The Beat of Brazil: Brazilian Society Through Its Music
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this advanced Portuguese-language course built around Brazilian popular music from the late nineteenth century to the present. Students study song lyrics, artists, and musical movements as windows into Brazilian cultural history and current social issues, while building vocabulary and oral fluency in Portuguese. The course emphasizes critical reading and writing skills, with discussion topics tied to specific musical genres and periods rather than a general survey. Materials include readings, listening assignments, and writing exercises drawn from OCW's course materials, following MIT's standard structure of a syllabus, weekly topics, and assignments. No instructor lectures are included since OCW publishes materials rather than a live class, but the syllabus and readings give a full picture of how the course was taught. Free to access under MIT's open license, with no certificate offered.