Buy Beats of the Heart - The Spirit of Samba: Black Music of Brazil here, one of many top quality Music Documentaries products at DVD Dispatcher. We greatly appreciate your patronage at DVD Dispatcher and look forward to offering you great products and prices in the future.
Current Page: Home : Documentary DVD Movies : Music Documentaries : Item 18 of 215
|
|
Reader Reviews
The key to understanding this tendentious hour-long documentary film is in its subtitle, and the dogmatic assertion that samba is a "black" music that has somehow been appropriated and exploited by Brazil's "white" population. Although the film has some good material, including sit-down interviews with Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Chico Buarque and Leci Brandao, the thrill of seeing them all in action is severely undercut by the grinding, joyless narration, as French director Jeremy Marre intones gravely about how samba is the music of the poor and exploited black underclass, etc. etc. etc. He cuts away from scenes of street parties and MPB concerts to military parades held by the dictatorship that was still in power when the film was made (albeit in its waning days; the military relinquished control of the country in 1985) and makes the seemingly contradictory assertions that Brazil's vast Carnival celebrations are merely a bread-and-circuses sop, a pointless bacchanal designed to placate the nation's poor, and, simultaneously, that samba has been stolen from the masses, and that they can no longer hear their own music. Second-string MPB star Luiz Melodia is shown singing a sexually suggestive song with a female co-star, as Marre instructs us that his music has been ruined by the influence of non-Brazilian pop, and that his songs "have no meaning." There are elements of truth to Marre's argument, but on the whole, he seems to be pounding static, lifeless square pegs into round, rhythmic holes. Marre's dogmatic political presentation betrays a startling ignorance (or willful disregard for) the dense complexities of Brazil's interracial, multilayered, ceaselessly fluid and profoundly syncretic centuries-long cultural heritage. Samba, which came into existence towards the end of the 19th Century, was one in a long line of admixtures of African, Amazonian and European influences -- it didn't come fully formed fresh off the boat from West Africa, as the film seems to suggest. And historically, it is a national music, not only enjoyed by all, but actually one of the key elements uniting this far-flung country. This same point is made constantly by the film's own footage: every time Marre sets out to show us some "exploitative" situation in which a poor samba artist is forced to play their music for a "white" audience, the crowd we see is invariably and emblematically of mixed race, and they generally seem to be having a pretty good time together. Try as he might to stack the deck, the director keeps running up against the contradictory nuances of Brazil's confoundingly multi-textured society. This film is worth checking out for a glimpse at the samba culture, but its message has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Comment (1) | Permalink |
function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) {
var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId);
if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) {
msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours.";
} else {
showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value);
}
}
(Report this)
|
|
Beats of the Heart - The Spirit of Samba: Black Music of Brazil
List Price: $19.99
Available from Amazon
Price: $17.99
Updated on 12-6-2008.
|
dvddispatcher.com offers top quality Beats of the Heart - The Spirit of Samba: Black Music of Brazil in association with leading DVD movie retail stores such as Amazon.com. DVD Dispatcher features hot deals on Beats of the Heart - The Spirit of Samba: Black Music of Brazil.
![]()
|
|
Increase your websites importance by offering your visitors one-click consumer reviews and purchase reviews for "Beats of the Heart - The Spirit of Samba: Black Music of Brazil" and similar Products from DVD Dispatcher. Just copy and paste the code into your page and add on-topic value to your site.
Provide a link to this product on your website:
Your Code will look like this:
Read reviews and get product information on Beats of the Heart - The Spirit of Samba: Black Music of Brazil
|
|
|
|
