Piano na Mangueira : A Brazilian Story about Music and Essentialism

Abstract: In 1992, the samba school Mangueira honors Tom Jobim in its carnival parade. Two different musical expressions emerge from this: a samba-enredo by the school and the song “Piano na Mangueira” by Jobim and Chico Buarque. Although both represent musical encounters and mutual homage, their character is directly affected by sound and material systems that we recognize as “music theories,” in a broad sense. The challenge of representing a piano in the samba school, as well as the encounters and disagreements in this context, lead to a historical, social, and musical-analytic investigation that goes beyond images of music and seeks musical aspects of interaction. Thus, we are faced with the role of essentialism in Brazilian music, which not only determines it, but also constitutes an obstacle to what interfaces between musical systems could be, as we present in our conclusion.