From Africa to Portugal: Black Slave Musicians in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Court Culture - Apprenticeship to Image of Power and Prestige

The recruitment of Africans as slave musicians in Portugal and the rest of the Iberian Peninsula during the early modern period is still a relatively little explored area. Although there exists substantial evidence for the importation of vast numbers of slaves from the African continent and elsewhere from the mid-fifteenth century onward, testimony to their attained privileged status as official court musicians is harder to come across. However, the significant post-mortem inventory of Teodósio I (d. 1563), fifth duke of Braganza, enables a reconstruction of his distinguished court, which not only had acquired luxury goods from all over the world—Europe, Africa, India, and the Far East—but was also characterized by both a pan-European musical culture and a globally more far- reaching musical personnel of black African slaves, whose presence at courtly functions was evidently a highly visible, sonic symbol and expression of power and prestige. This unique document supplies a full list of their names, their ethnic backgrounds, ages, instruments they played, besides their values in monetary terms—from lowly priced veteran, to apprentice, and to a highly valued leading shawm player, whose “price tag” nearly equaled that of the entire collection of the duke’s keyboard instruments. Clearly the learning of European musical skills and traditions afforded them an increasingly valued position, leading sometimes even to emancipation. Indeed, the elevation of the status of imported slaves generally by means of a classical education provided them with opportunities to move more freely in society and even to acquire significant social standing. Focusing on this inventory especially—which also testifies to the slaves as custodians of over 150 musical instruments—this paper explores the role and duties of court slave musicians from apprenticeship to professional status and their all-important contribution to the distinguished profiles and images of their patrons.