Beating the Drums of Santa Teresa: Performing Resistance in a Brazilian Quilombo (original) (raw)
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New World Songs for Catholic Saints: Domestic Performances of Devotion and History in Bahia, Brazil
Ph.D. dissertation, 2013
This dissertation is about historicity. It is an inquiry into how individuals creatively layer personal and collective memories to shape socially shared cultural practices. It is also about how such pasts are employed to understand and negotiate the present. To address these issues, this dissertation focuses on the reza, an annual Catholic patron saint ritual that is practiced in private homes all over the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. The religious celebration includes Catholic Church texts intoned in local melodies, samba dancing, and group feasting. Explicitly, this musical ritual plays a vital role in solidifying social relationships and affirming Catholic identity, while also providing the spiritual means to confront quotidian life. Implicitly, the reza gives participants a means of remembering their own spiritual journeys and evoking a collective Black Atlantic past. Despite the fundamental socio-religious value of this tradition, it has largely been neglected in both English- and Portuguese-language academic scholarship. Consequently, this dissertation, based on over four years of ethnographic fieldwork and historical research (2008-2013), introduces the reza and, at the same time, uses it to develop a broader theoretical perspective about the way in which history plays out in contemporary cultural practices.
"It is when the bells ring that the saints are called": For an Afro-Brazilian Ethnomusicology (Atena Editora), 2023
This article presents data from an anthropological investigation focused on Afro-Brazilian religious and musical manifestations present in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Beat, extreme south of Brazil), based on a set of documentary sources available in both Germany and Brazil that take as an object of analysis a collection of Afro-Brazilian ritual artifacts deposited at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin and its possible consequences. The investigation is relevant both from an archival point of view and from an ethnographic and ethnomusicological point of view, and aims to contribute to the development of a topic that has been sparsely studied by researchers to this day. Working with a combination of new empirical sources, I conduct “ethnography of/in museums and archives” from both countries involved, comparing German sources with Brazilian ones. It is worth noting here that the first part (Germany) has already been completed. The interpretative lines suggested here foresee a combination of theoretical perspectives arising from Post-Colonial Studies within a Contemporary Anthropology combined with Ethnomusicology approaches.
El Rocío: A Case Study of Music and Ritual in Andalucía
2007
ABSTRACT Title of Document: EL ROCÍO: A CASE STUDY OF MUSIC AND RITUAL IN ANDALUCÍA W. Gerard Poole, Ph.D., 2007 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Carolina Robertson, Department of Ethnomusicology Music is central to the processional pilgrimage of El Rocío, which attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Andalusia, Spain, late each spring. The pilgrimage affords a unique view, in microcosm, of the relationships between music and ritual from both ritual-studies and ethnomusicological perspectives. Based on extensive fieldwork and other research, this dissertation explores the nexus of the Catholic ritual system in Andalusia, flamenco, and the specific music of El Rocío: the Sevillanas Rocieras. That nexus becomes clear through exploration of three particular features of the pilgrimage: (1) the devotional processions that generate a single, focused, collective emotion; (2) the Andalusian musical form called the palo; and (3) the informal musical gatherings called juergas, which take place nightly along the route. Analysis of structural and morphological relationships between ritual, music, and emotion yields surprising realizations about how these three elements come together as embodied aesthetics within a communitas to generate popular culture. Another important finding of this work is the necessity of placing, at the center of the inquiry, the religious experience—including the curious Andalusian phenomenon of the “chaotic” emotional procession and its role within the overall pilgrimage and ritual system. The dissertation concludes with two theoretical positions. The first addresses the process of “emotional structuring” and its role within the musical rituals of El Rocío and, by extension, Andalusia. The second advances a theory of ritual relations with potential application to ritual systems beyond Andalusia. The author presents both positions within an evolutionary framework based on the tenets of biomusicology, neurophenomenology, and Peircean semiotics.
Folia and Baile de Rabecada: Aural Narratives in a Brazilian Quilombo
Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian Studies, 2019
This article describes the music of baile de rabecada and folia da bandeira from the perspective of two rabeca players who are leaders in a rural Afro-Brazilian community. Their narratives rely on repertoire and music examples that are part of the aural tradition of these practices in the quilombo. Adopting as its focus specific music pieces, this study reveals that baile de rabecada features rhythmic patterns indicating a mixture of Iberian and Afro-Brazilian aspects, to a much greater extent than literature suggests. My ethnographic work on these two rabeca players highlights the association between their music practices and the socioeconomic networks of the rural economy. The baile and the popular Catholic folia da bandeira are associated with an agrarian traditional system and territorial relations that form a cultural setting that operates as agency, which has enabled the communities in Vale do Ribeira to reclaim the historical meaning of the quilombo (maroon community), and carry out a political campaign for the recognition of their land rights. As a result of broad social changes, community leaders acknowledge that they do not perform the tradition as it was once practised and are now concerned with the extent to which future generations will maintain the rituals that characterize these rural Afro-Brazilian communities.
The Untidy Playground: An Irish Congolese Case Study in Sonic Encounters with the Sacred Stranger
Religions, 2017
This paper explores the proposal that music, and particularly singing, has unique properties that render it amenable to encounters with "the other" or the sacred stranger. Drawing on the deconstructionist works of Kristeva and Derrida, as well as the postmodern hermeneutics of Kearney and Caputo, it explores current debate concerning the nature of "the sacred" in contemporary life and the erosion of the theistic/atheistic divide, while proposing a deepening of the debate through the inclusion of the performative. As philosophical and theological discourses embrace this aporia, it does so against the backdrop of unprecedented human migration. The concomitant cultural and social disruption throws up new questions around the nature and experience of religion, spirituality and the sacred. This paper explores these questions in the context of a Congolese choir called Elikya, which was established by a group of asylum seekers in Limerick city, Ireland, in 2001. In tracking the musical life of this choir over the last decade and a half, including two musical recordings and numerous liturgical, religious and secular performances, it suggests that the sonic world of the choir both performs and transcends these descriptors. Using a threefold model of context, content and intent, the paper concludes that musical experiences such as those created by Elikya erode any easy divisions between the religious and the secular or the liturgical and the non-liturgical and provide sonic opportunities to encounter the sacred stranger in the untidy playground of creative chaos.
International Journal of Practical Theology, 2017
is a musical practice staged in the Dutch public sphere and an example of how large, Christian musical forms in late-modern network societies moved from the church to the broader culture. Neither the classical discipline of hymnology nor the emerging discipline of Christian congregational music studies have developed theoretical concepts that serve to understand musical practices outside the ecclesial domain. The authors distinguish the emerging field of fluid ritual musical practices and reinvent the concept of sacro-soundscapes as a notion that contributes to the interpretation of these practices. They claim that, consequentially, the aforementioned disciplines are included in this field and therefore change, as well.
Sounds, Bodies and Power: Politics and Poetics of Religious Sounds
National University of Singapore, Asia Research Institute, Feb 27-28, 2020
Whether through mantras, Quran recitation contests, or Christian congregational singing, sounds, bodies and texts depend on each other for the continued vitality of the sacred and the way it is experienced in Asia. However, texts have been given utmost priority in the field of Religious Studies for a series of historical and cultural reasons that have been summarized as a "scriptist bias" and "ocularcentrism". Ranking vision over other senses in Western cultures, at the expense of the auditory and other sensory realms, has produced a kind of "disciplinary deafness" in the study of religions. This conference aims to consider the importance of "a sonic turn" to bring forth understudied connections between bodies, sounds and media in the private and public life of religions in Asia. It welcomes toolbox approaches from multidisciplinary scholars who combine methods and perspectives from religious studies, history, ethnomusicology, anthropology, media studies, folklore and performance studies. Bodies of texts, which represent our common acceptation of the term corpus/corpora, will give way to a specific attention on "bodies of songs" (Hess 2015), "bodies of sounds" (Dodds and Cook 2013), the "skinscapes" of religious experience (Plate 2012), the sensory and embodied dimensions of the sacred (Csordas 1994, Meyer 2011), and the "entextualization" of the body through sacred sounds (Flood 2005). The role of sounds and embodied practices will also emerge as encompassing these intimate and affective dimensions, and reflecting broader questions on mediatization, and on the relationship between sounds, religions and power. In fact, the use of sound shapes the ways in which space is produced and perceived. Hence religious soundscapes, especially in urban and multicultural spaces, have been discussed as enveloping and claiming territorial authority, establishing boundaries, or awakening inter-religious tensions. An emerging literature on congregational singing as establishing community and the sense of belonging, and recent scholarship on the relationship between religious soundscapes and place-making are helpful in articulating the theoretical liaison between sound, people, places and identities. However, these conceptual frameworks, frequently based on urban, predominantly Christian, and North Atlantic contexts, often neglect intimate discourses, real experience and lived understandings of sound-and what sacred sound does to the people who are creating, listening, producing, and interpreting it. The focus on the sonic aspect of religion cannot be separated from movement and touch, as fundamental dimensions of the experience of the religious body. Sound, and the senses of the praying/playing/listening/dancing body, appear as an interconnected and fundamental point to start an innovative discussion on the politics and the aesthetics of religious experience. The ways in which performed and sounded religious experiences are produced, transmitted, reproduced, commodified and received is also inseparable from the technical and mediated ways in which these communicative acts take place. Therefore our discussion is necessarily embedded in the understanding of the relationship between religion and media. Sound and the sonic ritual body are articulated and understood in different religious mediatizations, as cultural expressions communicated by oral, textual, musical, danced, digital, and other vehicles. Whether conveyed by live performance, graphemes, televangelism, or social media, the sensorial field of religious chanting, preaching, mourning, ritual dancing, or singing, becomes a site for broader social negotiations, sectarian contestations and trans-territorial identity formations, ultimately unsettling and multiplying the discussion on religion, the senses and the media in Asia. Our discussion is interested in the various intersections between religious sounds, bodies, mediascapes and the reflection of power relationships, in order to understand contemporary issues that comprise but are not limited to: Community-making and place-making processes; Sound in ritual performance and the heritage discourse; Multicultural soundscapes in the public sphere; Sacred music, migration and diasporas; Sonic contestations and the production of inequalities; Religious sounds in new and changing mediascapes.
The bodies of Christ: performances and agencies of Passion in Ouro Preto
Vibrant - Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 2017
In this article, I analyze the enactments of the Passion of Christ that occur during the celebrations of Holy Week in Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais, Brazil). I follow the actors who perform the protagonist's role and their different forms of rehearsal in more peripheral urban regions. The conceptions of their practices – including how they distinguish a religious performance from a theatrical enactment – are explored through the idea of a continuum between the domains of ritual and theater identified by Victor Turner and Richard Schechner. I discuss the limits of the notion of performance proposed by the two authors and argue that, from a heuristic point of view, its semantic scope remains insufficient to explore ethnographic settings in which other agencies transcend the actor-audience duality. The analysis of the actors who play the role of Christ reveals different agencies (and intentionalities) that intervene in their performances and emphasizes the importance of the body as a primary locus of action. Resumo Neste artigo, analiso as práticas de encenação da Paixão de Cristo que ocorrem durante as celebrações da Semana Santa em Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais). Acompanho as experiências de ensaio e atuação dos moradores que encarnam o papel do protagonista em regiões mais periféricas da cidade. As concepções sobre tais práticas e como eles diferenciam uma performance " religiosa " de uma " teatral " serão exploradas por meio do continuum que Victor Turner e Richard Schechner identificaram entre os domínios do ritual e do teatro. Discuto os limites heurísticos da noção de performance proposta por tais autores e argumento que sua amplitude semântica não impede que ela se revele insuficiente para dar conta de situações etnográficas nas quais outras agências transcendem a dualidade ator-público. A análise das atuações dos moradores no papel de Cristo revela as diferentes agências (e intencionalidades) que afetam tais performances e destaca a importância do corpo como lócus privilegiado de ação.