resident dance band, the Brazilian Serenaders. As the use of English suggests, such venues were seeking to create a cosmopolitan allure, not least by contracting international star attractions such as Baker. 54 Baker played a key role in transnational dialogues and exchanges, most famously between the United States (Harlem), France (Paris), and a mythical black Africa. Mediated by her passage through the artistic circles of cosmopolitan Paris, and performed by an “authentic” North American star associated with the Harlem Renaissance, Baker’s version of the baiana offered the white elite audience of the Urca Casino in May 1939 a palatable performance of one of the most celebrated yet “racially” marked popular tropes of Brazil’s colonial past. As Jules-Rosette argues, “[T]here is potential for new research on Baker to articulate with multicultural studies of the African diaspora,” and her article follows Paul Gilroy’s lead in highlighting the “roles of diasporic figures in constituting transatlantic dialogues.”55 Even before she fi rst set foot there in 1929, Josephine Baker was a

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household name in Brazil. In 1927 Paulo de Magalhães had published an article in the magazine Para Todos based on an interview he had conducted with her in Paris. He tellingly wrote: Josephine Baker, dark-skinned star of Paris. The fi rst news about her to arrive here called Josephine Baker a black star. This gave rise to the appearance of several jet-black stars on the stages of Rio. Then, photographs and word of mouth revealed that Josephine Baker was not as black as all that. Here is a picture of her, showing that she is only dark-skinned, without the features, not even the nose, of colored actresses that we see around here. 56

In January 1929 the São Paulo–based Afro-Brazilian newspaper Progresso referred to her as “the Black Salomé,” using the Portuguese term negro to refer to her and other figures they held in high esteem. 57 Baker’s fi lms were widely advertised in the Brazilian press, 58 and her impact on the zeitgeist is amply reflected in the numerous intertextual references that allude to the star within the realm of popular performance. Juçara de Oliveira, daughter of the famous Afro-Brazilian clown Benjamin de Oliveira59 and briefly a child star of the teatro de revista, was described in the press, for example, as being “the color of Josephine Baker.”60 The revues of the teatro de revista drew heavily on the topical headlines of the day, not least Baker’s success in Paris and her tour of South America. The revue Laranja da China (Orange from China), staged at the Teatro Recreio in April 1929 and starring Araci Cortes, a performer discussed in more detail below,61 included an imaginary, and prophetic, encounter between Baker and Cortes featuring the Argentine comic actor Palitos playing “Josephina Baker” in drag.62 On 18 November 1929, Baker fi rst appeared on stage in Brazil at the Teatro Cassino in a visit organized by the impresario Nicolino Viggiani. Alongside her jazz band, the so-called Negros Cubanos, she starred in Casamento de preto (Blacks’ Wedding) with Grande Otelo and sang the well-known song “Boneca de piche” (Tar Doll).63 The newspaper headlines of the time illustrate the impact of her performances in Brazil: “The great coup of the impresario Viggiani, Josephine Baker in São Paulo,”64 and “she has come to America.”65 On 25 November 1929, Baker appeared at Rio’s Teatro Santana, where she proved to be a tremendous success.66 In a volume of her memoirs, Baker writes of a “succulent feijoada washed down with paraty”67 at a party held in her honor at the chic Confeitaria Colombo tearoom in downtown Rio, which she attended with Araci Cor-

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tes.68 She continues, in relation to her new friend Cortes: “she dances the maxixe like I dance the Charleston. It was riotous fun. A great party, in the Rio style, a wild time.”69 Baker’s stage-managed encounter with the mixed-race teatro de revista star Cortes has been analyzed by Judith Michelle Williams from the perspective of the “intra-diasporic gaze of recognition” that it gave rise to.70 Williams situates this genuine physical encounter within the transnational circulation of people and ideas that characterized the Black Atlantic, and within the understudied tradition of Brazilian participation in these cultural migrations. Baker’s blackness evidently presented a problem in Brazil, and her deliberate positioning alongside Cortes, herself labeled as mulata assumida,71 attenuated her dark menace by giving her the reflected identity of the mulata. Sexualized blackness was still problematic in Brazil, despite Baker’s close associations with metropolitan modernity, so she was conveniently transformed into a mulata as her lascivious star text fit the latter’s stereotypical depiction. Unlike the black female performers of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, Baker had been referred to in the Brazilian press in 1927 as “not as black as all that.”72 She had gained the reflected identity of a pale-skinned mulata thanks to her implicit associations with Araci Cortes and was able to draw on her transnational credentials essentially to join the ranks of white women who performed the baiana on stage in black- or brownface, both before and after the brief existence of the Companhia Negra de Revistas. In Paris, Baker performed a composite version of “blackness” that conflated Harlem with the continent of Africa, and she effectively took on the role of minstrel in blackface. In the tableau “The Mississippi Steamboat Race,” from the Revue nègre, Baker’s lips were painted white to exaggerate her mouth, and her eyes were outlined in paint in the typical mask of minstrelsy. She drew heavily on her background in the minstrelsy tradition to construct her “racialized” persona Fatou in the “danse sauvage” of the Revue nègre as well as that of the Ebony Venus.73 When Baker took on the persona of the baiana in 1939 at the Cassino da Urca, without needing to darken her skin tone, she gave a de facto blackface performance of this stock type, just as Carmen Miranda had done with the aid of brownface makeup at the same elite venue some months earlier. The samba composer and radio presenter Ari Barroso acted as Baker’s host in Rio during her visit in 1939 and on 30 June accompanied her to a macumba ceremony in the suburb of Ramos, which he was charged with reporting on for Rádio Tupy.74 According to Jota Efegê, this visit was the brainchild of the magazine O Cruzeiro and the news-

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paper Diário da Noite, who entrusted its organization to Heitor dos Prazeres, Paulo da Portela, and other leading lights from the world of samba. He writes, “It was likely not a religious ritual, strictly speaking, but just a show that combined a mix of folklore, chanting and sambas. All with baianas and pastoras,75 swaying and dancing to the rhythm.”76 Efegê illustrates how this event, clearly manufactured for Baker’s benefit, was to provide inspiration for Barroso’s compositions, but it is perhaps also a telling indication of Baker’s fascination with Afro-Brazil, particularly its more performative aspects. On the stage of the upscale casino, both Carmen Miranda and Josephine Baker were acceptable to the white elite audience precisely because they were simply performing the baiana persona; Miranda’s white skin and European descent (she was born in Portugal, but emigrated to Brazil with her family as an infant) and Baker’s metropolitan blackness, US birthplace, and Parisian stardust provided them with “white masks,” to use Frantz Fanon’s term,77 sufficiently distancing them from the real-life black women on whom the baiana persona was based. Both Miranda’s and Baker’s casino baianas represent a visual and aural celebration of what James Clifford terms “traveling cultures.”78 The stage of Urca Casino, like that of the lowbrow teatro de revista, represented a fertile site of travel encounters, what Clifford would term a site of “displacement, interference, and interaction.”79 Baker, the international entertainer and thus the quintessential traveler, came into contact there with the baiana persona, an archetype of marginalized black Brazilian female subjectivity that she displaced onto the body and into the accented voice of a US-born black star of modernist Paris. Baker’s baiana is thus intrinsically transnational, relying on its interstitial, borderland position to acquire the cultural capital and cosmopolitan allure required by white elite audiences in Rio de Janeiro. A closer look at the baiana costumes worn by Baker and Miranda, respectively, on the stage of the Cassino da Urca reveals an important disparity between the performative options open to the two stars; the Rio newspaper A Noite on 24 May 1939 published a sketch of Baker “dressed as a baiana” alongside one of Miranda, also “in baiana dress” (see figure 4.3).80 The contrast between the two versions of the archetype is striking; whereas Miranda’s appears to be based on the costume she wore in the fi lm Banana da terra (consisting of a long, body-hugging, bias-cut skirt and a short, midriff-exposing cropped top, both in matching striped fabric), Baker is represented in what looks more like a stylized nun’s habit and wimple, with long sleeves and floor-length full skirt. The only exposed parts of Baker’s body are her hands and face, and the only obvious nod to the typical baiana look are her large hooped

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earrings. The sexual allure of Miranda’s baiana persona was clearly not permissible for a performer of Baker’s skin color (despite her transnational performance credentials);81 when the North American star appeared on stage at the Cassino da Urca performing “O que é que a baiana tem?” three days later, the “vedette colored” (colored star)—as the headline in the newspaper A Noite referred to her82 —wore a plain white baiana costume that hid her body under its traditional full, long skirt and demure peasant blouse.83 When representing a black Brazilian female archetype, this “colored” star’s matronly baiana costume contrasted markedly with the thigh-high split skirt worn by one of the accompanying chorus girls (a stylized mulata, performed by a white woman), and with Baker’s own reportedly “half-naked” performance of an “Arab Dance” later in the same show at the Urca Casino—the scanty costume revealing her dark skin, permissible in this case as a consequence of the performance’s “exoticized” distance from Brazilian subjectivity.84

the cross - border wanderings of carmen mir anda’s baiana As early as the end of the nineteenth century, the baiana performance archetype had begun to travel beyond Brazil. The stage version is thought to have fi rst crossed the Atlantic when Plácida dos Santos, widely credited as the fi rst Afro-Brazilian to perform this character on stage, danced the Brazilian lundu and maxixe on stage in France in 1889.85 Almost a decade later, the white Brazilian performer Sinhasinha Prates made her debut “em traje de baiana” (in baiana dress) in Portugal on 27 January 1898 in the one-act operetta Um atelier modelo (A Model Studio).86 The Portuguese actress Mercedes Blasco and the Spanish-born actress Pepa Ruiz also played the baiana in the Portuguese revue Tim-tim por timtim (Down to the Last T) in Brazil in 1892 and 1893,87 and Blasco reprised the role in Lisbon in As farroncas do Zé (Joe’s Boasts) in 1897 and 1898, as she recounts in her memoirs.88 As the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Lisboa reported on 22 January 1898, Blasco was obliged to “dance in the Brazilian style, wiggling her hips and performing a kind of belly dancing.”89 The baiana featured again on the popular stage in Portugal in the 1904 revue O ano em 3 dias (The Year in 3 Days)90 and in Festa rija (Wild Party [1944]),91 to cite just a few examples. In 1933 Araci Cortes took her stage baiana to Lisbon as star of the Tro-lo-ló theatrical company, the fi rst entirely Brazilian company to visit Portugal.92 In 1940, fourteen baiana dolls measuring close to two feet tall were sent to the Exposição Histórica do Mundo Português (Historical Exhibition of

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the Portuguese World), but they were removed from the Brazilian pavilion because some organizers deemed it would be “too depressing to present Brazil as a country of blacks and macumbas.”93 Nevertheless, the baiana persona clearly took hold in the Portuguese popular imagination, prompting a one-act comedy by Romualdo Figueiredo entitled O que é que a baiana tem? (What Does the Baiana Have?), written in 1942. In the play a conversation between the characters Gastão and Luciano echoes the interactive lyrics of Dorival Caymmi’s eponymous song: Dizem que a baiana tem dinheiro? Tem. E o que é que a baiana tem? Tem uns . . . uns prédios em Belém. Ah! Tem? Uma . . . uma quinta no Cacém. Tem? E . . . e . . . e . . . e outra em Santarém. Também? Tam . . . também? E dinheirinho, não tem? Tem. They say that the baiana’s got money? She has. And what does the baiana have? She’s got some . . . some buildings in Belém. Oh! Has she? A . . . a farm in Cacém. Has she? And . . . and . . . and . . . and another in Santarém. As well? As . . . well? And hasn’t she got a bit of money? She has.

Like Argentine audiences, the Portuguese wanted to consume a certain version of Brazilian identity that hinged on Afro-Brazilian cultural legacies. Brazilian songs were incorporated into Portuguese revues in the 1920s and 1930s, and they often caricatured Afro-Brazilian identity. This was the case of “Yáyá-Yôyô” (Missy-Massa), by Josué de Barros, which

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featured in the revue O canto da cigarra (The Song of the Cicada) of 1931, and whose lyrics re-created an imagined “black speak” that was popularized in the teatro de revista (see chapter 3).94 But it was with Carmen Miranda’s debut on Broadway in 1939 that the baiana persona was to defi nitively carve a niche for itself in the international imaginary.95 Miranda and her backing band, the Bando da Lua (Moon Band), arrived in New York on the SS Uruguay on 17 May 1939, and just two days later they performed a show for Lee Shubert and his colleagues at the Broadhurst Theatre to select the songs that they would perform in the show Streets of Paris. After a few weeks of rehearsals and a brief warmup run in Boston, the show premiered on Broadway on 19 June 1939, and Miranda, who performed just three numbers,96 became an overnight sensation, as did her baiana costume. As the magazine Collier’s reported, “Miss Miranda really did stop the show, despite being limited to six minutes, and she got raves from the critics.”97 In a few short weeks her face and colorful baiana outfits appeared on the pages of leading magazines such as Life, Vogue, Esquire, and Harper’s Bazaar.98 Claude Greneker, the public relations man for the Shuberts’ theatrical empire, refers in a press release to the source of inspiration for the baiana costumes Miranda wore in both her Broadway shows (Streets of Paris and Sons o’ Fun), but he tellingly elides their “racial” connotations: “While Miranda wears a great many necklaces and bracelets on the stage, mostly to carry out the color and character of a ‘Baiana Maid’ (native girl), she uses these decorations most sparingly in everyday dress.”99 Miranda had already showcased her version of the costume in Brazil earlier in 1939 (as discussed above), but she began to increasingly exaggerate and sexualize key aspects of the look once in the United States.100 If we compare her performance of the baiana in the Brazilian fi lm Banana da terra with the reviews of her appearances on Broadway, it becomes clear that the restrained dance moves presented to Brazilian cinema audiences (which allowed for the foregrounding of her vocal skills) were soon replaced by more provocative movements that played up to North American preconceptions of fiery, sexually voracious Latin American women. In reviews of her performances on Broadway, journalists repeatedly gave center stage to the Brazilian entertainer’s body, her physical movements, and her costumes. For journalists, she was “the volatile little entertainer” with “huge eyes, active hands, and sinuous hips,”101 and they emphasized her visual aspects and kinetic skills at the expense of her vocal abilities, openly demeaning her voice by poking fun at its unintelligibility. Within this recurrent celebration in the press of Miranda’s physical attributes and agility,

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journalists demonstrated a particular fascination with her bare midriff, which she exposed consciously and innovatively in her adaptations of the baiana costume. Roberts notes the tendency of critics to use the term “torrid zone” to refer to this part of Miranda’s anatomy, conflating her body with Latin America and “equating her ‘equator’ with that of the planet’s, the ‘torrid zone’ of South America, where it’s hotter than the rest of [the] planet and where the natives are stereotypically wilder, sexier, and more naked than other people.”102 Miranda was evidently well aware that her personification of the Latin American continent relied heavily on her elaborate and sexually alluring baiana costumes, a vital element of her spectacle. Tracing the roots of all aspects of the costume in great detail, Ligiero Coelho shows how Miranda increased its erotic appeal: Instead of being rounded and starched, Miranda’s tight wraparound satin skirt outlined her body contours. It gave more emphasis to her hips and more sensuality to her leg movements. Miranda only partially adopted the original baiana model, discarding the petticoats and keeping the long skirt to emphasize her body movements. For Banana da Terra, she chose a very bright and light fabric that showed off her body. She arranged the strips of the fabric in the center of the skirt, so that the skirt would highlight the constant movement of her hips.103

On the night that he fi rst saw her perform at the Cassino da Urca, Lee Shubert would have seen Miranda wearing dark makeup in a form of brownface performance, but as Bishop-Sanchez writes, “[I]n Miranda’s baiana the brown facial paint reinforced her whiteness and the performance as an artifice,”104 and it is telling that by the time Miranda’s baiana set foot on a Broadway stage, she had literally been whitened, the dark makeup jettisoned for good. By customizing the baiana look, Miranda effectively turned Afro-Brazilian culture into a performance of “Latin-ness” rather than “blackness,” thus rendering the baiana acceptable to mainstream white audiences. She was, however, still undoubtedly interpreted in the United States as a “racialized,” non-white Latin American, a phenotype that was endorsed by her adopted celebrity text, to which her visual and vocal styles were central. In Brazil, Miranda had been associated closely with Afro-Brazilian songwriters and performers, having grown up in the mixed-race district of Lapa in Rio de Janeiro and having recorded many hits by black samba composers.105 She thus represents a complex example of how ethnic female stars fictionalized their “racial” background

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once they had arrived in the United States, with some denying a non-white heritage and others exaggerating or entirely inventing a “profitable ethnic persona.”106 Despite being of southern European origin, she was viewed in the United States as non-white and as belonging to what Beltrán terms the “liminal ethnicity” of “Latinness.”107 As well as eroticizing and partially whitening the baiana for North Americans, Miranda entered into a knowing process of tropicalization via the adoption of what would become her trademark fruit-laden turbans.108 When she was called upon to perform “O que é que a baiana tem?” in the elite context of the Urca Casino in Rio, the performance that Shubert attended and that led directly to her departure for the United States, a more sophisticated version of the baiana costume was required, but as in the fi lm Banana da terra, artificial fruit again made its appearance on top of the baiana’s turban.109 Having experimented with the tropical touch back home in Brazil, Miranda’s creativity went into overdrive on arrival in the United States, where her millinery skills and those of a host of costume designers were put to full use in the quest to transform her into the personification of the perceived natural abundance and fertility of the Latin American continent. To fully appreciate Miranda’s sharp understanding of how to capitalize on the stereotype of tropical excess in creating her baiana persona, it is helpful to situate her Broadway performances within the context of the contemporaneous promotion of Brazil as a “land of plenty,” blessed with enviable export potential, at the New York World’s Fair of 1939–1940. In effect, Miranda transformed herself into the jewel in the crown of Brazil’s panoply of natural wonders displayed in the nation’s pavilion, a modernist construction that evoked the image of a tropical paradise combining “green walls, tropical flowers, and the smell of coffee.”110 She clearly took her role as unofficial cultural ambassador of Brazil very seriously, making personal appearances at the Brazilian pavilion largely on her own initiative.111 When interviewed by the Brazilian press shortly before her departure for the United States, Miranda took great pride in what she saw as her pivotal role in promoting her homeland, chiefly via the samba music and the six baiana costumes that she announced she would be taking with her.112 Her stylized baiana persona in New York complemented the discourse of the exhibits in the Brazilian pavilion, which housed lavish displays of Brazilian fruit, “especially oranges, which today are the national product that offers the greatest possibilities for increasing exports abroad.”113 White Brazilian hat-check girls at the restaurant in the Brazilian pavilion also wore pared-down versions of the baiana outfit, the US mixed-race dancer Katherine Dunham created the choreography for

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a number entitled “Baiana” in 1939,114 and the Brazilian singer Alzirinha Camargo adopted the baiana persona in performances in New York in 1940, performing in the pavilion in September that year accompanied by Ciro Rimac’s dance band, as well as on Broadway.115 A photograph of Camargo in baiana costume entertaining US troops in Washington, DC, was published in the Brazilian newspaper O Diário da Noite on 27 March 1942.116 Similarly, at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco in 1940, white women in baiana costumes performed in the Brazilian pavilion, where Carmen Miranda herself was photographed next to a display of Brazilian cotton. During the regime of President Getúlio Vargas (1930– 1945) a new model of national authenticity was manufactured, drawing on aspects of Afro-Brazilian culture such as samba music and the baiana costume to form a homogenizing official “Brazilian” culture.117 When Miranda and the Bando da Lua performed for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1940, this was not the fi rst time that the US president had been presented with the baiana, having attended a special folkloric show with a northeastern theme at the Cassino da Urca during his official visit to Rio de Janeiro in 1936.118 As early as July 1939, and virtually every month until May 1940, the US press referred to the influence of Miranda’s baiana look on trends in costume jewelry and women’s wear. With the enthusiastic backing of the Select Theatre Corporation, she was quick to exploit the power of celebrity as a commodity, employing her image for promotional and commercial gain via the endorsement of a range of products, particularly ladies’ clothing lines inspired by the baiana costume. The New York department store Macy’s promoted a line of clothing “in the style of Carmen Miranda”—including the “Fantastic South American Turban,”119 skirts, blouses, and platform shoes (a style of footwear that the singer favored)— as early as July 1939.120 Saks Fifth Avenue was quick to follow suit, stocking turbans and costume jewelry inspired by the star of Broadway. The Bonwit Teller department store created display mannequins whose faces were made from a mold of Miranda’s face and whose poses emulated her characteristic dance moves.121 Such was the commercial power of her image that unendorsed and counterfeit products soon found their way onto the market, one of several illegal uses of the Miranda “brand.”

the baiana goes to holly wood Carmen Miranda’s landslide success on Broadway in 1939 was reported throughout the United States and naturally caught the attention of the

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Hollywood studios. The columnist Walter Winchell reported in the Daily Mirror, in a column syndicated to newspapers all over the country, that a new star had been born, and his praise for Miranda and her Bando da Lua was repeated on his daily show on the ABC radio network, which reached 55 million listeners.122 As soon as news of Broadway’s latest star, the socalled Brazilian Bombshell,123 reached Hollywood, Twentieth CenturyFox began to develop a film to feature Miranda. Tellingly, the working title of the project was “The South American Way,” the title of a song she performed to rapturous applause in New York; her performance in what would later be titled Down Argentine Way (1940), her fi rst Hollywood fi lm, would draw heavily on her Broadway baiana persona. This was the fi rst of a series of so-called Good Neighbor musicals featuring the Brazilian star, in which she functioned as a de facto Latin American envoy, personifying the official US policy of using popular culture, particularly fi lm, to foster closer links and greater understanding between the United States and Latin American nations.124 In Down Argentine Way and the followup fi lm, That Night in Rio (1941), she appears in spectacular baiana costumes, designed by acclaimed wardrobe artist Travis Banton, that exploit to the full the potential of Technicolor. In Down Argentine Way her performance style was based very closely on her performances in Streets of Paris, in which she had sung the same three songs, as well as her act at the Waldorf Astoria nightclub in New York. In That Night in Rio Miranda’s costumes are all adaptations of the baiana costume and characterized by colors that maximized the potential of Technicolor, oversized beads and earrings, lamé and sequined fabrics that catch the light, and extravagant turbans, variously decorated with brightly colored feathers, artificial flowers, or fruit (figure 4.5). She was thus drawn in obvious opposition to the white North American women who populate the fi lm in their glamorous evening gowns and sophisticated hairstyles, not least leading lady Alice Faye. Against a nightclub stage set that evokes the coastline of Rio de Janeiro by night as fi reworks explode in the sky, female dancers in pale imitations of her baiana costume frame Miranda with sparklers as she performs the song “Chica, Chica, Boom, Chic” in Portuguese. She is wearing a baiana outfit composed of a silver lamé bias-cut skirt and turban made of matching fabric and decorated with fruit, a cropped top that exposes a broad section of her midriff, and abundant costume jewelry. In her next three fi lms Miranda’s baiana costumes were characterized by their gaudiness, with clashing fabrics, increasingly adorned turbans, and an excess of costume jewelry—a far cry from the more elegant designs of Travis Banton in her previous two Hollywood productions. In

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figure 4 .5 . Carmen Miranda in a stylized baiana outfit in the Hollywood film That Night in Rio (1941). Screen shot.

Weekend in Havana (1941), for example, she performs the rumba “The Ñango” on a nightclub stage, clad in a hybrid of the baiana costume and that typically worn by Cuban rumberas (rumba dancers).125 The midriffexposing blouse of the baiana has been replaced with a gold lamé, sleeveless, cropped top and huge stand-alone puffed sleeves whose showy green, red, and yellow fabric are repeated in the oversized frills that decorate the hemline of the long, bias-cut baiana-style skirt. Her tall turban is extravagantly decorated with red, green, and gold baubles and feathers. In Springtime in the Rockies (1942) much of the repartee centers on the clothes that Miranda (Rosita) wears.126 In a scene in which she is wearing a plain white baiana costume, she makes it clear that her preferred style is much more elaborate, declaring, “It needs some beads, some flowers, fruits, baubles, knacks, knicks.” By the time Miranda starred in The Gang’s All Here (1943), her versions of the baiana costume had reached absurd, high-camp proportions, particularly her increasingly outlandish turbans. In the opening musical number, when Miranda appears to be off-loaded onto a New York quayside from the SS Brazil along with other tropical cargo, she wears a turban bedecked with what appears to

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be a large, flat plate of fruit, and a cropped top and skirt decorated with brightly colored pompons, a costume that clearly aims to conjure up connotations of joie de vivre and tropicality. In Greenwich Village (1944), a Technicolor musical set in the eponymous New York City district in 1922, Miranda managed to adapt the baiana costume to the historical context, fi rst appearing on stage in the down-market speakeasy Danny’s Den wearing a shocking pink and white version, complete with a turban decorated with lollipops, to perform a well-known song from the 1920s, “I’m Just Wild about Harry.” Elsewhere, visual nods are made to the baiana costume, often resulting in rather curious effects, as when she wears a green turban piled high with what appears to be her own long, plaited hair. A fancy-dress competition offers the narrative solution to keeping audience expectations fulfi lled and drawing on intertextual references to her previous screen performances in Hollywood. In this scene she appears in Danny’s Den resplendent in a dark-blue and white sequined baiana outfit with large, white, frilly sleeves, a tall, white-plumed turban, and her trademark platform shoes. In the wartime Technicolor musical Something for the Boys (1944), no opportunity was spared (yet again) to make visual jokes at the expense of the Brazilian star’s instantly recognizable baiana costumes. The fi rst image of her character, Chiquita, is a close-up of her head on an ID badge that she wears at the munitions factory where she works. On the badge, and in the subsequent factory scene, she is wearing a simple fabric turban as part of her uniform. Later she appears in a kitchen in overalls and a turban constructed of a white towel and decorated with a scrubbing brush. In other scenes, her hair is pinned up into an elaborate topknot and decorated with large, brightly colored fascinators in a visual homage to her characteristic turbans even when she is dressed in relatively sober day wear. After the Second World War, Miranda’s fi lms at Fox were made on black-and-white stock, reflecting Hollywood’s diminishing interest in her and in the portrayal of Latin Americans in general, in keeping with the demise of the now strategically unnecessary “Good Neighbor Policy.” In Doll Face (1945) and If I’m Lucky (1946) her costumes still pay homage to her stock baiana look, but their visual impact is lost in monochrome. For her performance in Portuguese of “Tico-tico no fubá” (Tico-Tico Bird in the Cornmeal) in the independent production Copacabana (1946), she wears an elegant version of the nightclub baiana outfit reminiscent of her fi rst Hollywood performances, but her visual impact is diminished once again by the absence of Technicolor. In other musical numbers, how-

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ever, oversized, elaborately decorated turbans resurface, including one in the form of a chandelier. In the narrative sequences, turbans are teamed with elegant day wear such as tailored suits with knee-length pencil skirts and fitted jackets with large padded shoulders. The baiana costume reappears with a vengeance in the Technicolor Nancy Goes to Rio (1950), in which Miranda bursts onto the screen through a stage set of an oversized tambourine alongside brightly made-up circus clowns. Her baiana outfit consists of an eye-catching multicolored, striped, and sequined version of the skirt (emphasized via flounced underskirts) and a midriffrevealing cropped top.127 Her turban is flamboyantly decorated with miniature parasols in a range of bright colors. In the Paramount production Scared Stiff (1953), Miranda’s last fi lm, variations on the baiana costume are again taken to absurd lengths; in the musical number “The Enchilada Man,” for example, she gives a display of how to make the eponymous Mexican dish as part of a song and dance routine with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, and her baiana outfit is composed of a striped skirt and a huge turban adorned with kitchen utensils as well as fruit and vegetables.

the holly wood baiana on the move: the return journey to br a zil With the international success of Carmen Miranda’s Hollywood fi lms, her celluloid baiana was reproduced on screens all over the world and undoubtedly influenced how foreign film industries depicted “tropical” South America. In Portugal, for example, Down Argentine Way and That Night in Rio premiered in Lisbon in 1940 and 1941, respectively, and it is clearly no coincidence that in the Portuguese musical comedy O pátio das cantigas (The Courtyard of Songs [1942]) a character by the name of Rufi no dons an improvised turban and performs a visual parody of Miranda, mimicking her characteristic hand movements and facial gestures.128 Ten years later, Miranda’s Hollywood baiana was still informing Portuguese fi lmmakers’ representations of Brazilian performance. In the backstage musical comedy Os três da vida airada (The Fun-Loving Three [1952]), a group of female dancers and singers appears on stage at the Teatro Continental dressed as baianas and singing lyrics about samba and carnival against a set decorated with bananas. In Brazil, Miranda’s Hollywood fi lms provoked mixed reactions but had an undeniable visual impact. The baiana creations that she wore in That Night in Rio, designed by Travis Banton, were so widely commented on in the Brazilian press that the organizers of the Rio carnival parade re-

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quested replicas from the Twentieth Century-Fox wardrobe department to serve as inspiration for carnival revelers back in Brazil.129 Miranda’s version of the baiana became the template for Brazil’s national costume in international beauty pageants and even the clothes worn by souvenir dolls.130 It was in the Brazilian cinematic tradition known as the chanchada, however, that Miranda’s Hollywood baianas had their greatest impact. Looking to Hollywood for emblematic motifs of self-defi nition, the chanchadas of the late 1940s and 1950s reworked the baiana persona and, just as Miranda had done, whitened her skin. The Miranda clones in these low-budget black-and-white musicals are a pale imitation of the Hollywood star’s trademark look. They are stripped of a narrative role, primarily featuring as backing dancers who attempt to reproduce some of her characteristic dance moves but lack her exuberance and vitality. Miranda’s over-the-top footwear and tutti-frutti headdresses, for example, are replaced by much less extravagant but equally stylized baiana costumes, and in many ways the baianas of the chanchadas are more akin to the Hollywood B-movie Miranda mimics, such as Maria Montez, than to the so-called Brazilian Bombshell herself.131 The pale-skinned sweetheart of Brazil’s Atlântida studios, Eliana (Macedo), made frequent appearances in the song and dance sequences of the chanchadas wearing a sexy baiana costume that revealed her bare midriff, in apparent contradiction of her epidermis and innocent, homely roles in the narratives. In her fi rst fi lm, E o mundo se diverte (And the World Has Fun [1948]), Eliana sings the well-known samba “No tabuleiro da baiana” (On the Baiana’s Tray). The performance is strikingly reminiscent of a rendition of another of Ari Barroso’s sambas (“Os quindins de Yayá” [Missy’s Coconut Cakes]), by Aurora Miranda (Carmen Miranda’s sister), for which she too wears a baiana costume in Walt Disney’s partially animated feature fi lm The Three Caballeros (1945). Eliana’s celluloid baianas clearly owe a debt of gratitude to such Hollywood images, not least those of Aurora’s famous sister, Carmen.132 Throughout the 1950s versions of the baiana constantly reappeared in the song and dance numbers of the chanchadas. Such performances denied the nation’s Afro-Brazilian heritage and yet borrowed from it at the same time. In O camelô da Rua Larga (The Street Vendor of Larga Street [1958]), for example, a female lead singer—not coincidentally whiteskinned—takes to the stage in a nightclub dressed in a baiana costume and repeatedly sings “é samba” (it’s samba) to a percussion accompaniment. In a tokenistic nod to samba’s Afro-Brazilian roots, the backing

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singers and dancers who surround her are mixed-race and also dressed as baianas. They are distanced from the white baiana lead, however, as are the black musicians and male dancers dressed as malandros,133 via their choreography; against a stage set of cubist-style enlargements of African tribal masks—and in contrast to the white baiana’s poised, restrained vocal delivery and restricted movements—the black baianas and malandros dance frenetically to percussion accompaniment, appearing by the end of the number to be possessed by spirits (in a not-so-subtle allusion to samba’s historical links with the Afro-Brazilian religion candomblé). In the same vein, in a musical number in the chanchada Esse milhão é meu (This Million Is Mine [1958]), the pale-skinned star Sônia Mamede, wearing dark brownface makeup and a variation on the baiana costume, takes center stage as she dances to a cha-cha-cha. She is accompanied by black percussionists positioned at the side of the stage who are wearing a stylized version of African tribal dress. Their mock tribal drumming provides an odd introduction for the subsequent cha-cha-cha, accompanied by orchestrated strings and piano, in what amounts to a very fragmented musical number in which the percussion and the melody sit uneasily alongside each other. The white baiana thus distances herself from the nation’s African roots (in the form of the internally “orientalized” black percussionists) in apparent contradiction of the historical origins of her outfit. Within the chanchada tradition, the exoticized space of the nightclub stage, with its diegetic audience of foreign tourists and white elite Brazilians, provided the perfect environment in which to reproduce tropicalized, metonymic Hollywood motifs of an apocryphal “Latin American” identity via renditions of samba by pale-skinned baianas molded by an interhemispheric celluloid journey.

concluding remarks In Brazilian cinema of the 1950s, the baiana played by a white woman was once again a recurrent trope of Brazilian identity, just as the figure had been in the teatro de revista between 1889 and the early 1920s. The vogue for black performance that made its way to Rio de Janeiro from New York and Paris briefly opened a window of opportunity for AfroBrazilian women to perform as baianas on the popular stage in the mid to late 1920s. As a consequence of the impact in Brazil of transnational artistic currents, black Brazilian women were permitted to take on the role of baiana for the fi rst time. The Companhia Negra de Revistas did not bring about significant innovations, but it knew how to assimilate, stylize, and

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re-elaborate aspects of the musical theatre, reproducing them in an original, creative way.134 The performance of the baiana/mulata archetypes by this troupe was far from being an example of “rebellion through racial ventriloquism,”135 but was rather the adoption of a well-worn performative straitjacket that denied Afro-Brazilian women agency in the representation of their subjectivity. These were not blackface performances, or instances of selective masking, unlike those of Baker and Miranda on the stage of the Cassino da Urca just over a decade later. A letter from V. Benício da Silva, an official of the ministry of war, addressed to the ministry of education and dated 12 October 1941, exemplifies the reassertion of hegemonic codes of representation after the brief interlude enjoyed by the Companhia Negra de Revistas in 1926–1927. The author complains, at great length, about a show he has recently seen with a group of foreign dignitaries at the Urca Casino in which a production number commemorating “America Day” represented the Brazilian nation “ridiculously and indecently” in the form of the “mulata, with lascivious and indecent swaying of her hips, gestures only tolerated in theatres of the poorest quality.” He continues, “[T]urning the black, the mulato, into a national type; choosing this figure as a model for our nation, exhibiting him as a Brazilian symbol to foreigners who visit us in their thousands, in our theatres, in our casinos and even sending him abroad—this is inadmissible and deserves to be decisively and severely repressed.”136 While the author does not deny the contribution of black Brazilians to the formation of the nation in this correspondence, he deems them unfit to represent the nation on an elite stage. On this same stage, however, the Brazilian white elite had just two years earlier delighted in Carmen Miranda’s and Josephine Baker’s “white blackface” performances of Afro-Brazilian identity. After her arrival in the United States, Carmen Miranda personified the spectacular, with Technicolor exploiting to the maximum the exoticism of her baiana look in her earliest Hollywood fi lms, and the brashness of these costumes as the years wore on. Her increasingly stylized turbans, in particular, were a metonym for cultural alterity and an apocryphal female “Latin-ness.” The sheer excess of Miranda’s look and its increasingly tongue-in-cheek, camp quality undoubtedly contributed to her visual appeal and the longevity of her baiana screen persona. Her look became a kind of trademark that lent itself to parodic reworkings and imitations. Her caricatured baiana was parodied by the likes of Bob Hope and Mickey Rooney, and incorporated into Walt Disney’s feature-length animations about Latin America, Saludos Amigos (1943) and The Three Caballeros (1945). Miranda’s personification of Brazil as “fertile land of plenty / banana republic” in Hollywood, in the form of the increasingly

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caricatured baiana, was seen by many Brazilians as patronizing and even offensive. More recently, however, critics have identified a knowing parodic element in her screen persona that betrays a creative use of some of the empty clichés of Hollywood’s stereotypical latinidad/e.137 If we accept that non-narrative interludes allow for negotiated or subversive readings by spectators, we should note that the baianas of the Brazilian chanchadas of the 1950s, who clearly took their lead from Miranda’s Hollywood persona, always appear in the musical/dance sequences, when the narrative simply pauses. Thus they are instantly marked as synthetic constructs, totally separated from the “reality” of the story line. The screen audiences within the chanchadas do not identity with the baianas on stage, who perform for diegetic members of the elite and tourists. They are mere diversion, to be looked at by both the screen audience and its real-life counterpart. No intimacy is permitted between the baiana and the diegetic or extra-diegetic spectator, whereas Brazilian audiences were clearly intended to identify with the characters of the narrative proper, particularly the lowly caipiras (hillbillies), migrants, and marginalized urban dwellers. Ana M. López has argued that Miranda’s inclusion as a performer similarly freezes the narrative of the Good Neighbor Policy fi lms that she starred in at Twentieth Century-Fox, openly displaying her as an object of a voyeuristic gaze. However, Miranda herself undermines the passivity inherent in this role by aggressively returning the gaze of the camera and the spectator, and as a result she is seen to acknowledge and openly participate in her representation as “tropical other.”138 The chanchada can be viewed as a transcultural medium involved in a two-way movement of borrowing and lending between Hollywood and the Brazilian fi lm industry. In this respect, it is an example of what Néstor García Canclini calls “hybrid” or “impure genres,” which have expanded in Latin America upon contact with modernity, in this case in the form of Hollywood.139 The baiana clones of the chanchada are the product of a multidirectional cultural migration. To use Canclini’s terms, the baiana persona was “deterritorialized” upon its arrival in Hollywood with Carmen Miranda. He describes this process as “the loss of the ‘natural’ relation of culture to geographical and social territories.”140 Projected back to Brazil in Hollywood movies, and subsequently reappropriated by the chanchadas of the 1950s, the white-skinned baiana is “reterritorialized.” The baiana that appears on screen in these 1950s Brazilian fi lms has new symbolic meaning. She is an intercultural hybrid whose historical identity and memory in the Brazilian context are drowned out by the figure’s reworking in Hollywood. As this chapter has shown, the palimpsest of the performative baiana

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is intrinsically rooted in a transnational circuit of exchange that binds together West Africa, colonial and post-Abolition Brazil, Lisbon, Paris, Hollywood, and so on. It is thus unsurprising that this chameleonic figure has been performed by two of the most notable vectors of transnational exchange in the world of show business: Josephine Baker and Carmen Miranda, women whose contrasting “racial” categorizations foregrounded the performative, negotiable dimension of this trope of Brazilian national identity.

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On 12 M ay 2015, the day before the commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Brazil—a process fi nalized by the promulgation of the Lei Áurea on 13 May 1888—eight social actors took to the stage to discuss the depiction of Afro-Brazilians in the arts and wider society. This debate replaced a performance of the play A mulher do trem (The Woman from the Train), canceled due to antiracism protests sparked by black female architecture student Stephanie Ribeiro. Ribeiro had objected in her blog to what she perceived as blackface performance in the play. Ensuing discussions focused on the issue of racism in Brazilian society, especially in the context of the heated debates triggered by the proposed introduction in 2003 of racial quotas into Brazilian public universities and other traditionally privileged “white” spaces, but equally on whether the cancellation of the play represented an act of censorship. Reactions to the play, described by its creators, the group Os Fofos Encenam, as a “circus comedy,” also drew attention to the history of “racialized” performance in Brazil, specifically in the circus, still a relatively underexplored subject. As university professor Mario Bolognesi pointed out, the circus played an important role in the abolitionist cause, welcoming fugitive slaves, and in fact never engaged with the practice or concept of blackface. Instead, he argued, it relied on the performance of social types whose physical characteristics (including skin color—whether “white,” “black,” or “red”) were exaggerated for comic effect and to create obvious polarities that could be easily spotted by audiences in often large outdoor venues. Thus performers’ faces were darkened, lightened, or reddened to create what Bolognesi terms “masks.”1 Fernando Neves, director of Os Fofos Encenam, denies that A mulher do trem features blackface performance, a statement with which the award-winning journalist and social commentator Eliane Brum concurs, albeit in the strict conceptual sense of

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the term. Brum does, however, importantly ask, “Who says what is blackface? Those who do it or those who recognize it?”2 As this book has explored, from the time of Abolition onward, AfroBrazilian “race” has been a palimpsestic performative mask that could be mobilized by Brazilians from a wide spectrum of skin tones and physiognomies—ranging from the black chorus girls of the Companhia Negra de Revistas and the troupe’s creator, De Chocolat, to the brasileiríssima Araci Cortes (whose mixed African and European heritage made her a defi ning embodiment of Brazilian-ness by the mid 1920s, well before the Vargas regime’s official promotion of miscegenation as a central tenet of national identity); from the “blacked up” cast of the revue Guerra ao mosquito (War on Mosquitoes [1929]), who borrowed from traditions of US minstrelsy, to Carmen Miranda performing in her “whitened” baiana guise for foreign audiences. By the same token, “race” has traditionally also been camouflaged by other performative strategies, such as star texts that have foregrounded class over physical appearance, as demonstrated in the cases of early twentieth-century artists such as Eduardo das Neves, Geraldo Magalhães, and Plácida dos Santos. One aim of this book has been to give long-overdue prominence to little-known, marginalized performers and to showcase their individual and collective contributions to the evolution of popular culture and, by extension, representations of Brazilian-ness, illustrating their transnational sense of belonging to a diasporic entertainment community. My central argument is that throughout the historical period explored in this book (from Abolition until the 1950s) notions of racial and national identity have been constructed within circuits of transatlantic and interhemispheric exchange— to which the city of Rio de Janeiro has remained a key node in a network of metropolitan performance sites—and thus only fully make sense when viewed through a transnational lens. From the 1880s onward, the mobility of the residents of and visitors to Rio de Janeiro was principally facilitated via an increasing number of steamship lines and routes, in addition to metaphorical transnational journeys facilitated by the recording industry, radio, and cinema (and even apocryphal journeys made perhaps by the likes of De Chocolat). This movement of people and ideas further muddied the waters of “racial” representation on the popular stages of Rio de Janeiro, as evidenced by the performance of the baiana archetype by Josephine Baker at the Urca Casino in the late 1930s. As Davis rightly points out, “North Americans and Europeans were relatively more mobile and had more opportunities to travel than Brazilians. African American and black European ideas and music and cultural productions also circu-

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lated internationally with greater frequency than their Brazilian counterparts.”3 This was due in part to economic disadvantages experienced by black Brazilians in particular, but it did not prevent Afro-Brazilian idioms from circulating abroad, most famously via the baiana persona adopted by Carmen Miranda, but equally via the performances of lesser-known figures such as Geraldo Magalhães, Plácida dos Santos, and the members of the Tro-lo-ló theatrical company. As a nexus in shipping routes and transnational performance circuits, Rio de Janeiro enabled black performers such as the Oito Batutas and Liverpool-born Gordon Stretton—as well as the white ballroom dancer and entertainment entrepreneur Duque, the “whitened” Plácida dos Santos, and cultural magpie Jardel Jércolis—to actively contribute to and benefit from cross-border dialogues. Such dialogues resulted in popular artistic depictions of Afro-Brazilian subjectivity, and national identity more broadly, which were indelibly marked by transnational currents, interactions, and exchanges. Consequently, I contend that long-standing notions concerning the role of homegrown popular culture in identity construction at both the local and national level in Brazil in the aftermath of Abolition and during the fi rst half of the twentieth century must be reassessed and nuanced by placing a greater emphasis on the role played by transnational encounters and dialogues in shaping representations of nation, more specifically from a “racial” perspective. As Livio Sansone concludes in his landmark study Blackness without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil, in contemporary Brazilian society, in the wider setting of a globalized world, “ethnic and ‘racial’ formations are defi ned in the interplay between the local context and a trans-Atlantic circuit of ideas, categories, hierarchies, and black objects.”4 As illustrated in the previous chapters of this book, this has in fact been the case since the 1880s, and a diachronic perspective is essential to shed further light on the complexities of “racial” identity and representation in contemporary Brazil. This book’s charting of the historical evolution of the performance of “race,” and its foregrounding of the latter’s inherent transnational dimension, ensures that Brazil can no longer be marginalized within global debates about “race” and its construction. The cultural mestiçagem of the Vargas years and Carmen Miranda’s “whitened” Hollywood baiana may not have been what the black performers of the 1920s such as De Chocolat, the Oito Batutas, Déo Costa, and Araci Cortes had in mind for the evolution of racialized performance, but, as I have shown, it must be recognized as a direct legacy of their groundbreaking appropriation of transnational performance vogues, particularly their vernacular versions of primitivist modernist tropes that in-

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corporated what I have termed “transnational metonyms of modernity” and “cosmopolitan blackness.” Such performers evidenced a nascent panAfrican sensibility of cultural resistance and inchoate politicization. In the 1930s and beyond, the more radical aspects of their visions of black Brazilian identity were not given wider currency in the dominant narrative of race relations and cultural politics, but these pioneering artists and their audacious innovations set a precedent that would later be developed—perhaps unconsciously, in part—into radical cultural activism by the likes of the Teatro Experimental do Negro of Abdias do Nascimento;5 undoubtedly, their trailblazing must be seen in the wider context of the development of black consciousness throughout the twentieth century, not least during the liberation struggles of Lusophone Africa and the Black Power movement in the United States. Popular performance, and particularly its racialized aspects, has unquestionably informed wider societal attitudes, Brazil’s self-image, and how the nation is perceived in the eyes of foreigners. In the 1950s, for example, UNESCO commissioned a cycle of studies by social scientists of Brazil’s reputation as a “nation well on its way to peaceful and egalitarian interracial relations.”6 This project came at a time when, influenced subconsciously perhaps by Carmen Miranda’s fame and performance, the world turned its attention to Brazil to solve the dilemma of race. Their fi ndings did not overturn the notion of a “racial democracy,” a utopian vision engendered by the elevation of Afro-Brazilian popular culture as a marker of national identity during the Vargas era, and, I would argue, greatly facilitated by popular performers’ embrace of the transnational vogue for “cosmopolitan blackness” in the 1920s. The conclusions of the UNESCO studies did qualify this moniker, however, attributing major inequalities that correlated with skin color to class rather than racial discrimination.7 As Alberto writes, “Absent a system akin to Jim Crow or apartheid, racial disparities would disappear, social scientists predicted, as Brazil completed the transition from a slave society to a capitalist class society.”8 Similarly, time-honored racialized performative tropes, such as that of the lascivious mulata, have become deeply ingrained in the national psyche, with studies by sociologist Roger Bastide and others of interracial sexual relations in the late 1950s and early 1960s concluding that “middle- and upper-class white men saw black and especially mulatto women as sensual and easily accessible, in contrast to the chaste women they would marry.”9 The importance of popular culture and performance in the shaping of lived existence, particularly with regard to race relations and attitudes, is beyond question, and to paraphrase the words of Vic-

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tor Turner, cited in the introduction to this book and which underpin its very rationale, the relationship between everyday sociocultural processes and cultural performance is reciprocal and reflexive—and thus inherently political.10 In more recent years a dichotomy of opinions regarding race has emerged in Brazil, “one built on the premises of traditional a-racism and hybridism, the other on the premises of racism and racial/ethnic singularity.”11 The latter view became official government policy with the publication of then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s Human Rights Program in 1995 and has since taken on a more institutional form. In Cardoso’s words: “We wish to affi rm, and truly with considerable pride, our condition as a multiracial society and that we have great satisfaction in being able to enjoy the privilege of having distinct races [raças distintas] and distinct cultural traditions also. In these days, such diversity makes for the wealth of a country.”12 These recent transformations in terms of attitudes about race, I would argue, must be seen in the context of transnational dialogues that date back as far as the establishment of the First Republic and which now embrace “global networks of meaning that underpin the values of ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism.’”13 As is the case throughout the historical period examined in this book, tensions and contradictions around how Brazil defi nes itself in “racial” terms persist, and reactionary stances regarding “race,” and Afro-Brazilian subjectivity in particular, have never gone away—as evidenced by the continuing controversy surrounding racial quotas in public universities—but such voices have been muffled by a courageous and determined tradition of black agency that has emerged within popular performance since Abolition in 1888.

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introduction 1. As Marc Hertzman writes, while in relation to Brazil’s other cities Rio de Janeiro traditionally receives a “disproportionate amount of scholarly attention, the same is not true for the city’s black communities, especially in English and especially during the interwar period” (Making Samba, p. 6). 2. Rosenhaft and Aitken, “Introduction,” Africa in Europe, p. 3. Emphasis in the original. 3. Ibid. 4. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 18. 5. Ibid., p. 235. 6. Ibid. Their communication was thus often indirect and mediated by the culture industry. 7. Ibid., p. xiii. I concur with Seigel that “the value of transnational method is its ability to examine and critique the nationalism that remains a powerful political and intellectual force. Transnational subjects overflow and challenge national borders not in blithe disregard for those borders but because nation-states so profoundly, even violently, constrain them.” I agree that the term “transnational” is useful precisely because it “directs attention to cases in which national borders are not the pertinent containers for the phenomena at hand [and not] simply to replace either ‘international,’ which refers to the interactions of nation-states or representatives thereof, or ‘global,’ a gesture to the earth’s largest scale” (p. 16). 8. Matory, Black Atlantic Religion, p. 110. 9. Ibid., p. 267. Matory continues: “African culture [in Brazil] has most flourished in urban areas and among prosperous populations that, through travel, commerce, and literacy, were well exposed to cultural Others” (ibid.). Elsewhere he has shown how “Many apparently local, continent-bound or language-bound cultural formations— such as the Renaissance, Senegalese and Martinican Négritude poetry, Ghanaian panAfricanism, Afro-Cubanismo, and Congolese Soukous music—in fact have origins and reciprocal outcomes in geographically and linguistically distant regions of the African diaspora” (pp. 36–44). 10. Araujo, “Introduction: Interactions, Identities, and Images,” p. 2. Araujo underlines the importance of recent studies that have focused on the distinct position of Latin America—and particularly Brazil—and emphasizes the need to move beyond a comparative perspective “in order to understand how exchanges involving both sides of the Atlantic Ocean generated composite zones of complex interactions that gave birth to new religions and identities” (p. 3). 11. Gilroy, Black Atlantic. 12. Naro, Sansi-Roca, and Treece, “Introduction,” p. 4. 13. In this respect, Rio de Janeiro had much in common with Buenos Aires, “a port city in intimate contact with Paris” (Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 75). 14. Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity. 15. This gap in scholarship is identified by and, to some extent, addressed by

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Darién J. Davis in his book White Face, Black Mask. The focus of his study, however, is solely commercial popular music from the fi rst half of the twentieth century. He considers the influence that Afro-diasporic musical forms such as ragtime, the rumba, the Charleston, the shimmy, the fox-trot, and later jazz had in Brazil as well as other parts of Latin America (pp. 17–18). 16. As Dain Borges summarizes: “Between 1890 and 1940, Brazilian intellectuals responsive to scientific debates . . . reversed their evaluation of the African legacy. Initially, most intellectuals rejected the African heritage as one of the many dangerous and polluting social menaces that should be isolated or smothered. Around 1920, they shifted towards acknowledging it as an intrinsic element of Brazilian culture. The transition eventually enriched Brazilian social thought, but even during its course it produced interesting and fruitful ambiguities in ideology” (“Recognition of AfroBrazilian Symbols and Ideas,” p. 59). 17. Cowling, Conceiving Freedom, p. 5. Cowling illustrates how, in both these cities, “the combination of a long tradition in which enslaved people were at least theoretically able to claim freedom through the law, and the experience of gradual wombbased legal emancipation, made for some similar dynamics. On the one hand, legal change—which both reflected and helped produce social and political change—expanded the spaces for the enslaved and their relatives to seek freedom and craft their own defi nitions of what that ‘freedom’ promised. On the other, the gradualist strategy and the profound resistance to change among powerful sectors of each society severely limited those spaces” (p. 11). 18. Ibid., p. 18. 19. Borges, “Recognition of Afro-Brazilian Symbols and Ideas,” p. 63. As Borges writes, “During the oligarchical, anti-democratic First Republic of 1889–1930, AfroBrazilians had few advocates who would refute this labeling, and these were often marginal dissidents.” 20. According to Paulina Alberto, “The stigmas of race and servility associated with African slavery extended beyond those in bondage, shaping the lives of a large population of free people of color as well. After abolition, freedom and citizenship were similarly conditioned by racial and class inequities that survived and evolved in the absence of slavery. Brazilians of African descent made up roughly half the country’s population in the century after abolition, but they accounted for the vast majority of the nation’s poor and dispossessed” (Terms of Inclusion, p. 3). Kim Butler has studied the attempts by the white elite of the city of Salvador to ensure that Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions—what the elite saw as barbaric Africanisms—did not dominate in the aftermath of Abolition. In the 1890s they introduced measures to rid public spaces in the city of displays of the martial art/dance capoeira, samba parties, batuques (celebrations involving drumming), and Afro-Brazilian aspects of the entrudo carnival tradition, reflecting “anti-African prejudices and the equation of African culture with ‘savagery’” (Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, p. 177). Furthermore, George Reid Andrews has shown how Afro-Brazilians aspiring to middle-class status were “rigorously barred” from white social clubs, religious brotherhoods, athletic clubs, and dancing societies in São Paulo in the early 1900s—which is generally still the case—forcing them to establish their own social clubs in the state capital and major towns of the interior. In the 1920s, as resistance to the Republic grew, black men were similarly barred from entering the officer ranks of the armed forces and political organizations, leading, in

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1925, to the black-run São Paulo newspaper O Clarim d’Alvorada calling for the creation of the Congress of Black Youth, a political party composed solely of men of color (Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, pp. 141–145). 21. Love, Revolt of the Whip, pp. 4–5. As Love illustrates in this study of the naval revolt of 1910, commonly referred to as “the revolt of the whip,” racism was prevalent among the white officer class toward the noticeably and often strikingly darkerskinned sailors, reflecting wider societal trends. As Amy Chazkel writes in her history of the illegal gambling game jogo do bicho, in the early 1890s “talk of the dangerous masses arose in legislative debates, bureaucratic correspondence, and judicial writing that established the legal basis for its criminalization” (Laws of Chance, p. 17). She continues: “The political elite in Brazil saw the nation’s capital as a critical front in the country’s sporadic war between civilization and perceived barbarism.  .  .  . Concerns over public order grew in this period, shaped by existing class and racial fears, political anxieties and, in circular fashion, the process of criminalization itself” (p. 18). 22. Telles, Race in Another America, p. 24. For more details on the policy of “whitening” see Stepan, “The Hour of Eugenics”; Schwarcz, Spectacle of Races; and Skidmore’s intellectual history of racial ideology in Brazil, Black into White. As Skidmore writes, “whitening” was a theory peculiar to Brazil that was accepted by most of the Brazilian elite between 1889 and 1914, and “was based on the assumption of white superiority—sometimes muted by leaving open the question of how ‘innate’ the inferiority might be, and using the euphemisms ‘more advanced’ and ‘less advanced’ races. But to this assumption were added two more. First, the black population was becoming progressively less numerous than the white for reasons which included a supposedly lower birth rate, higher incidence of disease, and social disorganization. Second, miscegenation was ‘naturally’ producing a lighter population, in part because whiter genes were stronger and in part because people chose partners lighter than themselves. (White immigration, of course, would reinforce the resulting white predominance.)” (pp. 64–65). 23. Skidmore, p. 110. 24. Rosa, Brazilian Bodies, pp. 130–131. As Rosa continues, “since hygiene constituted one of the practical concerns regarding the informal commerce of food in public areas, these black food vendors were often blamed for or mixed with the bad odor and the promiscuity disgracing Brazil’s capital. This ethno-cultural battle reached a climax in the 1910s, when Mayor Pereira Passos launched an aggressive campaign to ‘civilize/ de-Africanize the city’” (p. 131). 25. Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, p. 60, citing Pixinguinha, whom Roberto Moura, in turn, cites in Tia Ciata (p. 84). Pixinguinha explains that when he received social invitations from members of the elite, such as the millionaire entrepreneur Arnaldo Guinle (see chapter 2), he would politely decline: “I understood that he was just being nice and I knew that he didn’t expect me to accept his invitation. So I too would be nice and not accept.” As Stam writes, “Pixinguinha’s account of negotiating the complex racial codes of 1920s and 1930s Rio gives a glimpse into the operative ‘racial etiquette’ of the time” (p. 371 n1). Hertzman also points out that despite their success in the local music scene in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century, both Pixinguinha and his Oito Batutas bandmate Donga “still found themselves below many of the more celebrated white mediators in material wealth and social prestige” (Making Samba, p. 118). Hertzman does stress, however, that “Rio’s Afro-Brazilian musicians

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were hardly the monolithic, impoverished mass they are so frequently depicted to be” (p. 119). 26. Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira has documented how the mixed-race soccer player Domingos da Guia was one of the fi rst nonwhite professional athletes to break through the color barrier in Brazilian sport. Pereira shows how sports journalists and intellectuals in Brazil in the 1930s portrayed him as a living embodiment of the myth of racial democracy (“Domingos da Guia,” pp. 147–164). It was only in 1938 that Brazil sent a national team to Europe that included black and brown players. The Clube de Regatas Vasco da Gama has gained mythical status as having taken a heroic, pioneering stand against racism and being the fi rst Rio de Janeiro team to accept black players. However, Antônio J. Soares explores the myth that has grown up around Vasco da Gama’s role in combating racism, providing a more nuanced overview of racism in soccer in this period (“O racismo no futebol do Rio de Janeiro nos anos 20,” pp. 101–121). 27. As Borges writes, “the international aesthetic movement of primitivism and the avant-garde ethic of transgression of taboos lent courage to some modernist intellectuals to reverse their valuation of the Indian and African heritage, thus breaking down boundaries between the ‘pure’ and the ‘polluted’ segments of the nation” (“Recognition of Afro-Brazilian Symbols and Ideas,” p. 69). 28. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, p. 10. Alberto goes on to explain how later, in the fi rst Vargas era (1930–1945), black intellectuals across Brazil “seized the opportunity to be considered full nationals, demanding compensation for their real and symbolic exclusion under earlier regimes, while proposing their own, regionally specific interpretations of what it meant to be a black or African Brazilian” (p. 11). 29. Skidmore importantly underlines, however, that the practical effect of Freyre’s analysis was not to promote racial egalitarianism, but rather “to reinforce the whitening ideal by showing graphically that the (primarily white) elite had gained valuable cultural traits from their intimate contact with the African (and Indian, to a lesser extent)” (Black into White, p. 192). 30. As Bishop-Sanchez writes, “Freyre’s text eloquently articulates Brazil’s racial melting pot, and although the expression ‘racial democracy’ is not explicitly used in Freyre’s text, it is from this seminal work that the concept develops to become Brazil’s official stance on race relations for years to come” (Creating Carmen Miranda, p. 45). For a detailed exploration of the process of co-option of Afro-Brazilian culture see, among others, Borges, “Recognition of Afro-Brazilian Symbols and Ideas”; Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil; Vianna, Mystery of Samba; and Skidmore, Black into White, pp. 178–192. Skidmore also notes the contribution to the valorization of African and Afro-Brazilian culture made by scholars such as the acknowledged leader of the Modernist Movement, Mário de Andrade, and Edison Carneiro, who researched the influence of African religions in Brazil (p. 192). Immediately following the publication of Casa grande e senzala, Freyre began organizing an Afro-Brazilian Congress in his home city of Recife in Brazil’s northeast “to bring together the academic establishment and the living culture in a format that had never before been attempted” (Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, p. 42). This was followed in 1937 by a second eponymous event in the city of Salvador, in the northeastern state of Bahia, organized by Carneiro, a young mixed-race scholar. As Butler states, “The Bahian conference brought forth a wealth of ethnographic data on Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions in the northeast. Far

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less attention was given to eugenics, although some of the papers continued to reflect stereotypical attitudes” (p. 43). She continues: “The second Afro-Brazilian Congress continued the direction set forth by Freyre in that it again represented predominantly white academic perspectives and concerns, although Afro-Brazilians were involved in the conference at all levels. Like the fi rst congress, it offered a positive perspective on African contributions to Brazilian history and culture. Yet close examination reveals that this view was narrowed by stereotypes with which whites limited the types of socially acceptable contributions” (p. 44). Daryle Williams has studied how the selection of artworks for exhibition abroad during the Vargas era was influenced by considerations relating to issues of race and underdevelopment. He writes: “The overriding concern was audience. On domestic soil, Brazilians enjoyed access to official spaces that included, at a minimum, some recognition of Brazil’s multiethnic character. On foreign soil, however, the steering committees who organized narrated Brazilianness abroad most often consciously tried to censor blackness and manual labor on the principle that foreign eyes needed to see a white and civilized Brazil” (Culture Wars in Brazil, p. 214). 31. Borges, “Recognition of Afro-Brazilian Symbols and Ideas,” p. 70. 32. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 153. 33. For details of the rise of the radio and recording industries in Rio de Janeiro, see McCann, Hello, Hello, Brazil; and Hertzman, Making Samba. For information on the emergence and consolidation of the fi lm industry in the sound era, see Dennison and Shaw, Popular Cinema in Brazil. 34. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, p. 12. 35. Ibid., p. 175. 36. Telles, Race in Another America, p. 22. 37. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. viii. 38. Telles, Race in Another America, p. 22. 39. Skidmore, Black into White, p. 39. Stam underlines that unlike in the United States, “racial classification in Brazil as early as the nineteenth century was pluralistic, involving not an epidermic dichotomy based on descent, but rather a subtle (if nonetheless racist) scheme involving a complex interplay of color, facial features, occupation, education, and social status” (Tropical Multiculturalism, p. 30). This complex system of “racial” (self)-identification persists to this day. As Stam adds: “The Brazilian system is less concerned with ancestry than with appearance; its racial spectrum nuances shades from preto retinto (dark black) through escuro (dark) and mulato escuro (dark mulatto) to mulato claro (light mulatto), moreno, and branco de Bahia (Bahia-style white), not to mention all those terms that have to do with European indigenous and African indigenous mixtures—cafuso, caboclo, mameluco” (p. 45). In 1976 the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the government agency responsible for the national census, drew up a list of all the different terms—134 in total—used by people to describe their skin color. For more details see Levine and Crocitti, The Brazil Reader, pp. 386–390. 40. Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, pp. 107, 249 n58. 41. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. xvii. 42. Ibid., p. xviii. Seigel also prefers to use whiter rather than white “to recognize the equally fluid, relative quality of this adjective” (p. xvii). As Stefania Capone reminds us, the term “white” is a social category, and a very dark-skinned Brazilian

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may even today be considered “white” because he or she occupies a higher social status (“The ‘Orisha Religion,’” p. 230 n7). 43. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. viii. 44. This is a reference to Carl Degler’s seminal study Neither Black Nor White. Degler coined the concept of the “mulatto escape hatch,” an intermediate social position that exists in Brazil (but not in the United States) whereby some mixed-race Brazilians are able to escape the disadvantages of African ancestry. As he summarizes, “In Brazil the mulatto is not a Negro, whereas in the United States he is” (p. xvii). 45. Davis shows how many artists identified as mulato/a became national icons of popular music by the early 1940s, including Orlando Silva, Sílvio Caldas, Dorival Caymmi, Assis Valente, Araci Cortes, Araci de Almeida, and Ângela Maria (White Face, Black Mask, p. xvii). Stam makes the point that Dorival Caymmi (discussed in chapter 4) “was light-skinned enough to enter into the cream of Brazilian society. He had no trouble breaking into the world of radio and fi lm, when those careers were still closed to all but a few darker Afro-Brazilians” (Tropical Multiculturalism, p. 109). 46. As Alexandre Emboaba Da Costa writes, “‘racial democracy’—the view that Brazilian race relations are relatively harmonious and that race is of minor importance in shaping identities and life chances—has long occupied the minds of Brazilians, whether as ideology, myth, ideal, or future hope. For much of the 20th century, racial democracy was employed by the state, elites, and middle-class whites to deny the existence of racism and racial inequality in society” (Reimagining Black Difference, p. 5). 47. Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity, p. 11. 48. Melo Gomes and Seigel, “Sabina’s Oranges,” pp. 9–20. 49. Ibid., p. 12. 50. Turner, Anthropology of Performance, pp. 21–22. 51. The term “gender performativity” was coined by Judith Butler in her seminal book Gender Trouble (fi rst published in 1990). 52. Ibid., p. 25. 53. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 26. This tradition also existed in Spain and Portugal, but the major difference was that in Brazil the musicians were all black or mixed-race (ibid.). For a detailed discussion of such musicians, see Tinhorão, História social da música popular brasileira, pp. 121–137. 54. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 29. 55. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, pp. 46–47. 56. Green, Beyond Carnival, p. 211. 57. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 13. 58. Ibid., pp. 77, 79. Ethnic origins could also be completely hidden by the recording process. 59. See, for example, Hertzman, Making Samba; Sandroni, Feitiço decente; Davis, White Face, Black Mask; Shaw, Social History of the Brazilian Samba; Vianna, Mystery of Samba; McCann, Hello, Hello, Brazil. McCann writes that “Afro-Brazilian sambistas . . . did not merely provide grist for the mill of commercial popular culture. They engaged the cultural market and played crucial roles in shaping new cultural expressions, gaining a cultural influence over the nation that stood in marked contrast to their continued marginalization in the economic and formal political spheres” (p. 11). He continues, “Through much of the Vargas period, radio stations and record labels shied away from featuring black performers, allowing white professionals to become

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rich and famous while Afro-Brazilian composers often remained relatively poor. Rhetorical praise of African influence served to mask this ongoing racism” (p. 12). 60. Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, p. 60. 61. Depê, O Degas, 5 September 1908, p. 5. 62. Lopes, “Vem cá, mulata!,” pp. 80–100. 63. The title of this revue refers to three contemporary carnival societies. In her study of Brazilian legal documents from the fi rst half of the twentieth century, Sueann Caulfield concludes that the most common unofficial categories used to describe people seen as neither black nor white were mulato/a, moreno/a, and mestiço/a, and that in general a mulato/a was considered to have a greater number of African features and darker skin than a moreno/a (In Defense of Honor, pp. 154–155). As Dennison and Shaw explain in relation to the contemporary Brazilian actress Sônia Braga: “The screen morena, of which Braga is the most celebrated example, is sensual, darkskinned, with long wavy hair and European features. . . . Given the general absence of people of colour from TV and cinema screens in Brazil, the morena frequently fi lls the role assumed by the mulata in other art forms” (Popular Cinema in Brazil, p. 175). This was evidently also the case in relation to Otília Amorim’s career in the teatro de revista of the 1920s. 64. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 192. 65. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 100. 66. Ibid. Davis points out, however, that the outspoken, low-class Cortes was not deemed suitable for a career at the elite Urca Casino or in the local film industry, unlike Carmen Miranda (whose white European heritage and ability to mix with the elite in her personal life endowed her with the necessary “class” to thrive in both performance spaces). The problematic nature of black female subjectivity for mainstream patriarchal society was further evidenced by reactions to the Mãe Preta (Black Mother [wet nurse]) monument campaign. As Seigel writes, “for Brazilians of all sorts the celebration of black Brazil in female form posed a dilemma that the scrim of nostalgia only partially resolved. Many black press supporters would have preferred to skirt the issue entirely, and to that end they repeatedly circulated proposals to monumentalize a great Afro-Brazilian man” (Uneven Encounters, p. 216). 67. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 127. 68. Ibid. 69. See Sandroni, Feitiço decente, for further details of this adoption of what were considered African musical characteristics (such as syncopation) by white musicians. 70. Hertzman, Making Samba, pp. 22–23. 71. Ibid., pp. 90–91. 72. Celso Thomas Castilho examines the importance of elite theatrical and carnival performances to the Brazilian abolitionist movement, which involved presenting slavery as a national problem (“Performing Abolitionism,” pp. 377–409). As Castilho notes, however, these theatrical performances of works such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and José de Alencar’s Mãe (Mother [1860]) produced narratives of progress that stigmatized Afro-Brazilian identity and denied the place of freed slaves in the “newly envisioned body politic” (p. 379). He points out that, unlike the slave narrative genre in the United States, these performances did not aim to illustrate aspects of slave life, but rather to encourage the abolition of slavery and to help white elite audiences imagine a new social reality (p. 393).

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notes to pages 14–15

73. A photograph of Batista wearing this makeup appeared in SBACEM’s Boletim no. 3 (April 1950, pp. 3, 5). In 1950 this tradition still existed, with Brazilian stores selling Nega Maluca costumes based on those worn by the character of Topsy, the young female slave in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 220). 74. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. xvii. 75. For more on the black press’s appropriation of this figure, see Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, pp. 98–99. For more details of the Mãe Preta monument campaign, the press’s involvement, and its transnational dimension, see Seigel, Uneven Encounters, pp. 206–234. 76. Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, p. 215. 77. Seigel sees the fact that this black church approved of the Companhia Negra de Revistas as evidence that “black-identified Brazilians understood Afro-diasporic cultural production as valuable anti-racist collaboration” (Uneven Encounters, p. 119). 78. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, pp. 87–88. The campaign to erect a monument in Rio had petered out by the end of the 1920s. In São Paulo, however, the project was revived, and in 1955 a statue was unveiled in the Largo do Paissandú in the city center, a small square that had been the site of the city’s oldest black religious brotherhood, Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Pretos (pp. 209–210). 79. Ibid., p. 88. In an essay that Freyre wrote later that year, entitled “On the Valorization of Things Black,” he recounted, “As we listened, [we] could hear the great Brazil that is growing half-hidden by the phony and ridiculous official Brazil where mulattos emulate Greeks” (cited in Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, p. 114). Alberto writes, “Freyre, it appears, not only succumbed to the charms of Rio’s African-inflected popular culture but also imbibed many locals’ emerging views of that culture as the basis for a more authentic national identity, distinct from those of Europe and the United States” (Terms of Inclusion, p. 88). 80. Mitchell, “Racial Consciousness,” p. 159. 81. Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, p. 90. 82. Ibid., p. 93. 83. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, p. 68. Partially this stance was in reaction to the continued influx of European immigrant laborers to São Paulo, in particular. 84. “Os pretos e o teatro moderno,” Progresso, 19 August 1928, p. 2. 85. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 120. Seigel writes: “This flexible, transnational ‘us’ deftly sidestepped the differences in defi nitions of black identity prevailing in different places” (p. 120). She continues: “Black press writers used the recognition awarded urban Afro-Brazilian culture abroad as both stick and carrot” (p. 121). She gives the example of Clarim editor Jaime de Aguiar, who emphasized the European fame of the Companhia Negra’s founder and writer, De Chocolat, and proposed a black-based, inclusive nationalism. Aguiar was explicitly optimistic about the company’s ramifi cations for Afro-Brazilians, but he expressed his optimism in terms of nation rather than race. “It is for all of us, this theatrical event . . . yet another fi rm and victorious step to the temple of progress, in the evolution of our country . . . the fact will, for sure, contribute to the rebirth of the national theatre” (Jaime de Aguiar, “Nossos parabéns!,” Clarim, 22 August 1926, pp. 1–2, cited in Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 121). For a detailed overview of Brazil’s black press and its transnational links, see Seigel, Uneven Encounters, pp. 179–205. Seigel writes:

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notes to pages 15–19

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The Afro-Paulista press enjoyed far-flung interlocutors in the city of São Paulo, São Paulo State, Brazil, and beyond. Outside of Brazil, in addition to Italian newspapers, editors and writers from the African American press noticed and engaged its work. The engagement was reciprocal, though imperfectly so: the United States and Brazilian black presses reached out to each other in an irregular, uneven embrace, reading and reprinting material from each other’s pages and sometimes entering into more direct communication. (p. 182) She adds: “The asymmetry of inter-American relations kept Afro-Brazilians from the liquid clarity of empathetic Pan-African solidarity. . . . The journalists found ways to imagine racially inclusive national communities and broader diasporic identity formations nonetheless. Indeed, inequity is the mother of utopian collective invention—not a barrier, but the very condition of transnational exchange” (p. 183). 86. Ibid., p. 59. Butler explains that “the Frente was unable to win broad support throughout Brazil, in part because, for many Afro-Brazilians, a race-based identity of ‘blackness’ confl icted with their social realities and practical self-identities in their everyday lives” (Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, p. 93). 87. For more details see Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, pp. 212–223. 88. Ibid., pp. 213–223. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., p. 217. 91. For a comprehensive survey of the period between 1898 and 1914—the socalled Belle Époque—when culture of European derivation flourished among Rio de Janeiro’s elite, see Needell, Tropical Belle Époque; for details of the urban renewal and public health campaigns in the city during the First Republic, and the popular protests they provoked, see Meade, “Civilizing” Rio; and for the sociocultural changes in Rio de Janeiro during the Belle Époque, see Sevcenko, Literatura como missão, pp. 25–77. 92. Karasch, A vida dos escravos no Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850, pp. 19, 27. 93. Noronha, Malandros, p. 33. 94. Sevcenko, Literatura como missão, p. 36. 95. Carvalho, Porous City, p. 76. 96. Ibid., p. 153. 97. Ibid., pp. 8–10. 98. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 45. 99. Ibid. 100. For more details see Barman, “Brazilians in France,” pp. 23–39. 101. Ibid., p. 25. 102. Ibid., p. 36. 103. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 20. 104. Ibid. 105. Needell, Tropical Belle Époque, p. 45. 106. Ibid., p. 165. 107. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 21. 108. Vianna, Mystery of Samba, pp. 67–73. The maxixe “O boi no telhado,” written by José Monteiro under his pseudonym, Zé Boiadeiro (Joe Cowboy), was incorporated into one of the Ba-ta-clan theatrical company’s revues, and the French title gave its name to a Paris nightclub. Seigel writes: “Although Milhaud did recognize his debt

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notes to pages 19–23

to Brazilian popular culture, his high-culture colleagues, critics, and audiences read ‘Le boeuf’ as upgrading a quaint folkloric tune, rather than as citing a recent, urban creation” (Uneven Encounters, p. 114). 109. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 24. 110. Ibid., p. 27. 111. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 104. 112. Ibid. 113. In the 1920s there was a fashion in Rio’s popular theatre for importing Argentine leading ladies (or vedetes) such as Renata Fronzi and Irma Alvarez. 114. This company is discussed in more detail in chapter 3. 115. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 178. The brothers were Spanish-born but raised in Argentina. 116. Barros had earlier visited Paris with Duque. 117. A Noite, 24 March 1936, p. 2. 118. O Cruzeiro, 4 April 1936, p. 19. 119. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. xxvii. 120. Ibid., p. 161. As Davis writes, “Buenos Aires represented an important international space in the Brazilian imagination, one that helped to globalize Brazilian popular music.” 121. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 175. 122. Tinhorão, O Samba agora vai, p. 37. From there, Romeu Silva went on to perform in various cities in Spain and, subsequently, in Paris, where after adopting the name of Orchestre Brésilienne and adding a few new US and French musicians into the mix, he was invited by then-president of France Albert Lebrun to perform at the inaugural Longchamps evening horse racing event. His band also accompanied Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris, and made gramophone recordings with the star, including “J’ai deux amours” and “La petite tonkinoise.” After performing in Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, England, and even Siam (present-day Thailand), Silva returned briefly to Brazil, only to rename his band the Brazilian Olympic Band and head off to Los Angeles with the Brazilian delegation to the 1932 Olympic Games. He later spent a year in Argentina before returning to Rio de Janeiro to play at the Urca Casino, from where, in 1939, he was dispatched by the Vargas government to represent Brazil at the World’s Fair in New York. The following year he took part in the Festival of Brazilian Music at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York (Tinhorão, O Samba agora vai, pp. 37–40). 123. Silva interview in “A música barulhenta,” A Notícia, 26 October 1923, n.p. Cited in and translated by Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 125. Seigel writes: “Although Silva’s specific referent is not clear, it is fairly obvious that he was making a racially ordered comparison, given the implications of monkeys and moral laxity in the lexicon of his day. Unable or unwilling to distinguish the national origins of the orchestra he disdained (French or North American?), Silva set an exclusive, white Brazilian nationalism against the competing ‘nationalism’ of the African diaspora.” 124. See chapter 1. Masters was born at 43 Hopwood Street, Liverpool, on 5 June 1887, the son of a Jamaican sailor of the same name and a mother of Irish descent, and he died in 1982. After performing with the Eight Lancashire Lads clog-dancing troupe, he left Liverpool for the neighboring city of Chester and then moved to Wales, where he performed as a singer and dancer, as well as playing the banjo and mandolin in 1907

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(Daniels and Rye, “Gordon Stretton,” pp. 79–80). Masters also joined forces that year for some performances with the Kingston Choral Union Choir, taken to England by the Welsh businessman and trader Sir Alfred Lewis Jones in 1906 to initially perform at his exhibition of colonial products at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool. To all intents and purposes, Masters was assumed by audiences to be Jamaican, an assumption he was content to endorse. When the choir visited Jamaica in January 1907, The Jamaica Times referred to “Mr. W. J. Masters” as the son of Jamaican parents who was born onboard ship (ibid., p. 80). In the late 1920s he went to Buenos Aires, hired by Augusto Alvarez to work at the Select Lavalle Cinema. From 1929 on he performed in Argentina with his self-styled Gordon Stretton’s Symphonic Jazz Band, which once shared the bill with Carlos Gardel at the Cine Teatro Suipacha in Buenos Aires (ibid., p. 86). 125. See advertisements in the Correio da Manhã, 3 October, 21 October, and 25 October 1923. In August 1923 Stretton sued the Ba-ta-clan company’s director, Mme. Rasimi, for breach of contractual obligations, requesting as recompense six steamship tickets that he and his band members were entitled to. These were duly handed over by the fi rm of solicitors representing her (see Correio da Manhã, 23 August 1923, p. 5). For more on the Ba-ta-clan company’s performances in Rio and their impact on performance traditions in the teatro de revista in the city, see chapter 3. 126. A Noite, 31 August 1923, p. 2. 127. Correio da Manhã, 30 September 1923, p. 6. This item mentions that the band had previously played with the French singer and theatrical star Mistinguett and her stage partner Earl Leslie in Rio. On 3 October 1923 the same newspaper reported that Stretton was organizing a “dancing evening” at the Palace Hotel, and he is referred to as the head of the Ba-ta-clan’s Jazz-Band (p. 5). 128. Gazeta de Notícias, 6 October 1923, p. 3. 129. A Noite, 10 November 1923, p. 4. 130. See advertisement in the Correio da Manhã, 8 November 1923, p. 14. 131. The Afro-American Louis Douglas, a dancer, choreographer, and bandleader, also went to South America with the Ba-ta-clan in 1923, giving solo performances. He subsequently returned to Paris, where he codirected La revue nègre, and was described as Stretton’s “only rival” as a performer (Correio da Manhã, 13 December 1923, p. 14). 132. Marion Cook Douglas was the wife of Louis Douglas and the daughter of Will Marion Cook, the Afro-American theatrical music composer. 133. O Paiz, 6 November 1923, p. 7. 134. Correio da Manhã, 13 December 1923, p. 14. 135. Daniels and Rye, “Gordon Stretton,” p. 79. When performing with the Eight Lancashire Lads clog-dancing troupe as a child, he had also played the bones, “the latter accomplishment suggesting that he was already being used to import a touch of ‘exotica’ into the quintessentially English fare.” With the Kingston Choral Union, a mixed troupe billed as the Jamaica Native Choir, in 1907 he performed the racialized songs “De Water Melon on de Vine” and “Ma Dark-Eyed Venus” in a show on 17 August in Plymouth, England. He later advertised himself in The Stage as “Gordon Stretton, The Natural Artistic Coon” in 1911, seeking “to single himself out as the genuine article, in contrast to the numerous white ‘coon-shouters’ who were traveling the halls at this time, and also to imply that his work is artistic in a way that their parodies were not” (pp. 79–81). 136. Diário de Notícias, 5 June 1931, p. 15.

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notes to pages 24–27

137. Diário de Notícias, 21 June 1931, p. 5. This article also mentions that Little Esther would dance and sing in Portuguese a samba that Duque composed as a tribute to her, entitled “Eu também quero sambar” (I Also Want to Dance Samba). An advertisement and photograph in the Correio da Manhã (23 June 1931, p. 7) shows a man, presumably Stretton, doing an Al Jolson impersonation. 138. Shown in an advertisement in the Correio da Manhã (26 June 1931, p. 12). 139. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 24. 140. Mulatas were inextricably associated with lower-class prostitution in Rio de Janeiro during the Belle Époque, along with recently arrived Jewish immigrant women from Eastern Europe, known as polacas. As well as being the heart of popular entertainment in this era and beyond, the theatres of the Praça Tiradentes square also nestled alongside brothels and boardinghouses, and were a stone’s throw from the Lapa neighborhood, another center for nightlife and a red-light district (as was the nearby area of Mangue) (Green, Beyond Carnival, pp. 24–25). As Sueann Caulfield writes, “While Lapa was perceived as the territory of sophisticated francesas [French women] and exotic mulatas, Mangue was the reputed home to polacas and pretas who served lower-class men” (In Defense of Honor, p. 69). 141. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 109. 142. As Melo Gomes and Seigel write: Prior to the First Republic, the baiana was a figure recognizable primarily in Rio as a representation of the African traditions brought to Brazil by slaves. At the turn of the century, few Bahians (especially elites) considered this essentially carioca invention to be an appropriate self-reflection. Nor did Brazilians in general. Their resistance to this figure would be somewhat extenuated after the First World War, amidst the search for both national and regional identities. The baiana stands at the crossroads of that dual search, which yielded such paradoxes as the reinterpretation of the quitandeira, a figure recognized as deeply carioca throughout the nineteenth century, as a baiana. (“Sabina’s Oranges,” p. 11) 143. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, pp. 55, 58. Davis writes: Of all the live performance venues in Rio de Janeiro, the casinos represented the most glamorous, and thus the most class and race restrictive. Even then, casinos were not totally off limits to blacks and featured a number of light-skinned black performers. . . . They were the most international of the forums, appealing and accessible to international and national tourists and wealthy Cariocas. . . . Musical numbers in the casinos differed significantly from the teatro de revista, a genre that appealed more exclusively to a Carioca or national taste. (pp. 56–57) Of all Rio’s casinos, the Cassino da Urca was undoubtedly the most frequented by international visitors (p. 57). 144. Ibid., p. 24. 145. Rosa, Brazilian Bodies, p. 123. Rosa points out that Miranda’s “burlesque impersonation” of the baiana found “a compelling resonance with the democracy of races ideology that gained momentum during Vargas’ Estado Novo (1937–45).”

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notes to pages 28–32

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chap ter 1 1. My emphasis. The revue and lyrics were written by De Chocolat, one of the troupe’s founders, discussed in more detail below and in chapter 3. 2. For an overview of the cultural interactions between the Harlem Renaissance and “black” Paris in a wider historical context, see Fabre, La rive noire. 3. During and after the 1910s a new generation of journalists and writers who specialized in crônicas (journalistic essays that chronicled daily life) combined the valorization of Afro-Brazilian popular culture with a keen interest in Rio de Janeiro’s demimonde of vice, crime, nightlife, and religious gatherings (see Chazkel, “Crônica”). These cronistas thus contributed to the conflation of black subjectivity and marginality in the popular imagination. 4. Hertzman highlights the power wielded in the careers of black and mixed-race artists by white businessmen such as Fred (Frederico) Figner, a European immigrant who pioneered the production and sale of gramophone records in Brazil. He writes: “The contrast between Figner, a white, worldly immigrant with ready access to capital, and Benjamin de Oliveira, the son of slaves, could hardly be more absolute. While the music industry allowed for a limited degree of fluidity and flexibility, an artist’s success and visibility were always tied to skin color, audience taste, the actions of power brokers like Figner, and disparate values assigned to performers and composers” (Making Samba, pp. 69–79, esp. p. 77). 5. Ibid., p. 97. 6. Key scholarly works that explore race in the context of the First Republic include Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness; Skidmore, Black into White; Degler, Neither Black nor White; Love, Revolt of the Whip; Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo; Schwarcz, Spectacle of Races; Stepan, “The Hour of Eugenics”; and Skidmore, Black into White. Dávila’s Diploma of Whiteness has been particularly important in establishing “whiteness” as a theoretical concept and illustrating how it has been negotiated in Brazil. 7. The contribution of Afro-Brazilian pioneers to Brazil’s rich tradition of popular music, however, particularly samba, continues to be well documented. See, for example, Davis, White Face, Black Mask; and Hertzman, Making Samba. 8. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 139. 9. See, for example, O Malho, 17 January 1925, p. 24. 10. His mother had the status of escrava de estimação, which meant that her children were born free (Hertzman, Making Samba, pp. 66–67). Benjamin changed his surname from “Chaves” to the arguably more distinguished “de Oliveira” after leaving home. 11. Ibid., p. 67. Revue theatre combined an assortment of musical styles with circus-style humor and sociopolitical critique, and was thus able to appeal to a wide audience (Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 32). 12. Ibid., p. 68. These included characters such as Niegus in the popular play A viúva alegre (The Merry Widow). Such face painting by Afro-Brazilians during street carnival celebrations was recorded by European travelers, most famously by the French artist Jean Baptiste Debret (1768–1848) in his painting Scène de Carnaval. See Cunha, Ecos da folia, pp. 57–58, cited in Braga-Pinto, “From Abolitionism to Black Face.”

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166 notes to pages 32–34

13. These short plays shared the performance space of the circus with equestrian acts, acrobats, gymnasts, contortionists, musical numbers, and comedy acts. 14. Subtitled O punhal de ouro (The Gold Dagger), advertised in A Imprensa, 26 May 1911, p. 8. 15. O Século, 10 December 1912, p. 2. 16. O Século, 24 December 1912, p. 3. 17. “It is even said that the Spinelli Circus’s visible prosperity is almost entirely due to Benhamin” (A Notícia, 15–16 August 1913, p. 1). 18. Revista da Semana, 5 July 1908, p. 20. This magazine was established in 1900 and was primarily focused on politics. 19. Ibid. 20. A Notícia, 15–16 August 1913, p. 1. 21. A Imprensa, 17 May 1911, p. 4. The statesman Ruy Barbosa—abolitionist, intellectual, one of the founding fathers of the First Republic, and coauthor of its constitution—was the director of this newspaper, which ran from 1898 to 1914. 22. Based on a novel by José de Alencar. 23. It should be noted that Afro-Brazilians were largely absent from Brazilian cinema until the late 1940s. See Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism; and Dennison and Shaw, Popular Cinema in Brazil, pp. 107–115. 24. Alma do Brasil (Soul of Brazil [1931]) and Inconfi dência mineira (Conspiracy in Minas Gerais [1948]). 25. In 1915 it was announced in the press that Oliveira was about to embark on a tour of Brazil with Eduardo das Neves and Maria Lino (discussed further in chapter 2) [O Rio Nu, 4 September 1915, p. 3]. 26. Neves is described by Stam as a “songwriter, mime, actor, theatrical writer, and impresario” who also worked behind the scenes as a singer-dubber in silent fi lms such as Sangue espanhol (Spanish Blood) of 1914 (Tropical Multiculturalism, pp. 61–62). 27. Hertzman, Making Samba, pp. 80–81. 28. Ibid., p. 82. 29. Advertised, for example, in O Paiz, 28 October 1898, p. 7. Neves was one of the fi rst artists to work for Fred Figner’s Casa Edison record company in Rio de Janeiro (Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 72). The daily newspaper O Paiz, founded in 1884, was an important mouthpiece for the abolitionist cause, and thus its support of AfroBrazilian artists is unsurprising. It was in operation until 1930. 30. O Paiz, 6 February 1899, p. 2. 31. Quoted in Vasconcelos, Panorama da música popular brasileira, pp. 284–285. 32. In the title of this collection, Neves knowingly capitalizes on the association between blackness and the counterculture of malandragem (the lifestyle of the AfroBrazilian malandro [rogue]) in the popular imagination and, more important, in the minds of white consumers. 33. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 84. Hertzman states that Neves’s use of the term crioulo angered journalist João do Rio (a light-skinned mulato himself who could “pass” for white by dint of his social standing and success, and whose real name was Paulo Barreto), adding that: “In a society that viewed ‘rich blacks’ as anomalies, Neves’s self-proclaimed crioulo-ness, and his transformation from a humble fi refighter to a well-known, well-dressed star was surprising and threatening” (pp. 84–85).

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34. See advertisement in O Paiz, 3 April 1899, p. 6. This collection also included examples of the more “racially” marked lundu genre. 35. O Paiz, 23 April 1899, p. 2. 36. O Paiz, 28 April 1899, p. 5. 37. Review of a show at the Salão Floresta in Petrópolis, Gazeta de Petrópolis, 5 December 1899, p. 2. The review goes on to praise Neves’s singing and musicianship: “he is a distinguished guitar player and has a beautiful baritone voice, with a pleasant timbre and correct diction.” 38. An advertisement published in O Malho on 27 August 1904 (p. 39) refers to his release of a cakewalk on disc, but he was not predominantly associated with “black” genres, whether homegrown or imported. His star persona adopted elements of the malandro’s sartorial elegance rather than the figure’s associations with criminality or libidinousness. 39. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 81. Neves was criticized in the press for asserting his rights as an author by the cronista João do Rio, who dismissed the performer’s claims as evidence of his arrogance. As Hertzman writes: Afro-Brazilians were subjects of João do Rio’s chronicles, not members of his ilk. He fancied himself a gatekeeper of the circles in which he socialized. If he had his way, Neves—black and once poor—would not enter those circles. . . . To individuals who imagined all Afro-Brazilians to be poor, Neves’s transformation into a confident celebrity was unsettling. João do Rio attacked him not because he was the “antithesis” of the ideal worker but because he brazenly pursued and displayed his wealth, which he acquired through a combination of business acumen and the successful branding and selling of his creative production. Neves was dangerous not because he rejected capitalism, but because he crashed society’s gates and embraced wealth. Other prominent Afro-Brazilian men faced similar challenges. His sense of “foreignness” was shared by upwardly mobile Afro-Brazilians elsewhere. (pp. 82–84) 40. O Malho, 17 October 1903, p. 4. 41. O Malho, 16 June 1917, p. 41. Both O Malho and Careta featured high-quality political cartoons that relied on caricature. 42. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 84. Hertzman notes that in the case of Neves, it was not only his unsuitable clothes but also his brazen sexuality (his lyrics about white women and his pursuit of them in real life) that offended critics like João do Rio. 43. O Malho, 6 January 1917, p. 44. 44. See also chapter 3. 45. Even as late as 1 January 1944, Careta has no qualms about referring to “that famous and extremely black [pretíssimo] Eduardo das Neves” (p. 27). 46. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 92. 47. Ibid. 48. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 125. Hertzman underlines that these two black impresarios, along with De Chocolat, “held keys to the industry and the ability to grant or deny opportunities to aspiring artists.  .  .  . Neves and Oliveira co-owned a circus troupe, and Oliveira is credited with discovering the white circus star-cum-

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impresario Antolim Garcia, a stark inversion of the more popular white-elite-fi ndsimpoverished-black-star narrative” (pp. 136–137). 49. Vasconcelos describes Santos as “uma bela morena cor de jambo” (a beautiful morena the color of jambo fruit”) (Panorama da música popular brasileira, p. 255). The term morena refers to a woman with a dusky skin tone, long wavy hair, and European features. A jambo is a dark-skinned Brazilian fruit similar to a plum. 50. Ibid. 51. Advertisement for Santos’s performance at the Teatro Lucinda in Rio, Gazeta de Notícias, 8 May 1901, p. 4. 52. See also chapter 4. 53. Efegê, Figuras e coisas, pp. 11–13. See also the website of the Dicionário Cravo Albin da Música Popular Brasileira: http://www.dicionariompb.com.br/placida-dos -santos (accessed 19 October 2015). 54. The Rio newspaper Gazeta de Notícias on 22 November 1890 reported that “Miss Plácida Santos and maid” entered the port of Rio de Janeiro from Liverpool and stopovers the previous day on the English steamship Sorata (p. 2). 55. A Noite Ilustrada, 12 April 1933, p. 29. In 1906 Santos went on tour with the Companhia de Operetas, Mágicas e Revistas and the maestro and conductor Nicolino Milano in the north of Brazil, appearing at the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus in the revue Ilha do paraíso (Paradise Island) (Correio do Norte, 25 April 1906, p. 2). 56. Diário de Notícias, 19 November 1887, p. 1. 57. A Notícia, 17 August 1901, p. 3. 58. O Rio Nu, 8 April 1903, p. 2. 59. O Rio Nu, 21 March 1903, p. 3. 60. See item in A Imprensa, 1 October 1910, p. 4. 61. One performance in which Santos performed with D’Armouville and Lino was at the city’s Cassino Nacional, as advertised in Cidade do Rio on 29 July 1901, p. 2. Santos also performed at Rio’s Moulin Rouge cabaret in August that year. A photograph of her with Lino appeared in Revista da Semana, 24 May 1903, p. 10. See also chapter 2. 62. Cidade do Rio, 2 January 1901, p. 2. 63. Revista da Semana, 3 February 1901, p. 8. 64. Bryan McCann refers to the noun dengo as “a term of African derivation referring to a woman’s ineffable sensuality” (Hello, Hello Brazil, p. 149) when discussing the popular song “Dengo que a nega tem” (The Charm that Black Women Have), written by Dorival Caymmi in 1941. 65. See also chapter 4. 66. See, for example, an item on Santos in A Notícia, 8 January 1910, p. 3. 67. This is how Santos is referred to in an advertisement for her performance at the Teatro High Life in Rio (Gazeta de Notícias, 24 October 1900, p. 4). 68. See Correio da Manhã, 14 November 1909, p. 5. 69. See Correio da Manhã, 5 January 1910, p. 3. Santos also established a business creating fancy-dress costumes that was advertised in the press; for example, in the Jornal do Brasil, 28 February 1919, p. 7. 70. In 1909, with the Companhia Dramática Artur Azevedo, Santos played “a Feiticeira” (the Sorceress) in the revue Tudo de fora (Everything Out) at the Teatro Recreio Dramático (advertisement in A Imprensa, 25 September 1909, p. 8).

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71. Advertisement in Correio da Manhã, 15 January 1910, p. 10. 72. Advertisement in Correio da Manhã, 15 November 1910, p. 10. 73. Quoted in Vasconcelos, Panorama da música popular, p. 302. João do Rio again referred to Magalhães in his publication A alma encantadora das ruas, mentioning his “elegance and his polished boots” (ibid.). In both cases, beneath the Bohemian cronista’s semblance of esteem is an ironic dig at this mixed-race performer’s pretensions (encapsulated in his recourse to a monocle, tuxedo, and polished boots). See chapter 2 for further discussion of João do Rio. 74. Os Geraldos recorded various songs in 1905, including “Corta-jaca,” a maxixe by Chiquinha Gonzaga (the song’s title refers to a type of country dance). 75. Vasconcelos, Panorama da música popular brasileira, p. 302. 76. Gazeta de Notícias, 31 January 1909, quoted in ibid., p. 302. 77. Ibid., p. 302. 78. A Notícia, 13 March 1909, p. 2. 79. Quoted in Vasconcelos, Panorama da música popular brasileira, p. 302. 80. Sheet music was produced in Lisbon of their hits “Franqueza rude” (Rough Honesty), “Beijo fatal” (Fatal Kiss), “Jeny,” “Canção triste” (Sad Song), “Remeleixo” (Wiggle), and “A casinha da colina” (The House on the Hill). Copies can be found in the collection of the Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança in Lisbon. They performed at the Coliseu dos Recreios theatre in the Portuguese capital in February 1912, billed as the “Brazilian duo,” alongside the Italian light opera company Citá di Firenze (Covões, Os 50 anos do Coliseu dos Recreios, p. 86). The duo was one of a series of variety acts that performed at the same venue as part of the carnival celebrations in 1924 (p. 155). On the fi ftieth anniversary of this theatre, Geraldo Magalhães wrote the following in a letter to its owner, Ricardo Covões: “I, as an artist, have the greatest of affection for the Coliseu dos Recreios, since it was at that theatre that I worked for the fi rst time in Portugal, and on successive occasions, and to it I owe to a great extent the popularity that I have come to enjoy in the such hospitable city of Lisbon” (pp. 385–386). 81. The duo is credited with having introduced the maxixe to Portugal; this musical genre went on to appear in many theatrical revues (Rebello, História do teatro de revista, p. 158 n119). By popularizing the maxixe among Portuguese audiences, they paved the way for the importation of other Brazilian rhythms, particularly with the arrival of the Tro-lo-ló theatre company in the early 1930s. See chapter 3 for further discussion. 82. On their return to Brazil, the Geraldos toured the north of the country, returning to Rio to appear in the carnival revue Fandanguaçu, which opened at the Teatro São Pedro in January 1913, performing to great success the song “Ó, minha caraboo” (Oh, My Caraboo), a version by Alfredo de Albuquerque of a US fox-trot. This song would go on to be one of the biggest hits of the carnival of 1916. 83. A Noite, 21 December 1912, p. 4. 84. See, for example, A Noite, 30 December 1912, p. 2, and 24 January 1913, p. 4. 85. A Noite, 29 November 1915, p. 4. 86. O sete e meio was the name of a popular card game in Portugal. 87. The lyrics of the fi nal verse are as follows: “Com a carinha engraxada / A gritar todo contente / Não riam da ‘espletalhada’ / O ‘espleto’ também ser gente!” (With blacked up little faces / Shouting happily / Don’t laugh at we ‘bracks’ / ‘Bracks’ also be people!) (lyrics by Pereira Coelho and Matos Sequeira).

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notes to pages 41–43

88. Costa, cited in Vasco Rosa, Fotobiografi a de Beatriz Costa, p. 98. Beatriz Costa was another important vector of transnational exchange between Portugal and Brazil in the 1920s; she went on to live in Brazil, moving there in 1939 and performing for the next ten years. In the same book, Costa also intriguingly refers to costarring in O sete e meia with a “seductive mulatinha, Black Daisy.” 89. Literally “creature,” criatura is also a colloquial way of referring to an individual, and it sometimes has pejorative overtones. 90. Gazeta de Notícias, 22 September 1910, p. 5. 91. Review of the revue Tim-tim por tim-tim (Down to the Last T) at the Teatro Apolo in Correio da Manhã, 23 October 1909, p. 8. 92. In a satirical poem by a certain Malandrão, O Rio Nu, 25 March 1903, p. 2. 93. De Chocolat was born in Salvador, Bahia, in 1887 and traveled to Rio de Janeiro as a teenager, having joined a visiting Spanish zarzuela theatre troupe during their run in his home city. He soon entered the lower ranks of the entertainment world in the cabarets and beer halls of the capital. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1956. 94. O Paiz, 12 November 1909, p. 12. Brackets in the original. 95. See, for example, the Jornal do Brasil of 10, 12, and 13 November 1909 (all p. 16). 96. Jornal do Brasil, 21 November 1909, p. 20. By the beginning of December 1909, Ferreira formed part of the lineup for the opening night show at the chopp Palácio Popular, also known as the Grande ABC, in the Lapa district of Rio (Avenida Mem de Sá, no. 77, on the corner with Rua do Lavradio), and was billed as “Jocanfer, pseudonym of the agreeable bohemian” (Correio da Manhã, 6 December 1909, p. 7). In March 1910 he was still appearing there, now termed the “funny Jocanfer” and also referred to as an “improviser” (O Rio Nu, 5 March 1910, p. 7). In April 1910 he was performing duets at the same venue with a woman called “Arminda,” forming the duo Os Nortistas (The Northerners), as part of a benefit show alongside the Brazilian performer Iracema Bastos, the Spanish Amparo Rodriguez, the Italian Cecília Cerri, and the male singers Domingos Correa (Boneco), Eduardo das Neves, Octávio Vianna, Moreno, and Acácio Correia (Correio da Manhã, 24 April 1910, p. 12). 97. Diario Español, 15 February 1912, p. 4. 98. For this performance Ferreira was billed as the “acclaimed eccentric singer João Cândido (Chocolat)” (Gazeta de Notícias, 27 September 1910, p. 8). 99. Gazeta de Notícias, 6 February 1912, p. 3. 100. See chapter 3. 101. Chocolat was born Raphael Padilla in Cuba. When orphaned, he was purchased by a Portuguese merchant who took him to Europe as his servant. In the circuses of Paris he re-created the slang expression “C’est du chocolate!” (It’s really great!) as “Je suis chocolate!,” meaning “I’m great!” and also “I’m Chocolate,” thus subverting the derogatory term for black people. Chocolat and Footit’s act played on their contrasting skin colors, with Manchester-born Footit appearing as a white-faced clown, and Padilla wearing no makeup. The duo became so famous, thanks to their performances at the Nouveau Cirque in Paris, that their images were being used in advertising by 1895; they were frequent subjects for the painter Toulouse-Lautrec; and they featured in several early fi lm productions. Their career peaked in 1905 when they performed at the Folies Bergère. Chocolat was still performing in 1917, the year he died (Green, Lotz, and Rye, Black Europe, p. 110). See also the representation of his artistic career in the recent French-language feature fi lm Chocolat (dir. Roschdy Zem, 2015).

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102. Pacotilha, 19 October 1912, p. 2. 103. Pacotilha, 11 November 1912, p. 2. 104. See announcement on 27 April 1912 in the Correio Paulistano (p. 7) for a “Great Artistic Festival” to be held at the Teatro Colombo in São Paulo featuring “‘the well-known CHOCOLAT’ (Chocoracy Duo).” The main attraction was a fi lm of the five-act play O banquete de núpcias (The Wedding Banquet). 105. Pacotilha (18 October 1912, p. 1) refers to Ferreira in its announcement of his imminent arrival in São Luiz from São Paulo along with the Italian singer Lídia Florent and the Brazilian singer Iracema, who would be appearing at the Palace Cinema Theatre in the city. 106. Pacotilha, 22 October 1912, p. 2. On 22 October the Rio newspaper O Paiz (p. 6) reported that he was performing in São Luiz, Maranhão: “The national artists Chocolat and Iracema made an impressive debut at the Palace Cinema Theatre, and are the target of continuous displays of appreciation.” The same newspaper reported on 1 November 1912 (p. 8) that Le Chocolat was performing again at the Palace in São Luiz with Lilia Florent. The Rio-based Correio da Manhã also reported on 1 November 1912 (p. 8) that “the artists Le Chocolat and Lilia Florent continue to be a success” at the Teatro Maranhense, São Luiz. 107. Again, the French language is used to promote Chocolat. 108. O Pharol, 23 July 1913, p. 2. 109. O Pharol, 27 July 1913, p. 2. 110. O Pharol, 8 August 1913, p. 1. 111. On 20 January the Rio newspaper O Imparcial featured an item on the Palace Cinema Theatre, where “Mr. Chocolat—Brazilian comic” was currently appearing (20 January 1914, p. 12). 112. On 11 September 1914, Pacotilha reported that Le Chocolat was back in São Luiz (11 September 1914, p. 2). 113. Ibid., p. 4. On 8 March 1915, Rio’s Correio da Manhã wrote: “The artists Le Chocolat and Aida Juracy, who make up the Chocoracy-Duo, will introduce themselves today to the press, in a special session at the Trianon Cinema. They are two distinguished and elegant dancers” (14 January 1917, p. 5). On 10 July 1917, the comic duo performed to enthusiastic applause in the interior of the state of São Paulo, in the town of Botucatú at the Casino Cinema (Correio Paulistano, 11 July 1917, p. 4). On 16 March 1918, the duo was on the bill of the Teatro Brasil, along with several fi lms, including newsreels and fiction fi lms (Correio Paulistano, 16 March 1918, p. 12). 114. On 14 September 1914, Pacotilha announced “Le Chocolat as conjurer” at the Cinema São Luiz (14 September 1914, p. 2). On 19 September 1914, the same newspaper advertised him at the Cinema São Luiz as follows: “Le Chocolat imitating women, a very hilarious number” (Pacotilha, 19 September 1914, p. 2). 115. A Notícia, 8 March 1915, p. 5. On 14 January 1917, he was once again performing as part of the Chocoracy Duo at the Trianon Cinema, as reported in the Rio newspaper O Imparcial: “The singers Chocolat and Alda Duracy [sic] form an interesting duo known in several Brazilian states by the name of the Chocoracy-Duo” (14 January 1917, p. 6). 116. Barros, Corações De Chocolat, pp. 50–51. 117. On 22 January 1921, the Correio Paulistano reported that De Chocolat was organizing a so-called Festa de Boneca (Doll Party) at the Teatro Carlos Gomes in Ribeirão Preto with the Chocoracy Duo featuring on the bill, as well as solo “expres-

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notes to pages 45–46

sive, recitative songs” performed by him (22 January 1921, p. 4). On 27 April 1921, the same newspaper featured an item entitled “‘Troupe Chocolat,’ which premiered to a receptive audience at the João Caetano Theatre in the town of Amparo, directed by João Cândido Ferreira, whose stage name is ‘Chocolat’” (27 April 1921, p. 3). On 28 December 1921, the São Luiz newspaper Pacotilha announced the debut of the Chocoracy Duo at the Teatro-Cinema Eden in the city (28 December 1921, p. 2), and on 23 August 1922 the Rio newspaper Correio da Manhã publicized a performance at the CineTeatro Brasil of Chocoracy, “creators of expressive song, a veritable marvel in terms of the speed with which they invent a verse to meet the public’s demand” (23 August 1922, p. 6). The same newspaper announced their performance at Rio’s Cine Teatro Centenário on Rua Senador Euzébio alongside screenings of two fi lms: Amores aos 19 anos / Nineteen and Phyllis (1920), starring Charles Ray, and Mulheres levianas / The Foolish Matrons (1921), featuring Doris May and Hobart Bosworth (Correio da Manhã, 11 September 1922, p. 4). By 5 October they were appearing at the Cine Engenho de Dentro in Rio (Correio da Manhã, 5 October 1922, p. 6) and by 20 December debuting at the city’s Cine Teatro Boulevard (Correio da Manhã, 20 December 1922, p. 5). By 1922 Chocolat was already a well-known “singer and improviser” in Rio (A Noite, 22 November 1922, p. 5) who parodied other singers and improvised songs in response to the suggestions of members of the audience in variety shows that accompanied fi lm screenings in the city. He appeared at the Cinema Central in October of that year (A Noite, 18 October 1922, photo on p. 5) and at the Palácio Theatre, where he was billed as a “national parodist” (A Noite, 4 April 1923, p. 5). In 1924 he went on to perform at the Íris Cinema (A Noite, 7 August 1924, p. 7) and at the end of the year at the Parisiense Cinema, where he was one of several vaudeville-style entertainers (A Noite, 29 November 1924, p. 2; 4 December 1924, p. 2). 118. Barros, Corações De Chocolat, pp. 50–51. 119. Ferreira would not, however, have encountered the Oito Batutas, who were in the City of Light between February and August 1922. 120. Correio Paulistano, 13 March 1925, p. 2. In late December 1925 Ferreira was performing with his own namesake troupe at the Guarany Cinema in Porto Alegre: “Tomorrow the matinee performance at 3 o’clock of Chocolatina organized by the popular DE CHOCOLAT . . . as a tribute to Mr. Ari Nogueira and Mr. Vicente Celestino” (A Federação, 21 December 1925, p. 7). This show must have been a success since Chocolat was still performing there in the middle of January 1926 alongside fi lm screenings, such as at the Guarany Cinema: “On stage the acclaimed troupe ‘De Chocolat’ will continue to perform” (A Federação, 13 January 1926, p. 3). The same publication refers to him as a “comic,” still performing there with his troupe on 28 January 1926 (A Federação, 28 January 1926, p. 3). He and Duque also went on to be the cofounders of the very popular Casa de Caboclo venue in Rio in the 1930s. 121. At this venue Ferreira also appeared on stage “among the multiple comic attractions,” as well as dancing (Diário Nacional, 2 October 1928, p. 7). This theatre, opposite the Chá viaduct, was clearly an upmarket venue, and De Chocolat’s appointment as artistic director was obviously a reflection of his sophisticated, urbane star persona. It was described as follows: “it will be a variety theatre . . . with an elegant ambience, since it has a luxurious hall with leather chairs and a comfortable waiting room, all situated in the most central point in the city” (Diário Nacional, 4 October 1928, p. 7). 122. Diário Nacional, 4 October 1928, p. 7. De Chocolat was also composing pop-

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ular music at this time; Francisco Alves recorded his samba “Mulata” on the Odeon label. See advertisement in Diário Nacional, 29 September 1929, p. 15. 123. For detailed studies of the Companhia Negra de Revistas and its splinter companies, see Barros, Corações De Chocolat; Melo Gomes, “Negros contando,” pp. 53– 83, and Um espelho no palco. By 1928, after his involvement with the Ba-ta-clan Preta had come to an end, De Chocolat returned to performing solo, where his “European” credentials continued to earn him kudos. When he debuted at the Teatro Central in Rio in October 1928, performing with the female singer Amélia de Almeida, for example, he was described as “the popular and acclaimed ‘chansonnier’ held in such esteem here and in Europe” (A Noite, 23 October 1928, p. 5). It was also reported that he was soon to embark on a tour of Europe with a troupe of solely mulato performers (A Noite, 21 November 1928, p. 5). In December 1931, De Chocolat formed the Troupe Mosaicos and wrote and starred in their revue Bibelots (Correio da Manhã, 18 December 1931, p. 7). In 1938 he formed the Companhia Negra de Operetas (Domingues, “Tudo preto,” p. 123). De Chocolat also composed sambas, one of the most famous of which, written in partnership with the white composer Ari Barroso and entitled “Negra também é gente” (Black Women Are People Too), explicitly celebrates Afro-Brazilian identity: “moreninhas / Cheias de gracilidade / São produto das negrinhas / Alma da brasilidade” (the little dark girls / Full of charm / Are the product of dear black women / The soul of Brazilian-ness). The song lyrics tie in with the wider veneration of the Mãe Preta figure: “Quem foi que ninou o Brasil? / Foi Yáyá” (Who cradled Brazil? It was Missy). His 1950 show-revuette Ritmos do Brasil (Rhythms of Brazil), a lighthearted celebration of African musical contributions, written with a certain M. Lanthos and to be performed at Rio’s Night and Day nightclub, featured a return to trite stock types of “black” performance, namely the nega maluca, the mulata, and the malandro, in addition to Afro-Brazilian slave characters. 124. In the book Pixinguinha, Marília T. Barboza da Silva and Arthur L. de Oliveira Filho state, however, that the Companhia Negra de Revistas included one white actor, Soledade Moreira, who played the archetypal Portuguese immigrant (p. 117). 125. A Noite, 23 June 1926, p. 5. 126. Correio Paulistano, 25 September 1926, p. 4. 127. These included Rosa Negra, Dalva Espíndola, Jandira Aimoré (the future wife of Pixinguinha), Djanira Flora, Miss Mons (a dancer from Barbados), Imperalina Dugann (a classical dancer), and others. 128. Dalva Espíndola was described in the press as a “typical actress,” and readers were often reminded that she was the sister of the star Araci Cortes. See, for example, the Correio Paulistano, 10 November 1926, p. 9, which refers to her role in the Bata-clan Preta company. She was billed as the “estrela negra” (black star) of a show at the Democrata Circus, part of a festival organized by Pixinguinha (Jornal do Brasil, 18 January 1927, p. 13). 129. Jornal do Brasil, 10 July 1926, p. 11. Hertzman groups De Chocolat with Eduardo das Neves and Benjamin de Oliveira as black artists and impresarios who “also held keys to the industry and the ability to grant or deny opportunities to aspiring artists” (Making Samba, p. 136). He continues: “In a seemingly endless set of combinations and in multiple roles—partners, advocates, talent scouts, and so on— Rio’s black musicians mediated and shaped the city’s music and entertainment industry” (p. 138). 130. As explored in greater detail in chapter 2, the Afro-Brazilian musician Pixin-

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notes to pages 48–51

guinha was a pioneer in taking Brazilian popular music to Paris in the early 1920s with his band the Oito Batutas. He was also a leading figure in the developments surrounding black performance in the teatro de revista in the mid-1920s (as discussed in chapter 3). After the Oito Batutas returned from Paris, and subsequently from performing in Argentina, Pixinguinha became the bandleader of the Companhia Negra de Revistas in 1926 and subsequently its spin-off, the Ba-ta-clan Preta company. He went on to become bandleader at several leading radio stations in Rio in the 1930s. 131. Correio Paulistano, 17 October 1926, p. 4. 132. Correio Paulistano, 7 November 1926, p. 9. This item also mentions the “Empresa Déo Costa e De Chocolat” (Déo Costa and De Chocolat Company). 133. Correio Paulistano, 10 November 1926, p. 9. 134. O Sacy, 12 November 1926, p. 11. The author here appears to have confused Déo Costa with Dalva Espíndola, the sister of Araci Cortes. 135. O Estado de São Paulo, 7 November 1926, p. 16. 136. O Sacy, 19 November 1926, p. 10. 137. O Sacy, 26 November 1926, p. 10. 138. “The black revue companies have appeared amongst us in an agreeable atmosphere, although the public’s favorable disposition towards them is underpinned by an effervescence of nationalist sentiment, as is frequently felt in the heart of the people. The theatres have been full to capacity: the public’s enthusiasm could be felt night after night at the Apolo, the Cassino and Santa Helena theatres; the newspapers, reflecting fairly the audience reactions, have praised the talent, harmony and vocation of the blacks” (Correio Paulistano, 17 November 1926, p. 6). 139. Ibid. The item also mentions the name of someone who is contesting De Chocolat’s coauthorship of the revue Na penumbra (In the Twilight). On 28 November 1926 the Correio Paulistano announced that the “‘Ba-ta-clan Negro’ [sic] led by De Chocolat will be appearing at the Teatro Carlos Gomes in Ribeirão Preto” (28 November 1926, p. 8). 140. Jornal do Brasil, 22 October 1926, p. 12. Déo Costa is named as one of these leading members of the troupe. 141. “Duas palavras com De Chocolat,” A Pátria, 6 August 1926, “Nos teatros.” 142. Revista do Brasil, 15 September 1926, p. 28. 143. Fon-Fon!, 7 August 1926, p. 35. 144. The display on stage of the female black body—nudez negra (black nudity)— appears to have been particularly problematic for white journalists. An item in O Paiz published in February 1926 about the revue Ai, Zizinha! (Oh, Little Zizi!) refers to the “Nu preto . . . quase artístico” (Almost artistic black nude) that “had the approval of the censors and the Morality League” (12 February 1926, p. 4). 145. O Malho, 10 July 1926, p. 19. 146. O Malho, 21 August 1926, p. 18. 147. Correio da Manhã, 7 September 1926, p. 11. 148. See, for example, O Jornal, 20 November 1926, p. 12. 149. Costa is described as “the jambo venus, star and impresario” of the Ba-ta-clan Preta in the Jornal do Brasil, 22 October 1926, p. 12. 150. Estado de São Paulo, 11 November 1926, p. 16. 151. Careta, 11 February 1926, p. 23. See also chapter 4. 152. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 124.

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153. This announcement was reproduced in O Jornal, 23 November 1926, p. 12. 154. Hertzman cites Costa’s subsequent public contesting of the passing on of her artistic label to another actress as a telling indication of the lack of power that AfroBrazilian popular artists, and particularly women, had over their careers and intellectual property (Making Samba, p. 124). 155. O Sacy, 12 November 1926, p. 10. 156. O Jornal, 23 November 1926, p. 12. 157. Ibid. 158. O Paiz, 9 November 1929, p. 5. 159. See also chapter 4. 160. O Paiz, 9 November 1929, p. 5. 161. This revue featured the number “A câmara escura” (The Camera Obscura), created especially for Rosa Negra, whom the writer was pinning his hopes on for a hit show (O Malho, 27 March 1926, p. 13). 162. “Rosa Negra,” Jornal do Brasil, 13 July 1926, p. 14. 163. All information on Rosa Negra was obtained from the website Dicionário Cravo Albin da Música Popular Brasileira: http://www.dicionariompb.com.br/rosa -negra/dados-artisticos (accessed 22 August 2015); Nepomuceno, “‘Quem haverá que não conheça a Rosa Negra?,’” pp. 27–45; and Barros, Corações De Chocolat, pp. 36– 39. In September 1927, Rosa Negra and Índia do Brasil, together with other former members of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, were part of a troupe called Black and White, with promotional news items helpfully adding “Preto e Branco” in parenthesis. This company performed the revuette 3 x 1 at the Circo Central Variedades on Botafogo Beach in Rio (as advertised in the Correio da Manhã on 13 September 1927, p. 16, and on 15 September 1927, p. 8). In 1931 Rosa Negra became one of the stars of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira (Barros, Corações De Chocolat, p. 37), appearing in their second revue, Com que roupa? (In Which Clothes?), at the República Theatre in Rio. In July 1931, she was invited to take part in the Festa do Negro (Blacks’ Party) organized by Pascoal Carlos Magno at the Teatro Cassino, advertised as a display of “our folklore” (Diário de Notícias, 15 May 1932, p. 10); the event also featured Pixinguinha and the Cuban artists Diamantes Negros (Black Diamonds) in what appears to have been Rosa Negra’s last major performance. 164. A Noite, 18 January 1926, p. 7. The same newspaper reported that Santos attempted to commit suicide in the town of Juiz de Fora in August 1926 (23 August 1926, p. 4). 165. Correio da Manhã, 5 February 1926, p. 7. The item refers to her wearing “bataclanic outfits” in this revue (see also chapter 3). Santos was also referred to as the “estrela negra” (black star) in O Jornal, 19 February 1926, p. 15. 166. A Manhã, 3 June 1927, p. 8. Clara can also be translated as “pale.” 167. Jornal do Brasil, 1 October 1926, p. 12. 168. Barros, Corações De Chocolat, p. 33. 169. Correio da Manhã, 19 January 1926, p. 7. 170. O Malho, 23 January 1926, p. 9. 171. Barros, Corações De Chocolat, p. 33. 172. O Malho, 13 February 1926, p. 13. The original text is as follows: “Quero prová que os preto, no Brasil, são mesmo ali, de fato! E vamo deixá dessa história de dizê que são só os português que gosta da gente! Meu camarim, no teatro, véve cheio!

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notes to pages 54–56

É português, é entaliano, é hispanhó e muito brasilêro. . . . E não é preciso sê atriz. . . . Quarqué cozinheira sabe muito bem disso!” 173. Gazeta de Notícias, 9 December 1926, p. 5. 174. Correio da Manhã, 17 January 1926. 175. Correio da Manhã, 4 April 1921, p. 6. Before joining the São José company, Amorim had worked for theatrical groups led by Procópio Ferreira, Carlos Leal, and Leopoldo Fróes. With the latter she toured the Brazilian states of Bahia and Pernambuco. 176. See also chapter 4. 177. A Rua, 9 January 1918, p. 5. 178. O Paiz, 6 February 1918, p. 6. 179. Correio da Manhã, 14 December 1922, p. 5. 180. See advertisements in O Paiz, 28–29 September 1925, p. 4, and 7 August 1925, p. 5, respectively. 181. O Paiz, 17 October 1925, p. 5. 182. Jornal do Recife, 25 July 1920, p. 10. 183. Amorim later also appeared in the fi lm Campeão de foot-ball (Football Champion [1931]) with Genésio Arruda and became a recording artist. She founded her own theatrical company in 1922 at the Teatro Recreio. 184. This close association was also reflected in the fact that when she died, Cortes was buried wearing the baiana outfit (Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 160). She often performed songs in revues that reinforced her associations with the mulata archetype, such as the carnival samba “Lua cor de prata” (Silver-Colored Moon) by Lamartine Babo, which she performed in the revue Para inglês ver (Just to Impress the English), which premiered in July 1931: “A lua vem saindo / cor de prata / cor de prata / cor de prata / que saudades da mulata! / Minha mulata / foi-se embora da cidade” (The moon comes out / silver-colored / silver-colored / silver-colored / how I miss the mulata! / My mulata / left the city) (quoted in Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 150). 185. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 138. Cortes lacked Carmen Miranda’s discretion and decorum, making her unsuitable for elite audiences, unlike her mixed-race predecessor Plácida dos Santos. 186. A mulata contemporary of Araci Cortes was Zaíra Cavalcanti (1913–1981), promoted as “a mulata do sul” (the mulata from the south), born in Santa Maria in Rio Grande do Sul. She too performed with the Tro-lo-ló theatre company in the 1930s, touring with them in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. The Tro-lo-ló company is discussed in detail in chapter 3. 187. A term frequently used to describe the star, for example in the magazine O Tico-Tico (20 June 1928, p. 6). 188. O Malho, 8 December 1923, p. 24. The review also refers to a performance by the Oito Batutas as part of the same show, Sonho de ópio (Opium Dream), organized by Duque. See also chapter 2. 189. See, for example, O Malho, 17 January 1925, p. 24. 190. A Noite (“Suplemento”), 15 October 1930, p. 11. 191. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 129. 192. See also chapter 3. 193. O Malho, 7 February 1931, p. 9. The use of the superlative of the adjective dengo here alludes to her partial African ancestry.

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notes to pages 56–59

177

194. Careta, 3 January 1925, p. 20. 195. An item in the Catholic newspaper A Cruz reads: “It seems that the authorities that are ordinarily focused on the Teatro Recreio have become overly fascinated ‘with the artistic nude’ of Miss Araci Cortes and her salacious female dancers, thus closing their ears to the obscenities uttered by the bit players of the indecent revue” (20 January 1929, p. 2). 196. See also the introduction and chapter 3. On 22 March 1933 the company arrived in Lisbon and premiered with the revue Morangos com crème (Strawberries with Cream) on 30 March at the Coliseu theatre. Antunes explains that even when the revues had the same titles, the ones performed in Portugal were not identical to those performed in Brazil; instead the most popular sketches, songs, and numbers were selected. The troupe went on to perform two other revues, Salada de frutas (Fruit Salad) and Angu de caroço (Lumpy Oatmeal), in Lisbon and Oporto (pp. 182, 186). 197. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 174. The troupe subsequently returned to Portugal for further performances. 198. Advertisement for the revue Há uma forte corrente . . . (There Is a Strong Current . . .) at the Teatro Recreio (Correio da Manhã, 9 January 1934, p. 16). An advertisement for this show published in the same newspaper the following day announced: “Araci Cortes who returns victorious from Europe!” (Correio da Manhã, 10 January 1934, p. 14). 199. Cortes was promoted as the star replacement for Carmen Miranda at the PRA9 radio station and joined the ranks of contract stars at Rádio Nacional in 1941. 200. See also chapter 4. For more information on Grande Otelo’s fi lm career, see Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism; and Shaw and Dennison, Brazilian National Cinema, pp. 133–138. 201. “Grande Otelo” was a moniker clearly based on his very dark skin and an ironic allusion to his diminutive stature. Such racially inspired stage names for nonwhite performers have been a long-standing feature of both the stage and screen in Brazil (see Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, p. 104). 202. See also chapter 3. 203. Correio da Manhã, 5 March 1927, p. 7. 204. A Manhã, 10 March 1927, p. 8. 205. A Manhã, 11 March 1927, p. 4. 206. See, for example, the advertisement in the Correio da Manhã, 19 March 1927, p. 14. 207. See chapter 4. 208. See chapter 4. 209. In an interview, Grande Otelo commented that this was one of the most memorable performances of his career, since even he, given his skin color, was not permitted to enter the elite venue via the front door (television program Roda Viva: Grande Otelo, TV Cultura, 1987, cited in Brito, Um ator de fronteira, p. 114). In September 1940, he shared the same upscale stage with Carmen Miranda in a self-consciously “racialized” performance (as discussed in chapter 4). 210. Melo Gomes, “Negros contando (e fazendo) sua história,” pp. 53–83. 211. Sevcenko, Orfeu extático na metrópole, pp. 236–257. 212. Melo Gomes and Seigel, “Sabina’s Oranges,” pp. 5–28 (esp. pp. 19–20). Rosa Negra and Índia do Brasil are also discussed in the introduction.

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178

notes to pages 59–60

213. All three stars adopted racially premised stage names, with Aimoré taking her surname from a Brazilian indigenous tribe and, like Índia do Brasil, asserting a performative Amerindian ancestry. 214. Gomes, “Negros contando (e fazendo) sua história,” p. 77. 215. O Globo, 20 December 1930. Melo Gomes refers to this review to illustrate that the attitudes of the inhabitants of Rio and São Paulo toward the appropriate representation of “their” blacks were not as dualistic as reactions to the Companhia Negra de Revistas may have implied. 216. Ibid. 217. Felippe declared to the Rio newspaper Diário Carioca: “In the end I’m happy because this just gives more publicity to our show, and all I suffered was a little fright” (“Communiqués: A prisão de um ator da Companhia Mulata Brasileira como feiticeiro,” Diário Carioca, 22 January 1931, quoted in Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 191). 218. O Globo, 17 December 1930. As Seigel writes: “Whether these words belonged to Aimoré or an inventive reporter, the lack of further explanation shows that the paper expected such a sentiment to make good sense to its readers. That suggests a widespread, up-to-date understanding of the status of Afro-diasporic performers abroad, tempered by a keen perception of the eroticizing gaze the metropole turned on the tropics” (Uneven Encounters, pp. 118–119). 219. Notícias Ilustradas, 28 June 1931. “For the fi rst time a Brazilian company is visiting us, and its name ‘Brazilian Mulata Revue Company’ reveals the genre that it is dedicated to and the dark [moreno] faces of the artists that constitute it. The company has worked at the Trindade Theatre, performing a genuinely Brazilian repertoire, dominated by maxixes, catêrêtês and backlands’ modinhas and other dances.” One of the company’s chorus girls, Bartira Guarani, also performed with them in Portugal and then starred alongside Maurice Chevalier in Paris, where she is said to have imitated Josephine Baker. 220. In an interview with the Correio da Manhã newspaper, for example, she talked about her indigenous ancestry (3 February 1931, p. 8). 221. A Manhã, 10 March 1927, p. 8. 222. Correio da Manhã, 3 February 1928, p. 6. 223. A Manhã, 7 February 1928, p. 6. 224. A Manhã, 9 February 1928, p. 6. 225. Correio da Manhã, 3 February 1931, p. 8. 226. On 6 February 1931 the Correio da Manhã listed the main cast members of Deixa eu morá com você as follows: Índia do Brasil, Rosa Negra, Aurea Brasil, Durva Sudan, Jacy [Jandira] Aimoré, Avelino Soares, J. Maia, João Philippe, Garcia and Oscar Costa. The following day the newspaper printed a review of this, the Companhia Mulata Brasileira’s third revue, calling it “a play with highs and lows,” and singling out the number “Macumba” (a term used to refer to the Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda and sorcery in general) as being one of the most interesting: “it is the exact reproduction of what is actually practiced here in Rio and caused a favorable impression due to the way the artists performed it.” Particular praise is given to a “trio of mulatas from the Mangue and Mem de Sá red-light districts,” which is “de qualité.” Pixinguinha’s lively music and Jaime Silva’s eye-catching set designs are also commended (Correio da Manhã, 7 February 1931, p. 8). 227. Correio da Manhã, 3 February 1931, p. 8. 228. Correio da Manhã, 4 February 1931, p. 7.

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notes to pages 60–64

179

229. Correio da Manhã, 5 February 1931, p. 9. On 10 February the newspaper printed a rave review of Deixa eu morá com você, declaring it to be the best revue of that year’s carnival period: “The artists of the Companhia Mulata Brasileira are a tremendous hit in this play, performing encores. Its amusing sketches, full of verve, elicit sincere and pleasant guffaws from the public every night” (10 February 1931, p. 7). 230. Correio da Manhã, 19 December 1930, p. 14. 231. See, for example, Lott, Love and Theft; Cockrell, Demons of Disorder; Lhamon, Raising Cain; Sampson, Blacks in Blackface; and Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask. 232. Braga-Pinto, “From Abolitionism to Black Face.” 233. Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 23 August 1869, cited by Braga-Pinto, “From Abolitionism to Black Face.” 234. Anglo-Brazilian Times (Rio de Janeiro), 1 October 1881, cited by BragaPinto, “From Abolitionism to Black Face.” As Braga-Pinto points out, black impersonation was even evidently a legitimate political strategy among abolitionists in the northeastern city of Recife, as seen in the antislavery performances by the Beija Flor carnival club. 235. See chapter 3. 236. As Robin Moore writes, “Blackface theatre was so popular and so widespread in early twentieth-century Cuba that it is impossible to mention all of the well-known white actors who based their careers on stylized depictions of Afrocubans” (Nationalizing Blackness, p. 48; see pp. 49–52 for details of the stage mulata in popular theatre in Cuba in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century). 237. Photograph from CEDOC-Funarte collection. 238. Grande Otelo refers to this in an interview with the Museu da Imagem e do Som in Rio de Janeiro, published in Marília Trindade Barboza’s Grande Otelo, pp. 53– 54. US-style blackface also features in the 1949 fi lm Pinguinho de gente (Tiny Tot). 239. See chapter 3. The title Guerra ao mosquito was a reference to the phrase used by telephonists when answering the phone in support of the federal government’s campaign to combat yellow fever (Veneziano, Não adianta chorar, p. 95). It is also striking that cartoons published in Brazilian newspapers and periodicals in the early 1920s clearly took their inspiration from the caricatures of minstrelsy; see, for example, the cartoon “O prestígio da Rosinha” (Rosinha’s Trick) in O Malho (2 August 1924, p. 51), a publication that delighted in racially inspired satire. 240. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, 158. The lyrics included the lines: “Da cor do azeviche, da jaboticaba / Boneca de piche, é tu que me acaba” (The color of jet, of the jaboticaba fruit / Tar doll, you drive me crazy”). See also the introduction and chapter 4. 241. As Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez writes, “The boneca de pixe (meaning tar doll, also spelled piche) is a popular figure that has remained in the Brazilian cultural imaginary as a mystical, presumably female, black doll. Brazil’s tar doll is comparable to the standard types that minstrelsy produced in America, such as Jim Crow, the plantation darky Sambo, or the urban dandy Zip Coon, in that the boneca de pixe became part of Brazilian popular folklore as an easily recognizable figure, and from there it transitioned into mainstream popular culture through Ari Barroso’s composition in 1938” (Creating Carmen Miranda, p. 59). 242. See chapter 4 for more details on Miranda’s performance of the baiana archetype in this fi lm. 243. See chapter 4.

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180

notes to pages 64–70

244. Benamou, It’s All True, pp. 180–181. She describes his blackness as both a social identity and phenotype, and refers to his assumed Afro-carioca subjectivity as a malandro (pp. 236–237). Otelo told her in an interview on 30 August 1989 that even in the Brazilian cinema of the 1940s it was difficult, if not impossible, for black performers to step out of prescribed subordinate roles. 245. A Notícia, 13 March 1909, p. 2. 246. A Notícia, 10 September 1907, p. 1. 247. Gazeta de Notícias, 11 May 1912, p. 2. 248. Despite their success as live performers and recording artists, these were the only recordings the Oito Batutas made that have survived. These recordings were rereleased in 1995 on the Revivendo label on a CD entitled Oito Batutas. 249. Gomes, “Negros contando (e fazendo) sua história,” p. 67. 250. Hertzman, Making Samba, pp. 178–179. 251. Ibid., pp. 189. 252. Ibid. 253. Boletim da SBAT, 12 July 1927, p. 297. 254. Barros, Corações De Chocolat, p. 292. 255. Although both the Companhia Negra de Revistas and the Ba-ta-clan Preta had ceased to exist by the end of 1928, their influence can be traced in individual numbers performed by companies that began to embrace black performers; the revue Deixa essa mulher chorar! (Let That Woman Cry! [1931]), written by the Quintiliano brothers, for example, featured the number “Minha favela” (My Shantytown), starring Araci Cortes in duet with Sílvio Vieira, but more significantly, accompanied for the fi rst time by Afro-Brazilian popular musicians from the favela playing alongside the orchestra and Ari Barroso on the piano (Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 163). 256. On 22 August 1931 the Afro-American newspaper in Baltimore reported on Little Esther’s reception in Rio, stating that she was invited by the US ambassador to perform, accompanied by Liverpool-born musician Gordon Stretton (22 August 1931, p. 9). See also the introduction. 257. Ibid. When in Rio in 1931, Stretton made the acquaintance of Carmen Miranda, as a photograph published in the Afro-American on 2 November 1946, p. 6, attests.

chap ter 2 1. The maxixe, in one form or another, traveled to France several times at the turn of the century. Klein states that a version with more overt “black” connotations was taken to the French capital in 1904 along with other Afro-descendant rhythms from the other side of the Atlantic, such as the cakewalk, but “their characteristic extravagance, in numbers intended to startle the crowds, was hardly conducive to wide dissemination” (“Borrowing, Syncretism, Hybridisation,” p. 176). See also the discussion in chapter 1. 2. The Oito Batutas arrived in the port of Bordeaux on 11 February 1922. 3. At the turn of the century, samba was seen by the Brazilian elite as African and “savage,” and therefore totally unsuitable to represent the nation, as evidenced by the words of Rui Barbosa, minister of the treasury, who complained about the playing of a corta jaca (a sister of samba) at a reception at the presidential palace: “But, the corta-

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notes to pages 70–72

181

jaca, of which I fi rst heard a long time ago, what is it, Mr. President? It is the most obnoxious, the most underclass, the most vulgar of all the savage dances, the twin sister of batuque, cateretê and samba” (cited by Garramuño, “Primitivist Iconographies,” p. 129). 4. Vianna, Mystery of Samba, p. 112. 5. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 96. 6. See chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of this topic. 7. See also chapter 1. 8. O Paiz, 28 December 1899, p. 2. 9. Gazeta de Notícias, 28 December 1899, p. 6. In January 1900, Cook was still performing in Rio at the Teatro Recreio (see advertisement in the newspaper Cidade do Rio, 20 January 1900, p. 2) and at the Grande Café Cantante, in its Jardim Guarda Velha, in February, April, and July 1900. On 21 August 1900, the newspaper Cidade do Rio reported that she was soon leaving for a tour of the state of Pará with Geraldo Magalhães (p. 2). In April and May 1902, Cook was again performing in Rio, and A Noite reported on 25 January 1913 that this “mischievous singer” was once again performing in the city, at the Pavilhão Internacional (p. 2). Correio da Manhã (30 January 1915, p. 13) featured an advertisement for the Pavilhão Internacional (on Avenida Rio Branco) and “Jenny Cook—eccentric French singer.” She was also referred to as the “French artist, English in origin,” and as living at the Casa dos Artistas in Jacarepaguá (A Noite, 7 August 1938, p. 8). 10. See also chapter 1. 11. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 109. 12. Ibid., p. 110. 13. See also chapter 1. 14. Duque continued to practice as a dentist in Rio while carving out a career in the theatre and as a dancer. He was sent to Paris as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical product, a job he maintained until he saw an opportunity to pursue his dancing career there (Marcondes, Enciclopédia da música brasileira, p. 254). 15. Music labeled maxixe began to be produced on sheet music in Brazil at the turn of the century. The subsequent Parisian vogue for maxixe music is best exemplified by the success of Ernesto Nazareth’s composition “Dengoso” (Captivating), often referred to as the fi rst Brazilian musical hit abroad. The sheet music for this composition was published in Rio in 1907 by the Casa Vieira Machado and credited to a certain “Renaud” (Nazareth’s French-sounding pseudonym, undoubtedly designed to appeal to Francophile residents of Rio). Although it was only moderately successful in Brazil, the maxixe “Dengoso” was by far the most widely published and recorded example of the genre in Paris and New York. 16. See, for example, Le Monde Artiste, 25 October 1913, p. 686. 17. See, for example, Comoedia, 20 November 1913, p. 4. 18. Le Frou-Frou, 2 November 1913, p. 19. 19. Silva and Filho, Pixinguinha, p. 50. 20. Le Gaulois, 19 March 1914, p. 4. 21. Tinhorão, Pequena história da música popular, p. 86. An article written in French entitled “‘Dancing Palace’ de Luna Park,” announcing the opening of the venue and featuring a photograph of Duque and Mlle. Alboni, describes it as “a paradise of pleasure and beauty, an enchanted paradise” where one can dance the Brazilian

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182

notes to pages 72–74

maxixe to the accompaniment of a Hawaiian or Brazilian band (unattributed journal article, n.d., n.p., in the clippings fi le of the Jerome R. Robbins Dance Collection, New York Public Library, Performing Arts Division). 22. Duque arrived in New York by December 1914, when he was advertised alongside a vaudeville show, Watch Your Step, by the famous husband-and-wife ballroom dancers Vernon and Irene Castle. He went on to give lessons and private dance exhibitions. As in Paris, however, Duque was far from the fi rst to take the maxixe to North America, although he undoubtedly boosted its popularity there. Duque and his maxixe would be marketed in the United States as French exports, clearly to capitalize on notions of Parisian sophistication (Seigel, Uneven Encounters, pp. 76–77, 85). 23. Bastos, “Brazil in France, 1922,” p. 7. 24. Correio da Manhã, 20 January 1916, p. 5. 25. Chasteen, National Rhythms, African Roots, pp. 18–31. 26. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 91. 27. Lopes, “O teatro de revista e a identidade carioca,” pp. 25–26. 28. Saroldi, “O maxixe como liberação do corpo,” pp. 37–38. 29. Cited in Efegê, Maxixe, pp. 136–137. 30. Fon-Fon!, 10 January 1914, p. 48. 31. Correio da Manhã, 7 September 1915, p. 3. 32. Correio da Manhã, 12 September 1915, p. 4. 33. A Noite, 13 September 1915, p. 4. This issue of the Rio newspaper included a review of their performance: “Duque and Gaby are, in fact, marvelous. They dance with elegance, with distinction, and are impeccable.” 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. An advertisement published in A Noite on 14 September 1915 (p. 6) points out that João do Rio was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, underlining the highbrow pretensions of this event. He is described by Bruno Carvalho as having “chameleonic abilities and acumen [that] put him in the position of being intimately attuned to the city’s cultural cartography and to the cognitive maps of his readers— including their racial prejudices, of which several of his own observations were not immune” (Porous City, p. 84). For more details on João do Rio, see Chazkel, “The Crônica”; and Conde, Consuming Visions. See also chapter 1. 36. Correio da Manhã, 17 September 1915, p. 12. 37. O Paiz, 13 September 1915, p. 4. This same publication, on 15 October 1915 (p. 4), referred to their “stupendous success, as a result of their elegance and genuine artistry” in Europe and the United States. 38. No page numbers. The same issue of this publication features an article on Flaubert, examples of poetry, items relating to Brazilian and international current affairs, and the transcription of a one-act comic play. It was clearly targeted at an elite readership. 39. Correio da Manhã, 28 September 1915, p. 4. A photograph of the duo taken at an elite event at Rio’s Jockey Club was published in Fon-Fon! on 13 November 1915 (p. 27). After a brief spell in Buenos Aires in January 1916, they returned to Rio to perform at the Trianon, one of the upscale theatres on the Avenida Central, for “an elegant and discerning elite public” (O Paiz, 5 February 1916, p. 4). They went on to perform in Salvador’s Teatro Polytheama in May that year. 40. Correio da Manhã, 15 September 1915, p. 4.

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notes to pages 74–76

183

41. The Correio da Manhã (18 September 1915, p. 4) reported that their show at the Teatro Lyrico included the “rousing salon maxixe ‘Duque in Rio,’ a composition by the Brazilian Gabriel Costa, a piece of music that is always met with cries of ‘encore!’” 42. Correio da Manhã, 24 September 1915, p. 12. 43. See the advertisement in Correio da Manhã, 20 September 1915, p. 11. Ever the artistic border-crossing magpie, Duque drew equally on his experiences in Portugal to incorporate a self-styled fado into his repertoire. On 5 October 1914, the Correio da Manhã reported that Duque and Gaby had performed at the Teatro República in Lisbon, where a fi re subsequently destroyed their entire expensive wardrobe, but Gaby’s jewels had been spared (p. 5). The same newspaper stated that in his show at the Teatro Lyrico in Rio, Duque had danced a “Fado,” “a curious and suggestive dance based on popular Portuguese sources” (15 September 1915, p. 4). He invented his own eclectic choreographies, drawing on various transnational influences, such as the “fox-step” (O Paiz, 13 September 1915, p. 4) and the “fado apache,” billed as a “recent and resounding hit . . . in New York, Portugal and Buenos Aires” (O Paiz, 10 February 1916, p. 10). He drew directly on his overseas travels to instantly create new attractions, such as “a new version of the ‘Argentine tango’” that he and Gaby performed for the elite audience of Rio’s Teatro Trianon on their return from Argentina and Uruguay in February 1916 (Correio da Manhã, 3 February 1916, p. 5). He had performed this new creation in Buenos Aires the previous month to a rapturous response according to this same Rio newspaper (Correio da Manhã, 4 February 1916, p. 5). 44. Jardel Jércolis. See chapters 1 and 3. 45. O Paiz, 15 September 1915, p. 4. 46. O Paiz, 13 September 1915, p. 4. 47. See also chapter 1. Such was the appeal of Duque and Gaby in Rio that they gave rise to copycat performers. The Teatro Apolo company’s performance of a series of excerpts from popular theatrical revues, for example, included an interval during which a duo called Ananias and Gabriella performed an “imitation of Duque and Gaby” (A Noite, 18 December 1915, p. 5). 48. Correio Paulistano, 9 November 1915, p. 4. 49. Ibid. 50. Correio Paulistano, 14 November 1915, p. 3. 51. The Rio carnival hit song “Vem cá, mulata!” probably arrived in Paris with the Afro-Brazilian maxixe dancer and singer Geraldo Magalhães in 1906 since he and his partner had recorded it the previous year on the Casa Edison label in Rio (see chapter 1). Versions of what was referred to as a Brazilian maxixe were recorded in France as well as in England. 52. The Argentine press published many interviews with Duque and Gaby; see, for example, the newspapers El Nacional, La Mañana, and El Diario. An item in El Diario published on 14 January 1916 referred to the “great success” of the duo’s performance of a “mimed play” entitled “Defeated by Dance” (p. 7). The following day the same newspaper described this performance as a “comedy mime” (p. 16). On 19 January 1916, El Diario described the duo’s dances as “full of elegance and expressiveness” (p. 13). After their last performance at the Teatro Nuevo on 20 January, the pair were reportedly “bid farewell with enthusiastic applause” (El Diario, 21 January 1916, p. 11). 53. Correio da Manhã, 20 January 1916, p. 5.

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notes to pages 76–78

54. See, for example, the report in the Correio da Manhã, 24 January 1916, p. 5. 55. See the Correio da Manhã, 5 February 1916, p. 4. 56. Women had to wear pink and/or white gowns (Correio da Manhã, 15 March 1916, p. 4). 57. The press still exploited to the full their international credentials; at the Trianon in Rio they performed their “Fado apache,” with which they had been, according to the newspaper A Época, “a roaring success in New York, Lisbon and Buenos Aires” (7 February 1916, p. 8). 58. A Noite, 26 May 1916, p. 5. This same item reported that the duo would be leaving for Europe in August to honor a contract at the Olympia venue in Paris. On 30 August they traveled across the Atlantic on the steamship Frisia. This was coincidentally the same ship that they returned to Rio aboard after touring Argentina and Uruguay in January 1916; see, for example, the item in the Correio da Manhã, 25 January 1916, p. 5. 59. Correio Paulistano, 23 May 1916, p. 3. In fact, the opening of the venue had to be delayed until 31 May due to the late arrival in dock of the steamship on which Duque and Gaby were returning from Argentina and Uruguay (Correio Paulistano, 24 May 1916, p. 2). 60. Correio da Manhã, 2 June 1916, p. 5. 61. The figure skater Gentil is promoted in a similar vein: “Having performed in all the European capitals and in the different courts of the Old World, this young Brazilian has won the highest accolades in championship skating” (ibid.). 62. A Noite, 22 June 1916, p. 4. This announcement also reported that Duque was about to send 100,000 Brazilian cigarettes to French soldiers fighting in Verdun, via the French consulate in Rio and the French war ministry, and that each pack would contain a picture of him with the caption “To the French soldiers fighting at Verdun— Souvenirs of L. Duque, Brazilian dancer.” 63. Ibid. 64. A Época, 21 November 1916, p. 8. 65. See, for example, the advertisement for this fi lm in the Rio newspaper A Época on 2 November 1916, p. 8. It describes the fi lm as starring the world’s foremost dancers, Duque and Gaby. 66. See, for example, the editions of 15 June 1919, p. 38, and 2 August 1919, p. 12. 67. Correio da Manhã, 15 August 1919, p. 12. 68. Saroldi, “O maxixe como liberação do corpo,” p. 41. 69. Ibid., cited on p. 43. 70. Jackson, Making Jazz French, p. 40. For further details of the tango’s evolution in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including its often-obscured African influences and relationship with Afro-diasporic dances such as the cakewalk and ragtime, see Robert Farris Thompson’s far-reaching study Tango. 71. For more details see Apprill and Dorier-Apprill, “Entre imaginaires et réalités,” pp. 32–47. “Exotic dances” included all foreign dances, and “new dances” embraced mainly dances from the Americas such as the US cakewalk, Argentine tango, Brazilian maxixe (usually spelled matchiche or matchicha in French), Spanish paso doble, Cuban rumba, and other genres. Among these, the danses latines, including those from Latin America, and those from the Orient (which included Cambodia, among other locations), were important.

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notes to pages 78–80

185

72. Chasteen, National Rhythms, African Roots, p. 45. 73. As Bastos argues, at that time the label samba was used outside Brazil as an umbrella term for “pan-Latin American African-ness linked to the music-dance sphere.” He explains how Paris played a vital role in the “consecration of emblematic national Latin American musical genres until the 1920s.” Between 1906 and 1923, dozens of maxixe and samba recordings had been released in Paris to cater to the demand for dance music (Bastos, “Brazil in France, 1922,” pp. 2–3). 74. The original lineup of the Oito Batutas included Pixinguinha (flute), Donga (guitar), Nelson Alves (cavaquinho, a small guitar akin to the ukulele), China (vocals and guitar), Raul Palmieri (guitar; he was later replaced by João Pernambuco), Luís de Oliveira (bandola [a kind of mandolin] and reco-reco; he was later replaced by J. Tomás), Zezé (José Alves de Lima) (mandolin and ganzá), and Jacó Palmieri (mandolin and reco-reco). As Hertzman states, “Four were white, and four were black, but the band’s racial composition would fluctuate in the coming years as individuals departed and were added” (Making Samba, p. 104). 75. In the 1910s and 1920s, cariocas had a latent interest in the “exoticism” of the rural backlands or sertão of Brazil, which was reflected in song lyrics from this era, and from 1915 onwards in the fashion for canção sertaneja (backlands songs) (Tinhorão, Pequena história da música popular, pp. 41–42). This was evidenced in 1908 at the exhibition held in Rio to mark the centenary of the opening of Brazilian ports to foreign trade, where there were many stands featuring exhibits of “typical products” from the rural regions of the country (p. 42). 76. Literally, batuta is a conductor’s baton, but in colloquial usage it referred to a talented musician. 77. Hertzman stresses how black artists such as Donga, Pixinguinha, De Chocolat, Eduardo das Neves, and Benjamin de Oliveira, although not wielding the same power and control as the likes of Fred Figner, were able to give opportunities to—or withhold them from—would-be performers: “In creating the Oito Batutas, Donga and Pixinguinha cut more than ten members from the Grupo Caxangá. For private parties and special events, wealthy cariocas often sought out accomplished and well-known black musicians, who in turn selected who would play with them and who would stay at home” (Making Samba, p. 136). 78. Alencar, O fabuloso e harmonioso Pixinguinha, p. 40. 79. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 110. He continues: “To the band’s members, their own relationship with the roça [countryside] must have been more complex. A number of the Batutas were either born in rural areas or had family or friends who were. But the band also made money by parodying those places and gained distance from demeaning stereotypes by performing them and thus casting themselves as cultured, refi ned mediators” (pp. 110–111). 80. Ibid., p. 41. 81. Bastos, “Brazil in France, 1922,” p. 7. 82. Interview with Pixinguinha in As vozes desassombradas do museu, p. 23. 83. Alencar, O fabuloso e harmonioso Pixinguinha, p. 42. 84. Bastos, “Brazil in France, 1922,” p. 7. 85. Seven of the Oito Batutas set sail for Europe on 29 January 1922. The Palmieri brothers were unable to make the trip so were replaced by José Monteiro (vocals and percussion) and Sizenando Santos, better known as Feniano (tambourine) (Alencar, O

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186 notes to pages 80–81

fabuloso e harmonioso Pixinguinha, p. 43). Seigel states that Monteiro and Santos, and a third musician who joined the band for the Parisian excursion (either José Alves or Luís de Oliveira, the records are unclear), did not identify as Afro-descended (Uneven Encounters, p. 105). In addition, another member of the band, J. Tomás, who had replaced percussionist Luís Pinto, fell ill just prior to the voyage and was unable to travel. Thus eight became seven. 86. Cited in Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 84. 87. The press repeatedly referred to all eight members as being dark-skinned boys, and photographs of the band suggest that other members were of mixed-race backgrounds. As Hertzman points out, “The group’s members changed various times, but it always retained a racial mix. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, the group was often referred to collectively as pretos” (Making Samba, p. 107). 88. Cited in Vianna, Mystery of Samba, p. 82. 89. Costallat refers to the reaction provoked by the band’s performance in the lobby of the Cine Palais: “According to spiteful people, it demoralized Brazil to have a black band playing in the main artery of their capital city. What would foreigners think of us?” (cited in Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 83). 90. This performance for the visiting monarchs consisted of musical numbers that evoked the rural hinterland or sertão of northeast Brazil. Cultural manifestations, not least musical, of the ordinary folk of this bucolic region were valorized as authentic, preindustrial forms and promoted as national symbols in this era. Hence the visit to the remote northeast of Brazil by the Oito Batutas, funded by Guinle, in search of new material. Such was the sertanejo image of the band that they were invited to participate in the Rio carnival parade of 1921 and to play “regional modinhas” alongside a float depicting the type of humble thatched-roof dwelling typically associated with the poor sertão. 91. Vianna, Mystery of Samba, pp. 82–83. 92. Cited in Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 82. 93. Ibid., cited on p. 83. 94. Fortunato, “Os ‘Batutas’ em Paris” (1922), reproduced in Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 17. For an excellent English translation of this fictitious interview see Seigel, Uneven Encounters, pp. 132–133. 95. Boletim da SBAT 37 (July 1927). See also chapter 1. The SBAT was founded by Bastos Tigre and Raul Pederneiras in 1917 to regulate copyright and other entitlements on behalf of those who wrote for the stage. While claiming to stand up for the rights of all theatrical and musical artists, it was a hierarchical body that favored white playwrights and composers. Its members included Pixinguinha, Donga, and Benjamin de Oliveira, but the SBAT “marginalized or pigeon-holed popular musicians, black male artists of all genres, and most women, black or white” (Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 185). As Hertzman writes, “[H]ierarchies within the new author’s rights associations reproduced the narrow, racialized defi nitions of authorship, ownership, and creative genius that marked larger discussions and debates” (p. 201). 96. Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 82. Josué de Barros was a Bahian guitar player who began his artistic career in 1904 in the duo the Irmãos Barros with his brother Otaviano. He went to Rio and signed a contract with Columbia in about 1910. Shortly after, he and fellow Bahians Duque and Artur Castro tried their luck in Europe, but it did not prove a success and they returned to Brazil. With the help of the Brazilian embassy in

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notes to pages 81–83

187

Paris they later went back to the French capital and traveled to Lisbon, where Josué and Castro remained and achieved a degree of success. At the invitation of a German, they went to Berlin, where they recorded some records on the Decca label. There, the duo split up and returned to Salvador. In 1928 Josué went back to Rio, where he worked as a guitar teacher and composer. There he met Carmen Miranda, teaching her the guitar and introducing her to the Brunswick record label. She went on to record several of his compositions (Dicionário Cravo Albin da música popular). See also the introduction. 97. Pixinguinha, the group’s leader, claimed that they enjoyed considerable commercial success in the French capital. In an interview with the Rio newspaper O Jornal he asked, “Do you want to evaluate with certainty [the Oito Batutas’] success [in France]?” and provided his own reply: “Before our debut, the highest daily earnings [for one club] was 6,000 francs. After we started playing there, it rose to 16,000 and sometimes 20,000 per day” (27 January 1925; quoted in Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 157). 98. Jackson, Making Jazz French, p. 17. 99. Shack, Harlem in Montmartre, p. 33. It was only in the late 1920s and particularly in the 1930s that black entertainers from the French-speaking Caribbean participated actively alongside North Americans in music hall revues, nightclubs, and cabaret clubs in Paris. The 1930s also witnessed a vogue for black music from Cuba such as danzón, son, and rumba performed by Cuban musicians in the clubs of Mont martre and Montparnasse. 100. Berliner, Ambivalent Desire, p. 69. 101. Ibid., p. 236. 102. Ibid., p. 105. 103. Ibid., pp. 237–238. 104. Le Petit Parisien, 14 February 1922, n.p.; Comoedia, 14 February 1922, p. 2. 105. According to an advertisement in Le Petit Parisien, “The Batutas Orchestra is not a jazz band. It does not include a piano or drums. Composed of special instrumentalists of accomplished virtuosity, it has a wonderful infectious gaiety” (Le Petit Parisien, 16 February 1922, n.p.). The same advertisement featured in the publication Comoedia (17 February 1922, p. 2). Similar phrasing is used in promotional items published in Le Journal (15 February 1922, p. 4) and in Le Figaro (30 April 1922, p. 5): “Les Batutas, original, extraordinary Brazilian band, with an infectious gaiety, unique in the world.” 106. Duque astutely capitalized on the “dance craze” of the postwar years that, as Jackson writes, “provided a business incentive to revamp old venues into fl ashy and fashionable hot spots so that they could provide space to do the latest steps.” He continues, “Just as jazz musicians were fanning out across Paris, important changes in the city’s entertainment culture were also underway to accommodate the new tastes of audiences. The evolution was particularly striking in one of the favorite gathering places of the 1920s, the dance hall” (Jackson, Making Jazz French, p. 34). 107. Cabral, Pixinguinha, pp. 94–95. On 1 August 1922 their brief stay in Europe came to an end when they left France, accompanied by Duque, perhaps returning to Brazil so they could participate in celebrations marking the centenary of Brazilian independence. 108. Bastos, “Brazil in France, 1922,” pp. 14–15. 109. Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 91. 110. Alencar, O fabuloso e harmonioso Pixinguinha, p. 43.

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188

notes to pages 83–85

111. Alencar refers to “Les Batutas” as a maxixe (ibid.). However, the song’s selfreferential lyrics, composed by Duque in Paris, make it clear that this music wants to be understood as samba: “We are the Batutas / Batutas, Batutas / Come from Brazil / Right here / We are the Batutas / We make all the world / Dance the samba.” Donga also referred to it in an interview as a samba written by Pixinguinha, with French lyrics by Duque (cited in Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 89). As Hertzman writes, “In 1922, it was ‘samba’ the word, not yet the distinct, fully formed musical style, that had ‘gained acceptance’” (Making Samba, p. 112). 112. Alencar, O fabuloso e harmonioso Pixinguinha, pp. 43–44. 113. Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 91. 114. Vianna, Mystery of Samba, p. 83. As Vianna explains, “When Arnaldo Guinle fi nanced a Brazilian tour for João Pernambuco and the Oito Batutas, the purpose was partly to facilitate their desire to collect folk music, then defi ned exclusively in rural terms. In other words, the connoisseurs of Brazilian popular culture tended to elide it, in these years, with the idea of a national folklore, and to identify that with the sertanejo phenomenon of northeastern Brazil. The Oito Batutas rode that wave of interest to national and international success” (p. 83). 115. Cited in Cabral, Pixinguinha, p. 84. 116. Ibid., cited on p. 86. 117. On the day of their fi rst performance, 16 February 1922, the same newspaper announced: “The Batutas are not a jazz band. They do not play piano or drums. They are special instrumentalists of accomplished virtuosity, with a wonderful, infectious gaiety. Today: Gala evening.” 118. Interview with Pixinguinha in As vozes desassombradas do museu, p. 24. 119. See, for example, Vianna, Mystery of Samba, pp. 83–84; Cabral, Pixinguinha, pp. 111–123; Tinhorão, O samba agora vai . . . , pp. 29–35; and Marcondes, Enciclopédia da música brasileira, p. 584. Pixinguinha’s most famous composition, “Carinhoso” (Affectionate), was dismissed by the critic Cruz Cordeiro as heavily influenced by North American musical styles. He wrote in the magazine Phono-Arte, “It seems that our popular composer is being influenced by the rhythms and melodies of jazz music. This is what we’ve noticed, for some time now and yet again, in his choro, whose introduction is a veritable fox-trot and that, as it progresses, reveals combinations of pure US popular music. We don’t like it” (no. 11 [January 1929], p. 26). Many strongly disagreed, however, and “Carinhoso” became a classic of Brazilian popular music. 120. As Daniels and Rye note: European audiences clearly perceived what they were being offered as distinctive, though they were frequently far from clear what it was distinctive of. It is abundantly clear from research into contemporary comment that European audiences tended to consider all performers of African ancestry as a single cultural phenomenon. . . . The prestige of African-American models far exceeded that of any other type of music that might have been presented by members of the African diaspora. Minstrelsy, spirituals, ragtime, jazz, were successively the latest thing in the market place and, however little perspective audiences may have had, these constituted “black music” for them, and that was the music that performers of African ancestry needed to play if they wanted to maximize their income and reputation. (“Gordon Stretton,” p. 78)

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notes to pages 85–91

189

121. Radano, “Hot Fantasies,” p. 459. 122. A Noite, 28 January 1922. 123. A Noite, 14 August 1922. 124. Commenting on their choice of dress, which ranged from the rustic clothing of the sertanejos to “sharp dark suits, reminiscent of countless Jazz Age ensembles across the globe,” Hertzman writes that “the Batutas represented different things to different people: here a window into a distant, pastoral world, there a symbol of urban cosmopolitanism and modernity” (Making Samba, p. 106). He makes the point that the humble sertanejo label often stuck to them even after their return from Paris and despite their new “jazz-band suits” (p. 108). However, I would emphasize the chronological shift in their sartorial choices and the significant change in self-presentation and marketing following their trip to Paris in 1922. 125. Jackson, Making Jazz French, p. 69. 126. Ibid., p. 55. Many black Americans, attracted by low rents and familiar jazz music on their doorsteps, lived in Montmartre, which was the natural home away from home for Les Batutas, a neighborhood that functioned as a “point of transition between the United States and Paris” (p. 56). 127. Miller, Slaves to Fashion, p. 6. 128. Published in A Noite, 22 March 1922, n.p.; quoted in Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 130. 129. Ibid. 130. La Nación, 8 December 1922, p. 6. 131. Ibid. 132. This negotiation of their place within popular music circles in Paris was further complicated by the fact that by the early 1920s, Brazilian popular music was seen as an interloper, and its performers as a very real threat to the employment opportunities of French musicians (Bastos, “Brazil in France, 1922,” p. 10). This backlash against these Brazilian rhythms and their performers logically created a tension with the city’s fervent interest in and promotion of the black Other during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the form of jazz. 133. Vianna, Mystery of Samba, p. 16. 134. Radano and Bohlman, “Introduction,” p. 6. 135. See Jackson, Making Jazz French. 136. Ibid., p. 89. 137. See also chapter 3. 138. A Noite, 23 August 1922, p. 5. 139. As reported in A Noite (7 February 1925, p. 5). Duque and Gaby also performed at the Teatro São José in Rio that year. 140. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 107. 141. Correio da Manhã, 25 September 1923, p. 3. Duque and Gaby made their last public appearance dancing together at the Teatro São José in Rio in January 1924, as announced in the Correio da Manhã (5 January 1924, p. 5). 142. Vianna, Mystery of Samba, p. 67. See also the introduction. 143. Ironically, by 1925 Pixinguinha was dismissing samba as “primitive music that does not reflect the amplitude of musical thinking,” claiming that he only composed a few examples of the genre himself so as not to appear “incapable or inept” (27 January 1925; quoted in Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 158). As Hertzman writes,

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notes to pages 92–95

Pixinguinha “saw himself as a mediator, capable of subjugating and still remaining connected to something considered to be savage and unsophisticated” (p. 158).

chap ter 3 1. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 96. 2. The teatro de revista fi rst emerged at the end of the 1850s, became a recognized entertainment format in Brazil by the 1880s, and enjoyed its golden age in the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1920s, revues were characterized by a range of stock characters, such as the Portuguese immigrant, the mixed-race mulata, and the caipira (hick); quadros (sketches) that poked fun at everyday life in the capital; musical and dance numbers; and an apoteose (grand fi nale) that brought together on stage the entire cast. 3. Cited here is one of the defi nitions of cosmopolitanism given by Vertovec and Cohen (“Introduction,” p. 7). As they also state: “There is much scope for conceiving cosmopolitanism theoretically, practically and in terms of the people and contexts that the term might illuminate” (p. 4). 4. Vertovec and Cohen note that historically, cosmopolitanism has only been accessible to an elite blessed with the resources to travel and the opportunities to learn foreign languages and become familiar with other cultures. “For the majority of the population, living their lives within the cultural space of their own nation or ethnicity, cosmopolitanism has not been an option” (ibid., p. 4). In the case of Rio in the 1920s and 1930s, however, the presence of imported popular entertainers and the performance traditions that they brought with them was complemented by that of Brazilians who had traveled abroad and, upon their return, disseminated the impact of their experiences within the carioca (Rio) popular entertainment world, allowing ordinary people to engage with performative tropes of metropolitan modernity. 5. Ibid., p. 4. 6. Vertovec and Cohen, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism. 7. Rovisco and Nowicka, “Introduction,” p. 2. 8. Ibid., p. 5. 9. Fojas, Cosmopolitanism in the Americas, p. 25. 10. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco. Melo Gomes shows how the Companhia Negra de Revistas consciously played up its transnational elements to market its revues in the press, linking itself to a modern, cosmopolitan imaginary (p. 343). 11. Süssekind, As revistas do ano, pp. 54, 59. 12. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, pp. 34–37. 13. Conde, Consuming Visions, p. 53. Conde continues: “The plays depicted urban people, places, customs, fashions, and speech, with a remarkable attention to detail that performed a rhetorical strategy related to what Roland Barthes calls the ‘effect of the real.’ In this way the revistas helped to make the ideal city a reality. Emerging as a form of urban inculcation, they helped individual spectators to not just believe in but also see and experience the reality of its utopian configuration” (p. 54). 14. The fi rst female vedetes (stars) of the revue in Brazil were French women transported across the Atlantic to Rio in 1859 by a French impresario by the name of Monsieur Arnaud. Veneziano, As grandes vedetes do Brasil, p. 19. 15. Rebello, História do teatro de revista, p. 52. 16. Veneziano, O teatro de revista no Brasil, p. 134.

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notes to pages 95–97

191

17. Antunes, Fora do sério, p. 47. 18. The Companhia Portuguesa de Revistas performed the revues Foot-ball, Lua nova, and Belo sexo (The Fair Sex). On 23 August 1926 they gave their farewell performance. In 1928 the Companhia Portuguesa de Operetas performed Bairro alto (the name of a district in central Lisbon), by Avelino de Sousa, which had a nostalgic tone and was clearly aimed to appeal to the expatriate community in Rio. 19. Other formal changes were introduced, such as reducing the number of performances from three to two per day, and the number of acts in a given revue to two. 20. Seigel describes this company as “a powerful engine of cultural exchange” since it toured widely and hired local artists who were subsequently taken to new locations, where they often remained, being replaced by a fresh batch of local talent, and so the process went on (Uneven Encounters, p. 107). When the company performed in Rio in 1923, for example, the Afro-American tap dancers Douglas and Jones, and their compatriots Alex and John (an acrobatic duo), featured in the revue Oh lá lá alongside the British Tiller Girls (resident dancers at the Folies Bergère in Paris) and the French female star Mistinguett (Correio da Manhã, 8 September 1923). On their fi rst visit to Rio in 1922 the Ba-ta-clan included an orchestra of “negros americanos” whose leader was the percussionist Gordon Stretton and which featured John Forester on trombone. Stretton (the stage name of William Masters [1887–1982], a black British musician of mixed Jamaican and Irish ancestry born in Liverpool) went on to perform in Rio as leader of the Jazz-Band do Ba-ta-clan (see advertisements in the Correio da Manhã, 3 October 1923). See also chapter 1. 21. Ruiz has documented that two female performers who arrived in Brazil with the Velasco company, Isabelita Ruiz and Tina de Jarque, went on to appear with the Brazilian company Tro-lo-ló in the revue Dá nela in February 1930 (Aracy Cortes, p. 140). 22. Antunes, Fora do sério, pp. 54–55. 23. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 164. 24. Correio da Manhã, 3 June 1922, p. 5. 25. Correio da Manhã, 27 June 1922, p. 6. 26. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, pp. 164–165. 27. Ibid., pp. 162–163. In the mid 1920s Pascoal Segreto reformulated this company, incorporating elements of the “exotic” that had proved so successful in Paris in the 1920s (p. 179). On 6 January 1926 the newspaper A Noite reported on these changes: “One of them has already been introduced, putting music hall numbers in their revues and, shortly, there will be others, including an authentic chorus of [chorus] girls, a Yankee male dancer and a Jamaican jazz band, who will thus offer more hit elements to the revue writers, like the leading theatres of Paris and London.” 28. Jornal do Brasil, 4 April 1926. Rosa Negra was praised for her Charleston and called the “Mistinguett brasileira” in a direct allusion to the famous French star of the popular stage (Brito, “Um ator de fronteira,” p. 39). Antunes notes that the presence of Rosa Negra “e as oito black girls” (and the eight black chorus girls) was something of a novelty when this revue was performed (Fora do sério, p. 59). See also chapter 1. 29. The actors and actresses of Rio’s teatro de revista in the 1920s were predominantly immigrants or fi rst-generation Brazilians, often descended from families with a long history in circus or variety performance (Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 105). Thus, they were likely to be familiar with performance traditions from other countries.

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notes to pages 97–98

30. Abreu, “O teatro de revista,” pp. 12–13. Veneziano states that Peixoto went to Europe in 1923 (Não adianta chorar, p. 84). Previously Brazilian revues had copied the Portuguese method of carrying out scene changes during an act, simply dimming the lights and having the orchestra play music while the sets and props were replaced, and employing a sign that simply said, “Mutação” (Change) (Abreu, “O teatro de revista,” pp. 12–13). 31. Veneziano, Não adianta chorar, p. 84. 32. In Paris, Jércolis established a theatrical revue company that went on to perform in Portugal, Spain, England, and Italy. In the 1920s he and his partner Lucília Jércolis performed at London’s Crystal Palace and at the Teatro Eldorado in Lisbon (Antunes, Fora do sério, p. 45). He also traveled in Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and North Africa. In Portugal in the early 1920s, he directed and managed several theatre troupes and founded the Teatro Eldorado in Lisbon (Brito, Um ator de fronteira, p. 64). 33. Brito, Um ator de fronteira, p. 69. He cofounded the Tro-lo-ló company with José do Patrocínio Filho, who had worked as a journalist in Europe and took back to Brazil ideas from revues he had seen in Paris (Antunes, Fora do sério, p. 42). It was the fi rst Brazilian company to replace the traditional string orchestra with a jazz band and to include the bandleader in the cast of the revue, following the US model. 34. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 168. 35. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 66. 36. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 169. In the 1920s the teatro de revista was performed in a wide variety of venues across the capital city, including cafécantantes, cabarés, casinos, so-called music halls, and circuses. Most of the theatres dedicated to this performance genre were located in or around the Praça Tiradentes and seen primarily as aimed at a popular audience, with the elite ostensibly eschewing these venues in favor of highbrow entertainment in theatres and other locales on the Haussmann-inspired Avenida Central. Jércolis hired the Teatro Glória in the Rio district of Cinelândia, adjacent to the Avenida Central, to distinguish his company and to attract a more elite audience. Via analysis of ticket sales, Melo Gomes shows how the revue was popular among a wide range of social classes, helping to dispel the myth that it solely attracted the povo (the masses). The creators of revues targeted as wide an audience as possible to ensure commercial viability (Um espelho no palco, pp. 97, 154). 37. Brito, Um ator de fronteira, p. 71. 38. Antunes, Fora do sério, p. 88. 39. Fla-fl u is the popular way of referring to the local Rio de Janeiro soccer derby between the teams Flamengo and Fluminense. 40. Ibid., p. 55. 41. The arrival of the Ra-ta-plan in the city of São Paulo in 1927 was something of a scandal, with the company’s name bringing back memories of the French troupe (Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 84). One of the city’s newspapers published an attack on the derivative nature of such Brazilian companies and their chosen nomenclature, entitled “A mania das imitações” (The Mania for Imitations): “In the blink of an eye, we sense our ears being affl icted by these harsh and irritating voices: Ra-Ta-Plan, Ba-Ta-Clan Preta, Tró-ló-ló [sic], pure counterfeits” (Correio Paulistano, 10 March 1927, p. 6). 42. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, pp. 176–177. 43. Antunes, Fora do sério, p. 67. The term nu artístico referred to chorus girls without hosiery or those showing their breasts in a discreet way in static poses in subdued lighting.

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44. Ibid., p. 55. 45. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 103. 46. The Tro-lo-ló company’s orchestra was rebranded as the Jazz-Symphonica, for example. By 1934 the group had been renamed Jércolis Syncopated Hot Band and played jazz-inspired rhythms under the leadership of Jardel Jércolis. 47. In the revue Charleston (1928), by Carlos Bittencourt, the eponymous dance is described as being “national” and “from Brazil.” 48. Antunes, Fora do sério, p. 57. 49. Bastos Tigre had published a regular column in the periodical Careta in 1909 (under the pseudonym “Xix Malmequer”) in which he parodied the mundane advice given by writers in newspapers and magazines (Conde, Consuming Visions, p. 69). 50. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, pp. 128–129. 51. In Secos e molhados of 1924, for example, Araci Cortes performed a tap dance, and tap dancing schools began to appear throughout the center of Rio in the 1920s. The Argentine tango was also often incorporated into revues, reflecting its popularity in Rio thanks to the success of Carlos Gardel in Buenos Aires and Europe. In Eldorado of 1927, by the Tro-lo-ló company, for example, Araci Cortes sang and danced a tango. 52. Some revistas called themselves carnavalescas (carnivalesque) and included scenes based on carnival musical hits (Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 97). 53. The teatro de revista had become a key way of promoting popular songs, and composers who wanted their songs performed by the stars of the popular stage approached theatrical companies (Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 49). This influx of foreign musical genres sparked complaints from homegrown composers (Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 76). 54. As James Green writes: “At the turn of the century, Pascoal Segreto, an Italian immigrant turned entrepreneur, built his entertainment empire at Praça Tiradentes. . . . When he died in 1920, the humble immigrant, who had begun working as a shoeshine boy, owned most of the theatres and movie houses in the district, from the elegant São Pedro that billed top European talent to concert halls featuring the latest in risqué entertainment for the popular classes of Rio de Janeiro” (Beyond Carnival, p. 24). 55. Ibid., p. 79. 56. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 89. 57. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 3. 58. Baker performed in Brazil for the fi rst time in 1929, at the invitation of the impresario Nicolino Viggiani, and again in 1939, when she performed at the elite Cassino da Urca. See also chapter 4. 59. This incident was reported on in the newspaper Correio da Manhã on 10 August 1922 but occurred before the arrival of the Ba-ta-clan for the fi rst time in Brazil earlier that year. 60. See also chapter 1. 61. See also chapters 1 and 4. For more on this tradition of white women playing the baiana on stage, see Melo Gomes and Seigel, “Sabina’s Oranges,” pp. 5–28. 62. These dance styles included the jongo and the umbigada, whose origins lay in the rural plantations, and later the more urban maxixe, which in the fi rst decade of the twentieth century became the dominant dance style in the teatro de revista, where it was performed in a lascivious manner that emphasized its Afro-Brazilian origins (in contrast to its performance by Duque [see chapter 2]). The revue writer Luís Carlos Martins Pena (1815–1848) fi rst introduced Afro-Brazilian music into revue theatre

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when Brazil was still very much a slavocracy, and he also exceptionally tackled the issue of racism in his work (Neto, “O teatro das contradições,” p. 45). Neto points out that in the more highbrow theatre in Rio in the 1860s–1880s, musical influences from the Parisian stage were more prevalent, in particular the cancan in the upbeat fi nales, although they still competed with Afro-descendant local dances. The latter created a highly stereotypical vision of black culture, however, with African rhythms sometimes being mocked and associated with sensuality, primitivism, or even violent behavior, in contrast to imported European music and dances, synonymous with melody, harmony, reason, and “civilization” (“O teatro das contradições,” pp. 60–63). The inclusion of Afro-Brazilian music and dance styles would become a characteristic of the finales (apoteoses) of the end-of-year revues in Rio, particularly after the premiere of the revue-operetta O mandarim (The Mandarin), by Artur Azevedo, in 1884 (ibid., p. 63). For an extensive study of dance in the teatro de revista of the 1920s and the impact of modernity on choreography, see Cascaes, “Queria bordar teu nome.” 63. Domingues, “Tudo preto,” p. 115. 64. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, pp. 289–290. Despite this innovation, Melo Gomes points out that it was still common on the Rio stages of this era to see artists in the local version of blackface (p. 290). See also chapter 1. 65. See also chapter 1. 66. The musical numbers were written by Sebastião Cirino and included the maxixe “Cristo nasceu na Bahia” (Christ Was Born in Bahia), written by him in partnership with Duque. It became a huge hit in the Rio carnival of 1927 and was recorded on the Odeon label by Artur Castro. 67. See Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, and “Negros contando,” pp. 53–83; and Barros, Corações De Chocolat, for detailed studies of the Companhia Negra de Revistas and evidence of the white elite’s attitudes about the presence of blacks on stage in Rio at this time. The SBAT prevented the company from touring in Argentina, for example, for fear that it would demean Brazil’s image (see chapter 1). 68. It should be remembered that De Chocolat himself (the author of this revue) was from Bahia. As Melo Gomes points out, Tudo preto, the company’s most successful production, overtly deals with debates surrounding national identity and the contribution of Afro-Brazilian culture. The two main characters, the Bahian Benedito and Patrício, a black man from São Paulo, symbolize two very different “Brazils,” with Patrício being portrayed almost like a foreigner who knows nothing about the roots of black culture in Brazil. Symbols of “authentic” Afro-Brazilian culture abound in the play, such as the batuque (a song and dance form based on the rhythm performed on rural plantations by slaves, which gave rise to the samba) and the de facto national dish, feijoada (a black bean stew invented by slaves using the scraps of pork left over by their white masters). Tudo preto thus gives ample evidence that Afro-Brazilian performers, and not only the white intelligentsia, were embracing the idea of “racial” harmony as a peculiarly Brazilian phenomenon, as well as the notion that brasilidade was inherently linked to Afro-Brazilians and their cultural products (Melo Gomes, “Negros contando,” pp. 69–71). 69. See chapter 1. 70. The titles of the revues performed by the Companhia Negra de Revistas and its subsequent splinter companies (Tudo preto, Preto e branco [Black and White], Carvão nacional [National Coal], Na penumbra [In the Twilight], Café torrado [Roasted Cof-

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fee]) were overtly “racialized” but entirely lacked any militant content, aiming instead to capitalize on the transnational “negro vogue.” As Petrônio Domingues points out, however, the Companhia Negra de Revistas was praised by black associations in São Paulo and did become involved in the contemporary campaign to erect a monument in tribute to the Mãe Preta or Mãe Negra, the archetypal black wet nurse of Brazil’s slave-owning plantation society (“Tudo preto,” pp. 116–117). The apoteose (grand finale) of Tudo preto was entitled “Mãe Negra,” and although no copy of this text still exists, it is safe to assume that it was in praise of the contributions of Afro-Brazilian slaves, such as these wet nurses, to the formation of the Brazilian nation. This would have clearly tied in with the contemporary campaign led by sociologist-anthropologist Gilberto Freyre and groups in both São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to build monuments as a tribute to this figure. It is thus not surprising that the black press in São Paulo, particularly the publication Clarim d’Alvorada, was full of praise for the Companhia Negra de Revistas, which it considered to represent black self-advancement and transnational influences, particularly from Paris (Melo Gomes, “Negros contando,” pp. 73, 79). As Seigel writes, “Emerging in the city of São Paulo at the intersection of global and local spheres, the Afro-Brazilian press was a transnational phenomenon from the moment of its formation.” She notes how many of these newspapers emerged from the recreational societies, cultural centers, and mutual aid organizations set up by black Brazilians since at least the beginning of the century, themselves “cross-fertilizations of African associational traditions and immigrant mutual aid organizations . . . formed at the junctions of transatlantic migrations both recent and remote” (Uneven Encounters, pp. 183–184). See also the introduction. 71. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 344. Domingues alludes to references to her also being from Martinique or Africa (“Tudo preto,” p. 125 n4). 72. The company put on around four hundred performances in more than thirty towns and cities across six Brazilian states (Domingues, “Tudo preto,” p. 117). It performed primarily for white audiences, who saw the cast as “exotic.” Afro-Brazilian audiences were prevented from attending in large numbers due to the cost of tickets, which was in line with that charged by other “white” companies, illustrating the commercial rather than consciousness-raising imperative of the company (ibid., p. 118). 73. The Ba-ta-clan Preta’s fi rst revue was Na penumbra (In the Twilight), written by De Chocolat in partnership with Lamartine Babo and Gonçalves Oliveira. The company’s debut was in São Paulo at the Teatro Santa Helena, and the orchestra was once again under the direction of Pixinguinha, along with Bonfiglio de Oliveira. The newly streamlined Companhia Negra de Revistas was led by Jaime Silva. 74. See, for example, A Manhã, 26 October 1926, p. 6. See also chapter 1. 75. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 373. 76. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 119. 77. See also chapter 1. Grande Otelo was approximately eleven years old at the time, and in Rio he became the star attraction of the revue Café torrado. Another child star, Isa Rodrigues, billed in the press as the “Brazilian Shirley Temple,” starred in Manoel Pinto’s revue É batatal! (It’s Spot On!). 78. See also chapter 1. 79. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 163. 80. Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 205. As Susan Besse writes, “Films not only provided a new leisure activity, but as they quickly captured the popular imagina-

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tion, they introduced viewers to a new world of Hollywood stars and American styles and cultural values. Female moviegoers gained as role models sexy flappers and independent working girls who stepped out of traditional roles of resignation and modesty. Hollywood stars—especially female stars—became the heroes and symbols of modern life” (Restructuring Patriarchy, p. 22). 81. Besse, Restructuring Patriarchy, p. 164. For details of the emergence of the feminist movement, see especially pp. 164–198. 82. In the revue Champagne (1927), by Luís Carlos Júnior, for example, the eponymous song celebrates this luxurious beverage: “Champagne! Champagne! / Your effervescence / Is the image of existence.” 83. As one critic wrote in relation to the second visit of the Ba-ta-clan to Rio in 1923: “People applauded because it was from Paris. It is enough to be from Paris to receive applause” (Correio da Manhã, 2 November 1923). 84. The influence of Hollywood is similarly invoked in this revue in the chorus of the number “Cowboys.” 85. This revue’s prologue declares that nothing about it is original, thus explicitly acknowledging its reliance on imitation and the influence of transnational performance trends. 86. The song continues: E venho ao Rio dar o tom E mostrar a todos o que é bom! Deus em mulher O povo me quer! Todo mundo sabe quem é Josephine Baker! Até a grande Mistinguett Comigo é sopa, não se mete! . . . Eu sou divina, eu sou grande Eu sou a própria alma do jazz-band! I come to Rio to set the tone And to show everyone what is good! God in the form of a woman The people want me! Everyone knows who Josephine Baker is! Even the great Mistinguett With me it’s simple, don’t mess with me! . . . I am divine, I am great I am the very soul of the jazz band! The stage directions then continue: “she jumps from the swing and comes to the center of the stage, where she imitates the gestures and poses of the star of the Folies. Then the dancers begin a typical Hawaiian dance.” 87. The Companhia Nacional de Revistas advertised their revue Bancando o trouxa (Playing the Fool) at the Teatro Carlos Sampaio with this phrase. See advertisements in the Correio da Manhã, 28 December 1922 and 14 January 1923. This company also used this description to market its production Cruzeiro do sul (Southern Cross) at the Teatro República (Correio da Manhã, 17 November 1923).

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88. See the advertisement in the Correio da Manhã, 29 January 1924, p. 7. 89. See the advertisement for the duo Cicco e Cola, for example, in Correio da Manhã, 14 December 1923. 90. The shoe shop Casa Clotilde in downtown Rio de Janeiro advertised “Louis XV shoes—Ba-ta-clan designs, grey and beige” (Correio da Manhã, 9 December 1923). Another advertisement for girls’ shoes reads, “the most beautiful and elegant BA-TACLAN—sizes 28 to 33 for girls” (Correio da Manhã, 13 January 1924, p. 10). 91. See Correio da Manhã, 10 January 1924, p. 7. When the newspaper launched a nickname competition in 1923, one member of the public suggested “Mme. Rasimi” for the politician Bueno Brandão, adding that he “directs the parliamentary Ba-taclan” (Correio da Manhã, 25 October 1923). 92. Fon-Fon!, 27 June 1925, p. 53. 93. The controversy surrounding the nu artístico led to widespread comments on the theme in revues themselves; for example, in the scene “Modas femininas” (Female Fashions) in Rio-Paris, by Paulo de Magalhães and Geysa Bôscoli, performed by the Tro-lo-ló company in 1927. Female nudity was synonymous with modernity, as reflected in the revue Nu vestido (Clothed Nude) of 1927, by Henrique Junior, in which the character Satanás (Satan, described as a “galã” or leading man wearing silk pajamas), describes himself as “a modern Satan, the friend of beautiful and seminaked women.” 94. It is no coincidence that Ba-ta-clan is the name of the brothel in Jorge Amado’s novel Gabriela, cravo e canela, set in the 1920s and fi rst published in 1958. 95. In scene 9 of Demi garçonne the character Amor refers to “Ba-ta-clan love, which promotes joy in the world.” As its title suggests, this revue engaged with modernity in the form of references to the fashion for short hair among women, known by the French term à la garçonne (flapper style). This term even gave its name to a revue of 1924 by Marques Porto and Afonso de Carvalho that became one of the biggest hits in the history of the revue theatre in Brazil, with more than three hundred performances. To perform the number “Tudo à la garçonne” (All Flapper Style) the star, Margarida Max, and all the chorus girls cut their hair in this short style, setting a trend (Antunes, Fora do sério, p. 61). 96. The character “Mme. Rasimi” then sings the following lines: “since Madame Rasimi / Has been around here / This is what we’ve seen / No one wears clothes any more.  .  .  . / They just go around ba-ta-clan style!” Pindoba responds to her performance by stating, “This ba-ta-clan fashion is going to transform Rio into a veritable paradise!” 97. As late as 1929 the Tro-lo-ló company was referred to in the Argentine press as the “Brazilian Ba-ta-clan.” See, for example, the item on the company’s debut at the Opera theatre in the Buenos Aires newspaper La Época, 10 October 1929, p. 9. 98. As the character Gandencio states, “They say that the Ba-ta-clan is naked people.” 99. Fabiana exclaims, “The desire to see the Ba-ta-clan / Is burning in my soul,” but upon discovering that the young girl Jujú has gone to see the show, the horrified matron Generosa repeatedly exclaims, “What a disgrace!” 100. She states, for example: “Oui, oui! I am going to say goodbye to mon salvateur”; “What’s the matter, mon ami?”; and “Non fight with your Clarinette, mon cher ami!” She fulfi lls her dream of traveling to Paris with the company, having dramati-

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cally exclaimed, “I cannot bear Rio’s climate anymore! . . . I need to breathe the air of Paris!” 101. It was not unusual for foreign chorus girls to stay behind in Rio for romantic reasons, and the press regularly reported on this phenomenon. According to the newspaper O Paiz on 28 October 1925, for example, in a few short weeks the company of the Casino de Paris allegedly lost seventeen of its twenty-six chorus girls in this way. It is interesting to note that the same happened with the black Brazilian chorus girls of the Companhia Negra de Revistas, but in this case they paired up with members of the local black population in São Paulo (Melo Gomes, Um espelho no palco, p. 362). This suggests that these female performers were seen as akin to “exotic” foreigners in the eyes of the local audience. 102. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 60. 103. In the number “La petite femme de Copacabane” the modernity of Rio is encapsulated in the reference to bathing in the sea, which is rendered even more chic via the use of the French language: “Je suis la petite baigneuse / De Copacabane.” 104. Rio’s teatro de revista was traditionally a multilingual space, reflecting the varied demographic profi le of the city’s inhabitants. The language of the street began to permeate the popular stage, with Forrobodó (Bedlam [1912]), by Luís Peixoto and Carlos Bittencourt, being the fi rst revue to use the popular language of the carioca at a time when revues were written in European Portuguese, with a strict adherence to the formal grammatical rules established by that variant of the language. In the late nineteenth century, however, immigrant voices had been represented in the teatro de revista of Artur Azevedo, who reflected in his plays the languages that he heard in daily life in Rio and reproduced French, Italian, and Spanish dialogue in his texts. The same respect was not extended to Anglo-Saxon languages in his work, and German- and English-speaking characters spoke in a kind of pidgin version of their mother tongue that involved adapting Portuguese words to the grammatical structure of the latter. This linguistic tradition continued in the revues of the 1920s and 1930s, as did the caricatured reproduction of an imagined, grammatically flawed “black speak.” See also chapter 1. 105. Similarly, in Oooh! (1927), the song “A garçonière” (Love Nest) begins: “I have a garçonière / Which is tout a fait comme il faut / My love, if you want / I’ll give you the address right now.” This revue features the song “Conferência sobre o amor” (Lecture on Love), described in the stage directions as a “Parisian number” for the Bata-clan actress Mirka, as well as a “French number by the actor Max D’Arlys.” 106. See Martins, Arthur Azevedo, pp. 161–167. 107. As Maite Conde documents, in 1909 Patrocínio Filho began writing a section in the periodical Careta entitled “Cartas de um matuto” (Letters from a Country Bumpkin), presenting readers with visual descriptions and reports of fashionable downtown Rio de Janeiro from the point of view of the fictitious rural-urban migrant Tibúrcio d’Annunciação, written in the form of letters to his sister back in his home village (Consuming Visions, pp. 67–68). Conde writes, “The country bumpkin’s urban adventures often reveal the superficiality and absurdity of Rio’s worldly civilization in ways that parody, question, and undermine the teleological narrative of Rio’s modernity” (p. 68). One feature of contemporary life in the capital that the journalist derided was the adoption of estrangeirismos (foreign words) in everyday discourse and in pretentious sections of the press. He was one of a group of cronistas, includ-

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ing Manuel Bastos Tigre, who wrote theatrical revues and went on to write for the cinema, attracted by the latter medium’s popular appeal (p. 52). Terming such writers “the new bohemians,” Conde writes that rather than resorting to nostalgia and melancholy, “These writers’ humorous cultural practices can be interpreted as highlighting their displaced status from the political landscape as well as from the new and more fashionable contours of literary life” (p. 85). She notes that Patrocínio Filho’s cinematic work was created under the pseudonym “Antônio Simples,” “the name itself highlighting a less than wholehearted embrace of the new medium and its broad appeal” (p. 86). 108. José do Patrocínio was the son of a white vicar and politician, João Carlos Monteiro, and Justina do Espírito Santo, a young freed slave. 109. Jércolis had danced the maxixe in Paris before returning to Brazil to dedicate himself to the theatrical revue (Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 75). 110. Antunes, Fora do sério, pp. 214–215. 111. Ibid., p. 233. 112. Cited in Antunes, “O homem do Tro-lo-ló,” pp. 94–95. 113. See item in the Argentine newspaper El Diario, 9 October 1929, p. 6. This newspaper reported the following day that the company invited the Brazilian ambassador in Buenos Aires, members of the diplomatic mission, the consuls general of Brazil and of Portugal, and several Argentine dignitaries to the performance of both revues that night (El Diario, 10 October 1929, p. 11). 114. El Diario, 14 November 1929, p. 7. 115. Última Hora (Buenos Aires), 9 October 1929, cited in Antunes, “O homem do Tro-lo-ló,” p. 95. The Tro-lo-ló company toured several Argentine towns and cities, performing the revue Brasileira (Brazilian Woman), full of “sabor típico” (typical flavor) (p. 101), and Mosaicos brasileiros (Brazilian Mosaics) (p. 102). 116. El Mundo, 9 October 1929, quoted in Antunes, “O homem do Tro-lo-ló,” p. 95. The company portrayed easily identifiable Brazilian “types” for Argentine audiences, some of which were “racially” marked, such as in the revue Todo en broma (All in Jest), which featured “a parade of types, of characteristic figures, which translated the particular modes and atmosphere of our friendly neighbor” (El Diario, 23 October 1929, p. 6). 117. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 88. In one of the Tro-lo-ló’s earlier revues, Champanhe (Champagne [1927]), Araci Cortes appeared on stage with the Argentine Palumbo sisters performing a “black-bottom,” a clear example of the fusion of transnational performance trends and the cross-border interactions of popular performers in this era (Antunes, “O homem do Tro-lo-ló,” p. 89). In the early 1930s the company returned from almost three years of performing in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (p. 81). 118. Antunes, “O homem do Tro-lo-ló,” pp. 194–198. He subsequently pursued an acting career in Hollywood. 119. Ibid., p. 105. Alves performed in Argentina in 1930 and again in 1931, when he toured with Carmen Miranda. 120. Ibid., pp. 218, 245, 247. 121. Antunes, “O homem do Tro-lo-ló,” p. 36. The same was true of the expectations of audiences and reviewers in Chile and Uruguay. 122. Ibid., p. 35. This company took much of its inspiration from modern French and Spanish revues. 123. Ibid., p. 107.

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notes to pages 112–117

124. Ibid., p. 125. 125. In February 1934 the company was renamed the Empresa Teatral Jardel Jércolis Ltda (Jardel Jércolis Theatre Company Ltd.), known as Companhia Jardel Jércolis. Its main foreign attraction was the Portuguese vedete Ana Maria, who appeared alongside “the snake woman”—a German woman named Anita Koening—and the Argentine comedian Pepito Romeu. 126. Correio da Manhã, 10 January 1933, p. 7. 127. Correio da Manhã, 24 January 1933, p. 3. 128. Correio da Manhã, 27 January 1933, quoted in Antunes, “O Homem do Trolo-ló,” p. 170. The company took with them an official message from the SBAT and the Casa dos Artistas do Brasil (p. 175). 129. Correio da Manhã, 2 August 1932, p. 6. 130. Correio da Manhã, 11 May 1933, p. 7. US performance traditions were reflected in the press advertisements for Jércolis’s revamped company, which deliberately used English to publicize its “25 Beautiful’s Jardel Girls [sic]” (Correio da Manhã, 9 August 1932, p. 14). 131. Correio da Manhã, 25 August 1932, p. 7. 132. Correio da Manhã, 30 August 1932, p. 10. 133. See advertisement in the Correio da Manhã, 17 September 1932, p. 7. 134. See advertisement in the Correio da Manhã, 29 September 1932, p. 14, which bills them as “the true black [negros] American devils.” 135. See also chapter 4. 136. Correio da Manhã, 27 October 1932, p. 6. 137. Ruiz, Aracy Cortes, p. 174. “Randal Chocolat [sic]” was one of the variety acts that performed in a show at São Paulo’s Teatro Boa Vista in February 1932 (Diário Nacional, 3 February 1932, p. 4). In a fact-blurring transnational mélange, “Randall de Chocolat” is referred to as a “Brazilian dancer” who is performing in a “Cuban Night” featuring rumba and organized by “Oriental Dancing” at their own venue on the Avenida São João in São Paulo (Diário Nacional, 28 May 1932, p. 1). He is referred to as “Randal Chocolat, tap dancer” to promote his performance at São Paulo’s Teatro Sant’Anna (Diário Nacional, 8 September 1932, p. 2). 138. Correio da Manhã, 28 September 1930, p. 4. 139. Brito, Um ator de fronteira, p. 26. 140. See also chapter 1. 141. Diário Carioca, 18 May 1935, p. 12. 142. Brito, Um ator de fronteira, p. 83. 143. Ibid., pp. 83–84. 144. Seigel, Uneven Encounters, p. 17. 145. Seigel refers to “the marvelous savvy of Carioca popular performers, highly aware of the transnational and cross-class circuits their work traversed” (ibid., p. 96). 146. Paul Gilroy has helpfully suggested that estrangement of this kind is necessary to achieve a cosmopolitan commitment (Postcolonial Melancholia).

chap ter 4 1. Melo Gomes and Seigel, “Sabina’s Oranges,” p. 10. 2. Coelho, “Carmen Miranda,” p. 90.

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3. Cristina F. Rosa explores the history of the term and its referents in both West Africa and Brazil. She writes that in colonial Brazil, “the term ‘quitandeira’ came to signify, quite specifically, black women, initially all slaves for hire (escravos de ganho), who sold fruits, vegetables, and cooked food on the streets of urban centers. These market women became particularly famous for the African-inspired sweetmeats, stews, and porridges that they sold to the population at large. Food vending constituted, more importantly, one of the primary ways that these slaves for hire were able to purchase their own freedom” (Brazilian Bodies, pp. 127–128). 4. Ibid., p. 132. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. Rosa points out that the adjective Bahian (baiano/a) acquired a pejorative connotation in Rio de Janeiro, becoming “a euphemism for African heritage or, for that matter, anyone looking or acting black. At the same time, ambulatory food vendors from different regions also adopted the typical ‘Bahian’ attire as a marketing strategy to further authenticate the Africanicity of their selling goods in Rio de Janeiro. In this scenario, the ‘Bahian woman’ who sold food dressed in a colonial attire adorned with Afro-Brazilian religious symbols (re)-emerged as a character-type, which illustrated or recalled Africa, colonial past, black motherhood, and auto-exotic otherness” (pp. 132–133). 7. Tia Ciata was born in the countryside of Bahia state, where she was initiated into candomblé and exposed to the region’s samba de roda musical gatherings. At the age of twenty-two, she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she married an affluent AfroBrazilian, João Batista da Silva. There she established a business selling Afro-Brazilian sweetmeats, hiring local neighborhood women to sell her merchandise across the city dressed in typical baiana attire. She also became leader of one of the fi rst black ranchos or carnival groups, called Rosa Branca, which paraded through the streets during the annual celebrations (Rosa, Brazilian Bodies, p. 135). These black street carnival groups featured black female pastoras (so-called shepherdesses) dressed in variations of the baiana costume, which earned them the nickname falsas baianas (fake baianas) (p. 138). For more details on Tia Ciata’s involvement in the emergence of samba in Rio de Janeiro, see Hertzman, Making Samba, pp. 59–62. As he writes, “Women like Tia Ciata and Tia Perciliana exercised great influence but rarely had the same opportunities to establish careers or make property claims as those available to the men who gathered at their houses. But both women expertly managed and marketed their cultural knowledge and expertise” (p. 62). 8. Every escola de samba was obliged to include an ala das baianas: a wing or aisle of women dressed in the typical baiana attire. In 1935 the samba school called Deixa Falar (which was to become Portela) won the carnival competition organized by city hall with the fi rst mechanical float in the history of Rio de Janeiro’s parades: “a baiana figure on top of a rotating globe” (Rosa, Brazilian Bodies, p. 142). Paulina Alberto writes that, in part, “Vargas’s recognition of these women and his requirement . . . signals the increased salience of a regional Bahian Africanness in celebrations of a mixed national identity. But it also underscores Vargas’s Rio-centered approach to defi ning national culture: not only were these carnival Bahianas usually black Cariocas dressed in folkloric regional attire, attending a celebration purportedly national in scope but local in practice, but their presence was a tribute less to Bahia than to an episode in Carioca cultural history” (Terms of Inclusion, pp. 116–117). 9. Ibid., p. 127.

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10. Before leaving for the United States in 1939, Miranda had popularized Brazilian music in Buenos Aires in the 1930s, regularly spending several months appearing in theatres and on the radio, and building up a large fan base in Argentina. On her fi rst visit in 1931 she was accompanied by the two leading male Brazilian singers of the day, Francisco Alves and Mário Reis, and performed for a month at the Cine Broadway. She returned to the Argentine capital in 1933 and 1934, giving various live performances, and again in July 1936, this time with her sister Aurora, to appear as guests on the Belgrano radio station. During the visit in July 1936, Miranda turned down an offer to appear in an Argentine fi lm and a contract with the El Mundo radio station. She was an invited guest on the Belgrano station on 26 October 1934 and again from 23 May to 6 June 1935. She later made a guest appearance on the El Mundo station in March 1936 (Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 160). Radio in Argentina, as in Brazil, enjoyed its “golden age” in the 1930s, becoming a major attraction for Brazilian performers (p. 159). Miranda took her Afro-Brazilian-inspired music to porteño (Buenos Aires) audiences, and as Davis writes, “Although the Argentines would import many types of Brazilian music, the popular Afro-Brazilian sounds were in greatest demand” (p. 160). Argentine radio announcers divided the music they played into two categories, “danceable” and “folkloric,” and Brazilians performed both (ibid.). The Miranda sisters remained in the news throughout their stay, often appearing alongside Argentine celebrities and producers in press photographs (p. 160). In July 1937 the Brazilian elitist magazine O Malho reported on her popularity in the Argentine capital, as well as that of her sister: “With each visit by Carmen Miranda to Buenos Aires she acquires a new army of fans of Brazilian music. With the collaboration of Aurora, who, undoubtedly, will end up being a hit too, the greatest artist of our popular radio has colonized a great number of Argentine listeners” (O Malho, 22 July 1937, p. 9). Miranda’s star status is reflected in the fact that she became one of the favorite models of the Buenos Aires–based German photographer Annemarie Heinrich, who took pictures of Argentine and foreign celebrities. As the newspaper Gazeta de Notícias reported on 31 May 1936: “The exchange of musicians between Brazil and Argentina is a fait accompli. . . . Carmen Miranda has become, as a result of this exchange, an extremely popular figure in Argentina, loved by the people of Buenos Aires on her continuous tours of the capital and other cities on the River Plate” (p. 13). 11. Rosa, Brazilian Bodies, chapter 5. 12. “Little Africa” was the name given to the geographical area of Rio de Janeiro that embraced the port district; the neighborhoods of Gamboa, Saúde, and Santo Cristo; and other parts of the city inhabited by former slaves and their descendants between 1850 and 1920. 13. These legendary black mother figures also included Tia Perciliana, Tia Amélia, and Tia Bebina, who were instrumental in performing blackness in Little Africa. Rosa explores their interconnected social roles and their syncopated way of moving, “their individualized swayed-walk or swagger” (Brazilian Bodies, p. 133). For more on the social and spatial domains of these figures, see Velloso, “As tias baianas tomam conta do pedaço,” pp. 207–228. 14. As Rosa writes, the famous house parties hosted in Little Africa by the baianas festeiras “offered a family atmosphere and a lived repertoire of selective inventiveness, especially in the kitchen and on the dance floor. In doing so, they provided both material and affective sustenance with which to feed and renew the ethno-cultural pro-

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cesses of identification of their entire community. Besides live entertainment by local artists, these ‘underground’ dancing parties also featured a wide range of guests coming from different places, classes, and ethnic backgrounds. Thus, their house parties functioned as cultural trading posts across distinct kinds of peoples and ideas” (Brazilian Bodies, pp. 133–134). 15. Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 62. 16. Melo Gomes and Seigel point out that this confl ation of the two now very separate figures may surprise observers today, given the gulf that now exists between the image of the sensual, young, light-skinned mulata, highly sexualized in the popular imagination, and that of the dark-skinned, older, matronly baiana street vendor (“Sabina’s Oranges,” p. 18). Rosa notes that the quitandeira street vendors of the colonial era, as a consequence of their physical freedom of movement—in sharp contrast to white women confi ned to the privacy of patriarchal homes—“tended to be associated with concepts such as ‘moral dishonesty’ and ‘social degeneration,’ even if they sold sustenance rather than lust” (Brazilian Bodies, p. 130). She describes the quitandeiras as “working-class women whose choreographed actions projected an image of sensuality, independence, and self-sustainability” (p. 131, emphasis added). In street carnival groups such as Tia Ciata’s Rosa Branca, “the baiana-pastora leitmotif, or sexy dancing market woman, became an inventive strategy of cultural resistance. . . . In the case of hip-wiggling baianas portrayed at black parades, their dancing acts infused their traumatic memory with joyful and humorous experiences” (p. 139). 17. Melo Gomes and Seigel, “Sabina’s Oranges,” p. 12. 18. See also chapter 2 on the maxixe. 19. Melo Gomes, “Negros contando,” p. 60. 20. Veneziano, O teatro de revista no Brasil, pp. 128–129. See also chapter 3. It is interesting to note an obvious parallel between this mockery of black women’s desire to better themselves by imitating the language of the white elite and the blackface minstrelsy tradition in the United States, where white performers who used burnt cork to darken their faces often made fun of black efforts to imitate whites (Rogin, Blackface, White Noise, p. 33). 21. Michael North refers to “a kind of vocal blackface .  .  . a mimicry of ‘black’ speech patterns” in the fi lm The Jazz Singer (1927) (Dialect of Modernism, p. 6). 22. In 1932, for example, one of the hit songs of carnival was the marchinha entitled “Teu cabelo não nega” (Your Hair Doesn’t Lie), by Lamartine Babo, the lyrics of which “helped extend long-standing racist and misogynist depictions of mulata figures” (Hertzman, Making Samba, p. 182). For a detailed account of the depiction of the mulata in carnival song lyrics and literature, see Queiroz Júnior, Preconceito de cor. 23. See also the introduction. 24. Melo Gomes and Seigel, “Sabina’s Oranges,” pp. 13–14. In the revue, the elderly real-life Sabina is transformed into a young and likeable mulata. “The quitandeira’s music, her costume, and her dance all referenced blackness. Meanwhile, Menarezzi’s soprano voice and her European features and manners performed a desirable whitening of the character she staged. Newspaper reviews of the time also confi rm that the lasciviousness of Menarezzi’s cross-over performance drove the local (white male) audience into a frenzy” (Rosa, Brazilian Bodies, p. 140). 25. Likewise, revue actress Margarida Max, the daughter of European immigrants

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living in São Paulo, frequently appeared in the pages of the magazine Para Todos photographed as a baiana, as did Lia Binatti (Barros, Corações De Chocolat, p. 31). 26. See also chapter 1. 27. See also chapters 1 and 3. 28. Ibid. 29. A Rua, 14 September 1926. 30. Similarly, when De Chocolat broke away from the Companhia Negra de Revistas in 1927 to form the splinter group Ba-ta-clan Preta (a name clearly inspired by the French company Ba-ta-clan, with its several Afro-American members, which visited Brazil in 1925), it was the Afro-Brazilian performer Déo Costa, billed as “the Jambo Venus” and referred to in the press as “our Josephine Baker,” who took the part of the baiana. (A jambo is a dark-skinned fruit found in Brazil, and Costa’s stage name was clearly inspired by Baker’s moniker of “the Ebony Venus”). See also chapters 1 and 3. 31. The revue’s fi nal section—of which, regrettably, no record exists—centered on the equally stereotypical figure of the Mãe Preta (Black Mother), the legendary black wet nurse of Brazil’s colonial plantations. See Melo Gomes and Seigel, “Sabina’s Oranges,” pp. 22–24, for more details of the likely representation of this figure in the play. 32. Ibid., p. 20. 33. See also chapter 3. 34. North, Dialect of Modernism, pp. 6–7. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., p. 8. North identifies this strategy within the route to modernity adopted by the protagonist of Samson Raphaelson’s short story “The Day of Atonement,” published in January 1922 in Everybody’s Magazine. He argues that it is reiterated over and over again in the next decade within transatlantic modernist literature. 39. Paiva, Viva o rebolado!, p. 425. 40. See also chapter 1. 41. Brito, “Um ator de fronteira,” pp. 113–114. Brito includes a photograph of Grande Otelo performing a parodic impersonation of Josephine Baker—as he did of various international artists, including Mistinguett and Carlos Gardel (p. 127). 42. Elisa Coelho adopted the baiana persona herself in a performance at the Cassino da Urca in 1935 (Castro, Carmen, p. 172). Baker also performed the song “Na Baixa do Sapateiro” (an area of the city of Salvador in the state of Bahia), and a journalist who attended her rehearsal at the casino wrote, “Josephine pulls out all the stops, gets carried away, and suddenly she is no longer a foreign ‘star’ and becomes an authentic Brazilian morena, perfectly integrated into the cadence of the samba” (“Para a estreia de Josephine Baker no samba,” A Noite, 25 May 1939). He goes on to heap the greatest praise on her performance: “our music has waited until now for its greatest performer, who is this provocative and wily morena that the Cassino da Urca brought over from Paris.” The audience at the casino clearly shared this journalist’s enthusiasm; Baker was obliged to perform several encores and even elicited audience participation. Two of Rio’s renowned popular musicians in the audience, Nássara and Sílvio Caldas, also expressed their admiration (“Um triunfo notável de Josephine Baker,” A Noite, 27 May 1939, p. 3). 43. A Noite, 24 May 1939, p. 2. On learning of Baker’s performance, Carmen Mi-

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randa sent her a telegram from New York congratulating her: “I thank you for your interest in Brazilian regional music, congratulating great artist for idea of making samba known in Paris. I trust your intelligence, your great name—Carmen Miranda.” The telegram was reproduced in the Rio newspaper A Noite on 23 May 1939 (p. 2) in an article entitled “Samba do Brasil nos Casinos de Paris.” The following day the newspaper reported that Baker had told a reporter that she intended to perform a maxixe at the Urca Casino and had already written to the Casino de Paris stating that she wished to perform it there too (A Noite, 24 May 1939, p. 2). In this interview she states, “Now I am going to Paris. The Parisians will like the samba. Soon, very soon, the maxixe will be danced in the most luxurious nightclubs in the world. I will do all that I can to collaborate with the management of the Urca [Casino] to disseminate Brazilian dance and music in the great centers of Europe.” She also expresses her gratitude to Miranda for her good wishes: “I was very touched with the kindness of the great Brazilian singer. I was very touched indeed. When I sing the song ‘O que é que a baiana tem?’ I will not forget her. She will be my invisible inspiration.” 44. For detailed analysis of Miranda’s performance of “O que é que a baiana tem?” in this fi lm, see Shaw, Carmen Miranda, pp. 24–34; and Bishop-Sanchez, Creating Carmen Miranda, pp. 26–29. 45. The Sonofi lmes studios reused the “O que é que a baiana tem?” sequence from Banana da terra in their next fi lm, Laranja da China (Orange from China [1940]), in order to feature Miranda’s name in publicity material, astutely drawing on her star status. 46. Green, Beyond Carnival, pp. 1–2, 204–205. Thus commenced the fetishization of key aspects of Miranda’s visual style and recognition of its camp elements within gay culture (pp. 204–205). For a detailed camp reading of Miranda’s star text, see Bishop-Sanchez, Creating Carmen Miranda, pp. 131–166. 47. As Bryan McCann writes, “the term was archaic even in Bahia, and in the rest of the country virtually unknown. Its sudden dissemination throughout Brazil in a popular fi lm set off flurries of scholarly etymological inquiries into its origins and significance. It immediately entered into popular usage in the capital, quickly taking on the completely secular meaning of trinkets or baubles.” Inspired by the buzz created by “O que é que a baiana tem?,” the popular composer Lamartine Babo wrote a song entitled “Joujoux e balangandãs,” which was then incorporated into the eponymous theatrical revue (Hello, Hello, Brazil, p. 107). According to the anthropologist Donald Pierson, who provides a detailed description of baianas and their typical attire, the balangandã had disappeared from the casual baiana costume by the early 1940s and was worn on festive occasions only, mostly tied at the waist (Negroes in Brazil, pp. 246–247). 48. Correio da Manhã, 23 July 1939, p. 16. This show was aimed at a high-society audience, and both race and class were considerations when it came to selecting the performers (Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 67). 49. Correio da Manhã, 30 July 1939, p. 9. 50. Correio da Manhã, 13 August 1939. 51. I am grateful here for the comments made in relation to an earlier draft of this chapter by one of the reviewers appointed by the University of Texas Press. 52. Miranda’s performance at the Cassino da Urca also attracted the attention of Shubert’s traveling companion, Norwegian Olympic skater–turned–fi lm star Sonja He-

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notes to pages 128–130

nie, who complimented her on the baiana costume. On the journey back to New York on the SS Uruguay, Miranda gave Henie one of her costumes to wear to a fancy-dress ball onboard the ship, for which she was awarded fi rst prize. 53. See also chapter 1. 54. Brito, Um ator de fronteira, pp. 111–112. 55. Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker, p. 325 n26. 56. Magalhães, “Josephine Baker.” Similarly, on 27 May 1929 the newspaper A Noite featured a large photograph of Baker and the following comments on her “racial” type: “Josephine, despite making a point of being seen as such, is not, however, a black woman in the true sense of the term. She is, rather, an Americanized mixed-race woman [mestiça], with a skin tone the color of jambo fruit, large, velvety black eyes, the hands of a princess and smooth, straight hair. Her father—she says—was Spanish” (p. 7). 57. Progresso, 13 January 1929. Cited in Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, p. 107. 58. An advertisement for the Cinema Parisiense in the Rio newspaper A Noite on 31 August 1927 reads: “Tomorrow—Josephine Baker, the famous ‘star’ of the Folies Bergère, in her devilish numbers, the Charleston and the Black Bottom from the Casino de Paris in the fi lm O Apache” (p. 7). On 8 October 1927 the same newspaper featured an advertisement for the Cinema Íris in Rio: “The fi nal days of the grandiose color fi lm Porque Paris Fascina—a reproduction of the ‘Folies Bergère’ where you will see the famous black [negra] star Josephine Baker in a real Charleston. Marvelous! Surprising!” (p. 8). 59. See also chapter 1. 60. Barros, Corações De Chocolat, p. 267. 61. See also chapter 1. 62. Williams, “Uma mulata, sim!,” p. 14. 63. See also the introduction. 64. A Notícia, 28 November 1929. Baker was also widely impersonated by carnival revelers in Brazil; the Rio newspaper A Noite reported on 8 February 1932 that sketches performed at carnival balls at the Eldorado Cinema featured impersonations of Baker alongside those of Al Jolson, Gandhi, Maurice Chevalier, and Mistinguett (p. 4). 65. Progresso, 28 April 1929. 66. This success prompted the Serrador company to approach Viggiani about hiring her to perform at the Odeon Cinema. 67. Feijoada, a stew of beans and cheap cuts of meat, is seen as Brazil’s national dish, descended from slave diets on colonial plantations. Paraty is a generic name for cachaça, the potent fi rewater made from sugarcane alcohol, and also a brand name for this product. 68. Baker, Memórias, p. 114. Excerpts from this memoir by Baker were also serialized in the theatre journal A Máscara. 69. Ibid. 70. Williams, “Uma mulata, sim!,” p. 8. 71. The term mulata assumida implies a lighter-skinned woman of mixed-race heritage who can sometimes “pass” for white but who embraces rather than denies her African roots. See also chapter 1. 72. Magalhães, “Josephine Baker.” 73. Baker learned the techniques of applying blackface makeup, minstrel-style, in

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her early touring days with the Dixie Steppers vaudeville act and in Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s vaudeville musicals Shuffl e Along and Chocolate Dandies. Ethnic stereotypes performed in blackface, predominantly but not exclusively by whites, were a staple of vaudeville in the United States (Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker, pp. 56–58, 145). As Robin Moore writes in relation to Baker’s performance of black subjectivity in Paris: “French producers choreographing her acts knew next to nothing of African or African-American culture. The versions of ‘blackness’ they promoted can only be described as a racist and exoticized fantasy, replete with giant watermelon backdrops, cotton pickers, cannibal scenes, grotesque clowning, and blackface comedy” (Moore, Nationalizing Blackness, p. 71). 74. Macumba is a term used to refer to Afro-Brazilian religious practices that combine elements of Catholicism with those of belief systems taken to Brazil by African slaves. 75. Pastoras (shepherdesses) are female samba dancers who traditionally appear as a group in the annual carnival parades in Rio de Janeiro as part of the samba schools. 76. Efegê, Figuras e coisas, pp. 145–146. 77. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. Given their gender, Miranda’s and Baker’s donning of the “white masks” deserves further exploration within the context of wellrehearsed gender studies’ critiques of Fanon’s male-centric theoretical formulations. 78. Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” p. 101. 79. Ibid. 80. A Noite, 24 May 1939, p. 2. 81. The sketch of Baker’s baiana displays just the slightest hint of shading under the bust; otherwise it is strikingly chaste. 82. A Noite, 27 May 1939, p. 3. 83. Baker’s costume was created by the Casa Siberia fashion house, and she selected it from five possible designs. In an interview she declared, “I will also take this costume to Paris and I believe it will awaken interest among elegant Parisians” (A Noite, 24 May 1939, p. 2). 84. The review of the show in A Noite on 27 May 1939 describes her as appearing “half-naked” in this number (p. 3). In the run-up to her debut at the upscale Cassino da Urca, advertisements in the press featured photographs of her in ultra-glamorous, sexually alluring evening gowns worthy of a Hollywood star. 85. See also chapter 1. 86. Leal, Demolindo, pp. 280–281. 87. Pepa Ruiz performed a “baiana number” entitled “O mugunzá” (the name of an Afro-Brazilian dish) in one of her eighteen guises in this production. This number was composed especially for the company’s Brazilian tour by Francisco de Carvalho. 88. Blasco, Memórias, pp. 169–170. 89. Jornal de Lisboa, 22 January 1898. 90. Rebello, História do teatro de revista, p. 139. 91. Santos, A revista à portuguesa, p. 95. 92. See also chapters 1 and 3. 93. Corrêa, Antropólogas e antropologia, pp. 178–179, cited in Bishop-Sanchez, Creating Carmen Miranda, pp. 14–15. See note 74 for an explanation of the term macumba. Here it is being used disparagingly as a generic term for witchcraft or sorcery, with clear racist overtones.

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94. The title of the song itself (repeated throughout) is a stereotypical example of “slave speak”; the terms Yáyá and Yôyô are corrupted forms of Senhora and Senhor, respectively, and were supposedly used by slaves to address their masters. The lyrics also feature the omission of fi nal syllables (e.g. “carnavá” instead of carnaval); the substitution of r for l (“vorte” instead of volte [return]); and errors in pronunciation (“tu mi disse” [you said to me]) and grammar (such as the failure to pluralize nouns; e.g., “umas coisinha” [some things]). 95. Rosa enumerates the various building blocks of Miranda’s stage and screen baiana as follows: “Real” ambulatory vendors selling African-inspired food on the streets; EuroBrazilian men cross-dressing as quitandeiras during Mardi Gras; colonial “naughty shepherdesses” shaking their hips in exchange for church donations during Epiphany; white-looking sopranos mimicking sexy dancing mulatas on urban stages; young women honoring Cidade Nova’s tias baianas at black pageantparades; high-society women dressed as “stylized” baianas at carnival balls, etc. (Brazilian Bodies, p. 144) She concludes that Miranda’s “choreographed performance fuses the racial indefi niteness and the tantalizing mockery characteristic of burlesque musicals with the dignified boasting and the hyperbolic fakery exercised at black carnival, thus collapsing the baiana-mulata-pastora who dances samba into a symbol of auto-exotic-yet-patriotic gaiety” (ibid.). 96. Miranda initially performed two Brazilian songs, “O que é que a baiana tem?” and “Touradas em Madri” (Bullfights in Madrid), in addition to a pseudo-rumba especially written for the show, “South American Way.” Due to problems over copyright, the two Brazilian songs were replaced in October 1939 by the tongue-twister “Bambú, bambú” (Bamboo, Bamboo) and “Mamãe eu quero” (Mummy, I Want Some). The lyrics of “South American Way” were originally in English and Spanish, but to save Miranda from having to learn them phonetically, Aloísio de Oliveira, a member of the Bando da Lua, translated them into Portuguese, inventing in the process the word pregoneiro (a Portuguese version of the Spanish term pregonero, referring to a street vendor who hawks his wares) (Castro, Carmen, pp. 201–207). 97. Pringle, “Rolling Up from Rio,” p. 23. 98. Tavares, “A pequena notável,” p. 26. 99. Press release, Shubert Archive, New York City. 100. As Ligiero Coelho states: “Miranda’s skirt in The Streets of Paris (1939) showed four triangular cut-outs through which parts of her belly and hips could be seen, a style that was considered very sexy at the time.” This cut-out device was also used in her Hollywood movies Down Argentine Way (1940) and Weekend in Havana (1941) (Carmen Miranda, pp. 97, 98–99). 101. “‘The Streets of Paris’ Fast and Hilarious,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 15 April 1940, p. 14. 102. Roberts, “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat,” p. 11. 103. Coelho, Carmen Miranda, p. 97. 104. Bishop-Sanchez, Creating Carmen Miranda, p. 67. She continues, drawing on the work of Judith Butler: “Miranda could never pass for Afro-Brazilian; despite all

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the components of her performance, her impersonation remained just that, an approximation in which the body performing and the ideal performed appear distinguishable” (ibid.). 105. Despite her runaway success in the United States, when Miranda returned to Brazil in 1940, she received the cold shoulder from the upscale audience at a charity show at the Urca Casino. The spectators reacted frostily to her greeting them in English and were not impressed by her performance of the Broadway rumba “South American Way.” Visibly distressed by this reaction, she canceled all further shows at the casino. It seems no coincidence that two months later, in September 1940, she chose to return to this stage alongside the very dark-skinned Afro-Brazilian entertainer Grande Otelo, with whom she performed several new sambas, self-consciously aligning herself with Afro-Brazilian culture. Adopting the persona of the Afro-Brazilian baiana again in her lyrics (not just her costume), she sang Dorival Caymmi’s “Dengo que a nega tem” (The Charm that Black Women Have) to rapturous applause. 106. Negra, Off-White Hollywood, p. 6. 107. Beltrán, Latina/o stars in US Eyes. 108. As Molina Guzmán and Valdivia write, “Tropicalism erases specificity and homogenizes all that is identified as Latin and Latina/o. Under the trope of tropicalism, attributes such as bright colors, rhythmic music, and brown or olive skin comprise some of the most enduring stereotypes about Latina/os, a stereotype best embodied by the excesses of Carmen Miranda and the hypersexualization of Ricky Martin.” They cite extravagant jewelry, bright seductive clothing, curvaceous hips, and a focus on the area below the navel as among the key aspects of the trope of tropicalism or tropicalisation in its feminized form (“Brain, Brow, and Booty,” p. 211). 109. Mendonça, Carmen Miranda, pp. 18–19. 110. Freire-Medeiros, “Star in the House of Mirrors,” p. 24. There is ample evidence to suggest that this architectural representation of Brazil was designed to fulfi ll US expectations linked to a perceived Brazilian essentialism. In a letter to Oswaldo Aranha, Brazilian ambassador to the United States, dated 18 June 1938, Francisco Silva Jr., a resident of New York, criticizes the plans for a “majestic, austere and classical” pavilion. He tellingly adds: “The Americans are expecting a Brazilian pavilion— light, simple, with a tropical atmosphere, with rare birds, regional vegetation, and so on” (document at the Centre for Research and Documentation [CPDOC]), Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro). In an unsigned letter stored in the same archive, dated 9 December 1938, on headed paper from the Great Northern Hotel, New York, Oswaldo Aranha is given advice regarding the choice of music to be played in the pavilion, which should be performed by a “typical Brazilian band brought over from Brazil, not composed of blacks but rather the whitest possible good musicians [and] folkloric female singers like Carmen Miranda.” 111. Miranda’s contract with Shubert prevented her from becoming the official ambassadress of Brazilian popular music and singing at the fair. Her musicians, the Bando da Lua, however, were invited to be part of Brazil’s official musical delegation, and the Vargas regime’s Press and Propaganda Department (DIP) paid for their travel to New York. They performed on the day the restaurant at the Brazilian pavilion was officially opened. However, according to Aloísio de Oliveira’s memoir, the band was unable to meet their commitments to play in the pavilion due to their rehearsals and performances for Streets of Paris in Boston (De banda pra lua, p. 71). When it was an-

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nounced in Brazil that the nation would be represented at the fair, Miranda began a discreet campaign to be chosen to appear at the opening of the Brazilian pavilion and its restaurant (Gil-Montero, Carmen Miranda, p. 76). During her time on the US East Coast between 1939 and 1941, Miranda attended several official engagements in the de facto role of Brazilian cultural envoy. On 5 March 1940, for example, she was invited to perform at a dinner for President Roosevelt and his wife at the Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC, the residence of secretary of state Cordell Hull. 112. In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Diário da Noite in April 1939, she stated, “I have been given the great opportunity and honor to promote Brazilian culture. This will be the fi rst important chance for samba. Thus I am going to do my utmost to get it right, so that Brazil’s popular music conquers North America, which would lead to its consecration all over the world.  .  .  . And I am taking with me six snazzy baiana outfits. . . . I’ve done everything to ensure that our music and the baiana are a hit over there” (29 April 1939, p. 9). 113. Correio da Manhã, 9 May 1939. 114. The show, with music by Don Alonso, premiered at a concert at the University of Cincinnati, and Dunham continued to perform her “Baiana” routine onstage throughout the 1940s (Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 170). See the photograph of Dunham in a baiana costume in the New York Amsterdam Star-News, 21 June 1941. 115. Camargo went on to imitate Miranda’s musical repertoire and costumes in shows at MGM cinema theatres and New York nightclubs (Castro, Carmen, p. 291). Citing the Washington Times Herald, the Rio newspaper Gazeta de Notícias reported on Camargo’s debut at the Capitólio Theatre: “Miss Camargo, a 23-year-old Brazilian singer, was ‘discovered’ at the Atlântico Casino in Rio de Janeiro, where she is as popular as Carmen Miranda” (18 September 1940, p. 5). In spite of her conscious imitation of Miranda, and the opportunities that the latter’s success in the United States afforded her by association, Camargo objected when one Broadway theatre billed her as “the Brazilian Bombshell”—Miranda’s famous moniker—on a poster for her show, stating that she did not want to be compared to Miranda (Diretrizes, November 1940). They were great rivals within the Brazilian recording industry and radio, and like Miranda, Camargo starred in the fi lm Alô, alô, carnaval! and appeared onstage at the Cassino da Urca with the Bando da Lua (A Noite, 25 November 1936). 116. Diário da Noite, 27 March 1942, p. 8. A small photograph of Camargo wearing a turban-style hat appeared in the Rio newspaper Diário de Notícias advertising the Cuban bandleader Ciro Rimac’s Revista panamericana (Panamerican Revue) (7 January 1941, p. 8). 117. Vianna, Mystery of Samba, p. 41. As Pereira de Sá writes, “Carmen Miranda and her baiana dialogue, thus, [were] in perfect harmony with the whole context of the emerging national musical culture of the 1930s” (Baiana internacional, p. 119). 118. Gil-Montero, Carmen Miranda, p. 90. As Gil-Montero underlines, the members of the Bando da Lua were middle-class white men, and on their second visit to the United States the only member who was married to a black woman remained in Brazil. “As they were not dark-skinned and fit in easily in luxurious surroundings, they complied very well with the requirements for class identification” (p. 122). 119. Ibid., p. 91. The turban retailed at an affordable US $2.77. 120. Ibid. As early as 1934 Miranda was wearing sandals with extremely thick soles, which she had especially made for her by a cobbler in Rio de Janeiro to increase her height. She referred to these shoes as tamancos (Portuguese for “clogs,” worn by

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poor Portuguese immigrants to Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). She innovatively incorporated such footwear into her various versions of the baiana costume, which traditionally featured flat sandals. It is possible that she took her inspiration from platform sandals created in the 1930s by Italian designer Ferragamo and his French counterpart Vivier, but all the evidence suggests that she, in fact, served as their muse. As Ligiero Coelho explains, in New York, Miranda hired new shoe designers, notably Ferragamo, then living in the city, and it was after meeting her that he started to promote his platform sandals in the United States. Until Miranda became associated with them, local stores considered platform shoes too exotic for North American women (Carmen Miranda, p. 123). 121. Castro, Carmen, pp. 222–223. 122. Ibid., p. 210. 123. The moniker was coined by US columnist Earl Wilson (ibid., p. 471). 124. The Good Neighbor Policy dated from the beginning of the twentieth century but was reactivated in 1933 by President Roosevelt. With the outbreak of World War II the policy was intensified in a concerted effort to strengthen cultural, economic, and political ties between North and South America to attenuate the fi nancial and geostrategic threats posed to the United States by the confl ict. The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, created in 1944 and headed by Nelson Rockefeller, had a motion pictures division that, in addition to sponsoring the production of newsreels and documentaries for distribution in Latin America, actively encouraged Hollywood studios to produce feature fi lms with Latin American themes, settings, and stars. 125. The costume designer for this fi lm was Gwen Wakeling, although it has been suggested that Miranda’s costume for the number “The Ñango” was designed by Brazilian Alceu Penna, who designed various baiana costumes for her in the United States. It was common practice for Hollywood fi lms not to credit all those responsible for wardrobe designs. See Bonadio and Guimarães, “Alceu Penna,” p. 164. 126. Sadlier, “Good Neighbor Brazil,” p. 180. The fi lm’s costume designer was Earl Luick. 127. In a poster for the fi lm, Miranda is pictured wearing a bright yellow baiana outfit and multicolored turban, and unlike the other stars, who appear in head shots, she is displayed from head to toe, highlighting her “tropical” alterity. For an analysis of Miranda’s fi lm posters see Bishop-Sanchez, Creating Carmen Miranda, pp. 104– 108. She notes how posters intended for Hispanic communities or Spanish-speaking countries featured the star more prominently “to emphasize the shared Latinidad/e” (p. 105). 128. Surprisingly, given their common language, Portugal screened only one example of the Brazilian musical comedy known as the chanchada, which dominated fi lm production in Rio de Janeiro between 1940 and 1960, perhaps because of the chanchada’s predilection for scantily clad showgirls and predatory adult males. The one chanchada to be shown in Portugal was E o mundo se diverte (And the World Has Fun), produced by the Rio de Janeiro–based Atlântida studios in 1948, and which premiered in Lisbon the following year. It was Miranda’s US fi lms, rather than the Brazilian musicals, that delighted Portuguese audiences and molded the vision of Brazilianness depicted by Portuguese fi lmmakers. 129. Similarly, the fi lm magazine Cinelândia contained a feature entitled “Suggestions from Hollywood for Carnival” (February 1956 [fi rst fortnight], p. 38). 130. Seigel explores the influence of Miranda’s trademark look on Brazilian-born

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mixed-race operatic singer and composer Elsie Houston during her international career (Uneven Encounters, pp. 166–177). As Cristina Rosa points out, by the time of her death in 1955, Miranda’s baiana was also being adopted by other white-looking celebrities, such as the ballerina and choreographer Eros Volúsia (1914–2004) and Martha Rocha, the 1954 Miss Brazil (Brazilian Bodies, p. 146). 131. Miranda’s screen persona gave rise to a host of replicas and wannabes in Holly wood, including B-movie actresses Maria Montez and Acquanetta (“the Venezuelan Volcano”), both at Universal Studios, and Olga San Juan (“the Puerto Rican Pepperpot”) at Paramount (Roberts, “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat,” p. 3). Maria Montez began her Hollywood career as a chorus girl in That Night in Rio, where she was spotted by Miranda herself, who helped her get a screen test for a small speaking part in the fi lm. Fox did not follow this up with a contract, but less than a year later Montez was signed by Universal (Castro, Carmen Miranda, p. 277). Miranda’s sister Aurora also reproduced the trademark baiana look in an unsuccessful screen test she made at the Warner Bros. studios, but she went on to appear in this costume in the Walt Disney production The Three Caballeros (1943). Carmen Miranda’s look was likewise reproduced by female performers in countless nightclub shows in New York, Havana, and Mexico City (ibid., p. 291). These included the self-styled “Yiddish Carmen Miranda,” Ethel Bennett, who performed at the Old Romanian nightclub in New York City (GilMontero, Carmen Miranda, p. 66). 132. Evidently, despite her best efforts Aurora Miranda was forced by the US entertainment business to adopt the persona that her sister had made iconic. She declared, “Hollywood wants me to wear the Bahiana, the headdress and be like Carmen, but I must be deefrant [sic]” (Earl Wilson, “Hokay, Go Home Keed, They Said to Aurora but Aurora, Carmen Miranda’s Sister, Showed Hollywood Up,” New York Post, 13 October 1941, quoted in Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 173). 133. Like the baiana, the malandro—often represented by a straw hat, striped jersey, and/or two-tone shoes in musical fi lms—was inextricably bound up with AfroBrazilian identity but was appropriated under the Vargas regime to become a national symbol, a light-hearted representative of Brazil’s mythical cordiality, as seen in the Walt Disney creation Joe Carioca, a malandro parrot who introduces the US “tourist” Donald Duck to the delights of Rio in Saludos Amigos (1943) and embodies Brazil in this fi lm and in Disney’s partially animated The Three Caballeros (1945). 134. Domingues, “Tudo preto,” p. 117. 135. North, Dialect of Modernism, p. 9. 136. Manuscript consulted on microfi lm at the CPDOC (Center for Research and Documentation), Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, December 2009. 137. See, for example, Roberts, “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat”; and López, “Are All Latins from Manhattan?” 138. López, “Are All Latins from Manhattan?” 139. Canclini, Hybrid Cultures, p. 241. 140. Ibid., p. 229.

conclusion 1. Bolgnesi, cited by Eliane Brum, “No Brasil, o melhor branco só consegue ser um bom sinhozinho,” El País, Opinião, 25 May 2015. http://brasil.elpais.com/brasil /2015 /05/25/opinion/1432564283_075923.html.

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213

2. Brum, “No Brasil.” 3. Davis, White Face, Black Mask, p. 194. 4. Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity, p. 165. 5. Abdias do Nascimento has denied any connection between the TEN and the Companhia Negra de Revistas, declaring that “a vast, electrified, barbed-wire fence separates my work from De Chocolat’s.” He does, however, embrace the legacy of Benjamin de Oliveira, rather confusingly, as Seigel points out (Uneven Encounters, p. 119). 6. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, p. 12. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Caulfield, In Defense of Honor, p. 152. 10. Turner, Anthropology of Performance, pp. 21–22. 11. Fry, “Undoing Brazil,” p. 238. As he writes: The term “afrodescendente,” which was introduced at the same time as the introduction of quotas, represents Brazil as a racially divided country and suggests the North American one-drop rule as the basis of classification. But to affi rm that this is a simple importation is no answer. Surely the increasing involvement of Brazilian intellectuals and activists in the global networks of meaning that underpin the values of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” strengthen their hand. . . . Those who believe in the naturalness of a racial divide between blacks and whites and who see Brazilian ideals of mixture and hybridism as archaic and unjust, have the right and might of the wider world on their side. (p. 246) 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid.

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Bibliogr a ph y

archives Arquivo Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro Centro de Documentação da Funarte (CEDOC), Rio de Janeiro Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação (CPDOC), Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro Jerome R. Robbins Dance Collection, New York Public Library, Performing Arts Division Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles Museu da Imagem e do Som–Lapa, Rio de Janeiro Museu da Imagem e do Som–Praça XV, Rio de Janeiro Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança, Lisbon Shubert Archive, New York City Sociedade Brasileira de Autores Teatrais, Rio de Janeiro

periodicals Afro-American (Baltimore) Anglo-Brazilian Times (Rio de Janeiro) Boletim da SBAT (Rio de Janeiro) Careta (Rio de Janeiro) Chicago Daily Tribune Cidade do Rio Cinelândia (Rio de Janeiro) Clarim d’Alvorada (São Paulo) Collier’s (New York) Comoedia (Paris) Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro) Correio do Norte (Manaus) Correio Paulistano (São Paulo) A Cruz (Rio de Janeiro) O Cruzeiro (Rio de Janeiro) O Degas (Rio de Janeiro) El Diario (Buenos Aires) Diário Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) Diário da Noite (Rio de Janeiro) Diário de Notícias (Rio de Janeiro) Diário do Rio de Janeiro Diário Nacional (Rio de Janeiro) Diretrizes (Rio de Janeiro)

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A Época (Rio de Janeiro) La Época (Buenos Aires) O Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo) Expresso (Lisbon) A Federação (Porto Alegre) Le Figaro (Paris) Fon-Fon! (Rio de Janeiro) Le Frou-Frou (Paris) Le Gaulois (Paris) Gazeta de Notícias (Rio de Janeiro) Gazeta de Petrópolis (Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro state) O Globo (Rio de Janeiro) O Imparcial (Rio de Janeiro) A Imprensa (Rio de Janeiro) O Jornal (Rio de Janeiro) Jornal de Lisboa (Lisbon) Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro) Jornal do Recife (Recife) Le Journal (Paris) A Maçã (Rio de Janeiro) O Malho (Rio de Janeiro) La Mañana (Buenos Aires) A Manhã (Rio de Janeiro) Le Monde Artiste (Paris) El Mundo (Buenos Aires) La Nación (Buenos Aires) El Nacional (Buenos Aires) New York Amsterdam Star-News (New York) New York Post A Noite and A Noite Ilustrada (Rio de Janeiro) A Notícia (Salvador, Bahia state) Notícias Ilustradas (Lisbon) Pacotilha (São Luiz, Maranhão state) O Paiz (Rio de Janeiro) Para Todos (Rio de Janeiro) A Pátria (Rio de Janeiro) Le Petit Parisien (Paris) O Pharol (Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state) Phono-Arte (Rio de Janeiro) Progresso (São Paulo) Revista da Semana (Rio de Janeiro) Revista do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro) O Rio Nu (Rio de Janeiro) A Rua (Rio de Janeiro) O Sacy (Rio de Janeiro) O Século (Rio de Janeiro) O Tico-Tico (Rio de Janeiro)

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I n de x

Abolition, 5, 151; Abolition movement, 109, 147, 159n72, 166n21, 166n29, 179n234; aftermath of, 3, 8–9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 30, 31, 65, 146, 148, 149, 154n20; commemoration of, 147; preAbolition society, 13 Acosta, Adolfi na, 112 Afro-Brazilian religions, 131, 178n226, 201n6, 207n74; candomblé, 4, 117, 118, 126, 143, 156n30 Aimoré, Jandira, 47, 59, 100, 173n127, 178n213, 178n218, 178n226 Aitken, Robbie, 2 Alberto, Paulina, 14, 16, 150, 154n20, 156n28, 160n79, 201n8 Almeida Júnior, Fernando Mendes de, 78 Almirante (Henrique Foréis Domingues), 63, 64 Alves, Francisco, 21, 110, 173n122, 199n119, 202n10 Alves, Nelson, 80, 185n74 Amaral, Tarsila do, 18 Amorim, Otília, 12–13, 54, 57, 159n63, 176n175, 176n183 Andrade, Mário de, 156n30 Andrade, Oswald de, 18, 19 Andrews, George Reid, 14, 154n20 Aníbal, Augusto, 98 Antunes, Delson, 98, 99, 111, 177n196, 191n28 Araujo, Ana Lucia, 4, 153n10 Argentina, 4, 5, 6, 19, 20–21, 59, 66, 67, 74, 77, 81, 90, 110, 111, 112, 162n115, 162n122, 163n124, 174n130, 176n186, 183n43, 184n58, 184n59, 194n67, 199n117, 199n119, 202n10 Arruda, A., 103 Arruda, Genésio, 176n183 Azevedo, Artur, 38, 120, 168n70, 194n62, 198n104

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Babo, Lamartine, 48, 176n184, 195n73, 203n22, 205n47 baiana: as performance archetype, 3, 12, 21, 24, 26, 27, 37, 38, 39, 40, 52, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 68, 100, 116–146, 148, 149, 164n142, 164n145, 176n184, 179n242, 193n61, 201n7, 201n8, 203n16, 204n25, 204n30, 204n42, 205n43, 205n44, 205n45, 205n47, 206n52, 207n81, 207n87, 208n96, 208n97, 209n106, 210n113, 210n115, 210n118, 211n121, 211n126, 211n128, 212n131, 212n132, 212n134; real-life Afro-Brazilian women, 117, 118, 126, 127, 164n142, 201n7, 202n14, 203n16 Baker, Josephine, 1, 3, 9, 10, 24, 26, 27, 31, 41, 45, 46, 47, 51, 52, 53, 55, 58, 64, 71, 81, 92, 99, 102, 104, 105, 106, 110, 112, 113, 116, 118, 121, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 144, 146, 148, 162n122, 178n219, 193n58, 196n86, 204n30, 204n41, 204n42, 204n43, 206n56, 206n58, 206n64, 206n68, 206n73, 207n77, 207n81, 207n83 Baños, Ricardo de. See De Baños, Ricardo Banton, Travis, 138, 141 Barreira, Luís, 10 Barros, Josué de, 20, 81, 133, 162n116, 186n96 Barros, Luís de, 98 Barroso, Ari, 62, 103, 130, 131, 142, 173n123, 179n241, 180n255 Bastide, Roger, 150 Bastos, Iracema, 170n96 Bastos, João, 96 Bastos, Rafael José de Menezes, 80, 83, 185n73 Bastos Tigre, Manuel, 67, 74, 99, 186n95, 193n49, 199n107

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Ba-ta-clan (French theatre company), 22, 23, 53, 90, 96, 97, 98, 100, 102, 104, 106–108, 110, 161n108, 163n125, 163n127, 163n131, 191n20, 193n59, 196n83, 197n97, 197n99 Ba-ta-clan Preta, 46, 47–48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 58, 68, 102, 103, 173n123, 174n130, 174n139, 180n255, 192n41, 195n73, 204n30 Batista, Dircinha, 124 Batista, Linda, 14, 160n73 Batista da Silva, João, 201n7 Batista de Almeida, Hilária. See Tia Ciata Benamou, Catherine, 64, 180n244 Bermudez, Felix, 96 Besse, Susan, 103, 104, 195n80 Binatti, Lia, 120, 204n25 Bishop-Sanchez, Kathryn, 135, 156n30, 179n241, 208n105, 211n128 black consciousness, 14–16, 150, 195n72 blackface performance, 2, 13–14, 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, 55, 58, 60, 61–64, 81, 103, 104, 119, 120, 122, 123, 130, 144, 147, 148, 179n236, 194n64, 203n20, 203n21, 206n73 black intellectuals, 6, 7, 15, 156n28 black press, 14, 15, 159n66, 160n75, 160n85, 195n70. See also Clarim d’Alvorada; Progresso; and Quilombo “black speak” (performance strategy), 12, 13, 35–36, 53, 109, 111, 120, 134, 198n104, 208n95 Black Stars (dance troupe), 112 Blake, Eubie, 46, 207n73 Blake, Robert, 77 Blanco, Mercedes, 111 Boettgen, Georges, 98, 108 Bohlman, Philip, 89 Bolognesi, Mario, 147 Borges, Dain, 154n16, 154n19, 156n27, 156n30 Boston (USA), 72, 134, 209n112 Braguinha (Carlos Alberto Ferreira Braga), 64 Branca, Mimi, 45

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brasilidade (concept), 58, 59, 70, 101, 111, 173n123, 194n68 brownface performance, 63, 100, 128, 130, 135, 143 Brum, Eliane, 147, 148 Buenos Aires. See Argentina Butler, Judith, 11, 158n51, 208n105 Butler, Kim, 154n20, 156n30, 161n86, 206n57 Cabral, Sérgio, 83 Caldas, Sílvio, 21, 158n45, 204n42 Camargo, Alzirinha, 137 Campos França, José Alfredo de, 77 Canclini, Néstor García, 145 candomblé. See Afro-Brazilian religions Cantero, Pepita, 110 capoeira, 26, 32, 154n20 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 151 Carneiro, Edison, 156n30 carnival, 13, 16, 38, 60, 66, 77, 79, 111, 117, 126, 141, 142, 154n20, 159n63, 159n72, 165n12, 169n80, 179n229, 179n234, 186n90, 201n7, 201n8, 203n16, 206n64, 207n75, 208n96; carnival fi lms, 127, 141; carnival songs, 20, 64, 76, 83, 99, 169n82, 176n184, 183n51, 193n52, 194n66, 203n22 casinos, 26, 45, 52, 64, 95, 123–132, 136, 144, 148, 159n66, 162n122, 164n143, 192n36, 204n42, 205n43, 209n106, 210n116 Cendrars, Blaise, 19, 91 chanchada (Brazilian fi lm tradition), 57, 142–143, 145, 211n129 Chasteen, John Charles, 78 Chazkel, Amy, 155n21, 165n3, 182n35 Chevalier, Maurice, 45, 108, 178n219, 206n64 Chile, 176n186, 199n117, 199n121 China (Chininha), 80, 185n74 Chocolat, Le/De. See Ferreira, João Cândido Chocolat (Rafael Padilha), 170n101 Chocolate, Randall, 113, 200n137 cinema: Brazilian cinema, 7, 27, 33,

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54, 57, 77, 127, 134, 142–143, 145, 159n63, 166n23, 180n244, 199n107, 211n129; cinema culture in Rio de Janeiro, 6, 17, 44, 79, 80, 98, 148; Holly wood, 24, 27, 103, 112, 127, 128, 142, 143, 145, 146, 196n80, 196n84, 199n118, 207n84, 211n125, 211n126, 212n132, 212n133; Carmen Miranda in Hollywood, 12, 98– 99, 110, 113, 117, 118, 124, 137–142, 144, 145, 149, 208n101 circus, 11, 12, 17, 32, 33, 34, 67, 141, 147, 165n11, 166n13, 167n48, 170n101, 191n29, 192n36; circoteatro, 29; Democrata Circus, 53, 173n128; Spinelli Circus, 32, 166n17 Clarim d’Alvorada (Afro-Brazilian newspaper), 15, 155n20, 160n85, 195n70 Clifford, James, 131 Cobia, Carlos, 110 Coelho, Elisa (Elisinha), 58, 123, 204n42 Coelho, Pereira, 169n87 Cohen, Robin, 93, 190n3, 190n4 Companhia Negra de Revistas, 10, 12, 14, 15, 26, 28, 31, 46–50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 67–68, 71, 81, 90, 94, 100–104, 105, 113, 116, 120– 123, 130, 143, 144, 148, 160n77, 160n85, 173n123, 173n124, 174n130, 175n163, 178n215, 180n255, 190n10, 194n67, 194n70, 195n73, 198n101, 204n30, 213n5 Conde, Maite, 94, 182n35, 190n13, 198n107 Cook, Jenny, 37, 71, 181n9 Cortes, Araci, 10, 12, 13, 31, 38, 49, 54–57, 59, 63, 68, 99, 100, 103, 105, 120, 121, 129, 130, 132, 148, 149, 158n45, 159n66, 173n128, 174n134, 176n184, 176n185, 176n186, 177n195, 177n198, 177n199, 180n255, 193n51, 199n117 cosmopolitanism, 3, 42, 71, 74, 88, 89, 92–93, 101, 103–109, 115, 189n124, 190n2, 190n3, 190n4; cosmopolitan blackness (concept), 3, 12, 26, 43, 51, 58, 68, 92, 99–109, 113, 115, 150

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227

Costa, Beatriz, 41, 170n88 Costa, Déo, 13, 31, 47, 48, 49, 51, 102, 149, 174n132, 174n134, 174n140, 174n149, 175n154, 204n30 Costa, Gabriel, 183n41 Costa, Jaime, 52 Costa, Oscar, 178n226 Costallat, Benjamin, 50, 80, 84, 186n89 Cowling, Camila, 5, 154n17 crônica (journalistic essay), 15, 30, 39, 80, 165n3, 167n39, 169n73, 198n107 cronistas. See crônica Cuba, 5, 60, 61, 111, 129, 139, 153n9, 170n101, 175n163, 179n236, 184n71, 187n99, 200n137, 210n117, 212n132 Daniels, Juan, 112 Davis, Darién, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 25, 26, 55, 148, 154n15, 158n45, 158n59, 159n66, 162n120, 164n143, 165n7, 166n29, 202n10, 205n48, 210n115, 212n133 De Baños, Ricardo, 77 Degler, Carl, 158n44 Dennison, Stephanie, 159n63, 166n23, 177n200 Depê, Jota, 12 Diggs, Irene, 7 Disney, Walt, 142, 144, 212n132, 212n134 Dockstader, Lew, 23 Donga (Ernesto Joaquim Maria dos Santos), 19, 79, 80, 84, 155n25, 185n74, 185n77, 186n95, 188n111 Douglas, Louis, 23, 101, 163n131, 163n132, 191n20 Dorgère, Arlette, 72 Dunham, Katherine, 7, 136, 210n115 Duque (Antônio Lopes de Amorim Diniz), 20, 25, 45, 46, 56, 69, 70, 71– 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 149, 162n116, 164n137, 172n120, 177n188, 181n14, 181n21, 182n22, 182n33, 183n41, 183n43, 183n47, 183n52, 184n59, 184n62, 184n65, 186n96, 187n106, 187n107, 188n111, 189n139, 189n141, 193n62, 194n66

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Efegê, Jota, 130 Emboaba Da Costa, Alexandre, 158n46 escolas de samba. See samba: samba schools Espíndola, Dalva, 47, 48, 52, 100, 121, 173n127, 173n128, 174n134 Espíndola, Zilda de Carvalho. See Cortes, Araci Espírito Santo, Antônio Feliciano do, 81 Fanon, Frantz, 131, 207n77 Faye, Alice, 138 Ferreira, João Cândido (Le/De Chocolat), 1, 31, 42–46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 58, 60, 61, 66, 71, 100, 101, 102, 105, 120, 148, 149, 160n85, 165n1, 167n48, 170n93, 170n98, 171n104, 171n106, 171n107, 171n111, 171n112, 171n113, 171n114, 171n115, 171n117, 172n119, 172n120, 172n121, 172n122, 173n123, 173n129, 174n132, 174n139, 194n68, 195n73, 204n30, 213n5 Figueiredo, Romualdo, 133 Flora, Djanira, 121, 173n127 Floresta de Miranda, 84, 88 Fojas, Camilla, 93 football. See soccer Fortunato, José, 81 France, 1, 3, 4, 12, 15, 16, 17–19, 20, 23, 25, 27, 29, 40, 47, 51, 52, 57, 58, 60, 65, 66, 68, 69–91, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 128, 123, 129, 130, 131, 132, 143, 146, 153n13, 161n108, 162n116, 162n122, 163n131, 164n140, 165n2, 170n101, 174n130, 178n219, 191n20, 191n27, 192n32, 192n33, 194n62, 195n70, 196n83, 197n93, 197n100, 198n101, 198n105, 199n109, 204n42, 205n43, 206n58, 207n73, 207n83 Frankel, Isaac, 79 French language: use of in Brazilian press reviews and advertisements, 37–38, 43, 75, 76, 171n107, 181n15; use in

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teatro de revista, 95, 96, 104, 107, 108, 109, 197n95, 198n103 Freyre, Gilberto, 6, 15, 19, 70, 156n29, 156n30, 160n79, 195n70 Fróes, Leopoldo, 20, 90, 176n175 Fronzi, Renata, 21, 162n113 Gaby (Gaby D’Armouville), 20, 38, 46, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 90, 182n33, 183n43, 183n47, 183n52, 184n59, 184n65, 189n139, 189n141 Garner, Sydney, 68 gender, 5, 11, 41, 56, 103, 117, 119, 122, 158n51, 207n77 Gentil (figure skater), 77, 184n61 Gill, Ruben, 106 Gilroy, Paul, 4, 128, 200n146 Grande Otelo (Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata), 48, 57–58, 60, 62, 64, 103, 113, 123, 129, 177n200, 177n209, 179n238, 195n77, 204n41, 209n106 Green, James, 126, 193n54 Greneker, Claude, 134 Grupo Caxangá, 79, 83, 86, 185n77 Guinle, Arnaldo, 79, 80, 81, 84, 155n25, 186n90, 188n114 Harlem Renaissance, 29, 31, 47, 66, 82, 128, 130, 165n2 Havana. See Cuba Helena, Heloísa, 127–128 Henie, Sonja, 205n52 Hertzman, Marc, 11, 13, 30, 34, 51, 67, 73, 79, 153n1, 155n25, 157n33, 158n59, 160n73, 165n4, 165n7, 165n10, 166n33, 167n39, 167n42, 167n48, 173n129, 175n154, 178n217, 185n74, 185n77, 185n79, 186n87, 186n95, 187n97, 188n111, 189n124, 189n143, 201n7, 203n22 Hoskins, Allen Clayton, 103 immigration, 6, 16, 17, 21, 26, 54, 93, 109, 119, 120, 155n22, 160n83, 164n140, 165n4, 173n124, 190n2, 191n29, 193n54, 195n70, 198n104, 203n25, 211n121

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indigenous (Amerindian) performance, 54, 59, 178n213, 178n220 Iracema, 44, 171n105, 171n106 Jackson, Jeffrey, 81, 87, 89, 187n106 jazz, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 45, 48, 51, 61, 62, 70, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 92, 98, 100, 104, 106, 113, 114, 129, 154n15, 163n124, 163n127, 187n105, 187n106, 188n117, 188n119, 188n120, 189n124, 189n126, 189n132, 191n20, 191n27, 192n33, 193n46, 196n86 Jércolis, Jardel, 20, 21, 57, 97, 98, 109, 110, 112, 113, 149, 183n44, 192n32, 192n36, 193n46, 199n109, 200n125, 200n130 Jolson, Al, 24, 62, 164n137, 206n64 Johnson, Jack, 77–78 José, Paulo, 65 Jules-Rosette, Bennetta, 128, 207n73 Ladeira, César, 21 Le/De Chocolat. See Ferreira, João Cândido Leitão, Luís, 106 Lewis, Jerry, 141 Ligiero Coelho, José, 135, 208n101, 211n121 Lino, Maria, 38, 72, 166n25, 168n61 Lisbon. See Portugal Little Esther, 24, 68, 164n137, 180n256 Liverpool, 22, 23, 149, 162n124, 168n54, 180n256, 191n20 London, 1, 76, 97, 98, 191n27, 192n32 López, Ana M., 145 Lopez, Mary and Alba, 112 Los Angeles, 162n122 Lou et Janot, 112 Love, Joseph L., 5, 155n21, 165n6 Luiz, J. (Jotinha), 128 lundu (musical genre), 11, 13, 34, 37, 39, 132, 167n34 Macedo, António, 95 Macedo, Eliana, 142 Machado, Carlos, 128

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229

Mãe preta: monument campaign, 14, 159n66, 160n75, 195n70; number in revue Desfile Tropical, 111; as symbolic figure, 14, 173n123, 204n31; theatrical revue, 31, 52 Magalhães, Geraldo (Os Geraldos), 12, 20, 21, 31, 34, 37, 39–42, 66, 71, 148, 149, 169n74, 169n80, 169n82, 181n9, 183n51 Magalhães, Paulo de, 52, 129, 197n93 malandro/a and malandragem, 14, 17, 26, 27, 34, 114, 119, 143, 166n32, 167n38, 173n123, 180n244, 212n134 Mamede, Sônia, 143 Martin, Dean, 141 Martins, João, 61, 63 Martins, Júlia, 12 Martins Pena, Luís Carlos, 193n62 Matory, J. Lorand, 4, 153n9 Mattos, Cidália, 113 maxixe, 25, 37, 40, 42, 45, 55, 56, 59, 60, 66, 69, 70, 71–79, 81, 84, 89, 90, 99, 119, 130, 132, 161n108, 169n74, 169n81, 178n219, 180n1, 181n15, 181n21, 182n22, 183n41, 183n51, 184n71, 185n73, 188n111, 193n62, 194n66, 199n109, 205n43 McCann, Bryan, 157n33, 158n59, 168n64, 205n47 Melo Gomes, Tiago de, 10, 58, 59, 67, 94, 99, 117, 118, 120, 121, 164n142, 165n11, 173n123, 178n215, 190n10, 191n29, 192n36, 193n53, 193n61, 194n64, 194n67, 194n68, 195n70, 198n101, 203n16, 204n31 Menarezzi, Ana, 120, 203n24 Milano, Nicolino, 72, 168n55 Milano, Rosina, 44 Miller, Monica, 87 Mills, Florence, 47 Minstrelsy, 2, 31, 55, 58, 60, 61–62, 103, 104, 130, 148, 179n239, 179n241, 188n120, 203n20 Miranda, Aurora, 142, 202n10, 212n132, 212n133 Miranda, Carmen, 3, 13, 14, 20, 21, 26, 27, 63, 64, 68, 116, 117, 118, 123–128, 130, 131, 132–142, 144,

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Miranda, Carmen (continued) 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 159n66, 164n145, 176n185, 177n199, 177n209, 179n242, 180n257, 187n96, 199n119, 202n10, 204n43, 205n44, 205n45, 205n46, 205n52, 207n77, 208n96, 208n97, 208n101, 208n105, 209n106, 209n109, 209n111, 209n112, 210n113, 210n116, 210n118, 210n121, 211n126, 211n128, 211n129, 211n131, 212n132 Mistinguett, 45, 52–53, 92, 101, 102, 104, 107, 110, 128, 163n127, 191n20, 191n28, 196n86, 204n41, 206n64 Mitchell, Louis, 82 Mitchell, Michael, 15 modernism, 26, 31, 96, 97, 100, 106, 122, 123, 131, 136, 149; Brazilian Modernism (artistic movement), 6, 18, 156n27, 156n30; Modernism (Spanish American literary movement), 93; modernist literature (transatlantic), 204n38 modernity, 3, 17, 18, 19, 59, 89, 93, 96, 98, 101, 103–109, 115, 123, 130, 145, 150, 189n124, 190n4, 194n62, 197n93, 197n95, 198n103, 198n107, 204n38 Mons, Miss, 102, 173n127 Montevideo. See Uruguay Montez, Maria, 142 Moore, Robin, 179n236, 207n73 morena/moreno identity, 12, 41, 48, 60–61, 111, 113, 157n39, 159n63, 168n49, 178n219, 204n42 mulata/mulato identity, 9–10, 12, 13, 14, 26, 27, 31, 37, 38, 40, 49, 51, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59–61, 65, 66, 68, 71, 76, 100, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111, 118, 119, 120, 122, 130, 132, 144, 150, 157n39, 158n44, 158n45, 159n63, 160n79, 164n140, 166n33, 170n88, 173n122, 173n123, 175n163, 176n184, 176n186, 178n219, 178n226, 179n229, 179n236, 183n51, 190n2, 203n16, 203n22, 203n24, 206n71, 208n96

Shaw_6501-3rd_rev.indb 230

Müller, Lauro, 77, 79, 81 Murray, Violeta, 110 Nascimento, Abdias do, 7, 15, 16, 150, 213n5 Naya, Oterita de, 110 Negra, Rosa, 31, 47, 52, 59, 97, 100, 120, 121, 173n127, 175n161, 175n163, 177n212, 178n226, 191n28 négrophilie, 25, 29, 70, 91 Neves, Antônio, 20 Neves, Eduardo das, 20, 29, 31, 32, 34– 37, 41, 50, 65, 148, 166n25, 166n26, 166n29, 166n32, 166n33, 167n37, 167n39, 167n42, 167n45, 167n48, 170n96, 173n129, 185n77 Neves, Fernando, 147 New York, 16, 46, 47, 62, 68, 72, 77, 98, 99, 104, 108, 112, 113, 115, 123, 128, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143, 162n122, 181n15, 182n22, 183n43, 184n57, 205n43, 206n52, 209n111, 209n112, 210n116, 211n121, 212n132; World’s Fair in New York (1939), 136 Oito Batutas, 19, 20, 25, 27, 46, 66, 69–71, 78, 79–91, 100, 104, 149, 155n25, 172n119, 174n130, 176n188, 180n248, 180n2, 185n74, 185n77, 185n79, 185n85, 186n90, 187n97, 187n105, 188n111, 188n114, 188n117, 189n124, 189n126 Oliveira, Aloísio de, 208n97, 209n112 Oliveira, Benjamin de, 12, 29, 32–33, 34, 36, 41, 54, 55, 56, 65, 129, 165n4, 165n10, 166n25, 167n48, 173n129, 185n77, 186n95, 213n5 Oliveira, Bonfiglio de, 48, 195n73 Oliveira, Gonçalves, 195n73 Oliveira, Juçara de, 129 Oscarito, 57, 124 Paixão Cearense, Catulo da, 84 Palitos (Pablo Palos), 20, 110, 129 Palos, Esteban, 20 Paris. See France

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Patrocínio, José do, 109, 199n108 Patrocínio Filho, José do, 106, 108, 109, 192n33, 198n107 Pavão, Ari, 106 Pederneiras, Paulo, 186n95 Peixoto, Luís, 2, 61, 62, 97, 192n30, 198n104 Pereira, Avellar, 67 Pereira, Geraldo, 123 Pereira, José, 107 Pessoa, Epitácio, 80 Pixinguinha (Alfredo da Rocha Vianna Filho), 6, 15, 47, 48, 55, 79, 80, 84, 90, 100, 102, 155n25, 173n127, 173n128, 174n130, 175n163, 178n226, 185n74, 185n77, 186n95, 187n97, 188n111, 188n119, 189n143, 195n73 Portela, Paulo da, 131 Porto, Marques, 2, 52, 62, 67, 107, 197n95 Portugal, 4, 18, 21, 40, 41, 57, 59, 72, 77, 94–95, 110–111, 112, 113, 114, 131, 132, 141, 146, 158n53, 169n80, 169n81, 169n86, 170n88, 177n196, 177n197, 178n219, 183n43, 184n57, 187n96, 191n18, 192n32, 199n113, 211n129 Power, Tyrone, 128 Prates, Sinhasinha, 132 Progresso (Afro-Brazilian newspaper), 9, 15, 129 Quilombo (newspaper of Teatro Experimental do Negro), 15 Quintiliano brothers, 103, 180n255 racial democracy myth, 3, 6, 7, 9, 70, 150, 156n26, 156n30, 158n46 racial discrimination, 5, 6, 7, 12, 115, 150 racial nomenclature, 7–11, 27, 59–60, 74, 98 racism, 6, 12, 15, 16, 29, 30, 31, 44– 45, 50, 53–54, 80, 85, 90, 101, 115, 147, 151, 155n21, 156n26, 158n46, 157n39, 159n59, 160n77, 194n62, 203n22, 207n73, 207n93

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radio, 7, 14, 20, 21, 57, 63, 70, 108, 126, 130, 138, 148, 157n33, 158n45, 158n59, 174n130, 177n199, 202n10, 210n116 Ramos, Alberto Guerreiro, 15 Randall, André, 113 Rasimi, Madame (Mme), 90, 96, 104, 106–107, 108, 163n125, 197n91, 197n96 recording industry, 4, 7, 14, 34, 40, 57, 66, 70, 88, 124, 135, 148, 157n33, 158n58, 158n59, 162n122, 165n4, 166n29, 169n74, 173n122, 176n183, 180n248, 181n15, 183n51, 185n73, 187n96, 194n66, 210n116 Reiprich, Herta, 112 Reis, Júlio, 80 Reis, Mário, 21, 202n10 Ribeiro, Alberto, 64 Ribeiro, Oscar, 95 Ribeiro, Stephanie, 147 Roberts, Shari, 135 Rodrigues, Ernesto, 96 Rodrigues, Isa, 195n77 Rodrigues Alves, Francisco de Paula, 16 Roldão, Henrique, 96 Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor, 137, 210n112, 211n125 Rosa, Cristina, 117, 118, 155n24, 164n145, 201n3, 201n6, 202n13, 202n14, 203n16, 208n96, 212n131 Rosa Branca (carnival group), 201n7, 203n16 Rosa do Norte, 49, 51 Rosenhaft, Eve, 2 Ruiz, Isabelita, 191n21 Ruiz, Pepa, 120, 132, 207n87 Ruiz, Roberto, 191n21 samba, 3, 11, 15, 19, 20, 21, 25, 56, 60, 66, 69, 70, 71, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 89, 90, 91, 99, 111, 114, 118, 119, 123, 128, 130, 131, 135, 136, 137, 141, 142, 143, 154n20, 164n137, 165n7, 173n122, 173n123, 176n184, 180n3, 185n73, 188n111, 189n143, 194n68, 201n7, 204n42, 205n43, 208n96, 209n106, 210n113; samba

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samba (continued) schools (escolas de samba), 16, 117, 201n8, 207n75 Sansone, Livio, 4, 149 Santos, Ascendina, 31, 51, 52, 53–54, 175n164, 175n165 Santos, Plácida dos, 31, 37–40, 41, 50, 54, 71, 132, 148, 149, 168n49, 168n51, 168n54, 168n55, 168n61, 168n66, 168n67, 168n69, 168n70, 176n185 Santos, Sizenando (Feniano), 185n85 São Paulo: city, 6, 7, 9, 14, 15, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 58, 59, 66, 67, 75, 76, 77, 84, 90, 102, 129, 154n20, 160n78, 160n83, 160n83, 171n104, 171n105, 178n215, 192n41, 194n68, 195n70, 195n73, 198n101, 200n137, 200n137, 204n25; state, 45, 57, 79, 102, 171n113 Saroldi, Luís Carlos, 78 SBAT (Sociedade Brasileira de Autores Teatrais), 20, 67, 81, 186n95, 194n67, 200n128 Seigel, Micol, 3, 4, 9, 10, 15, 19, 26, 70, 71, 88, 90, 99, 102, 114, 117, 118, 120, 121, 153n7, 153n13, 157n42, 159n66, 160n75, 160n77, 160n85, 161n108, 162n123, 164n142, 178n218, 182n22, 185n85, 186n94, 191n20, 193n61, 195n71, 199n109, 200n145, 203n16, 204n31, 211n131, 213n5 Seixas, Georgette, 48 Selassie, Haile, 9 Sevcenko, Nicolau, 16, 58, 161n91 Shaw, Lisa, 157n33, 158n59, 159n63, 177n200, 205n44 Shubert, Lee, 128, 134, 135, 136, 205n52, 209n112 Silva, Jaime, 46, 47, 57, 60, 67, 68, 100, 103, 113, 121, 179n226, 195n73 Silva, Lódia, 57, 110 Silva, Orlando, 21, 158n45 Silva, Romeu, 20, 21–22, 162n122, 162n123 Silva, V. Benício da, 144

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Sissle, Noble, 46, 207n73 Skidmore, Thomas, 8, 155n22, 156n29, 156n30, 165n6 slavery, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 30, 31, 32, 34, 54, 59, 63, 117, 122, 150, 154n17, 154n20, 159n72, 160n73, 164n142, 165n4, 173n123, 179n234, 194n68, 195n70, 199n108, 201n3, 202n12, 206n67, 207n74, 208n95 soccer, 6, 96, 156n26, 192n39 Spain, 57, 110, 113, 158n53, 162n122, 192n32 Stam, Robert, 11, 155n25, 157n39, 158n45, 166n23, 166n26, 177n200, 177n201 steamship travel, 16, 18, 19, 21, 25, 73, 148, 149, 163n124, 163n125, 168n54, 184n58, 184n59, 206n52 Stratton, Eugene, 23 Stretton, Gordon (William Masters), 22, 23–24, 149, 162n124, 163n125, 163n127, 163n131, 163n135, 164n137, 180n256, 180n257, 191n20 Süssekind, Flora, 94 Tango, 25, 40, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 84, 89, 183n43, 184n70, 184n71, 193n51 teatro de revista (Brazilian vaudeville tradition), 1–3, 10–15, 20–26, 28– 32, 38, 41, 42–45, 46–68, 71, 73, 81, 90, 92–123, 129–130, 132–134, 143, 148–149 Teixeira, Nina, 39, 40, 71 Telles, Edward E., 8 TEN (Teatro Experimental do Negro), 7, 15–16, 150 Thompson, Willie, 112 Tia Ciata (Hilária Batista de Almeida), 117, 118, 119, 127, 201n7, 203n16 Togueiro, Gastão, 107 Torres, Antônio, 105 transnational blackness, 59, 66, 68, 83, 99–103, 115, 122–123, 149, 150, 160n85, 190n10, 195n70 transnational methodology, 2–5, 92–93, 114, 148, 153n7

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transnational metonyms of modernity and cosmopolitanism, 3, 93, 103–109, 112–115, 150 transnational performance circuits and encounters, 8, 12, 15, 17, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 41–42, 43, 45–47, 49, 51, 56, 57, 61, 74, 77, 83, 90, 94– 99, 109–112, 114, 115, 118, 120, 128, 130, 131, 132, 143, 146, 148, 149, 151, 160n75, 170n88, 183n43, 196n85, 199n117, 200n137, 200n145 Trindade, Solano, 15–16 Tro-lo-ló (theatre company), 21, 56, 57, 97–98, 99, 103, 106, 109–114, 132, 149, 169n81, 176n186, 191n21, 192n33, 192n41, 193n46, 193n51, 197n93, 197n97, 199n115, 199n116, 199n117, 199n121 Turner, Victor, 10, 150–151 Uruguay, 20, 22, 67, 72, 111, 112, 176n186, 183n43, 184n58, 184n59, 199n117, 199n121

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Vallée, Yvonne, 108 Vargas, Darcy, 126 Vargas, Getúlio, 3, 6–7, 21, 68, 70, 90, 110, 112, 117, 137, 148, 149, 150, 156n28, 157n30, 158n59, 162n122, 164n145, 201n8, 209n112, 212n134 Velasco (theatre company), 96, 97, 191n21 Vertovec, Steven, 93, 190n3, 190n4 Vidor, King, 112 Vieira, Sílvio, 103, 180n255 Viggiani, Nicolino, 113, 129, 193n58, 206n66 whitening: as ideology, 6, 30, 155n22, 156n29; as performance strategy, 3, 25, 31, 37, 42, 51, 69, 74, 89, 120, 135, 142, 148, 149, 203n24 Williams, Daryle, 157n30 Williams, Judith Michelle, 130 Winchell, Walter, 138 Ziegfeld, Florenz, 98

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