Traditional galician female singers: an exhibition of transmission

Abstract

The initiative of the Real Academia Galega to honour seven female oral poets on the Día das Letras Galegas [Galician Literature Day] 2025 enabled the Museo do Pobo Galego [Galician Ethnographic Museum] to create a temporary self-produced exhibition in order to highlight the intangible legacy of the cantareiras (traditional Galician female singers) across all its departments: collection, library, documentation, and visual and sound archives. The exhibition narrative was based on a gender perspective while maintaining focus on the natural transmission of oral heritage; an archive of female names that had been forgotten in the wake of the concept of collective creation was compiled. The multitude of professional and personal stories that emerged from this study underscores the need for further research in this field.