Mulheres percussionistas na cidade de João Pessoa/PB: um estudo do grupo “As Calungas”

Abstract

This paper is an outcome of the analysis of integrating and resulting factors in both insertion and practice activities of women in percussion practice field in João Pessoa – PB. As Calungas, a women percussion group, collaborated to this autoetnographic case study as participants. Considering the perspective of local knowledge and musical performance as local performance acts, in this thesis I make use of the decolonial feminist epistemologies and adopt an ethnomusicological approach. Based on a qualitative approach to bibliographical research, documentary research, autoethnography, semi-structured interviews, and some surveys, it is possible to understand As Calungas as a regular meeting opportunity in the capital of Paraíba where visibility to women in percussion is consolidated. Thus, As Calungas converge to the insertion of women in the percussion field, which is often considered a masculinized space in music. This band stands out locally as a group that, in addition to enabling women's protagonism in percussion performance, contributes actively to the maintenance of a network of women who, among several possibilities of convergence, find in the percussion a catalytic means of empowerment. From the percussion workshops to the pre-carnival group performance, the percussionists who form the group offer support to other women to learn instruments, but also extrapolate this purpose by fostering the creation of affective ties and exchanges of experiences, articulating resistance on a daily basis and, through all these routes of action, communicating that "a woman's place is wherever she wants to be".