Brazilian Music as World Music in the Late 1980s

This chapter traces the development of Brazilian music within a “world music” framework, through the influence of music compilations in contrast with attempts to market a short-lived world dance craze (lambada), and through the participation of Margareth Menezes in a high-profile international tour. These musical phenomena owed their heightened prominence to contact between Brazilians and enterprising outsiders in Brazil, especially in the state of Bahia. Brazil’s international musical brand would be linked either to the kinds of music that US-based rock and pop musicians tapped in their effort to revitalize their sound, or to specialist record labels compiled to meet the rising demands of the market. Through these contrasting examples, the chapter historicizes the emergence of “world music” as a marketing genre and subject of scholarly inquiry.