Book of the month, March 2012

DIAS, Ana Carina Marques - O adufe: contexto histórico e musicológico. Faro: Universidade do Algarve, 2011. 159 p. Dissertação de mestrado em Portugal islâmico e o mediterrâneo – área de História, apresentado à Universidade do Algarve, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais e Campo Arqueológico de Mértola.

The “adufe” is a bi-membranophone of square shape associated with the folk traditions of the interior border of Portugal, particularly the Beira Baixa, where today, in Idanha-a-Nova, it found its place as a symbol of the municipality. Its origins are lost in time with representations of possible specimens in Pre-Classical Antiquity in Mesopotamia, arriving in the Iberian Peninsula possibly in the early Middle Ages as an instrument of erudite use, but mostly popular, feminine and overarching political and religious domains. The cultural processes in the interior region of Portugal resulted in a crystallisation of some medieval traditions within the country, including the use of the “adufe”, which was shared with neighbouring regions of Spain, with the addition of Galicia, Asturias and Catalonia. This thesis aims to approach these processes from an Iberian point of view, addressing subjects such as Social-Political History, Ethnomusicology, Ethnology, Musicology and Geography.

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