Infância, música e experiência: fragmentos do brincar e do musicar

Abstract

This thesis discusses childhood, music and experience in a dialogic and non-linear way. It consists of fragments from the works of Walter Benjamim (1994; 1987) which were built from my own childhood memories and were linked to the observation sessions carried out with the kids, who I have been working with along my career, as well as the results reached in this research. The fragments constitute theoretical connections with the sociology of childhood by Corsaro (2011), Sarmento (2007; 2005; 2003; 2002) and Qvortrup (1993). Such fragments have connections with music from the cultures of childhood having as basis for discussion the works of Brito (2012; 2007), Beineke (2012; 2009; 2008), Ponso (2011) and Lino (2010; 2008). Regarding childhood and experience, their connections were established through the writings of Benjamin (1994; 1987). Concerning the general objective, I investigated how music constitutes experiences in the peer cultures built by the children at the Early Childhood Education School. The specific objective was to comprehend how children act as protagonists when experiencing music during their games and analyze how music manifests itself in their interaction and also during the peer culture building process. Through an interpretative approach with ethnographic inspiration (GRAUE; WALSH, 2003), I carried out a research having 15 children who were 4 5 years old from an Public Early Childhood Education School in the city of Santa Maria/RS from July to December 2013. The methodological instruments were: observation, intervention-observation, video sessions, written registers and a field diary as well as photos and audiovisual registers. Regarding the research results, I defend the thesis that through peer cultures, children act as protagonists in many musical experiences at the Early Childhood Education School. Such experiences are built through intra and inter-generational interactions (SARMENTO, 2003), especially when considering media culture; however, they do not essentially constitute media elements reproduction. Through creative appropriation of media elements, which is part of the process of interpretative reproduction (CORSARO, 2011), new meanings are given to the songs and new songs are created by peer culture. The process of acting as a protagonist starts with one kid and slowly draws the others demonstrating the collective character of such processes. The results were organized according to fragments constituted by narratives and video recordings which show the kids acting as protagonists during musical experiences and also in peer culture production at school; they also show the ethical processes of participation in the research. In order to understand the cultures of childhood the ethics of a different look towards children is needed and this implies listening and thinking about their acting as protagonists inside the different cultures of childhood. Therefore, it is needed to avoid seeing such acts as obvious characteristics belonging to the age; on the other hand, these acts are the historic and cultural ways that kids build themselves and their relations according to the their social, cultural, ethnic, economic and political contexts.