A study of Macanese music through Tuna Macaense Group in a postcolonial perspective (1935-2017)

• Autor(a) principal: Si Man Chan
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/24432
• topic: Ethnomusicology; Postcolonial Theory; Macau; Macanese music; Portuguese-Macanese music; Patuá; Cultural value

It has been several centuries since the “Age of Discoveries” of Portugal, but the results of this past still exist in some places of the world where Portuguese had passed by. Those results are mainly related to Catholicism, music and language. Macau was one of the colonies of Portugal but after the transfer of sovereignty to China, Macau didn‟t become an independent country. It was integrated into China and had become one of the special administrative regions of China. In Macau different kind of communities are living, namely, the Chinese, the Portuguese and the Macanese. In the last one we have people who define themselves as Portuguese-Macanese and others who prefer to be identified as Chinese-Macanese. This dissertation is dedicated to the role of music in the context of the Portuguese-Macanese who can be distinguished from the other communities by a singular cuisine, music and language. The language Patuá is a distinctive Creole and was classified as a “critically endangered” language by the UNESCO in 2009. The Portuguese-Macanese is making effort to keep this language alive and one of the ways is through music. Music is one of the specialities of the Portuguese-Macanese community and tuna is one of the icons of the Portuguese-Macanese music. Tuna Macaense was formed in 1935. It is the unique remaining tuna in Macau nowadays and the members are still producing new music to keep the band fresh. Patuá in their generation was already not wildly used but they still use their limited Patuá or taking the elements from the Patuá poems to fill in the lyrics in order to keep this language alive. As the average age of the members is about 60, after their generation, the Portuguese-Macanese music may not be existed or would become another thing. In this dissertation, I will describe the history of Tuna Macaense and the processes through which this musical group is using music in order to retain language in a social post-traumatic context.