Clara Nunes (1942–1983) was one of the most renowned and successful female samba singers in Brazilian history. This article offers new interpretations of the term transposition in the analysis of how Nunes racially transformed her image and sound to fit the discourse of Brazilian mestiçagem, or race mixture, during the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Through the folklorization of Afro-Brazilian religions and traditions placed onto and voiced from her body, transposition offers a useful analytic to further understand her performance of mestiçagem as racial and gendered excess, lending itself to a queer reading. The queer potential of transposition is compounded by the legacy of black drag queens performing impersonations of Nunes following her early death to enact a sense of belonging to the Brazilian nation.
