My Time in Brazil

Phillip Claassen

Education Abroad

1.) For my STEP signature project I traveled to Salvador and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil as part of an education abroad program. While we were there we performed and attended performances as a way to experience Brazilian culture as well as comparing Brazilian culture to our American culture. To accomplish this, we visited schools of all ages and saw professional performances. We took a class on campus for two weeks, and then we spent about two weeks in Brazil.

(art piece in the historical center of Salvador)

2.) This project has given me a whole new perspective on issues that we deal with in the United States. In Brazil, they have a lot of the same problems that we as Americans do. Before this trip, I did not really think that there would be very much in common between these two countries because they are so far apart and dissimilar in a lot of ways. But what I learned through this trip is that even though cultures may be different, the same struggles that people go through appear in very similar ways. Some areas that really affected my view of the world are poverty, corruption, and music.

3.) One of the more striking things about Brazil for me is that there are a lot of things that we experience in the US that are more extreme in Brazil. For example, poverty is a big issue in the United States, but in Brazil, it is even more widespread and very visible in comparison. Something that blew my mind was how close together the very rich and the very poor are in Brazil. In the United States, it is fairly common to be driving on a highway and on one side, there is the shiny new part of the city and on the other side, there is an area that is run down and old. In Brazil, it is common for there to be a new apartment complex and a favela right next door to each other. Below I have inserted a picture that shows exactly that. You can see that there is an apartment complex that has swimming pools on the balconies right next to an extremely impoverished neighborhood. Now, we did not see this specific scenario, but there are many places just like this in Salvador and Rio. There will be very wealthy neighborhoods and then there will be pockets of very poor neighborhoods within the rich neighborhood. It is a very bizarre thing to see at first because you don’t really expect to see such a stark contrast within a city.

Government corruption is another example of something that happens in the United States but is exaggerated in Brazil. Depending on who you talk to, some people may say that government corruption is widespread in the US, but it is nothing compared to Brazilian corruption. Ever since Brazil gained independence, there has been almost a constant string of corrupt officials that are leading the country. It was really interesting to talk to locals about these issues and what they think about the current administration. I had some great conversations about the government and the police presence in Brazil with someone who was with us to help translate for us and his thoughts on what should be done. But if you took that conversation and substituted all of the Brazilian officials with their US counterparts, I think that you could have a very similar conversation with someone in the United States.

Music is not really an issue like the previous two topics, but there is a surprising amount of similarities in Brazilian and American music. Before taking this trip, I thought that Brazilian music would just be in a class of its own, and not comparable to music that we experience in America, which in some ways it is, but at the same time there are a lot of similar characteristics. The class that I took before going to Brazil really focused on the music of Brazil so I had lots of opportunities  to examine and study Brazilian styles of music. Many people would consider jazz a very American music style because it was was invented in America and I would agree. When you look at the base of jazz, it is African rhythm with the western ideas of form and structure. Choro is a Brazilian genre of music which was extremely influential on later genres that have become extremely popular such as samba and bossa nova. Now when you break down choro into its roots, you find that it is the same as jazz: African rhythm with western form and structure. That being said, jazz and choro sound nothing alike because of how these ideas are implemented, and how they have changed over time, so I am not saying that they are the same, but that they originated from very similar ideas.

(School of Music at the Federal University of Bahia)

4.) Overall, I would say that what I have learned from this whole experience is that people are very similar no matter where you go. Yes, there will always be cultural and language differences, but the people that I interacted with were more similar to me than they were different. This is reinforced by other trips that I have gone on and people from other countries that I have interacted with. I think that this is a very important lesson to learn early on in life because knowing this will shape how I see people that I might think are different from me in the future. And knowing that people around the world have had the same problems that I have seen and experienced in the US is a good way to empathize and connect to people who are from other countries who have gone through these struggles as well.

(from the top of Christ the Redeemer)