New Shifts in Heritage and Cultural Policies: Musicking, Activism and Popular Culture in Contemporary Brazil

• Grant number: 19/04064-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: August 31, 2019
• End date: August 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Music
• Principal Investigator: Suzel Ana Reily
• Grantee: Lorena Avellar de Muniagurria
• Supervisor: Michael Benjamin Silvers
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/20126-0 - The musicking of Santarém Novo's carimbó: music, policies and construction of a Brazilian cultural heritage, BP.PD

Abstract

The proposed one-year research internship is conceived as part of the post-doctoral research funded by FAPESP and currently ongoing in Brazil (Process Nr. 17/20126-0). That project aims to investigate the musicking of carimbó and its relations with the universe of public policies, particularly policies for cultural heritage. It is based primarily on multi-sited fieldwork in localities of the State of Pará, including an ethnography of virtual networks of carimbozeiros, and of governmental websites. The first year of investigation was devoted to conducting most of the fieldwork required for the post-doctoral project. For the research internship proposed here, I seek to organize and analyze the collected material in view of two main issues: (i) the implications of the heritagization for carimbó, specially shifts in terms of musicking and categories such as the so-called "traditional carimbó"; (ii) the impacts of the ongoing Brazilian political crisis on heritage policies and cultural activism, considering both what music does to politics and what politics does to music. In order to do so, dialogue with three main research areas will be essential: popular music studies; cultural heritage studies; and Brazilian studies. Research outputs such as peer-reviewed articles written in English and (inter)national conference presentations will fill in an important gap in the still understudied particularities of music in the field of intangible cultural heritage, as well in the growing interest for studies on contemporary Brazilian politics and society.