Lectures on music in colonial independence
The cycle, between June 16 and July 14, focuses on the relationship between music and the independence of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe, researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology and visiting assistant professor at the Department of Musical Sciences at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Marco Roque Freitas, responsible for organizing the initiative, told Lusa.
The sound constructions of Angola after independence, the relationship between anti-colonialism and sound memory in Cape Verde, the trajectories of musical production in Guinea-Bissau, the sounds of São Tomé and Príncipe and the sound construction of Mozambique are the themes addressed in the five lectures.
In addition to Marco Roque Freitas, with research carried out in Mozambique, researchers André Castro Soares, Inês Nascimento Rodrigues, Magdalena Chambel and Miguel Barros, from different institutions, also participate.
The lectures — part of the “Music and Post-colonial Studies” curricular unit of the Musical Sciences degree — will be held digitally, on Mondays, between 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm, with five researchers who will address specificities of each of the countries, which this year celebrate 50 years of independence (with the exception of Guinea-Bissau, which declared its independence in 1973), he said.
According to Marco Roque Freitas, in addition to the geographical dispersion of the various researchers, the digital medium also allows “deterritorializing the event and allowing anyone from any of the countries to attend” the lectures.
“The idea, basically, is that it will be an open, horizontal and uncomplicated discussion, in which musicians and enthusiasts can participate”, he said, noting that the lectures will focus mainly on the relationship between music in the post-independence period of each country.
The researchers will address “what was happening in the late colonial period, the transformation or otherwise of music after independence and then, in the 1990s, the instrumentalization of these practices in the network of so-called 'world music'”, explained Marco Roque Freitas.
In this sense, the relationship between music and the creation of the Nation-State in each of the countries will be considered, as well as the influence of political ideology on the sound construction of each of the countries, in which there was “rejection of musical genres, appropriations and modifications of others”, he stated, recalling that in countries with high illiteracy rates after independence, music played a role in the affirmation of a political and ideological project.
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