Experience and meaning in music performance

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Entrainment in Congado

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Entrainment in Congado music

This project builds on Dr Glaura Lucas' many years’ experience researching Congado rituals among Afro Brazilian communities in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.

During Congado festivals several groups of singers, dancers, drummers and percussionists process around a host’s community or home town performing ritual songs. When individual groups meet or pass close to each other, the focus is on staying together, and on not being influenced rhythmically by the other group (thus, “resisting entrainment”). This focus is linked to their own sense of group identity in the ritual context. This project aims to analyse entrainment in the musical performances of Congado and to investigate the involvement of entrainment in the processes of defining and projecting ritual identity in this music as well as of constructing meaning.

The feasibility of such research depends on the combination of Dr Lucas’ extensive work on Congado with the expertise developed within the “Experience and Meaning in Music Performance” project, especially in the use of professional audio-visual recording equipment and video analysis software.

In May 2006 the Open University funded the first stage of this research, involving the documentation of Congado rituals during the May Festival hosted by the Arturos Community in Contagem (Minas Gerais, Brazil). Dr Lucas’ stay in the UK in May 2007 (funded by the British Academy 44th International Congress of Americanists Fund) has allowed trial analysis of the video material collected. Empirical analysis has been the focus of the final stage of research, taking place in winter 2007/08 thanks to a British Academy Visiting Fellowship awarded to Dr Lucas.

Congado

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Doing fieldwork in Contagem


Doing fieldwork in Contagem: (from left) Rafael Anderson Guimarães Santos, Leonardo Rosse and Martin Clayton put the radio mics on the caixas before the ritual starts – 14th May 2006, Arturos Community, Minas Gerais

Antônio Maria da Silva, main captain of the Arturos’ Congado

Antônio Maria da Silva, main captain of the Arturos’ Congado - 14th May 2006, Contagem, Minas Gerais

José Bonifácio da Luz, president of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary

José Bonifácio da Luz, president of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary in Contagem - 14th May 2006, Contagem, Minas Gerais

Mário Braz da Luz, patriarch of the Arturos Community

Mário Braz da Luz, patriarch of the Arturos Community - 14th May 2006, Contagem, Minas Gerais

 

 

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