Forró and Redemptive Regionalism from the Brazilian Northeast

Jack A. Draper III earned his Ph.D. in Literature at Duke University. Dr. Draper has published an array of scholarly articles and chapters relating to Brazilian popular music, literature and cinema. He continues his work in the field of Brazilian Cultural Studies in his current position of Assistant Professor of Portuguese at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

«This book presents a coherent, well-researched, and highly insightful analysis of ‘forró.’ Jack A. Draper’s exploration of the workings of saudade in the genre, his analysis of forró’s relationship to patterns of migration and assimilation, and his critical division of the current field of forró into three distinct styles are excellent. As Draper notes, forró has received less scholarly attention than other Brazilian genres of similar popularity and substance. It is a major cultural phenomenon whose growth and recombination over the past seventy years present fascinating cases of cultural vitality and variation, and it amply deserves the close critical attention it gets here.» (Bryan McCann, Georgetown University, Author of ‘Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil’)«In this book, Jack A. Draper very accurately analyzes the trajectory of the musical genre known as ‘forró’, examining this music as one of the elements of cultural expression of the people of Brazil’s Northeastern region. It is a historiographical analysis that delves into the fields of sociology and anthropology, not forgetting references from the regional literature. Draper interprets signifiers and signifieds contained in the song lyrics, exploring scenarios which present the life and way of being of the artists, of the Northeastern poets that reside in the region and of those who migrated to the great cities and have in forró their greatest reference of sociocultural identity. It is a work that deals with popular musicality from the standpoint of a researcher who left behind his habitat – the United States – to go to the field. In Brazil he experienced and witnessed Northeastern customs, habits, and traditions, but it is his object of study forró that consolidates this work.» (Expedito Leandro Silva, University of Santo Amaro, Brazil, Author of ‘Forró no asfalto: mercado e identidade sociocultural’)