On 27 November 2014, the Alentejo Cante was declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). As was exemplarily explained in the application presented, the “song of the land” is type of collective, polyphonic singing, in a slow tempo, nearly always melancholic, without resorting to instruments. It combines music and poetry, and it is geographically associated with Lower Alentejo, portraying the “umbilical relationship between the worker and their motherland”. Composed entirely of either male or female singers, the Cante’s musical structure is composed of two solo voices, one high and one low, which alternate with a choir, in stanzas repeated in a cycle as often as the singers wish. It is the expression of a people, a unique vernacular tradition, which reflects the identity and the history of a community and a region.
In a partnership with Museu do Cante de Serpa, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its status as Intangible Cultural Heritage with Livro Segundo, op.57, from the Novíssimo Cancioneiro by Nuno Côrte-Real (1971). Dedicated to Maria Pinto Cortez and her Cancioneiro de Serpa (1994), an essential ethnographic collection compiled over a lifetime and profusely illustrated by the author, Livro Segundo, op.57 is also the result of an ethnographic collection carried out in Serpa by the composer who, due to occasional family circumstances, spent his childhood there.
External musical narratives are multiplied and appear to divert the Cante from its identity and authenticity. However, contrary to appearances, they neither divert nor upstage. Instead of Côrte-Real’s habitual musical transparency, we encounter an unusual opacity, not unlike a whitewashed music score, emulating the traditionally white Alentejo houses. In this Livro Segundo, we sense a deliberate crudeness, a percussive and penetrating chant that echoes across the serenity of the Alentejo plains. It is the crudeness of hard days of labour, of a miserable existence, a rhythmic and dilacerating poverty that found, in the Cante and its poetry, both an expression and an escape.
Programme
E. Carrapatoso (n.1962)
Llaços, contradanças e descantes
N. Côrte-Real (n. 1971)
Cante (Novíssimo Cancioneiro – Livro Segundo)
