PORTUGAL AND THE WORLD
TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF CROSS-CULTURAL PROCESSES IN MUSIC

Portugal pioneered the initial encounters between European peoples and cultures and those of Africa, Asia, and Brazil. Portuguese explorers followed by missionaries, traders, settlers, and colonial officers were, in many cases, the first to introduce Christianity and European culture, including music, to other parts of the world.

Portuguese and multi-ethnic communities strongly marked by Portuguese culture, were formed in many parts of the world where they contributed to the preservation of Portuguese culture and to the emergence of new cultural syntheses.

The historical encounters initiated five hundred years ago through Portuguese expansion engendered multifarious social and cultural processes. The study of these processes is essential to our understanding of one of the most important periods of human history. Music, examined as social process, as expressive behaviour and as cultural product, can provide insights into the processes generated by the historical encounters initiated by Portuguese expansion. Musical performances embody ideas, beliefs, attitudes, experiences, and cultural identities. Through the study of music, processes such as cultural continuity, change, adaptation, resistance, and multicultural syntheses can be examined. 1

The musical repercussions of Portuguese presence overseas were multifarious. Music was used in the process of missionization. Religious music was performed in churches and formally taught in paroquial schools. In some contexts, repertoires of religious music have survived in live performance and/or in written sources. Outside the church, dramatized versions of the bible were performed on special occasions such as Christmas and Easter, and have been maintained in live practice in a few areas up to the present. We also find musical genres that are the result of multicultural synthesis both in Portugal and abroad. The seventeenth century 'vilancico', the Luso-Brazilian 'modinha', the Angolan 'rebita', the Goan 'mandó', the Indonesian 'kroncong', the Sumatran 'sikambang kapri', and the Malaccan 'dondang sayang' are but a few examples. Within the realm of musical instruments and instrumental ensembles, there is abundant evidence of the adoption or adaptation of Portuguese musical instruments, and organological features. In particular, plucked lutes of various sizes have become basic instruments in some parts of Asia (including Indonesia, Timor, Sri Lanka, and Goa), Africa, and Brazil. A famous example is the small Portuguese guitar known as 'cavaquinho', an instrument basic to traditional ensembles in the Northwest of Portugal which was adopted in Hawaii, Brazil, and Indonesia. Local adaptations of Portuguese repertoires, genres and music stylistic features are also found and include ballads, children's songs, songs dedicated to Saints, or sung on special occasions, competition songs, work songs etc...

The study of the musical processes and products catalyzed by Portuguese expansion represents a challenge to music researchers. It requires a context-sensitive multidisciplinary approach combining historical research with ethnographic analysis.

Recently, a volume has been published including articles by historians, musicologists, ethnomusicologists and anthropologists from Portugal, other countries in Europe, Canada, United States of America and Brazil. It deals with the musical processes and products engendered by Portuguese overseas expansion in Africa, Asia and Brazil, and by external cultural influences in Portugal.2 The articles emphasize musical identity, cross cultural influences, multicultural musical syntheses, retention and adaptation of tools and practices in new environments, and the religious and political instrumentalization of music. They also point out that the diversity in the nature and length of Portuguese presence conditioned the ensuing musical processes. Thus, the results of Portuguese presence in Asia are probably structurally different from those that occured in Africa and Brazil. 3

Several articles published in this journal contribute to the understanding of the musical repercussions of Portuguese presence in Asia. They were initially presented in a paper session within the 31st World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music (UNESCO) held in Hong-Kong and Macao in 1991 which was devoted to Portuguese musical influences in Asia.

The research carried out provides a grounding for future research. However, there are still many lacuna and there are areas where little or no research has been accomplished. Several questions need to be addressed in depth. For example, what were the musical traditions that were taken overseas by the Portuguese? How were these musics introduced? What was the role of missionary institutions and religious brotherhoods in introducing European music? How did multicultural performative genres develop? What was the role of music in the construction of identity in multicultural contexts? How have the myriad cultures with which Portugal has come in contact over the past five hundred years affected its own musical life in the past and present? How did the diverse nature and length of Portuguese presence overseas influence the ensuing musical processes?

The understanding of the repercussions of the encounters initiated through Portuguese expansion five hundred years ago on a central domain of human expressive behaviour can contribute to a more equilibrated vision of the past, present and future. □

NOTES

1 CASTELO-BRANCO, Salwa El-Shawan, Five Centuries of Cross-Cultural Processes in Music, in CASTELO-BRANCO, Salwa E1-Shawan, ed., "O Encontro de Culturas na Música: Portugal e o Mundo / Portugal and the World: The Encounter of Cultures in Music", Lisboa, Dom Quixote, 1996, pp. [bilingual edition in English and Portuguese].

2 CASTELO-BRANCO, Salwa El-Shawan, ed., O Encontro de Culturas na Música: Portugal e o Mundo / Portugal and the World: The Encounter of Cultures in Music, Lisboa, Dom Quixote, 1996 [bilingual edition in English and Portuguese].

3 See: Note 1.

* Ph. D in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University, New York. Professor at the Departamento de Ciências Musicais (Department of Ethnomusicology) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (New University of Lisbon), Lisbon. President of the Portuguese Instituto de Etnomusicologia (Musicological Society) and member of the board of the International Council for Traditional Music (UNESCO). Her extensive research in rural and urban Portugal as well as in the Middle East resulted in numberous articles and publications on music and related topics.