Writing Homework Help

Write a commentary on one of the following quotations, supporting your arguments with knowledge resulting from class lectures, readings and discussions. Provide examples and quotations of songs to support your essay. Indicate which prompt you are answering to.

1. The topic you will be writing about:   ——Topic A. “The implications of samba-exaltação and the new critical samba are contradictory. The first celebrates racial democracy and a national culture built on Afro-Brazilian foundations but shared by all harmoniously. The second shows the contradictions and ambiguities behind the rhetoric of racial democracy, and reveals the networks of power that structure Brazilian society. Nonetheless, over the past fifty years these two contradictory approaches to the genre have coexisted. Samba serves both as uncritical celebration of the nation and profound inquiry into its failures.”

Bryan McCann. “Samba and National Identity,” 94-95.