Festa, dança e alegria: uma etnografia musical pomerana ao sul do sul do Brasil – São Lourenço do Sul/RS.

Abstract

This Pomeranian musical ethnography in southern Brazil begins with my engagement as a teacher in Pomerando Project, where I got in contact with the Pomeranian language and music. This project was developed at the Municipal School of Elementary Education Germano Hübner, located in Santa Tereza, 3rd District of São Lourenço do Sul, state of Rio Grande do Sul, rural area. The ethnography firstly went through both an auto-ethnographic period and a pre-ethnographic one, aiming the necessary location of the ethnographer and the proper entrance to the field. A subsequential period aimed a maturation methodological and theoretical deepening, directed to the research methodology and to the utilization of the New Musicology, the cultural memory’s concept, the Ethnomusicology, the musical ethnography, the Oral History, the photography, the Organology, and the cultural hybridism and historical time’s concepts as analytical categories. Afterwards, the research community, the Serra dos Tapes Pomeranian descendants, was contextualized in the light of the historiography about the Pomeranians and their emigration process, and of the reflection concerning the memory, the identity and the Pomeranian cultural heritage in the region. So, finally, I realized a Pomeranian musical ethnography itself, through the analysis of some traditional Pomeranian songs registered previously, in the light of New Musicology and cultural memory, and my insertion, as bandoneonist, in a Pomeranian band of the region, Musical Boa Esperança. This allowed an analysis of the Pomeranian musical context from within. After the ethnography mentioned previously, there was room for complementary researches where other aspects of Pomeranian memory and identity were approached through Oral History interviews – with local bandoneonists and a deceased bandoneon luthier’s daughter – and organological analysis of ancient photos – that contain the music presence in the community studied. It was also possible to hold a discussion on the most evident aspect of the musical ethnography performed, namely hybridism, set within a concept framework of historical time. It was concluded that, despite the evident hybridism – a present future, its horizon of expectations, associated with the desire to update – the Pomeranian music practiced in Serra dos Tapes in the present remains linked to its roots – to its present past, its space of experience, linked to its musical traditions –, situated in a cultural balance point that the local community recognizes and supports it.