Narradores de Marrabenta música e nação em Moçambique

Abstract

Narradores da Marrabenta: música e nação em Moçambique is a study about the Mozambican music, produced in the countryside, the newly formed outskirts of Lourenço Marques and by the Mozambican scene present on the South African record label circuit, in the first half of the 20th century. The research aimed to show the marrabenta as a form of popular resistance of Lourenço Marques, in the colonial period, considering that it has modified the Lourenço Marques urban scenario, giving rise to a local aesthetic. This aesthetic arises from the amalgamation of traditional Mozambican rhythms and the western technological resources available at the time (basically, bass, guitar, drums, electric keyboards and wind instruments), and differs from the previous context marked by the predominance of a western musical aesthetic, including Brazilian rhythms. The study consisted of a recording stage of 11 testimonies, along with a bibliographic research. The deponents, here named as Narradores da Marrabenta (title given to the documentary which is one of the thesis chapters), from the perspective of oral history, reveal themselves as authors and central thinkers of the theme. Furthermore, based on a bibliography that reflects, predominantly, the decentered western thought, the research reveals the marrabenta as an aesthetic-musical elaboration of the outskirts, which, possibly, thinks and forges, a Mozambican identity in the Lourenço Marques outskirts, contrasting with the colonial features that still exist. Likewise, it suggests that the movement/rhythm is a proposal of specific nationalism, which is not attuned to Portuguese colonial nationalism (even adhering to a western musical technology), nor to FRELIMO's modern nationalism (even breaking with Portuguese colonialism). As a theoretical foundation, studies are used such as those by António Sopa (2014), Eduardo Mondlane (1995), José Craveirinha (2008), José Luís Cabaço (2009), Luís Bernardo Honwana (2017), Mario Pinto de Andrade (1997), Maria Paula Meneses (2016), Rui Laranjeira (2014), Marilio Wane (2020/2021), among others.