Coloniality and decoloniality in the Kola San Jon da Cova da Moura

Abstract

If in the doctorate I researched Brazilian popular dances in the context of the expansion of the Modern States, in the present research I intend to expand the scope of the investigation based on new epistemological assumptions. I shall begin with the decolonial studies to work the hypothesis that the afro-diasporic cultural expressions present in the lusophone space should be researched from the common soil of the Portuguese colonization, confronting Brazilian, Cape Verdean, Angolan, Portuguese etc. popular expressions. Therefore, the concepts of "coloniality" and "decoloniality" are the focus of research, which mean abandoning the exclusivity of the national dimension in the articulation of popular culture and modernity. Based on the critique of the Eurocentric notion of progress and rationality, intrinsic to decolonial studies, I intend to configure a methodological space that will allow me to circulate through different Afro-diasporic cultural expressions in space as well as in time. Consequently, the idea of "co-presence" is fundamental to question the validity of a single evolutionary line, as proposed by Western science. The decolonial studies reveal confronting epistemologies and, thus, the coexistence of diverse conceptions of time. Other times rather than linear - circular, spiral, etc. can be thought of in the framework of different epistemologies. A new way of relating local, national, and global emerges from this approach. In connection with the theoretical dimension, based on this epistemological review, I intend to describe a party, of Cape Verdean origin, which happens every year in the suburb of Lisbon: it is Kola San Jon, Alto da Cova da Moura, neighborhood formed by Cape Verdean immigrants, after the independence of Cape Verde. The Kola San Jon is therefore a tradition that has been reconstituted in the midst of European culture, in the territory of the former metropolis, thanks to the action of subalternates, coming from a former African colony. These aspects of the tradition at the Kola San Jon in Portugal and the connections that I perceived between this party and a series of popular traditions already researched by me in Brazil, especially the drums of umbigada, led me to conceive the present research to exercise a new way of thinking about popular cultures in the lusophone space within a globalized world. (AU)