Memórias dos sambas nas festividades do Rei Roubado, São Cosme e Damião, Santa Bárbara e outras brincadeiras da comunidade rural do Benfica, Santo Antônio de Jesus – Sul do Recôncavo Baiano.

Abstract

This research aims to investigate possible processes of resignification and invisibility of musical practices of “samba de roda” in the rural community of Benfica, in Santo Antônio de Jesus – BA – a town located in the south of the Bahian Recôncavo. I seek to understand how the standardization of civilization ideals imposed by the local government, based on laws and codes of posture, urbanization and modernization affected the municipality's cultural practices, in this specific case, the “samba de roda”. When doing a bibliographic survey of works carried out on Santo Antônio de Jesus, no record was found regarding “samba de roda”, except for the works of historians, Maitê Rangel (2010) and Liliane Lima (2013), who, in their research, observed a strong connection between the urbanization and modernization processes with the silencing and transformations of the city's cultural practices, approaches that contributed to the definition of the main objective of this research. Another important aspect is to relate these factors mentioned above by the authors with the absence of the town in the “Dossier of Samba de Roda” Bahian Recôncavo produced by IPHAN, considering that the researches and surveys of samba groups covered several towns in this territory. Seeking to meet these demands, the methodological investigation procedures that fit the proposal are qualitative, using ethnography as a methodological resource, which, due to the global pandemic of COVID-19, needed to be reformulated and adapted. For data collection, semi-structured interviews were carried out with the community's samba singers, with recordings in audio and video recordings indicated in the text as a listening script and made available to the public (in www.soundcloud.com). Transcription and analysis of some of the sambas and their lyrics was also carried out, as well as data collection from historical documents, public archives, periodicals and newspapers. With this research work, I intend to contribute to the following questions: how have urbanization and modernization processes influenced/influenced samba de roda practices in the town? How can this research contribute to memory, dissemination or elaboration of possible projects for historical repair?