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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Acoustics Of Justice: Music And Myth In Afro-Brazilian Congado, Genevieve E. Dempsey
The Acoustics Of Justice: Music And Myth In Afro-Brazilian Congado, Genevieve E. Dempsey
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
For the Afro-Brazilian musicians of popular Catholicism, or Congadeiros, who live precariously on the urban and rural margins of Brazil, ritual undergirds their struggles for subsistence, spiritual fulfillment, and racial equality. When Congadeiros create ritual, they enter into a tradition begun in the seventeenth century in Brazil by their enslaved African and Afro-descendant ancestors who intoned songs of redemption. In keeping with their ancestors’ evocations of dignity during slavery, worshipers in the present day embed multiple kinds of vested interests within ritual festivity to achieve racial equality. This article explores Congado, the ceremonies of these disenfranchised musicians, to …
Relational Power, Music, And Identity: The Emotional Efficacy Of Congregational Song, Nathan Myrick
Relational Power, Music, And Identity: The Emotional Efficacy Of Congregational Song, Nathan Myrick
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Relational Power, Music, and Identity: The Emotional Efficacy of Congregational Song
The power of congregational song to unify (or divide) people along various lines is well documented. Yet, how this process of uniting or dividing is accomplished has proven necessarily difficult to document. This paper examines the complex and polyvalent factors that contribute to the meaningfulness of congregational music making, seeking to offer a synthetic, conceptual framework with which to engage this often murky milieu.
Employing interdisciplinary research techniques drawn from sociology, ritual studies, and ethnomusicology, I construct a conceptual framework with which to understand the profoundly formative power of …