View Public Project: Learning Plena in the Streets of San Juan: Rethinking Didactics from a Cultural and Social Perspective [PR113009]

Institutionen

• Private Pädagogische Hochschule Burgenland, Stabstelle Forschung

Personen

• Silvestrini, Javier

Monday night 8:04 pm. Ireceived a call from Tito Matos, the master of Plena in San Juan, saying "you´re late, los muchachos and me, we, are about to start." I got the call just as I was arriving at the Terraza del Bonanza (local gastronomy) in the Barrio Villa Palmeras in Santurce, Puerto Rico. Two thoughts crossed my mind. "Since when are Puerto Ricans on time and where is everybody, almost no one is here." As I am coming in Tito receives a few plates with typical Puerto Rican food, among them hot fried plantains, and tells me to help myself. "I called because everyone likes to get home early," he said. In a few minutes three other pleneros (Plena players) joined and sat in between the rest of us at the Bonanza. Before I could unpack my camera, they began to sing "Guara no me quiere porque yo no se bailar" (Guara doesn´t love me because i don´t know how to dance). Some more men dresse in basketball jumpsuits quickly joined the pleneros on the improvised stage. It so happens that the pleneros have a basketball league and after their weekly games they meet to play Plena. In spite of what happens on the court, at the end of the evening everyone shares a few songs, some food and something to drink before heading back to their homes and facing the rest of the week. People would keep joining in the music. From the sidewalk, ongoing people would step in to listen the sound of the Plena. On the floor lied multiple panderos (hand drums used to accompany the Plena) as an invitation to anyone. There is no excuse if you are in the Bonanza on Monday night. You have to play and you have to sing! That was my first Lesson in Plena!

Who are these people? Where are thy from? how long have they been meeting here or playing this music? How did they learn ist? The present research project will study the different ways in which the Plena, an Afro-Caribbean musical genre that has relied on oral tradition for over a hundred and fifteen years, is learned today in the cities of Puerto Rico, specifically San Juan.

• Bildungsinhalt (Themenfeld) / Bildungsinhalt / Kunsterziehung / Musikerziehung
• sonderpädagogische Förderung (Themenfeld) / sonderpädagogische Förderung / schulische Integration
• Bildungstheorie (Themenfeld) / Bildungsprinzipien / schulische Integration
• Bildungstheorie (Themenfeld) / Bildungswissenschaft (Kernthemen) / Didaktik