Narratives of music teachers in Brazil: everyday learning through spirituality/religiosity

Neste artigo, apresenta-se três corpos de pesquisas relacionados ao tema espiritualidade/religiosidade de professores de música: dois sobre formação inicial e formação continuada de professores e um sobre aprendizagem a partir de experiências espirituais/religiosas. Partindo de uma tripla construção teórica, essas pesquisas compartilham pontos comuns: espiritualidade na educação musical; teorias da vida cotidiana; abordagem (auto) biográfica em educação. A discussão concomitante dessas três pesquisas pode contribuir para os debates sobre espiritualidade e educação musical na perspectiva das pesquisas brasileiras, especificamente daquelas realizadas no estado do Rio Grande do Sul, região sul do Brasil.


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Revista Digital do LAV -Santa Maria -vol. 14, n. 2, p. 385 -407 -mai./ago. 2021 ISSN 1983 -7348 http://dx.doi.org/10. 5902/1983734864710 386 Many studies in Brazil on music teacher education and practice are theoretically based on writings of francophone origin, mainly those of Portuguese authors such as Antonio Nóvoa. In this context, the inseparability of life narratives in the personal and professional spheres presents itself as a feature. Several Brazilian studies on music teachers have followed this path: Bozzetto (2004), Vieira (2009), Mota (2017), Louro (2013, Teixeira (2016), Lima (2015) and Borba (2013). However, in such studies, the experiences in religious settings and spiritual experiences are not highlighted as relevant themes. Yet, these experiential memories and narratives are part of the teachers' lives.
Thus, they can be important in the analysis of their ways of being. Memories of religious experiences can, then, form part of the analysis in studies regarding teachers' initial and continuing education as well as teacher practice. The three studies herein presented share a commonality in that the music teachers agree that their personal and professional lives are inseparable aspects of their life histories.

Spirituality/Religiosity, daily life and (auto) biographical approach
To search for proximity or distance between the terms spirituality and religiosity, we turn to authors such as Marques (2010, p. 139) who considers that both: [...] involve the search for transcendence, the interest in the sacred, faith, etc. And they can be cultivated both individually and collectively, in religious institutions or outside. The frequency of participation in worship, repetition of rituals, and belief in rites are often associated with religiosity. On the other hand, the cultivation of spirituality, values, transcendence, faith, are considered part of the phenomenon of spirituality that is found in all cultures and in all ages.
For authors like Palmer (1995), there is a much deeper difference between religiosity and spirituality than that pointed out by Marques (2010, p. 92): "I will use spiritual to mean only those dimensions of human experience that reside beyond the realm of easily detectable materiality -frequently referred to as the metaphysical -but not connected to a supreme being or universal soul." In this article, we present a set of three studies related to Spirituality / Religiosity: two about initial and continuing teacher education and one about learning from spiritual / religious experiences. These researches share three points in common: (a) spirituality in music education, (b) daily life theories, and (c) (auto)biographical approach in education.
In the preface of the Handbook in arts education, by Rita Irwin (2007), the author states that "As arts educators, we need to acknowledge the deep human need to create, to make meaning, to care for one another and ourselves, and to work in the service of _________________________________________________________________________________________ Revista Digital do LAV -Santa Maria -vol. 14, n. humanity" (p. 1403). In this article, we present three Brazilian studies that identify with this thought of Irwin; and we consider these studies as related to the theme of spirituality in that the experiences narrated show a search for deep human meaning in the care for individuals, for each other and for one's self. Again, even if we adopt spirituality and religiosity as themes, our focus is on narratives as part of the life histories of teachers and not so much on the spiritual and religious phenomenon per se.
For choosing narratives and (auto)biographies as methodological approaches, this study can also be grouped under the umbrella of daily life and music education studies.
When emphasizing that Brazilian experiences with spirituality and religiosity in daily life are quite rich, we do not intend to give an account of this multiplicity of experiences, but rather we intend to reflect on the possibilities of how teachers and musicians articulate their lives within the scope of everyday learning. In spite of the delimitation we have adopted, we believe that exploring music learning within a spiritually oriented perspective becomes quite relevant as it meets what Irwin highlights as deep human need. Souza (2013, p. 18) emphasizes that in everyday theories: Music learning always includes one's own experience with music. The basis for these experiences is the world of life that can be considered at three levels: a) students' subjective experiences, which are not usually reflected; b) the basic, universal human experiences which are, generally, concepts abstracted from the everyday; and c) music as a reflection of life and the world of life in music.
Although the observation contemplates the depth of experiences in human significations, it does not necessarily focus on extraordinary situations in society or on special cases of greatness. Rather, the spiritual experiences analyzed in these surveys focus on the ordinary and commonplace that happen throughout the life of the participants such as the Sundays at Mass or the dilemmas that music teachers face in their daily work. One aspect of the theory of everyday life pointed out by Pais (2019)  consciousness from which we extract the useful information to our transactions with ourselves and / or with our human and natural environment" (JOSSO, 2004, p. 48).
Thus, we establish a threefold theoretical umbrella for these three researches (a) within the aspect of spirituality -the intensity of the reflections that are made; (b) within the scope of daily life and musical education -the importance of musical experience; and (c) within the approach of narrative methodologies -the processes by which the narrators reflect on how experiences, which might be considered of less importance in other contexts, acquire meaning in each individual way of living as musicians and music teachers. These music teachers have learned in an out-of-school environment and bring to their narratives the aspects of their life as musicians and music teachers, as much as their personal lives.

(Auto) Biographical Approach in Education
It should be noted that other theoretical aspects tie the three studies together in this article. Many authors make distinctions between narratives that are produced by interviews with the researcher and those that are produced solely by the researcher.
Passeggi (2011) distinguishes between "(auto) biographical narratives and self-writings." It is interesting to note that the third research is characterized by the use of personal writings, thus taking on an autobiographical character on the part of the author.
According to Demetrio (2015, p. 67 leads to the other, to the cosmos, to life. It is not restricted, because by writing, one looks at the depths of the soul and the solitude that may have been experienced and put to flight generating another alter ego for the self with which it will have to reconcile time and again (DEMETRIO, 2015, p. 70).
In such a way, the writing of a person becomes reflective of the social groups with which they interact hence, all personal writing is also a social writing. In this direction, the self-biographical writings of the university professor that will be presented in the latter part of this article can also help the reflection of other teachers inside and outside the field of music. As pointed out by Zabalza (2004, p. 18), what is lived as personal dimension also resonates to other people that share similar experiences.
The class diaries are part of the teachers' personal documents. They are one of the tools for auto-biographical research. Although they may address many issues, questions of spirituality and religiosity also emerge from these reflections. In narrative studies in music education carried out by NarraMus, a research group from the south of with the musical, pedagogical and life experiences of the students, as studied from the university professors' diaries. Similar to musical improvisation, there is a part that is fixed and a part that is variable in this type of improvisation. In tonal improvisation, the harmony often stays the same so that the melodic instrumentalist can create variations to the melody. In this methodological improvisation, the reviewed articles and books are the fixed component, while life experiences as music teachers, as well as the way the teacher presents their connections with bibliographic references, are the variable element. All of this process is described in the teacher's diaries. From this perspective, In the first study, which is reviewed in this paper, Maria Cecilia Torres gives a historical overview of her involvement with the (auto)biographical research in studies with teachers and highlights the theme of music and religiosity using data produced mainly in Rio Grande do Sul. In the second study André Reck carried out in a complementary subject of a licentiate in music course at a university in Rio Grande do Sul, the author highlights the students' narratives as part of their reflections as music teachers in formation. Narratives about spirituality / religiosity surface in these reflections. Both studies support the debate about the role of the (auto)biographical approach for the training of music teachers. In the third study Ana Lúcia Louro, using diaries in which dilemmas are highlighted, the confluence of personal and academic lives is described within the context of music teacher practice in Rio Grande do Sul. In the following section, we will present the narrative of each of the three authors of this study starting with Maria Cecilia Torres. The first person will be used pronoun will be used.

Initial and Continuing Music Teachers' Education
The study of music memories in the space of autobiographical narratives and teacher training has occupied and permeated my work as a teacher educator in a music degree course and also in courses of continuing education in music, thus allowing exercise and recall of experiences and stories from the biographical narratives since the time of my doctorate studies, which was completed in 2003, with the research "Musical identities of Pedagogy students: music, memories and media".
When I was analyzing the oral and written narratives of the 20 students who participated in my doctoral research, I was able to understand and, above all, be amazed by the multiple sonorities of the churches, their various religious rituals and their repertoires that accompanied the various moments, celebrations and worship. The statements of the interviewees and their personal writings revealed "the sounds of the harmonium performing hymns, guitars and singing in the masses, children's voices in catechesis classes" among many other sonorities and timbres (TORRES, 2003, p. 136).
Using written autobiographical narratives and interviews, I interviewed 20 pedagogy course students and teachers regarding the formation of musical identities and the memories that both constituted and constitute them. The interviewees shared many recollections about the songs that marked their childhood memories of friends and family, and school. The memories about music that were linked to religiosity recurred in the narratives of seventeen of the twenty participants in my study, lending a significant echo at the moment of data analysis.
In this way, I stress once again that one of the surprises I had as a researcher, at the end of the work and in the analysis of the autobiographical oral and written narratives, was to hear and perceive the presence of the memories of church music and to know the diversity of musical identities which emerged through interviews and autobiographies, as I recorded: I missed some and surprised was surprised by others. I hoped to hear more of the memories of the melodies in elementary and middle school, but these sounds emerged in a sparse and diluted form, some with the voices of the teachers and sisters of the confessional schools (TORRES, 2003, p. 170).

Memories of teachers in a continuing education course in music
For more than 10 years, I worked with continuing music education for elementary repertoire and the writing of songs that marked these moments. I present an extract of these activities.
I worked for a semester as a teacher in both presential and in distance classes using Moodle. This class involved a group of teachers of the final years of elementary education from different areas of knowledge such as Mathematics, Portuguese Language, Physical Education, Arts, Geography, History, among other areas.
In one of the meetings, I proposed a self-writing activity based on excerpts from Stephanou (2003)  The group of more than 50 teachers had time to write and then comment on some aspects of their musical memories that they wanted to share with their classmates. The As for the autobiographical narratives, I present some excerpts from the childhood recollections as in the following account: "In my childhood I have many memories of the music of the Church I had attended since the age of 4"; Another teacher commented: "I remember children's songs which I learned in the church and also hymns and songs. I started liking singing and I realized how the harmony makes the songs wonderful to the point that it would penetrate the heart and soul". In another account example, the participant recounts the sonorities and image of the mother singing to her baby son "the religious hymns" and complements that "I even fell asleep in my mother's lap to the sound of the church orchestra".
On the other hand, for a group of teachers teaching the same class, their writings of themselves 1 , from the perspective of music memories, focused on the time of adolescence, their comments included memories of music in the church as aspects of their spirituality. One teacher narrates "growing up and seeing his uncle create music sheets for the church" and also "hearing the sound of the guitars that played the songs adapted to the church rituals", commenting at the end that "it was modern and we young people liked it". In order to finish this topic with the musical memories of youth and the memories of religiosity, I selected this excerpt in which a teacher remembers her memory about music in her life was "when she was 11 years old in the catechism group in [her] church". The priest was very strict, and he liked always having choirs during his masses. And she added: "I already enjoyed singing and improvising with my brother in the singing and in the church, I will never forget the rehearsals, the gargling and the tune of the bass and treble voices on the piano of the coordinator who rehearsed once a week and it was very good". He closes his account by drawing attention to the fact that "when Sunday came, everyone who did catechism sang at the altar of the church" (teacher M. L.).
Among those memories that included participation in religious communities with orchestra and introduction into the "universe of erudite music", this group of teachers brought different styles such as gospel and sacred music, mixed with composers such as Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Sibelius, that made up the eclectic repertoires of the orchestra and choirs of different churches of different denominations. The songs in these environments were released through microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers that broadcast the songs, as in the memory of one of the teachers with the Mother Church of a city in the interior of São Paulo that "at 6:00 pm, I played the song 2 Ave Maria".

Narratives of undergraduates of a music course: writing their musical histories
In consonance with the thematic reflections of this study, I present some excerpts of narratives from students of a music course in which aspects of the didactics of music education and elaboration of research project are tackled. I proposed that they write about their first contacts with music, musical notation and other musical learning. In the autobiographical writings, memories of music learning emerged in church spaces, as one student who was "a member of the Assembly of God Church" reported, and who began learning with a church member lessons in music theory and wind instrument.
A classmate points out that "since 4 years old" she had sung in a choir of the church with other children and that at the age of 21, she began taking saxophone lessons in the Church and playing in the orchestra. Another colleague recounts he began his Among the undergraduates' narratives on their musical initiation stories are the testimonies related to their participation in Catholic Church 3 prayer groups, the pleasure of playing music in religious meetings and the emphasis on singing and playing in mass, participating in events, pilgrimages and retreats. One of the students points out in his autobiographical writings that it was in the Church where he actually discovered his future and so, thereafter, attended "a bachelor's degree in music". I believe that proposing autobiographical activities with music memories for both teachers in a continuing education course and licentiate in music undergraduate students, triggered a process of remembering and narrating music experiences impregnated with meaning. This allowed for reflections on the times and spaces in which these experiences occurred and how they contributed to identity formation.

Religious / spiritual experiences and teacher training
The overlapping of world experiences in the music teachers' formation processes Starting from a hermeneutic perspective, the analyses produced dealt in very general lines with: a) the possibility of understanding life histories and music memories as significant processes in / for music education; b) the relation of religious / spiritual meanings in this process of formation; c) the dialogues between musical narratives, produced during a practice of collective re-arrangement. Due to the refinement of the results of the study and the proposal of the present work, I make present excerpts from the second analytical field described above, that is, on the relation between the religious/ spiritual meanings in the process of higher education of the music teacher.

Practices in day-to-day religiosity and music education
It is worth mentioning the relations between day-to-day religious life and music education have already been featured in the work of Reck (2011), which sought to "start from the everyday realities of the students as people who are involved with religious environments", considering that this type of involvement "is not uncommon among music teachers in formation" (RECK, 2011, p. 3 understand how the experiences produced in the sphere of religiosity / spirituality are (re)significant in the process of institutional formation.
It is important to note that the multiple experiences and religious / spiritual memories reported here are not limited to the institutionalized religious spaces. It is also possible to observe that these religious experiences are not always understood as linear and homogeneous, and that religious belongingness is often negotiated in different senses and spaces. In this sense, Christian musical practices, although dominant, still had deep differences among them, permeated with multiple theological and philosophical understandings. Taking this into account, the generalization proposed by terms such as 'evangelical students' or "Catholic pupils", for example, seems increasingly impossible.
Secondly, the review of a conceptual discussion on religiosity / spirituality allowed for a broader understanding of musical experiences in this field, including, in the analysis, the relationships produced in music festivals and gatherings among friends, as well as in listening to music which, in one way or another, touched the threads of the senses of human existence. My attention was drawn to the writing of one of the collaborators of the research, who describes in one of his reports "I have never had a religious musical contact. But spirituality has always been present in the music that I like to play".

Religious experience and musical practice
In addition to the more evident religious belongingness such as in Catholicism, spiritism and evangelicalism, it was also possible to see some plural crossings that can mark the religious experience. According to one of the contributors, "I myself am a Catholic, but today I like the Gospel more, depending on who is preaching it" and emphasizes: "depending on who preaches it". He also reports he has attended some spiritist centers, "umbanda and everything else". Some of these relationships are suggested in his writings: "I come from a non-practicing Catholic family and at the same time a certain conviviality with the Umbanda religion, for an aunt's grandmother had an Umbanda center", and continues, "but my grandmother was very God-fearing and she always had prayers to teach me and the other grandchildren and children". Such plurality has already been pointed out as a complex factor in the question of religion in Brazil, especially when "it is observed that people consider themselves Catholic as a broad denomination, but attend Spiritist centers, Candomblé and other cults simultaneously" (MARQUES; AGUIAR, 2014, p. 117).
In addition to different worlds and religious / spiritual experiences, different musical practices have also been reported, spread in a web of situations involving multiple ways of listening and producing music. Some of these relationships have been described by the songs that are celebrated in the Catholic masses and in the evangelical to music is a manifold act and represents different ways of knowing the world. In this sense, it may not be possible to say that there is a single mode of listening to religious music, or some kind of religious dimension to listening to music, but different ways of understanding music in its relations with the world we live in.
Many of these musical practices narrated were produced in the Christian context, congruent to Lorenzetti's claim (2015) that "a large number of undergraduate music students had their musical initiation in the churches" (LORENZETTI, 2015, p. 15). Both in the Catholic and in the Evangelical context, observing the differences in music used in these two environments (LORENZETTI, 2015, p.21), different practices of making, learning and teaching music were narrated. One of the narrators, for example, says that he participated in various music groups in the Catholic Church, experiences that he considers important to his musical development: "I began to lose the shame of playing because I started playing at Mass and playing with a group of young people". He also says that in performing at the masses, he understood that this practice was not only a technical musical performance, not only errors and corrections, but also "helping others to pray and sing, and to be in prayer". This view is shared by Lorenzetti (2012), when the author points out that the Mass "does not allow for a show, does not allow applause for musical performance in the liturgical act, and singing and prayer are hardly disassociated" (LORENZETTI, p. 12).

Ways of listening and spirituality
In the narratives, a way of listening to music that promotes some kind of look at oneself and one's relationship with the world is highlighted. This is the experience narrated by one of the collaborators when he puts the album Dark Side of the Moon, of the British band Pink Floyd, and is involved in a project of (self) knowledge: "whenever I am in a bad moment, whether tired, or whatever it is, I usually lie in a comfortable place with a good headset and play this album; it's incredible how in a few minutes I get out of the reality, it seems that I am in tune with the songs". Another participant reported about specific moments in which friends who share commonalities, in this case related to rock and roll culture, come together to make a sound: "sometimes you're there, whatever, you pick up a guitar, a circle of five or six people starts playing and everyone sees that they like the same songs and begin to interact in a deeper way through music". Thus, sharing appreciations about the world and about music can be considered a meaningful social belongingness and existential process.

Relationships between religious practices and institutional learning
In general, it was also possible to understand that the pedagogical-musical practices lived in religious/spirituality contexts are part of the formation process, and that their relations with the institutional process in the under-graduate Music Education program are broad and extensive. Some of the participants of the complementary undergraduate course reported that in recent years they have noticed an emphasis in the licentiate course in promoting dialogues between daily life and training, in the sense of "bringing and talking and discussing our practice". In the case in question, this practice occurred with an Evangelical church choir conductor following a trend that "with the large number of Evangelicals in the course, the educational practices of people in one way or another will end up being in the religious environment". This dialogue allows the religious musical context to be seen as one of these spaces of educational practices. This participant uses her musical experiences in the church as a basis for reflections on her pedagogical-musical practices, problematizing her relationships. The account refers to a situation in which conducting the church choir during a congress, "people began to weep and close their eyes". At that moment the participant was torn between the technical need to conduct and the emotion of the participants: "As an academic and with the knowledge I had, I could not get so involved, but if I do not get so involved, you know, a person can end up becoming cold". This dilemma produced the need to problematize their practices as a music educator: "They seem to be paths that oppose each other, but actually intersect; What happens is that I'm still pretty much figuring out how to cross this one, you know?" Reports like this seem to point to a complex relationship between everyday practices and higher education, because their experiences require constant negotiation between them. Thus, dealing with technique and emotion in conducting a choir, for example, is a practice that involves different ways of relating to music.

Possible contributions of this study
Finally, I venture to offer a possible contribution of the lines described above, by proposing a more in-depth analysis of religious / spiritual meanings in music courses, specifically on teacher education. Note that it is not a question of being in favor or not, of accepting or not accepting these meanings; but to situate them as biographical elements that are inherent to the process of becoming a musician or music teacher. These religions, but also in the ways and meanings that a subject narrates and understands themselves. In analyzing these results, the findings indicate that playing, a praise, a Mass, or a Pink Floyd, for an example, is musical practice that involves different reasons in being in the world and different comprehensions about the meaning of life and death.
Hence the importance of thinking about these practices in music teachers' education through an (auto)biographical prism.

The concept of dilemma and the university professor of music
According to Zabalza (2004, p. 128), dilemmas is one of the main focuses in he "didactic research of the teacher's thought". This research area involves the examination of dilemmas and reflection on how teachers confront and elaborate them mentally, seeking "the way he himself evolved in the various scopes of conflict that the dilemmas defined" (ZABALZA, 2004, p. 109). For this author, it is necessary "to see how these dilemmas are structured and how the teacher evolves from the moment he writes the diary" (ZABALZA, 2004, p. 110). In order to do so, the author structures the chapter in _________________________________________________________________________________________ Revista Digital do LAV -Santa Maria -vol. 14, n. 2, p. 385 -407 -mai./ago. 2021 ISSN 1983 -7348 http://dx.doi.org/10.5902/1983734864710 400 which he analyzes, for a year, excerpts from the diaries of a kindergarten teacher structured in the form of tables in which it is possible to see the two poles of the dilemma and its evolution over time. In this way, it is possible to situate "the teacher's thinking about the bipolar or conflicting question that the dilemma reflects" and "how he cognitively and practically solved this dilemma" (ZABALZA, 2004, p. 110). This author concludes that the dilemmas constitute "the meeting point between the teacher knowledge and practice, between the personal experience and the professional experience" (Idem,p. 128). In this sense, the language of the class diaries corresponds to a "personal dimension" (ZABALZA, 2004, p. 18): the words are part of the teacher's daily life and express, in a more or less elaborate way, the feelings and internal reactions to each teacher's reflection. Within the area of arts and particularly in Music Education, some authors studied musical instruments university teachers and their dilemma involving "being a musician and being a teacher". In this direction Louro (2004)   To better clarify the tensions that were generated in the journals I turn to a possible category of analysis that emerges from the data of Louro doctoral thesis (2004) when one of the interviewees narrates: (…) this is experience, it is the human baggage, the person who touches, the moment one touches a work, when on recreates, one passes that baggage forward. Thinking about the dilemma of time and effort to be in the academy amidst a health crisis in the family, I see that yes, it is possible, it is possible to continue as a qualitative researcher who uses her knowledge to arrive at an understanding of the learning processes amidst an abyss of experiences; this process is informed by art, not only by the flute that I could still play sometimes, but also by all the artistic languages I talked to with my students, as well as by the notion of beauty that I try to feel throughout the time. In this notion of the beautiful is my connection with the divinity because it is the smell of the perfume of God (Excerpt 3 from December 04).

Final considerations
These three studies point to a learning produced in daily life and told through narratives using an (auto)biographical approach. These learnings are related to spiritual and religious experiences, both in terms of institutionalized religions as well as those related to spirituality outside these institutions. In the same direction, it is important to point out that some subjects mix their experiences of different religions. We know that some authors do not consider experiences in institutional religions as spirituality, but we consider that the quest for the transcendence of a material world can, from a certain point of view, be considered as spirituality even if it is linked to an experience lived in an institutionalized religion.
We return to Souza's writings at the beginning of the text, which consider as part of the Daily Life and Music Education approach "the basic human experiences that are universal, and which are generally concepts culled from everyday life" (SOUZA, 2013, p. 18). Could spirituality be a basic human experience that can be obtained from everyday life? It seems that such research points to that direction. In the same way that the teachers in continuous formation bring an experience with religion to their day-to-day life, it is so with music students. Such involvements become significant experiences (JOSSO, 2004) through the power of narrative.
The students of André Reck were able to understand their education more deeply when they considered the flowing of spiritual experiences in the deep meaning of certain musical repertoires and practices. For Maria Cecília Torres, it was possible to note in her data that the religious experiences became very significant for the subjects of the her academic life, she can refer to a faith that was greater than the day-to-day struggle.
This enabled her to be stronger in facing difficult times. In addition, the writing process about the dilemmas heightened her ability to deal with all aspects involved in the continuity of her role as a university teacher.
The narratives in this study reach a deeper density of meanings (IRWIN, 2007) among the subjects insofar as these narratives led the subjects to reflect on which beliefs and values are behind their pedagogical-musical practice; and which existential meanings of being music teachers are generated in this reflection. In this direction, these three case studies can contribute to the debates on Spirituality and Music Education, within Brazilian research perspectives and specifically those of Rio Grande do Sul.