Popular music under a new theoretical perspective.
Carlos Almada's book formalizes a novel approach to harmony in Brazilian Popular Music (MPB).
Popular music under a new theoretical perspective.
Carlos Almada's book formalizes a novel approach to harmony in Brazilian Popular Music (MPB).
Composer, arranger, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and researcher, Carlos Almada articulates theory and practice in the book *Harmonic Functionality in Popular Music* , presenting the necessary foundations for both new academic research in the field and the teaching of Brazilian popular music (MPB). The work is the result of a series of research projects, which had already given rise to other books by the author, and is based on detailed analyses and extensive classroom experience. Published in 2025 by Editora Unicamp, the book offers a novel methodology that proposes multiple ways of understanding the harmonic functions of popular music.
Almada develops in this work an original and consistent approach, seeking to fill the gap in adequate teaching materials on musical harmony at a time of expansion of popular music courses in Brazil – which often lack a well-founded bibliographic base. This scenario is explained by a simple fact, but one that demands attention and care: music, like most objects of study in the humanities, is a living phenomenon, subject to constant transformations. Therefore, for solid and constantly renewed theoretical frameworks to exist, research in the field needs to be updated regularly, which, in most cases, does not happen.
In an interview with the Unicamp Journal, the author shares interesting facts about his work, as well as discussing the research process and the writing of the book. Check it out below.
Unicamp Journal – For what audience was the work conceived?
Carlos Almada – This book is primarily intended for undergraduate music students, particularly those involved (professionally or otherwise) with popular music. Beyond this target audience, I believe the work will also be of interest to a wide range of readers, including teachers, researchers, and instrumentalists, especially those seeking possible explanations for the numerous particularities they encounter in their experiences, both practical and theoretical, with harmonic functionality in popular genres.
Unicamp Journal – The cover story states that the work presents an original and unprecedented perspective on the field of harmony studies. Please explain this further.
Carlos Almada – The creation of this book is the result of many years of reflection, reading, and analytical observation, with the vast universe of harmony in popular music as its field of study. Over decades as a professor of Functional Harmony, as well as in my own trajectory as a composer, I have built a robust database. More recently, I have dedicated myself to formatting and organizing this set of information – concepts, principles, methodologies, etc. – in a logical and coherent way, generating this proposal on the idea of harmonic functionality in popular music. A topic that, to my knowledge, had never been addressed in rigorously theoretical terms.
Unicamp Journal – How the book contributes to education in popular music in Brazil?
Carlos Almada – The book examines a topic of great interest – and relatively well-explored – in the literature on popular music: harmonic functionality. However, unlike other approaches to the subject – many of them excellent, incidentally – it is not a practical manual on the discipline, but, as I mentioned, a theoretical, systematic, and in-depth proposal. It is important to add that this proposal was carefully constructed from observations of musical practice. The book contributes to popular music education in Brazil by working with a generalization of the idea of function to other logics within the field, as well as expanding upon them. In this way, the title addresses the topic not only within the scope of tonality, but also of diatonic modes and symmetrical scales, providing an entirely new perspective.
Unicamp Journal – How can the analytical methods and theoretical approaches presented in the book be applied to other musical repertoires?
Carlos Almada – I interpret the question as referring to repertoires that do not present such high levels of complexity and harmonic diversity as those generally observed in so-called MPB (Brazilian Popular Music), as opposed to those outside the universe of popular music, such as concert music. In this case, the methods and theoretical approaches proposed in the book apply to these repertoires precisely because they are generally complex, centrifugal, dissonant, and inherently ambiguous. The harmony of MPB lends itself perfectly as an ideal object of study for this proposal, since it was from its observation that the formulations and analytical methods of the book were extracted, which, within these specifications, can be generalized to encompass countless other popular repertoires – from the most diverse aesthetics, eras, and origins.
Unicamp Journal – Throughout your research, what was the biggest challenge in writing the book?
Carlos Almada That's a rather complicated question to answer. The challenges were undoubtedly many, since writing a book that maintains coherence, logic, and consistency in the balance between structure and content – and that is, at the same time, sufficiently informative – requires a great deal of effort and planning. Not to mention that it often involves course corrections and reworking extensive passages. Therefore, I can't single out the "biggest challenge" here, but it certainly lies within the broad set of issues I've mentioned.
TitleHarmonic Functionality in Popular Music
AuthorCarlos Almada
ISBNs: 9788526817883
Edition: 1th
Vintage: 2025
Pages: 400
Dimensions: 16 cm x 23 cm
