The Banda União:

a community musical construction

Abstract

This article discusses the historical identity construction of Brazilian wind bands. As a section of current doctoral research, the specific case presented here is that of the União dos Artistas Musical Corporation, founded in 1912 in the city of Itu in the state of São Paulo. The fieldwork was carried out from observations of essays and presentations, bibliographic review of publications about the band, news of websites and the local press of the city region of Itu/ SP. To contextualize the case studied, a literature review was also carried out on Brazilian wind bands. Similar processes were observed and placed in dialogue between the case study and the bibliography. Thus, we observed the identity construction of bands given in multiple processes of interactions with different segments of society, highlighting: the sense of belonging with communities and with public/collective spaces; the diversity of performance situations; the interaction with the religious customs, and political, military and entertainment fields; the relationships of acceptance and resistance to new communication technologies; and also dialogue with the educational field. In all these processes, we were able to verify that the musical repertoire fulfills different and fundamental roles as motivators, conductors or resulting from it. Therefore, we understand that the historical identity development of the bands occurs tied to the development of their musical repertoire, especially for their diversity.