Black art and thought as critical epistemologies: contributions to music education

Abstract

Based on the problematization of the lack of recognition of black intellectual productions and artists as an episteme, and in particular,  of Afro-referenced content in Brazilian musical literature, this article seeks to lead the reader to reflect on the processes of musical teaching and learning, from a decolonial and Afro-diasporic perspective. Seeking to weave a dialogue with the concept of black-body-territory, by the black historian and intellectual, Beatriz Nascimento, the text seeks to relate how the black body is inscribed in different environments based on the awareness and resumption of its ancestry, culture and origin. In the lines that are woven here, I seek to provoke the reader to the need to decentralize the hegemonic discourse of white-European tradition, which are undertaken in debates and recorded in books of musical theory and analysis, as well as in books of music history. Thus, the aim is to understand how the mechanisms of racial, class and gender oppression operate in the perpetuation of the symbolic erasure of the history and influence of the African continent on our musicality.