Pipiruí e caixa de assovio: tocadores de pífanos e caixas nas festas de reinado

Abstract

This work aimed at establishing a panorama about the performance of fife and drum players at the reinado feasts, in Minas Gerais, with emphasis on the musicological analysis of two groups belonging to this style: Pipiruí, from Conceição do Mato Dentro and Caixa de Assovio, from Serro. The reinado feasts were promoted since the colonial period by the Our Lady of the Rosary sisterhoods. The research was developed upon a variety of sources: sisterhood documents, historical and memorialist literature, musical instruments, interviews, photographs, movies, recordings, among others. It was also analysed here the European military filiation of these players, according to several evidences of the existence of these groups in that continent, consolidated in the Renaissance period and in the ambit of the Portuguese military forces in Brazil. The study was complemented with a survey that included the activity of at least five other fife and drum groups from the present time or that existed in the past, in the State of Minas. The informations about the groups were confronted generating a comparative chart that included instrumentation, repertoire and kinds of functions played in the contexts in which they perform.