BRAZILIAN MUSIC AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS: - Elisabeth Blin

please the abolitionists only, and it came at a time when many fazendeiros, (plantation
owners) considered that the new immigrants from Europe would be a better and more
dependable work force than the black ex-slaves.
Most of the documents related to slavery were destroyed by the white authorities
who were obviously trying to erase an embarassing past. Consequently, historians and
anthropologists, like Claude Levi-Strauss (b.1908), in the twentieth century, have done
extensive research to understand the problem of Brazilian identity.
In 2007, Brazil’s population of 188 million, included fifty five per cent whites,
thirty-eight per cent mixed (mestizos), six per cent blacks, and one percent of other races.
This population was divided among Portuguese, Italians, German, Japanese, black and
Amerindian origins. 17 The vast Brazilian culture is therefore dominated by three
elements: its indigenous influence, which came from various Amerindian tribes, the
European influences brought by different colonizers, and the African influence, which
came from a massive slave trade.
Brazil was settled by Portugal on March 8 th , 1500, when the Portuguese navigator
Pedro Alvarez Cabral arrived by mistake at Porto Seguro, on the coast now called
17 John W. Wright, editor, 2007 New York Times Almanac (New York: Penguin Group USA), 543-44
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