THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES

Literature. The country has a rich literary tradition and several Brazilian writers have achieved international renown, including Jorge Amado, Brazil's best known contemporary author. His books have been translated into fifty languages and his writings vividly evoke the sensual and popular delights of Brazil, especially his native Bahia, the setting of most of his work.

Brazil also has a tradition of folk literature that is little known abroad. The literature de cordel (literally, literature on a string)—derived from the custom of displaying booklets of verse by hanging them from a thin string or cordel— is a form of rhymed verse still popular in the Northeast interior. In the region with the country's highest illiteracy rate, these verses disseminate news and carry on cultural traditions. The cordel singer, who travels from town to town performing his verses to the accompaniment of a guitar or accordion, writes the verses, composes the melody, prints the lyrics in a booklet—which he also sells—and may even illustrate the work with his own woodcuts or sketches.

Performance Arts. Music is not just entertainment in Brazil, it has been called the "soundtrack" of national life. Brazil gave the world samba and bossa nova, but other musical traditions—batuque, forró, maxixe—are less well known outside the country. Like so much of Brazilian culture, the country's music borrows from its three cultural elements, although in the musical realm it is the African tradition that has the largest influence. While Brazil's musical energies are mostly focused on popular, not classical, music, the country was also home to one of the world's most esteemed neoclassical composers, Heitor Villa-Lobos, who made imaginative use of folk themes in his best known composition, Bachianas Brasileiras.