Real or Plastic Forró

This chapter dialogues with ideas about the sustainability of musical culture by offering a case study in which robust cultural policy, supporting foothills forró, was implemented by the same leftist Workers’ Party government that brought millions of Brazilians out of poverty at the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century. The new consumer class amplified the success of electronic forró, a genre often considered a threat to foothills forró. It is this paradox--that the leftist goals of ameliorating poverty and of bolstering a cultural policy that can sustain vibrant music ecologies might sometimes be at odds--I wish to bring to the debate over musical sustainability.