Making Samba

"Making Samba is revisionist history at its best. Marc A. Hertzman takes on cherished myths of Brazilian popular culture and carefully debunks them, demonstrating through pioneering research and painstaking analysis where, how, and why they were created. In addition, he illuminates the links between popular music, race, labor, and intellectual property. This should attract considerable attention; no other study of Brazil has done similar work."—Bryan McCann, author of Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil
“Hertzman skillfully navigates this history, tracing it through the 20th century and taking previous accounts to task for overgeneralization and reliance on outmoded paradigms. . . . This is a fresh, and refreshing, perspective on these topics. For music historians, researchers in Afro-Brazilian music, and serious samba aficionados.” -- Genevieve Williams * Library Journal *
“Marc A. Hertzman's diverse, revealing, and extensive archival research for Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil brilliantly illustrates the advantages of a wide-ranging cultural studies approach to Rio's popular music and race relations in the first half of the twentieth century…. Making Samba provides a very rich picture of popular music and the experience of black musicians in Rio between the Empire and the 1950s.” -- Jack A. Draper III * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"In Making Samba, Marc A. Hertzman narrates with great skill and clarity the complex history of Brazil's foundational musical genre. In doing so, he reveals how this celebrated, often romanticized Afro-Brazilian form emerged out of an acutely material set of social conditions and in close relation to Brazil's modern struggles over race, artistic ownership, and popular culture. By focusing in large part on the actual laboring lives of the musicians who negotiated Brazil's commercial/legal structures and technologies of circulation/dissemination, Hertzman brings alive samba's modern story while also telling a powerful tale about the music's generative cultural power. A remarkable contribution to popular music studies, suggesting compelling parallels with musical traditions to the north."—Ronald Radano, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“Hertzman’s judiciously research study is not so much a history of the music of samba—or the dance, for that matter—as it is a consideration of the role of samba in shaping Brazilian national identity in the 20th century. . . . Recommended."
-- R. M. Delson * Choice *
“A sublime example of social history at its best. . . . Of special interest for samba enthusiasts is the magnificent, if lamentably brief, photo gallery of musicians. The book is ideal for the scholars of the music industry, Brazilian music, and the creation of popular music. With commendable English-language translations of idiosyncratic phrases, Making Samba is entirely accessible to those who are new to the Brazilian context.” -- Michael Iyanaga * Ethnomusicology Review *
"Samba, the quintessential 'Brazilian' musical genre, has been at the center of controversies and myths about national identity, racial democracy, and cultural authenticity for nearly a century, with each generation going over more or less the same ground. What these debates desperately needed was a fresh perspective, grounded in new and significant evidence, and that is just what Marc A. Hertzman provides in this deeply researched and cogently argued historical study. Making Samba takes the discussion of music, race, and authority to a whole new level of sophistication. Hertzman explores the changing contours of the music 'business' in Brazil, the spaces that black performers could carve out for themselves, and the costs musicians incurred when they sought to challenge existing racial, intellectual, and economic hierarchies. The result is a social and cultural history of samba that is by turns fascinating and sobering, and a book that anyone interested in questions of race, music, and nation will want to read."—Barbara Weinstein, author of For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in São Paulo, 1920–1964
"[T]his book is highly recommended for anyone interested in Brazilian culture with a focus on the following keywords: samba, race, gender, national identity, music industry, music journalism, authorship and royalty societies, as well as biographies of many outstanding musicians.”  -- André Rottgeri * Popular Music *
“The book’s main success is in giving breadth and new, sophisticated contexts to both overlooked and familiar voices. Hertzman is an excellent guide to the financial inequities in that business, making this the definitive history of artist organizations.” -- Jonathon Grasse * History: Reviews of New Books *
“Marc Hertzman’s book offers an important new perspective on the old adage that history often moves in a circular fashion…. The book stands on its own merits of thick description and neatly positions itself vis-à-vis relevant paradigms.” -- Dominik Bartmanski * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
“The volume is highly informative about economic matters…. Hertzman’s erudition is clear, and his mastery of the details as well.” -- Tom Moore * Music Reference Services Quarterly *