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Brazilian
Culture
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The Brazilian population today comes from
four ethnic groups: the indigenous Indians, the colonizing Portuguese,
the African Negroes, and a number of immigrant European and Oriental
groups that have come to Brazil since the 1850's. The most important
of these cultures is that of the Portuguese, from whom the Brazilians
acquired their language, their religion and most of their traditional
customs. The indian contribution to Brazilian culture is perhaps most
apparent in the Amazon Basin. Evident in northern coastal regions are
religious cults of African origin. African influence is also reflected
in Brazilian popular music, especially in the rhythmic samba. Brazil
is a country that adapts readily to rapid changes and new opportunities.
The attempt upon to impart "Brazilianness"
to the arts succeds in the hands of creative geniuses: the composer Heitor
Villa-Lobos (a powerful force in breaking with tradition to create distinctively
Brazilian compositions by weaving into his music folk themes and rhythms),
the painter Candido Portinari (influential in developing a uniquely Brazilian
style, blending the abstract techniques of Europe with the real people
and landscapes), the novelist Joao Guimaraes Rosa (always using regional
and traditional themes though treated in very experimental and personal
linguistic style), the architect Oscar Niemeyer (the creator, in collaboration
with Lucio Costa, of the capital's original layout), and the cinema director
Glauber Rocha, who have handled Brazilian themes with a distinctly Brazilian
attitude.Brazilian cultural life has been influenced by a series of intellectual
movements since independence.
Some have aimed at a cultural renewal or
modernization; others at a return to national traditions. A complex and
vigorous group of poets novelists, short-story writers, literary critics
and essayists are imparting to Brazilian literature an authenticity not
so much of theme as of attitude. Here is a result of prenational and national
development of Brazilian culture with its characteristic combination of
cosmopolitanism and tropicalism. It embodies a tendency continuous from
colonial days toward a genuine ethnic democracy - not imcompatible with
an equally persistent tendency toward aristocracy of family, manners and
spirit. Brazil's greatest novelist and short-story writer, Joaquim Maria
Machado de Assis (1839-1908), was socially a plebeian but an aristocrat
in spirit and literary form, though not a pedant.A tipically romantic
movement of the 19th century was Indianism, which emphasized Amerindian
themes in art, music and literature. It produced a sociologically important
type of novel (as exemplified in the work of Jose Martiniano de Alencar),
of poetry (Antonio Goncalves Dias), and music (Carlos Gomes, whose opera
'O Guarani' is based on Alencar's novel about a noble Guarani indian).
Another tendency in popular music is the protest
song, with political and social implications. Architecture: The landscape
architect Roberto Burle Marx has made urban Brazilians especially aware
of the splendours of their natural environment by replacing the traditional
formal European-style with profusions of native species in close association
of their natural settings. Some of Marx's landscapes have been used to
set off the imaginative structures of Brazil's world-renowed architect
Oscar Niemeyer. Brazil also cherishes numerous splendid structures from
its colonial and imperial past from the tiled houses and ornate churches
of Salvador to the palaces and public buildings of Rio de Janeiro. Among
the most revered of these are the 18th-century churches in Minas Gerais
that were adorned by facades, biblical scenes, and statues carved in soapstone
by Antonio Francisco Lisboa, better known as Aleijadinho.
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