My singing of love: The sung doctrine of Mestre Irineu in a female and northeastern perspective
Hymns. Santo Daime. Religion. Women and Sacred Feminine. Ethnomusicology.
Through an autoethnographic approach, this work presents the result of participative observation in the rituals of the sung doctrine of Santo Daime at CICLU-Ba, a center that follows the spiritual work of Mestre Raimundo Irineu Serra, its creator. In this musical tradition the hymns are not composed, but "received" from the spiritual realm. The repertoire analyzed in this research includes the hymnals obtained until the death of Mestre Irineu, in 1971.
Having as main mark the apparition of the Virgin Mary, who first offered the hymns to Mestre Irineu and then to the other daimistas, thus instituting the sacred feminine in its original myth, it will be analyzed the role of women as caretakers of these chants and original guardians of that musical tradition.
Seeking to understand the cultural and musical roots that determined the emergence of this singing style, a study was carried out on the sonorities that permeated the life of Mestre Irineu and his companions before and during the reception of the hymns. Initially, the musical elements from their northeastern origins were analyzed and then those from the Amazon region, where many of them migrated in search of work in the early 20th century. Other musical influences were also observed which, guided by the consciousness expanded by the holy drink, composed the acoustic culture of the original daimistas.
The work is based on a perspective of an engaged and participative ethnomusicology, sensitive to the feminine, that brings references to brazilian theoretical concepts, such as "acoustic culture" by José Lopes (2004), "native theory" by Tiago Pinto (2001) and works on religious music and the sacred feminine like Laila Rosa (2009), Kátia Rabelo (2013), Camila Benedito (2019) and Beatriz Labate (2009).