This study investigates the polemic established in the second half of the 1990s, between the Secretary of Culture for the State of Pernambuco, the writer Ariano Suassuna, and the artists involved in the pop scene of Recife in this period. The struggle arose from of the questions of the legitimacy artistic production proposed in a project that privileges the expressions considered as truly popular. This discussion is the theme for the problematization of different proposals of cultural intercession presented by the armorial perspective - defended by Suassuna in his theoretical and literary work -, and by Manguebit´s position - treated here mainly by an analysis of the creations of the composer Chico Science, one of its greatest exponents. The discussion is about the place and current functions of the popular cultures and tradition in peripheric societies, and about the diverse possibilities of aesthetic and political appropriation of the expressions of popular art for external authors that are not part of their context of production.