Musical Education and Performance of Women Instrumentalists in Popular Music: a multicase study
Instrumentalist women; Gender; Popular music; Music education; Musical training.
In Brazil, Chiquinha Gonzaga's remarkable career as an instrumentalist, composer and conductor opened new paths for women to act as brazilian music protagonists. However, after this period we noticed an invisibility of women's work as instrumentalists, mainly in the context of popular music. Considering this panorama of low visibility of women instrumentalists’ work, we are now interested in the subversion of tradition, that is, the education and occupation, even if minority, of women in conducting and playing instruments in professional musical groups. Using the sociological portrait as a methodological device, this ongoing research will present a multi-case study on the musical education and professional performance of six women instrumentalists in the field of popular music in different regions of Brazil. In dialogue with microsociology and gender theories, this work aims to investigate the tensions in
gender relations in the musical education of the instrumentalists. This study also aims to understand the challenges that are at stake, from the choice of the instrument, through the trajectory of studies, to the consolidation of professional work in popular music and its consequent legitimation in its context of performance.