Suffering and smiling – singing: Bide & Marçal’s sambas

Abstract

This article discusses the ambivalent articulation between joy and sadness, characteristic of some strands of the samba poetics and pointed out in critical and journalistic  discourses about the genre. Quite common in sambas of the 1930s and 1940s, the conjunction of crying and singing, suffering and dancing the samba, can be found in  the lyrics, but also in the whole structure of the songs, which includes music and performance. A complaining lyrics can be combined with an animated melody, in  addition to the varied and even contrastive suggestions coming from vocal and instrumental performance. To study these procedures and effects by analysing a corpus of  ambas, I take the repertoire composed, between 1933 and 1947, by Alcebíades Barcelos and Armando Marçal, one of the most constant and productive associations of songwriters in  Brazilian popular music.