Big Bands no Brasil: Das Transformações da Paisagem Sonora à Banda Savana

Resumo (EN)

From its consolidation within the North American jazz tradition — particularly during the Swing Era — to its adaptation and reinvention in the context of Brazilian instrumental music, the big band is understood in this study not merely as an instrumental ensemble, but as an aesthetic, cultural, and perceptual structure capable of traversing distinct historical and technological contexts. More than a specific orchestral model, the big band actively participates in the construction of sonic identities, musical languages, shaping listening practices, taste formation, and musical forms. In Brazil, the assimilation of this format generated original experiences, among which Banda Savana — the corpus of this research — stands out as a paradigmatic case whose trajectory reveals hybrid practices of arrangement, improvisation, performance, and orchestration. The central hypothesis of this thesis argues that big bands, far from constituting a merely ephemeral trend or historically limited phenomenon, played a significant role in the reorganization of modern and contemporary listening practices, establishing themselves as devices of symbolic mediation, timbral elaboration, and collective sonic experience. In the Brazilian case, their incorporation occurred through processes of aesthetic, rhythmic, and cultural recombination, resulting in ensembles endowed with distinctive characteristics. To address these issues, the research adopts a historical-cultural, qualitative, and interdisciplinary approach grounded in the concepts of soundscape (Schafer, 1991), cultural hybridity (Canclini, 1994), performance (Zumthor, 2000), listening (Delalande, 2003), and sonic mediation (Chion, 1994; 2011). The analysis combines bibliographical research, examination of phonographic recordings, and critical reflection derived from long-term professional experience in the field of instrumental music, here understood as a form of situated knowledge. The findings indicate that Banda Savana not only sustains the big band tradition but reconfigures it within the contemporary Brazilian context by integrating improvisation, orchestral discipline, shared listening, and pedagogical practices. The ensemble operates as a space of collective formation and as a laboratory of musical experimentation in which timbre, gesture, and interaction assume central roles. It is concluded that Banda Savana reaffirms the vitality of the big band as a living musical form, capable of continuously reorganizing creative practices, modes of listening, and cultural processes in the present.