Harue Tanaka Paraiba Federal University
Brazil
hautanaka@ig.com.br
Abstract
The present work comprises the results obtained from a doctoral thesis on music education where aspects concerning the spreading and propagation of old cultural traditions belonging to the community of Baixa do Dendê were analyzed. The core of the matter comprises the observation along the music teaching/learning process and its social-educational-cultural connections – pedagogical bridges – among the group participants. The group being studied represent, as described in one of the themes presented at the Community Music Activity Commission, represents a pedagogical formula of situated learning, musical making through a community music practice that expands along its course giving rise to the building of bridges based on academic knowledge needed for the formation of music educators. One can safely state that the recommendations found along the body of the thesis do help to produce elements directed towards the formation of music educators, enabling them to assess and re-think their music pedagogical practices. These elements will serve as practice towards resilience – a term borrowed from physics used here to describe the professional’s capacity to endure the challenges and adversities that may be encountered along their careers.
Keywords: community music, ethnographic case study, music educators’ formation, pedagogic connections, pedagogic design, PONTES Approach
This paper conveys the research results of a doctorate thesis entitled “Pedagogic musical connections at Ganhadeiras de Itapuã’s Choir: an ethnographic case study”.
The results were derived from a popular cultural group in the Northeastern Brazil belonging to a community known as the Baixa do Dendê in Salvador, Bahia. The group represents a sample amid the various community music practices or in informal music education areas and their methodologies all absorbed by the Federal Music Education in Brazil. With the enforcement of the Bill 11.769/2008 which made musical content compulsory in all Brazilian schools, the academic community and its professors discussed strategies concerning the transmission and use of local music practices with the adaptation of some of their practices to current pedagogical contexts. This research seeks to help the music teacher to consider and debate the profile of the present and future music educator who, according to Schön (2000)
“instructs the thinking professional” over their initial and further professional
development. For such, we have taken the PONTES (Positivity, Observation, Naturalness, Technique, Expressivity and Sensibility) approach as basic reference on the recommendations of a teacher’s activity concerning a methodological planning duly adapted to students and contexts. As suggested by Oliveira (2008), “this deals with pedagogical creativity, with the teacher’s posture, adaptation and strategic approximation in relation to their students, to the institutions, and the opportunities that come in the way and during the educational praxis” (p. 5).
According to Oliveira (2004), the term design would correspond to a theoretical trend, a way of thinking through which one intends to adopt a pedagogical project stemming from the teacher’s own nature (the individual) and the environment (the context) with the purpose of attending to target public necessities (the students), taking into account their previous cultural experiences, level of development, preferences, specific talent, needs, and motivations.
Two important aspects of pedagogical success are pacing and interactions between the music teacher and his or her students. Consequently, the teacher creatively promotes the so-called pedagogical articulations, which result from the introduction of ideas behind the PONTES approach (PA): Positivity, Observation, Naturalness, Technique, Expressivity and Sensibility which may be translated as bridges. According to the PA mentor, there are two levels of articulations: the basic and advanced articulations. To these we suggest the inclusion of a third, medium level (Tanaka Sorrentino, 2012).
These levels reveal that these articulations can be continuously improved, and indeed operated based on a reflection over a musical-pedagogical practice as much as over the PA propositions.
The research and some fields of music education
From the body of the research a number of recommendations serve as a way of reconsidering the practice previously referred to within the academic/pedagogical sphere, mainly with the purpose of creating bridges linking the musical/community practice and the academic practice. This last found in general within the European musical perspective, following the same directions traced for the musical education in the 19th Century in France, based as it is in the curricula and repertoires constructed according to conservative models i.e., inherited from the Superior National Conservatory of Paris in the 18th Century (1795) (Arroyo, 1999; Fonterrada, 1993;
Jardim, 2002; Penna, 1995; Santos, 1990; Sloboda, 1983; Viegas, 2006). Their main features are: syllabus division into two parts, music theory and instrumental practice;
cumulative classical music knowledge; emphasis on instrumental practice the objective of which would be that of sheer virtuosity, all resulting from natural talent and geniality (Vieira, 2001, p. 21).
Much of the research conducted in Brazil in the l980s and 1900s enlarged the horizons towards spaces and pedagogies where musical education was present. In the 1980s, Arroyo (1999) reported two studies on the relationship between musical education and culture, most specifically the writings of Alexandre Bishop and Conde and Neves. Alexandre Bishop sought to introduce a musicological orientation on to the musicological syllabus leading to a degree in Music Education/Artistry; the principle of which “was based on the acceptance of an indispensable aesthetic
relativist position covering the various musical manifestations” (Arroyo, 1999).
Conde and Neves (1985) called attention to the fact that the musical experience of children in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro was not accredited by the local schools. A study by Alda Oliveira (1986) dealt with music teaching under the viewpoint of the Brazilian culture, concerning the systematic use of folk songs or typically traditional songs in schools and in the places where the children lived. We call further attention to two main lines of research in Brazil: one that relates school daily activities to music (Souza, 1996); and another concerning music learning in cultural settings as different from those of the school. As a result, there came a number of works based on field insertion, such as those produced by Marialva Rios (1995, 1997) on teaching and learning processes as in Trio of Kings’ Rosa Menina (a genre of Brazilian popular culture, in Portuguese, Terno de Reis) from Salvador (Bahia) which is a pioneering work in the field of music education in Brazil, for instance.
The Ganhadeiras
The Ganhadeiras de Itapuã, a group of popular singers, was created to disseminate and divulge the ancient cultural traditions of Itapuã (a district on the outskirts of Salvador, Bahia) via the affective memory of their ancient members; most of them descendant of the ganhadeiras (black women enslaved or free). The group adopted its name in honor of the ancient ganhadeiras who, between the late 19th century and the early 20th century, lived from “gains” i.e., from the commercialization of goods they transported in baskets, trays and bowls, which they carry on their heads, in cities all over Brazil, working as walking vendors, selling their goods via the vendor’s cry in order to make enough money to give to their masters and, as a result, be allowed to wear shoes (metaphorically, only free men were allowed to wear shoes).
Besides divulging their history, the group is trying to get their pregões (vendor’s cry) acknowledged by the UNESCO as a master-piece of the oral and immaterial patrimony of humanity, just in the same way it happened to the Samba de Roda (2004), a genre mainly sung by the Ganhadeiras. This has strengthened the actions of the Associação dos Sambadores e Sambadeiras do Estado da Bahia in the Recôncavo Baiano (the main region where this genre is cultivated).
Figure 1 – Ganhadeiras dancing samba de roda in the Lagoa do Abaetê, 2007. Photo: Ganhadrias photo collection.
Photographer: Alberto Lima (Jornal Irohin)
The idea behind the present work is to demonstrate the main results obtained from data collecting via observation, transcription, analysis of interviews, public performance, and from the 17 rehearsals from which most statements given by the social actors were extracted as well as the various examples of the most effective pedagogical connections. Ethnography was most decisive for locating environments and individuals socially (about 40) that contributed to the research along with two establishments: the Casa da Música and the Senzala do Samba.
Creating bridges with PONTES: Research outcome
The analytic body of the present research generated a list of recommendations (See Figure 2: List of Recommendations for Pedagogical-Musical Interactions). This information provides information for educators to establish connections and articulations along their pedagogical-musical interactions.