The song of Vissungos: tradition and resistance

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-8420.2015v16n2p124

This research aims to show the importance of the vissungos as part of the African-Brazilian culture. First, we presented a historical contextualization of the songs, which arose among the mining services in Brazil’s upcountry, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and we present the most significant studies about the songs, by Aires da Mata Machado Filho and Lúcia Nascimento. In this perspective, we intend to think African languages used in vissungos as a way of resisting to forms of oppression and domination in the slavery period, and reflect over the oral tradition and the relations be­tween preservation and disappearance of aspects of the culture.