Memórias da cantoria: palavra, performance e público

Abstract

In this work, I analyze what meanings the singing assumes for singers and listeners who, under the pressure of different forms of communication and amusement in the “modern times”, address their experiences and subjectivities for the creation and understanding of an art that takes place mainly through the sung and improvised words to the sound of the viola. The singing, through words, of the singer’s voice seems to have the power to act, to shuffle the memories of the listeners, causing a sensation of pleasure and identification with what is being lived and sung. To reach those meanings, I focus on the maturation route of the singer, who gains configuration by being sure that he/she has a “gift”, which added to aspects of the broader social atmosphere, becomes developed and acclaimed before the public’s acceptance. The public is a fundamental piece in the poetic creation of the singing. Nowadays, those singers circulate more often between the rural and urban universes, having contact with different contexts, languages, and communication means. Thus, causing changes and updates in their poetic performance, which in turn is reflected in the creation of strategies to keep his/her relationship with the public, which used to be more of a body-to-body contact, going through other mediations, such as the radio, TV, CD, and DVD that increase the reach of singing significantly. The memories of singers and listeners express displacements and re-meanings of that art, translating a poetic universe that gathers different experiences and traditions. Thus, singers and listeners go recreating and giving life to singing; because it symbolizes his/her form of communication with the world. From the countryside to the city, the singers’ route evokes similarities that reach even the youngest generations: the children of country parents who used to make a living on plantations certainly own a “gift”, and have long lived with a universe of entertainment full of singings, reisados, puppets, patron saint parties and sambas (forrós) as the main representatives, prejudices and combats to the wanderer’s stereotype thoroughly reproduced in the social context. And at last, it engenders a cultural dispute that is effective until the present time.