“Favela, o mestre da cultura popular: memória, história oral e narrativa na cultura popular de Porto franco- MA”

Abstract

This end-of-course work aims to present the life story of Felipe Serrão, in order to understand his importance to the popular culture of Porto Franco, the city where the research is set. Our aim is to highlight the life story of Felipe Serrão - also known as Favela and “master of popular culture” - with the aim of making it part of the official history of the city of Porto Franco and making other narratives about the city and non-hegemonic social actors visible. To create the narrative presented here, we used oral history as a scientific methodology, in order to reconstruct the interlocutors' memories of Felipe Serrão's life story through his connections with the city of Porto Franco and local popular culture. Taking as our axis the perspective that individual trajectories allow us to access collective memories and processes, we used the path taken by Favela to present and discuss some elements of the main popular festivities in Porto Franco in which he performed, namely: Carnival, the Divino Espírito Santo Festivitie, the June Festivities and Bumba Meu Boi. Throughout the research, we problematized the extent to which Favela's memory is intertwined with Porto Franco's identity, the city's history, the collective imagination and the continuous process of building its cultural field. In the analysis, we reflect on how Favela's life story connects us to various other stories, contexts and local social actors (brincantes/players, revelers, devotees, artists, activists, public agents), with the argument that individual trajectories allow us to access collective processes and social dynamics. Finally, it stands out that the research conducted opens up space for discussions around popular cultural manifestations, as well as the importance of memory, orality and its many different forms of recording.