Leonard Bernstein’s 1949 second symphony, subtitled “The Age of Anxiety,” is an exploration of post-war apathy and exhaustion at the dawn of McCarthyism. Examining the work both in its political context and also within the context of Bernstein’s beloved American symphonic tradition, I show how Bernstein flipped the triumphal musical rhetoric of…[Read more]

In the United States, most middle-class listeners often have passive contact with bossa nova. In recent decades, this contact is often in the context of restaurants, bars, and increasingly in spaces more directly affiliated with commerce such as clothing stores, coffee shops, and bookstores. As common as bossa nova and other Brazilian musical…[Read more]

This chapter examines the role of independent labels in mobile music consumption and distribution in Brazil. It explains the division between independent and major labels and their relationship with digital consolidation services, and it discusses the role of iMúsica as one of the main mobile content aggregators for the major and independent…[Read more]

Ever since appearing in Disney’s Saludos Amigos (1942), Ary Barroso’s musical ode to the Brazilian motherland, “Brazil,” is among the most recognizable songs circulating in Western Culture about Brazil. This essay shows how the song became detached from its roots as a nationalist samba to represent in audiovisual media such divergent ideas as tro…[Read more]