Singing in two, three or more voices, a predominantly modal repertoire, a legacy from traditional agrarian society, is the way in which women fight for sustaining the social memory in the 21st century. It is sung in parallel thirds, fifths and, at times, eighths. The tempo distends itself as each of the voices comes in, prolonging itself in the final suspension. The singers argue that the interlacing of the voices and individual vocalizations generates great happiness. In the 21st century, these women hold the knowledge of a repertoire, musical abilities and vocalizations that they wish to see safeguarded and recognized. They want to share and transmit to the next generations, the intersubjective and liminal experience of the multipart singing which reverberates in their bodies. They asked for our collaboration in inscribing this sensitive knowledge in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, with the expectation of later joining the UNESCO list. We created a team, set out for the field, and spoke with dozens of cantadeiras (singers), encouraging them to activate the “women´s singing”, as some like to call it. We wanted to know how they sing and why they do it. Below we share some of the moments from this encounter.
Women's Multipart Singing in three or more voices in the 21st century
As Cantadeiras
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Though the memory of the songs is shared with the men, the musical skill of superimposition of voices in parallel fifths is exclusive to women. Women give body and voice to the multipart singing, in a collective resonance which does not dilute the individual vocalizations. Throughout reiterated performances, these cantadeiras incorporate the skills of multipart singing which enable them to act, be it by singing, expressing themselves, taking on a critical appreciation of the singing and, in certain circumstances, creating new verses and melodic ornaments. Therefore, in our research, we sought to bring to the understanding of the words not only the relational space of the singing, but also the whom of who sings.
A Few Examples
Repertoire
The anchor of this repertoire are the cantadeiras initiated within the family, during agricultural work, in pastoralism and, during the planting of the forest, and more recently, during rehearsals. Having rural origins, this repertoire of knowledge and skills is incorporated and safeguarded predominantly by women in the centre and north of Portugal. They hold the same musical tradition, and through their voices materialize the collective knowledge. The performances of multipart singing, which reverberate in the acoustic space of the mountains, fields and streets, remain alive in the memories of the older cantadeiras, maintaining a dialogue and challenging other groups. The social pregnancy of those performances is also present in the different designations which multipart singing acquired, from “canto”, “cantedo”, “cantarola”, “cantada”, “cramol” and “terno”, to “cantaréu” and “cantaraço”. In the same way, each of the voices that wove the choral texture earned distinct nomenclatures, depending on the locality where it was cultivated.
Descante, erguer e outras designações
Memórias do Canto a Vozes
The groups of cantadeiras
Formally and informally constituted groups, both in rural and urban contexts, give life to multipart singing in three or more voices in the 21st century. They distribute the singing voices in a non-egalitarian manner given that, frequently, there are, in each group, only two or three women who know how to superimpose the sharper voices. They are both feminine and mixed groups, at times generated within other groups and folklore ranchos, with an agenda of rehearsals and public presentations. They differ in their repertoires, number of singing voices and attire: most of them limit their presentations to the locality or region where the group is headquartered, and in this sense, the groups “Cantadeiras do Minho”, “Cramol”, “Segue-me à Capela” and “Sopa de Pedra” are the exception, as they sing a repertoire which is free from that cartography.
Activism
In the 21st century, cantadeiras make multipart singing a practice of memory, identity and, in certain cases, the fight for sustainability of the local social ecosystem, of their villages. They are aware of the great transformations which ruptured the traditional order of agrarian society within which some grew up, of the new social values which have silenced the public space and the compulsive mobility of their fellow countrymen subject to migratory exodus and, more recently, to the commuter mobility of retirees who reside a few months in their country of origin and others in the country that hosted them.
In most cases, it is the activist women who are safeguarding the necessary knowledge for multipart singing in three voices, who organize themselves in a group, formally or informally constituted, to intervene in their localities on four fronts: they impel the older women to share the knowledge they retain.
Create performance contexts enabling collective experiences around the multipart singing in three voices.
Recall in the public space the selective group of stories, discourses and repertoires which makes up the local social memory, whether in short speeches preceding a choral performance or by exhibiting objects and ways of dressing which attest to the collective experience of past generations.
They seek to interest the children and young people in learning that repertoire. This activism seeks to strengthen and renew the supports and conventional means of transmitting the knowledge and common memory. And thus, they confront the rupture with the traditional forms of agrarian society, in which that knowledge had a daily social function, and confront the break in the continuity of relationships (dislocation, migration, emptying of the public space, low birth rate) which affectively weaved remembering and forgetting into the memory of societies. Parallel to that, they battle externally for the recognition of the da cultural difference they retain.
Knowledge transmission
These women generate relational spaces in the remembrance of “cantas”, “cantadas”, “cantedos” ou “cramóis”. They know that the sustainability of multipart singing depends on its reiteration in different contexts and on its transmission to subsequent generations. In the 21st century, multipart singing skills are transmitted within the context of rehearsal, by observation and reproduction by the olders of the tradition, by listening to sound recordings, or by mediation by a formal conductor who transmits the musical transcriptions of the ethnographers orally. During this process, the new cantadeiras broaden their knowledge of modas and cânticos and conquer the right to the individuation of their voice.
Creativity
In the 21st century, the groups of women who actively look after the sustainability of multipart singing are divided into those who defend the reproduction of historical documentation and those who promote the safeguarding in dialogue with the present, or the recent past, incorporating individual creativity. In these cases, the authorial contribution of each one, is not specified to the outside. Small informal groups, of family members or neighbours, integrate verses recently created by women with that knowledge, into the traditional modas. However, those verses are not a part of the repertoire of the groups which represent those localities
Arquivo: Etnografia e colecionismo
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Folcloristas e etnógrafos documentaram a diversidade das peças musicais do canto a vozes, desde finais do século XIX. Os corais de matriz rural a duas vozes que se movem á distância de terceiras paralelas estão documentados desde finais do século XIX, em diferentes localidades, do Minho ao Alentejo. Em 1890, defendia-se na revista Amphion a coleta dos cantos populares com a identificação do tipo de “harmonia” praticada. O termo “harmonia” referia-se à sobreposição de vozes, sendo novamente utilizado na Circular que o Conselho Musical do Real Conservatório de Lisboa elaborou em 1902 com a finalidade de compilar num cancioneiro cantigas populares de diferentes partes do país. Mas foi o botânico Gonçalo Sampaio quem mais cedo analisou de modo sistemático o canto feminino a três e mais vozes, centrando o seu estudo na região do Minho. Logo em 1926, numa conferência proferida na cidade do Porto, apresentou um grupo a cantar, em terceiras e quintas paralelas, uma moda do linho coligida por si em Póvoa de Lanhoso. Autor da primeira classificação dos cantos populares do Minho, viu nas “modas de terno” ou de “lote” a quatro ou cinco vozes femininas semelhanças com o cantochão, afirmando que a melodia principal se encontra na voz mais grave, sobrepondo-se as outras por cima: “As vozes graves que fazem ouvir a melodia chamam-se baixos e são elas que iniciam o canto; mas um destes que toma o nome de baixão, desdobra, às vezes, em função de contrabaixo, para a nota inferior de certos acordes, como no acorde perfeito da dominante, as semi-cadências. Depois da primeira ou primeiras frases dos baixos, entra o meio, a que nalgumas localidades chamam desquadro, acompanhando superiormente a melodia em 3ªs e algumas vezes em 4ªs. Nas semi-cadências é que geralmente começa o guincho, denominado também desencontro, ou requinta, ou 2º meio, conforme as terras, harmonizando por via de regra em 5ªs ou 6ªs dos baixos. É na última frase ou na última nota do canto que se levanta o sobreguincho ou fim, executando a réplica aos baixos.” (Sampaio 1929). Deve-se a Armando Leça e aos técnicos da Emissora Nacional de Radiodifusão que o acompanharam entre 1939 e 1940 a primeira coleção de registos sonoros do canto feminino a três e mais vozes nas regiões centro e norte do país. Depois dessa data foram vários os etnógrafos e coletores que documentaram esta prática coral.
1938
1939
1940
1956
Ambientes da Memória Social
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As profundas transformações que ocorreram nas aldeias nas últimas décadas, retiraram significado social aos rituais cíclicos ligados à sociedade agrária. No século XXI, são sobretudo mulheres as ativistas pela transmissão do conhecimento e pela manutenção dos ambientes de memória social, ou seja, os textos e contextos de experiência coletiva, comunitária, do canto a vozes. Sabem que a memória social habita os corpos e requer a prática social reiterada, aberta à dialética do lembrar e esquecer e por isso fazem do cantar a vozes uma prática de memória, identidade e, em certos casos, de luta pela sustentabilidade do ecossistema social local, das suas aldeias. São conhecedoras das grandes transformações que romperam com a ordem tradicional da sociedade agrária na qual algumas cresceram, dos novos valores sociais que silenciaram o espaço público e da compulsiva mobilidade dos seus conterrâneos sujeitos a êxodos migratórios e, mais recentemente, à mobilidade pendular dos aposentados que residem uns meses no país de origem e outros no país de acolhimento.
The “Encomendação das almas”
The “encomendação”, “amentação” or “ementação” of souls is a cult ritual of the dead performed at night, during Lent. On those night, ‘ementadores’, ‘amentadores’, ‘rogadores’ or ‘regrantes’, go down paths to sing their own repertoire and pray for the souls. They can be heard from afar and, waiting in their homes, those who hear them can participate by praying. They are groups of men, women or both who, due to devotion or activism on behalf of the local culture, chant hymns such as the Alerta, the Oração às Almas, the Paixão, or the Martírios do Senhor, and pray out loud, prayers from the catholic liturgy (such as the Our Father, the Hail Mary, or the Salve Regina). After having gone extinct in many of the localities where it used to be practiced, this ritual has gained a new expression in the 21st century, becoming a part of the agendas of the activists on behalf of the local culture and the touristic cultural programs of the local municipalities. The sound of some of the canticles, which constitute some of this practice, has been documented since 1939 in the Recolha Folclórica, directed by Armando Leça with the technical support of the Emissora Nacional de Radiodifusão (national radio and television in Portugal). Ten years later, Vergílio Pereira described this ritual in the Cancioneiro de Resende (Pereira 1950). In this year, also began the study done by Margot Dias and Jorge Dias (Dias and Dias 1953). The interest in this ritual was also shared during this same period by three more members of the Comissão de Etnografia e História do Douro Litoral (Ethnography and History Commission of Douro Litoral), Augusto César Pires de Lima and Alexandre Lima Carneiro (Lima and Carneiro 1951) and Manuel Rodrigues Simões Júnior (1953).
Missa
Mediation (policies, media and cultural industries])
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Until the end of the 1970s, the periodicals would only mention multipart singing with regards to the activity of folklorists and ethnographers such as Gonçalo Sampaio, Armando Leça, Artur Santos and Michel Giacometti, or the commercial edition of the collection Alvorada, of Rádio Triunfo. With the exception of the eight programs disseminated by the Emissora Nacional de Radiodifusão in 1940, where Armando Leça revealed a small part of the collection of sound recordings assembled as part of the Recolha Folclórica, between 1939 and 1940, news items with regards to groups and cantadeiras such Isabel Silvestre, only come after the reinstatement of democracy in Portugal. Those are also the years during which commercial recording intensifies, with Valentim de Carvalho playing a major role in the 80s, with the release of records by the Grupo Etnográfico de Cantares e Trajes de Manhouce. The dissemination on a large scale of multipart singing, resulting from the record and performance media industries is, in the 21st century, a requisite for the sustainability of multipart singing. Being aware of this, multipart singing groups endeavour to gain access to radio and television, and spend much of their resources (and give up their rights to sales) on recording a CD.
Rádio
Televisão
Indústria
