Established in 1946, Emissora de Goa played a pivotal role in fostering a cosmopolitan musical culture in Goa. Although primarily a Portuguese-language radio station, it aired programs in eight languages, including English and various Indian languages associated with Western and Indian classical music, respectively. Its diverse non-Indian music offerings showcased a broad repertoire, featuring not just Portuguese compositions but also selections from Portugal's former colonies in Africa and Brazil. Following Goa's integration into India in December 1961, Emissora de Goa joined the national All India Radio network. This transition marked a shift in the station's Portuguese-language segments, which increasingly featured Brazilian music. The broadcaster began receiving records directly from Brazil, discontinuing shipments from Portugal. Consequently, a weekly segment titled "A Hora do Brasil" emerged, airing throughout the late 1960s and 1970s under the stewardship of radio journalist Imelda Dias. This presentation explores the radio's significance in post-colonial language policy in Goa and Brazil's role in shaping the Portuguese-language radio musical landscape. Brazil's influence also led to the adoption of a local repertoire, which has become a defining and distinctive characteristic of Goa within the broader Indian context.

This presentation analyses the categorization models of expressive practices in Mozambique, considering a nation-building context through a post-colonial theoretical framework. My analysis will focus on two historical periods: the late colonial period, marked by the liberation/colonial war (1964-1974), and the so-called socialist period that began with the country’s independence, lasting until the first multi-party elections (1975-1994). Based on the discursive analysis of musicians, advertising companies, and written and radio press, as well as the analysis of phonograms and other audio documentation (unpublished and published), I examine the sometimes-ambivalent relationships between the designation of musical categories and their associated sounds and meanings, considering the perspectives of different actors in these different periods. I will notably focus on how political ideas shaped processes of appropriation, refusal, and resignification of categories such as “traditional music” and “popular music”. Lastly, I will consider the operationalisation of “African Music”, as exemplified in a fervent late-1981 newspaper debate on the music broadcasted on the national radio station. I argue that this debate reflected a growing divide between two distinct nationalist projects within FRELIMO, the ruling party: the first project was “pan-negro,” insofar as it privileged racially based African music, based on the valorization of black people – regardless of whether or not they came from the African continent (hence the adoption of rumba and samba, among other genres); the second was “pan-Africanist,” focused on “revolutionary” content and to an idea of “common space” for African peoples, without direct reference to racial identity.

Cesária Évora (1941-2011) played an important role as the first female Cape Verdean artist to achieve commercial success worldwide. Before Cape Verde's independence in 1975, Cesária sang in local bars in Mindelo without much success beyond São Vicente island and with minimal financial returns. However, following independence, she chose to silence herself. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that her voice began to gain international recognition, primarily in France. The French National Library in Paris hosts the most comprehensive archive of documents on Cesária Évora. There we can find documents where the journalists use the word “Fado,” referring to the national genre of Portugal, to explain the Cape-Verdean musical genre Morna (immortalized by Cesária Évora) as well as moving images showing the artist holding a book of Amália Rodrigues, the famed Portuguese fado singer. The perception of a close relationship, both aesthetically and discursively, between Cape Verde and its former colonizer is evident in certain musical practices, showcasing how Portuguese influence has shaped the cultural cartography of Lusossonia. In some Lusosonic territories, the perception of cultural proximity to Portugal may be more evident than others. Cape Verde’s country's geographic closeness to Europe, the fact that the archipelago was not inhabited when the Portuguese arrived in the 15th century, and the construction of a Creole identity would especially contribute to this sense of proximity. I intend to present an analysis of the discourses about Cesária Évora found in newspapers and radio broadcasts through the lens of the concept of Lusosonia.

The Brazilian immigrant carnival in Brazil’s historical metropole of Lisbon, Portugal, is a space in which the postcolonial relationship between the two countries is mediated, negotiated, and transformed. Emerging in the mid-2010s, the largely middle-class immigrant carnival has grown quickly with the largest bloco attracting 20,000 people to Lisbon’s streets. Despite the popularity and knowledge of Brazilian music in Portugal, blocos in Lisbon have often encountered hostile local communities and unyielding bureaucratic structures when holding events, leading to blocos’ protests critiquing xenophobia, demands for institutional support given to Portuguese festivities, and the threat of “inviability” of their practices. Of the theories focused on postcolonial relationships, postcolonial theory has been principally focused on the aftermath of decolonization in the twentieth century its applicability to the earlier wave of decolonization in the Americas has been questioned, while decolonial theory later developed in an Ibero-Latin American context generally critiquing lingering coloniality at home. Attempting to understand why the emergence of a migrant Brazilian carnival has encountered so many obstacles when Portuguese carnivals imitating Brazilian models, especially the samba schools, are common throughout the country, I dialogue with emerging Lusosonic postcolonial frameworks—including lusofonia and the “Brown Atlantic,” as well as the dueling dialectics of fraternity/paternity and similarity/difference always in tension between the two countries. Attending to both the real discrimination and cultural intimacy experienced by Brazilian migrant musicians in Portugal, I argue for locally situated understandings of postcolonial relationships beyond the dominator/dominated dialectic to understand this complex dynamic and the ambivalent Luso-Brazilian relationship.