Multicultural Issues in Music Teacher Education: The Case of Three Music Education Higher-Degree Programs in the City of Rio de Janeiro

This article discusses how multicultural issues pervade music education programs offered by three main institutions in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The discussion becomes relevant because of the enactment of Law 11,769/2008 (Brazil, 2008a) which makes "music" compulsory in Brazilian primary and secondary education, making it important to understand how the future music teacher is being prepared to teach in the K-12 education system and to respect classroom cultural diversity. To this end, we applied questionnaires containing open-and closed-ended questions to 59 graduates of the music education undergraduate program from three institutions in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was found that, in general, these students recognize the importance of multicultural music education, but do not feel that their college education is preparing them to work in and with the cultural diversity found in K-12 classrooms. We suggest a post-colonial multicultural curriculum to avoid essentialism and identity freezing, as well as to promote hybridizations and positive exchange between different cultures. We also believe it is necessary that disciplines of music education degree programs use an ample repertoire that does not only include European music, but also African, African-Brazilian, Indigenous, "Popular" and Media music.