Lecture by Christopher Dunn: Tom Zé and the Cantoria Tradition of Northeast Brazil

This presentation examines the music of Brazilian composer and performer Tom Zé in relation to the long-standing tradition of cantoria—the improvised poetic and musical practice associated particularly with Brazil’s Northeast. It considers how the artist transforms elements associated with cantadores, including verbal play, improvisation, audience engagement, and social critique. Particular attention is given to the tension between tradition and experimentation in Tom Zé’s work: how inherited forms can become resources for radical musical invention, and how modernity itself can be rendered through distinctly Brazilian modes of storytelling and performance. By placing Tom Zé alongside the practices and aesthetics of cantoria, this talk proposes a more expansive understanding of Brazilian experimental music—one in which the avant-garde emerges not in opposition to popular tradition, but through its creative reworking

Christopher Dunn is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese/ Africana Studies at Tulane University and past Executive Director of the Brazilian Studies Association. He is the author of “Stray Dog in the Milky Way: The Experimental Brazilian Sound of Tom Zé”, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2026.