Musicalentar, mulheres negras em movimento: uma etnomusicologia negra multissituada em Salvador/BA

Abstract

This doctoral thesis in ethnomusicology is an autoethnography (MAIA, Suzan; BATISTA, 2020) aims to understand, through ethnographic work, the sound-musical processes that encompass and imprison female bodies, the vast majority of whom are black, in distinct territories. The first space refers to the Mata Escura Women's Penitentiary Complex, in Salvador/BA, where I conducted my research with four women, aged 35 to 53, who are serving prison sentences in the “safe” pavilion of the aforementioned penitentiary. The second territory encompasses different spaces and makes references to the black singer of the Afro block, Karina Neres, aged 53, and myself. Of the six women I chose to discuss, four are black and two are non-black. I chose to address these interlocutors, having as research problems the territorial, cultural and structural imprisonments concomitantly with the social violence inherent not only to this prison space, but also in relation to the difficulties existing in musical territories that make us, black singers, see ourselves imprisoned in a context of social invisibility, prejudice, machismo and social stereotypes, imposed by society.To this end, I use multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995) as a way of describing and analyzing these movements, especially those of singer Karina Neres and myself, who circulated in different places during the research. This fact does not differentiate us from the other interlocutors, since our lives intersect due to the ethnic and social conditions inherent to our skin color. In this sense, in my work I sought to understand how these women perceive the processes of sounds, music, poetry, musical memories, perception of themselves and others in different contexts. For these reasons, and as a feedback from a feminist, black and engaged ethnomusicology, I propose the concept of Feminine Musicalentar based on pedagogies experienced and co-created within the scope of Feminaria Musical: a research and sound experiments group, of which I have been a member since 2020, especially with regard to the understanding of music/sound experiments and voice/singing as a tool for healing and Well-Being (theme of the 1st March of Black Women) for all women as a human right, without distinction. Through participant observation, field diaries, interviews, image records, conversation circles, writings and reflections on the lives of these women, I will seek to elucidate the role of music in the reconstruction and identity affirmation of these female bodies and to compose my theoretical basis, having as main references the authors: Jon Lomax (1936); Jason Benjamin (2010); Laila Rosa (2013); Nana Queiroz (2015); Noemi Viana (2015); Angela Davis (2018); Juliana Borges (2019); Ossimar Franco (2021) among other researchers who help us think about ethnomusicology in different territories with and from music and sound. These perceptions will be interpreted through the writings and memories of these six collaborators. The aforementioned research, in multiple fields, national, international and virtual, was carried out between April two thousand and twenty-two and November two thousand and twenty-three.