The cosmopolitanism of Mulher do Pau-Brasil
Keywords:
Adriana Calcanhotto, Brazilian popular music, CosmopolitanismAbstract
The aim of this essay is to reflect on cosmopolitanism in the work of Brazilian singer, songwriter and instrumentalist Adriana Calcanhotto. It argues that her cosmopolitan sensibility (her frequent visual compositions thematizing travel, wandering and nomadism) crosses three axes that are important for understanding Calcanhotto's artistic work: 1) the amalgam of a modernist, anthropophagic and tropicalist aesthetic, including the artist's literomusical foray into setting Brazilian and Portuguese modernist poetry to music; 2) the frequent interchange of her voice and her compositions with erudition and popular-media culture, including when her songs are widely used as soundtracks for Brazilian soap operas; 3) the lesbian sensibility present in her songbook, especially in the love songs in which the lyrical self of the song is constantly on the move geographically, culturally and aesthetically, which gives new relevance to the old but little-studied presence of lesbian sexuality and/or female bisexuality in music and popular media culture.
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