Na batida do meu boi: inventividade e criatividade na afirmação identitária dos brincantes de bois-bumbás de Campina Grande.

Abstract

The search for legitimacy and identitary affirmation went through all the intellectual hought in our country. Popular demonstrations were taken as representative heralds of the ational identitary character in the most legitimate and pure forms as possible. The preservationist and innocuous impetus of such perceptions was redirected here for a critical view of the sociocultural conflicts that emerge as significant elements for the appraisal of these events. The folkloric party called boi bumbá, or “hit my bull”, from Campina Grande, PB, is analyzed with a focus on disputes over legitimacy and assertions of identity through which the struggles of revelers for the continuation of its manifestations and for the nstitutionalization of its practices, all of which constitute the central object of this work. The inventiveness and the cultural creativity are highlighted in the search for the demarcation of a character proper for the ox from Campina Grande, where the musicality appears as the substrate that gives substance to the main apparatus artistic material elaborated by the communities that play an ox.