A FLOWER FROM THE SERTÃO IN CONCERT MUSIC
Orchestral music. Social projects for art-education. Ethnomusicology. Embodied performance. Identity and territoriality.
In this research, I propose an investigation of how music can contribute to the identity formation of the young protagonists of the Santo Antônio Orchestra (SAO). It is a Social Project created and developed in the outlying ghettos of Conceição do Coité City, located in the semi-arid region of Bahia, which discusses the relationship between the social projects, which focus on art education. The research’s main objective is to analyze the musical, social, and political processes developed in the referred project. It aims to discuss the issues that involve the actions, which pursue the development of the sense of citizenship, sociability, and self-esteem of children and young adults. The studied population is from outlying ghettos and comes from low-income families. Another research goal is to analyze the relation of these projects to urban violence that has grown both in the large and the small cities. I show the voices of the musicians of Bahia, the northeastern and Brazil from SAO, through an embodied performance, which shatters the Brazilian concert music scenario, revealing creativity and autonomy. I present the musical construction of the SAO’s outlying repertoire, in order to contribute to the assurance of its diversified sonorous identity. It is located in an area where the color of Bahia’s semi-arid is portrayed, but with the contemporary nuances of the Brazilian popular music’s sounds. I highlight the SAO women’s empowerment in a scenario of female silencing and invisibility in the orchestral music context. This research has as its theoretical base the ethnomusicology and gender theories, post-colonial feminist epistemologies, and the theoretical discussions on identity, territoriality, and musical performance. I used as a methodology the systematic observation and the semi-structured interview, in order to discuss the teaching music practices adopted in the light of a social perspective and of the parallel, distinct, and socially complementary cultures. I perform a theoretical-methodological analysis linking Sociolinguistics and the Generative Grammar Theory with Ethnomusicology.