From silence to resonance

In November 2024, a wave of social media testimonies about sexual harassment within the Portuguese jazz scene sparked what mainstream media referred to as the ‘Portuguese #MeToo in jazz’. Most of the accounts came from former female jazz students, revealing systemic power imbalances in educational settings. This article draws on these narratives to examine power dynamics, institutional accountability, and sexual misconduct in artistic education. Using a multi-source ethnographic approach grounded in Donna Haraway’s (1988) concept of situated knowledge, the article integrates three main data sources: (1) a corpus of digital testimonies publicly shared on Instagram during the 2024 wave of harassment allegations; (2) autoethnographic reflections based on my experience as a jazz musician and educator; and (3) existing literature on sexual harassment, particularly in artistic, musical, and pedagogical contexts. By combining these sources, the study offers an analysis that is both empirically grounded and epistemologically reflexive, highlighting the intersections of personal experience, collective testimony, and structural critique. Ultimately, the article seeks to deepen our understanding of the challenges women face in jazz and to reflect on how educational communities might foster safer, more equitable environments

Autoethnography · Ethnography · Harassment · Jazz · Mainstream · Narrative · Silence · Situated · Diverse Music Education Insights · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Social and Cultural Dynamics