In 1938, when the Department of Culture sponsored the Mission for Folklore Research, Mário de Andrade was faced by the dilemma of Modernity: in the same pace popular manifestations were under the risk of vanishing due to growing urbanization in the country, the technology advance of the time provided means to capture those manifestations in discs, photographs, and films.
Against such ambiguous scenario, between endangered facts and the building of references, the project was taken by urgency. His interest in national culture led Mário de Andrade to travel to Northern and Northeastern Brazil in the 1920’s. Having been registered in his posthumous book Turista Aprendiz (Apprentice Tourist), the existential, intellectual adventure set the milestone for his trajectory as a field researcher, and convinced him of the need to travel to Brazil’s hinterlands, to those places where our cultural traditions had not yet perished under the burden of industrialization. Generally speaking, quoting the trajectory trod by the writer in his ethnographic journeys, the Mission was – under many of its aspects – the institutionalization of a personal experience. Put together by Luís Saia, Martin Braunwieser, Benedicto Pacheco and Antônio Ladeira, the caravan left São Paulo Capital District in February, 1938 to Ceará, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Piauí, Maranhão and Pará states.
A political drawback – as a result of Estado Novo – and a new mayor in office (Prestes Maia), turned Mário de Andrade’s stay at the Department of Culture shorter. Still, the Mission succeeded in finishing its first stage: based on field note pads, images, songs, and the innumerable objects collected a fragmentary – although significant – panorama of Brazilian folklore was revealed.
The organization and diffusion of the material did not share the same success. All efforts in that direction were restricted to the solitary work of Oneyda Alvarenga for years: the first director of the National Music Archive, she could not count on the support of Municipal Government; she then dedicated her life so the collection could be preserved.
The
launch of the CDs does not have the purpose of resuming the project, which
dates back to the 1920’s and 1930’s, when São Paulo was still
concerned about looking at the issues of nationality, embracing beyond political
and cultural frontiers. While making the Mission for Folklore Research
collection of phonographic records available to the public, the purpose of the
Municipal Culture Secretariat – in partnership with SESC-SP – is
to reiterate the high relevance of such collection – a fundamental component
of Brazilian people cultural material.
Carlos Augusto Calil
Secretary of Culture of the City of São Paulo