Performance, meaning and interaction in participatory/presentational musicking of a roda de choro

Abstract

Rodas de choro are spaces for the musicking of choro, a kind of fundamentally instrumental music that appeared in the popular layers of the urban environment in nineteenth-century Brazil. Nowadays, these rodas articulate elements of participatory and presentational performances according to the meanings constructed and the experiences acquired. The text is based on an ethnography realized in a roda de choro to approach four performance actions: looks, gestures, speeches and interactions. My argument is that performative aspects of musicking are relational – and sometimes synchronic – in their participatory and presentational dimensions, they re-signify themselves in the collective, express the participant's engagement and their interactions.