My research, supervised by prof. Jason Stanyek, engages with the recent wave of Haitian immigration to Brazil, a phenomenon linked with Brazil’s leadership of the UN’s Minustah mission and the 2010 earthquake near Port-au-Prince. Habitually known for its ethnic and cultural diversity, in the last years Brazil has seen economic decline and the rise of xenophobic, nationalist and conservative tendencies within its society, leading up to the election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. Within such a delicate context for black labour migrants, my thesis aims to investigate the music making of this black Caribbean diaspora in Brazil. Through ethnographic and collaborative musical work with Haitian immigrant artists, I seek to explore the political aesthetics of migration, issues of hybridity and cosmopolitanism in cultural identities, the (trans)local musical and political agency of these migrants and relations between music and race in contemporary Brazil.
Publications
“(Hy)-Brazil, Celtic land? An ethnomusicological study of the formation and characteristics of the Irish-Celtic music scene in Brazil”. Ethnomusicology Ireland, n.6, 2018 (forthcoming, 2019).
“Haitian immigrant-artists and the political aesthetic of migration in Brazil’s polarized 2018 presidential campaign”. SEM student news, Vol. 14, No. 2, Fall/Winter, 2018).
Conference papers
‘Musical participation and communication technology to the service of applied ethnomusicology in the context of Haitian immigration to Brazil: reflections from post-fieldwork with Haitian immigrant artists’. VIII Meeting of the Brazilian Association of Ethnomusicology, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil, May 2019.
‘World Music: ethnomusicology at University Radio: (inter)faces in research, teaching and extension’. BRAGA, Reginaldo Gil; ROSA, Pedro Fernando Acosta da; SANTOS, Caetano Maschio; JUNIOR, Paulo Fernando Parada Ausquia. The Joint Symposium of the ICTM Study Groups on Applied Ethnomusicology & Music, Education and Social Inclusion, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, July 2018.
‘Haitian immigrant musicalities in Porto Alegre: opening theoretical pathways through musical practice’. VII Meeting of the Brazilian Association of Ethnomusicology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, May 2017.
‘(Hy-)Brazil, Celtic land? An ethnographic study of the Brazilian Irish-Celtic music scene’. Transcending disciplinary frames: 1st Irish Studies Graduate Conference, Concordia University, Montreal, March 2017.
