The Secret of the Sertanejo

This chapter concerns the process through which Luiz Gonzaga’s voice--recorded, disseminated, and popularized by a national music industry--became a vehicle for the transmission of ecological knowledge about rain, drought, and the meaning of birdsong. Into the twenty-first century, rain prophets, who announce their observation-based forecasts at a public event in the backlands each January, take inspiration from Gonzaga’s mass-mediated songs, sometimes referring to the song’s lyrics when discussing knowledge about the weather. In doing so, they assert their trust in local ecological knowledge over other kinds of institutionally sanctioned knowledge about the local ecology.