The genre lost one of its exponents, Rick, from the duo Rick and Renner; In almost a century, music that was born portraying rural life incorporated foreign influences, romanticism, pop and funk until it became one of the country's main phenomena
By BBC
The country duo Rick and Renner in concert in 2013 — Photo: Getty Images via BBC
Jonathan Scarello dos Anjos is not a well-known name in Brazil. But Panda, his artistic identity, does: he is the voice of the most listened to musical hit in the country today, the country song Eu Te Seguro — according to the most recent survey by Pró-Música Brasil, an entity representing the national music market, based on the sum of reproductions on streaming platforms.
But the country music that is at the top is not exactly the country music that began to appear in recordings at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s.
Nor the romantic aspect with cheesy contours that made the reputation of duos like the one that Rick — Geraldo Antônio de Carvalho, who died this week in a helicopter accident — formed with Renner — stage name Ivair dos Reis Gonçalves.
As is often the case with successful examples of the cultural industry, the genre constantly reinvents itself as time passes.
The examples that follow the previous ones are, in the definition of historian Gustavo Alonso, "modernizing in the sense of cultural anthropophagy, of incorporating values and music from other fields, from other origins".
Alonso is a professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and author of the book "Cowboys do Asfalto: Música Sertaneja e Modernização Brasileira".
"There was a structural transformation that accompanied the modernization process and the shift from rural areas to urban consumption", analyzes specialist Gisele Jordão, coordinator of the cinema and audiovisual course at the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM).
Jordão sees the genre changing from versions “that recorded the routines of agricultural work” and “local stories” to “the nostalgic pain of the disillusioned migrant in the urban environment”. Then, with the advance of the livestock frontier towards the Central-West, an exaltation of the "heroism of the cattle driver".
Gradually, country songs began to include "narratives of mass cultures" and move away from "rural references", placing more emphasis on "loving sentimentalities".
Finally, in this century, came the emphasis on "flirting, drinking, misunderstandings and ostentatious consumption".
The pioneering recording
In general, the episode that made the genre accessible as a product of mass consumption is understood as a kind of founding milestone of country music in Brazil: the first recording of a song in the segment, in this case the song "Jorginho do Sertão", composed by journalist and folklorist Cornélio Pires (1884-1958) based on fragments of popular stories, in the voice of the duo Mariano and Caçula. It was in 1929.
"No record company wanted to record country music. Cornélio Pires rented a studio and paid for the pressing out of his own pocket", emphasizes artistic entrepreneur Anita Carvalho, founder of the Music Rio Academy school and researcher at ESPM.
"For me, this is the first independent release in the history of Brazilian music, and it says a lot about how much the industry makes mistakes when judging what the public wants."
Mariano and Rubens da Silva, the "Caçula", were brothers and lived in Piracicaba in the interior of São Paulo. The music they sang was the one known as viola moda.
In these almost one hundred years that have passed, country music has gone through different phases and can be understood not only as a musical phenomenon: the genre leaves clues, based on its success and dissemination, to understand Brazilian society and urbanization.
Professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), guitarist and researcher Ivan Vilela divides country music into five major phases — Vilela is the author of the book "Cantando a Própria História: Música Caipira e Raizamento" and is considered the greatest expert on the subject.
The first steps of the genre as a product go from the recording of Mariano e Caçula to the 1940s. "The broadcasting of these songs helped in the process of re-rooting the migrants who left the countryside for the big cities", he points out.
Vilela notes that this period saw the birth of the professionalization of singers. This was the case of Raul Torres (1906-1970), a São Paulo native from Botucatu who sang but intended to combine his artistic life with his profession as a pharmacist.
Torres ended up seeing that music was a good idea and left the bar behind — he even formed a duo with a nephew, but made history even with Florêncio, stage name of João Batista Pinto (1910-1971).
"He sang embolada, but realizing that there was a lot of work space [for country music], he ended up joining the segment", says Vilela. In other words: country music was no longer an expression of rural people; it became entertainment that followed the logic of market supply and demand.
"[That was when] country music was consolidated in the phonographic market, above all, with the work of urban musicians who began to dedicate themselves to the genre", comments guitarist and researcher Leandro Valentin, PhD from Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) and currently writing the biography of country singer Tião Carreiro (1934-1993).
It is estimated that, at that time, the genre already dominated 40% of the incipient Brazilian recording industry.
The success of Tonico & Tinoco
"The second phase came with the music already broadcast on the radio, with production also reaching small towns and rural areas", explains the USP professor.
The music that was born in the countryside, migrated to the city singing the countryside and now returned to the countryside packaged by the radio waves.
The biggest name of this phase, according to Vilela, is the duo Tonico & Tinoco. It was a resounding success. They were the brothers João Salvador Perez (1917-1994), born in São Manuel, and José Salvador Perez (1920-2012).
During their fruitful career, they recorded almost 1,000 songs, released 83 albums, sold millions and millions of copies and performed more than 40,000 shows.
For Vilela, this duo meant the beginning of a process of breaking the bubble — and country music began to be heard even by people who had no relationship, neither emotional nor biographical, with the rural world.
He estimates that Tonico & Tinoco have sold around 150 million records in total. "Along with all formats, they are the duo that sold the most records in the world", he says.
"That's when a pattern was established more strongly: the duo, the guitar and the viola, no longer the choro instrumentals that were used in the past", says Vilela.
"The musicians were guys from the countryside who grew up listening to the radio and now composed with very rural characteristics, incorporating rhythms such as catira, folia de reis."
If in the first wave, the country people narrated their rural daily life, in the second this country life started to be sold with contours of nostalgia — after all, the public was already established in the cities and had that imaginary ideal of bucolicism as a sentimental escape valve.
"Life in the countryside and the rural exodus are themed with a dose of nostalgia and coexist with romanticism that is slowly beginning to gain strength", notes Valentin.
Vilela contextualizes. In the beginning, it was migrants, "people from the countryside who [had moved to the cities but] saw values in the countryside" who listened to country music. Afterwards, "with all these people already living in the city, the narratives become anachronistic".
"Tonico & Tinoco's main selling point was already urban, so they were stories of nostalgia", he comments.
"The term country music became hegemonic from the 1950s onwards", points out Alonso. "Before, since the first recording in 1929, people talked about country music, country music, backcountry music, country music..."
In this decade, the genre incorporated foreign elements, especially from Paraguayan guarânia and Mexican ranchera.
"These genres interacted with local cultures and some became fans", explains the historian. "In this phase, there was an increasingly demarcated use of traditional rhythms such as recortado, cururu and cateretê", adds Valentin.
Jovem Guarda and the exaggerated romantic
In the 1960s, country music underwent another major transformation. Brazil already had a well-established process of rural exodus and the music market understood that the new listeners of the genre, the children of migrants, were already born in big cities.
"They had a traditional education at home and a modern education on the streets, at work, at school. For them, music was created that combined aspects of Jovem Guarda with country music", says Vilela. "In the third phase, country music stops being a chronicler of the rural world and also becomes a chronicler of the urban world."
The first duo of this subgenre was Léo Canhoto & Robertinho, respectively Leonildo Sachi (1936-2020) and José Simão Alves, now 82 years old. For Valentin, it was "an attempt to modernize country music, whether with the use of electric guitars, or with an emphasis on typically Mexican elements in the sound of the songs, and with an increasingly striking presence of love themes in the lyrics of the songs".
The pop turn would come in the 1980s — mainly due to the commercial efforts of the Sony record company. "[Record company executives] realized that country music could receive a new type of dressing, sound and visual guise, and that's when the trend called today romantic country music began", comments Vilela.
"In this basket are unmissable hits such as Chitãozinho &
Valentin says that only at this stage "sertanejo was finally accepted by the mainstream media as the most popular genre in the country, even though it had been so for decades."
"At that time, brega was incorporated as a style, as a musical genre", says Alonso. It was exaggerated love. "A fixation. Today we call it suffering, at the time it was 'cuckold music'."
It was a time of institutionalized jabá and an industry eager for new things. "The market was already very voracious, focused on music production", assesses Vilela.
"The romantic follows the pagoda of the time, also romantic, and follows a strand of North American romantic music that gained a lot of ground in the 1980s", analyzes the teacher and guitarist.
University and agriculture
At the turn of the century, the current stage of country music emerged, called university country music. The genre becomes pop, as international pop is also incorporated and "becomes a guide", adds the USP professor.
"They are pop stars, they play pop music in Portuguese, in their own way, but that's the idea", he summarizes.
Valentin explains university country music as a moment of "increasing fusion with styles such as pop, rock and axé". "And the theme of the lyrics increasingly speaks to young urban audiences, with an approach that moves between traditional romanticism and the ephemeral nature of contemporary love relationships", he points out.
It's a long harvest that already has many developments.
Case of feminejo, which emerged more or less 10 years ago. It is a movement in which women — who have always been a minority among artists of the genre — have become the most heard voices. Marília Mendonça (1995-2021), Maiara & Maraísa, Simone & Simaria, Naiara Azevedo, Paula Mattos and Paula Fernandes are the greatest exponents.
More recently, there is the so-called agribusiness, the subgenre that feeds an idolatry, generally uncritical and subservient, of agribusiness. "They are artists who defend the culture of the latifundium and all these derivations", points out Vilela. "There was an appropriation by the extreme right."
The professor believes that a large part of the sector is linked to corruption problems, through a logic of millionaire fees in shows funded by city halls and companies linked to agriculture across the country.
Agronejo, recalls Valentin, incorporates "electronic beats and traces of pop and funk to country music". "Often, the ostentation and sensual aspects of ephemeral or casual love relationships are thematized at this stage," he says.
"Contemporary country music is the music of small and medium-sized cities. Most of these guys came from small and medium-sized cities. Brazil has become a country of small and medium-sized cities", analyzes historian Alonso, remembering that the big cities "stopped swelling" in the 1990s and it is the others that have grown economically and demographically since then. "In a way, country music portrays this phenomenon."
And it remains anthropophagic, incorporating new aesthetics. "Each new generation does this in its own way. 'Ai Se Eu Te Pego' [which was a hit with Michel Teló] is a forró. You have examples that are funk, there is reggaeton and now agronejo even records electronic music", comments the historian.
"They incorporate other aesthetics, from other genres. That's what makes country music become a big general umbrella of popular genres."
The duo's idea
Although among the current names it is far from unanimous, the idea of the "redneck duo" as a symbol of the genre remains in the imagination. According to Vilela, this way of singing "origins in the beginnings of country music recordings", always with the idea "of two people singing together, often brothers".
"The duo's issue has to do with singing in thirds. They sing in thirds, that is, if one sings in C, the other sings in E", explains Alonso. "This has been standard since country music was made way back when, even before the cultural industry embraced the genre." He observes that, curiously, the model of the university country singer no longer prefers duos — most stars pursue solo careers.
From this perspective, it was not the gender perspective that changed, but the object. The rural world became agribusiness — and music followed suit.
"[Country music] is an ethnomusic that brings very characteristic features, instrumental and rhythms. There are 17 rhythms present in the universe of country music", highlights Vilela.
