Portuguese Desafios and Desgarradas
Form: Desgarrada/ Cantares ao Desafio, Cantigas ao Desafio
Accompaniment: Accordion, concertina
Locations: Minho river valley in Northern Portugal, provinces of Minho, Douro Litoral and Beira Alta, and Madeira
Occasions: Festivals such as Feiras Novas (Ponte de Lima), pilgrimages,
To watch the full documentary, In the Moment: Poetry Duels and Improvisations click here.
Table of Contents
The Tradition
Desgarrada, also called Cantares ao Desafio, are a popular Portuguese song tradition in which the singers improvise, challenging and responding to each other, usually to the sound of an accordion or concertina. Two singers, often one male and one female, improvise boasts, insults and humorous conversations, many replete with double entendres (duplos sentidos in Portuguese). The tradition is prevalent along the Minho river valley in Northern Portugal, in the provinces of Minho, Douro Litoral and Beira Alta, and Madeira. It often takes place at festivals such as Feiras Novas in Ponte de Lima in northern Portugal. In one exchange, quoted by an anthropologist in 1927, a singer pokes fun at her rival pointing out the freckles on her face. She answers, “the sky is also beautiful, and it has its stars.”
Field Notes
One of our first and perhaps most powerful introduction to the tradition of poetry duels in their natural and original contexts took place after we heard there was a powerful tradition of desafios, dueling poets, in Portugal. Steve decided to track them down by searching the web for the phone number of an artist whose recording we had sent away for. In a scratchy phone call to a number on the back of the CD, Steve could barely make out what the singer was saying, except that if we wanted to know about poetry duels in Portugal, we needed to call Manny who ran a hardware store in Newark, New Jersey.
We were able to track down Manny at his hardware store in the iron district of Newark. He explained that if we wanted to see poetry duels in Portugal we needed to attend the agricultural festival, Feiras Novas, in Ponte de Lima near the city of Porto. In the fall of 2010 we traveled to Portugal to attend the September festival. Along with parades with music, haywagon floats, and livestock wearing wreaths, the program included a desgarrada singing contest on the main stage. We arranged to interview on of the stars, Maria Celeste.
One night we wandered into one of the many bars and restaurant tents on the festival grounds holding our tiny Cannon camera. No sooner had we sat down, we heard a braggacio drunk at the bar challenging anyone to spar with him in words. A gentleman named João took him up on the challenge and we pressed in among dozens of other listeners and filmmakers to capture the moment. The duel was obscene, homophobic, lewd, and hilarious and you can hear it in full in our documentary In the Moment. It was replete with what Valentina Pagliai terms “outrageous speech.” [70]. But for us, who had seen poetry duels primarily on stages, this was a rare window into the social contexts from which these traditions originated and evolved.
