Música do Círculo: a guest post by Fernanda Vicente
I recently attended my second music retreat with Música do Círculo (circle music; MdC) in Bahia, Brazil. I wrote about my experience at the first retreat in my new book, Musicking in a Relational Key; it forms the first case study, in Chapter 3. I’m delighted to share today the perspective of another participant, Fernanda Vicente. I’m keen for other voices to be heard, and Fernanda draws on very different life experiences to mine and writes in a poetic style that I could not hope to match. I invite you to read and savour her words: they are beautiful and profound.
Fernanda Vicente is a journalist by profession, and she founded and runs Perifa Delas, a social project for women in situations of vulnerability in the Vila Pantanal favela in the city of Santos, Brazil. Prior to attending MdC, she had had no previous experience of making music; but her social project had hosted several workshops led by an MdC teacher, which had impressed Fernanda and piqued her curiosity. One of the impressive aspects of MdC is that it is designed to include everyone, from absolute beginners to experienced pros, and to enable them to make music together. The fact that someone with no background in music making could have such a deep musical-social experience in just a few days is remarkable, in my opinion, and it deserves attention from community musicians and music educators with a social orientation.
I invite you to read Fernanda’s words alongside my account of MdC in Musicking in a Relational Key, which is open access, can be read online or downloaded for free, and is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. I provide more contextual information and analysis; Fernanda goes straight to the heart of the matter.
Because Fernanda is a writer, I will post her original text in Portuguese below the English translation, so that those who read Portuguese can appreciate its poetry.
I arrived weary.
Not the kind of weariness that disappears after a night’s sleep, but the deeper exhaustion of someone who had to grow up too soon—someone who spent years holding the world together so it would not fall apart on everyone else.
I came carrying the weight of countless battles, my voice steady, my fists clenched, my heart quietly searching for a place where it could finally lay down its armour.
Then I found the circle. The Music of the Circle [Música do Círculo].
No one asked how many battles I had survived. No one asked how many times I had swallowed my tears so I could keep looking strong.
They simply made room. And in that simple act, there was something that felt unmistakably like home.
I sat among people who knew nothing of my story. Perhaps that is what belonging truly is—not having to explain yourself before someone draws near, not having to prove your strength before you are worthy of tenderness.
In Bahia, even the earth seemed to breathe more slowly.
The wind moved gently through the trees. The sea was endless, as all that is whole becomes sea. And every voice that rose within the circle carried an entire world inside it.
The music did not come from somewhere outside us.
It was born in the listening. In bodies willing to be fully present. In the silence between one voice and the next. In the courage to create without knowing where the moment, or one another, might lead us.
There, being part of a collective did not mean dissolving into the crowd. It meant becoming more completely yourself.
It meant offering your own voice without needing to fill every silence. It meant discovering that one person’s presence can hold another with nothing more than generosity and love.
I, who had learned far too young that survival meant fighting alone, began to understand that no struggle is meant to be carried in solitude.
There are hands that do not pull us forward; they simply walk beside us.
There are arms that do not hold us captive; they simply hold us.
There are encounters that ask nothing of us, yet quietly return the parts of ourselves we believed were gone forever.
No one in that circle imagined they could save anyone else.
Perhaps that was precisely what saved me.
For the first time in a long while, I rested without surrendering who I am.
I closed my eyes and trusted that, for a little while, others would help carry the weight of the world.
I came home changed.
Not less courageous. Not less willing to stand and fight. But knowing that even resilience needs a place to rest.
I brought Bahia back with me: the chorus of mingled voices, the scent of the earth after the wind, the memory of the sea, and the quiet certainty that belonging is not about finding people who are like us.
It is about finding people in whose presence we are free to become wholly ourselves.
Música do Círculo taught me that community does not diminish who we are. It reveals what exhaustion had hidden from our own eyes.
There, among voices, silences, and shared presence, I found again a part of myself that years of struggle had left behind.
Now I know there are encounters that do not simply pass through our lives. They settle into our bodies. They linger in our memories. They change the way we breathe.
And when the weariness returns, when the road ahead feels longer than my strength can bear, I will remember that circle.
The space that was opened for me.
Bahia, breathing slowly.
The music rising between us.
And the woman who, after so many years of carrying everyone and everything else, finally allowed herself to be carried, too.
Eu cheguei cansada.
Não daquele cansaço que uma noite de sono resolve, mas do peso de quem precisou crescer cedo demais e passou anos sustentando o mundo para que ele não desabasse sobre tanta gente.
Eu vinha de muitas lutas, com a voz firme, os punhos fechados e o coração procurando, em segredo, um lugar onde pudesse baixar a guarda.
Foi então que encontrei o círculo. A Música do Círculo.
Ninguém me perguntou quantas batalhas eu havia vencido, quantas vezes engoli o choro para continuar parecendo forte.
Abriram espaço. E naquele gesto tão simples havia uma espécie de casa.
Sentei entre pessoas que ainda não conheciam a minha história. E talvez pertencer seja isso: não precisar explicar nada para que alguém se aproxime, não precisar provar a própria força para merecer cuidado.
Na Bahia, a terra parecia respirar mais devagar.
O vento atravessava as árvores, o mar era um ( e todo um é mar ) e cada voz que surgia na roda trazia consigo um mundo inteiro.
A música não vinha de fora.
Ela nascia da escuta, dos corpos presentes, do silêncio entre uma voz e outra e da coragem de criar sem saber exatamente aonde o encontro nos levaria.
Ali, fazer coletivo não era desaparecer entre muitas pessoas. Era existir ainda mais.
Era oferecer a própria voz sem precisar ocupar todo o espaço.
Era descobrir que uma presença pode sustentar outra com afeto e generosidade.
Eu, que havia aprendido tão cedo a lutar sozinha, comecei a compreender que nenhuma luta precisa ser solitária.
Há mãos que não puxam, apenas acompanham.
Há braços que não prendem, apenas acolhem.
Há encontros que não exigem nada, mas devolvem partes de nós que pensávamos ter perdido.
Naquele círculo, ninguém tem a pretensão de salvar ninguém.
E talvez tenha sido exatamente isso que me resgatou.
Pude descansar sem abandonar quem sou.
Pude fechar os olhos e confiar que, por alguns instantes, outras pessoas sustentariam o mundo.
Voltei diferente.
Não menos forte, não menos disposta a lutar, mas sabendo que até a resistência precisa de abrigo.
Trouxe comigo a Bahia, o som das vozes misturadas, o cheiro da terra, a memória do mar e a certeza de que pertencimento não é encontrar pessoas iguais.
É encontrar pessoas diante das quais podemos existir inteiras.
A Música do Círculo me ensinou que o coletivo não apaga o que somos. Ao contrário: faz aparecer aquilo que, de tão cansadas, já não conseguíamos enxergar em nós.
Ali, entre vozes, silêncios e presenças, reencontrei uma parte de mim que a luta havia deixado para trás.
Hoje sei: há encontros que não passam. Eles permanecem no corpo, na memória e na maneira como voltamos a respirar.
E, quando o cansaço retornar, quando a luta parecer maior do que eu, vou me lembrar daquela roda.
Do espaço aberto.
Da Bahia respirando devagar.
Da música nascendo entre nós.
E da mulher que, depois de tanto tempo sustentando tanta coisa, finalmente permitiu que o coletivo também a sustentasse.
Geoff Baker 