In between the strings, all along the chords: an ethnography of a network of social projects targeting social intervention through music teaching

• Grant number: 20/12294-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: October 01, 2021
• End date: September 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji
• Grantee: Paula Bessa Braz
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 16/05318-7 - Local musicking: new pathways for ethnomusicology, AP.TEM
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/01233-0 - Music, social intervention and the gift, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This doctoral project proposes to examine the ways in which musical instrumental practice is employed under the premise of producing social intervention in a network of social institutions and projects, acting in four states in Brazil, promoting instrumental music teaching. This research is drawing from my master's research carried out within the thematic project ""Local musicking - new pathways for ethnomusicology"". For this, I propose to carry out a multilocal ethnography of this network, seeking to understand how the musical activities undertaken in these various spaces are related to each other, whether they have similarities in their performances or not, and also in relation to the guidelines of the institution that finances them. Searching for references on different fronts of anthropological knowledge, this work intends to combine a literature of musical anthropology with an anthropology of institutions, seeking to understand, in this universe of non-governmental organizations, or 'technical-bureaucratic entities', how meanings are attributed to this musical making aiming the social intervention. Therefore, I argue that it is necessary to (I) go through the network of relationships between the connected institutions, perceive its tangles, and its bureaucratic mediations; but also to (II) understand the ways in which this same discourse informs the practices of social projects, their musical activities and their sound praxis. (AU)