Cumbia is arguably Colombia’s best-known musical export. This popular dance music from the country’s north coast is today ubiquitous throughout Latin America, yet surprisingly little has been written about it. This report examines cumbia in its most traditional setting, the conjunto de gaitas, an ensemble featuring flutes of indigenous origin and Afro-Colombian drums. Musicians and scholars alike have interpreted the ensemble and its repertoire as a site for preserving tradition and an audible symbol of how three distinct racial groups—black, white, and indigenous—combined to form the Colombian nation. This report examines the investment in a discourse of tradition and explores how this discourse has served to sound a marginalized Colombian identity while simultaneously limiting its place within the national imaginary. After an introduction that lays out theoretical literature on tradition, race, and place, I consider three instances where the discourse of tradition has prominently shaped gaita music. First, I turn to Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto, the most successful and archetypal conjunto de gaitas. The group’s history, from its beginning as a part of a staged folklore troupe for national and international tours to its recent Grammy award win, is a prime example of how the very appeal to traditionalism that garnered the group’s success has also been its greatest limitation. Second, I turn to scholarly literature on gaitas, comparing work from the mid-20th century and the early 21st. Despite notable differences between these two historiographical moments, especially in representations of the coast, appeals to tradition remain the central narrative, delimiting alternative interpretations of race and region. A final chapter offers three case studies on how different musicians have taken gaita tradition as a point of departure. From the development of gaitas in Western tuning by Juancho Nieves and Elber Álvarez, to Carlos Vives’s use of gaitas in his pop-vallenato musical blend, and lastly to the “progressive folklore” of experimental group Curupira, I explore how these different trajectories complicate notions of tradition. / text

Orientador(a): Lutero Rodrigues da Silva / Banca: Rodolfo Nogueira Coelho de Souza / Banca: Graziela Bortz / Resumo: A harmônica de boca, ou simplesmente gaita de boca, é um instrumento muito difundido em todo o mundo, e cada vez mais representativo em diversos gêneros musicais. Com o advento de seu modelo cromático com chave, surgido na primeira metade do Século XX, ela passa a inserir as salas de concerto com peças escritas exclusivamente para a harmônica cromática em formações orquestrais. No Brasil, três importantes compositores se destacam com as respectivas obras: Heitor Villa-Lobos e o Concerto para harmônica; Radamés Gnattali e o Concertino para harmônica e orquestra; e César Guerra-Peixe e a Suíte Quatro Coisas. Este trabalho tem o objetivo de analisar minuciosamente essas três obras relacionando as respectivas linguagens dos compositores à escrita idiomática do instrumento. Para conseguir essa meta foi necessário fazer uma contextualização histórica e organológica do instrumento, e uma breve síntese dos aspectos históricos e processuais dos compositores. No final do trabalho foram traçados pontos em comum, e que se diferenciam em suas respectivas linguagens, tendo como enfoque principal a harmônica cromática / Abstract: The harmonica, or mouth organ, is an instrument very widespread in the world, and increasingly representative in diverse musical genres. With the advent of its chromatic model, which emerged in the first half of the 20th century, it began to include concert halls with pieces written exclusively for the chromatic harmonica in orchestral formations. In Brazil, three important composers stand out with the respective works: Heitor Villa-Lobos and Harmonica concerto; Radamés Gnattali and the Concertino for harmonica and orchestra; and César Guerra-Peixe and the Quatro Coisas Suíte. This research has the objective of analyzing these three works in detail, relating the respective languages ​​of the composers relating to the idiomatic writing of the instrument. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to make a historical and organological contextualization of the instrument, and a brief synthesis of the historical and procedural aspects of the composers. At the end of the research, common points were drawn, which differ in their respective languages, with the main focus being the chromatic harmonic / Mestre

This thesis explores reasons and disagreement in ethics, and their connection to personal identity. I begin by arguing that reasons are open; what gives them direction is how they feature in my life and weigh with me. Of course, this does not tell us what reasons are available to a person when they act. In this connection I argue against Bernard Williams’ internal reasons thesis, showing that there are occasions when we will want to say someone has a reason to act even though they are unable to see it. Continuing with Williams, I explore moral necessity, drawing also on the works of Winch, Rhees and Cordner, arguing that Williams too readily conflates psychological with ethical limits. In particular, the possibility of recanting what we took to be necessary should inform our view of moral necessity, since it can show that I had misconstrued the nature of the limits I took myself to have reached. Following this use of recantation, I explore narrative in detail, arguing that my narrative is partly constitutive of who I am. My agency is therefore interpretive. This has ramifications for thinkers such as Christine Korsgaard and Jonathan Dancy, whose work I explore in two excursuses. In different ways, both fail to appreciate the significance of our interpretive identities.