Raciality, Gender and Music Flows in the Context of Commercial Recordings: Three Case Studies in Portuguese-Speaking Countries

Abstract

The second half of the 20th century has seen an important paradigmatic shift in social sciences and humanities, a process that starts with the emergence of postcolonial theories in the 1980s and culminates at the beginning of the 21st century with the so-called “decolonial turn”. The large body of post-colonial studies subsumes a range of distinctive aims and methods, that include the analysis of cultural Western influence and power in colonized countries, the analysis of oppression and violence applied to colonial contexts, the use of arts in the processes of cultural domination applied to the Third World, among many others. Throughout the 20th century, phonographic industries had a major key not only in constructing musical identities but also in producing racial, gender-oriented and exotic representations through music. This panel seeks to study the dynamics of phonographic industries in three Portuguese-speaking countries: Mozambique, Cape Verde and Brazil, focusing on racial, gender-oriented and decolonial issues. The first paper is dedicated to the early Mozambican phonographic recordings in the context of Radio Mozambique sound archives. It seeks to analyze the colonial processes that were responsible for the small representation of Mozambican artists and musical practices in 78 rpm shellac discs in the radio´s archives. The second paper focuses on the role of Cape-Verdean singer Cesária Évora in constructing a national identity for the country and also as a symbol of black feminine representation. Finally, the third paper is focused on the incorporation of macumbas – Afro-Diasporic religious canticles – in the context of phonographic industries in Brazil during the 1930s and 1940s.