Entre a feira e o teatro : a dinâmica dos repentistas em Pernambuco (1900-1948)

Abstract

The “repente de viola” underwent modifications in its mechanism of action between the end of the nineteenth century until around the beginning of the 1950s, identified, thus, in a series of changes that corroborated for a project of professionalization of the “repentista”. For the analysis and construction of the narrative of how this process took place, it was necessary to create a dialogue between scarce sources (periodicals, writings of folklorists and “folhetos”) and the historiography of Cultural History, especially authors such as Roger Chartier, Michel de Certeau, Carlo Ginzburg and Pierre Bourdieu. Several moments of rupture were identified in the practice of the "repentista". In a still quite ruralized moment, here called "Classical Generation of Cantadores", it was seen the annexation of new metrical genres, the victory of the viola among other instruments and the solidification of fixed poet pairs, leading, thus, to the canonical forms of the "cantoria pé-de-parede". From the 1920s onwards a sharp migration of “repentistas” to large cities was identified, in which this moment of arrival was seen by three optics: the works of the folklorists in defense of the “cantador” as a symbol of a rising Nordeste and how they represented those In their works; The reconstruction of the “cantadores” daily life among the markets and streets of Recife in the newspapers, especially during the 1930s and early 1940s; Finally, on the covers of the “folhetos” circulating in this period, changes were made between the representations of the “cantadores” between the fairs and the theaters. For the construction of the new field of the “repentista” in the 1940s, the emergence of the "Modern Generation of Cantadores" was discerned from biographical studies, which gained a series of new characteristics that led the fairs “repentistas” to the big stages. Before this, it is analyzed the process that took place before the construction of the First Congress of “Cantadores do Nordeste”, based on the analysis of the experiences of Ariano Suassuna in the first "official" “cantoria” of Recife and the first congresses with media success organized by the journalist and poet Rogaciano Leite.