Filarmónica Portuguesa de Paris: Performance Practices and Repertoire

The Filarmónica Portuguesa de Paris (FPP) is a community wind band created byPortuguese immigrants in Paris, in 1987. So far, to their and my knowledge, it is the only musical group of this kind in a European migrant context. The representation of Portuguese national identity in the migrant context of Paris then plays a specific mark of it. Studying it in the context of a PhD program in Ethnomusicology at the NOVA FCSH, in the New University of Lisbon, and having joint the group as flute player since September 2017, my role for ethnographic purposes enables us now to focus on the performance practices and the repertoire of this group. For the purpose of this presentation, we will focus on two different kinds of events and activities, organized by the band or not, to mention details of repertoire and performance practices. The events(performance activities) considered are a concert and a religious festivity in which the band participated. Considering the contexts of bandas filarmónicas (in Portugal) and that of orchestres d’harmonie (in France) with which FPP relates, in similar kinds of events, the analysis of details of repertoire and performance practices will include a comparative perspective through which the characterization of both will develop. This paper integrates the requisites of the PhD program Music as Culture and Cognition at the NOVA School for Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, in a research project with co-supervision from the Université du Luxembourg. Our main goal with it is to present and discuss the main characteristics of the repertoire played by the FPP, the joyfulconviviality or solemnity (depending on the contexts) of their performative practices and the way of presentation of the group to the public, comparatively to the repertoire and practices of similar groups existing in France and Portugal.