In this article I seek to provide a basis for understanding the process that triggered the change of the social position of samba in the 1930s. I try to show that a self-referred framework of discussion about samba emerged at the heart of the development of the commercialization of the "product" popular music, which paved the way to the emergence of a set of debates whose participants were experts in discoursing about that new form of art. On the other hand, these agents both rivaled against and cooperated with other intellectuals who ventured to produce commentaries about the musical genre in question. These two categories of intellectuals shaped a dialogical interstice that promoted the establishment of several "truths" about the urban popular music. From the contacts, the conflicts and the cooperation drawn between them, historical junctures would be forged, restructured and reinterpreted, a fact that would enable new ways of vision, the eruption and crystallization of institutions and songs.
Brazilian Popular Music; Samba; Choro; Intellectuals