Philanthropy and music education at fazenda vista alegre: violence and art in the second half of the 19th century

Abstract

This article presents a study of the contradictions present at Fazenda Vista Alegre (in the municipality of Valença) and other neighbouring properties, between the philanthropy involved in educational processes through music and slave violence. The period studied corresponds to the second half of the 19th century. We intend to develop a critical
detachment from the presence of freed slaves in the music band at Fazenda Vista Alegre because of the education of ingénues (the training of black and brown children at an early age) after the Free Womb Law, at the same time as the inhumane conditions inflicted on the enslaved. These
contradictions, clarified in this way, allow us to better understand the hierarchical burdens, which still persisted in the last decades of slavery. In other words, we have here the paradox of a process of humanisation, due to musical education for children, coexisting with the inhumanity of the slave quarters: parents oppressed by forced labour, whose children perhaps had an even undignified fate because of music.