The electric guitar in brazilian popular music: The styles of the musicians José Menezes and Olmir Stocker

Author(s)

Eduardo de Lima Visconti

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Artes
• Defense date: 2010-08-09

Examining board members

José Roberto Zan; Claudiney Rodrigues Carrasco; Jorge Luiz Schroeder; Eduardo Vicente; Herom Vargas Silva

• Advisor: José Roberto Zan

Abstract

The subject of this thesis is the insertion of the electric guitar in Brazilian popular music, a process that occurred progressively from the beginning of the 20th century. Through the study of the styles of guitar players José Meneses e Olmir Stocker, I seek to understand how the electric guitar was not only introduced, but also adapted to the Brazilian popular repertoire. Identified as an instrument with artificial devices (electromagnetic pickups) and symbolically associated to jazz and Anglo-American pop music, the electric guitar was object both of veneration and rejection by critics and players. Even as it was repudiated by some as a symbol of "foreignness" or even of cultural imperialism against the "Brazilian nation," it was acknowledged by other as an element of musical sophistication and modernity. Based on analyses of compositions and recordings by José Meneses and Olmir Stocker, I have sought to show that the styles of these two musicians express, in a certain way, a series of symbolic conflicts that pervaded the musical milieu for decades. These conflicts were focused on binary oppositions between national/international, erudite/popular; commercial/non-commercial, traditional/modern. Moreover, it was possible to verify that, whereas José Meneses - a musician who began his career still in the 1940's - can be acknowledged as a player who made a transition from acoustic to electric guitar, Olmir Stocker is part of a generation that consolidated the instrument in Brazilian popular music, building a style adapted to a wide range of popular and regional rhythms and genres (AU)