O duro aço da voz: investimento vocal, cenografia e ethos em canções do Pessoal do Ceará

Abstract

In this research, we analyzed how vocal investment in relation to its reference in scenography collaborates with building the ethos of positioning "Pessoal do Ceará" in Brazil. Our theoretical support is Discourse Analysis from French line, as delineated by Dominique Maingueneau (1996a/b, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2008, 2010), which proposes the more general concepts of positioning and investment, applied by Costa (2001, 2011) to Brazilian literary musical discourse. To get to the vocal characterization investment of "Pessoal do Ceara”, we resorted to reference these voices in the scenery of the songs, the statements from journalists and artists, the academic research (COSTA, 2001, 2011; CASTRO, 2008) and the concepts of the phonoaudiological area (BELHAU; PONTES, 1989). It was still necessary to adapt concepts of interdiscourse and metadiscourse to analysis of the song vocal dimension, which resulted in the concepts of "intervocalidade contitutiva", "intervocalidade mostrada" and "metavocalidade." Furthermore, we analyzed the construction of ethos in the articulation of vocal investment with its scenography reference, noting how this concept contributes to the definition of “Pessoal do Ceará.” Thus we achieved the following conclusions, respectively in these plans, vocal, verbal and vocoverbal of the songs. The nasal vocal quality and bass sound of singer Belchior and metal vocal qualities and treble sound of singer Fagner, as well the use of vocal resources that emphasize such qualities, among which respectively emphasize of the vowel sound elongation in Belchior and rasping sound in Ednardo and Fagner, produce an effect of strangeness. In Fagner’s voice, also contributes for the production this strangeness the fact of such elongation is often accompanied by vibrato and still be frequent the use of high intensity in the syllables "unstressed" ending the musical phrases, and can also be heard, sometimes, an aspiration. In scenery, this vocal "strange" investment of the enunciation is referenced by the figure of the "knife", the "scream", the representation of its production by the vocal cords of steel and the disqualification of the other song that it has the opposite characteristics to those. Therefore, the articulation of these two dimensions, it is concluded that there is reciprocity between the "what" it is sung and "how" it is sung. Thus, the strangeness of the song and what is said about him are essential parts in the construction of the controversial and aggressive ethos of “Pessoal” positioning of Ceará, already identified by Costa (2001).