A bimusicalidade na relação entre universidade e favela: reflexões sobre uma experiência etnomusicológica em uma favela brasileira

Abstract

This article presents part of the analysis of the ethnographic material that has been brought together in the last six years of research with “Grupo Arautos do Gueto”, in Morro das Pedras slum, Belo Horizonte. These six years of research include Scientific Initiation, Master’s Degree and part of Doctoral Degree. The participatory observation, combined with action-research and university extension has been the adopted procedure. The reflections presented here connect the ethnographic material with the sense of musicality such as: the non-ontological but socially acquired ability of expression throughout the organization of sounds; language and musical systems as products of social-historical process of development of musicality in each cultural system;  “bi-musicality” as the ability to develop a second musical system (language) different from the native system; the differences in language between the musical systems from the Western Europe, dominant in Brazilian Universities and the Afro-Brazilian, dominant in most slums and other parts of  Brazil; the postcolonial discussions that deal with sociocultural disparities in former colonies as the historical continuation of the disparities in the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised; the disparity in power between the Brazilian ethnomusicologists and the Brazilian communities where they work, and the “bi-musicality” as a resource for an ethnomusicologist that graduated in a Brazilian university where the hegemonic  musical  system is from the Western Europe, and then goes to the slums and communities where there is another musical system. As a conclusion, the article presents a discussion about how the “bi-musicality”, in the case of this research, is pointed out as an important resource for the pedagogical process and for the advancement of the relationship between the university and the slum.