Cowboy Hats And Rodeos: How Very . . . Brazilian?

BARRETOS, Brazil - A vision in turquoise chaps, Tory Herndon, of Oakdale, Calif., is mounting up for the bareback competition on a mean-looking bronco that's having a Bad Mane Day.

Meanwhile, Herndon's having trouble hearing his Brazilian rodeo assistant, who's sporting a Stetson hat and a silver "I Love Texas" belt buckle. Could be the language barrier, or maybe it has something to do with the 50,000 fans singing along to blaring Brazilian country music in Portuguese.

"I'm a goin' down to Minas Gerais to find me a new true heart," went one local ditty - roughly translated - about a romance in a neighboring Brazilian state. "I'm gonna find me someone new this time, someone who's gonna treat me right."

"Brazilians love this stuff!" an incredulous Herndon shouted over the din of the crowd at western Sao Paulo state's Barretos International Rodeo, an event that's grown into the globe's largest country-music and riding festival. For the eight-day party, 2 million Brazilian cowboys in jeans tight enough to be health hazards moseyed in with their big-haired Girls From Ipanema - along with foreigners such as country crooner Garth Brooks and U.S. executives from Wrangler Jeans.

"It's sort of surprising, you know, this is, like, Brazil," said Herndon, one of the world's top 30 bareback bronco riders. "But they love the whole scene. (Country's) gone mainstream over here."

Thousands of rodeos a year

The hemisphere's second-most-populous country has suddenly gone crazy for country. Brazil has long had a huge cattle industry, complete with gauchos and their unique traditions. But it's the ethos of the American West and its cowboy myths that have become wildly popular.

After the United States, Brazil is now the world's largest market for rodeos, country music and all its trappings, say industry officials. Portuguese- and English-language country records sell upward of 20 million copies a year here. And today, there are literally thousands of rodeos held in Brazil, with an average attendance of 24 million annually.

There are hit soap operas, or telenovelas, with country-western themes. Country-music bars, with names like the Lone Star State, are opening in big cities all over this nation, which is larger in area than the continental United States. Country Music Television is one of the few widely distributed U.S. cable channels here. The piece de resistance:

Next year in Barretos, officials will break ground on a $95 million country theme park, where Brazilians will find year-round fun in "their own Texas town," said Flavio Silva Filho, president of the Independents Club, the group building the attraction.

A uniquely Brazilian twist

But while it may appear on the surface to be a mere import of U.S. culture, what's happening in Brazil is actually far more sociologically interesting.

Brazilians have the uncanny ability to take a piece of another nation's culture, graft it onto their own and, in the process, turn it into something uniquely Brazilian.

Much of it comes, experts say, from being linguistically isolated. As the world's largest Portuguese-speaking nation, Brazil, which generates 70 percent of its own music, has nevertheless been forced to translate - literally and figuratively - most of international pop culture for its 160 million citizens.

"Groups here have borrowed part of the sound and created something that is artistically new," said Zeze di Camargo, a Brazilian country star whose new album with his brother sold 1.2 million copies in its first day of release recently.

"But while we may have the rodeos, the American country hats, and the American clothes, we still consider the music to be something very Brazilian," he said.

Over the past several years, the Brazilians combined modern American country music with their own rural music known as caipira to create the hugely popular sound known as musica sertaneja.

Sung mostly by duos from rural Brazilian states, sertaneja has taken Brazil by storm, becoming the third top-selling form of music here (behind samba and Brazilian pop) and more than quadrupling sales from 1990 to 1998. Today, the Brazilian country-music industry is worth more than $100 million a year, said Marcelo Castello Branco, president of PolyGram Brazil.

"Sertaneja used to be something that people were sort of embarrassed to admit they loved, but now it's very in fashion," said Eva Santos, editor of the Sao Paulo-based Sertaneja Journal, with a circulation of more than 30,000. "The devotion to the duos has become phenomenal. They've become some of the biggest celebrities in all of Brazil."

But while sertaneja outsells U.S. country music here by a ratio of 5-1, the scene surrounding it, as well as the marketing machine selling it, has a distinct North American twang. And increasingly, U.S. artists are becoming big here. Brooks, for instance, played the Barretos International Rodeo to a sold-out audience. Meanwhile, Billy Ray Cyrus recorded a Portuguese version of "Achy-Breaky Heart" with a sertaneja group, and Zeze di Camargo recently recorded a duet with Willie Nelson in Nashville.

U.S. rodeo stars in demand

Meanwhile, the growing music scene has fueled an insatiable thirst for rodeos, and for American country clothing from boots to hats. Brazil's also become a major stop for touring U.S. rodeo stars, who are winning thousands of dollars here. And Brazilian rodeo stars, who are taking more and more purses from the Americans, have earned even more cash by endorsing brands of Brazilian jeans and other clothing with American names like Wild West and Big Joe's Boots.