Maracatu Atomico

Scholars have not previously written a full study of mangue, a Brazilian cultural movement that has shaped popular culture in the country over roughly three decades, nor of the associated new music scene in Brazil's Northeast. The author looks at how the movement responds to entrenched poverty and social hardship by turning attention back to the surrounding landscape and its many folk customs, while also drawing on contemporary global pop styles and new technologies.

The book combines historical background and ethnographic fieldwork to describe the movement's development. It examines representative songs that blend regional folk traditions with pop, and it engages current academic arguments about postmodernity, globalization and the category of "world music." Its central question is how musicians in a region often labeled "Third World" take part in a wider international cultural system.