Listening to the post-empire: music as a decolonial device in contemporary Goa

Abstract

The main objective of this panel is to deepen the discussion on the decolonial value of music in non-independent post-colonial territories. It focuses on the case of the post-Portuguese empire, particularly in Goa (India), and relies on the concept of post-memory described by Marianne Hirsch (2008) as the relationship that individuals establish with the memory of their ancestors, incorporating experiences they did not live, but that were described or told to them. The post-empire refers, in this case, to a reality marked by discontinuities and singular and intimate ways of feeling the embodied memory of the other, produced by a generation of individuals who did not live the colonial experience – in the sense that they were not born and/or grew up under a nationality statute imposed by the colonizer. In the case of Goa, colonial musical practices survived historical colonialism (1510-1961) through the new generation of musicians. However, the anti-colonial consciousness of these new performers gave rise to decolonial dynamics that offer music an added value as a device for social and political transformation, opening paths to new forms of coexistence and equity. In this panel these dynamics will be analyzed through four case studies: (1) the recasting of colonial repertoires in the new context of digital media (2) the use of historical recordings of the cantaram performative genre , in particular their anti-colonial lyrics, as a resource for contemporary political consciousness, (3) the festivalization of mando, a musical genre deeply linked in the past to the Catholic elite, as a post-colonial possibility for coexistence and social equity, (4) the resurgence of fado as part of poetic and aesthetic representation of Goa in the context of India.