A MORNA- Moacyr Rodrigues
This book by Moacyr Rodrigues aims to analyze the social significance of morna, a musical genre from Cape Verde, and its role in demarcating an identity space in Cape Verdean colonial society and consequently constructing a national identity.
From the end of the 19th century until the 1980s, morna was the only musical genre that expanded throughout the archipelago in terms of audience and artistic production. It is characterized as a popular urban music sung and danced, with a tonal melodic and harmonic structure, having gone from a binary to a quaternary rhythm. From a literary point of view, it is a popular, traditional, and oral poetic text. A historical and ethnographic approach was used for its study, using the available bibliography, archival sources with official documents, travelers' books, periodicals, discography, field study, interviews, and the analysis of morna poems.
Moacyr Rodrigues examined morna and the transformations it underwent during a specific period. He studied its social significance, production, performance, dissemination methods, and learning, focusing on the three islands where it is most prominent: Boavista, Brava, and São Vicente. The study also established connections with emigrant communities.
To analyze the issue under study, concepts, and topics proposed by various ethnomusicologists which deal with the relationship between music, identity, nation, and nationalism were used, but also by scholars from other disciplines of the Social Sciences, with special emphasis on that of "imagined community." This book concludes that morna established itself as a space for the affirmation of "us" and undertook a national journey, undergoing a process by which it became "national music," still in the last phase of the colonial period. It has become the privileged instrument for building this "imagined community" that is the nation. It was the most popular musical genre in the archipelago and among emigrant communities throughout the 20th century, with performers and composers from all the islands and all social classes. On the other hand, since most of the Cape Verdean population is illiterate, music reaches a much wider audience than high-brow literature or journalistic texts in the archipelago and among emigrant communities in general, where Creole typically remains and prevails. Having understood the importance of this process, the nationalists of the independence movement that emerged in the 1960s also used morna as a privileged instrument to promote their political project among Cape Verdeans, thanks to radio broadcasts and the recording industry, to which they already had access.
This book by Moacyr Rodrigues aims to analyze the social significance of morna, a musical genre from Cape Verde, and its role in demarcating an identity space in Cape Verdean colonial society and consequently constructing a national identity.
From the end of the 19th century until the 1980s, morna was the only musical genre that expanded throughout the archipelago in terms of audience and artistic production. It is characterized as a popular urban music sung and danced, with a tonal melodic and harmonic structure, having gone from a binary to a quaternary rhythm. From a literary point of view, it is a popular, traditional, and oral poetic text. A historical and ethnographic approach was used for its study, using the available bibliography, archival sources with official documents, travelers' books, periodicals, discography, field study, interviews, and the analysis of morna poems.
Moacyr Rodrigues examined morna and the transformations it underwent during a specific period. He studied its social significance, production, performance, dissemination methods, and learning, focusing on the three islands where it is most prominent: Boavista, Brava, and São Vicente. The study also established connections with emigrant communities.
To analyze the issue under study, concepts, and topics proposed by various ethnomusicologists which deal with the relationship between music, identity, nation, and nationalism were used, but also by scholars from other disciplines of the Social Sciences, with special emphasis on that of "imagined community." This book concludes that morna established itself as a space for the affirmation of "us" and undertook a national journey, undergoing a process by which it became "national music," still in the last phase of the colonial period. It has become the privileged instrument for building this "imagined community" that is the nation. It was the most popular musical genre in the archipelago and among emigrant communities throughout the 20th century, with performers and composers from all the islands and all social classes. On the other hand, since most of the Cape Verdean population is illiterate, music reaches a much wider audience than high-brow literature or journalistic texts in the archipelago and among emigrant communities in general, where Creole typically remains and prevails. Having understood the importance of this process, the nationalists of the independence movement that emerged in the 1960s also used morna as a privileged instrument to promote their political project among Cape Verdeans, thanks to radio broadcasts and the recording industry, to which they already had access.
This book by Moacyr Rodrigues aims to analyze the social significance of morna, a musical genre from Cape Verde, and its role in demarcating an identity space in Cape Verdean colonial society and consequently constructing a national identity.
From the end of the 19th century until the 1980s, morna was the only musical genre that expanded throughout the archipelago in terms of audience and artistic production. It is characterized as a popular urban music sung and danced, with a tonal melodic and harmonic structure, having gone from a binary to a quaternary rhythm. From a literary point of view, it is a popular, traditional, and oral poetic text. A historical and ethnographic approach was used for its study, using the available bibliography, archival sources with official documents, travelers' books, periodicals, discography, field study, interviews, and the analysis of morna poems.
Moacyr Rodrigues examined morna and the transformations it underwent during a specific period. He studied its social significance, production, performance, dissemination methods, and learning, focusing on the three islands where it is most prominent: Boavista, Brava, and São Vicente. The study also established connections with emigrant communities.
To analyze the issue under study, concepts, and topics proposed by various ethnomusicologists which deal with the relationship between music, identity, nation, and nationalism were used, but also by scholars from other disciplines of the Social Sciences, with special emphasis on that of "imagined community." This book concludes that morna established itself as a space for the affirmation of "us" and undertook a national journey, undergoing a process by which it became "national music," still in the last phase of the colonial period. It has become the privileged instrument for building this "imagined community" that is the nation. It was the most popular musical genre in the archipelago and among emigrant communities throughout the 20th century, with performers and composers from all the islands and all social classes. On the other hand, since most of the Cape Verdean population is illiterate, music reaches a much wider audience than high-brow literature or journalistic texts in the archipelago and among emigrant communities in general, where Creole typically remains and prevails. Having understood the importance of this process, the nationalists of the independence movement that emerged in the 1960s also used morna as a privileged instrument to promote their political project among Cape Verdeans, thanks to radio broadcasts and the recording industry, to which they already had access.