Intercultural competence and collegiate workshops of Candomblé music and dance in the U.S.

• In Event: Recontexualizing Afro-Latin Religious Music

Abstract

How can discomfort and inauthenticity in music education contribute positively to intercultural learning? When an Afro-Brazilian folkloric troupe provided workshops about the music and dance of Candomblé at the author’s college, discomfort toward gender-divided performance roles in Candomblé (men play the percussion and women dance) caught the students’ attention as much as learning the polyrhythmic percussion parts and dance movements. While gender divisions authentically resembled etiquette in Candomblé rituals, they conflicted with the cultural values of students and equal opportunity rules of the college. Although the guest musician sought to keep students comfortable while learning authentically about musical performance in Candomblé, ethnomusicologists who direct ensembles on campuses have attested that discomfort and inauthenticity can help to achieve learning outcomes that strive to increase musical and intercultural skills, as documented in the edited volumes Performing Ethnomusicology (2004) and Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (2010). Similarly, transformative moments during such musical activities relate to theories about the development of intercultural competence, the study of which draws on the anthropology of education, multicultural research in social sciences, and international business training; e.g., The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (2009) and The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education (2009). This paper uses the intersections of these discourses to interpret the recontexualization of Candomblé music in those college workshops, where anxieties about authenticity/inauthenticity and comfort/discomfort informed the students’ and performers’ experiences and possibly their educational effectiveness.

Author

• Marc M Gidal, Ramapo College of New Jersey