The times and the shapes of the Cante Alentejano

The practice of cante alentejano has resisted the challenges of a rural society in constant transformation, in the progressive tension between experience and expectation. Experience intertwines diverse pasts of a built-in practice, represented, institutionalized, and transmitted by generations and institutions. Expectation is the present future, which can only be predicted from the experiences of its participants, whose action and social intervention are decisive for the continuity of this cultural practice. In this article, I question the power relations associated with the processes of institutionalization and patrimonialization of cultural practices, based on ethnography of historical contextualization of cante alentejano.