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

challenges established canons and leads us to question and rebuild ways of life. Thereference to the“global village in which we all live” requires reflection on the validityof the distinction of citizenship of national base. It is my aim to argue for the study ofmusic among migrants, and fado performance in particular, to observe nuances andmeanings of identity as a multipart performing, fluid and adaptable human characteristic,operating on individual and collective dimensions of each one’s life.Music performance is a multifaceted and dynamic human phenomenon, involving rathercapricious and sometimes intellectually elaborate, physical, aesthetical, socialand symbolic dimensions, challenging barriers, amplifying the voice of its producersand touching its receivers. It rends itself particularly effective for an interpretive observationof citizenship representation in the intercultural arena. In an approach tothe concept of identity, acknowledging its fluidity and performing character (Hall anddu Gay, 1996; Baumann, 1996), I present a Portuguese Night also billed as the GrandNight of Fados in Newark, in 1990. Material for purposes of reference was collected inLisbon, in the context of fado performances for tourists in the restaurants Adega Machado,which closed in 2009 after 72 years in business, and Adega Mesquita, foundedin 1941 and still open. 2 I carried out field and archival work from 1993 to 2000, basedon the Archive of SNI (Secretariado Nacional de Informação [Secretariat of NationalInformation], then Secretaria de Estado da Informação e Turismo [Secretary of Statefor Information and Tourism]) of the former Portuguese dictatorship.Paradigmatic interplays of behaviour involving mind and body, acting in adversity,revealed identity dilemmas that, questioning old nationalist canons, gave way tonew individual interpretations on citizenship representation. The Ethnomusicologyperspective, in which I am inscribed, studies music phenomena related with, amongothers, its hybrid character and national use. Inspiring texts have been written aboutthe role of music in the understanding of change and in helping social transformation.Among them Music and the Global Order by Martin Stokes identifies circulationacross cultural borders and the musical dynamics of interculture (2004). In time ofmass migration and electronic mediation that elected music as a key channel of expression,communication, amusement and profit making, political use of this kind ofinformed analysis will aid in human collaborative development. The action of decisionmakers in the design of effective public policies stemming models networking musicresearch, animation, experimentalism and diffusion (Carvalho, 2010) will surely benefitfrom the strengthening of such pursuit.The Portuguese Night was fruitful. We were entering the third month of contact.Besides listening, enjoying the ambience, eating, recording the fado repertoire andspeach, note taking and talking to develop interviewing strategic actions, my participantobservation took me into levels of significance, whose decoding clues and understandingtake eventually some time still. The Portuguese Night at the restaurantSerra da Estrela 3 in Newark, New Jersey, next to New York City, was, in 1990, rathercomplete. In the Portuguese community of the Ironbound district, is still today a referentialplace for fado in the US.Migrações _ #7 _ October 201075