2023/09/01 by Adam Mahler · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Hispanic-African Historical Relations #Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1353/cor.2023.a961712
openalex publication_date 2023/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/02
Abstract: This article examines a Galician-Portuguese satirical song by the troubadour Lopo Lias (ca. 1190–1260) that contains a charged reference to the som de negrada , or "blackened-up music." Leading scholars of the cantigas have taken the term as a reference to the strophic design of the muwashshaḥ , an Andalusi poetic form that combines metered stanzas in Classical Arabic or Hebrew with a refrain in Ibero-Romance, colloquial Arabic, or a combination of both. Though it is difficult to disentangle Lias's reference from the broader Christian discourse against Islam, I argue for the song's pertinence to the study of race-making in medieval Iberia and its importance as an early attestation of Iberian Blackness and black literary subjectivity in Galician-Portuguese. More generally, I highlight the role of voice and acoustics in medieval identity formation as well as in constructions of ethnorace.