This article addresses the "National Common Core Curriculum" in Brazil, focusing both on its "Introduction" and the sections dedicated to music teaching. The paper draws on contributions from broad critical curricular perspectives, arguing for the access to "powerful knowledge" as a means of achieving social justice and democratic social relations. It outlines some aspects of an ongoing qualitative research project, which investigates the recent curricular debates about the consistent inclusion of music in the primary and secondary levels of schooling in Brazil. Preliminary results suggest that the "Base Nacional Comum Curricular" (BNCC) relying on the development of pragmatic and generic competencies, is very far from promoting access to the pivotal "epistemic structures" of the discipline. At the same time, we hope to raise awareness about the potential "powers" provided by musical knowledge, which might help the Brazilian music education field to strengthen its curricular and epistemological bases.