Claiming Caribbeanness in the Brazilian Amazon

Lambada, Critical Cosmopolitanism, and the Creation of an Alternative Amazon

Bibliographic Data

ID3979986
AuthorsDarien Lamen (corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume34
Issue2
Pages131-161
Publication date2013-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Music Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-0350 • E-ISSN: 1536-0199
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7560/lamr34201
OpenAlexW230313145
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

Located in the eastern Brazilian Amazon roughly three hours by boat from the open Atlantic, the port city of Belém do Pará has been an important point of convergence for transnational flows of commodities, people, and culture, including a vast array of up-tempo Caribbean dance genres known locally as lambada. Since the late twentieth century, inhabitants of Belém and surrounding areas have sought to make a virtue of their liminal position between the hegemonic centers of southeastern Brazil and the circum-Caribbean. This article shows how musicians, dancers, listeners, and culture brokers draw on the local history of Caribbean cosmopolitan musicality to articulate an alternative Amazonian regional identity, one characterized by connectedness and proximity to their Caribbean neighbors rather than by isolation and provincialism. In so doing, the article contributes to the remapping of the cultural contours of Brazil, the Caribbean, the Amazon, and Latin America

Amazon rainforest · Amazonian · Cosmopolitanism · Ethnology · Geography · Hegemony · Indigenous · Latin Americans · Liminality · Political science · Social connectedness · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · History