Pedagogy of Mironga: Ancestrality, Orality, Musicality and Secrecy in the Work of Mestre Griô Dilermando Freitas

Abstract

This article presents a segment of the Pedagogy of Mironga, developed by Griô Master Dilermando Freitas, articulating enchantment and secrecy. The experience, carried out within the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Narrative, Art, Language, and Subjectivity (GIPNALS) and the Tutorial Education Program Fronteiras: Popular Knowledge and Practices (PET Fronteiras), is taken as a perspective for approaching and reflecting on knowledge that challenges the boundaries between university and community, science and popular practices. The work is grounded in the trajectories, reflections, and challenges undertaken by these groups over the past twenty years, drawing upon surrealist ethnography (CLIFFORD, 2002), reworked as the “surrealization” of research writing (BUSSOLETTI, 2007), and on PET Fronteiras projects, which aim to establish connections between popular knowledge and academia, promoting the exchange of knowledge and reducing the hierarchies that have historically privileged academic production. This investigation is situated within the framework of non-colonial epistemologies, engaging with authors such as Walter Benjamin, Nego Bispo, Luiz Rufino, and Luiz Antônio Simas — and, centrally, with the narrative experience of the Culture Masters, represented in the practice of Griô Master Dilermando Freitas. The thread that connects the teaching, research, and extension activities with Master Dilermando’s work is the academic and political struggle against the impoverishment of narrative experience as instituted by capitalist modernity. Based on the Griô Master’s approach, the article underscores the importance of the knowledge of mironga, recognizing its secretive nature and its power of enchantment.