This end-of-course work aims to present the life story of Felipe Serrão, in order to understand
his importance to the popular culture of Porto Franco, the city where the research is set. Our
aim is to highlight the life story of Felipe Serrão - also known as Favela and “master of popular
culture” - with the aim of making it part of the official history of the city of Porto Franco and
making other narratives about the city and non-hegemonic social actors visible. To create the
narrative presented here, we used oral history as a scientific methodology, in order to
reconstruct the interlocutors' memories of Felipe Serrão's life story through his connections
with the city of Porto Franco and local popular culture. Taking as our axis the perspective that
individual trajectories allow us to access collective memories and processes, we used the path
taken by Favela to present and discuss some elements of the main popular festivities in Porto
Franco in which he performed, namely: Carnival, the Divino Espírito Santo Festivitie, the June
Festivities and Bumba Meu Boi. Throughout the research, we problematized the extent to which
Favela's memory is intertwined with Porto Franco's identity, the city's history, the collective
imagination and the continuous process of building its cultural field. In the analysis, we reflect
on how Favela's life story connects us to various other stories, contexts and local social actors
(brincantes/players, revelers, devotees, artists, activists, public agents), with the argument that
individual trajectories allow us to access collective processes and social dynamics. Finally, it
stands out that the research conducted opens up space for discussions around popular cultural
manifestations, as well as the importance of memory, orality and its many different forms of
recording.
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