The oral practices of the prayerers: An immaterial patrimony present in the life of people from ibabaiana

The prayerers, who in Brazil are also known as "benzedeiras", a term that in English could be translated as the "blesserers", play an important role in a part of a society that keeps uses and traditional habits: establish relationship with the sacred world. Such tradition has orality as a key-practice. These prayerers possess a great religious knowledge and are able to put away evil and restore both emotional and physical balance by saying a set of prayers and rituals to the ones who seek them asking for help. The activity they exert is passed generation after generation, in a way the person who learned such task or was chosen to carry on such practice will also transmit his or her knowledge to the sucessor. The persistence of such culture contributes to the maintainance of the cultural patrimony, configured in its untangible dimensions. Regarding immaterial patrimony, a central point in this research work, refers to practices and domains of the knowledge, tasks, values and diferente ways of expression that constitute the social life of a communitary base. This article is centered in the task of two popular prayerers in the region of Itabaiana, an introdutory phase of a wider research work being developed in the city of Itabaiana, located in the state of Paraíba, northeast region of Brazil. This research work will result in a Doctor s Dissertation and also other academic production. Parallel to this, this research work intends to atract the sensitiveness in local institutions so as the prayerers practice be acknowledged as immaterial patrimony. The oral practices of the prayerers are presented in narrations, memories and performances. This research work counts with both áudio and visual resources, as a way to emphasize the voice of the prayerers, who in a dialogical process with her interviewer (Danielle Gomes do Nascimento) bring to presente rememberings and religious practices. Both prayerers narrated a litle bit of the religious life, the prayers practice and other tasks. The research work starts from empiric knowledge of the prayerers, in order to learn the meanings of the social phenomenon performed by them, i.e. the heal promoted by certain prayers. This discussion adopts as reference the principles established by the National Artistic and Historic Patrimony, IPHAN (an acronym from Instituto de Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional to identify the Brazilian Immaterial Patrimony and also authors who recognize the importance of memory in colectivity, such as Bergson (2011), Halbwachs (2006), Bosi (2004), as well as authors who provide subsidy to studies about orality and linguistic, Ong (1998), Zumthor (2007) and Bakhtin (2010) among others. Thus, the prayerers or blesserers are present in traditional habits of Brazilian religiousness and have been identified as the ones who posses certain knowledge in their practices, resulted from learning or oral transmission.