TÓPICOS DE LINGUA E CULTURA

In this work we intend to analyze the song Tenant of a guitarist, which tells the story of a young man from the countryside who has just arrived in town, typically dressed, and meets in the elevator of a building a young girl, who underestimates him and humiliates him due to his cowboy clothes. In the end, she finds out the young man is actually the owner of the building and that she is his tenant.

According to the concepts related to cultural representation and cultural identity, homogeneity and heterogeneity, there could be confirmed in the song which is being analyzed that when we have a sort of background in culture we try to analyze the ones around consulting this specific experience we have had in life, or experiences we have learned along the years.

Hall (1997, p.17) affirms this is what cultural representation means, which is the “link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the real world of objects, people, events, or indeed to imaginary words of fictional objects, people or events” providing knowledge exchange between people.

In the song, the guitarist is trying to refer to himself as a man from countryside, a “cowboy”, carrying a guitar and wearing a cowboy hat, although he is in a town, taking an elevator and affirming he is the owner of a great building. He feels he is from countryside according to his experiences in life, but tries to impress the girl beside him telling her things a “cowboy” would not do, nor have.

Music with its sounds and chords is a special case of 'language', according to Hall (1997, p.19) “any sound, word, image or object which functions as a sign, and is organized with other signs into a system which functions carrying and expressing meanings is, from this point of view, 'a language' “.

Furthermore, Hall affirms there are two systems of representation involved and the first one is more suitable to the song analyzed: “there is the system by which all sorts of objects, people and events are correlated with a set of concepts or mental representations which we carry around in our heads”. Thus, “meaning depends on the system of concepts and images formed in our thoughts which can stand for or represent the world, enabling us to refer to things both inside and outside our heads”. The second system of representation is related to obscure and abstract things, as told Hall “we

can´t in any simple way see, feel or touch”. This song presents some words as love and destiny, which are connected with this concept.

In the song, for instance, there is a young girl who is recognizing the man beside her as if he were a “beggar”, according to her experiences she probably has had before meeting the young man, according to the context she is able to identify, thus his clothes, speech, type of vocabulary help her to have that sort of interpretation; however, along the song the listener observes that the young man is such a rich man, who is the owner of the apartment which the girl has just rented.

Also, a simple conversation is constructed dialogically through the interlocutors; during the dialogue each interlocutor revaluates the meaning of each intervention. Souza (2006, p. 14) states that “it is in this sense that the language becomes emergent, it is simultaneously produced by each speaker, then, appropriate and modified by the other during the entire length of verbal interaction”1.

By way of Bakhtin (1981 : 293) who determines “language is built and works on the border between me and one another without being able to never be reduced to a mere product of one or the other”, the song shows the contrast between tradition and modernity. The guitarist feels honored being a cowboy: “call me as you like, redneck or hick, this hat is the trophy of cattlemen”, he symbolizes the tradition. The girl is interested in appearance, concerned about the status. She met the young man in the elevator, a place which symbolizes modernity.

On the other hand, Hall (1996, p. 599) argues that “tradition is a means of handling time and space, which inserts any particular activity or experience within the continuity of past, present and future, these in turn being structured by recurrent social practices. Modernity, by contrast, according to the same author “is not only defined as the experience of living with rapid, extensive, and continuous change, but is a highly reflexive form of life in which social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character”.

1 The citation was translated by the authors: “é nesse sentido que a linguagem se torna emergente, sendo simultaneamente produzida por cada interlocutor e apropriada e modificada pelo outro na duração inteira da interação verbal” Souza (2006, p. 14). Conforme disse Bakhtin (1981:293) a linguagem se constrói e funciona na fronteira entre um eu e um outro sem poder nunca ser reduzida a um produto meramente de um ou do outro”.

The girl thought that the young man was poor, “to me you're nothing but a shaped beggar, you with this guitar is a backward hick”. The fashion code relates some kinds of clothes combination as elegant, with a refined appearance. Hall (1997, p. 37) affirms that “this coding converts the clothes into signs, which can then be read as a language. In the language of fashion, the signifiers are arranged in a certain sequence, in certain relations to one another”.

Hall also calls our attention to personal and public identities. Our personal identity is sometimes and somehow different from the identity we need or want to state in a specific public context. The author affirms we do not have a fixed, or permanent identity; “it becomes a moveable feast: formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us” (Hall, 1996, p.598).

The subject, then, “assumes different identities at different times, identities which are not unified around a coherent self”. Hall adds that “if we feel we have a unified identity from birth to death, it is only because we construct a comforting story or "narrative of the self" about ourselves” (1996, p.598-599).

The cultural heterogeneity creates conflicts in a community. According to Souza (2006, p. 7), “in their cross-cultural contacts with members of other groups with whom they live, conflicts arise based on cultural differences, which generate conflicting interpretations and perceptions”2.

It is known each person understands and interprets the world in a personal way; however; Hall (1997, p. 18) states that “we are able to communicate because we share broadly the same conceptual maps and thus make sense of or interpret the world in roughly similar ways. That is indeed what it means when we say we belong to the same culture. Because we interpret the world roughly similar ways, we are able to build up a shared culture of meanings and thus construct a social world which we inhabit together”.

From this view, we can notice how the materialistic aspect is relevant to the subjects involved in the song. The girl represents the dominant thinking of the countryside man as a poor and ignorant man. The young man preserves his roots and his identity as a man of the countryside and goes against this dominant thinking when he claims, “Where you live is not yours,

2 The citation was translated by the authors: “in their cross-cultural contacts with members of other groups with whom they live , conflicts arise based on cultural differences , which in turn generate conflicting interpretations and perceptions Souza (2006, p. 7)”.

this building here is mine”. We see then the importance of wealth as a symbol of power in his auto affirmation. In the end he turns from oppressed into oppressor because both girl and man share the same meaning in relation to money, i.e. they see this issue from within the same conceptual map (Hall (1997, p. 22).

A community is not homogeneous and any culture will have dominant elements and other elements that will relate to the dominant, and may even replace them (Souza 2006, p. 8). Thus, in the song analyzed, the town girl considers the guitar player as inferior because of his clothes and what they represent. However, from their shared concept of wealth, he changes the situation and affirms himself and his values as superior: “Feel proud to be a tenant of a guitar player from countryside”.

TENANT OF A GUITARISTJoão Gonçalves / Tião Carrero / Zezé / Luciano

A young man with his guitar, is coming from the countrysideWith a cowboy hat and costumes farmerIn a building in Sao Paulo, entered the elevatorAlso entered a girl just like a flower budFinding the girl so beautiful the boy told her:“I want to be your love”The girl answered with a rude gestureTo me you're nothing but a shaped beggarYou with this guitar is a backward hickIt has nowhere to drop dead and wanna be my loverI just stay with noble peopleYou are such a poor guy, I don’t date underdogsThe very polite young man then told the girlI walk with this guitar to fulfill my destinyBut I am very capricious, just got a corner buildingTo me you're nothing but a false empty-headed young girlWhere you live is not yours, this building here is mine

You're my tenantCall me as you like, redneck or hickThis hat is the trophy of cattlemenNot off this guitar because I am a good BrazilianYou delayed your rent; I came to get my moneyYou must accomplish better your dutyFeel proud to be a tenant of a guitar player from countryside

INQUILINA DE VIOLEIRO

Um rapaz com sua viola vem chegando do interiorCom chapéu de boiadeiro e trajes de lavradorEm um prédio em São Paulo, entrou no elevadorTambém entrou uma moça igual um botão de florAchando a moça tão bela o rapaz falou pra ela“Quero ser o seu amor”A mocinha respondeu com um gesto indelicadoPara mim você não passa de um mendigo conformadoVocê com essa viola é um caipira atrasadoNão tem onde cair morto e quer ser meu namoradoSó fico com gente nobreVocê é um rapaz tão pobre, não namoro pé rapadoO rapaz muito educado então disse pra meninaAndo com essa viola pra cumprir a minha sinaMas sou muito caprichoso, só tenho prédio de esquinaPara mim você não passa de uma falsa granfinaOnde moras não é seu, esse prédio aqui é meuVocê é minha inquilinaMe chame como quiser, de caipira ou de roceiroEsse chapéu representa o troféu dos boiadeirosNão largo dessa viola porque sou bom brasileiroAtrasou seu aluguel, vim receber meu dinheiroCumpra melhor seu deverSinta o orgulho de ser inquilina de violeiro

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HALL, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage and The Open University, 1997.

HALL, Stuart. “The question of cultural identity” In Modernity An Introduction to Modern Societies, Hall, S, Held, D., Hubert, D. and Thompson, K. Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

SOUZA, Lynn Mario T. Menezes de. Linguagem, Cultura, e Emergência Dialógica, 2006.