This text is a view and invitation from the margins, from music, sounds, communities and musical instruments that have been resisting oppressive power structures in search for freedom, respect and togetherness. I’ll put forward examples of musical expressions—and their forms of gathering and musical instruments—to ask questions for the futures we envision. The goal here is to look at the past and present in a different way, to rethink them critically through the lens of power structures in order to open up for other futures of music without oppression and domination of a universalising mainstream music scene.

Introduction - music, universe, pluriverse and power structures

To start this journey, I want to introduce a perspective to lead us through thinking about mainstream vs alternative practices and the role of these alternative practices in nurturing other futures of songs, sounds and gathering around music: pluriversalism¹.Pluriversalism is a concept that has been growing in the art and social science scene recently. Pluriversalism stands for nurturing a “world where many worlds fit”, which is a concept put forward by the Zapatista movement in Mexico. The idea is to nurture our society in a way that allows different ways of being, of plural cultures, to coexist without one bigger culture with more power, dictating how others should be. Pluriversalism emerges from the struggle to mitigate the climate crisis and by realising that a main reason behind the crisis is the imposition of a singular culture into the whole world. This singular, universalized, culture that has been imposed and nurtured across the globe has brought with it a practice of exploitation of nature and people for the benefit of a privileged few. As a resistance to the oppressive universalized culture of extraction and abuse, the idea of pluriversalism emerges as an effort to allow different places on earth to live according to what is possible and desirable based on local conditions.

Of course, the idea of pluriversality should not be mistaken with any extremist nationalist agenda that may become fascist, because it defends exactly the opposite of that. Pluriversalism is about allowing people and groups to exist in the way they want to be, and then creating ways of communicating, exchanging and interacting across plural ways of being in the world. In that way we can think of pluriversality as a forest, with many species coexisting while universalism is more of a monoculture farm, where only one type of plant is allowed to exist. Of course there may be some disagreements and frictions between groups in a pluriverse, as they many not necessarily agree with how each lives, but pluriversality is ultimately based on respectful coexistence.

Let us take this concept to music then. Pluriversalism in music can mean allowing different music expressions to coexist and to exchange. In a pluriverse of music, all “worlds” of music are allowed without one being more powerful than the other. In a more equal playing field, a central aspect then becomes to nurture fair and carrying communication and exchange between different musical worlds. How could this look like? What signs of pluriverses of music do we already have? While we may say there are many different expressions of music that coexist, interact and exchange across the globe, music is also intertwined with power structures. That is, there is a mainstream music scene and a push towards universalization, of a monoculture of commercial music, resulting in all music within the “mainstream” becoming very similar to each other as they have to fit a commercializable identity. In the path of universalisation of music, plural expressions get either erased or appropriated as what we call “cultural appropriation”. Cultural appropriation, which is a deep and complex topic to discuss, in simple terms means that someone takes a cultural aspect from another place—a rhythm for example—and profits and benefits from it while the original beholders of the rhythm don't get credit nor financial benefit from it. Related to this, and more important for us here, is that music has also a history intertwined with oppression. The oppression of music styles and their related types of gatherings and instruments can be seen from recent times, for example with the horrible mass murder of festival attendees, to the history of prohibition of drums in the USA from the 18th century, to the burning of the Sami drums, and the prohibition of Capoeira in Brazil from colonial times up to the 60s. These are but a few. Do you have any local examples you know?

Nevertheless, a history of oppression is often accompanied by a history of resistance. Here I share two examples of musical expressions—with their ways of gathering and instruments—that have become symbols of resistance to colonisation and universalisation. The examples I’ll put forward are snapshots of a world of practices that I have been involved in practising, exploring, researching and teaching. I open these windows here as an offering from my personal stance, from where I stand in the world. My intention is to highlight resistance to oppressive power structures from and for music, and to invite you to think about local forms of musical resistance, to recognize degrees of resistance within our music and artistic practices, as well as the force that gatherings around music and songs have for fighting oppression and the homogenising power of universalisation.

Capoeira - disguising resistance to colonisation

Capoeira is a Afro-Indigenous-Brazilian martial art that is practised with music².In colonial Brazil, the enslaved people (mostly of afro-brazilian and indigenous origins) developed a martial art to fight for freedom from slavery. The intention of the martial art was to be able to escape from conflict with the colonisers and run to the forest where they could start free communities. In order to be able to practise under the eyes of the colonisers, the martial art was disguised as a dance. The fight then began being practised in a circle, in which eight people play instruments, and all are engaged in singing question- and-answer songs that guide the game between two people inside the circle.

As Capoeira was practised by people who would fight together for freedom, the goal of the game inside the circle was not to win over the other person, but instead to challenge each other so that both participants improve their abilities. Recognizing the power of this practice—especially by its success in providing an escape from slavery—Capoeira was forbidden by law in Brazil from the colonial times up to the 1960s. As part of outlawing Capoeira, the colonial administration made a conscious resolution to not allow the word “Capoeira” to be written in any police reports. so that once eradicated, no one could discover Capoeira’s existence afterwards by reading those records³.

During its prohibition, anyone who was discovered to be connected to the practice—including carrying any Capoeira-related instruments like the Berimbau, pandeiro (tambourine)—would be arrested. The Berimbau is the instrument that leads the Capoeira circle (image 1 and 2 on page 64), which has become a symbol of Capoeira and of resistance of the community around the practice. As some older Masters say, the Berimbau was not always the main instrument, but has gained centrality in Capoeira over the years, and sometimes it could be used as a weapon by attaching a blade to the upper end of it. With a history of being forbidden, Capoeira adapted to the changes in Brazilian society over the years, remaining a resistance movement against oppression. Capoeira was not recorded as official Brazilian history, and so relied on traditions of oral history to stay alive. In Capoeira, the role of the elder and the songs sung in the circle are the way of telling histories that are parallel to the official history of Brazil from the colony to nowadays.

The songs sung and repeated over the centuries often talk about the daily life under slavery, relevant people who fought against slavery, and many other people and happenings that are not mentioned in history books in Brazilian schools. The songs of Capoeira, repeated in each gathering, keep alive a history of resistance, stories that have survived the attempts to forbid Capoeira and thus rely on the community to keep it alive. Capoeira is now present in almost every country in the world, and is the main vehicle spreading Brazilian culture and Portuguese-Brazilian language worldwide.

Looking at Capoeira’s history and its role in Brazilian culture can help us pose some questions to explore our local contexts, and our personal position in the world: are there local musical expressions, ways of gathering and musical instruments that were forbidden? Can we recognize them, were they erased? How are local ways and practices of fighting against oppression? How does music and gatherings around sound and song play a role in these practices? What are the names we have to sing so they are not forgotten?

Capoeira represents a way of gathering to fight oppressive power structures. Capoeira is known as the fight of freedom, an art form developed to start new, free societies in the forest of Brazil, away from the Portuguese colonial control. In Capoeira, we see the role of music and dance as a way to disguise resistance, disguise the fight. We also see the power of music for sustaining untold and forbidden stories of an oppressed society. Further, we also see an example of an instrument, the Berimbau, which became a symbol of Capoeira, a symbol that connects a community, a symbol of resistance. In the next example, we will focus on an instrument that represents a direction opposite to universalisation.

Rabeca, an instrument on the opposite road of universalisation

The next example is of a “brazilian” instrument called rabeca. Brazilian is in quotation marks here because the rabeca comes from an Arab background and is an instrument that has siblings all around the world. In English, for example the famous cousin is known as fiddle, while its universalised sibling is the world famous violin. This example comes from a Brazilian music style that I am professionally active in as a guitar and bass player - Forró. However, I do not possess experience and intimacy with the rabeca, so I bring forward the work of Brazilian musician-researcher Caio Padilha, and the testimonies of various rabeca masters⁴.

As Padilha stresses, it is difficult to talk about the rabeca without getting to the question of whether it is a violin. Indeed, in portuguese, rabeca was the word used to call the instrument before the name “violin”. The division then between these instruments came from the violin’s goal of universalization. That is, the European violin started to have a whole tradition of how the instrument is built, which materials are used, how to play it, what to play and how to teach it. In this, the violinist became a person that can play any violin around the globe and that can supposedly play with any orchestra around the globe. With the violin in this direction of universalization, the name “rabeca” was used to denominate violin-like instruments in portuguese that did not comply to this tradition. Rabecas, as Padilha argues, have no recipe of how to be built, which material to use, and also have no convention on repertoire, tunings and ways to play⁵.

Going in the opposite direction of universalism, the rabeca is an instrument that is always connected to a specific place. We see its name often written as a composite name showing which region or culture it is attached to, one example is the rabeca-caiçara, from the cai.ara culture in the southern and southeast shore of Brazil. Of course, it is impossible—or useless— to think of an instrument without thinking of the people and communities that make the instrument sound. Rabeca music, similarly to the other cousins like the fiddle, nyckelharpa and so on, are nowadays connected to folk music, to the music made by the people for local rituals and celebrations. In some cases we can even see rabeca and other local instruments like the viola-caipira in Capoeira, though it is becoming rare nowadays. Nevertheless, rabeca is traditional in rhythmics related to Forró and is usually present in local celebrations, like parties after a joint community effort to celebrate joint achievements. However, without convention of how each rabeca should be built or played, the instruments are more connected to the players. That is, a musician may not be able to play each other’s rabeca because they may have different tunings, different sizes and different strings. With this direction of being connected to people and place—in contrast to the violin that creates a universal musician where the person, nationality and culture becomes almost irrelevant—the rabeca can be seen as an instrument that resists the homogenization of culture and fights for a connection to place.

With the rabeca example, we can pose some more questions, such as: are there local examples similar to the rabeca in the region you are from? How are these examples connected to the place, people and their ways of gathering around music, sounds and songs? Is there a tension between universalization and localization of cultural expressions in your region? How can we, through the instruments we make and play and the music we listen and make, support pluriverses of music?

The rabeca is an instrument that resists universalisation. We could say that the rabeca is a type of pluriverse, or an instrument that allows pluriverses to exist. That is, due to its denial of standardised notions of how to be built and how to be played, it allows people to make a rabeca that fits their contexts, their communities and the situations they want to play the rabeca. These two examples above are examples of resistance: Capoeira as resistance to colonisation and oppressive power structures, and a search for creating societies free from slavery and colonisation, and a rabeca as resistance against homogenisation and universalisation, and a search for localised ways of being. These two examples imply some sort of force against a mainstream direction, against the imposition of specific ways of being in the world. There are many other examples of music—and their gatherings, songs and instruments—used as resistance present in many places, we just need to recognize them and give them space.

Outro - moving backwards into the future

In some traditional perspectives in Latin America (and probably elsewhere too) we say we are moving backwards into the future. That is, all we know and can see moving to the future is the past and present. As we move towards the future, what pasts and presents of music do we want and need to sustain?

Capoeira resisted the initiative of not being recorded— to be erased from the future and the present by not being registered in the past. Are there other artistic and cultural pasts we need to recognize to move forward in ways that allows for pluriverses, for fair and equitable societies and for futures where life can thrive in and with the planet? What music, songs, sounds, instruments and musical gatherings do we need to nurture these futures? By seeing some examples of resistance with and through music and exploring how they relate to the idea of nurturing pluriverses by fighting dominant oppressive structures, we may finish with one last question: What resistances do we need for the futures we envision?