Keywords
Cinema
Local musicking
Decolonial
Multi-modal
How to Cite
Abstract
Following Mozambique’s independence from Portugal in 1975, both music and cinema were seen as essential tools in the revolutionary construction of a new and unified national identity. A National Film Institute was created to produce and distribute films throughout the country, and in a country with 43 different languages and high levels of non-literacy, it was found that musical films were effective at transcending the cultural and linguistic barriers of the colonially divided nation. One film that exemplifies the importance of musical films at this time, is the ethnographic and reflexive musical odyssey Sing My Brother — Help Me to Sing (CANTA, 1981). This multi-modal paper focuses on a scene in this film where a man and a woman play music together in northern Mozambique to reflect on how community musicking through film contributed to the passing of knowledge then, and how forty years later 30 young Mozambicans produced their multimodal, feminist, musical and equally decolonial response
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Copyright (c) 2023 Karen Boswall
