THE GLOSA AT SERTÃO DO PAJEÚ (PERNAMBUCO, BRASIL): POETIC FORMS AND SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

Abstract

This article investigates the links between expressive forms and social interactions from an ethnographic analysis of the glosa - a practice of poetic improvisation from the Sertão in the Brazilian Northeast - and its contemporaneous transformations. For such, we sought to combine theoretical frameworks of linguistics (structuring of communicative codes), linguistic anthropology (the central role of situation and contrast among various codes), and ethnomusicology (the need to capture the concrete, sense-accessible dimension of culturally established codes and structures). Steven Feld’s contributions to analyzing verbal arts and his theoretical thoughts on epistemological flows between linguistics and ethnomusicology and on the relations between language, music, sound, and social life are, thus, reference.

Keywords:
Expressive forms; Improvisation; Poetry; Music; Language