Revising citizenship: migration and fado in the play of identities in ...

samba to the Brazilians, explaining the nationalist identity they were representing.Invariably, local notions of tradition were connected with concepts such as “style”,“Portuguese identity” (without explanation) and antiquity of the repertoire. It was widelyconsidered among participants, even in Lisbon, that fado and Portuguese musichad lost its “Portuguese identity” in the last two decades. Worried, a musician inLisbon noted:“There is no defined style in modern Portuguese music. Portuguese music continues insearch of a style, which it cannot find. In the old days, there was a determined style, atrue style. Today, they try new things, but they fall into the old things again. They haven’tdiscovered yet anything new and valid. And now with Portuguese membership of the EEC(European Economic Community) things are getting even worse. Now Portugal is only a Europeancountry, it has nothing more. It is empty in my opinion it completely lost its identity,as Portuguese music did” (João Matos, personal interview, Lisbon 29.08.1990, in Carvalho,1991:80).The disappointment associated with the “loss of identity of Portuguese music, andof fado’s in particular” was common to both homeland and migrant contexts in thepublic spaces visited. Musicians seemed to be unanimous. However, there action expressedas “correct”, did not correspond to the indicators of success mentioned. Itwas not in tune with the reported “optimum” phase in fado’s reception mentioned bythe same musician:“We are in an optimum phase of fado reception. It is getting better in the last five or sixyears. I had another profession (architect designer), but now I only play the guitar.” (JoãoMatos, personal interview, Lisbon, 29.08.1990, in Carvalho, 1991:73).The disappointment was also not in tune with the relaxed state and contagious animationreached in the dancing parts of the Grande Noite de Fados in Newark. Mindand body reactions opposed in that. Neither the body animation in the migrant dancenor the satisfactory financial results reported were enough to overcome the negativemental construction that prevented participants rejoicing at the good results obtained.The opposing roles of body and mind competing within music mediation were revealingintimate/rational and public/physical domains of identity in that performancecontext. Strange feelings obscured the possible satisfaction in the representation ofPortuguese citizenship through fado not only in the migrant community in the US butalso in Lisbon.… dealing with identity …The discrepancy between rational and physical responses to music stimulus by participantsin that situation, stressed the plurality of identity roles, pointing to awkwardnessor inability in its interpretation. It is not easy to understand one’s exquisite anddynamic identity in a world undergoing increasing diversification, multicultural andin consequent demand of interpretive openness. With Appiah, in his comments onthe writings of Amartya Sen, I argue that in order to understand our identity, we need82 Music and Migration