Adoniran Barbosa and the people’s right language

Abstract

One of the most interesting aspects of Adoniran Barbosa musical work is his stylization of Brazilian popular language. It is well-known that, in Brazil, where immense social inequalities have persisted for centuries and the more privileged extracts of society have shown an explicit aversion to the poor people, linguistic variants associated to the lower classes have been stigmatized as “wrong”, “inexpressive”, “nasty”. In his songs, Barbosa clearly shows how popular language – in addition to being appropriate to the situations experienced by the characters who play the role of tragicomic stories in his songs – is beautiful, poetic, and very correct. When the artist exposes culture and language of these lower strata of society, which are maintained invisible, he exerts resistance to Brazil’s most retrograde forces, even if this is involuntary.