Gonzagão e Gonzaguina: percurso, sonoridade e métrica de brasilidades insubmissas

Abstract

This thesis discusses how the life courses of Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento (Gonzagão) and his son Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento Júnior (Gonzaguinha) influenced their musical productions, which themselves can be seen as unsubmissive discourses of Brazilianities. The father was originally from the backwoods of Pernambuco (Northeast region), before moving to Rio de Janeiro, where he attained great success in the 1940s and 50s; while the son was born in Morro de São Carlos, in the periphery of Rio de Janeiro (Southeast region) and appeared on the national scene during the 1970s and 80s. Both came from historically marginalized places in Brazil (backwoods and favela), were black men belonging to an underprivileged social class and, nevertheless, reached places of prestige in the pantheon of Música Popular Brasileiro without giving up a speaking of yourself that identified them as “peripheral” subjects. This fact demonstrates that the musicians studied, despite many dissimilarities, utilized different estratégias gingadas and confronted the official representations of a national identity. To arrive at such ideas, I took as a corpus of analysis, in addition to their life courses, some songs by each artist that allude to the three main questions of the thesis: autobiographical songs about trajectory/displacement; songs that enunciate ideas about Brazil; and songs that address the affective relationship between father and son. To nourish the discussions, I took as theoretical bases concepts and reflections coming from postcolonial and decolonial thinking.