Cante - Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: Representation of a Traditional Art in the city of Almada

We intend to disseminate a case study in a community of migrants in the urban context of Almada. In this city, with 175 thousand inhabitants, is a community of 50 thousand descendants and natural of the Alentejo province, inserted in a wider context of about 500 thousand people who, with the process of industrialization in several periods of the twentieth century and especially in the 60s, is present settled in the eighteen municipalities of the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon.
From 2014, with the recognition of cante alentejano as intangible heritage by UNESCO, in the city of Almada, where there are three groups of cante - one male and two female - was established in January 2015 the Working Group of Cante of Almada Municipality, coordinated by us. This group is composed of ten local and regional entities and institutions of local administration, with teaching, protection and ethnographic dissemination vocation, which aim to safeguard cante through teaching, using traditional methodology as well new methods, in public schools.
It is our aim to present our contribution to the safeguarding of cante, percepting and maintaining the spaces where it is practised. To identify and perceive the symbolic meaning of the spaces where cante is performed, bonding tradition with emerging city identity, like in the streets and buildings. On the other hand, we want to understand the dynamics of cante change - coming from a region with rural characteristics, the Alentejo - and its evolutionary course in an urban reality like Almada, as a meeting point of the groups of cante in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon.