Abstract
This article uses the story of a Chinese immigrant in Brazil and his love of música sertaneja as a starting point to discuss his adaptation to a new society and the way in which his music learning played an important role in this process. Anchored in the ideals of Narrative Inquiry and inspired by Mezirow's Transformative Learning Theory, the article then extrapolates from this unique story to present a broad discussion that includes ideas about music education, immigration, identity, individual and social transformation, empowerment, and self-definition. The article concludes with reflections about the importance of music learning to the adaptation of immigrants in general, an idea that has wide applicability, being useful both for immigrants themselves, as well as for teachers and policymakers.
Highlights
This article explores how a Chinese immigrant living in Northeastern Brazil used his learning of música sertaneja as a powerful tool to help his adaptation to his new country
Performing música sertaneja became a political instrument and an act of rebellion by Yan: his self-motivated, nonconformist, and autodidactic learning process provides a powerful example of the potential of transformative music learning experiences to help immigrants better cope with feelings of longing, alienation, isolation, and in-betweenness
One fundamental point about transformation is how, after it begins within one’s consciousness, it may translate into a change of individual behavior, which may, on its turn, incite social transformation
Summary
This article explores how a Chinese immigrant living in Northeastern Brazil used his learning of música sertaneja as a powerful tool to help his adaptation to his new country. Performing música sertaneja became a political instrument and an act of rebellion by Yan: his self-motivated, nonconformist, and autodidactic learning process provides a powerful example of the potential of transformative music learning experiences to help immigrants better cope with feelings of longing, alienation, isolation, and in-betweenness. Such a transformative learning process may result in a rearrangement of one’s identity and a critical questioning of one’s meaning perspectives, with the resulting intercultural identity being much more inclusive than the original (Mezirow 1991). This article starts from an individual's story and hopes to glean from it some ideas and principles that can be widely used in relation to other immigration stories, an extremely relevant topic in the modern world
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