Samba-enredo is chronicled and analyzed as an art form in a book that points to a renewed vigor in the carnival genre 19/02/2023
In 2009, when they completed the original edition of the book Samba de enredo – História e arte (2010), the authors Luiz Antonio Simas and Alberto Mussa had doubts about the future of this essentially carnival-related musical genre.
As they list in the afterword written in December 2022 for the revised and expanded edition released in bookstores by the publisher Civilização Brasileira this February 2023, the authors detected at the time what they characterize as "difficulties" for the proper continuity of samba-enredo as a fundamental and original genre of the samba tradition.
The difficulties stemmed from factors such as "stylistic standardization, the excess of sponsored storylines unrelated to the samba school environment, the accelerated pace of the percussion sections, the apparent disintegration of the composers' groups, the lack of authorial renewal, the judging criteria, and the disconnect between the samba schools and the wider public."
These questions remain open, as the authors conclude in the final part of the unpublished afterword, but Simas and Mussa's text already points to a certain injection of energy into the genre, citing the case of the Acadêmicos do Grande Rio samba school, which turned things around by hiring carnival designers Gabriel Haddad and Leonardo Bora, creators of culturally relevant themes that generated high-quality samba songs in the 2020 and 2022 Carnivals.
The afterword brings a contemporary feel to the new edition of Samba de Enredo – História e Arte (Samba Enredo – History and Art), whose unique cover was created by Leonardo Iaccarino based on the work Espelho da Diversidade Religiosa (Mirror of Religious Diversity), by André Cunha.
However, the book's raw material is an analysis of the genre's production, from its development around 1870 to the Carnival of 2009. In this analysis, the writers define periods to characterize what they call the "formation" phase (from 1933 to 1950), the "classical period" (from 1951 to 1968), and the "golden age" (from 1969 to 1989). To do this, the authors listened to approximately 1,600 compositions.
Maintaining the text written by Haroldo Costa for the blurb of the original 2010 edition, the book analyzes the lyrics of samba-enredo songs, provides brief profiles of composers of the genre, and maps samba schools of the Rio de Janeiro Carnival, shedding light on lesser-known groups such as União de Jacarepaguá and Unidos do Cabuçu.
On each of the book's 266 pages, one can perceive Luiz Antonio Simas and Alberto Mussa's love for samba-enredo, offered to the people in the form of art.
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