ETHNOGRAPHY AND POPULAR POETRY IN FOLKLORIC SONGBOOKS: AMADEU AMARAL, JOSÉ DE ALENCAR E MÁRIO DE ANDRADE

Abstract

Between the last quarter of the 19th century and the mid-20th century, the worldwide vogue of folk songbooks arose in Brazil among the nation’s cultural construction projects. Such collections of popular oral expressions were guided by concepts of ethnography that, synthesized in the native category “harvest”, this text seeks to illuminate. Amidst great variety, the quatrains - considered to be among the simplest poetic forms - lead the examination of the registries made by three writers: Amadeu Amaral, José de Alencar and Mário de Andrade. Misaligning temporalities, Alencar, with “O rabicho da Geralda”, from 1874, allows us to compare the distinct ways in which Amaral, in the 1920s, and Mário de Andrade, in the 1930s/40s, practiced ethnography in their respective and unfinished songbooks. Along the way, moving between orality and writing, the grace and power of the recorded poetic forms challenge us and bring the past of songbooks into the present.

Keywords:
Ethnography; Popular poetry; Folkloric songbooks; Orality; Writing