Images as a way of dialogue: Washerwoman’s Song and Water Blessing Ritual in Almenara – through memories and renewal

Abstract

This study intends to show the sacred conceptions observed through aesthetic manifestations mediated by the music from the group called Washerwoman’s Choir from Almenara. It seeks to understand their experience related to the selection of songs that reveal sacred signs and their attainable interfaces with new modes of believing and being in its interaction with renovating elements which may contribute to changes and possible openings to new identities nowadays. They undergo changing processes among ambiguities and reinvention of traditions enabled by media and CD recording in today’s world. By introducing the use of audiovisual for ethnographic recording in this research, its importance is remarked and the theories from Peixoto (2004) and Satiko and Hikiji (2009) are used as our theoretical framework. These authors argue that images may be used as a privileged way to address sensory and aesthetic universe in which study subjects are involved.