The University Music Classroom as an Intercultural Stage: Assimilation and Resilience

Abstract

The notion of interculturality assumes the time-space confluence of people who are identified with different cultures –defined as a set of specific skills and knowledge that people need in order to interact in and with the artifacts of their environment, and interpret the derived experience in a particular way. Music, in its specific ubiquity, entails in its experience, construction and circulation of a remarkable body of such capacities. The current characteristics of the University in Argentina make the university classroom into a scenario of cultural confluence. This paper aims to characterize our university classroom as a multicultural scenario in order to identify problems and possibilities for the establishment of intercultural (isometric) relationships. Students’ attitudes are explored at their entrance to University in relation to the encounter of their own culture with the official culture that the institution personifies. From a questionnaire provided to 277 incoming students, both attitudes of assimilation into the dominant culture (derived from the epistemological coloniality) and of resilience are identified. The paper discusses the categories found from listening to the voices of the students and proposes a reflection on the teacher’s role in the setting of intercultural relations.