Four music professors from the Institute of Arts (IA) are traveling to Italy with a groundbreaking project that blends performance, listening, and critical reflection on Brazilian popular music, treated as a field of creation, history, and thought. The initiative brings together singer Regina Machado, pianist Thaís Nicodemo, drummer Leandro Barsalini, and bassist José Alexandre Carvalho in a program that includes classes, a concert, and lectures in Frosinone and Rome on May 25th and 29th.
The starting point was a simple, almost one-off invitation extended to Machado by the Italian singer and teacher Susanna Stivali: to teach singing at the Conservatorio di Musica Licinio Refice di Frosinone, about an hour from Rome. But the idea expanded. “I received the invitation and thought: I’ll go, of course, but we can do something bigger. The proposal ended up becoming an entire week dedicated to Brazilian popular music, outside the already established formats of congresses and academic events,” he says.
At the Frosinone Conservatory, where music education is organized with university status and a strong emphasis on performance, the encounter will take place primarily in the realm of sound. In the morning, each teacher will work with the students on their instrument; in the afternoon, voices and instruments will come together around a repertoire built collaboratively, in the shared experience of making music. On the 27th, this journey opens to the public in the form of a concert, also incorporating the Italian students.
The choice of repertoire reflects a central concern of the project: to present the diversity of Brazilian popular music beyond the most internationally disseminated excerpts. Works by Tom Jobim, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, and Cartola are planned, but not as an end in themselves. “Abroad, the main reference is still bossa nova, because it had a very strong internationalization,” observes Machado. “But we want to broaden that horizon, to show other genres, such as samba and baião. The idea is to create a kind of sampling of this music that consolidated itself throughout the 20th century and that is now a subject of study.”
This idea of “matter” as something that is investigated, transmitted, and transformed runs throughout the entire project. In Rome, where the professors participate in activities at La Sapienza University of Rome, music shifts to the word. There, the group arrives as guests of Professor and researcher Luca Bacchini, affiliated with a department dedicated to intercultural and Brazilian studies. “The professor who invited us is a Brazilianist with several works on Brazilian song. It is a consolidated field of study,” points out Machado.
Each professor from Unicamp will present a lecture, expanding on the practical experiences they have gained. Machado will focus on the voice, its forms, its sounds, what has been historically constructed and still resonates. "The voice in Brazilian song has been defined throughout the 20th century, and this constitutes a language, an aesthetic, a field of research," he explains.
Barsalini points to the drum kit as a central element for considering a broader tension. "I want to discuss the relationship between tradition and modernity based on the presence of the drum kit, observing how it appears in different historical moments and what this reveals about transformations in language."
If the drums create tension, the piano, in Thaís Nicodemo's interpretation, cuts through it. "I think of the piano as a cultural mediator," she defines. Historically associated with prestigious spaces and European tradition, the instrument, in Brazil, descends to the streets, climbs the hills, and infiltrates samba. "It creates a bridge between distinct universes," she affirms. "It's not separate from popular music; on the contrary, it actively participates in its construction, often as an element of modernization."
At the heart of it all, supporting and connecting these layers, is Carvalho's work, which will focus on accompaniment, especially in samba and choro. "I want to show how the instruments build this foundation so that the music can happen," he explains.
The four approaches, distinct in their focus, converge on one essential point: the refusal to separate practice and thought. "We work with the idea that performance and critical reflection go hand in hand," emphasizes Barsalini. "This is part of the very history of Brazilian popular music."
This convergence also results from a shared background, built over decades at Unicamp. "We are the product of work that began 15, 20 years ago, with professors who created research groups and brought a more critical and multidisciplinary reading of music," adds the drummer.
Memory and affirmation
In the context of Unicamp's 60th anniversary, celebrated in 2026, the trip also takes on a symbolic character, as a gesture of remembrance and affirmation. By taking this perspective abroad, the group reaffirms the University's own history, which, in 1989, created the first undergraduate course in popular music at a Brazilian public university. "It's not trivial," Machado points out. "It's the recognition that this music has enormous cultural importance, not only for Brazil, but for the world."
Over time, the course has transformed, balancing different demands and perspectives. While it originally prioritized the critical training of already active musicians, it has progressively incorporated the dimension of performance and expanded its scope to postgraduate studies. "Performance is now well-established," observes Barsalini. "Now we seek to strengthen critical training again."
Brazilian popular music is often built outside of formal teaching models, through collective practices, orality, and circulation between spaces. "It involves the circle, coexistence, exchange," says Nicodemo. "And this doesn't always fit into the traditional structures of the university." There are gaps to be addressed, such as the timid presence of instruments linked to popular traditions, like the pandeiro and cavaquinho, in the academic environment. "These are paths we still need to open," acknowledges Barsalini.
If the trip points to these challenges, it also reveals possibilities. The interest in Brazilian music abroad, the professors agree, is intense and consistent. "Sometimes greater than here," observes Machado. The department that is hosting them in Rome is an example of this field of research that is consolidating outside the country, driven by researchers and artists who see in Brazilian song a fertile territory for analysis.
The expectation is that the project will not end there. There are already arrangements for bringing Italian professors to Unicamp and for building exchange programs that include students. "The idea is to create a flow. To take and bring, to establish links," adds Carvalho.
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