Diversity in Music Teachers Training: The Case of the “Tambor de Crioula” in the Brazilian State of Maranhão

Abstract

This article addresses the favorable outcome of the collaborative pedagogy methodology for the tambor de crioula in Ensemble Practice III (2015.2), a curricular course in the music teaching certification program at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA). This pedagogical method was innovated to increase the hierarchical flexibility between student-teacher relationships both in terms of who owns the musical knowledge and the teaching method used to transmit it. This was only made possible by the creation of a cooperative environment where the quota students, heirs of Afro-Maranhense musical traditions, could share their knowledge and worldviews with their classmates and teacher, taking on an unprecedented role in the educational process. Multicultural pedagogical practices such this, are founded on the belief that the teaching of music should exercise its political role in the construction of social justice, citizenship, democracy, and the reduction of the ethnic-racial inequality and should begin during the university teacher training programs. Such ideas have gained momentum in academic fields like music education and ethnomusicology (LUCAS et al., 2016. QUEIROZ, 2017. CAMPBELL, 2018), however, its full incorporation finds resistance from rigid institutional structures and conservative dispositions rooted in college-level music programs in Brazil. We conclude that only by transforming music teacher training institutions that we will be able to contribute, through the work of future music educators, to end prejudice and promote the inclusion of historically rejected epistemologies.

Keywords

• Licenciatura em música. Educação musical. Etnomusicologia. Culturas afro-brasileiras. Tambor de crioula.