PERMANENT SEMINAR OF THE RESEARCH GROUP ON ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AND STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC
13.02.2026 | 4h30 pm | DeCA UA | João Branco Amphitheatre | Online
Free entrance, both online and in presence.
Ocisumba kya Kalunga: The Atlantic Circulation of an Angolan Chordophone
Lucas de Campos Ramos | Universidade de Aveiro, INET-md
An ongoing research project on the ocisumba will be presented. The ocisumba is a pluriarc chordophone of African origin, documented around five hundred years ago in the Kingdom of Kongo and still known in Angola. Today, however, it is at risk of disappearance, with very few master musicians still alive. It is known that the instrument was brought to Brazil during the period of slavery and that its use appears in nineteenth-century naturalist paintings, but there is no evidence of continuity to the present day. In Portugal, the ocisumba is represented in ethnographic collections from the later colonial period.
Lucas de Campos Ramos | Brazilian musician, teacher, and researcher. As an instrumentalist, he has recorded and performed with leading figures in Brazilian popular music, including Hermeto Pascoal, Dona Ivone Lara, Monarco, Fabiana Cozza, and Mateus Aleluia. Since 2011, he has been a popular guitar instructor at the Brasília School of Music (Escola de Música de Brasília) and has volunteered with the social project ABC Musical, which works with children and young people from Brasília’s peripheral communities. He earned his degree in Music from the University of Brasília (2015), where he also taught, and completed his master’s degree at the same institution (2018), with research on the presence and functions of the guitar in Choro. He also completed a postgraduate specialization in History of Africa and Africans (FATEC/IPN). He has published materials related to Choro and music education, such as Alencarinos (Choros de Alencar 7 Cordas) and Nosso Livro de Samba (both 2018). In 2021, he was a scholarship researcher on the IPHAN project for the registration of Choro as Cultural Heritage of Brazil, with a focus on the Central-West region. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Aveiro, researching instrument migrations between Angola and Brazil—especially chordophones—and the processes that lead to their silencing and invisibility, in partnership with the National Museum of Ethnology.