A good book is one that makes you think, rather than one that provides you with pat answers. Micol Seigel undertakes a suggestive exercise in looking at transnational relations involving race and nation in Brazil and the United States during the early twentieth century. To achieve this, she seeks out these countries' images from coffee adverts, maxixe journeys and the exchange of musical groups that crossed the Atlantic.Footnote ³ These exchanges enabled the meeting of Pixinguinha, Josephine Baker and North American jazz musicians at the height of black exoticism in Paris during the inter-war period. Musicians, civil rights campaigners and militants from the burgeoning black press cross paths in Seigel's book, contributing to an interesting panorama. The author argues that ahead of ‘globalisation’ these meetings decisively influenced the course taken by history, especially that of Afro-descendants. She takes as her starting point the sharply contrasting stereotypes of a ‘racial democracy’ in a mixed-race and multicultural country on the one hand versus violent segregation on the other, stereotypes that became crystallised in academic analyses and common perceptions and produced diametrically opposite models of race politics in the north and the south of the American continent. The fragile foundations for reductionism of this sort are not only exposed but also convincingly demolished throughout the work.

Attempts to neutralise the effects of nationalism, particularly in cultural history, are welcome. When undertaken in a manner as competent as it is seductive, as they are in Seigel's book, they must be gladly received for their contribution to the expansion of historiographic horizons and political perspectives. Nevertheless, as Seigel herself points out, the book does not aim to exhaust the subject, nor could it, given the dimensions of the task. The reader is encouraged to criticise its declarations and suggest perspectives that may help fill gaps. It is inevitable to note particular absences – for instance, that of Francisco Guimarães, a black Brazilian columnist and journalist better known by his pseudonym Vagalume, under which he wrote political and carnavalesque chronicles for Rio de Janeiro newspapers at the start of the twentieth century. He wrote the classic Na roda do samba (1933); its protagonists are Pixinguinha and several musicians with whom the writer was close friends. The book was dedicated to four of the city's black personalities, each highly redolent. One of them, a character strongly linked to the city's African tradition, was the alufá Assumano Mina, of whom Vagalume was a follower.Footnote ⁴ Vagalume started out as a journalist in the 1880s, encouraged by the most combative abolitionist in the country, Luis Gama. He remained close to associative movements that defended his ‘brothers of colour’ and was among one of Robert Abbott's militant interlocutors when Abbott visited Brazil in 1923 during an anti-segregation campaign discussed by Seigel. Although he admired the founder of the Chicago Defender, Vagalume hated jazz bands and foxtrots, turning instead to the samba in his quest for a mark of brasilidade; he also loathed the mechanics of mass media, such as the phonograph ‘plague’.

It is thus regrettable that Seigel ignores Vagalume, for his trajectory could shine light upon matters only touched upon in the book. Firstly, much of the information Vagalume provides directly and indirectly demonstrates the existence of marked heterogeneity among black cariocas, something also expressed through different musical strains.Footnote ⁵ Seigel's analysis neglects the importance of these differences, however. The frequent disputes between musicians masked religious frontiers, professional or neighbourhood rivalries and much else. Here as well as there, if reduced to colour, black men and women may seem devoid of historicity: to use the prism of racial identity risks obscuring more than is revealed. It is not by chance that the inscription at the beginning of the book dedicates it to carioca Sinhô and baiano Hilário Jovino: notwithstanding their differences, they appear side by side in homage to the black militant Vagalume.Footnote ⁶

Further examination of Vagalume would also help elucidate another debate marginalised in Seigel's excellent work. A declared enemy of the cultural industry, which he condemned for transforming ‘authentic’ traditions into cheap merchandise, Vagalume pointed to a decisive phenomenon occurring in transnational cultural circuits. One reason for his displeasure was that, once recorded and sold, samba became disconnected not only from racial but also from class identities. Its appropriation by strangers meant that this national symbol was taken away from its origins and legitimate owners. This may sound naive nowadays, but as another sambista declared at the time, ‘talking pictures’ could be ‘the main culprit for the transformation’. This is a classic theme and a complex discussion that is far from resolved, above all in the context analysed by Seigel. Incidentally, it is good to remember that massification processes, whose transnational dimension was decisive, began much earlier: straight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, the ‘reunions’ took place throughout the nineteenth century. On this side of the Atlantic, chansonniers and black singers created lundus and maxixes but also performed various forms of music in cabarets for the entertainment of white masters alongside cocottes and blonde singers. Some of them achieved great popularity, such as Eduardo das Neves, also mentioned in the significant dedication in which Vagalume pays homage to samba's multiple roots.

Finally, one is left a touch disquieted by the perhaps excessive enthusiasm that Seigel displays for the transnational perspective. Are we effectively able to abandon the concept of nation? After all, we are looking at politics, which structures domination beyond borders. We often need the concept to understand forms of resistance. On defining samba, Vagalume relates the terms ‘black’ and ‘Brazilian’ to express belonging to a community that, in his view, gave the music meaning and perspective. In that context samba gave weight to the claims for rights made by descendants of slaves. Therefore, although a powerful tool, the ‘transnational’ category is not a ‘historical method’ as Seigel advocates. Although its limits are now more apparent, the national path imposes itself precisely because it made a lot of sense to those subjects, for better or worse.

Be that as it may, Uneven Encounters offers an intelligent and sensitive interpretation, overcoming the classic frontier created by the lack of familiarity with manifestations of the ‘other’. On the dawn of bossa nova, a stubborn sambista insisted on denying this possibility: ‘I'll only have a bebop in my samba’, he sang, ‘when Uncle Sam takes hold of a tambourine’, and when at long last ‘[he] understands that samba is not rumba’.Footnote ⁷ Micol Seigel takes hold of the tambourine and easily transits between North and South in search of connections concealed by nationalist blinkers.