Cantando e contando histórias e memórias: letra de música como espaço de representações identitárias negras.

Abstract

This thesis analyzes expressions of black ethnic identities in the lyrics of songs performed by Banda Reflexu's between the years 1987 to 1993 in order to understand how the representations of black identity occurred in those songs performed by that band. Therefore, the lyrics were separated by recurring themes such as the appreciation of black ethnic identities, ancestry and religiosity, and, finally, the representations of black women. It is a study developed interdisciplinary with theoretical assumptions of Cultural Studies, Black Feminism and contemporary literary historiography. To this end, the concepts of representation (WOODWARD, 2014), identity (HALL, 2003; MUNANGA, 2009a), difference (HALL, 2003) and blackness (MUNANGA, 2009b; FERREIRA, 2021) are discussed in order to understand how such representations contribute to the discursive constructions of ethnic identities, the selected corpus is confronted from the identification of the most recurrent themes and how they discursively present black men and women. The clipping presented here ranges from the memory records of Banda Reflexu’s found on digital pages, analysis of vinyl record covers and testimonies published in posts of songs in digital media; the presentation of the main concepts used in this study and, finally, the analysis of the letters listed for this study. It is hypothesized, therefore, that the discourses present in the corpus of this work make it possible to think about black identity expressions at that moment from the analysis of the lyrics, the importance of the band and what it represented in the 90's, as, more than thirty years after its trigger, new listeners receive the lyrics and performance of the band and how all this dialogues with the impressions of the author of this study that presents itself in first person from beginning to end.