The Portela Samba School: pedagogy and power from the block

11/30/22 • 20 min

In this episode we host the cultural director of the Portela Samba School Rogério Rodrigues Santos to talk about Portela’s production and history in the periphery of Rio de Janeiro. We discuss the centennial history of the School and its origins in the Oswaldo Cruz neighborhood, where Rogério accompanied the development of the school since the 1970s. He also created the project www.portelaweb.org as a digital archive of Portela that presents their main figures and annual samba stories. We reflect on the politics of culture and the current cultural scene in Brazil to consider the theme of our second season, Art and Culture on the Peripheries

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A Escola de Samba Portela: pedagogia e potência no seu território-berço

Nesse episódio recebemos o diretor cultural da Escola de Samba Portela, Rogério Rodrigues Santos, para falar sobre a produção cultural da Portela e sua história na periferia do Rio de Janeiro. Conversamos sobre a história centenária da escola e suas origens no bairro de Oswaldo Cruz, onde o entrevistado acompanhou o desenvolvimento da escola desde a década de 1970. Rogério também criou o projeto www.portelaweb.org como um acervo digital da Portela que apresenta suas personagens e enredos principais. Refletimos sobre as políticas de cultura e o cenário cultural atual no Brasil para pensar o tema da segunda temporada, Arte e Cultura nas Periferias.

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Popular art as a political tool

This episode features the Sociologist Ruy Braga and the performance artist Jonatas Campelo as they discuss their points of view on artistic production in the Brazilian peripheries of São Paulo and Salvador da Bahia, respectively. This conversation moderated by Dr. Jamie Lee Andreson occurred in person at the Pennsylvania State University in January 2023, when Dr. Ruy Braga was in residence as a visiting professor. The topics discussed include the making of peripheral identities, the urban peripheries as the centers of Brazilian cultural production, and the long-standing challenges for popular artists to secure the rights and resources they need to produce given a strict state bureaucracy.