Homens memória: a Velha Guarda e a guarda das tradições do samba carioca

Abstract

This dissertation, which is organized through three themes - memory, aging and samba, was conducted above all starting from observing the everyday of a particular group: elderly people who are part of the Old Guard wing of the samba schools of Rio de Janeiro. The main purpose is to see how this group constitutes itself from multiple memory work as guardians of the traditions of samba carioca. For this, we divide the work into four chapters, each one of them focused on one of the research objects. Thus, we first present in the central object, in this case, the ten seniors belonging to the Old Guard and who were interviewed, from the theoretical presuppositions of Oral History, and narratives that are building significant other and the other around a territory specifically, the world of samba. In subsequent chapters the theoretical question of aging and memory is constructed so interwoven once more narrative from fragments of the elderly. As a privileged methodology, beyond the techniques of oral history interview, we used the presuppositions of ethnographic analysis. Life stories are composed alongside participant observation in various meetings held by the elderly, standing up for those festive character. The feasts that organize weekly, forming in places of particular practices of sociability, are the high point of application of the methodology, made through participant observation and construction of field diaries. Furthermore, the concern had of registering images in these moments, figuring them in the work not as mere illustrations, but as a peculiar narrative of these significant moments of the elderly in their relation to memory and samba.