1 The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa once said that “All love letters are ridiculous/ They would not be love letters if they were not ridiculous/… But then only creatures who never wrote love letters are really ridiculous.” Read by those who are not their senders or their recipients all love letters sound of course silly. But for those who write or receive them they are full of sentiments, promises and expectations. Thus, the great problem with love letters is what to do with them when love ends. Keep them ? Destroy them ? Ask them back ? Return them ?

2 In the English language, people “fall in love” when they are enamored and “fall out of love” when they are no longer enamored. Love in this type of idiomatic expression is a continent into which we fall when passion starts and of which we are expelled when passion ends. Are we before a second Fall of humankind ? People also “lose their hearts to” somebody when they “fall in love.” Does this mean that the person to whom one loses our heart to must keep it, take care of it and eventually return it ?

3 Since affectionate relationships are made out of expectations, we are before a tension between what one gives to and what one expects or receives from the object of our passion. Present is also what one has done to fulfill the expectation of the other and the gratitude or ingratitude that this has generated. Thus, when the passion that has given rise to love ends, there are frustrations. These frustrations have to do with incomprehension. There was a whole set of promises and expectations but they were not fulfilled. This inevitably gives origin to complaints. Complaints between genders are important instances to analyze social relations. They speak about social roles, promises that were not kept and expectations that were not corresponded. They address the masculine and the feminine universe. They also speak about love exchanges and what they entail. Complaints are part of the field of sentiments.

4 Love presupposes the capacity to give ourselves to another person and it presupposes that this person returns this gesture. Although love can entail the giving of presents, its origin has to do with a feeling which is normally defined as sublime. Thus, love in itself would be the superior form of gift.

5 Popular music is a key instance for looking at social relations and the way they are represented. In many societies the majority of composers are men and they tend to use music as one of the few public spheres in which they allow themselves to speak more freely about their private feelings. They will sing about their weakness, their fear of losses, their sentiments towards women. But popular music does not speak only about love. It also sings money, work, social inequalities and gender relations.

6 This paper looks at love, money and reciprocity in Brazilian popular music of the first half of last century. During that period great social and economic changes took place in Brazil. Slavery, which had been the basis of the country’s economy for three centuries, had been recently abolished (1888), Brazil became a republic (1889) and migration from the countryside to the cities grew. During the 1930s and 1940s urbanization and industrialization gained momentum and salaried labor started to spread in cities. Social life became increasingly monetized and a redefinition of gender roles took place, with the transformation of a more extended family to a more nuclear one.

7 All these changes are reflected in popular music that speaks about its consequences. That was a period of much creativity in Brazilian popular music. The musical genre called samba started to grow in Brazil in the twentieth of last century and became stronger in the 1930s and 1940s, transforming itself into the hegemonic musical genre in the 1950s. At that time samba was so pervasive that it encompassed almost every aspect of Brazilian society. Thus, the saying that in Brazil “everything ends up in samba.” Songs of that period speak about practically every aspect of social life and remind us of what Mauss called social total fact.

8 The relation between love and money is a central theme in those songs. Samba composers see love as morally superior to money. Love is generally offered by men who see themselves above material interests, while women would be constantly bringing up the matter of money. Men tend to emphasize love over money, suggesting that the latter does not bring happiness.

9 The question of reciprocity surfaces constantly in samba songs. Expectations and complaints between men and women are abundant in the compositions at this time. The songs show both the masculine and feminine points of view (although the woman’s perspective is shown through the male imagination). As love relationships involve reciprocity, a tension exists between what is expected or demanded of the opposite sex and what is obtained from it. Popular music at that time reflects this world of expectations and complaints in a register that is at times humorous and at other times resentful.

10 During the 1930s and 1940s—period of the formation of an urban-industrial society in Brazil—there is a proliferation of sambas that emphasize three basic and frequently inter-related themes : labor, women and money.

11 Contrary to a weberian work ethic, Brazil has no tradition of valuing work, mainly manual labor. Even after the abolition of slavery and introduction of wage labor in factories, work has never been very highly valued, because the social order has always been highly exclusive. Until the 1930s Brazil was an essentially rural society. When industrialization and urbanization started to become more important there was a strong reaction against working and the growing monetization of life. At that time the horror ao batente (hatred of manual work) developed into malandragem (idleness) which can be seen simultaneously as a survival strategy and a conception of the world through which some segments of the lower classes refused to accept the discipline and monotony associated with the wage-earning world.

12 The negative side of labor is reflected in Brazilian popular music. During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s of the last century, when an urban-industrial society was in the making in Brazil, samba composers used to eulogize idleness. Malandragem developed into a way of life and a way of regarding life. Instead of developing a work ethic, Brazilians were developing a malandro ethic. This was so widespread that during the 1937-45 dictatorship the State decided to intervene through its censorship department prohibiting songs which praised malandragem and at the same time giving prizes to those which praised work.

13 The same composers who praised malandragem also depicted money as something ignoble, generally demanded by women who didn’t understand that the men they were asking it for had something much more precious to offer them : their love. Of course one can see here a “sour grapes complex : ” knowing they would never make much money no matter how hard they tried, those men looked down at the vil metal (filthy lucre). On the other hand, in several of the lyrics of these songs one can notice that money is a reality from which one can not escape in a monetized society. But all of this is seen in a melancholic fashion. Nobody is happy to work. And money after all is very destructive : it ends love and friendship, and it invites falsehood and treason.

14 It is therefore natural that composers would praise love in detriment of money. Thus, in 1918, Sinhô, the “Samba King, ” wrote “Quem São Eles, ” his first Carnival success. One of the verses states :

15

Não precisa pedir
Que eu vou dar
Dinheiro não tenho
Mas vou roubar

16

No need to ask
I’ll give it to you
I don’t have any money
But I’ll steal it

17 The theme of money appears incidentally in this song, in the middle of other motives, as if it were a minor issue. The fellow has no money, but to get it he would rather steal than work, which he considers unworthy. As he presents himself as uninterested in material preoccupations, it becomes clear that it is a woman who is asking him for money.

18 In Brazilian popular songs of the first half of last century, money is increasingly associated with the figure of the woman. She can be either Emília or Amélia, (characters from homonymous sambas in the early forties) who “knew how to wash and cook” and who thought that “it was good not to have enough to eat, ” that is, women who do not complain and eventually support themalandro [1], or she can be the housewife who constantly tells her husband he needs to work to bring home money. She may also be the piranha, [2] a woman who pretends to love the man, but in reality only wants to take his money.

19 People who love expect to be loved by their others. Thus, Pra Você Gostar de Mim (Taí) (For you to love me) (There you are), song composed by Joubert de Carvalho and made famous by Carmen Miranda (a Brazilian singer who made great success in Hollywood in the 1940es and 1950s), speaks about expectations :

20

Taí, eu fiz tudo para você gostar de mim
Meu bem, não faz assim comigo não
Você tem, você tem que me dar seu coração
Meu amor não posso esquecer
Se dá alegria faz também sofrer
A minha vida é sempre assim
Só chorando as mágoas que não têm fim
Essa história de gostar de alguém
já é mania que as pessoas têm
Se me ajudasse Nosso Senhor
eu não pensaria mais no amor
There you are, I have done everything for you to like me
Darling, don’t do that to me
You have to, you have to give me your heart
My love, I cannot forget
That happiness also makes one suffer
My life is always like that
Always crying the sorrows that never end
This story of liking someone
Is a mania people have
If our Lord would help me
I would no longer think about love

21 This song speaks about two inter-related themes : the first is the expectation of reciprocity in love ; the second the fact that loving makes you suffer. The best would be if God would make us forget about it. Anxiety and suffering are present in this song.

22 In “É o que ele quer, ” a 1938 composition by Oswaldo Santiago and Paulo Barbosa, we find what is the woman’s image of the male dream :

23

Boa casa e boa roupa
E comida de mulher
É o que ele quer
É o que ele quer
Uma vida de orgia
Com o dinheiro da mulher
É o que ele quer
É o que ele quer
Isso é demais
Não pode ser
Quem não trabalha
Não deve viver
Esse rapaz chega a querer
Que eu mastigue
Pra ele comer

24

Good house and good clothes
And home cooked meals
That’s what he wants
That’s what he wants
A life of fun
With the woman’s money
That’s what he wants
That’s what he wants
This is too much
It cannot be
He who does not work
Should not live
This young man even wants
Me to chew
So he can eat

25 Men, of course, have several complaints against women. In Brazil popular music, the worst accusation that can be made toward woman is that she is calculating and that she sells her heart, for in this operation she becomes as vile as the money. This is what happens in “Você é das tais, ” a 1937 samba by Francisco Malfitano and Eratóstones Frazão :

26

Eu sei que você está fazendo
negócio com seu coração
Você é das tais com as quais
tanto faz a gente ter carinho ou não

27

I know that you are doing
business with your heart
You are one of those
It doesn’t matter if one loves or not

28 A recurring theme during this time focuses on the woman’s interest in money and the pressure she exerts on the man to obtain it. The man’s invariable answer is that he is going to get some, but this is secondary to the affection that he has to offer. This is perfectly clear in “Dinheiro não Há, ” by Benedito Lacerda and H. Alvarenda :

29

Lá vem ela chorando
O que é que ela quer ?
Pancada não é
Já sei
Mulher da orgia
Quando começa a chorar
Quer dinheiro
Dinheiro não há
Não há
Carinho eu tenho demais
Pra vender e pra dar
Pancada também não há de faltar
Dinheiro, isto não
Eu não dou à mulher
Mas prometo na terra,
O céu e as estrelas
Se ela quiser
Mas dinheiro não há

30

There she comes crying What does she want ?
Not a beating
I know
Fun-loving woman
When she begins to cry
She wants money
There is no money
There is none
I have a lot of love
To sell and give away
Beatings will also not be lacking
Money, not that
I don’t give that to women
But I promise on earth,
The sky and the stars
If she wants them
But there is no money

31 Even in its title the song affirms the scarcity of money and the abundance of love that can be manifested even through physical aggression. The woman (fun-loving, in this case) wants money, whereas the man has something much better to offer her.

32 The dilemma of love versus money remains constant during this period. Many songs emphasize that love is much more important than money and that the latter does not bring happiness. It is better to be poor and happy than rich and unhappy.

33 The composer who developed the criticism toward money more than any other was Noel Rosa. He realized early that money was a reality that was permeating live in all of the great Brazilian cities. In an interview given to the newspaper O Globo on December 31, 1932, he made it very clear : “Before, the word samba had one single meaning : woman… Now, the malandro worries in his samba almost as much about money as he does woman… after all, they are the only serious things left in the world.”