Primitive Modernities: Tango, Samba, and Nation

Primitive Modernities invites us to reconsider the boundaries that usually separate popular culture from the culture of the elite. It focuses on the cultural network that enabled popular music—tango and samba—to transform into national and modern forms. The origin of tango and samba is considered primitive, marginal. Yet in the early decades of the twentieth century, they each came to symbolize a nation: Argentina and Brazil, respectively. Garramuño analyzes the aesthetic and ideological pr...