Terra Terra: Musical creativities, informal learning, and collective identifications between Portugal and Cape Verde

Abstract

This article analyses how artistic creativity is mobilised in processes of learning and collective identification across transatlantic spaces, particularly between Cape Verde and Portugal. Based on a multi-sited ethnography of sound in movement, it follows processes of creation, performance, and circulation of four musical works: Terra Terra, by Berlok; Cimbron Celeste, by Acácia Maior; Nez txada skúru dentu skina na braku fundu, by Scúru Fitchádu; and Racodja, by Fidju Kitxora. It argues that these works configure syncretic gestures that, by promoting particular forms of aesthetic juxtaposition, reconstruct collective belongings by articulating migratory genealogies with processes of cultural and political affirmation. It is further emphasised that these performances function as critical pedagogies and counter-archives: they activate silenced memories of African liberation struggles, confront the colonial aphasia structuring the Portuguese national imaginary, and challenge contemporary forms of racialised violence. Finally, it is shown that the centrality attributed to the notion of the “collective” – as an open platform for intergenerational and inter-diasporic collaboration – institutes renewed forms of identification and agency, where sound, sociability, and politics are co-produced. The article concludes that these aesthetic experiences, by mobilising the past in the pursuit of new imaginaries, constitute an ongoing process of renewing the cultural, affective, ethical, and political coordinates of the Black Atlantic.