Das tripas ao aço: violas nordestinas de dez cordas na música instrumental

Abstract

In the last decades, the ten-string Brazilian violas have entered into musical genres and styles different from those in which they set foot in the popular manifestations, which wer predominantly rural. The guitar players did not abandon their cultural origins, however, they did not stop dialoguing with their time, by the way, a fast, cosmopolitan, urban, technological and globalized time. The title given – From the guts to the steel – intends to demonstrate notorious transformations that have taken place in the field of Brazilian ten-string violas in the last decades, which was also noticed in the instrumental music scene of the northeastern violas. The present work, temporally, is situated in the present time and focuses on guitar players in their urban contexts. In order to understand the aforementioned sound phenomenon, initially, we carried out a netnographic survey with 184 musicians from 17 federative units of the country, which allowed us to extract quantitative and qualitative data, which were essential to dialogue with the second stage of the research, this one of ethnographic nature. The fieldwork has been carried out since the second half of 2018, opportunity in which we accompanied five guitar players from two different northeastern capitals: - João Pessoa/PB: Pedro Osmar, Cristiano Oliveira and Salvador di Alcântara; - Recife/PE: Adelmo Arcoverde and Hugo Linns. From the participant observation of the five guitar players and also from the dialogue with the exploratory stage, it was possible to problematize the notion of Instrumental Music and point out the local and global musical influences that characterize their music. We also focused on the analysis of the musical instruments (violas) used by them and their respective tunings. We also tried to perceive some common and unique characteristics of the instrumental music produced by the subjects of the research, facing three “musical mentalities”: modalism, experimentation and improvisation. We attempted to bring the meanings built by the subjects and, through the autoscopies, it was the guitar players themselves who analyzed their cultural artifacts (CDs, DVDs, albums, shows, method, etc). The thesis was intended to be a hypertext, since in addition to the written text, we indicate through hyperlinks various audios, videos, spreadsheets, interviews, magazines and a series of information which compose our interpretations. Among the subjects of the research, it was possible to perceive two generations of guitar players, both in the role of bringing a place in the shade for their instrumental viola songs. We conclude that the musical works, of the five guitar players observed, are powerful in pointing out that the northeastern traditions remain alive, even in the face of the effervescent transformations, innovations and dialogues which have occurred with the music of the world.