Biography

Lucas de Campos is a Brazilian musician, teacher, and researcher. His artistic and academic activities are predominantly related to “popular music” and chordophones.As an instrumentalist, he has developed activities, whether in concerts or recordings, with great names in Brazilian music, such as Áurea Martins, Dona Dalva Damiana, Fabiana Cozza, Hermeto Pascoal, Ilessi, Ivone Lara, Joel Nascimento, Leandro Braga, Mateus Aleluia, Monarco, Nei Lopes, Noca da Portela, Odete Ernest Dias, Oswaldinho do Acordeon, Sérgio Santos, Simone Guimarães, Aunt Surica da Velha Guarda da Portela, Zé Luiz Mazziotti, Zé da Velha and Silvério Pontes, among others. As an arranger, the activities in the following works stand out: CD “Pra querer ser feliz” (Uliana Dias, 2011), CD “Coração Brasileiro” (Helena Pinheiro, 2012), CD “Folião de Raça” (Cris Pereira, 2013), CD “Coisa Nossa” (Regional Glória, 2013), CD “A Velha Guarda do Choro de Brasília” (2013), CD “Alencarinos” (homage to Alencar 7 cordas, 2013), DVD “De Bem com a Vida” ( Carlos Elias, 2013), “O amor que habito” (theater soundtrack, 2018), CD “Samba Candango” (Breno Alves, 2021), and CD “Banzo” (Cris Pereira, forthcoming), among others. 

His work as a teacher has focused on his activities at the CEP/EMB (Escola de Música de Brasília), where he has been a permanent professor since 2011. In this public conservatory maintained by the Federal District of Brazil, he teaches Popular Guitar and Choro Practice classes. He acted as a substitute professor at the University of Brasília in 2019, teaching the subjects of Supplementary Guitar, Supplementary Percussion, and Oral Tradition Music. Pedagogically coordinates, since 2016, the ABC Musical Project, a voluntary action whose proposal is to offer music classes to young people and children in a peripheral location of Brasília. As a researcher, he has focused his attention on the chordophones and their Atlantic paths. In the Master’s held at the University of Brasília, he devoted attention to the guitar in the context of Choro, in a dissertation entitled “The 6-string guitar and the accompaniment skills in Choro”. In his PhD at the University of Aveiro, he is investigating chordophones triangulations between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil.

Ciência Vitae | ORCID

Jorge Castro Ribeiro

The circulation of Music across geographies seems to accompany the complexity of migratory movements and challenge the notion of unidirectional paths. This research seeks to describe the Atlantic routes of the chordophones between Angola and Brazil, often through Portugal. To this end, I start from historical records to imagine “a past” of chordophones on the African continent. There are essential records indicating the presence of stringed musical instruments in Africa at the time of the expansionist arrival of the Portuguese. According to José Pedro Caiado (1998), even in 1455 the traveler Cadamosto pointed to the presence of chordophones in Sierra Leone. With the expansion of Portuguese forays into Central Africa in the 16th century, reports emerged of contact with an essential range of chordophones in this region. Caiado (1998, p.83) tells that when describing the diplomatic communication between the Portuguese and representatives of the Kingdom of Kongo in 1578, the traveler Garcia Simões indicates the presence of “a viola that seemed to have few esparrelas together”. Documents generated in the Missio Antiqua religious expedition, carried out by the Capuchin priests between 1645 and 1835, also present references to the presence of stringed instruments on the continent. In the book “Historical description of the three kingdoms of Congo, Matamba and Angola”, written by the Italian priest António Cavazzi (1671), there is an indication of a musical instrument "made similar to Spanish guitars, but without a bottom, with good strings made with fibers very thin palm leaves or other plants.” (CAIADO, 1998). There is, therefore, an expressive set of textual indicators produced by Europeans of the material presence of chordophones (as well as the technologies and social agencies related to them) on the African continent that have been identified by European travelers since, at least, the year 1455. However, in addition to these and other textual descriptions, there are still essential imagery indications, whether in the notes that accompany the texts or in the iconographic material produced by travelers and specialized artists. On the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil, the main references are of an imagery nature, based on the work of naturalist painters. The move of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil (1806) caused an increase in the interest in portraying the social life of that country, especially through the “Artistic Missions”, such as the French Artistic Mission and the Austrian Mission, among others. In this movement, several artists are designated to make such records, such as the German Johann Moritz Rugendas and the French Jean-Claude Debret, among others. In such paintings, it is sometimes possible to detect specific chordophones normally associated (Redinha, 1984) with Angolan musical practices. Data from historian Robert Slenes (2019) point out that 76% of the 4.9 million enslaved people who landed alive in Brazil left Central Africa, that is, about 3.4 million people left the Congo-Angola region towards colonial Brazil. Would it be possible for such an expressive contingent of people not to leave marks on the chordophone traditions? Based on the assumption that social and cultural practices accompany the migratory movement of these individuals, it is also necessary to investigate the social trajectory of Angolan chordophones in the Atlantic transit. This research asks, therefore, about the possible circuits of these chordophones, as well as their adaptations and remodeling over time and their artistic possibilities in contemporary times.

Research Group: Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies