Culture of Brazil
The culture of Brazil has been shaped by the amalgamation of diverse indigenous cultures, and the cultural fusion that took place among Indigenous communities, Portuguese colonists, and Africans, primarily during the Brazilian colonial period. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brazil received a significant number of immigrants, primarily of Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and German origin, which along with smaller numbers of Japanese, Austrians, Dutch, Armenians, Arabs, Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, French, Russians, Swiss, Hungarians, Greeks, Chinese, and Koreans gave a relevant contribution to the formation of regional cultures in Brazil, and thus contributed to its current existence as a plural and racially diverse society.
As consequence of three centuries of colonization by the Portuguese Empire, many aspects of Brazilian culture are derived from the culture of Portugal. The numerous Portuguese inheritances include the language, cuisine items such as rice and beans and feijoada, the predominant religion and the colonial architectural styles. These aspects, however, were influenced by African and Indigenous traditions, as well as those from other Western European countries. Some aspects of Brazilian culture are contributions of Italian, Spaniard, German, Japanese and other European immigrants. Amerindian people and Africans also played an important role in the formation of Brazilian language, cuisine, music, dance and religion.
This diverse cultural background has helped show off many celebrations and festivals that have become known around the world, such as the Brazilian Carnival and the Bumba Meu Boi. The colourful culture creates an environment that makes Brazil a popular destination for tourists, who visit over 1 million annually.
History
Brazil was a colony of Portugal for over three centuries. About a million Portuguese settlers arrived during this period and brought their culture to the colony. The Indigenous inhabitants of Brazil had much contact with the colonists. Many became extinct, and others mixed with the Portuguese. For that reason, Brazil also holds Amerindian influences in its culture, mainly in its food and language. Brazilian Portuguese has hundreds of words of Indigenous American origin, mainly from the Old Tupi language.Black Africans, who were brought as slaves to Brazil, also participated actively in the formation of Brazilian culture. Although the Portuguese colonists forced their slaves to convert to Catholicism and speak Portuguese, their cultural influences were absorbed by the inhabitants of Brazil of all races and origins. Some regions of Brazil, especially Bahia, have particularly notable African inheritances in music, cuisine, dance and language.
Immigrants from Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary and the Middle East played an important role in the areas they settled. They organized communities that became important cities such as Joinville, Caxias do Sul, Blumenau, Curitiba and brought important contributions to the culture of Brazil.
Modernism in Brazil started with the Modern Art Week held in São Paulo in 1922 and was characterized by experimentation and interest in Brazilian society and culture, as well as rebellion against influence from Europe and the United States and the orthodoxy of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald de Andrade were among the catalysts of the antropofagia movement in Brazil, with works such as Manifesto Pau-Brasil, Abaporu, and Manifesto Antropófago. In the 1930s, sociologists such as Gilberto Freyre and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda published ideas about Brazilian culture, society, and identity, presenting concepts such as "racial democracy" and the "cordial man".
During the military dictatorship and especially following the Institutional Act Number Five in 1968, the government censored material—including art, literature, music, theatre, film, etc.—that it deemed subversive or against "morality and good manners." Tropicália or Tropicalismo was a movement against this repression and authoritarianism, from both the government and the Catholic Church. Part of the counterculture of the 1960s, Tropicalismo was led by figures such as Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso and manifested itself primarily in music.
Language
The official language of Brazil is Portuguese. It is spoken by about 99% of the population, making it one of the strongest elements of national identity. There are only some Amerindian groups and small pockets of immigrants who do not speak Portuguese.Similarly to American English and Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese is more phonetically conservative or archaic than the language of the colonizing metropolis, maintaining several features that European Portuguese had before the 19th century.
Also similarly to American English, the Brazilian regional variation, as well as the European one, include a small number of words of Indigenous American and African origin, mainly restricted to place names and fauna and flora.
Minority languages are spoken throughout the nation. One hundred and eighty Amerindian languages are spoken in remote areas and several other languages are spoken by immigrants and their descendants. There are significant communities of German and Italian speakers in the south of the country, both of which are influenced by the Portuguese language. Not to mention the Slavic communities, Ukrainians and Poles which are also part of these minority languages.
The Brazilian Sign Language, known by the acronym LIBRAS, is officially recognized by law, albeit using it alone would convey a very limited degree of accessibility, throughout the country.
Religion
About 2/3 of the population are Roman Catholics. Catholicism was introduced and spread largely by the Portuguese Jesuits, who arrived in 1549 during the colonization with the mission of converting the Indigenous people. The Society of Jesus played a large role in the formation of Brazilian religious identity until their expulsion from the country by the Marquis of Pombal in the 18th century.In recent decades Brazilian society has witnessed a rise in Protestantism. Between 1940 and 2010, the percentage of Roman Catholics fell from 95% to 64.6%, while the various Protestant denominations rose from 2.6% to 22.2%.
The African-Brazilian religion of Candomblé, with its orixá deities derived from Yoruba traditions, is particularly important in Salvador and Bahia in general.
Carnival
The Brazilian Carnaval is an annual festival held forty-six days before Easter. Carnival celebrations are believed to have roots in the pagan festival of Saturnalia, which, adapted to Christianity, became a farewell to bad things in a season of religious discipline to practice repentance and prepare for Christ's death and resurrection.Carnival is the most famous holiday in Brazil and has become an event of huge proportions. For almost a week festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities.
The typical genres of music of Brazilian carnival are: samba-enredo and marchinha, frevo, maracatu and Axé music
Cuisine (gastronomy)
Brazilian cuisine varies greatly by region. This diversity reflects the country's history and mix of indigenous and immigrant cultures. This has created a national cooking style, marked by the preservation of regional differences. Since the imperial period, the feijoada, a Portuguese stew with origins in Ancient Rome, has been the country's national dish. Luís da Câmara Cascudo wrote that, having been revised and adapted in each region of the country, it is no longer just a dish, but has become a complete food.Brazil has a variety of candies including brigadeiros, made with condensed milk, butter, and cocoa powder, and it can have sprinkles of chocolate around, and beijinhos. Other snack foods include coxinhas, churrasco, sfiha, empanadas, and araucaria nuts. Pão de queijo are typical in the state of Minas Gerais. Typical northern foods include pato no tucupi, tacacá, caruru, vatapá, and maniçoba. The Northeast is known for moqueca, acarajé, caruru, and Quibebe. In the Southeast, it is common to eat Bife a cavalo, Bife à parmegiana, Virado, Minas cheese, pizza, tutu, macaroni, lasagna, and codfish pastries. Churrasco is the typical meal of Rio Grande do Sul, and in the South region, it is common to eat polenta, carreteiro rice, chimarrão, cuca, salami, sagu, wine and grape juice. Cachaça is Brazil's native liquor, distilled from sugar cane, and it is the main ingredient in the national drink, the caipirinha. Brazil is the world leader in production of green coffee. In 2018, 28% of the coffee consumed globally came from Brazil. Because of Brazil's fertile soil, the country has been a major producer of coffee since the times of Brazilian slavery, which created a strong national coffee culture. This was satirized in the novelty song "The Coffee Song", sung by Frank Sinatra and with lyrics by Bob Hilliard, interpreted as an analysis of the coffee industry, and of the Brazilian economy and culture.
Literature
Literature in Brazil dates back to the 16th century, to the writings of the first Portuguese explorers in Brazil, such as Pero Vaz de Caminha, filled with descriptions of fauna, flora and Indigenous peoples that amazed Europeans that arrived in Brazil. When Brazil became a colony of Portugal, there was the "Jesuit Literature", whose main name was the father António Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit who became one of the most celebrated Baroque writers of the Portuguese language. A few more explicitly literary examples survive from this period: José Basílio da Gama's epic poem celebrating the conquest of the Missions by the Portuguese, and the work of Gregório de Matos Guerra, who produced a sizable amount of satirical, religious, and secular poetry. Neoclassicism was widespread in Brazil during the mid-18th century, following the Italian style.Brazil produced significant works in Romanticism – novelists like Joaquim Manuel de Macedo and José de Alencar wrote novels about love and pain. Alencar, in his long career, also treated Indigenous people as heroes in the Indigenist novels O Guarany, Iracema, Ubirajara. The French Mal du siècle was also introduced in Brazil by the likes of Alvares de Azevedo, whose Lira dos Vinte Anos and Noite na Taverna are national symbols of the Ultra-romanticism. Gonçalves Dias, considered one of the national poets, sang the Brazilian people and the Brazilian land on the famous Song of the Exile, known to every Brazilian schoolchild. Also dates from this period, although his work has hatched in Realism, Machado de Assis, whose works include Helena, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, O alienista, Dom Casmurro, and who is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. Assis is also highly respected around the world.File: "Clarice Lispector".png|thumb|180px|left|Clarice Lispector, who wrote with introspection and psychological probing, is well known for her crônicas.
Monteiro Lobato, of the Pré-Modernism, wrote mainly for children, often bringing Greek mythology and didacticism with Brazilian folklore, as we see in his short stories about Saci Pererê. Some authors of this time, like Lima Barreto and Simões Lopes Neto and Olavo Bilac, already show a distinctly modern character; Augusto dos Anjos, whose works combine Symbolistic, Parnasian and even pre-modernist elements has a "paralytic language". Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade, from Modernism, combined nationalist tendencies with an interest in European modernism and created the Modern Art Week of 1922. João Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Drummond de Andrade are placed among the greatest Brazilian poets; the first, post-modernist, concerned with the aesthetics and created a concise and elliptical and lean poetic, against sentimentality; Drummond, in turn, was a supporter of "anti-poetic" where the language was born with the poem.
File: Lygia Fagundes Telles, sem data.tif|thumb|211x211px|Lygia Fagundes Telles is the first Brazilian woman to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature
In Post-Modernism, João Guimarães Rosa wrote the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas, about the Brazilian outback, with a highly original style and almost a grammar of his own, while Clarice Lispector wrote with an introspective and psychological probing of her characters. Vinicius de Moraes, nicknamed "O Poetinha", was notable as a poet, essayist, and lyricist often collaborating with Tom Jobim. Nowadays, Nelson Rodrigues, Rubem Fonseca and Sérgio Sant'Anna, next to Nélida Piñon and Lygia Fagundes Telles, both members of Academia Brasileira de Letras, are important authors who write about contemporary issues sometimes with erotic or political tones. Ferreira Gullar and Manoel de Barros are two highly admired poets and the former has also been nominated for the Nobel Prize, while Fagundes Telles is the first Brazilian woman to be nominated for the Nobel.