Sounds of Urban Worlds

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the composer Aurélio Cavalcanti. A main figure in Rio de Janeiro’s entertainment venues, he worked as a pianist in salons, dance halls, and movie theater waiting rooms, and as a musical director and conductor of one of the most prestigious movie theater orchestras. Cavalcanti had the experience and creativity to instantly adapt many musics to the fast-moving scenes of silent movies, a skill that he used to write music suggestive of many peoples and places, even if he had never met the people or had never been to the places that his works were set to portray. Cavalcanti wrote waltzes and polkas that became local staples during his time; they had suggestive titles that served to project imaginations of places beyond the city through music. The chapter also traces the arrival and dominance of the cakewalk in Rio de Janeiro and explores how the dance served to articulate both Parisian fashionable trends and African-derived cultures within complex racialized cosmopolitan urban networks.