This paper analyzes the relationship between history and politics, using as sources the lyrics of lundus composed at the time of the bankruptcy of Casa Souto, a Rio de Janeiro bank (1864). The hypothesis proposed here is that, by establishing a "dialogue" about the Casa Souto's crisis, these poems exposed different views about it. Some readers recognized themselves in such views, as participants of the political process related to the episode, being therefore responsible for the success of the lyrics, which became very popular and were published in different songbooks in Rio de Janeiro in the second half of the nineteenth century.
history; politics; lundus; songbooks; Rio de Janeiro