No badalar dos cincerros : léxico e representação da cultura tropeira na música regionalista gauchesca

Abstract

The tropeirismo, the occupation of the muleteers, is a theme which is frequently exalted by different composers and interpreters of gauchesca regional music, having in mind its importance in the economic and cultural development of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. This phenomenon, which extended from the end of the XVII century until the middle of the XX century, in the southern states of Brazil, besides being responsible for the emergence of countless villages and cities throughout the routes, provided a huge cultural exchange. The mingling of the different cultures involved in the regular activities of the muleteers, the tropeiro, created a kind of common identity. Cultural tracescaused by the contact between birivas – as were known the muleteers from São Paulo and the inhabitants of northern area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, called Cima da Serra region – and gaúchos (the inhabitants of Rio Grande do Sul) are expressed in the culinary, dance, description of the work in the fields and in language, especially revealed in the choice of lexical items. In this research, we propose a lexical-semantic analysis of the lyrics of fourteen gauchesca regional songs, in order to investigate how the regional music reconstitutes the history of tropeirismo. The aim is to verify whether the mystification of the muleteer occurs, similarly to what happens to the gaúcho, which our analysis proved to be right. Based on the survey of the lexis related to the activities of the tropeiros present in the songs, we propose a model of organization of the memory of tropeirismo in lexical fields. According to Abbade (2012), the organization of the lexicon goes beyond the mere contribution to linguistic studies: it also evidences the history and the customs of the linguistic group that uses it.