This episode explores how women in the Azores, a Portuguese autonomous region in the North Atlantic Ocean, use their musical play on the viola da terra (a native Azorean chordophone) as a resource for postcolonial feminine performance.

This episode was produced by David Thurmaier along with Team Lead Shannon McAlister.

SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu; Closing music "hnna" by David Voss. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/season03/

Welcome to SMT-Pod, the premiere audio publication of the Society for Music Theory. In this week’s episode, Abigail Lindo explores how women in the Azores, a Portuguese autonomous region in the North Atlantic Ocean, use their musical play on the viola da terra (a native Azorean chordophone) as a resource for postcolonial feminine performance.

[Ensemble playing viola da terra]

Outside of downtown Ponta Delgada in São Miguel, the largest of nine islands in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores, there is a civil parish called Fajã de Baixo. It is home to about 5,000 residents and is the kind of place where everyone knows or has heard of everyone else in the area.

In this parish, across from the church that is central to the geographical architecture of each civil parish, there is a small, executive office, called a Junta de freguisia in Portuguese. This is where musician and composer Rafael Carvalho instructs his students on the viola da terra, a native Azorean chordophone. Can you hear them playing?

I should say, can you hear us? As I am one of the players in this ensemble. Another one of his students, Senora Ana Margarida Rêgo, has lived to see herself play the instrument she could formerly only observe men play, admiring their dexterity and skill in her childhood, adolescence, and early years as a mother and wife. She is now a viola da terra player at the age of 76 and exists within a multiplicity of being – not just relative to her current experiences as a musician but as a Portuguese woman tracing a legacy of resonances, a term I am using here to describe the prolonged reverberations of her identity evolving as her nation does the same.

For Senora Ana, the viola da terra is a marker of community and depth in her own personhood, and she believes more women should be playing. Here, I situate her musical engagement as a sign of modernism and liberation, while maintaining an Azorean simplicity in being, doing, and interacting that I have become enamored with.

[Transition music]

Go back in time with me. It’s a Tuesday in November 2022 and I am waiting for the bus by the marina. It gets dark around five in the evening now. The common buzz of cars and trucks whirl, punctuated by the steps of people passing by and the phone conversation of the woman to my left. The sky is deciding whether or not it wants to rain. So, indecision yields mist. I sit in the center of the wide-covered bus bench with my viola da terra between my legs in its case, protected. It’s just a loaner though. I’ll buy my own next week.

At this time I was learning to play the traditional Azorean string instrument as part of my dissertation fieldwork period in Ponta Delgada, which lasted from September 2022 to July 2023. Anyone who has previously listened knows about my lessons already and a bit about my research, but to make it short and sweet, I am interested in local musicking practices and how collective gatherings (like music festivals) shape a distinct form of sonic cosmopolitanism in the region. There is always something happening for locals to enjoy, and many traditional festivals and events feature the viola da terra, so it is only right that I get acquainted with the instrument.

Ok, ok… back in time again. I am getting off the bus and heading into my lesson, walking upstairs and entering into the book-filled room where we meet. In this space, I see Senora Ana for the first time. She is completing her lesson with Rafael, and he introduces us. Her voice is gentle, cracking in a high pitch as she greets me in Portuguese. I smile and stumble through salutations. She gives me a hug and I learn that her hands are as soft as her voice. We would later discuss how hands were an icon attracting her gaze and rousing wonderment when she observed viola da terra players performing during her childhood.

For centuries, the viola da terra (which we’ll just refer to as the viola) was played individually, accompanied only by the vocals of its player and others who would join in song. This sounding of the instrument occurred when the instrument was played by a single man in each village to entertain fishermen and farmers following their day of labor.

This individual was respected, though he would often be single since he regularly drank and stayed out into the morning hours and slept during the day. This was said to be a reality as early as the 17th century. Later, a patriarchal tradition of cultural maintenance began with the instrument becoming a familial practice, as men played in community groups and folclóricos. These groups often played songs once sung by the neighborhood viola player along with tunes from religious songs and choruses without clear origins.

These melodies were often simple and singable, featuring repeating ostinato with an accompaniment of a few chords, a logical practice considering the instrumental ensemble existed alongside a group of vocalists and dancers who regularly participated in secular and religious celebrations throughout the year.

As the function of the instrument has shifted from community entertainment to leisure and individuals learn in their spare time to establish community, ensembles play in larger groups and are accompanied by the violão, or classical guitar, along with other instruments and handheld percussion. Viola schools, like Carvalho’s in the civil parish of Fajã de Baixo, exist to teach prospective folclórico players how to handle and perform with their instrument, potentially leading to the development of improvisatory skills.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, lessons were temporarily canceled, then socially distanced, before returning to their regular arrangement. Of Carvalho’s current 16 students, seven are women, including myself, ranging from the age of 19 to 76. Carvalho notes that his female students are more attentive, initially handling their instruments with more care and practicing more intentionally following initial instruction. He states that all students, regardless of gender, demonstrate authentic interest in improving their instrumental play if they are committed to the instrument, but notes that many former female players have been more organized, aiding in their long-term success with the viola.

Repeat listeners may recall that I previously described my own experiences with learning the viola da terra, as I also contextualized and contended the insider-outside binary and its limitations as I completed fieldwork in the region. Hearing Senora Ana describe her initial experiences with the instrument and wishes of earlier tutelage, I cannot help but feel a sense of gratitude and reflection: this instrument is valuable, a tool for cultural memory and transformation.

From 1932 to 1968, António de Oliveira Salazar served as Portuguese prime minister, leading the corporatist dictatorship known as Estado Novo. This conservative, nationalist regime was an effort to reestablish Portuguese control in former African colonies, including Angola and Mozambique, regions that were earnestly fighting for their independence. Salazar avoided the mobilization of massive public rallies as spectacles seen in German Nazism and Italian fascism, opting instead, for a collective sense of pride demonstrated through imagined communities of citizens acting in collaborative cultural performances – like the dress, dance, and music of ranchos folclóricos (or just folclóricos, as many Azorean locals call it).

These performing groups began in the late 1930s, specializing in presentations of Portuguese folk songs in traditional embroidered costumes emulating pre-19th century attire although they were not empirically rooted in their execution.

During this period, Portuguese sociocultural knowledge focused on three F’s: The first, Fatima, or Roman Catholic religious ideology (since the Virgin Mary is “Our Lady of Fátima”); second, futbol, or soccer (a unifying leisure interest for Lusophone communities outside of Portugal); and third, fado, a popular style of Portuguese folk music originating in early 19th century Lisbon, with its most celebrated figure being Amália Rodrigues.

The late singer, who is known as the queen of fado, sung songs like “Lisboa Antiga” (or “Lisbon of Old”) and “Lisboa Não Sejas Francesa” (which translates to “Lisbon do not be French”) and these songs were used to uphold nationalist messages and normalize moral laws enacted to establish the purity of “Portugueseness” and position women as homemakers and nation makers through the maintenance of their purity and the purity of the family.

The three F’s intersected as vital aspects of identity, symbolizing collective values that could be imposed on other nations as Portugal sought to return to the world stage as colonizing force. In these three realms, Portuguese women maintained specific supportive roles, exerting their performative sonic and bodily knowledge in subordinate positions to male counterparts, only singing out along with fado songs, which was still typically done in the home.

These songs provided an expressive mode for women to tap into the saudade, the collective cultural spirit of mourning, longing, and joy, of what is now understood as the old fado, unlike the more joyous music that is found in tourist spaces throughout Lisbon, Coimbra, and other areas of mainland Portugal. In the context of fado or folclóricos, Salazar acknowledged the unifying power of musical engagement and sonic cultural knowledge, using these styles as political tools that gave deeper meaning to sound, noise, and the bodies that performed them.

[Clip from interview in Portuguese]

Throughout the regime, women were associated with virtuous female figures glorified in Catholicism, including Queen Saint Isabel and the Virgin Mary, and understood to have religious devotion as an act of maternal identity. A narrative was imposed that used terms like “natural” to signal the need for women to fulfill traditional roles associated with women in the home prior to the Industrial Revolution.

They existed as socio-political subjects who demonstrated womanhood and femininity by rejecting feminism and, along with their male counterparts, subscribing to ideas of the “natural” woman as one dedicated to maintaining and serving the Portuguese home.

[Clip from interview in Portuguese]

In January 2023 I interviewed Senora Ana, with Rafael translating. She stated that she loved the songs she heard but was more mesmerized by the fingers moving on the hands of viola players: she was fascinated by the agility of their hands dancing around the neck and body of the instrument. She appreciated the skill of the musicians playing the instrument, rekindling this appreciation during her own instruction, as she observed Carvalho’s hands playing scales and songs on the viola.

Beyond some imagined, “natural” female existence, Senora Ana’s present viola playing, and collective musical engagement demonstrates a connection to cultural heritage and acknowledgment of changing feminine roles in relation to sociopolitical realities, Azorean identity, and aging.

At 76 years old, she has lived many lives, carrying the titles and responsibilities of wife and mother. She now exists with her instrument as an act of pleasure serving her own desires while still signaling the more liberal existence she enjoys in the bodily performance of cultural identity she experiences in learning and playing the viola.

Although Rafael is preparing all musicians for the various functions their instrument could play in Azorean society, individuals can learn for their pleasure without doing anything beyond their weekly lessons. In the safety of viola and folkloric rehearsals, Senora Ana and other women who play viola da terra do not face the same cultural friction women of a former era would have endured.

Rafael instructs students from September to May, and throughout this period, he plans concerts to showcase student talent. While our recital in December 2022 featured more collaborative pieces and small ensembles, a shorter and more intimate concert in March of 2023 focused more on individual development. This concert primarily featured individual students on their violas accompanied by Rafael on the violão, or classical guitar. Here I am, struggling,

[Abigail playing the viola da terra]

…and here is Senora Ana, shining.

[Senora Ana playing the viola da terra]

You can hear Senora Ana’s hands, or at least the music they make.

While I knew I wanted to study the viola as a beneficial aspect of my ethnographic approach and challenge to my novice competency with string instruments, something was stirred in me when I considered Senora Ana, her instrument of choice, and her story. She is a simple woman, amicable and devoted to her familial roles and instrumental practice. She was born in Fajã de Baixo, maintains weekly viola lessons in Fajã de Baixo, and performs in concerts among other players in Fajã de Baixo.

Her existence and persistence in the space of her birth, the space where she has been, is currently, and will be, kindles thoughts of spatial and temporal resonance, of transformative imaginations of postcolonial becoming that shifts the invisible labor of Portuguese matriarchs to the foreground in subtle but meaningful ways.

When I say resonance, I am referring to the prolonged reverberation of Senora Ana as a presence in the space of Fajã de Baixo, as an observer and experiencer of her own Portuguese identity evolving, moving with the ripples of these realities. She lingers, and how she moves through space, makes meaning, and, in doing so, transforms former realities, is meaningful.

There are new spaces, practices, and functions in which her body can take up space and her identity as a Portuguese woman is expanded in this way. Her actions provoke new histories, revising gendered scripts and opening dialogues for the potential of alternative cultural knowledge in bodily performance.

This performance passively communicates emotion, something Ahmed describes as involving “bodily processes of affecting and being affected;” they are “a matter of how we come into contact with objects and others”. Senora Ana goes through the bodily process of emoting with instrument in hand, with the actual practice sometimes creating frustration, while completion of a performance (like the one in March), yielding pride and happiness.

With becoming, I am situating Senora Ana as a cultural agent rewriting female subjectivity and living it throughout the years within her quiet existence, slight stature, and small but powerful hands. She is reflecting this reality, and this reality is something she has experienced bodily, with other women (who came after her seeking to learn the viola) greatly benefiting from it. Intersectionality is always spatial, and Mollett and Faria additionally consider how intersectionality, as an aspect of Black feminist thought, provides visibility for multiple subjectivities and forms of power.

Feminist liberation is not just women outside of the home, or in the workplace (as the former regime reviled), but celebrates women possessing the option to exist in both spaces or neither space, opting instead for leisure in third spaces among others. Senora Ana enjoys her weekly lessons but loves collective lessons before concerts, which allow her small mistakes while playing to be hidden, and facilitating a space where she can have conversations with fellow musicians.

There are young girls, under ten, a teenager and her mother in her forties, and another woman in her forties, along with Senora Ana. There are generations of Portuguese being and becoming in these spaces, different modes of understanding and experiencing this music. The viola is an exemplar of her strength and a tool to define sonic notions of Azorean identity now, and everyone can strum a distinct song of their “Portugueseness” and belonging.

Visit our website smt-pod.org for supplemental materials related to this episode and to learn how to submit an episode proposal. Join in on the conversation by tweeting your questions and comments @SMT_Pod. SMT Pod's theme music was written by Zhangcheng Lu with closing music by David Voss. Thanks for listening!