While the city of Lisbon has sonically marked itself in tourist marketplaces and heritage presentation through local repertoires such as fado presented as iconic repertoires of the city and the country, the sounds of Portugal’s former colonies increasingly compete for presence within the city’s soundscapes. This former capital of a diverse empire has increasingly experienced immigration from former colonies as well as increasing circulation of Lusophone repertoires. The music of Brazil, as Portugal’s largest former colony, has in particular long held interest for the Portuguese, and an uptick in Brazilian immigration to the economically vibrant city of Lisbon has presented new opportunities for the consumption of Brazilian music. Through ethnographic research on the circulations of diverse Brazilian genres in Lisbon, this project explores a dynamic I call “postcolonial feedback.” I show how the notion of feedback complicates any sense of Portuguese culture as a “root” of Brazilian culture, illuminating rather how Brazilian musical cultures have long fed back into Portugal and putting at stake issues of cultural influence and identity in the historical colonial metropole of Lisbon.
Keywords: Postcolonialism, carnival, Lusophone world, lusofonia.
Photo: Raquel Pimentel