Viviane Beineke Master’s and Doctoral Degrees in Music from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Professor in the Undergraduate Degree Program and the Graduate Program in Music at Santa Catarina State University (UDESC), Brazil. Researcher with a productivity grant from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq. Current Director of Research and Graduate Studies at the Center of Arts, Design and Fashion, UDESC. Leader of the Study and Research Group Inventa Educação Musical. Pursued her Post-Doctoral studies at LudwigMaximilians-Universität München (LMU), Germany. Her professional experience includes working as a music teacher in an elementary school. Conducts research on creative music learning, focusing on school music education, design of teaching materials, and music teaching methodologies. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-00032056-8149 Email: viviane.beineke@udesc.br Music education, creativity, and diversity in school: deconstructing naive discourses in the Brazilian context Viviane Beineke State University of Santa Catarina (Brazil) Abstract This essay explores the importance of creative practices in school music education, emphasizing the need for approaches that broaden concepts of music and recognize multiple musical creativities. It revisits perspectives that prioritize certain musical knowledge and practices, questioning the historical acknowledgment, within the Brazilian context, of male-dominated foreign pedagogical approaches. The essay argues for integrating research on children’s creative musical productions with critical and transformative educational perspectives. It underscores the necessity of teacher education that problematizes musical composition practices, analyzing the social and political dimensions inherent in these practices. The essay concludes by advocating for a sensitive, critical, transformative, and supportive music education, contributing to democratic, anti-racist, and multi-epistemic praxis. Keywords Music education in Brazil, multiple creativities, critical pedagogies, general education, inclusive schools. T his article is an essay on music education, creativities, and diversity in school music education, in which I share many questions, in line with my activities as a student, a teacher and a researcher1. In writing this article, I intertwine stories, studies and questions, conceiving research and production of knowledge as living things, which are not separate from our lives, the people we meet, the partnerships we make, the challenges and dilemmas that arise along the way. In this sense, this text2 seeks to connect research with a territory more closely linked to everyday life, classroom experiences, arguments, and more incipient problematizations; this is a territory that includes uncertainties and desires because they are the ones that motivate our questions and can transform the way we see the production of knowledge. 1 The Foundation for Research and Innovation Support of the State of Santa Catarina (FAPESC) provided funding for this project. 2 This paper was adapted from a previous publication in Portuguese, entitled Educação musical, criatividades e diversidades na escola: encantando e desconstruindo discursos ingênuos (“Music education, creativity, and diversity in school: enticing and deconstructing naive discourses”), a chapter of the book Educação musical: diálogos insurgentes (“Musical education: nonconforming dialogs”), organized by Viviane Beineke (Hucitec, 2023). 2 Throughout this essay, I posit that in the field of music education at large and, more particularly, in Brazil, it is generally agreed that processes involving children’s creative productions are important. However, I believe that we must put toward propositions that can more deeply integrate research on music education and creativity with critical and transformative approaches. I argue that we need to broaden the concepts of music, dispel the notion of a single musical creativity, and start to acknowledge the existence of multiple musical creativities (Burnard 2012), and we also need to question the hierarchization of musical knowledge and practices that reinforce hegemonic values and lead to the invisibility of cultures. From this perspective, I reflect on the need to deconstruct naive views of creativity, aiming at anti-racist music education, in which our children are listened to, thus encouraging schools to be inclusive, diverse, democratic, and liberating. First ideas: children composing I begin by recalling my first experiences with musical composition, which happened in the classroom, as an elementary school music teacher. I was working in the early years of elementary school, making room for children to compose music. I tried to understand how they thought about their songs, how they tried and explored their voice, instruments, and sound objects, how they interacted with each other, how they explained their musical decisions. This was right after I started teaching music at a community elementary school, in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. While studying with music educator Leda de Albuquerque Maffioletti in the early 1990s, I adopted creative practices in my classes, understanding that composition activities in classes and listening to children and their songs were important elements for my teaching practice. At that time, creative music practices were not usually part of music teacher education in southern Brazil, and access to international literature was restricted. However, in 1991, a book was published in Portuguese that was thought-provoking for those who wanted to think about creative music education: The thinking ear: complete writings on music education, by Canadian composer and educator Murray Schafer (1933 - 2021), who came to Porto Alegre for a book signing event. In the 1990s, English music educator Keith Swanwick came to the state of Rio Grande do Sul several times. In his courses, he stressed that there should be connection and interaction among composition, appreciation, and performance activities in music classes. In that decade, the books and courses by Argentine professor Violeta Hemsy de Gainza (1929 - 2023), sharply focused on improvisation activities, were also noteworthy. This way, based on my studies and creative 3 practices with my students, over time I attributed new meanings to composition, as something that was part of my life and that I experienced in my music practice. Adjusting the focus: creativity(-ties), creative practices, creation, and composition I continue this reflective essay by briefly making a distinction on how to use the terms creativity(-ties), creative practices, creation, and composition, since they are often used as synonyms or interchangeably. I use the term creativity to refer to the great field of research that investigates creative processes and practices in music, including musical composition, based on concepts and theoretical references developed in different disciplinary fields that dwell on human creativity: among them, music and music education. In our field, we can place research on the subject in some categories and in works that look at different aspects of musical creativity, such as: creative personalities, creative processes, assessments and tests of creativity, and multiple approaches (Beineke 2009). Initially, these studies were strongly linked to Psychology, but there is increasing research on creativity by the lens of other fields of knowledge, such as Philosophy, Sociology and Anthropology. Creativities, in the plural, is a term used in more recent studies (Burnard and Loughrey 2022; Burnard 2012a), which discuss the idea of multiple creativities in education and music education, a subject that will be addressed later in this essay. On the other hand, creative practices refer to how we make music creatively, that is, our activities and creative experiences when we compose, listen, interpret, dance, conduct... Often, creative practices are understood as synonymous with composition activities, including musical improvisation. An extensive literature review published by Peter Webster in 1992 shows that this was the focus of the first studies on creativity in music education, which investigated creative thinking (which we could also refer to as creative process) in composition and improvisation practices, but there were few works on creative thinking that addressed music analysis or appreciation. Performance was not even present in research on creativity back then; it was not considered an activity that could be the object of study in the field of creativity (Webster 1992). This scenario started to change by the end of the 20th century, when the scope of research on musical creativity was broadened (Hickey 2002). Music composition can also be understood more strictly or more comprehensively; depending on the study, it may include — or not — improvisation. We can refer to composition both to talk about an activity that we perform in 4 class (children are composing a song), and to name the product of this activity (the composition of the children was played by sweet flutes and percussion instruments). I have been using the term composition broadly, including improvisations and arrangements, as well as simple ideas organized spontaneously, creating music intentionally by exploring sound and expressive possibilities. I agree with Swanwick (1994), whose definition of composition includes both brief and spontaneous expressions and longer and rehearsed inventions, when we have the freedom to make musical decisions, with or without notation or other forms of registration. In other words, processes and products created in class with the intention of expressing themselves sonically are considered compositions, without involving value judgment on degrees of creativity present in the works. As noted by França and Swanwick (2002, 11), “The educational potential of composition lies in the meaning and expressiveness that the musical product is able to communicate” [our translation], which does not indicate the absence of artistic criteria or educational objectives related to composition activities. Musical creation and invention are terms used in different ways in music education, often more comprehensively, as synonyms with musical composition. As with composition, the term is used to refer to creation processes, for example: “children are creating (inventing) a soundscape”, but also for products, as in “children’s creations (or inventions) were surprising because they combined music and dance.” Both in one and in another example, we could replace the word creation with composition, while maintaining the meaning of the sentence. However, the terms creation and invention also fit into more specific perspectives, in concepts formulated in Philosophy, for example, by Gilles Deleuze. Without focusing on this theme, I would like to cite the works of Brazilian researchers Teca Alencar de Brito (2007) and Regina Marcia Simão Santos (Santos, Guimarães and Alfonzo 2018), who use creation/invention from a Deleuzian perspective. I chose to use the term composition broadly and, depending on the case, I indicate whether I am talking about the composition of an arrangement, the composition of a song or an improvisation etc. In this way, I try not to restrict the idea of creation to composition activities, because I understand that creative practices are more comprehensive, permeating any musical experience that can, in some way, be creative. Having said that, I have used the term creation a few times in this essay as a synonym with composition. I should also note that, even though I understand that creative practices are not restricted to composition, most studies that I have developed since the beginning of my career as an educator in school and at university, and as a researcher, have focused on composition. Allow me to explain: for my interest and delight in this way of relating to music; in the appreciation of the children’s authorships and agency; in this place that we begin to occupy when we create music, not only as 5 consumers; in freedom; in the processes of decision-making and experimentation in music that are enabled by composition. This enchantment is also related to some very meaningful and transformative experiences that I have had as a music teacher. I will report one of them below. Scenes in school: when Pedro enchanted creative musical practices On occasions when I talk about the importance of performing composition practices in the classroom, I like to mention an experience that was very striking and transformative for me, back in the 1990s, when there was hardly any talk of inclusion in elementary and secondary education. I was an undergraduate and participated in a research project coordinated by Professor Dr. Liane Hentschke3. In this project, as a beginner researcher with a grant awarded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq4), I worked as a music teacher in a private school in Porto Alegre. In the class there was a boy, who I will call Pedro, whose disease limited his motor skills when he tried to write, walk, or play a musical instrument. In the first conversation with the school’s pedagogical team, the coordinator suggested that he should not attend the classes, but rather do other tasks in the meantime5, because he could not sing or play. I said that he could certainly attend the classes. The classes were based on Keith Swanwick’s theoretical framework, in which musical composition was one of the main pillars, along with musical appreciation and performance. Right in the first classes, Pedro’s listening skills caught my eye; he was very attentive to the expressive resources present in the songs that we played in class. However, it was in musical composition activities that he found his place. In the small groups, he imagined and suggested ideas of how his classmates could play, how to combine different instruments; he experimented with different sonorities and expressive possibilities... With wide movements, he conducted his group: he signaled when each member should start playing, when 3 The study Um estudo longitudinal aplicando a Teoria Espiral de Desenvolvimento Musical de Swanwick com crianças brasileiras de faixa etária de 6 a 10 anos (“A longitudinal study applying Swanwick’s Spiral Theory of Musical Development with Brazilian children aged 6 to 10 years”), was developed from 1994 to 1998, in two places: in Porto Alegre, under the coordination of Professor Dr. Liane Hentschke, and in Salvador, under the coordination of Prof. Dr. Alda Oliveira. 4 CNPq is a government-funded foundation linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (MCTI), focused on funding research in Brazil. 5 At the time, the school did not have a trained specialist who could provide one-on-one assistance to Pedro, who needed help to perform school tasks. Thus, the teacher used some time slots while her students were having classes with another teacher to assist Pedro. In the tasks that involved writing, for example, Pedro said what he wanted to write and the teacher wrote it for him. For this reason, it was suggested that the time slots of music classes should be used for this purpose. 6 they should play more (or less) intensely, when they should make a crescendo, accelerate or interrupt the piece of music. Pedro was increasingly admired and recognized by his classmates in this role as a composer, and they soon invited him to join them in the work groups. He was a full participant in the classes, especially in composition activities, and music became his favorite class. It is worth noting that all those children had an inclusive experience in music classes, as they learned that motor limitation does not prevent an active, skillful, lively, and happy musical participation. It was very important for me, at the beginning of my professional education, to understand how composition could be inclusive in school music education, making room for other ways of children’s participation. How many times have we heard someone say that a child can easily learn or is “good” at music because they play rhythms accurately or because they sing in tune? How many times is a child considered less musical when they are not keeping up the pace or when they do not have such a good performance while playing an instrument? Today, almost 30 years later, do we still see children being made to feel self-conscious in music classes because they do not have good motor skills? There are so many ways to relate to music, so why do musical performance or listening seem to define children’s musicality? Also, how many times do we prevent or exclude children from experiencing their musicality in school because we do not offer them opportunities or restrict the way they can make music in classes? My work with Pedro taught me about children’s many musical expressions, about the countless ways in which they can learn-think-make-experience music. I also learned how composition can make room for significant participation in classes, as an inclusive practice. Only much later did I learn about the subject by reading technical literature of the field, research studies, as inclusive education and musical education grew stronger in Brazil. Next, I will address another theme that I consider important when we think of creative musical practices in school, and reflect on how its approach has been built symbolically and historically in the field of music education. Adjusting the lenses: any pedagogical innovation in listening to children’s music creations? From the point of view of works published in Brazil, we have long advocated the need to value the ways children think-make-experience music, emphasizing the relevance of creative practices in musical education processes (Delalande 2019; Kater 2022; Maffioletti 2005, 2019; Fonterrada 2008, 2015; Brito 2001, 2003, 2007, 7 2019; Beineke 2003, 2009, 2019). We also recognize teachers’ difficulty in developing composition and improvisation activities in classes. However, in addition to pointing to gaps and difficulties with creative practices in school, we can also look at the issue in another way, reflecting on musical approaches and educators that are - or not - remembered and noted historically. I wonder: what is new in the current support for creative music education? How many of these approaches are invisible in the history of the music education that we tend to reproduce? Going back in time and expanding studies in the historiographical field of music education, Tamya Moreira (2019) questions references that restrict pedagogical innovations from the early twentieth century to the so-called active methods. The author argues that if we approach education studies, especially in the field of the history of schools and pedagogical ideas, “It is clear that the openness to creative expression and to the participation of children was already a subject being discussed and experienced since the end of the 19th century, and it gained considerable strength between the world wars, with the internationalization of school renewal movements” [our translation] (Moreira 2021, 80). Moreira (2021) investigated the movement of school creation and renewal in the first decades of the twentieth century, revealing the pioneering approach of the American music educator Satis Coleman (1878 - 1961). Her work with children began in 1910 in a private studio and, from 1919 to 1942, it was expanded at Lincoln School, a school-lab at Teachers College, Columbia University. Coleman used the term Creative Music to refer to a proposal of music education that included activities of invention and construction of instruments, creation of music and poetry, improvisation, practice of musical instruments, singing, and dance (Moreira 2021, 90). Satis Coleman’s work participated in the Progressive Education movement and fostered great pedagogical innovation, especially regarding the openness to children’s participation and creative practices in school music education. According to Moreira (2019), Coleman stated that creative practices should be encouraged by families since childhood, on a daily basis; for example, creating songs for flowers on a walk through the garden or a birthday song for a family member. In addition to composing music, Coleman valued the creation of notation systems for children’s songs, both to help the memory of the songwriter and to contribute to the circulation of the composition in the group, because the pieces were also played by other children (Moreira 2021). In a 1927 publication in the journal Progressive Education, Moreira (2021) found evidence that children’s creative practices, individually and collectively, were a place of recognition and appreciation in the school setting. In a study on the work of Donald Pond, professor and composer in New York around the same time, Judith Kierstead (1994 in Moreira 2021, 88) reported that Pond described 8 school children as natural explorers and discoverers of sound, emphasizing Pond’s pioneering attitude of listening to children’s productions. There was also debate on the importance of acknowledging children’s creative productions as different from the modes of expression of adults, and the need to respect such difference. Even though the epistemological bases of Coleman’s work and her contemporaries can be challenged today, Moreira (2019) argues that her works approached current themes in education. In addition, she believes that women’s contributions to music education need to be emphasized, thereby re-assessing the historiographic discourse relative to pedagogical innovations in music education6. In general, the so-called active methods are considered exponents of the pedagogical propositions of the field, a scenario predominantly led by male, European composers, whose prevalent loci were music schools or conservatories. The study of proposals such as that of Coleman’s and their circulation worldwide make room for questions about the innovations developed by educators in different countries and in different scenarios [our translation](Moreira 2019, 182). Without going into details of the possibilities and limits of Creative Music, I would like to point out that we are not talking about anything essentially new when we discuss children’s participation and creative practices in music classes in school: the difference largely lies in approaches and objectives. In addition, it is time to advance in relation to the foreign male composers commonly cited as references in creative music education in Brazil. Back to the first question, about the idea that creative practices are innovative pedagogical propositions in our field: we agree that we need to recognize, listen, welcome, encourage and value children’s creative productions, and these processes are important in music education, but that is not enough. I argue that we need to advance propositions, thinking about how we can combine studies on music education and creativity with critical and transformative approaches, engaged in guidelines committed to the education of ethnic-racial relations, equity, anti-racist education, and social justice, put forward by an inclusive, emancipatory, and liberating schools, as proposed by Brazilian educational legislation (Brasil 2003, 2004, 2008, 2013). 6 In the face of the predominantly male figure in the history of Brazilian music education, Moreira (2019) highlights the importance of the works of Ines de A. Rocha (2012, 2017 in Moreira 2019), who investigated the trajectory of Liddy Chiaffarelli Mignone and Susana Cecilia Almeida Igayara-Souza (2011 in Moreira, 2019), in research on Brazilian production regarding music and music education written by women. 9 Blurring creativity(-ties): for the diversity of sound-cultural practices In the field of Brazilian music education, I realize that, in general, we agree with the view that creative practices are relevant and that we have the commitment and the challenge of improving and expanding them. As I have been arguing in my works, creative practices in music education go beyond the goal of creating something new for children or applying musical knowledge, because more than the products created in class, the focus is on collaborative learning, of human beings who relate to making music, listening to each other, and learning from each other (Beineke 2011, 2019, 2021, 2023). Based on this understanding, what I put into discussion is not only the defense of creative musical practices in school, but also the reflection on the educational perspectives that support these practices, how we understand them and what meanings and purposes we attribute to them. How can we think of the social and political dimensions involved in the teaching and learning processes or the power of music education as a possibility of democratic practices and social change? How can we encourage different attitudes to listening in relation to diversity, building critical and creative pedagogies focused on dialog, collaboration, and social transformation? To adjust this focus on the subject, I emphasize that I see elementary and secondary schools as public spaces of change, conducive of democratic relations. Spaces to learn, but going far beyond learning; spaces for students to be subjects in diversity and plurality, as Hannah Arendt would say (1977 in Biesta 2017). Biesta (2017, 97) argues that one way to understand learning is to think that someone only learned something “when they respond to what is not familiar, to what is different, to what challenges, irritates, or even disturbs. Then learning becomes a creation or invention, a process of introducing something new into the world: someone’s unique response.” [our translation]. From this point of view, we need to develop research that integrates the study of creativity and creative practices into learning experiences that provide opportunities for children and young people to be democratic people in school, recognizing it as a space of plurality and difference. Thinking about plurality and diversity means moving toward perspectives of music education that seek to bring together different types of knowledge, recognizing music as a multi-epistemic human expression, connected with values, functions, and meanings related to sound-musical practices in different socio-cultural contexts. The definition formulated by Queiroz (2021, 163-164) contributes to the idea that I wish to develop: 10 Music is a human expression consisting of multifaceted aesthetic-sound organizations that gain form, sense, and meaning in social interactions, resulting from different concepts, values and types of knowledge established within each culture. From this angle, music is diverse by nature, because it emerges from plural manifestations, characteristics of the uniqueness that constitutes the diversity of cultures [our translation]. By (re)assessing how we understand music, extending our understanding to conceive it as sound-musical or sound-cultural expressions, we create the need to also review our concepts of creativity. As Burnard (2012b) argues, there are still concepts of creativity that do not cover the diversity of musical practices, and we need to expand the concept of a single musical creativity, in the singular, to consider the manifestation of multiple musical creativities, paying attention to the groups, musicians, and artists who produce music from specific social and cultural systems. Under this perspective, Burnard researched the creativities that manifest themselves in the practices of various musical genres, including the bands that compose their own songs, songwriters, DJ culture, improvised songs, and interactive audio design, for example. According to her, we need to wonder which music, from which social-cultural system and in which activity musical creativity originates; and who are the groups, musicians, or artists who support them (Burnard 2012b, 23). Burnard (2012a) argues that a pedagogy focused on musical creativity emphasizes critical and reflective aspects of music, so that children and young people can develop a broad understanding of their own activities in relation to the practices of others, including a wide range of cultural traditions. This requires developing new understandings, practices, and pedagogies, considering new activities that are inspired by the contemporary field of music (Burnard 2012a, 237). Recognizing multiple creativities in music and, consequently, in the music practices of children and young people, causes profound changes in music education. In planning, for example, Burnard (2012a) argues that we need to look at the broad spectrum of multiple musical creativities, deliberately choosing creative elements, forms, modalities, and degrees of invention, differentiating musical creativities and the way they contribute to the process of musical learning, while connected with different sociocultural contexts. Deconstructing naive discourses about musical creativity Recognizing the diversity of the world’s sound-cultural expressions challenges us to review our conceptions of creativity in its interfaces with music education. 11 We need to question approaches that hierarchize musical knowledge and practices. It is essential and urgent to formulate concepts that exceed perspectives limited to certain cultures, which exclude and make other cultures invisible. For example, how can we think of creativity in relation to Afro-diasporic music practices, problematizing racism and racialization in the field of music? Sodré de Souza (2022, 200) challenges us to reflect on this complex of afro-diasporic music practices: “sing, play, dance, pray, eat and drink – musical arts that create knowledge”. According to the author, these are inseparable elements: “One cannot think of music without thinking about its transmission, creation, performance, registration, involvement, production, political engagement, resistance” [our translation]. How can we relate to indigenous worldviews when we think about creative music learning? How can music education approach the ancient wisdom of the Tikmũ`ũn, whose songs have the power of healing, store the acquired knowledge of their ancestors, who sing to place themselves in the place of other beings? (Tugny 2013). For the Tikmũ`ũn, listening to music is populated by all the sounds of the village and the forest: whistles, cries of children, sounds of cicadas, frogs, crickets. Listening to music is also listening to the sound produced by a gecko crawling on the sand, or the humming of bees. It is, therefore, by training their listening that the Tikmũ`ũn people begin to better understand everything that is around them [our translation}. (Tugny 2013, 29) Do we remember these children when we have to consider multiple creativities in the music education of children and young people? And how do we include in our work the movements and struggles of Brazilian indigenous peoples for the survival and demarcation of land? As regards the racism expressed in music teaching that dismisses black, African, and Afro-diasporic perspectives, as denounced by Djenane Vieira dos Santos Silva, Eduardo Guedes Pacheco, and Wenderson Silva Oliveira, how can we consider territories of music learning terreiros (worship places), quilombos (settlements), maracatus (music and dance genre), peripheral communities, and so many others in Brazil, with a massive presence of the black population – in music education? (Santos Silva, Pacheco and Oliveira 2022, 213). We certainly have much to learn and a long way to go to become aware of and recognize other ways of connecting with the diversity of sound-cultural expressions. We need to consider that creativity is linked to concepts in the field of music and in the field of education and that there is a great deal behind our discourses on creativity. As Spruce argues, 12 Creativity, furthermore, is not neutral, value-free or self-evidently a good thing, but rather open to being deployed for a range of purposes including to legitimise and privilege particular – and arguably reductive – musical epistemologies and ontologies, and the approaches to music education that proceed from these. Recognising the ideological nature of creativity affords music educators the opportunity to make decisions that, whilst inevitably ideologically bound, can also be imbued with moral and ethical questioning around the values and purposes of music education. (Spruce 2021, 77) Biddulph and Burnard (2022) expand this problematization by pointing out that creativity and, as a result, creative learning, are defined by the assumptions of the dominant social groups. Consequently, What is seen as ‘normal’ is defined through the eyes of White culture, typically well-educated (and in the UK upper middle class), and thus attempts at universalisation perpetuate the deafening silence of those whose voices are not presented, or even represented. Misrepresentation and homogenisation seem more common. (…) The capitalist belief in the ‘intrinsic goodness’ of creativity, as product driven, to develop a future workforce, is undermined by the fact that it is the dominant monocultural voice that articulates its value. So, with its universalisation there is an inherent hierarchy and structured inequalities. Seeing creative learning as a dynamic and fluid concept brings to light the importance of diversity and holding a critical awareness in mind: that there are missing voices in definitions of what it is and what it could mean for those engaged in it. (Biddulph and Burnard 2022, 47). It is urgent that we realize that it is not enough to introduce creative practices in the classroom to align ourselves with critical, emancipatory pedagogies, or pedagogies that value children’s listening skills and practice. Some composition activities, on the contrary, reinforce hierarchizations of music knowledge and practices, isolating the songs from their socio-cultural contexts. This is often the case of composition proposals that aim to have students remember musical contents, or have them exercise their perception, or which are only written on the score and will be decoded afterwards... Or when the assessment criteria of the compositions are established according to Eurocentric musical criteria, when the exploration of harmony is, a priori, considered more complex, more creative, or more musical than those that are prepared primarily on the basis of rhythmic or timbre parameters, for example... Or when musical productions associated with contemporary classical music trends are considered more creative than music from 13 popular culture, which hierarchizes musical elements according to characteristics of certain songs belonging to dominant groups. This also happens when sound-cultural manifestations are fragmented, devoid of the complex of afro-diasporic practices, in the elements previously mentioned by Sodré de Souza (2022): singing, playing, dancing, praying, eating, and drinking. Glaura Lucas et al. (2016, 251) reflect on the violence of processes that are triggered when experiences and musical contents of popular groups are guided by other epistemological foundations, which causes such knowledge to be devoid of aesthetics and symbols. According to the authors: The folklorist perspective of the past, which extracts parts and rhythms of the performing expressions of popular traditions, and arranges and sets them according to the values and norms of the musical “common sense” (temperament, hierarchization of sound-musical parameters, adequacy of duration, voice placement, etc.), in order to be learned and presented to an external audience, remains current in hurried and ill-considered proposals for teaching materials to meet the demand for enforcement of laws no. 11.645/2008 and no. 11.769/2008. These reductions not only change the properties of the sound-musical reality as understood and experienced by practitioners, but also minimize and depreciate these expressive traditions, nullifying their complexity, their values, their rules, and their particular and alternative forms of existence, including the sociability practices associated with them [our translation]. Finally, when creative musical practices are understood to be neutral, they do not connect with sound-cultural manifestations, thus weakening ethical, political, and democratic commitments. Even if some more fragmented propositions can meet some goals in specific situations, we must recognize that such proposals legitimize and reinforce values associated with some songs - mainly white, European, male - to the detriment of others. In the field of music education, we often identify an automatic legitimation of creative music practices in the classroom, as if including them in pedagogical planning could ensure the fulfillment of the objectives that I have been arguing about, as a practice that can favor democratic relations, citizenship, and social justice. As noted by Biddulph and Burnard (2022), creativity is ultimately seen as an educational panacea for all problems in an unfair educational system. In this perspective, we cannot but question the pedagogical and epistemological bases that are supporting the planning and development of creative practices in school music education, because we may be helping to maintain hegemonic, prejudiced, and racist values in society, as much as we have been trying to transform them. We are not neutral. 14 Scenes of life in a song to Erê: who are our children? To wrap up this essay, I will recall another story that was remarkable to me, which occurred at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, in a live broadcast of Ação Fladem Brasil Online7, with the theme Descolonização dos processos pedagógico-musicais a partir de outros modos e práticas (“Decolonization of pedagogical-musical processes based on other ways and practices”), with Samuel Lima, Augusto Pérez Guarinieri and Marcos dos Santos, and mediation by Leonardo Moraes Batista. At the end of the broadcast, I asked in the chat box: – When we think about transforming music education, the focus often remains on teachers’ actions, or on the songs that will be “taken” to children. What about listening to children’s music? What room are we making for the songs that children produce and create, which relate to their lives? Among the various answers, I quote that of Marcos Santos, PhD in Ethnomusicology, who answered me with a thought-provoking, transformative question: – Thinking about what we are discussing, about sound, silence, noise, Viviane asks us about children’s references, and questions that their voices are not being heard. I don’t have an answer, but I’ll try to answer with one more question. Santos says that, the week before, owing to the murder of the boy Miguel, in Recife 8, he wrote a poem entitled Poema pra Erê, que se encantou (“Poem to Erê, who was enchanted9”). With Santos’s permission, his poem is transcribed below. 7 Fladem Brasil is the national section of the Latin American Forum of Music Education – FLADEM. The above-mentioned live broadcast was given on June 9, 2020. 8 Professor Santos refers to the case of the boy Miguel, which occurred in Recife, Pernambuco, on June 2, 2020. Miguel, a 5-year-old black boy, the son of a maid, fell from the ninth floor of the building where his mother worked. He was left alone in the elevator by his mother’s boss, a white woman, and suffered a fatal fall. Ágatha, Marcos Vinícius, and João are three black children who were killed in police operations in 2019 and 2020. 9 Professor Santos sent me an e-mail to explain that the poem was staged at the height of a series of deaths/murders of children, between March and June 2020. According to him: “As the father to a child (though I wouldn’t need to have a child to react to that), particularly a black child, I felt shaken and powerless in the face of it all. The poem was a way to cherish these children who have gone and offer hope for the lives of those who are still here” (e-mail of 7/19/2023). He explained that Erê is a spiritual being, enchanted, with childlike energy, which incorporates into adult people or not. In the poem, he refers to all the children whose lives were reaped. In this case, they are erês in body and spirit. 15 Poem for Erê, who was enchanted Marcos dos Santos (2020) I, my mother’s best dreams, My father’s best smile The slight run, free down the street, The broken embrace, which I will no longer feel. Five years, nine floors, a life falling to the ground, I cry for Agatha, I cry for Marcos Vinícius, I cry for João. Why do children die? Why are children killed? Erês are enchanted, they create hope And you, what do you want to be when you grow up? Me? I want to be enchanted A very black angel A winged Erê. – I made this poem while thinking of all the black children who are constantly murdered by the police, the state, the whiteness. White people who are watching this live broadcast, go learn about whiteness! And I answer Beineke’s question with a question: Which children are not being listened to?” As a white woman who does not suffer racism on a daily basis, that question hit me with a punch of reality. It lingers on. To support this reflection, I repeat the question asked by Lia Vainer Schucman (2023, 183): After all, why do we study whiteness? The author explains that, to understand the critical studies of whiteness, they must be related to anti-racism, which implies understanding the different mechanisms that ensure positions of privilege without that being seen as racial privilege. As Marcos dos Santos generously denounced, Schucman (2023, 184) states: Each of us needs to know what can be changed in this configuration within a racist structure. It is essential to realize that a gear cannot exist, that is, a racist structure, without individuals who sustain it daily. Thus, in the anti-racist struggle, there are different obstacles to be worked on, and one of them is the process of individual identification, of our responsibility and participation. [...] However, as we know, this is not an obstacle that can be overcome individually or only with awareness. The process of identification and recognition by itself does not revoke 16 the white privilege, nor the structural disadvantages that black people experience in our society [our translation]. The author also argues that, by understanding that racism is systemic, we need to seek ways to intervene in the institutions in which we are present, including family, school, university, etc. “In each of them we need to break Eurocentrism and the pact of whiteness, pointed out in Cida Bento’s speech, which is characterized mainly by the denial of the racial problem, by silence, by blacks not being allowed into spaces of decision and power” [our translation] (Schucman 2023, 184-185). When these arguments are brought over to the field of music education, how can we, as music teachers in school, think about the potential of epistemic plurality of musician-sound-creative-cultural practices in the fight against racism? How can we contribute to disassembling the logic of a history of colonial domination that persists, denouncing hierarchies and Eurocentric concepts of creativity(-ties) that, even in the plural, do not warrant engagement in these struggles? Finally, returning to Santos’s question, how to listen to our children in school music education, especially those who, in addition to not being listened to, are being silenced? Who are our children? Enchantment, just as a conclusion... To finish this essay, I highlight the — deep — marks of what I learned in school with the boy Pedro, almost 30 years ago, about the inclusive potential and the enchantment possible in the practices of musical composition in the classroom. And also what I learned most recently, in the midst of the pandemic, with my colleague Marcos Santos, who speaks to us with poetry, about the Erê that was enchanted, reflecting on the tragedies that affect our black children and the commitments of music education in the fight against racism. They are different types of questions, but they both foster reflections that lead this essay, on how creative musical practices in school can help us think of a better world to live in with our children, in a democratic Brazil. The stories narrated here bring theoretical and methodological perspectives that reflect different times in music education research. These are problematizations that change over time, and they are fueled by the production of knowledge in music education so that they can be transformative. We have a long way ahead. However, before concluding, I believe I should emphasize that we are moving 17 toward the construction of proposals and curricula more socially and politically engaged by another Brazilian music education. In undergraduate programs in music, I highlight the project Encontro de Saberes (“Knowledge Encounters”), a proposal led by José Jorge de Carvalho and implemented at the University of Brasilia (UnB) in 2010. It has already been expanded to other Brazilian universities, and it is currently on the verge of being adopted in several others in Brazil and abroad. The project questions the exclusion of popular and traditional knowledge from academic educational models, and claims that such exclusion is justified by positivist scientific criteria that mask value judgments which dismiss knowledge produced by peoples that suffered violence from traditional power structures (Carvalho et al. 2016, 202). Carvalho et al. (2016, 203) explain that by considering the need to integrate this large theoretical-practical corpus into the university curriculum, the project Encontro de Saberes (“Knowledge Encounters”) proposes the inclusion of traditional knowledge of masters of popular and traditional cultures, who directly pass such knowledge onto students, at university and outside it, recognizing that they are the masters who have this knowledge. We have made significant progress in the representativeness of black and indigenous authors in the academic environment. As a historical milestone in our publications, I quote the recent release of the book Música e Pensamento Afrodiáspórico, (“Music and Afro-diasporic Thinking”), organized by Eurides Santos, Luan Sodré and Marcos Santos (2022). As for indigenous cultures, I highlight the relevant musician-pedagogical movement carried out by numerous Brazilian indigenous peoples, activated and intensified by the work of educators and ethnomusicologists such as Maria Elizabeth Lucas and Marília Raquel Albornoz Stein (Lucas; Stein 2009), Rosângela Pereira de Tugny (2013), Magda Pucci and Berenice de Almeida (2014, 2017). Moreover, I highlight the nonconforming dialogs of Eloisa Costa Gonzaga (2023), Eurides de Souza Santos with Katiusca Lamara dos Santos Barbosa (2023), Flavia Candusso with Valnei Souza Santos (2023) and Luis Ricardo Silva Queiroz (2023), who discuss, from different angles, creative, decolonial, anti-racist, and emancipatory music education. Therefore, it is essential that teacher education should include a wide range of experiences of musical composition and creation, and such practices must be questioned and problematized, stripped of the naive perspectives that classify them as positive “by nature”. This way, teachers come to school full of reflection and criticism, aware of the social and political dimensions involved in educational processes, thus educating people to be more sensitive, critical, transformative, and supportive, reflecting the power of music education toward democratic, anti-racist and multi-epistemic practices. 18 References Beineke, Viviane. 2003. A composição em sala de aula: como ouvir as músicas que as crianças fazem? In Avaliação em música: reflexões e práticas, ed. Liane Hentschke and Jusamara Souza, 91-105. Moderna. Beineke, Viviane. 2009. Processos intersubjetivos na composição musical de crianças: um estudo sobre a aprendizagem criativa. 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