POLYPHONIC SINGING: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE BRIDGES, BETWEEN THE TRADITIONAL AND THE CONTEMPORARY
An exhibition conceived by Binaural Nodar for the Culture between Bridges project,  in the Municipalities of Sever do Vouga, Oliveira de Frades, Vouzela and  São Pedro do Sul.

São Pedro do Sul
Dates: July, 1st to 14th (opening, July 1st at 15:00)
Location: Roman Bathhouse Museum (Termas de São Pedro do Sul)

Oliveira de Frades
Dates: July, 16th to 30th
Location: Municipal Museum of Oliveira de Frades

Vouzela
Dates: August, 3rd to 15th
Location: Municipal Museum of Vouzela

Sever do Vouga
Dates: August 17th to 31st
Location: Municipal Library of Sever do Vouga

As the human voice is a sound element that serves as the basis for expression and communication, it naturally absorbs and projects the entire sensory palette of being in the world. We can say that the voice and the rhythm of the heart are the basis of musical intuition since the oldest civilizations, an intuition that naturally developed and gradually deepened, according to the specificities of each time and each cultural context.

The rural villages in the municipalities along the Vouga River valley are living examples of this ancient relationship between landscape, body and voice. The voice that relieves tiredness, the voice that accompanies the walk and the work, the voice that challenges and helps to form community bonds, the voice that explains the past, the voice that denounces the present, the voice that provokes, the voice that seduces, the voice that laments, etc.

One of the most impressive aspects in the polyphonic songs of the municipalities of Sever do Vouga, Oliveira de Frades, Vouzela and São Pedro do Sul is precisely its ancestral origin as a current manifestation of a cultural flow, which developed slowly and without interruptions through a culture anchored in a rural mountain region, naturally with external influences but limited by the harshness and difficulty of the landscape itself.

The exhibition “Polyphonic singing: A journey through the bridges between the traditional and the contemporary”, conceived by Binaural Nodar and integrated in the inter-municipal cultural programming project “Culture between Bridges”, presents a vast set of collected sound, photographic and video documentation related to the ethnographic and musicological history of four polyphonic singing groups from the participating municipalities: Sever do Vouga, São João da Serra (Oliveira de Frades), Carvalhal de Vermilhas (Vouzela) and Manhouce (São Pedro do Sul), and also related to the initiative developed in 2021 and 2022 of polyphonic singing workshops open to the community, which were directed by Teresa Melo Campos, Celina da Piedade, Carmina Repas Gonçalves and Joana Negrão and culminated in concerts held in cultural spaces of the four municipalities part of the “Culture between Bridges” project.

Credits:
Exhibition concept: Luis Costa and Liliana Silva
Graphic design and video editing: Liliana Silva
Photos of the workshops: Nely Ferreira, Andreia Mota and Liliana Silva
Photos and sound recording of the concerts: Nely Ferreira and Andreia Mota
Video recordings of traditional groups: Luis Costa and Liliana Silva
Photographs of traditional groups: Archives of traditional groups and Binaural Nodar Digital Archive