Projects

The musical experience of the 20th century in Portugal and the Portuguese-speaking African countries was marked by relationships that passed by the colonial and subsequent independence processes. This mark has not been scrutinized, and its impact requires a scientific observation that is indispensable for the understanding of the societies involved. The encounter of musical cultures in this framework was approached through studies of intercultural processes and multiculturalism. The relationship between musical culture and the phenomenon of colonialism deserves now further study. In particular, the historical and cultural affinities between Portugal and African Portuguese-speaking countries have not been taken into account in the study of flows and dynamics of global cultural relations. The resulting musical representation of such affinities is reflected in important musical languages, identified as genres with roles ranging from the imaginary figuration of socio-cultural entities, to the crystallization of national identities.

The role of music in the formation of social and cultural representations has been characterized by the study of identity, assuming that music has a formative role in building, negotiating and transforming socio-cultural profiles. In the colonial and postcolonial contexts, the representation of otherness through music acquires a particular power resulting from the ownership of imaginative figurations of the human groups involved in the process and from its construction and articulation. In these cases, the politics of musical representation and appropriation that formed the "national consciousness" in the dictatorial era and in the democratic one, seem heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory. This unveils a the dictatorial era and in the democratic one, seem heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory. This unveils a large behavioural variety that, according to Spivak results from different historical experiences of expression and oppression in the formative context of colonial organizations. The study documents the variety of musical representation and appropriation policies contributing to the knowledge of specific forms of musical representation and its variability according to particular historical and ideological contexts. This study, to develop within the field of postcolonial approaches, focuses on the construction of musical representations in southern Mozambique, and on the role of its relationship with Portugal throughout the 20th century. We intend to establish and clarify the processes of isonomy, in which the aesthetic and discursive analysis is consistent with the prevailing ideological connotation in the relationship between the two countries; and in those of antinomy in which the aesthetic and discoursive analysis is discordant of the same connotation.

The study of creation and categorization of musical genres in Mozambique is approached according to a perspective that considers sound dimensions, and also the discursive and performative practices associated with music. Research on the processes of composition and performance in the articulation of social and cultural identities in Mozambique, started around Makwayela in the studies by Soeiro de Carvalho, is now extended to the paradigmatic cases of Timbila and Marrabenta, among others to point.