ABSTRACT
The first half of the twentieth century was a period of great social and economic changes in Brazil. Slavery, the foundation of Brazil’s economy and society for three centuries, had been abolished not long before (in 1888). Brazil had become a republic (in 1889), and migration from rural to urban areas was on the rise. During the 1930s and 1940s, urbanization spiked and industrialization gained new life with the spread of wage labor. There was growing monetization of social life, as well as a redefinition of gender roles along with a transition from the patriarchal to the nuclear type of family.
All these transformations and their consequences were present in popular music. During the 1930s and 1940s – when an urban-industrial society emerged in Brazil – there was a proliferation of songs that depicted the period imaginary. Songs that made up the Brazilian popular music (MPB, Música Popular Brasileira) – the name given to the ensemble of sambas, chorinhos, and Carnival marches for this period – foregrounded three interrelated themes: work, women, and money.
It is on songs from this period that this chapter will focus. It will analyze compositions that became classics and, as such, are part of the Brazilian urban imaginary.
