Without losing the beat

The trajectory of a black woman, a samba dancer in an academic space

Abstract

This text provides an account of my experience as a Black woman, singer and samba player in an academic space. Through this writing, I recount both my positive and negative experiences tracing my trajectory until arriving at this transformative world of higher education, followed by the paths of education. The reflections I present here are a walk through my memories of childhood, adolescence and adult life, where I highlight that my relationship with music, alongside experiences of injustice and violence in all aspects, were part of my journey from a very early age. Based on these experiences, the text presents an awakening to life and an extremely important turning point for the paths I decided to follow in my personal and professional journey through studies in music, violence and gender in conflict environments during my postgraduate studies. In it, I also present my experience as a woman with black skin while I was Vice-President of ABET, in an affirmative, mostly Black administration, and how I needed to face issues of institutional racism, as a structural and social problem that was “veiled”, not nonexistent.