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Trying to Tremor
October 26, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Lunchtime Symposium Speaker Series
Trying to Tremor: Meanings of Alternative Identity and Alternative Music in São Miguel
Abigail Lindo, UF Ph.D. Student, Ethnomusicology
Moderator: Imani Mosely, UF Musicology
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In September 2021, I spent a week on São Miguel, the largest of the nine islands in the Azores (a Portuguese autonomous region in the North Atlantic Ocean). This experience served as a preliminary research trip, allowing me to engage with both an unknown environment and a somewhat unknown culture as an independent black female scholar. Throughout the duration of the five-day long Tremor music festival, I immersed myself in moments of cultural confusion, lush landscapes, and uncomfortable situations along with the wealth of alternative music performances in stereotypical and ridiculously scenic spaces throughout the island. I was confronted with an Americanized Portuguese identity, but one still touted with pride and distinction from America and continental Portugal. I recognized that my identity was also performed in an alternative way, reflecting my existence as a foreign entity, although the festival goers as participants welcomed my interaction because of my perceived difference. How do these realities shape the nature of the research and why do they matter?
