Biografía:
Sao Paulo, 1893 Writer and musicologist Mario Raul de Morais Andrade attended the Dramatic and Musical Conservatory where he also taught History of Music. Since an early age, he got involved in the modernist artistic movements and wrote for such major magazines as Klaxon, Estetica, Terra Roxa, and many others. His poetry work was as intense as the efforts he poured into Brazilian music and folklore. About this particular field, he penned his "Study on Brazilian Music" (1928) and "Brazil's Popular Music and Songs" (1936) as two instances of the many pieces he wrote about music. He led the Cultural Department of Sao Paolo where he founded the Public Discography Library and planned the Second National Congress of Sung Language. Mario Andrade believed strongly in Brazil's necessary cultural independence from Portugal in order to create an artistic and linguistic expression of its own. His first poem book was "There's A Blood Drop In Every Poem" (1917). Among the pieces of his that can be pigeonholed in the first stage of Brazilian modernism, "Loca São Paulo" (1922) is a case in point. This particular poem broke away from the post-romantic tradition and introduced the Brazilian avant-gardism. Other poems dealing with such hot issues as racism, poverty and freedom are "Remate de males" (1930) and "Lira paulistana" (1946). He authored novels and short stories like "Macunaíma" (1928), "Primeiro Andar" (1926) and "Belazarte" (1934), which distinctive touches of his homeland folklore. He wrote a number of essays on the modernist movement. Mario Raul de Morais Andrade passed away in Sao Paulo in 1945.
