| Ranchos folcloricos, groups of amateur musicians and dancers who perform turn-of-the-century popular tradition, act as cultural barometers of political, social and economic change throughout twentieth-century Portugal. The project of this dissertation is to unearth and interpret how macro, systems-directed changes have marked the performance practices of ranchos folcloricos from 1926 to 1996, and how performers, in turn, have processed, adapted to and/or contested these markings. This dissertation is an ethno-history not only of folkloric revivalism, but also of sweeping cultural transformation powered alternately by the motors of authoritarianism, democracy, decolonization, and European unification.; Used as propaganda and as a means toward achieving social control, the performance of revivalist folklore became an essential ingredient to dictator Antonio Salazar's cultural policy throughout the Estado Novo (1926--74). Following the coup in 1974, many expected revivalist folklore performance, the expressive legacy of fascist ideology, to disappear. Surprisingly, however, ranchos folcoricos not only survived Portugars transition to democracy but actually grew in number and force. A primary objective of this dissertation is to understand why ranchos folcoricos continue to thrive in post-revolutionary Portugal and to identify the changes to rancho repertoire, costume, instrumentation and personnel that make this protean adaptability possible.; This study is based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in the Portuguese region of Estremadura. Using the methods of historical inquiry, ethnographic research and literary analysis, this project provides a cultural history of revivalist folklore performance within local, national and transnational frameworks of power and resistance. This work will be of interest to scholars of folklore, Lusophone studies, performance, theater and cultural studies and to those interested in applying theories of space and development to expressive behavior. |
