Abstract:
The cultural objectification process is selective, as it implies the recontextualization of
certain cultural objects in a different context than the one that generated them, attributing them
new significance and meanings (Handler, 1984, p. 62). During the First Portuguese Colonial
Exhibition (Porto, 1934), this attitude was related to the discourse of invention of the “other”,
where the relations between societies are governed by certain hierarchies. Mudimbe (2013, pp.
15-16) designates them as settlers, those who establish a region and dictate the rules; the colo nizers, those who explore a territory under the control of the local majority, with a tendency to
organize and transform non-European zones into fundamentally European constructions. At the
end of this hierarchy, I would add the colonized, that is, those who obey. In the context of the
colonial exhibition in Porto (1934), the Chopi music was recontextualized, and new meanings and
significance were attributed, becoming a symbol of Portuguese national identity. Therefore, the
Chopi music during the colonial exhibition of Porto was transformed into practices of surrender
and submission of Mozambican communities, and its meanings and significance were reduced in acts of folk representation through Western performance models and the imposition of the
respective aesthetic and moral models, including vertical communication from top to bottom.
