"Em este som de negrada": Sounds of Blackness in the Medieval Iberian Lyric

• Autores: Adam Mahler
• Localización: La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures & Cultures, ISSN 0193-3892, Vol. 52, Nº 1, 2023, págs. 139-177
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1353/cor.2023.a961712
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This article examines a Galician-Portuguese satirical song by the troubadour Lopo Lias (ca. 1190–1260) that contains a charged reference to the som de negrada, or "blackened-up music." Leading scholars of the cantigas have taken the term as a reference to the strophic design of the muwashshaḥ, an Andalusi poetic form that combines metered stanzas in Classical Arabic or Hebrew with a refrain in Ibero-Romance, colloquial Arabic, or a combination of both. Though it is difficult to disentangle Lias's reference from the broader Christian discourse against Islam, I argue for the song's pertinence to the study of race-making in medieval Iberia and its importance as an early attestation of Iberian Blackness and black literary subjectivity in Galician-Portuguese. More generally, I highlight the role of voice and acoustics in medieval identity formation as well as in constructions of ethnorace.

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