Casa dos Arcos / House of Arches
São Paulo / Brazil
History
CASA DOS ARCOS, appeared in 2017, in São Paulo, on the initiative of the musician, Felipe Gomide, who started offering free fiddle and fife classes at his home, which soon gave rise to the Bloco de Pífanos de São Paulo and the Orquestra Livre de Rabecas, two important groups of people interested in the study, dissemination, maintenance and practice of instruments.
These social projects, always with available scholarships and accessibility, since its inception, have formed more than 80 biannual fife and fiddle groups, throughout Brazil, in seven years, with around 10 to 20 people in each group, totaling thousands of participations and classes held. In addition to channels on YouTube, and pages on Instagram, with free classes and thousands of subscribers, such as Canal Curso Livre de Rabeca.
Among the project's missions is the connection and dissemination of the work of masters of popular culture, and also the artisans responsible for making traditional instruments, valuing the artisanal economy and thousands of instruments sold through the project, benefiting families and communities.
Several face-to-face and virtual meetings were also held with strongholds of Brazilian culture such as: Master Sebastião Biano, from the Banda de Pífanos de Caruaru, Master João Biano, Master Zé Pereira, Master Edmílson do Pife, Master Nélson da Rabeca, Master Luiz Paixão, Banda Cabaçal São José, Cláudio Rabeca, Jefferson Leite, Maisa Arantes, in addition to meetings with musical references in contemporary Brazilian music such as Carlos Malta, Thomas Rohrer and Renata Rosa.
Several students on the course, soon became teachers, and renowned musicians on the fife and fiddle, with professional careers, such as Tanaka do Pife, Ariane Rodrigues, Fiona da Rabeca, Ana Colomar, André Blumel, forming several new groups and bands from these meetings.
The projects took place in person, until 2020, when due to the Pandemic, classes began to be broadcast live, online, via the Zoom platform. In this way, it was possible to increase the reach of the project to a national level, with currently registered participants from all states in the country, including a high number of participants from the north and northeast regions.
Since 2020, the Free Pandeiro Course was also created, following the same formats as the other courses, and coordinated by the musician and researcher, Gedeão Soares.
It is worth mentioning that since its inception, all CASA DOS ARCOS courses have always had UNLIMITED SOCIAL SCHOLARSHIPS, covering all those who cannot pay the already very affordable contribution amount. Around 60% of participants receive some kind of scholarship, full or partial, and, on average, more than 60% of participants are women.
Currently, the collectives have eight educators, responsible for the eight classes of the course, including fiddles, fifes and tambourines.
