Friday, March 29, 2024
Mario Osava
Rehearsal room at Bituca, with giant poster of Milton Nascimento. Credit: Courtesy of Grupo Ponto de Partida
As a school that is both "free" and "free of charge," Bituca’s philosophy rejects all rigid formalities. It has no minimum requirements in terms of formal schooling, and no age limits: all that matters is talent. Applicants from seven to 77 years of age competed for this year’s openings at the school. There are course programmes for nine instruments, and singing. Each runs for two years but can be extended, based on the school’s evaluation or the decision of the apprentices themselves.
"Human beings learn to speak first, and much later on to write," noted Pablo Bertola, stressing the importance of practice in musical learning. Bertola is a guitarist, composer and actor in Grupo Ponto de Partida (GPP), the theatre group that founded Bituca ("ponto de partida" is Portuguese for "starting point").
Bituca follows the Kodály Method, developed by Hungarian composer and educator Zoltán Kodály. This method of music education begins with sensory experiences like listening, movement, singing and improvisation, before moving on to theory. Emphasis is placed on local folk music, which reflects the language of students’ daily lives.
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Bertola, already a prolific composer at the age of 24, insists that he could have never attended a conventional university. His passions are popular music and the guitar, and neither is taught at the closest public university. But that university has never produced any well-known musicians, either, he added.
Some 2,700 applicants from cities throughout Brazil have participated in the three biannual selection processes held so far by Bituca. Although a total of 100 spots are offered each time, the school usually ends up accepting a larger number of apprentices. This year, 137 were enrolled.
Planting seeds
One of this year’s prize-winning BDMG Young Instrumentalists is Yuri Hunas, 21, who studied percussion at Bituca. In fact, Yuri was one of the reasons this free university was created.
Yuri and Renato Marques arrived in Barbacena six years ago from Araçuaí, a 15-hour bus ride away over treacherous roads, to take part in a theatre training course offered by GPP.
The two became singer/actors in the Children of Araçuaí choir, which was trained by GPP and went on to give successful performances in a number of Brazilian cities and even in Paris in 2005. Ever since he was a small boy, Yuri had dreamed of being a "tamborzeiro", the lead drummer in traditional music played in his hometown.
Yuri and Renato’s musical talent inspired the theatre group to create Bituca. Denying these boys the opportunity to study music would mean they would have been lost to work as day labourers cutting sugarcane in the southern state of São Paulo, the primary source of employment for the people of Araçuaí.
The Bituca University of Popular Music is located in a former silk factory, originally built in 1919, on the outskirts of Barbacena. The name Bituca is actually the nickname of the school’s "godfather", renowned singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento, a native son of Minas Gerais and a major force in Brazilian music since the 1960s.
Another youngster from Araçuaí, Pitágoras Silveira, had already captured Nascimento’s attention through his natural talent for the piano, an instrument he learned to play almost instantly after coming into contact with one for the first time at the age of 11.
The musical potential of the poor children of Araçuaí was already known to Nascimento, who had shared the stage with the children’s choir at a number of the performances organised by GPP, including the concert in Paris.
Five children from the Araçuaí choir studied at Bituca the first year it opened, and stayed in a house specially designated for them. Yuri’s mother, Irene Hunas, formerly a small farmer and domestic worker, was divorced and had no other children, and so when Yuri moved to Barbacena to attend the school, she moved there with him, and was responsible for taking care of the house and the children living there for five years.
"Yuri read a lot, so much that I started to worry because he never left the house," Hunas told IPS. Back in Araçuaí since January, she is sad to be living far away from her son for the first time, after he moved to Belo Horizonte, 680 kilometres away, to further his studies in pursuit of a professional career.
As one of the BDMG New Instrumentalists, Yuri won a six-month scholarship to hone his talents in a series of workshops with seasoned percussionists. He will then go on to form part of a band made up of the prize-winning young musicians, which will offer regular performances.
Renato, the other youngster who inspired the creation of Bituca, studied bass guitar at the school for four years, but he is a "well-rounded musician" who has also mastered a number of other instruments, as well as harmony and the Kodály Method, according to GPP director Regina Bertola.
Renato has chosen the southern Brazilian city of São Paulo to pursue his professional career, because four of his seven siblings already live there, having fled the endemic unemployment in Araçuai, but managing to avoid a life of cutting sugarcane.
Human training
The opportunity to train with highly talented musicians as instructors has the benefit of "motivating us to study harder, because we want to be just like them," commented Renato. More than teachers, they are role models.
For Yuri, even more important than the musical training he received in the Children of Araçuaí choir and later at Bituca was the "human training" instilled in him.
All of Bituca’s former students, even those who do not go on to pursue a career in music, are forever marked by its philosophy that you learn more through the collective effort demanded by the arts than in a conventional school, he said.
The crossing of paths between the children of Araçuaí and the GPP theatre group, which opened up unimaginable horizons in his own life and those of many of his schoolmates, "is inexplicable, and somehow sacred, because it wasn’t planned," Yuri declared.
A "divine plan" is the term used by GPP director Regina Bertola, the mother of Pablo Bertola and guiding force behind the entire process. Bituca, the "offspring", has outgrown its creator, the theatre group she founded in 1980 with her late husband Ivanée Bertola.
From the 20 actors who comprised GPP, Regina now has more than 200 people under her charge, which makes it difficult for her to get back to her original calling as a playwright – a dilemma she describes with a mixture of regret and proud satisfaction.
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" This article forms part of the "Art Is the Best Education" series of reports. The project that gave rise to this effort was the winner of the AVINA Investigative Journalism scholarship. The logos must be published with the reports. The AVINA Foundation and Casa Daros, its local partner in the Art and Society category, are not responsible for the ideas, opinions or other aspects of the content. ". | ![]() |