Background
Mario Raul De Morais Andrade was born on October 9, 1893 in Sao Paulo and lived there virtually all of his life.
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critic musicologist novelist Photographer poet
Mario Raul De Morais Andrade was born on October 9, 1893 in Sao Paulo and lived there virtually all of his life.
Mario graduated from the Ginasio Nossa Senhora do Carmo, studied music and piano at the Music and Drama Conservatory of Sao Paulo.
Although Mario did receive a degree in piano, he gave no concerts and began studying singing and music theory with an eye toward becoming a professor of music. At the same time, he began writing more seriously. In 1917 he published his first book of poems, Há uma Gota de Sangue em Cada Poema (There is a drop of blood in each poem), under the pseudonym Mario Sobral.
Mario's first book does not seem to have had an enormous impact, and Andrade broadened the scope of his writing. He left São Paulo for the countryside, and began an activity that would continue for the rest of his life: the meticulous documentation of the history, people, culture, and particularly music of the Brazilian interior, both in the state of São Paulo and in the wilder areas to the northeast. He published essays in São Paulo magazines, accompanied occasionally by his own photographs, but primarily he accumulated massive amounts of information about Brazilian life and folklore. Between these trips, Andrade taught piano at the Conservatory, and became one of its professors in 1921.
Andrade helped organize what proved to be a key event in the future artistic life of Brazil, the Semana de Arte Moderna (“Week of Modern Art”), held in Sao Paulo in February 1922. His own contribution to the event, a reading of poems drawn from his Paulicéia Desvairada (1922; Hallucinated City), was greeted by catcalls, but it has since been recognized as the single most significant influence on modern Brazilian poetry.
Andrade’s diverse interests and wide knowledge ranged among all the arts and found expression in several. As director of the Department of Culture of São Paulo from 1935 until his death, he organized research into Brazilian folklore and folk music. His own novels reflect his concern for folk themes; Macunaíma (1928) is written in his highly idiomatic style in an attempt to recreate actual Brazilian speech. Andrade died at his home in Sao Paulo of a heart attack on February 25, 1945, at the age of 52. Andrade’s complete poems were collected and published posthumously (Poesías Completas, 1955).
Mario was a peominent person has had an enormous influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist - he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology - his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.
Andrade was the central figure in the avant-garde movement of Sao Paulo for twenty years.
Mario was a member of the avant-garde "Group of Five."
