Catimbau, a tragic love story told and sung over time

Abstract

The relationships between music and literature are of a historical nature. Throughout history, it has consistently been observed that there are historical and literary moments in which music and lyrics have converged, though not always with identical objectives. It is also possible for the same story to be conveyed to the public in various forms, including through a fictional text in the form of a short story or a song lyric. The purpose of this study is to compare the content of the short story “Catimbau,” published by Humberto de Campos in 1932, with the song of the same title, recorded more than three decades later by the country duo Tião Carreiro and Pardinho. This work is grounded in theoretical studies by Aguiar (1993), Goulart and Vieira (1994), Tavares (1996), Gancho (2004), Gotlib (2004) and Costa (2010). The study concludes that a song lyric, according to its specific characteristics, can be classified as a narrative text and that it is feasible to compare the content of a short story with that of a song.