about me
about me
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I have a long experience in different Brazilian musical traditions as a saxophonist, guitarist, percussionist, pianist and singer, as well as composer, arranger, choir and orchester conductor, and music director for dramatic arts (theater and film). Before my academic studies, I had already dedicated many years in the search for my aesthetic signature. My bachelor in Composition added to it some theoretical and critical lenses of investigation. As an undergraduate, I worked in many areas from music theater to orchestral composition, from neoclassic to soundscape, from film and game sountrack to choir music, from samba to research on music athropology.
I had my master degree in musicology, at the UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies (anthropology of music, sociology of music, applied musicology). More recently, I have worked artistically and academically with Latin-American, African, and African-diasporic cultures. My master thesis was an anthropological and sociological analyses of Music in the anti-racist and anti-colonialist struggle in Brazil.
My ongoing doctoral research is a transdisciplinary investigation on Music in the Haitian Revolution as a search for possibly replicable models for the consummation of the African Revolution.
Curriculum Vitae
ARTISTIC WORK
2023 - 2025 Musician, Actor, Music Director and Co-author of the theater play Ayiti with Marconi Bispo (Porto, Portugal)
2022 Musician in the experimental theater piece The Gods Are Not To Blame by Bright Richards, New Dutch Connections (Utrecht, Netherlands)
2022 Concert with the Yoruba master drummer Ayanlere Alamu Alajede - Culture Shock - (Utrecht, Netherlands)
2022 Performance Agô! from Duo Obará at the UdK Program Archiving the Mo(ve)ment, by Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhimins (Berlin, Germany)
2021 Street Performance There Is No Such Thing as Decoloniality, Duo Obará (Berlin, Germany)
2021 Concert and Lecture on the weekly program Pensar Africanamente (Brazil, online)
2020 Concert for Prize Ceremony of Goethe Medaille, with Lukha Mukhavele and Jordan White (Weimar, Germany)
2018 Concert Series Coral da Vila - State commissioned (Brasília, Brazil)
2018 Musician and Music Director - street theater Auto da Paixão e da Alegria (Brasília, Brazil)
2017 Music Director - theater play Um Brinde a la Muerte (Brasília, Brazil)
2017 Musician and Sound Technician in the short film Rito by Pedro Miranda (Brasília, Brazil)
2016 Co-founder and Conductor of the community choir Coral da Vila as a social worker at a senior citizens' association (Brasília, Brazil)
2013 - 2017 Musician and Music Director of the Catarse theater company - productions: Anel de Magalão, Gata Borralheira, Na Cova dos Leões (Brasília, Brazil)
2013 Singer in Trio Cajarana - Genre: Forró (Brasília, Brazil)
2012 Saxophonist in Crash41 - Genre: Dave Matthews Band cover (Brazil)
2011 Saxophonist in Baixo Clero - Genre: Samba and Choro (Brasília, Brazil)
ACADEMIC WORK
2025 Coordinator of the panel "Self-critique of Decoloniality" at the Iberic Congress of African Studies (Barcelona, Spain)
2024 Keynote Lecture on Candomblé and Capoeira as anti-colonial technologies and the crossroads of material and immaterial heritage at Decolonial Dialogues 1.0 by Prof. Pemi Oludare (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
2022 - 2023 Academic Assistant - HfM Franz Liszt Weimar International Office - DAAD third-party funded project, digital solutions for the internationalization of German universities (Germany)
2022 Member of the ISME(International Society for Music Education)
2022 Video-lecture: The Naturalization of Colonialism - Modernism and the Production of Cultural Identity by Duo Obará at the WebLab Affect and Colonialism (Berlin, Germany)
2022 Lecture by Duo Obará at the panel Racialized Faces in Creative Spaces (Berlin, Germany)
2021 Member of PASMAE (Pan-African Society for Musical Arts Education)
2021 Interviewed as Duo Obará by Gugulethu Duma and Jessica Korp for the Oyoun podcast series (Berlin, Germany)
2020 Master's thesis Panafricanism and African Revolution in Brazilian Music (Weimar, Germany)
2017 Field Researcher on Bell playing as intangible cultural heritage in Goiás, Acervo Identidades Sonoras, State commissioned (Goiás, Brazil)
2016 Field Researcher on improvised sung poetry in Brasília, Acervo Identidades Sonoras, State commissioned (Brasília, Brazil)
2015 Field Researcher on Soundscape Archive as Intangible Cultural Heritage, Acervo Identidades Sonoras, State commissioned (Brasília, Brazil)
2015 PIBIC - Program for Introduction to Science - Paper on institutional critique of canonic counterpoint methodology, honorable mention (Brazil)
2015 Tutor for Choir Music and Choir Conducting course (Bachelor of Music) at the Universidade de Brasília (Brazil)
2014 Tutor for Counterpoint and Music Analysis (Bachelor of Music), substituting lecturer, stand-by support for students (Brasília, Brazil)
2013 Tutor for Music History 1 and Music History 2 (Bachelor of Music), substituting lecturer, stand-by support for students (Brasília, Brazil)
2012 Tutor at the 1st International Musicology Symposium at the Universidade de Brasília (Brazil)
LECTURING / TEACHING
2024 Music Teacher and Lecturer - Samba Workshop, Other Music Academy & Escola Popular (Weimar, Germany)
2024 Music Teacher, Arranger, Conductor in Orin Agba, artistic-scientific project, HfM Franz Liszt Weimar (Germany)
2023 Executive Manager and Lecturer - externally funded project Nossas Áfricas - Capoeira, Samba, and Acarajé for Portuguese speakers - Each One Teach One & Federal Agency for Civic Education - BPB (Berlin, Germany)
2022 Lecturer as Duo Obará at the summer course of West Den Haag - Where We Are Right Now? (The Hague, Netherlands)
2021 Research Assistant - externally funded project, digitisation of musical and musicological archive from personal donation to the UNESCO Chair for Transcultural Music Studies (Weimar, Germany)
2021 Keynote on Music in Continental and Diasporic Africa - Prof. Dr. Nina Graeff and Prof. Dr. Eurides Santos at Universidade da Paraíba (Brazil)
2020 Course Coordinator and Lecturer - externally funded project Music in Africa, academic assistant - UNESCO Chair for Transcultural Music Studies (Weimar, Germany)
2019 Research Assistant - HfM Franz Liszt Weimar, e-learning and digitisation initiatives (Germany)
2019 Guitar Teacher at the adult education center Weimar (Germany)
2018 Music Teacher and coordinator of the Weimar samba group from the Escola Popular (Germany)
ORGANIZER / PRODUCER
2022 Executive Manager as Duo Obará - Open Talk "Ifá and the Humanity Crisis" with Oluwo Adelona Isola - Opening event of the Cultural Center AKilombeSe (Berlin, Germany)
2022 Executive Manager - weekly event Transcultural Music Sessions, Mascha Weimar (Germany)
2020 Co-founder and Chairman of the Worldwide African Route (Berlin, Germany)
2019 - 2020 Executive Manager - monthly event Roda de Samba, Other Music Academy (Weimar, Germany)
2016 Co-founder and Chairman of the non-profit organization ADMIM - Association for the Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage (Brazil)
2015 Executive Manager - weekly event Forró do Minas (Brasília, Brazil)
2014 Executive Manager - weekly event Samba & Choro (Brasília, Brazil)
2013 Executive Manager - weekly event Forró do Ferreira (Brasília, Brazil)
EDUCATION / TRAINING
2020 - 2025 PhD Research - UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies, Thesis: Music in the Haitian Revolution (Weimar, Germany)
2018-2020 Master of Arts - UNESCO Chair for Transcultural Music Studies, HfM Franz Liszt Weimar (Germany)
2011-2017 Bachelor of Music (major: Composition, minor: Conducting) Universidade de Brasília (Brazil)
2013 Summer course at the Music Conservatory - Arranging, Composition (Brasília, Brazil)
2012 Summer course at the Music Conservatory - Saxophone, Harmony (Brasília, Brazil)
2009 High School INEI-Dínatos/COC-SEB (Brasília, Brazil)
2006 - 2011 Technical school: Escola de Choro Raphael Rabello - saxophone, music theory (Brasília, Brazil)
2001 First saxophone lessons
1998 First cavaquinho and guitar lessons
list of publications
list of publications
(with peer review)
(with peer review)
FREIRE, Kamai. Music as historiographic source: musical warfare and musical marronage in Haiti's revolutionary contexts. In: International Conference Africa, Caribbean and Americas - Shadows of the Past. University of Alabama, Department of Language and Classics, 2025. (in press)
FREIRE, Kamai „A New Forró or Just a New Market?" In book: Forró as Social Practice, University of Illinois, USA, 2024. (in press)
FREIRE, Kamai. Bloco Afro Ilê Aiyê and the African Revolution. In book: “Can I Sing My Song? African Perspective on Musical Arts Education”. Indiana University Press, 2023. (in press)
FREIRE, Kamai. On the Spiritual Warfare. Anthology CreativeLab 3.0 – Racialized Faces in White Creative Spaces. DisCheck, Kultur Bund. Berlin, 2022. https://tinyurl.com/racialized-faces
FREIRE, K. Arts and Sciences in african perspective: thoughts on the unfinished African Revolution. InterEspaço: Journal of Geography and Interdisciplinarity, v. 6, e202040, 2021. https://tinyurl.com/AfricanPerspective
NZEWI, Meki. Towards a “true African-Brazilian musicology”: interview with Meki Nzewi. By Kamai Freire and Nina Graeff. Revista Claves, v. 9, n. 14, 20201 https://bit.ly/3qHCsA9
NZEWI, Meki. Por uma musicologia “verdadeiramente” africana-brasileira: entrevista com Meki Nzewi. Por Kamai Freire e Nina Graeff. Revista Claves, v. 9, n. 14, 2021. https://bit.ly/3vnUZW7
FREIRE, Kamai. Universalism in the Sciences and in the Arts: thoughts on a Pierre Schaeffer's postulate. Infinitum: Multidisciplinar Journal, v. 3, n. 4, p. 97-114, 2020. https://bit.ly/3tnhWXF
FREIRE, Kamai. Intangible Cultural Heritage and Transatlantic Connections – Panafricanism and African Revolution in Brazilian Music. Weimar: UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies, HfM Franz Liszt, 2020. https://bit.ly/3cfarL6
FREIRE, Kamai & PEREIRA, Flávio Santos. Melodic treatment in improvised poetry singing: analyses of decasyllable melodies. Journal Music in Context 13, no. 2: 71-90. 2019. https://tinyurl.com/22um2bwh
FREIRE, Kamai & MENDES, Sérgio Nogueira. Comparative study of composition treaties from the first phase of Western polyphony. PIBIC-UnB, https://bit.ly/3liFhHb , vol. 2 Humanas, p. 447, 2015. (Honorable mention, p. 13) https://bit.ly/2PJnYD9
As far as I have been notified, at least 20 texts from other authors cite my work.
Publications with no peer review:
Soundscape and Cultural Heritage Archive: Identidades Sonoras
https://www.identidadessonoras.org
Cultural Heritage Archive: Identidades Sonoras - Repentistas do DF
https://repentistas.identidadessonoras.org
Cultural Heritage Archive: Identidades Sonoras – Sinos de Goiás
https://sinosgo.identidadessonoras.org (under construction)
research projects
research projects
Identidades Sonoras
Research on Brazilian Music, Soundscape and Cultural Heritage
Repentistas do DF
Research on Cantoria (improvised poetry singing)
Sinos de Goiás
Research on bells and bell tolls in the State of Goiás(under construction)
selected works
selected works
compositions
compositions
Feelings for Viola Solo
Challenge piece for Viola inspired by the Brazilian RabecaPresented in the occasion of the graduation concertPerformed by Victor BuenoJul.2017
Divertimento #3 - Sati - Parodia
3 pieces for piano soloPresented in the occasion of the graduation concertPerformed by the composerJul.2017
The Yoruba Creation
Chamber music for camerata and Candomblé drumsPresented in the occasion of the graduation concertPerformed by UnB Music Department studentsJul.2017
Contemplations
Piece for piano and flute duoPresented in the occasion of the graduation concertPerformed by Tales Portugal (flute) and Saint-Clair Cantanhede (piano)Jul.2017
Carioquinha (Waldir Azevedo)
Baixo Clero performing at the Clube do Choro de BrasíliaBrazil - Dec.2009
Saa Magni (Oumou Sangaré)
Los Excéntricos performing at the C-KellerWeimar, Germany - Dec.2019
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