Culture of Brazil
Brazilian culture reflects the various peoples who make up the demographics of this South American country: Indians, Europeans, Africans, Asians, Arabs etc. As a result of the intense miscegenation of peoples, there was a peculiar cultural reality, which summarizes the various cultures.
The tension between what would be considered a scholarly and popular culture has always been very problematic in the country. During a long period of history, from the Discoveries to the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the distance between high culture and popular was quite large: while the former sought to be a true copy of the canons and European styles, the second was made by adapting cultures of different peoples who formed the Brazilian people a set of values, habits and aesthetic rejected and despised by the elites. Much of the modernist aesthetic project was to rescue the fields considered “noble” of Culture (in the arts, literature, music, etc.) and even in daily habits to the popular side, considering it as the legitimate Brazilian culture .
Currently, the country goes through a process of cultural integration in Mercosul, and to accelerate this process, is creating the University of Mercosul, an institution that will have multi campus units in all state members, including associated countries.
The Portuguese
Among the many people who make up Brazil, the Europeans were those who exerted the greatest influence on Brazilian culture, especially those of Portuguese origin. For 322 years the country was a colony of Portugal and transplantation there was a culture of the metropolis to the land of South America. The Portuguese settlers arrived in greater numbers to the colony from the eighteenth century, this century has been a Catholic country, Brazil and Portuguese-language dominant.
Indigenous
According to some historians, centuries of Moorish domination and relations with other civilizations facilitated contact between Portuguese settlers and indigenous Brazilians, however this did not prevent the natives were decimated by colonial action.
The first decades of settlement allowed a fusion of rich culture of Europeans and the Indians, giving rise to the formation of elements such as the general language, which influenced the Portuguese spoken in Brazil, and various aspects of Indian culture inherited by the current Brazilian civilization. In addition to the decimation of indigenous peoples, there was action and the intense miscegenation of catechesis, which contributed to many of these cultural aspects were lost. The Indian influence is getting stronger in certain regions of the country in which these groups have managed to stay farther from the action and colonizing newly populated areas, mostly in Northern Brazil.
Africans
African culture came through the enslaved people brought to Brazil in a long period that lasted from 1550 to 1850. The cultural diversity of Africa contributed to a greater multiplicity of the Brazilian people. The slaves themselves were of different ethnic groups speaking different languages and had distinct traditions. Just as the indigenous African culture was overwhelmed by the colonists, and slaves baptized before arriving in Brazil. In learning Portuguese colony and were baptized with Portuguese names and forced to convert to Catholicism. Some groups, like the slaves of the ethnic Hausa and Nago, the religion of Islam, have brought a cultural heritage and knew how to write in Arabic and others, like the Bantu, were monotheists. Through the religious syncretism, slaves worshiped their deities with Catholic saints, giving rise to the african-Brazilian religions such as Candomblé.
The black Brazilian culture bequeathed to a multitude of elements: dance, music, religion, cuisine and language. This influence is to be noted in almost all over the country, although in some areas (particularly in Northeastern states such as Bahia and Maranhão) african-Brazilian culture is more present.
Immigrants
The European immigration was encouraged not only to meet the end of labor, slave labor, but also was promoted by the government that he intended to launder Europeanize Brazil and its culture, after all, most of the population in the nineteenth century was composed of blacks and mestizos. Among the various groups of immigrants who arrived in Brazil, it was the Italians who arrived in greater numbers between 1870 and 1950. Spread from the south of Minas Gerais to Rio Grande do Sul, where most settled in the region of São Paulo. In addition to the Italians, the highlights were the Germans, who came streaming since 1824. They settled primarily in southern Brazil, where several regions inherited Germanic influences of these settlers.
The immigrants who settled in rural areas of southern Brazil, living in small family farms (mainly Germans and Italians) were able to keep the customs of the country, in Brazil by creating a copy of the lands they left in Europe. In contrast, immigrants who settled on large farms and urban centers in the Southeast (Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic), rapidly integrated into Brazilian society, losing many aspects of the cultural heritage of the country of origin. The Asian contribution would come with the Japanese immigration, but with more limited.
Individual religiosity
Not all Brazilians consider themselves members of any religion, organized or not. The prevailing freedom of worship within the Brazilian government. According to the Federal Constitution, the participation of Brazilian citizens in any religious activities in the country is an individual right and a responsibility that should never be abdicated, suffer any kind of coercion and / or incentives. No religion is above the secular laws in force on home soil.
About three quarters of the population follows the Roman Catholic religion, which makes the country the absolute number of Catholics in the world. There is still a small number of followers of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church. Here Protestantism 15 percent of the population (mostly by Pentecostal evangelical churches), 1 percent is spirit, 0.5 percent is a Jehovah’s Witness and nearly 7 percent have no religion. Other religions, although few practitioners deserve quotation are the religions of African origin (sometimes practiced in syncretism with the Catholic religion), like Umbanda and Candomble. Judaism, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism (Hare Krishna) have a small number of followers in Brazil, often concentrated in cities in the south, southeast or northeast.
Arts
Literature
The first literary manifestations in the country basically boil down to the production of narrative texts about the country within the context of Discovery. The production of literary fiction, itself only has to occur effectively with the inauguration of the Baroque.
The concern in producing a truly national literature comes into existence with the intention romantic nationalist, but this merely supposed to look issues in Brazil (as the indigenization and regionalism) and repeat the European forms. Something similar occurs with Realism and Naturalism, although authors such as Machado de Assis were considered highly innovative.
The various modern movements that explode in the early twentieth century (among which is represented by the cannibalistic Mário and Oswald de Andrade) are beginning to reject European values and pursue what is truly national, digesting foreign culture and returning synthesized at the national level.
Visual Arts
Until the mid-nineteenth century the production of plastic arts in Brazil has little attention, except the work of Aleijadinho and Manuel da Costa Athayde the baroque. Even to mention the production of foreign artists during the colonial period were recorded in the country landscapes and local customs, such as Albert Eckhout.
The Brazilian painting of the nineteenth century is quite academic, highly influenced by the work of the French Artistic Mission (which included the likes of Jean Baptiste and Nicolas-Antoine Debret Taunay). That mission was responsible for creating the Imperial School of Fine Arts. In this period, we highlight the historical paintings of Victor Meirelles and Pedro Américo.
Music
Some genres of popular music originating in Brazil are the most popular Choro, Samba, Bossa Nova and popular Brazilian music. How can we highlight whiners Pixinguinha, Jacob’s Mandolin, and Waldir Azevedo Altamiro Carrilho. Examples of samba are Cartola and Noel Rosa. Maestro Tom Jobim, the poet Vinicius de Moraes and Joao Gilberto, on the other hand, are familiar names associated with bossa nova and whose work has had international repercussions, were recorded by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Stan Getz. After the Bossa Nova, the movement known as tropicalia also had an important role in the avant-garde and experimental.
But Brazil also had an important role in the classical tradition. It is considered the first great Brazilian composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia was a contemporary of Mozart and Beethoven. Carlos Gomes, author of the opera O Guarani, adapted from the novel by José de Alencar, was the first Brazilian composer to have international profile. In the twentieth century stands out the work of Heitor Villa-Lobos, responsible for the assimilation on the part of classical music, various elements of popular culture, like certain guitars and rhythms. Other important composers in classical music are online Guerra Peixe, Claudio Santoro and Camargo Guarnieri. At present, the highlights are works by contemporary composers like Amaral Vieira, Osvaldo Lacerda and Edino Krieger.
Architecture
The flag and baroque architecture is considered by many scholars as expressions of European styles that have found an expression in Brazil and language themselves, demonstrating their metropolitan counterparts. The first refers to production taking place in what was basically now the State of São Paulo, for the families of the pioneers, inspired by an aesthetic close, though quite changed, the mannerism. The second is a kind of baroque (though many consider it closer to the Rococo), represented especially by the churches built by Aleijadinho.
The Brazilian architecture had its culmination in the modernist movement, with the construction of Brasilia, Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.
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