Cross-cultural "countries": Covers, conjuncture, and the whiff of Nashville in musica sertaneja (Brazilian commercial country music)

This article uses concepts from anthropological linguistics to examine a cover of "Achy Breaky Heart" within the genre of Brazilian commercial country music (musica sertaneja). I argue that cross-cultural cover songs create spaces in which culturally located notions of time and place are laminated together in performance. I detail how the anthropological concept of structures of conjuncture elucidates this process. Furthermore, using ethnographic data, I argue against frequent charges that covering English-language songs in this Brazilian context represents cultural imperialism. Instead, musica sertaneja performers and fans use American country songs to make quite Brazilian arguments about gender, intimacy, the family, the past, and the importance of the countryside. These "country" arguments in turn provide a means by which to critique Brazilian urbanization and neoliberal economic reform.