Workshop Open Call: Rethinking Brazil’s Sonic Heritage through Oralture with Conceição Evaristo

Saturday, 11 October, 10:30–12:30
In Portuguese
Free entry, registration required (see below)

Conceição Evaristo invites participants to explore the living archive of Brazilian music as a form of oralture. Through a curated repertoire of songs by Jorge Ben Jor, Dona Ivone Lara, Elza Soares, Leci Brandão, and Maurício Tizumba among others, she demonstrates how the music of these artists narrates the history of Brazil. Each song becomes a carrier of memory, transmitting knowledge—from forms of remembrance to strategies of resistance—across generations in ways that written texts alone cannot. A samba by Lara, for instance, expresses the everyday joys and struggles of Black women in Rio’s communities, while Soares’s unmistakable voice turns personal pain into collective memory. This workshop offers participants not only an encounter with Brazil’s sonic heritage, but also an opportunity to explore how song itself becomes a mode of memory and resistance. Participants listen, sing, dance, write, and reflect on songwriting as a genre that simultaneously bridges with and transcends oralture. By tracing the connections between Afro-Brazilian music and oralture, Evaristo highlights how sonic practice operates as a site of learning and unlearning, worlding and reworlding.

The Middle Ground workshops offer the possibility to deepen one’s own writing practice and to be in exchange with other authors about issues around writing. Participants of all ages and experience levels—whether amateur writers, professionals, or literary scholars—are invited to join.   

To register: Please submit a short fiction text  of no more than 500 words in English, German, or Portuguese to middleground@hkw.de, indicating the workshop in the subject line by 28 September 2025. Selected participants will be notified by the end of September.