Feminine choir from Católica in Porto celebrates 30 years
The Tuna Feminina of Universidade Católica Portuguesa (TFUCP) in Porto is to be congratulated! It was on December 10, 1990 that tuna was born into the hands of students from the Porto School of Law, the Porto Catholic Business School and the School of Biotechnology, although today it already includes members of all academic units.
Currently, the direction of tuna is constituted by Inês Guimarães (Magistra), Ana Moreira (Public Relations), Leonor Pizzaro (Musical Direction), Sara Madureira (Treasurer) and Francisca Silva (Secretary), who accepted the challenge to answer some questions:
UCP: What is the mission of the Tuna Feminina of the Portuguese Catholic University?
TFUCP: The mission of TFUCP is to continue its legacy by spreading music and the spirit of group unity. The tuna has as objectives: to act in festivals and fight for the best prizes, the continuous team work and, most important, that its members have fun throughout the journey as tunantes.
UCP: How many elements does tuna have?
TFUCP: Once tunante, always tunante. Thus the TFUCP is made up of almost 150 elements, and currently has about 20 elements in active.
UCP: What is the spirit in tuna?
TFUCP: A lot of words or phrases could be written, but only those who live can understand the spirit of belonging to this family in which they are friends for life. Here there is an academic group where students can grow. Anyone who wants to join this academic group can expect work, ambition, complicity, celebration, and most importantly, group spirit.
UCP: What was it like to overcome the challenge of the pandemic?
TFUCP: The expectations and objectives for the school year 2019/2020 were very high because the school year 2018/2019 was a very good year: we went to numerous festivals, one of which on the island of Madeira and another in which we went to the capital to win the prize for Best Tuna. All these moments led us to be better as a group and to strengthen the bond between us. Thus, we decided to hold again our festival Acordes do Douro, for which we started working at the beginning of the school year 2019/2020. The goal was to hold this festival in April 2020 and, after a lot of work and almost all points closed, we had to cancel due to the pandemic. When we found ourselves closed at home, without rehearsals, without invitations and without festivals, we decided to continue animating everyone who was in the same situation and so we made some dynamic and fun videos. Even on the night of our festival, we published a video in which we gathered the voices of elements from several generations of our tuna singing the song "Porto Velhinho". Since then, we have been trying to innovate and use even more our social networks in order to energize this academic group. We have also kept several virtual meetings between us so that the contact is not lost and we will have a next one, with more than 50 attendances, to celebrate our 30th anniversary!
You can get in touch with tuna through tunafemininaucp@gmail.com and follow its activity through the Social Media Accounts.