"Exemplary study, based on author's dissertation in anthropology (Univ. Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1994), focuses on social aspects of the urban samba, offering an account of the genre's early popularity. The dissemination of samba as a national product of Brazil in the 1930s-40s not only reflected the interests of a specific social and ethnic group, but was also the result of a set of complex interactions among the lower classes, intellectuals, politicians, art music composers, and foreign visitors"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.