Lusossonia: Postcolonial Cartographies of Sounds and Memories.

In the field of expressive culture, and in particular of music, the signs of the Portuguese presence in Asia reveal a singular history of permanence and resilience. Unlike the architectural heritage that can resist the erosion of time regardless of human intervention, performative, ephemeral, and transitory expressions are completely dependent on the human will to preserve them. Within a scattered and insular cartography, invariably related to ancestral contact with the Portuguese, it is possible to point out a set of performance practices whose Portuguese genealogy is claimed by their holders and performers. I refer to subjects who recognise themselves as «Asian Portuguese», who identify themselves by Portuguese baptismal names of Catholic origin and who invariably organize themselves into community groups in various territories in India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Malaysia, or Indonesia. They all are noted for the practice and display of a musical repertoire sung in Portuguese or in Creole forms of the language or, in some cases, reduced to instrumental versions of musical genres of supposed Portuguese origin. “Asian Portuguese” people are responsible for creating a lusossonic world, where the importance and emotional effectiveness of music surpass that of language or architecture. The present text seeks to reflect on this cartography of Lusossonia.Instituto Camõespublishe