Social Conflict & the Political Dimensions of Sound Praxis--Perspectives from a Participatory Research Project in Rio de Janeiro

The presentation will address social conflict from the perspectives opened by ongoing research projects being carried out in marginalized areas of the city of Rio de Janeiro. In such initiatives, inspired by the theoretical and methodological formulations of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and, more generally, of so-called "participatory action research," teams of ethnomusicologists have been working dialogically with groups of residents of these communities, who participate actively as co-researchers to produce original knowledge on different meanings articulated by the musical practices that coexist in those spaces. By discussing issues as the political dimension of sound praxis, the epistemological relevance of participatory and dialogic research practices, and the new meanings that community-conceived archives can altogether assume as a tool for social transformation, the article seeks to offer alternative perspectives for knowledge building, in which distinctions between "academic" (or "theoretical") and "applied" ("practical" or "advocacy") research will have to be thought over in new epistemological keys.
 
Presenters:

Samuel Araujo is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Having organized three books and published extensively in Brazil and abroad, he has been coordinating the project Music, Memory and Sociability at Maré since 2003.

Vincenzo Cambria, Ph. D. candidate at Wesleyan University, has written on music and ethnicity in Brazil, and is currently working on a dissertation on music and violence in the context of Maré. He was also responsible for coordinating fieldwork activities during the first year of the research project.

Sinesio Jefferson Andrade Silva holds a B. A. in History and is currently a master's degree candidate in ethnomusicology at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Being a resident of Maré and having participated of the Maré project since the beginning, he is currently writing a thesis on music and social memory in his own community.