ABSTRACT
During the carnival in 1994, a Brazilian newspaper asked its readers if São Paulo is the ‘tomb of samba’, as described in ‘Sampa’, Caetano Veloso’s famous song about São Paulo. The lyrics of this song subtly imply the death, or absence, of real samba culture in this metropolis. A 15-year-old student from Rio de Janeiro answered ‘yes’ because she considered São Paulo to be a ‘city full of immigrants, from the four corners of the Earth; a city full of Japanese’. To the question ‘Do Japanese samba?’ her answer was ‘Never’ (A Folha de São Paulo [Folhateen], 17 January 1994). Since samba was historically formed and developed in Rio de Janeiro, her reply is understandable. But her words also reveal the tenacity of the view that ‘immigrants’, especially japones, are alien to samba, the national music and dance of Brazil.
