Performing the Migrant, Performing Home Televised Nostalgia in Northeast Brazil SHARP, Dan

RESUMEN: This article examines how music and mass media contribute to the production of the northeast region of Brazil as a nostalgic space in the national imaginary that is distanced from modern national identities. It focuses on the televised images and sounds of two groups from the semi-arid interior city of Arcoverde, Pernambuco: samba de Coco Raízes Arcoverde, marked as traditional, and Cordel do fogo Encantado, marketed as a rooted cosmopolitan sound. It traces how both groups face an idiosincratic play of social inclusion and social exclusion, as being calebrated as the symbolic essence of a region does not necessarily translate into the material benefits of full cultural citizenship. Cordel and Coco Raízes have made progress in their efforts to proliferate more nuanced contemporary narrative of the music of the northeast. Yet, as their audience broadens, both continue to find themselves ensnared in the very discourses of folkloric tradition that thay seek to transform. Keywords: northeast Brazil, popular music, traditional music, samba, coco, sertao, Pernambuco, nostalgia, television, media.