Pete Moser
Artistic Director of More Music England
pete.moser@moremusic.org.uk
Abstract
More Music musician Pete Moser has visited this community in Maraba, northern Brazil for two residencies and brought the methodology of his organization to support the young musicians and other leaders in the community. New links have been created with the artists Dan Baron and Manoela Soza, and with schools and cultural institutions in both countries and we are all in the process of deciding what the next phase should be and where we can find funding to support a long term youth exchange.
Keywords: Action research, international learning, partnership, youth leadership This is the story about a youth leadership project that is connecting two communities, both of which are under threat from multiple social and political issues. The key enquiry for More Music is how the international connection develops and changes the local work and what is the best methodology for sustained powerful exchange.
Morecambe is a seaside town in the North West of England whose heyday as a tourist resort is long past.
Following decades of post-war decline, many coastal towns became the locus for some of the most significant economic and health deprivation in the UK…
A decreasing number of holidays were made in the three towns. The void left by the holiday industry was filled in various ways; sometimes, as in the case of Margate, by an economy, society and culture of the disadvantaged and excluded, sometimes, as with Bexhill, by enclaves for the elderly retired.
Many coastal towns became the locus for nationally significant economic, social and health deprivation. At worst, lost resorts became last resorts. (Vella-Burrows et al., 2014, p. 3)
The same is true in Morecambe where in the 1980s the transient population came to sign on for benefits and take advantage of cheap rents and turned the West End of the town into a place of multi occupancy housing, drug use, crime, and prostitution. It rapidly gained a reputation as a no go place and now 30 years later after a variety of regeneration projects (physical infrastructure and NGO agencies) the area is a better place to live but is still fractured with lack of employment, aspiration, and hope. The changes in government policy in health, social care, and education have hardly helped and it remains in the bottom 3% as measured by a variety of indices. This is where the
community music and education charity More Music is based in The Hothouse – an inspirational musical community center with workshop studios and a venue.
Cabelo Seco is the Afro-indigenous community of 600 families in the town of Maraba, Para in the north of Brazil. The houses in this community are in a triangle of land where two rivers join and the lives of the people are intimately linked to the two rivers - with the beach that is uncovered in the summer, the fish, the swimming, the boats, and the washing. It is said to be one of the most dangerous cities in the north where young people are 12 times more likely to be assassinated, where drug use governs the streets, and where there is a prevalence of teenage pregnancy. Into this mix comes the massive threat brought by the mining company Vale, who is destroying the countryside, threatening to dredge the river so it becomes a useful main route for taking out minerals, and bringing wealth that is slowly picking away at the individual families. The new money is used to buy riverside houses - that can be turned into “mansions” and “bars” from displaced people who end up in small concrete bungalows in new housing estates where there is no history or community.
Cabelo Seco is where Mano Souza and Dan Baron live as community cultural activists, using their house as a community space where meetings and rehearsals can take place.
Starting in 2011 an exchange program has included three residencies focused on youth leadership with exchanges of skills and knowledge between artists and young people from both countries. The aim is to build resilience and strength in the two communities. In each community the young leaders are involved in different programs that allow them to develop both their music leadership and their general leadership and confidence.
At More Music, the youth leadership program aims
1. To truly embed young people’s participation within the organization by encouraging young people to participate in the planning and decision making process on an equal level with adults through the creation of a Youth Board
2. To support and encourage young people to lead, facilitate and run music-making activities themselves, and in the process increase transferable skills and outcomes for the transition to adulthood.
The learning and development all takes place within programs of activity that include:
Events and Festival Stages – Here the young people run all aspects including programming, technicals, marketing, compering, documenting, and evaluating. As many as 12 different events occur within one year.
Commissions – Examples include researching, writing music and performing for the Holocaust Memorial Commemoration; creating a multimedia space outside for the high profile LIGHT UP THE STREET event; working with young people from 3 countries on music for the local European Youth Games.
Youth Consultation – This program involves consultation with youth to discover their thoughts on their musical involvement and needs in the district for the Lancashire Music Hub. Through these activities the leaders gain Arts Award qualifications and a new cohort of younger people start to get interested and engaged in leadership.
In Cabelo Seco, Maraba music has been at the center of the program of work and residencies from Brazilian and Nigerian musicians and dancers and UK community musicians have created links and enabled the project to gain an international dimension. At the center of the work with the young people have been discussions around cultural identity, about roots and diversity, and the potential power of music to create resilient communities. Fashion, clothing, television advertising, and rampant consumerism all try to destabilize authentic cultural identity and destroy cultural diversity. Inclusive collective music-making, group singing, joint performance, and the creation of new songs re-establish connection to historic cultural identity and give young people pathways to the future.
The Latinas de Quintal is a group of 8-10 young people who have worked with songwriter Zequinha and resident artists Manoela Sosa and Dan Baron over five years and gained national recognition as well as a prestigious UNESCO award. They have written songs about their local community, about the river and the life on its banks, about the desecration of the regions forests and the danger for their community from the mining development. They have learned how to play, to lead music in their local schools, to perform and present at their project at national and international conferences. Their community survives and the 500 families are likely to be able to resist change as a result of this cultural activity.
This is the double context for international exchange.
If Youth development is the process that prepares a young person to meet the challenges of adolescence and adulthood and achieve his or her full potential then Youth Leadership is part of the youth development process and, as Wehmeyer, Agran, and Hughs (1998) explain, should support the young person in developing:
a) the ability to analyze his or her own strengths and weaknesses, set personal and vocational goals and develop the self-esteem, confidence, motivation and abilities to carry them out (including the ability to establish support networks in order to fully participate in community life and effect positive social change) and
b) the ability to guide or direct others on a course of action, influence the opinions and behaviors of others, and serve as a role model.
Both partners are committed to the personal, social, and musical development of the young people and the Youth Leadership projects are necessary in order to provide opportunities for young people to reach not just their full potential as musicians but as human beings. Both are committed to providing young people not only with access to high quality music making activities but also with opportunities to realize their full potential in life and opportunities and support to overcome the barriers that exist and that prevent young people from reaching their goals and ultimately reaching self-actualization.
According to Maslow (1987), “Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization” (p. 22)
In Cabelo Seco this story tells the tale
While waiting for Zequinha, Evany has tuned her guitar and is practicing arpeggios and experimenting how to translate jongo and samba into guitar riffs. Like her aunt, she may never grow taller than the adolescent she is now, but just in the last year, she has become a striking cabocla woman whose glowering beauty and fierce percussive intelligence create an onstage presence no audience forgets. The coordinator of the art education research nucleus from the nearby Federal University enters the workshop, followed immediately by a cultural entrepreneur, a teacher-mother returning to study and a mature student, and all unsheathe their guitars, mildly surprised to find Evany in the mestre’s chair. They are immediately drawn to her unselfconscious intense and virtuoso experimentation, forgetting that she is just fourteen years old. Evany welcomes them with her dazzling smile and guides them with her eyes to sit in the circle of chairs. Just as Zequinha has guided her and his other pupils the day before, she then lures them into the rhythm of the exercise she has been rehearsing, transforming it into the pedagogical performance of an easy dialogue between her pupils and the creation of a community of exchange, solidarity and cooperation. She studies the strumming, plucking and fingering of the four as they watch her, pausing to correct the position of the university professor’s fingers, demonstrating the transition between arpeggios to the cultural entrepreneur and the teacher-mother, showing the student how to correct her posture to improve her coordination, and gradually leads them into an improvised jongo.
Performing Transformation, Community of Rivers – (Baron, 2014)
THE PROGRAM
Residency One – Feb/March 2012
Peter Moser (musician) and Kathryn MacDonald (Pedagogue) visit Cabelo Seco.
This launched the project with musical exchange, teaching of music leadership skills to the young people, a schools tour, teacher training and a creative workshop for a massed group of young people.
The outcomes included new connections created within the local district with musicians, institutions, families and young people, a developed understanding of each other’s practice, pedagogy and language, and raised profile for the project in local / regional press.
Residency Two – May 2013
10 days of workshops, performances and creative play.
For the second residency, the following outcomes were present:
Sopras – a new band developed with their own composed repertoire and donated instruments from the UK, participants developed connections and understanding with local musicians and artists, an increase of music leadership skills and knowledge for Evany and other young people.
Residency Three – June 2013
14 year old Evany Valente visited Morecambe (with Dan and Mano) to run workshops, play and perform with the young leaders from the UK project. She brought her authentic cultural identity to the UK in these school sessions, performances and creative workshops where she presented alongside Peter Moser.
These activities showed how international connections can enhance learning, share authenticity of cultural identity and show a way to the future.
The Future
There is energy and desire from both countries to continue this exchange in the long term and as both groups of young people develop artistically and in leadership skills we will continue to search for options and possibilities.
References
Baron, D. (2014). Rivers project meeting Blog. Retrieved from http://riosdeencontro.wordpress.com/
Cabelo Seco. Retrieved from http://riosdeencontro.wordpress.com/
Maslow, A. (1987). Motivation and personality. (3rd ed). New York: Longman More Music. Retrieved from www.moremusic.org.uk
Valla-Burrows, T., Ewbank, N., Mills, S., Shipton, M., Clift, S., & Gray, F. (2014).
Cultural value and social capital: Investigating social capital, health and wellbeing impacts in three coastal towns undergoing culture-led regeneration.
Sidney De Haan: Research Center for Arts and Health. Retrieved from http://www.nickewbank.co.uk/downloads/Cultural-value-report.pdf
Wehmeyer, M. L., Agran, M., & Hughs, C. (1998). Teaching self-determination to students with disabilities: Basic skills for successful transition. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.