Earth Sound Music Center celebrates 25 years with fear of the future

O space was inaugurated on September 1, 2001 and has a vast collection of ethnomusicological records with about 820 recordings made in the Mirandês Plateau, in particular, and in the northeast Transmontano, in general. The photo inventory adds 73,927 images related to music, dance and trasmontanas culture, next to the northeastern streak.

With regard to the discography of traditional singing and music, 84 albums of edition of Sons da Terra are counted, as well as files in VHS format with films, historical documentaries, ethnographic and performatives that make the center a place where researchers and visitors seek to know more about the ancestral culture of Planalto Mirandês, which covers the municipalities of Miranda do Douro, Mogadouro and Vimioso, in the district of Bragança.

The Traditional Music Center preserves many more records in different formats. For 25 years it has been dedicated to perpetuating the collective memory of a people through field collections, with records of former singers, pipers and other players of traditional instruments.

Between shelves, shelves and archive cabinets, where everything is preserved and catalogued, the director of the Center for Traditional Music Sons da Terra, Mário Correia, told the agency Lusa that the future of this cultural equipment is the great challenge.

The long road done in these 25 years has not been easy, and there is still much to do and record, guarantees the director, for whom the lack of support can condition this work.

“The only guarantee I have is that the Traditional Music Center will be part of the National Sound Archive that is being installed in Mafra. Although it will be integrated into this network, none of the elements of this estate will leave its place of origin. Connection structures between the two spaces will be created”, he said.

Over these 25 years, much has been done. One of the initial missions was to record the pipers of Miranda Land, central figures in the festivals, processions and daily life of the region, establishing links with the past and traditions, through the dances of the Pauliteiros and the winter festivals, testimonies of identity and also of the isolation of the region.

“ This path has been a path of discovery”, said Mário Correia à Lusa. “When I arrived here in 2001, the goal was to record the tradition of the pipers of Miranda do Douro and Mogadouro, on which a mystique was created. In making these records, I realized that the old pipers were connected to one or another group of Paulites and there were no longer many these groups of dancers, so there was a whole repertoire that was not being recorded and that it was necessary to record”, he explained.

The ethnomusicologist began recording in the villages themselves, so that the locals would realize that these forms of traditional culture were being valued.

“ I always thought music was part of people’s lives, and people’s lives” went far beyond the dancing of the Paulites. “There was another way to be in everyday life, such as the songs of the harvest, the novels, the wheel games and religious repertoires that had to be registered,” he stressed.

With the collection and preservation of records, the Traditional Music Center also began to receive researchers and university students who came here to do their research, many from the Nova University of Lisbon and the University of Aveiro, institutions where there are also copies of many collections from the center.

“ This is a center of study and investigation, not a museum, where people visit. The spoil of the center is basically composed by the recording of the oral tradition, bibliography of these phonograms and, of course, always the mirandese language, to be studied ", explained to Lusa Mário Correia.

“There are many unpublished records archived at the Music Center,” he added.

The files in VHS support, already outdated and fragile, add 227 units.

The center also has records of Michel Giacometti and collections made by Judith Cohen in crypto-Jewish communities.

All these works are available to researchers and can be edited.

According to Mário Correia, “the traditional music center is the only space of its kind throughout the country and one of the most important in the Iberian Peninsula”, especially since “its collection is annually visited by a few hundred people linked to the study and investigation of traditions”.

At the moment, Mário Correia is recording a new generation of pipers from the Mirandês Plateau. “In 30 or 40 years, someone will be able to hear what this generation plays, which will then be passed.”.

As part of the activities, the Center for Traditional Music Sons da Terra was responsible for organizing 24 editions of the Inter-Celtic Festival of Sendim, with participation of Portuguese and foreign musicians, especially highlighted names of the ‘folk’.

The cultural space is based in the northeastern village of Sendim, municipality of Miranda do Douro, and occupies the space of an old parish residence that was provided exclusively for the promotion of cultural activities.