Talk:Lusophone music

Misleading informations

There are a lot of information here that is either imprecise, either misleading.
It is true that Portuguese music had some influence in the music of the former Portuguese colonies, but not in all the music. Some authors trace back the origin of the fado to Brazilian music, and not the inverse (check the portuguese article about the fado. A lot of musical genres in the former Portuguese colonies are genuine local creations (samba, lambada, morna, gumbé, semba, etc.), although they may have received Portuguese music influence, they are not derivatives of Portuguese music. The morna appeared before the fado, and schollars conjecture that both morna and fado derive from the Brazilian lundum.
Besides, lusophone means "Portuguese speaking". Since a lot of that music is not sung in Portuguese, perhaps the best title for this article shold be "Lusophone countries music".
Ten Islands 10:47, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Missing introduction

This article lacks of an introductory sentence. What is lusophone music? Music with texts in Portuguese? Or just music from lusophone countries? -- Robert Weemeyer (talk) 16:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Some explanations

1. “Lusophone” means Portuguese-speaking. It does not include languages that are not Portuguese, such as Portuguese-based Creoles. Therefore, music that is not sung in Portuguese should not be listed here at all. The Lusophony is also a political and cultural concept, meant to gather all the countries that speak Portuguese (as a first language or as an official language). The Netherland Antilles and Equatorial Guinea do not belong to the Lusophony, and they never did. I don’t know a thing if there is music from Sri Lanka, Macau, Malaysia, etc. sung in Portuguese.
2. When I first saw this page (and the related template), my first thought was to speedily delete this article. But then I thought, in order not to undo all the work that was done, to rename it to “Lusophone countries music”, which was a more suitable name.
3. If we can not reach to an agreement, I will propose the speedy deletion of this page, not because of the usage of the word “lusophone”, but because of the music itself: this page is unsourced and there is no proof that all the music sung in Portuguese is related (in musical terms, I’m not talking about the language).
4. And by the way, oh yeah, there is music from Cape Verde, from Guinea-Bissau and from São Tomé sung in Portuguese...

Ten Islands (talk) 17:50, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

GEOPOLITICAL VIEW IN A MUSICAL ARTICLE. IS IT FAIR?

This term "Lusophone countries music" tries to reduce a musical article to a geopolitical one, comprising only former Portuguese colonies....why only former portuguese colonies or countries that adopt portuguese language as official can produce lusophone music?
It´s amazing to see the reaction towards my inclusion of Neth. Antilles and Aruba (which uses "papiamento", a portuguese creole), in this article, but, you don´t mind at all to keep São Tomé, Guiné-Bissau and Cabo Verde here, although they also produce music ONLY in PORTUGUESE CREOLES.
List to me just ONE name from Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau and São Tomé which produces music in portuguese language, for the local people of these countries....I have NEVER SEEN any popular music from these three countries sung in portuguese, only in PORTUGUESE CREOLES. Again, why only former Portuguese colonies can be included here? This is a geopolitical view, not a musical nor linguistical one.

Emerson

It is rare (pretty rare, indeed) but music sing in Portuguese in Cape Verde, in Guinea-Bissau and in São Tomé does exist. Check some Cape Verdean composers from the beginning of the XX century (like this one); check the Guinea-Bissauan band “pt:Tabanka Djaz”; check the São Toméan singer Juka; etc. Nevertheless, this is not enough to classify the whole music of those countries as “Lusophone”, since the music produced ther is overwhelmingly produced in languages other than Portuguese. Ten Islands (talk) 13:55, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

New intro

I just rewrote the intro to this article to try to address some of the points previously raised on this talk page -- I tried to capture the fact that different writers use overlapping but not identical definitions of the term "Lusophone music" (geographic vs. purely language-based emphasis, whether they include music in languages that are close relatives of Portuguese), and to suggest that to some writers, the concept signifies more than *just* linguistic commonality, since linguistic and cultural heritages overlap. I linked to Lusophone, since a lot of the complexity of the term "Lusophone music" derives from complexity in the way "Lusophone" itself is used, and the other article does a nice job summarizing that. Unfortunately, I'm weak on references -- what I've got are just examples of the term's being used in the ways I describe, not sources for generalizations about usage, so I'm treading dangerously close to original research (and not very good research, considering how *few* sources I'm working with). There are undoubtedly better sources out there; I just don't have them at my fingertips.

Beyond that, I think the body of the article could use a thorough rewrite -- right now, it consists too much in isolated descriptions of the music of different countries, which could be better supplied simply by linking to other pages (e.g., Music of Brazil, or in some cases the "Culture" section of a country's main page). The primary job of this article (which it does somewhat, but not extensively or with the clearest organization) should probably be to discuss Lusophone music *in general* -- what different Lusophone musical traditions have in common, the historical roots of those commonalities, the contemporary transnational Lusophone music scene/market... Again, I lack the knowledge/resources to add much, especially without doing original research; I'm just putting this out there in case somebody else might be inspired to run with it...

68.122.68.131 (talk) 21:19, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Lusophone music

I'm trying to clean up the Lusophone music template by adding it to pages for music genres from Portuguese-speaking countries, but a user named TenIslands keeps undoing all my work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.54.195.214 (talk) 04:30, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I will gladly explain my editions. Let’s split this issue in two parts: one is about this article; the other is about the template.

Regarding this article, as I mentioned before, there were a lot of misleading information. “Lusophone” means “Portuguese-language speaking”, and that’s it. This is an encyclopedia, therefore, the information must be accurate and rigourous. An article entitled “Lusophone music” must talk about music sung in Portuguese (from any country) and not about the music of a Portuguese-speaking country (which may be in Portuguese or not). In all Portuguese-speaking countries there are languages which are not Portuguese (Kimbundu, Umbundu, etc. in Angola, Guarani, Tupi, etc. in Brazil, Creole in Cape Verde, Balanta, Creole, Mandinka, etc. in Guinea-Bissau, Makhuwa, Tsonga, etc in Mozambique, Mirandese in Portugal, Creoles in São Tomé, and so on). To include Portuguese-based Creoles in here is just plainly wrong since those languages are different languages from Portuguese. But, most importantly, I don’t know which is the relevance of this article. It is only a language-based grouping. There are not enough musical elements to justify grouping all the music sung in Portuguese in a single cluster, besides language.

Regarding the template, I also stated that I don’t know which is the relevance of that template. A template (here in Wikipedia) is a useful tool for navigating among related articles. However, I can’t see the relationship between the music of each of the Portuguese-speaking countries. But, I didn’t want to undermine all the work done, that’s why I thought that the template could be kept. However, we must be accurate regarding what we are talking about. As it is, right now, the template seems wanting to show musical genres. Music is not just about musical genres. If we want to talk about music, we should talk about musical genres, musical instruments, performers, history, music production, etc. If we want a template just about musical genres, perhaps it should be renamed to “Musical genres of Portuguese-speaking countries”; if we want a template to navigate between the music articles about each af those countries, it could be simplified, as is the template in Portuguese Wikipedia.

Ten Islands (talk) 13:37, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Something I forgot to mention: putting the articles “Music of country X” in the category “Lusophone music” is debatable; but putting certain musical genres in that category is wrong since those genres are never performed in Portuguese. Ten Islands (talk) 14:17, 25 October 2020 (UTC)