Musicians who participated in the second meeting of the Ciranda de Saberes Artísticos e Culturais da Lusofonia. Image: Taje Mendes.
The project “Ciranda de Saberes Artísticos e Culturais da Lusofonia”, which was contemplated in the Announcement “Ceará da Cidadania e Diversidade Cultural – Artistic and Creative Territories of Peripheries of Ceará – of the Secretary of Culture of the State – and has the support of Pro- Dean of Extension, Art and Culture (Proex), held its second edition last Friday (31/03), at the State Public Library of Ceará (Bece), with Music as its thematic axis.
This project, carried out by students from the Universidade da Integração da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira (Unilab), aims to promote artistic and cultural diversity through the participation of Afro-Ceará, peripheral and Luso-African groups and artists, enabling cultural exchange between Brazil and the countries of Portuguese-speaking Africa.
In this sense, the theme of music, in its multiple musicalities and its territories, proved to be a powerful tool of existence and resistance and served to demonstrate its power of mobilization and engagement, in addition, of course, to being a means capable of providing visibility to artists, valuing their productions based on their realities, contexts and feelings.
This meeting, which began with a refined debate on the possibilities and potential of music, had the participation of the Band of the Association of Guinean Unilab Students, composed of Muniz Irineu, Jéssica Moisés, Abú Armando and Augusta M’beia; the percussion group of Instituto Katiana Pena, based in Bom Jardim, under the leadership of percussionist artist Felipe Trapiá; the duo formed by the musicians Sebastião Sacului and Ageu Soma and the happer Two-Cent Music (Bonifácio Arlindo), with the mediation of Jandira Miguel Dala, Angolan student of the Arts course/Unilab and researcher of the Arts.
Unilab Guinean Students Association Band. | Image: Taje Mendes.
The project coordinator, Tainara Eugenio da Silva, who is also a poet, cultural producer and graduated in Pedagogy from Unilab, spoke a little about the history of this project. “This proposal was born in 2020 with the holding of ‘Poetic Encounters: Between Stories, Memories and Ancestry’, held virtually with Angola, Guinea Bissau, Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe. From this cultural exchange, we envision the possibility of giving visibility to these artists and valuing their productions, based on their realities, contexts and issues that are important, expensive and urgent for these bodies, ”she explained.
From there, the “Ciranda de Saberes Artísticos e Culturais da Lusofonia” was born, which, according to Tainara Eugenio, is this democratic space for the convergence of artistic and cultural knowledge and values. “In this second ciranda we are discussing and experiencing the musicalities and their territories, showing that music is an important tool of existence and resistance of the territories. With this debate and the musical performances, this moment also becomes a pedagogical space, which strengthens us as subjects and artists, also proving that Unilab is a rich and diverse cradle of culture and art”, highlights Tainara Eugenio, without forgetting It should be noted that “everyone involved in this project, from the technical team to the artists, are Unilab students”.
Tainara also explains that “These activities can also be seen as spaces of struggle, resistance and knowledge, far from the image of subalternity and marginality that is placed on the African continent, its peoples and black bodies. Through its axes [Literatura e Performance, Música, Dança]this project encompasses our lived experiences, artistic and cultural diversities, the production of knowledge, development and citizenship”, he highlighted.
Percussionist Felipe Trapiá performing with his students from the Katiana Pena Institute, in Bom Jardim, Fortaleza/Ce. | Image: Taje Mendes.
The political and artistic vision of the project coordinator soon finds resonance in the testimony of percussionist Felipe Trapiá. He, who works as a music teacher for around 50 students, aged between 5 and 14, at Instituto Katiana Pena, in Bom Jardim, describes music as an instrument of liberation. “Music takes us out of the cave and manages to show, under our noses, its impacts. The intervention within the community is visible, even having to compete with mass culture and its numerous entertainments, in addition to the internet. Despite this competition, I realize, with the percussion work that we develop with the boys and girls of Bom Jardim, that music is an open door to discussing citizenship and is also an instrument of mobility. With our music, we go to places we normally wouldn’t go and, thus, the music shows us how this city is full of (social) chasms”, said Felipe, who still sees music as a means of preserving childhood and stimulating the creativity of children and young people, since, according to him, music manages to educate and inform at the same time.
Duo formed by musicians Sebastião Sacului and Ageu Soma. Image: Taje Mendes.
For all these reasons, the project organizers believe in the strength of this project, as well as invest and believe that the creative artistic territories are diverse, therefore, “creating a space for the promotion of artistic and cultural diversity among Afro-Ceará artists, in the form of artistic-cultural exchange, is a way to make possible the valorization of subordinated productions of these artists and also to bring to the visibility this artistic-cultural diversity that is so rich in our society”, they defend, and then conclude: “The meeting in format a ciranda with debates, artistic presentations of music, dance and poetry, and their performances, is a way of enabling an integrated coexistence between the university community and its territories based on actions of cultural and educational development”.
Room of the State Public Library of Ceará, where the 2nd edition of the Ciranda de Saberes Artísticos e Culturalis took place. | Image: Taje Mendes.
Next meeting:
The next ciranda, which will focus on Dance, will take place on April 14, 2023, at the State Public Library of Ceará (Bece), with the participation of the following groups:
Grupo Uniculturas
Tetêmbú Santomé cu Plinxipi Group.
Sons of Ngola Group
Duo Cláudia Capemba and Abrão Matias
In addition to dance workshops: Kuduro and Semba, among others.
As in the other axes, we will seek to perceive art and culture as a way of mobilizing living territories, having, at this stage, dance as a tool for the existence and resistance of these places.
About the project coordinator: Tainara Eugenio da Silva
Tainara Eugenio: “These activities can also be seen as spaces of struggle, resistance and knowledge, far from the image of subalternity and marginality that is placed on the African continent”. | Image: Taje Mendes.
Mini bio: Black quilombola woman, sertaneja, embroiderer, poet, dancer of the São Gonçalo dance, cultural producer, daughter of Terezinha Maria and Osmar da Silva and Quilombo Sítio Veiga Quixadá/CE. Graduated in Pedagogy from the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (Unilab). She served from 2020 to 2021 as a Popular Educator in the Black Women in Movement Project, by the Rural Youth Institute of Brazil, in partnership with UN Women and Quilombo Sítio Veiga. Militant of the Quilombola movement in Ceará. Member of the interinstitutional commission for Quilombola School Education in Ceará and of the Management Committee for Afro-Brazilian Expressions in the state of Ceará.