Vozes e versos quilombolas : uma poética identitária e de resistência em Helvécia

Abstract

This thesis has as its object of study song-poems, an oral poetic expression of Helvécia Quilombo, located in the extreme south of Bahia. These song-poems, built from intersubjective experiences and voiced by black women singers, sometimes are answers and sometimes are questions about the historical, social-affective and confrontations of everyday life circumstances. To register, to describe and to analyze these poetic expressions that deal with the representation of African heritage, their identities, resignifications and resistance constitute the guiding objectives of this thesis. These song-poems, as a poetic instrument of struggles and of sacred celebrations, are able to activate memories of a lived and narrated time. When voiced by these specific singers to the beat of the lying drum, such poems take shape, rhythm and meaning in the performances of bate-barriga, of embarreiro, in the litanies by presenting ancestral stories, praises and prayers, conflict, love and work. Contextually, the song-poems illustrate the meaning of the voice in Helvécia, negotiations, discussions and struggles for citizenship and freedom from Cologne Leopoldina, an allotment established in 1818 and from which Helvécia Quilombo has its origin. It is highlighted in this thesis, the role that the song-poem reveals, from its poetic discourses and social voices related to Helvécia, its history and its people, and its outstanding importance in the maroon recognition process. This thesis promotes a direct dialogue between the discourses of such women singers and the theoretical basis and has culminated with a production of a dvd to demonstrate the performance so important to the poetic of these women singers of Helvécia and the transcription of every song-poem voiced by them, important to mention for the first time recorded. The results of this research and the analyzes that support this thesis dialogue with the conception of otherness proposed by Bakhtin; with the theories of the living tradition, according to Hampâté Bâ; the presence of voice and poetic orality in Paul Zumthor; the literalization of orality in Jean Derrive; concept of narrator and story in Walter Benjamin and, Walter Ong and the psychodynamics of orality.