Paper short abstract:

Briefly, this paper aim to call attention to the way the city of Lisbon is being conceived and shared as a single and personalized space and thus made into urban culture, as well how those acts of imagination and communication are being shaped by social and political contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Being an essential component of cultural and recreational events of the city, it is not surprising that the urban popular music has gained a continuous and detailed study over the last decades. With some structural and functional specificities, this kind of musical expression constitutes an enunciation from the city that proposes to symbolically elaborate what one imagines having lived and/or one can/wishes to live in it.

Thus, if understood as a performative expression — both musical and literary — that evokes images and organizes common discourses on the city, the Lisbon Great Marches acquire a renewed interest. Once these popular songs are a poetical-musical component of the Lisbon's Folk Marches Parade, one of the main cultural events on municipal festivities, initiated during the first half of the 20th century, the collection of more than forty lyrics provide a unique opportunity to examine a specific part of Lisbon imaginaries over the last seven and a half decades.

Briefly, this paper aim to call attention to the way the city of Lisbon is being conceived and shared as a single and personalized space and thus made into urban culture, as well how those acts of imagination and communication are being shaped by social and political contexts. In order to accomplish that purposes, two themes will be particularly highlighted throughout it: the role of local authorities in the promotion and dissemination of narratives around history and place in urban public space, and the function of musical and cultural expressions as media to spread urban imaginaries.