Resumo

The musical lives of youth music learners in Northeastern Brazil: mapping their music activities

Although music is an important part of youths’ lives, and listening to music is one activity they most like to do (LAMONT et al., 2003; O’NEILL, 2005; YOUTH MUSIC, 2006), their engagement in other music activities tends to diminish as they transit from primary to secondary school (HARLAND et al., 2000; RYAN et al., 2000), and at the end of secondary school (EVANS, 2009; MCPHERSON et al., 2012). In general, lower levels of student value to their music lessons accompany this phenomenon (GHAZALI; MCPHERSON, 2009; LOWE, 2011; MCPHERSON et al., 2015). McPherson and O’Neill (2010) observed this trend in several countries, except for Brazil. In fact, Brazilian students valued more music as they get older, especially those who did only extracurricular music activities (HENTSCHKE, 2010). This article presents the rationale of a PhD research project aimed at understanding the music engagement of youth music learners in Northeast Brazil. We focus on the mapping procedures of their everyday life music activities according to the interview study method proposed by O’Neill (2017). The case of a female music learner illustrates how data from thismapping exercise were collected and have been analyzed. Finally, we expose some of the expected contributions of this research project to the field of music education.