This book scrutinises the renegotiation of a music and dance folk genre kept by a few local families from the northeast of Brazil as an officially recognised tradition in contemporaneity. The work is the result of the author's one-year ethnographic research in Arcoverde, a small town in the backlands of the state of Pernambuco. The book's focus is Samba de coco, a type of folk music which mimics the movements and sounds of stomping mud on the ground of local shanty houses to flatten the floors. It was first recorded in the 1930s during Mario de Andrade's expedition, which aimed to forge an official cultural identity for the country. Its resurrection as a cherished tradition, Sharp's case study, occurred over half a century later in the post-dictatorship period, concurrent with the implementation of neoliberal policies in Brazil and when a new impetus to reassess the notion of ‘Brazilianess' also took place. The revival of samba de coco paralleled a global shift in the understanding of folklore, triggered by UNESCO's new categorisation of ‘intangible heritage’, although the genre is not officially designated as such.

Sharp's debate centres primarily on two musical groups from Arcoverde which emerged in the reawakening of the genre: Coco Raízes, formed by the coco families Calixto and Gomes, embodies the concepts of regional and folk; Cordel do Fogo Encantado, founded by a younger generation of musicians, merges traditionalism with heavier sounds as well as elements of 20th-century avant-garde theatre performance. Sharp uses Svetlana Boym's conceptual frames of restorative and reflective nostalgia to problematise the rise and survival of both groups within the reinvention of coco as a tradition. Whereas restorative nostalgia appeals to the construction of an idealised past to promote cultural heritage, reflective nostalgia, on the other hand, is ambivalent since it also adopts a critical stance towards such idealisation. However obvious the categorisation of Coco Raízes and Cordel do Fogo Encantado, respectively, as restorative and reflective may seem, Sharp argues that by seeking to promote themselves the two groups resort concomitantly to both registers of nostalgia. This is in fact the book's central thesis.

Sharp offers a penetrating analysis of the various discourses produced along with the renegotiation of Arcoverde's coco as a regional tradition. He canvasses the narratives implied in the spaces and events he attended while in the region. For instance, as discussed in the second chapter, the effort to evoke traditionalism is conspicuously suggested in the display of objects at the local museums of the Calixto and Lopes families. A television show featuring Arcoverde and the coco families, examined by Sharp in the fourth chapter, also conveys a restorative discourse. Such an attempt to produce a coherent account of coco as a tradition embedded in Arcoverde's history is critically addressed in Cordel's apocalyptic performances which recalled a mythical northeast of violence and misery. As Sharp points out, despite the critique, Cordel's members acknowledged the extent to which their rise and survival still depended on having the group's image attached to the notions of regional and tradition represented by the coco families and Arcoverde. In much the same way, being associated with Cordel is perceived by Coco Raízes as possibly facilitating its entry into the music market.

A suggestion made in the beginning of the book has the potential to generate some confusion. According to Sharp, ‘within the story of samba, the Northeast serves a reservoir of tradition, while Rio de Janeiro in the Southeast serves as the site where the genre later coalesced’ (p. vii). It is important to keep in mind that samba de coco and the music and dance often associated with the slums of Rio de Janeiro and carnival – also called samba – are, aside from their names, completely different genres. The passage transcribed above, though, seems to me to imply some continuity within a tradition categorised as ‘samba’. Until its reappropriation by the rising music industry at the beginning of the 20th century, the term samba did not refer to any specific type of music but rather meant an informal gathering simply to play, sing and dance.

In a captivating narrative, Sharp elaborates on the spatial layout of the São João festival in Arcoverde, revealing the conflicting stances of local authorities, inhabitants and visitors, as well as performers from various social backgrounds. The several stages, from the gazebo to the high-tech main venue, insert Arcoverde into an imaginary, linear, timeline. The hosting of different groups performing distinct genres symbolises inclusion within a developmentalist frame. Nevertheless, underlying tensions are exposed by Sharp's analysis of the event. For instance, a traditional mud shack intended to be a museum is misperceived by low-income residents as being government-subsidised housing, indicating that poverty and exclusion are in reality very far from being a thing of the past in contemporary Arcoverde.

Sharp unveils an intricate fabric behind the renegotiation of samba de coco as a local tradition. For the Calixto, Lopes and Gomes families, restoring coco as such meant the possibility of entering the music market and claiming their full citizenship in contemporary Brazilian society, leaving – as Sharp puts it – the margins of modernity. Local politicians, however, saw an opportunity to promote Arcoverde as a tourist destination (a survival expedient among the recently deindustrialised regions of the globe). For middle-class urbanites, mingling with Arcoverde's residents while attending coco sessions conjures up the fantasy of an idyllic past of cordial social relations overreaching class boundaries, far removed from the asphyxiating reality of high rises and strip malls. Sharp portrays this as visiting a favela (‘slum’) light in the sertão (‘great backlands’) light. Moreover, the encounters between the coco families and the tourists are understood by Sharp as promoting a temporary reversal of social status due to the roles assumed by the former and the latter within that context – as respectively cultural bearers and fans seeking to ‘drink from the source’.

By disentangling complex narratives within the renegotiation of Arcoverde's coco, Sharp situates contemporary Brazil between the nostalgia of an imagined past and the apocalypse of our post-dictatorship social reality.