Towards an Alternative 1922: Popular Culture and Rio de Janeiro’s Vernacular Modernisms

Abstract

This article explores cultural innovations taking place in Rio de Janeiro in 1922. The year evidenced numerous changes in the then capital. These have, though, been eclipsed by the dominant focus on avant-garde experimentations by modernist artists in São Paulo. Returning to 1922 and zooming in on Rio, this article explores transformations that altered the space of the city, and its popular cultural landscape. By doing so, the article seeks to widen the landscape of Brazil’s cultural modernity to encompass developments taking place beyond the confines of the modernist movement and the city of São Paulo. It does this by analysing cultural revolutions taking place in 1922 in terms of Rio’s “vernacular modernisms”, to borrow from Miriam Hansen (1999). Specifically it explores changes in urban planning, in popular music and live performance, in the teatro de revista and in popular literature.