Èṣù-Adorno: towards a Critical Theory of Samba

Abstract

Artistic productions simultaneously express, build and unveils the contradictions of the culture that harbors them. Based on this premise, we seek to understand Samba as a non-hegemonic and historically silenced culture, which erupts through the fissures and contradictions of our society and Cultural Industry. Key elements of Samba such its rhythmic figures (Syncope), the cadence of the chants and the issues addressed in the lyrics are analyzed as expressions of that cannot be reduced to the logic of stereotyping and repetition, as well as indexes of the rupture against a pseudo-elitist art that associates peripheral artistic, bodily, religious, and sensory manifestations to sin, deviation, and the profane. Against an Art that separates itself from the world, Samba, born from the religious songs of Èṣù and the Orixás, operates in the world and exhibits in itself not what the world should be, but the imperfections of what it is, of what it could be, and of what it is no longer, as claimed by Adorno in his Aesthetic Theory, and points to the benjaminian messianic time of rescue of the oppressed.