3 October 2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music is sponsoring the lecture “Cannibal Famine: Metaphors of Hunger and Violence in Nação Zumbi” by Melcion Mateu at City College.  This lecture concentrates on the poetics of Nação Zumbi’s and examines the metaphors –often stated in their lyrics, but implemented in their music–, that inform them. Celebrated at the moment of its appearance as one of the most promising bands of the 1990s, Chico Science and Nação Zumbi became the epicenter of a phenomenon known as manguebit or manguebeat –a musical style, or perhaps better, a musical scene that changed the way youngsters from Pernambuco regarded themselves, their landscape, and their culture. Nação Zumbi continues to this day despite the loss, in 1997, of its charismatic leader, vocalist and co-lyricist, Francisco de Assis França (Chico Science) of a car accident during Carnival. The band inscribes itself in the anthropophagist tradition that goes from Oswald de Andrade to Tropicália, as well as a longstanding Northeastern aesthetics of hunger and famine with revolutionary purposes.

“Cannibal Famine: Metaphors of Hunger and Violence in Nação Zumbi”

7:30 pm – October 3, 2012

CWE/CCNY – Conference Room

25 Broadway

New York, NY

Free, No Reservations Required

Mateu is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University and specializes in Modernism in Brazilian literature and music.  His dissertation explores the continuity of the avant-garde during the 1940’s and early 50’s in Spain, and pays special attention to two groups, Postismo and Dau al Set, as well as the influential role of Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto. His areas of interest are Modern Spanish Literature and Culture (1888-1975), with stress on the literary and artistic avant-garde and the Post Civil-War period, as well as Luso-Brazilian and Catalan studies, and theoretical issues such as intermediality, avant-garde theory, aesthetics and politics.  Additionally, Mateu was awarded the Octavio Paz Poetry Award in 1998 for Ningú, petit, which pays tribute to Little Nemo, the early 20th century comic-strip character by Winsor McCay, and Jardí amb cangurs.