- www.garethdylansmith.com
Gareth Dylan Smith
Boston University, Music Education, Faculty Member
- Popular Music Education, Higher Popular Music Education, Music and Music Education, Popular Music, Place and Identity, Gender, and 22 moreEntrepreneurship, Creativity, Music and Leisure, Philosophy of Music Education, Cultural Psychology, Sociology of Music Education, Music Education, Innovation and Creativity (Business), Creativity--Knowledge Invention & Discovery, Music Learning, Popular Music Education Creative Industries, Higher Education, Music, Popular musicology, Pedagogy, Musicology, Embodiment, Punk Studies, Popular Music Studies, Music Teacher Education, Drumming and Percussion, and Punk Rockedit
- I am Assistant Professor of Music, Music Education at Boston University, founding co-editor of the Journal of Popular... moreI am Assistant Professor of Music, Music Education at Boston University, founding co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Education and a drummer. My research interests include drum kit studies, popular music education, sociology of music education, punk pedagogies and eudaimonia. Email: gdsmith@bu.eduedit
The author is a drummer with experience in a variety of musical genres and contexts, with emphasis on rock and related styles. This auto ethnographic Element presents the author's philosophy of playing drum kit. The text explains how... more
The author is a drummer with experience in a variety of musical genres and contexts, with emphasis on rock and related styles. This auto ethnographic Element presents the author's philosophy of playing drum kit. The text explains how playing drum kit matters to this musician and may resonate with others to whom making music matters in similar ways. The Element contains audio files of music in which the author plays drum kit in the ensemble settings described. There are photos of the author's drums and of him drumming. Based on June Boyce-Tillman's non-religious model of holistic spirituality and Tim Ingold's notion of correspondences, the author describes how playing drum kit enables him to experience transcendence – the magical nexus at which Materials, Construction, Values/Culture and Expression meet. Each of these domains, and the magic derived from their combination, is illustrated through examples of the author's live and recorded musical collaborations.
Research Interests:
An array of diverse perspectives regarding the what and the why of popular music education. This book provides a variety of perspectives on popular music education. With a mixture of rants, manifestos, and punchy position pieces, the... more
An array of diverse perspectives regarding the what and the why of popular music education.
This book provides a variety of perspectives on popular music education. With a mixture of rants, manifestos, and punchy position pieces, the volume moves from scholarly essays replete with citations and references to descriptions of practice and straight-talking polemics. The writing is approachable in tone, and the chapters are intended to whet appetites, prime pumps, open eyes, and keep cogs turning for academics of all ages and stages.
The book will appeal to those working in popular music studies, communication studies, and education research. It also holds relevance for researchers of the music industry and music ecosystems around the world. International in reach and scope and edited by recognized voices at the vanguard of progressive music education, this is an eye-opening exploration of education in and through the widespread cultural phenomenon of popular music.
This book provides a variety of perspectives on popular music education. With a mixture of rants, manifestos, and punchy position pieces, the volume moves from scholarly essays replete with citations and references to descriptions of practice and straight-talking polemics. The writing is approachable in tone, and the chapters are intended to whet appetites, prime pumps, open eyes, and keep cogs turning for academics of all ages and stages.
The book will appeal to those working in popular music studies, communication studies, and education research. It also holds relevance for researchers of the music industry and music ecosystems around the world. International in reach and scope and edited by recognized voices at the vanguard of progressive music education, this is an eye-opening exploration of education in and through the widespread cultural phenomenon of popular music.
Research Interests:
Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music Learning asserts the fertile applications of eudaimonia—an Aristotelian concept of human flourishing intended to explain the nature of a life well lived—for work in music learning and teaching in the... more
Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music Learning asserts the fertile applications of eudaimonia—an Aristotelian concept of human flourishing intended to explain the nature of a life well lived—for work in music learning and teaching in the 21st century. Drawing insights from within and beyond the field of music education, contributors reflect on what the "good life" means in music, highlighting issues at the core of the human experience and the heart of schooling and other educational settings. This pursuit of personal fulfillment through active engagement is considered in relation to music education as well as broader social, political, spiritual, psychological, and environmental contexts. Especially pertinent in today’s complicated and contradictory world, Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music Learning is a concise compendium on this oft-overlooked concept, providing musicians with an understanding of an ethically-guided and socially-meaningful music-learning paradigm.
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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Educationdraws together current thinking and practice on popular music education from empirical, ethnographic, sociological and philosophical perspectives. Through a series of unique chapters from... more
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Educationdraws together current thinking and practice on popular music education from empirical, ethnographic, sociological and philosophical perspectives. Through a series of unique chapters from authors working at the forefront of music education, this book explores the ways in which an international group of music educators each approach popular music education. Chapters discuss pedagogies from across the spectrum of formal to informal learning, including “outside” and “other” perspectives that provide insight into the myriad ways in which popular music education is developed and implemented. The book is organized into the following sections:
- Conceptualizing Popular Music Education
- Musical, Creative and Professional Development
- Originating Popular Music
- Popular Music Education in Schools
- Identity, Meaning and Value in Popular Music Education
- Formal Education, Creativities and Assessment
Contributions from academics, teachers, and practitioners make this an innovative and exciting volume for students, teachers, researchers and professors in popular music studies and music education.
- Conceptualizing Popular Music Education
- Musical, Creative and Professional Development
- Originating Popular Music
- Popular Music Education in Schools
- Identity, Meaning and Value in Popular Music Education
- Formal Education, Creativities and Assessment
Contributions from academics, teachers, and practitioners make this an innovative and exciting volume for students, teachers, researchers and professors in popular music studies and music education.
Research Interests:
This book uses ethnographic techniques and modified case study analysis to profile musicians active in a wide range of musical contexts not typically found in institutional music education settings, such as popular and vernacular music.... more
This book uses ethnographic techniques and modified case study analysis to profile musicians active in a wide range of musical contexts not typically found in institutional music education settings, such as popular and vernacular music. The authors explore music learning in and across these diverse, related contexts. The rationale for this book is twofold:
● A gap in published literature exists regarding music learning in non-school (“outside”) contexts. Community hip hop studios, gospel groups, folk sessions, churches, online studios and communities, and electronic music studios epitomize music education that is thus largely ignored because it occurs outside of traditional academic settings. Recent publications (e.g. Burnard 2012, Burton (ed.) 2012, Green 2002, Higgins 2012, Smith 2013, Snell and Söderman 2014) have begun to explore learning in “outside “ musics for the music education profession; this book will add to the momentum in this burgeoning area of scholarship.
● A recent surge in interest in popular music and popular music ensembles (usually limited to guitar-based rock-oriented musics) in secondary and post-secondary educational settings (e.g. formation of Association for Popular Music Education in 2010, and the almost exponential growth of the Little Kids Rock program) demands further scholarship to describe and analyze models of music learning, including multi-cultural, multi-modal and multi-dimensional music education experiences – what Smith (2013, p. 26) calls “hybridized learning practices” (Chua & Ho, 2016; Powell, Krikun, & Pignato, 2015) .
The cases presented will give voice to heretofore unheard music learners who have been largely misunderstood or at the very least unrecognized by the music education establishment. The authors seek to highlight significant musical experiences derived from styles and genres of music that have touched the lives of millions but have been traditionally excluded from school music contexts. The authors also propose a new methodological approach to the study of these musics, musicians, and practices.
This book thus has four distinct yet interdependent purposes:
● The first and most immediate is to publish a collection of studies of musicians active in contexts that fall outside the traditional confines of institutional or compulsory schooling.
● The second is to illuminate diverse music learning practices, in order to impact music education in classrooms and lecture halls, and beyond.
● The third is to introduce a methodological approach – “flash study analysis,” a variant of traditional case study analysis.
● The fourth purpose is to introduce and describe the Music Learning Profiles Project, a group of scholars dedicated to developing an online repository of flash study analyses generated initially by the authors, and eventually by others, in subsequent research studies.
● A gap in published literature exists regarding music learning in non-school (“outside”) contexts. Community hip hop studios, gospel groups, folk sessions, churches, online studios and communities, and electronic music studios epitomize music education that is thus largely ignored because it occurs outside of traditional academic settings. Recent publications (e.g. Burnard 2012, Burton (ed.) 2012, Green 2002, Higgins 2012, Smith 2013, Snell and Söderman 2014) have begun to explore learning in “outside “ musics for the music education profession; this book will add to the momentum in this burgeoning area of scholarship.
● A recent surge in interest in popular music and popular music ensembles (usually limited to guitar-based rock-oriented musics) in secondary and post-secondary educational settings (e.g. formation of Association for Popular Music Education in 2010, and the almost exponential growth of the Little Kids Rock program) demands further scholarship to describe and analyze models of music learning, including multi-cultural, multi-modal and multi-dimensional music education experiences – what Smith (2013, p. 26) calls “hybridized learning practices” (Chua & Ho, 2016; Powell, Krikun, & Pignato, 2015) .
The cases presented will give voice to heretofore unheard music learners who have been largely misunderstood or at the very least unrecognized by the music education establishment. The authors seek to highlight significant musical experiences derived from styles and genres of music that have touched the lives of millions but have been traditionally excluded from school music contexts. The authors also propose a new methodological approach to the study of these musics, musicians, and practices.
This book thus has four distinct yet interdependent purposes:
● The first and most immediate is to publish a collection of studies of musicians active in contexts that fall outside the traditional confines of institutional or compulsory schooling.
● The second is to illuminate diverse music learning practices, in order to impact music education in classrooms and lecture halls, and beyond.
● The third is to introduce a methodological approach – “flash study analysis,” a variant of traditional case study analysis.
● The fourth purpose is to introduce and describe the Music Learning Profiles Project, a group of scholars dedicated to developing an online repository of flash study analyses generated initially by the authors, and eventually by others, in subsequent research studies.
Research Interests:
This book is the first of its kind to bring together chapters by a collection of international authors exploring possibilities, practices, and implications of “punk pedagogies”, following a recent spike in interest and paper publications... more
This book is the first of its kind to bring together chapters by a collection of international authors exploring possibilities, practices, and implications of “punk pedagogies”, following a recent spike in interest and paper publications around this subject. The book can also be seen partly as a response to a contemporaneous surge of political activity in the UK, US, and other Western nations, where education – especially higher education – is becoming increasingly embroiled in heated discussions around its aims, utility, and politics. These discussions often strike at the core of deep ideological divisions between and among sectors stakeholders. The book takes readers on a journey exploring the ‘what’, ‘how’/’where’, and ‘why’ of our subject area, presenting the chapters in three sections: I) conceptualizing and applying punk pedagogies; II) punk pedagogies in classes and curricula; and III) punk pedagogies as social and political activism. This book explores and expresses punk pedagogies, above all, as ways of re-engaging with the humanity, humility, vigor, and vitality that educators know are at the heart of their purpose and function in society.
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The overall goal of this revised 2nd edition of Sociology for Music Teachers remains the same as was intended in the first edition: to help aspiring music teacher candidates and experienced music teachers become sociologically informed... more
The overall goal of this revised 2nd edition of Sociology for Music Teachers remains the same as was intended in the first edition: to help aspiring music teacher candidates and experienced music teachers become sociologically informed pedagogues in a variety of school music settings. However, the focus of the revised edition lies on emphasizing its nature as a hands-on textbook with recommendations for action throughout. Although the educational settings referred to in this book speak mainly to music instruction in compulsory education as found in many industrialized nations, the text also speaks to studio teaching and other, possibly less institutionalized, music learning contexts.
A main focus of the 1st edition was to serve as a first academic introduction to the contributions that general sociologists, music sociologists, and sociologists of education have made to understandings of how society shapes the roles of teachers, students, and school curricula of which music is but a small part. This edition maintains that focus as one of its aims but places it alongside the bigger question of how such seemingly academic knowledge can benefit music teachers (and therefore, those with whom they come into contact) in practical ways wherever they work. Thus, while primarily aimed at music education in group settings in schools, the book may also be of relevance to music teachers in conservatories, municipal music schools, and private studios.
Both aims – serving the practical concerns of music teachers and providing an introductory text about the place of sociological scholarship in music and education – shape all seven chapters. Beginning with self and identity of a music teacher, the chapters then move from “teaching as work” and “music learning and teaching as socially situated acts” to major social and sociological theories in music and in education. Brief overviews of the contributions of cultural theorists as well as music sociologists appear next to the work of educational and general sociologists. In all cases, impact on scholarship and implications for practice in music education are emphasized. The last two chapters return to the teacher’s selves, and actions as curricular, pedagogical, and communicative decision maker in light of the theories outlined.
A main focus of the 1st edition was to serve as a first academic introduction to the contributions that general sociologists, music sociologists, and sociologists of education have made to understandings of how society shapes the roles of teachers, students, and school curricula of which music is but a small part. This edition maintains that focus as one of its aims but places it alongside the bigger question of how such seemingly academic knowledge can benefit music teachers (and therefore, those with whom they come into contact) in practical ways wherever they work. Thus, while primarily aimed at music education in group settings in schools, the book may also be of relevance to music teachers in conservatories, municipal music schools, and private studios.
Both aims – serving the practical concerns of music teachers and providing an introductory text about the place of sociological scholarship in music and education – shape all seven chapters. Beginning with self and identity of a music teacher, the chapters then move from “teaching as work” and “music learning and teaching as socially situated acts” to major social and sociological theories in music and in education. Brief overviews of the contributions of cultural theorists as well as music sociologists appear next to the work of educational and general sociologists. In all cases, impact on scholarship and implications for practice in music education are emphasized. The last two chapters return to the teacher’s selves, and actions as curricular, pedagogical, and communicative decision maker in light of the theories outlined.
Research Interests:
Popular music is a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programmes, courses and modules in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting and areas of music... more
Popular music is a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programmes, courses and modules in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting and areas of music technology are becoming commonplace across higher education. Additionally, specialist pop/rock/jazz graded exam syllabi, such as RockSchool and Trinity Rock and Pop, have emerged in recent years, meaning that it is now possible for school leavers in some countries to meet university entry requirements having studied only popular music. In the context of teacher education, classroom teachers and music-specialists alike are becoming increasingly empowered to introduce popular music into their classrooms. At present, research in Popular Music Education lies at the fringes of the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, community music, cultural studies and popular music studies. The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Music Education is the first book-length publication that brings together a diverse range of scholarship in this emerging field. Perspectives include the historical, sociological, pedagogical, musicological, axiological, reflexive, critical, philosophical and ideological.
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Music has been a vital part of leisure activity across time and cultures. Contemporary commodification, commercialization, and consumerism, however, have created a chasm between conceptualizations of music making and numerous realities in... more
Music has been a vital part of leisure activity across time and cultures. Contemporary commodification, commercialization, and consumerism, however, have created a chasm between conceptualizations of music making and numerous realities in our world. From a broad range of perspectives and approaches, this handbook explores avocational involvement with music as an integral part of the human condition. The chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure present myriad ways for reconsidering and refocusing attention back on the rich, exciting, and emotionally charged ways in which people of all ages make time for making music. The contexts discussed are broadly Western, including an eclectic variety of voices from scholars across fields and disciplines, framing complex and multifaceted phenomena that may be helpfully, enlighteningly, and perhaps provocatively framed as music making and leisure. This volume may be viewed as an attempt to reclaim music making and leisure as a serious concern for, amongst others, policy makers, scholars, and educators who perhaps risk eliding some or even most of the ways in which music - a vital part of human existence - is integrated into the everyday lives of people. As such, this handbook looks beyond the obvious, asking readers to consider anew, "What might we see when we think of music making as leisure?"
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This short tribute is based on a presentation I gave at the 34th MayDay Group Colloquium in Xalapa, Mexico (Smith 2023a). I was and remain profoundly grateful to be included as a panelist at this event along with colleagues Christopher... more
This short tribute is based on a presentation I gave at the 34th MayDay Group Colloquium in Xalapa, Mexico (Smith 2023a). I was and remain profoundly grateful to be included as a panelist at this event along with colleagues Christopher Cayari, Roger Mantie, Danielle Sirek, and Evan Tobias. I know many of us in the room, perhaps most of us, had connected with Janice and/or with her work, so I felt humbled to be doing this as I certainly did not think my relationship with Janice was more special than anyone else’s. Janice intentionally, lovingly, and humorously built a network of authentic connections with others and I feel fortunate to be one of the people with whom, iteratively and deliberately, she built a relationship. Hopefully what I have written mirrors in some ways others’ experiences or triggers some fabulous memories of hanging and learning with someone who I think was one of the best of us. What follows is a short reflection on connection, with and through Janice Waldron. Janice inspired me to be me; which she did for a whole generation of scholars. And she did so with gusto, tremendous generosity of spirit, a smile on her face, and a huge twinkle in her eye.
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In this article I describe my affinity for improvisation in music and life, and for free improvisation in particular as a music making practice. In this self-reflective position paper, I use these practices to help locate and define an... more
In this article I describe my affinity for improvisation in music and life, and for free improvisation in particular as a music making practice. In this self-reflective position paper, I use these practices to help locate and define an authentic sense of self as a music education professor. This paper gives an account of my introduction of free improvisation sessions into a weekly, in-person graduate class in psychology and sociology related to music education. Drawing on relevant literature and a university-wide learning initiative, I present my reflections and those of my students on the experience of doing free improvisation over the duration of one semester, that led to enjoyment, growth, and flourishing. In closing, I consider the potential for doing more free improvisation in music and music education classes.
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Music education in the United States is typified by students in large ensembles, like band and orchestra, learning to perform pieces of Western art music. One organisation working to expand curricular offerings within the field is Little... more
Music education in the United States is typified by students in large ensembles, like band and orchestra, learning to perform pieces of Western art music. One organisation working to expand curricular offerings within the field is Little Kids Rock (LKR), which has invested millions of dollars training music teachers and providing instrument resources for popular music pedagogy. Though this organisation has demonstrated success in its ability to propagate ’modern band’ programmes, the effects of its investment are not known. LKR administers an end-of-year survey to its participating teachers to assess teachers’ perceptions of their music programmes. However, LKR do not publish meaningful information regarding the outcomes and impact of its activities. The present study examined free-response data from the 2018 end-of-year survey. Using the passive and active identity and learning realisation (PAILR) model as our analytical framework (Froehlich, Hildegard C., and Gareth Dylan Smith. 2017. Sociology for Music Teachers: Practical Applications. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315402345), the authors analysed themes using grounded theory to produce a logic model to describe the effects of LKR’s investment. Results indicate participating teachers perceive a positive impact on students, including being more engaged in their learning, and more musically independent. Additionally, teachers believed they were more engaged and committed to their profession, and more able to teach previously disengaged students.
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The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a sudden rethinking of how music was taught and learned. Prior to the pandemic, the web-based digital audio workstation Soundtrap emerged as a leading platform for creating music online. The present study... more
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a sudden rethinking of how music was taught and learned. Prior to the pandemic, the web-based digital audio workstation Soundtrap emerged as a leading platform for creating music online. The present study examined the growth of Soundtrap's usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using machine-learning methods, we analyzed anonymized user data from Soundtrap's 1.6 million educational users in the United States to see if the pandemic affected Soundtrap's education user base and, if so, to what extent. An exploratory data analysis demonstrated a large increase in Soundtrap's user base beyond five standard deviations beginning in March 2020. A subsequent changepoint analysis identified March 17, 2020, as the day this shift occurred. Finally, we created a SARIMAX model using data prior to March 17 to forecast expected growth. This model was unable to account for user growth after March 17, showing highly anomalous growth rates outside of the model's confidence interval. We discuss how this shift affects music education practices and what it portends for our field. In addition, we explore the role of machine learning and artificial intelligence as a method for research in the music education field.
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The author explores the liberatory experience of improvised, woodland drumming as DIY music-making music and DIY learning in nature. A drummer and music education professor, he presents descriptive vignettes on the transformative... more
The author explores the liberatory experience of improvised, woodland drumming as DIY music-making music and DIY learning in nature. A drummer and music education professor, he presents descriptive vignettes on the transformative possibilities of making music amongst trees and by water. The method is autoethnographic, itself a DIY type of doing and recording research. Using Tim Ingold's lens of correspondence, the author suggests that, more than making music merely on trees and on ice, we channel music together with non-human co-musicians. The author draws on research in eco-psychology and eco-literacy to suggest, more than indulgence, being and making music in nature might be foundational to humanity recovering respect for our world and taking seriously how we might continue to live in it. Moreover, this article explores music making as a DIY pedagogical practice, grounded in the depth of listening and engagement with nature.
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Capitalism and its offspring, neoliberalism, are omnipresent in modern and postmodern societies. Illich, Giroux, and McLaren, among others, point to the futility and inequity of current models of education that focus on standardization,... more
Capitalism and its offspring, neoliberalism, are omnipresent in modern and postmodern societies. Illich, Giroux, and McLaren, among others, point to the futility and inequity of current models of education that focus on standardization, vocationalism, and conformity. Running counter to these powerful hegemonic systems, critical pedagogues and educational philosophers such as hooks and Silverman follow philosophers Frankfurt and Wolf in identifying a teaching approach rooted in love. Such an ethic embodies a robust, punk confrontation to potentially damaging, dehumanizing institutional norms perpetrated by current systems of schooling (Hewitt & Smith, 2020). The authors present and discuss vignettes as a duoethnographic study of one teacher's work with a high school choir in Colorado Springs, USA, through which she works to engage young people as compassionate artistic citizens (Elliott & Silverman, 2015; Hendricks 2018). By teaching with love and by modeling love, she teaches young people to love, embracing what Noddings (2005) identifies as an ethic of care. This choral community demonstrates the messy, anarchist ideal that Wright (2019) highlights as a necessary future for music education, wherein the educator diverts from teaching solely to standardized expectations to address the affiliative needs of her students through a love that desires good for her students (Fromm, 1956; Noddings, 2005).
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In this article, I describe professional encounters with Frank Abrahams, personally and through Abrahams' writing. The paper includes reflection on Abrahams' tireless work in testing and pressing the boundaries of normative, small-c... more
In this article, I describe professional encounters with Frank Abrahams, personally and through Abrahams' writing. The paper includes reflection on Abrahams' tireless work in testing and pressing the boundaries of normative, small-c conservative music teaching and learning traditions, in Abrahams' beloved Westminster Choir College and beyond. I recall watching Abrahams teach, both in formal classroom contexts and in other areas of working with students and peers, such as co-authored publications and conference presentations. I recount my role as an unwitting mentee in Abrahams' careful modeling of critical pedagogical approaches within and without the classroom. Drawing on personal anecdotes and several of Abrahams' publications, I illustrate how Abrahams cultivated in me critical pedagogical perspectives in and about music education in the United States. I express gratitude for learning from Abrahams a joyful disgruntlement for embracing the possible and never, ever settling for how things are. Keywords critical pedagogy; Frank Abrahams; mentorship; music education FINDING FRANK first met Frank Abrahams in the lobby of a hotel in China while attending the International Society for Music Education (ISME) conference in 2010. I was sitting with Clint Randles and my wife, drinking chrysanthemum tea. (Note to self: I miss drinking hot water with flowers in it.) Frank told me he appreciated the work of Lucy Green, who at the time was in the closing stages of supervising my doctoral dissertation at the University of London.
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In this article, I explain how percussion and groove are at the core of many musics created and enjoyed today, yet they can be overlooked in music teaching and learning. A pervasive culture of pitched-instrument prejudice makes it... more
In this article, I explain how percussion and groove are at the core of many musics created and enjoyed today, yet they can be overlooked in music teaching and learning. A pervasive culture of pitched-instrument prejudice makes it difficult to take rhythm and groove seriously, although these can be at the core of meaningful music-making experiences in schools. I provide an original, flexible composition for nonpitched percussion, with easy-tofollow instructions and video demonstration. The article invites teachers to consider embracing an engaging, Afrological approach to making music that emphasizes feel and groove.
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The pervasive Eurocentric model of music education in the United States is hegemonic, pursuing a model of performance excellence in large ensembles that, by the time young people reach high school, excludes most from music making... more
The pervasive Eurocentric model of music education in the United States is hegemonic, pursuing a model of performance excellence in large ensembles that, by the time young people reach high school, excludes most from music making opportunities in school. Despite numerous efforts to challenge the dominant paradigm since the 1960s, little change has happened from within the music education profession. Since 2002, nonprofit organization Little Kids Rock (Music Will) has leveraged outsider perspectives and philanthropic resources to galvanize momentum nationally towards adoption of curricula and musicking practices that focus more on popular musics and lifelong learning. Through a programme of professional development, curriculum provision and instrument donations, Little Kids Rock has both engaged in active resistance against, and established strategic partnerships with, state governments, university departments, school districts, major industry players including the National Association of Music Merchants, and education brands such as Berklee College of Music. Little Kids Rock promotes a new stream of music making called "modern band" as a disruptive phenomenon that emphasizes creativity, cultural relevance and student-centred learning while reinforcing entrenched hegemonic structures. Drawing on the history of Little Kids Rock and the modern band movement, the authors use Kahn-Egan's (1998) five tenets of punk to frame a critical examination of the modern band phenomenon and the ways which Little Kids
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This paper presents an autoethnographic account of how a drummer found meaningfulness through engagement in asynchronous, collaborative music making with friends in a period of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The author... more
This paper presents an autoethnographic account of how a drummer found meaningfulness through engagement in asynchronous, collaborative music making with friends in a period of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The author learned how to record drum kit in his garage using a rudimentary studio setup, and how to edit the recordings in a basic digital audio workstation. Using Boyce-Tillman's (2011) framework of Spirituality, the author details how, through activity in the domains of Materials, Construction, Values, and Expression, he was able to achieve liminal, Spiritual experience that provided focus, meaning, and purpose in a challenging and unsettling time. The author argues that students could benefit if arts educators recognize and value music making and learning as more holistic, Spiritual experiences.
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The drum kit is a musical instrument comprising various items of percussion. It is ubiquitous in popular music (the majority of music produced and consumed by contemporary society) but is largely excluded as a requirement in the... more
The drum kit is a musical instrument comprising various items of percussion. It is ubiquitous in popular music (the majority of music produced and consumed by contemporary society) but is largely excluded as a requirement in the collegiate percussion studio. The authors contextualize this phenomenon in the wider cultural disparity between music in society (99% rock, pop, hip- hop and other contemporary styles) and music in higher education (almost exclusively Western art music and jazz). We ask the following four research questions: (1) How frequently is drum kit taught in the collegiate percussion studio, relative to other percussion instruments? (2) If drum kit is taught, what topics are taught? (3) If the participants play drum kit themselves, how did they learn? (4) What opportunities and/or challenges exist for drum kit instruction in the percussion studio? Fifty collegiate percussion instructors completed an online survey. Participants agreed that drum kit is important for music-making and teaching after leaving college, but for most, drum kit takes a backseat to snare drum, timpani, and marimba as foundational instruments of Western art music. We argue that including drum kit in the collegiate studio would require a shift in pedagogy and aesthetic orientation, but that such shifts are necessary in order for the collegiate percussion studio to remain relevant. Further research is required to understand how the percussion studio and higher music education more broadly can better serve students and society, including in music teacher education and in kindergarten through 12th grade schools. This article’s exploration of drum kit and percussion underscores the importance of discussing the places and purposes of myriad musics and musicians throughout music education contexts.
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Following more than half a century of resistance to popular music in the classroom, modern band programs have proliferated in the United States since the early 2000s. Supported in part by the music education nonprofit Little Kids Rock... more
Following more than half a century of resistance to popular music in the classroom, modern band programs have proliferated in the United States since the early 2000s. Supported in part by the music education nonprofit Little Kids Rock (LKR), proponents of modern band aim to engage more students in school music and to support creative, student-centered music-making. The present study examined responses to the 2019 LKR end-of-year teacher survey and found that program participation has grown substantially in recent years, but is concentrated in a few urban areas. Teachers perceived that modern band expanded access to music education by engaging more students while also making themselves more committed to the teaching profession. With respect to student learning, teachers perceived that modern band allowed for nonmusical outcomes, including academic motivation and the creation of classroom social bonds. To a lesser extent, teachers perceived that students achieved creative outcomes, such as composition and improvisation.
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Editorial on the Research Topic in Frontiers
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This article presents reflections on a symposium on eudaimonia and music learning, from the perspective of one of the organizers. The symposium had been planned as a traditional, in person event in the United States, but was held online... more
This article presents reflections on a symposium on eudaimonia and music learning, from the perspective of one of the organizers. The symposium had been planned as a traditional, in person event in the United States, but was held online in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Despite shortcomings, the video-conferencing format possibly created a more democratized liminal space that served to dissolve hierarchies and broaden participation.
Keywords: eudaimonia, eudaimonism, flourishing, symposium, reflection, liminal, democratic
Keywords: eudaimonia, eudaimonism, flourishing, symposium, reflection, liminal, democratic
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LoLa is a cutting-edge technology that enables low latency, real-time collaborations across vast distances using high-bandwidth, low-jitter networks. It has the capacity to transform how music is made and experienced. It has been utilized... more
LoLa is a cutting-edge technology that enables low latency, real-time collaborations across vast distances using high-bandwidth, low-jitter networks. It has the capacity to transform how music is made and experienced. It has been utilized on a relatively small scale to date, primarily for teaching and performances associated with music colleges and concert halls. In this article we discuss various ways in which LoLa technology is “good enough” by describing examples of recent networked music performances “anchored” at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland. We discuss the ways in which processes and outcomes were “good enough” for the sound engineer, participating musicians, and audiences. We then consider ways in which this work can be understood to have a social purpose and suggest further opportunities for putting this immensely powerful technology to use for the greater good. We argue that all who can utilize the potential of this technology have a responsibility to improve lives today and into the future.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/jonma/vol2/iss1/5
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/jonma/vol2/iss1/5
Research Interests:
Despite decades of discussion, debate, and incremental gains, acceptance of popular music education in collegiate institutions is still in its inception. Higher education (and indeed, education in general) in the United States is rife... more
Despite decades of discussion, debate, and incremental gains, acceptance of popular music education in collegiate institutions is still in its inception. Higher education (and indeed, education in general) in the United States is rife with pervasive inequality and injustice, excluding large numbers of potential students on the basis of race, class, income, and cultural orientation. If music education is to continue and thrive in the 21st century and beyond, widespread curricular changes are needed in preservice music teacher education to move toward a model that is inclusive, equitable, diverse, and culturally responsive. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate several music programs across the United States as samples of the numerous collegiate institutions wrestling with curricular change. Though differing in size, scope, and population, these programs have one thing in common: faculty with a desire to enact change. Through the examples illustrated here, it is our hope that others wishing to initiate change may have some possible paths from which to choose on their journey toward making music education more accessible for all.
Keywords: Popular music education, inequality, culturally responsive, accessibility
Keywords: Popular music education, inequality, culturally responsive, accessibility
Research Interests:
In this position paper the author presents a perspective on rock drumming and music education. The author is a drummer and university professor who combines an autoethnographic account with consideration of theoretical frameworks... more
In this position paper the author presents a perspective on rock drumming and music education. The author is a drummer and university professor who combines an autoethnographic account with consideration of theoretical frameworks including authenticity, flow and the autotelic personality. Through illustrative vignettes of rock drumming and music teaching, the author appeals to the essentially somatic experience of rock drumming. He argues that educators and educational institutions need to allow for rock's inherent, authentic loudness or else risk misrepresenting the music and treating drummers unjustly. This means that the physical movements and resulting high volumes germane to much rock drumming in performance must be accommodated in rehearsals and practice. This article does not seek to privilege rock drumming over other forms, but argues that to include rock drumming authentically in education contexts means to acknowledge and celebrate its essence.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Popular Music Education A White Paper by the Association for Popular Music Education Introduction The Association for Popular Music Education (APME), founded in 2010, is the world’s leading organization in popular music education,... more
Popular Music Education A White Paper by the Association for Popular Music Education
Introduction
The Association for Popular Music Education (APME), founded in 2010, is the world’s leading organization in popular music education, galvanizing a community of practice, scholarship and innovation around the field. Popular music education (hereafter PME) is exciting, dynamic and often innovative. Music education – meaning formal schooling in music – has tended most of the time to exclude almost all forms and contexts of music, and therefore has also elided most models of music learning and teaching. Popular music is among these excluded musics. The report is based on the knowledge, perspectives and experience of APME Board members, and therefore reflects the Anglophone and largely US American orientation of the contributors. We recognize that popular music is as diverse as the world’s cultures, and that writing on popular music education is as nuanced as the languages in which it is communicated.
What is Popular Music Education?
Popular music is qualitatively different from other forms of music, in function and aesthetics (although there are areas of commonality). PME, therefore, may also be understood as necessarily different from Western Art Music (WAM) education. However, APME does not intend to construct or to construe PME as existing or working in opposition to existing music education programs and paradigms. PME, like popular music, is highly complex, problematic and challenging, as well as being inspiring and deeply meaningful to many people, individually and collectively. This is true of all musical traditions, their associated hierarchies, embedded practices and assumptions, and attendant educational practices. APME recognizes that change, stasis and tradition all constitute the lifeblood of popular music. As such, and to reflect that ongoing change, the authors assert that popular music education practice and scholarship must remain reflexive, allowing for and embracing constant revision and re-contextualization. As such, this paper marks a moment in time, but is not intended to codify, define or delimit PME.
Popular music has a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programs, courses and classes in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting, production and areas of music technology are becoming commonplace across higher education and compulsory schooling. In the context of teacher education, classroom teachers and music specialists alike are becoming increasingly empowered to introduce popular music into their classrooms. Research in PME lies at the intersection of the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, community music, cultural studies and popular music studies.
Who are the Popular Music Educators?
The following page quotes and borrows from the editorial article introducing the issue 1, volume 1 of the Journal of Popular Music Education. 1 The popular music education world is populated by two largely separate but far from discrete communities. One of these groups comprises mostly school music teachers and those who work in higher education institutions to ‘train’ teacher/musicians for the workplace. For them, music education is a high art and prized craft; PME is one part of the jigsaw puzzle of a schoolteacher’s diverse portfolio of approaches to learning, teaching and assessment. The other community primarily teaches popular music studies (including popular music performance, business and songwriting) in institutions of higher education. For them the goal is to learn (about) popular music; ‘education’ is implicit in the fact that this activity takes place in a college or university. These two communities (crudely bifurcated as they are here, for the purposes of this short paper) collide and collaborate at APME conferences. They rarely seem to bump into one another, however, at meetings of IASPM (frequented primarily by members of the popular music studies community) or ISME (attended mainly by music teachers and music teacher teachers).
People’s experiences of education are frequently self-defining and life-changing – affirming, uplifting, crushing, celebratory and (dis)empowering by turns; the same can be said of people’s encounters with music. Humans’ engagement with popular music and experiences of education are vital to people’s understanding and tolerance of themselves and one another. APME believes in the necessity and transformative power of deep educational experiences that critique and enable, challenge and transform. Popular music exists at the intersection of folk and celebrity cultures, combining the everyday with the exceptional and fantastic. It merges commerce, community, commodity and the construction of meanings. People live their lives both as popular musicians and through popular musicians, realizing identities as fans, consumers and practitioners. Popular music scenes, communities and subcultures are local, regional, national and international. PME thus takes place at the cross sections of identity realization, learning, teaching, enculturation, entrepreneurship, creativity, a global multimedia industry, and innumerable leisure, DIY and hobbyist networks – online, and in physical spaces.
Popular music education is business and social enterprise. It is personal and it is collective. It is vocational and avocational, and it builds and develops communities. Popular music stands as a vital part of our modern lives. A valuable form of artistic expression, it embraces all facets of the human experience. It blends art with contemporary culture and tradition to make relevant the ever changing now.
Introduction
The Association for Popular Music Education (APME), founded in 2010, is the world’s leading organization in popular music education, galvanizing a community of practice, scholarship and innovation around the field. Popular music education (hereafter PME) is exciting, dynamic and often innovative. Music education – meaning formal schooling in music – has tended most of the time to exclude almost all forms and contexts of music, and therefore has also elided most models of music learning and teaching. Popular music is among these excluded musics. The report is based on the knowledge, perspectives and experience of APME Board members, and therefore reflects the Anglophone and largely US American orientation of the contributors. We recognize that popular music is as diverse as the world’s cultures, and that writing on popular music education is as nuanced as the languages in which it is communicated.
What is Popular Music Education?
Popular music is qualitatively different from other forms of music, in function and aesthetics (although there are areas of commonality). PME, therefore, may also be understood as necessarily different from Western Art Music (WAM) education. However, APME does not intend to construct or to construe PME as existing or working in opposition to existing music education programs and paradigms. PME, like popular music, is highly complex, problematic and challenging, as well as being inspiring and deeply meaningful to many people, individually and collectively. This is true of all musical traditions, their associated hierarchies, embedded practices and assumptions, and attendant educational practices. APME recognizes that change, stasis and tradition all constitute the lifeblood of popular music. As such, and to reflect that ongoing change, the authors assert that popular music education practice and scholarship must remain reflexive, allowing for and embracing constant revision and re-contextualization. As such, this paper marks a moment in time, but is not intended to codify, define or delimit PME.
Popular music has a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programs, courses and classes in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting, production and areas of music technology are becoming commonplace across higher education and compulsory schooling. In the context of teacher education, classroom teachers and music specialists alike are becoming increasingly empowered to introduce popular music into their classrooms. Research in PME lies at the intersection of the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, community music, cultural studies and popular music studies.
Who are the Popular Music Educators?
The following page quotes and borrows from the editorial article introducing the issue 1, volume 1 of the Journal of Popular Music Education. 1 The popular music education world is populated by two largely separate but far from discrete communities. One of these groups comprises mostly school music teachers and those who work in higher education institutions to ‘train’ teacher/musicians for the workplace. For them, music education is a high art and prized craft; PME is one part of the jigsaw puzzle of a schoolteacher’s diverse portfolio of approaches to learning, teaching and assessment. The other community primarily teaches popular music studies (including popular music performance, business and songwriting) in institutions of higher education. For them the goal is to learn (about) popular music; ‘education’ is implicit in the fact that this activity takes place in a college or university. These two communities (crudely bifurcated as they are here, for the purposes of this short paper) collide and collaborate at APME conferences. They rarely seem to bump into one another, however, at meetings of IASPM (frequented primarily by members of the popular music studies community) or ISME (attended mainly by music teachers and music teacher teachers).
People’s experiences of education are frequently self-defining and life-changing – affirming, uplifting, crushing, celebratory and (dis)empowering by turns; the same can be said of people’s encounters with music. Humans’ engagement with popular music and experiences of education are vital to people’s understanding and tolerance of themselves and one another. APME believes in the necessity and transformative power of deep educational experiences that critique and enable, challenge and transform. Popular music exists at the intersection of folk and celebrity cultures, combining the everyday with the exceptional and fantastic. It merges commerce, community, commodity and the construction of meanings. People live their lives both as popular musicians and through popular musicians, realizing identities as fans, consumers and practitioners. Popular music scenes, communities and subcultures are local, regional, national and international. PME thus takes place at the cross sections of identity realization, learning, teaching, enculturation, entrepreneurship, creativity, a global multimedia industry, and innumerable leisure, DIY and hobbyist networks – online, and in physical spaces.
Popular music education is business and social enterprise. It is personal and it is collective. It is vocational and avocational, and it builds and develops communities. Popular music stands as a vital part of our modern lives. A valuable form of artistic expression, it embraces all facets of the human experience. It blends art with contemporary culture and tradition to make relevant the ever changing now.
Research Interests:
Public education in the United States is often woefully under-funded, especially in the arts, despite a federal mandate to provide music education for all. Where music programs exist in US schools, they tend to focus on teacher-directed... more
Public education in the United States is often woefully under-funded, especially in the arts, despite a federal mandate to provide music education for all. Where music programs exist in US schools, they tend to focus on teacher-directed large ensembles that afford students little agency or creative opportunity, playing music that alienates a majority of young people. Faced with the volume of evidence pointing to the benefits of including music in a well-rounded education, philanthropy-funded nonprofit companies such as Little Kids Rock step in to fill the vacuum in state provision. This paper is a descriptive, intrinsic case study that describes how Little Kids Rock provides culturally relevant music making experiences for young people in schools, through a learning approach called music as a second language and alternative music classes termed modern band. Little Kids Rock builds a nationwide community of innovative music pedagogues by training teachers, donating musical instruments and sharing original curricular resources. This paper includes examples of two modern band teachers – one working in a rock band context, and the other a hip hop facilitator. The work of these and other teachers is ever more urgent in an era in which the U.S. perpetuates an intense neoliberal capitalism that oppresses and marginalizes vast numbers of its own people. Little Kids Rock aims to foster artistic citizenship wherein music makers recognize social and emancipatory responsibilities with the aim of transforming lives for the better.
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This special issue of Action, Theory, and Criticism for Music Education (ACT) explores some of the current problematics being tackled through sociology of music education, as well as how the work of this group of scholars intersects with... more
This special issue of Action, Theory, and Criticism for Music Education (ACT) explores some of the current problematics being tackled through sociology of music education, as well as how the work of this group of scholars intersects with the MayDay action ideals. This collection of papers presented in 2017 at the International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education (ISSME) London, UK, illustrates the strong connections between the two organizations. A confluence is evident in the groups’ agendas to promote meaningful action in the world, in and through music education. This introduction outlines how the contributors’ work goes about this through critical research and practice that challenge the status quo in music education.
Keywords: sociology, music education, critical theory, change, practice
Keywords: sociology, music education, critical theory, change, practice
Research Interests:
Introduction Embodied experience in music performance Something subjectively savoured, valuable and enjoyable Vividly felt experience Feeling the groove Immediate presence Discussion: Towards meaningful experience Conclusions and... more
Introduction
Embodied experience in music performance
Something subjectively savoured, valuable and enjoyable
Vividly felt experience
Feeling the groove
Immediate presence
Discussion: Towards meaningful experience
Conclusions and implications
Endnotes
Embodied experience in music performance
Something subjectively savoured, valuable and enjoyable
Vividly felt experience
Feeling the groove
Immediate presence
Discussion: Towards meaningful experience
Conclusions and implications
Endnotes
Research Interests:
Music education takes place in socio-political systems that institutionalise cultural hegemony and social stratication through perpetuating symbolically violent practices and unconscious assumptions regarding the purpose of music and... more
Music education takes place in socio-political systems that institutionalise cultural hegemony and social stratication through perpetuating symbolically violent practices and unconscious assumptions regarding the purpose of music and music education in society. Education systems serve to perpetuate class divisions and structures, excluding the music and aspirations of many people through the imposition of an increasingly neoliberal ideology. This article discusses the pedagogical approaches of Musical Futures and Little Kids Rock, and their orientations to democratising learning in the school music classroom through incorporation of practices and perspectives in making and learning popular music, focussed around learner-led teaching and learning.
Research Interests:
This paper introduces the Music Learning Profiles Project, and its methodological approach, flash study analysis. Flash study analysis is a method that draws heavily on extant qualitative approaches to education research, to develop broad... more
This paper introduces the Music Learning Profiles Project, and its methodological approach, flash study analysis. Flash study analysis is a method that draws heavily on extant qualitative approaches to education research, to develop broad understandings of music learning in diverse contexts. The Music Learning Profiles Project (MLPP) is an international collaboration to collect and curate a large number of flash studies exploring musicking and music learning in a variety of contexts that fall outside traditional school music education. In this paper the authors present context, rationale, and methods for the project, along with indicative
preliminary findings. The project aims to provide an expanding online
database of music experiences upon which colleagues in music education and ethnomusicology research can draw, and to which they are invited to contribute. The MLPP aims to benefit the music education community and wider society by helping to democratize research to include more diverse experiences of music learning.
Keywords: flash study analysis, informal learning, alternative music learning, Music Learning Profiles Project, popular music, mentoring.
preliminary findings. The project aims to provide an expanding online
database of music experiences upon which colleagues in music education and ethnomusicology research can draw, and to which they are invited to contribute. The MLPP aims to benefit the music education community and wider society by helping to democratize research to include more diverse experiences of music learning.
Keywords: flash study analysis, informal learning, alternative music learning, Music Learning Profiles Project, popular music, mentoring.
Research Interests:
Musicians are acknowledged to lead complex working lives, often characterised as portfolio careers. The higher music education research literature has tended to focus on preparing students for rich working lives and multiple identity... more
Musicians are acknowledged to lead complex working lives, often characterised as portfolio careers. The higher music education research literature has tended to focus on preparing students for rich working lives and multiple identity realisations across potential roles. Extant literature does not address the area of work-life balance, which this paper begins to explore, as the authors seek to better understand potential challenges around combining music graduates’ multivariate ambitions, commitments and identities as musicians in the world. Rich data are presented, following interviews with professional musicians in London, UK, discussing health, portfolio careers and family. The authors conclude that more research is required to gain a deeper understanding of work-life balance for musicians, and that pedagogical approaches in higher music education could more effectively help students to prepare for their futures in a more holistic way.
Research Interests:
Popular music education is becoming firmly established as an academic field, in the UK and internationally. In order to help ensure that scholarship and practice within the field develop in reflexive and ethical ways appropriate to... more
Popular music education is becoming firmly established as an academic field, in the UK and internationally. In order to help ensure that scholarship and practice within the field develop in reflexive and ethical ways appropriate to particular traditions, musics, people and institutional contexts, the authors advocate a discursive and iterative approach to the question of what it means to be “authentic” across higher popular music education (HPME). With reference to current research, policy and industry documentation, the authors present a discussion framed by theories concerning authenticity in the domains of the vocational and academic, employability, music, gender, and pedagogy. The authors conclude that institutions and individuals working in higher popular music education have a responsibility to place the issue of authenticity at the center of pedagogy, curriculum design, institutional strategy and disciplinary knowledge share, in order for the field to develop in ways that are beneficial to all involved.
Keywords: Popular music, Education, Employability, Gender, Pedagogy, Curriculum, Epistemology
Keywords: Popular music, Education, Employability, Gender, Pedagogy, Curriculum, Epistemology
Research Interests:
The two authors are members of punk rock trio the Eruptörs. Both also teach in higher education – one in popular music, and the other in management and marketing. Writing from experience in the band, we also draw on theoretical... more
The two authors are members of punk rock trio the Eruptörs. Both also teach in higher education – one in popular music, and the other in management and marketing. Writing from experience in the band, we also draw on theoretical perspectives from our respective, intersecting fields to explore the Eruptörs’ entrepreneurship, collaborations, networks and creativities in the “DIY” underground punk rock scene. The paper provides cross-disciplinary insights into relevant internal and external cultures of the Eruptörs. The authors conclude that scholars and practitioners in music education, popular music studies, and related disciplines and fields involving entrepreneurship could benefit from engaging in reflexive practice which explores and incorporates ideas, models and syntheses discussed in this paper.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Creativities, Relationship Marketing, Autoethnography, Punk.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Creativities, Relationship Marketing, Autoethnography, Punk.
Research Interests:
From an autoethnographic perspective as a performer, educator and scholar, I consider constructions and presentations of success, what it means to be a popular musician in the 21st century, and how these issues are dealt with in the... more
From an autoethnographic perspective as a performer, educator and scholar, I consider constructions and presentations of success, what it means to be a popular musician in the 21st century, and how these issues are dealt with in the higher popular music performance education institution where I work. This position paper explores success as construed in music education and popular music studies in relation to changing contexts and practices in popular music. While popular music has a growing presence in music education and the literature of the field, institutions, scholarly publications, and mainstream media infrequently and inadequately address trends in popular music practice such as the widespread adoption of portfolio careers. Under- and mis-representation of popular music’s canon and practices, and ideas of success thus threaten to under-value the majority of popular music and popular musicians, a problem that should be addressed in higher popular music performance education and across the music education profession. Drawing also on literature from music business and economics, I call music educators to challenge traditional approaches and assumptions, engaging critically with the present in order to prepare for the future.
Research Interests:
The purpose of this study was to compare the creative musical identities of pre-service music education students in the United States and England. A 20-item survey was created based on previous work in the area of music teacher identity... more
The purpose of this study was to compare the creative musical identities of pre-service music education students in the United States and England. A 20-item survey was created based on previous work in the area of music teacher identity (Isbell, 2008). Survey items related to music making activities typically associated with creativity in music education, including composition, improvisation, popular music and “new music” ensemble participation, were completed by students (n = 159) from nine different universities in the United States and nine universities in England. Findings suggest that pre-service music education students in the US feel less confident about their abilities to compose music, less comfortable teaching composition, and are less likely to plan on “teaching students to compose/improvise their own original music when [they] get a job as a music teacher” than their English colleagues. Differences in primary and secondary socialization are proposed to account for the differences in survey responses between the two populations. The authors propose that music educators in the US might benefit from consideration of incorporating some practices from the system in England.
Research Interests:
Assessment in music education is a perennial problem; while assessment is generally regarded as necessary, practices are widely accepted as imperfect. This philosophical study reports on research tackling axiological questions stemming... more
Assessment in music education is a perennial problem; while assessment is generally regarded as necessary, practices are widely accepted as imperfect. This philosophical study reports on research tackling axiological questions stemming from the author’s perception of flaws in the application of grading rubrics to the assessment of students’ work on a popular music performance program at a UK college. The author is a musician – a kit drummer, and administrator of this program. The study explains the context of the program and of the award to which it leads. The assessment system used is presented and discussed with reference to relevant literature. The qualitative judgments required for assessment in music may conflict with the constraints imposed by assessment rubrics. Music educators are often also musicians, whose depth of understanding could be more effectively deployed in more holistic systems of assessment. The question facing the music education community is how best to ensure consistency and rigor in appraising students’ achievements. This paper concludes by calling for music educators to continue evaluating assessment procedures, and to ensure that assessments are designed and conducted in ways that are relevant and sensitive to learning contexts and practices.
Research Interests:
This qualitative case study was undertaken in order to explore learning styles in the context of instrumental drum tuition. The study considers two young drummers, taught by one of the authors prior to and during the study. Extensive... more
This qualitative case study was undertaken in order to explore learning styles in the context of instrumental drum tuition. The study considers two young drummers, taught by one of the authors prior to and during the study. Extensive observations were made; both drummers and ...
Research Interests:
In this chapter the author explores musical creativities realized as the drummer in post punk band, Black Light Bastards. He describes the collective musical creativities at play when the band collaborates to compose drum kit parts for a... more
In this chapter the author explores musical creativities realized as the drummer in post punk band, Black Light Bastards. He describes the collective musical creativities at play when the band collaborates to compose drum kit parts for a live set and explains improvisational creativities exercised in rehearsals and on live shows. The author frames his musical creativities using June Boyce-Tillman’s Spirituality framework, noting that through creative music making at the drum kit, he feels authentically him. As such, he describes creativities in terms of Materials, Construction, Values, and Expression, with alignment in these areas comprising transcendent, Spiritual experience. The chapter concludes with the suggestions that music education might focus more on learners’ and teachers’ musical creativities, as means to curate joyful, Spiritual experiences that enable students to be fully themselves in music.
Research Interests:
This short essay is a reflection on my reviling and revelling in a moderately glamorous episode in my life as a seagull academic. Below, I briefly define the terms, ‘external examining’ and ‘neocolonialism’, describe some of my roles in... more
This short essay is a reflection on my reviling and revelling in a moderately glamorous episode in my life as a seagull academic. Below, I briefly define the terms, ‘external examining’ and ‘neocolonialism’, describe some of my roles in sustaining both systems, and suggest possibilities for addressing a problem endemic to higher music education. If you are titillated sufficiently by what follows, note the further reading suggestions at the end.
Research Interests:
Schools in the United States are funded to a large extent based on local tax revenues, often resulting in children from lower-income communities receiving an under-resourced education. Arts education suffers disproportionately in a... more
Schools in the United States are funded to a large extent based on local tax revenues, often resulting in children from lower-income communities receiving an under-resourced education. Arts education suffers disproportionately in a socio-economic era characterized by widespread adherence to an ideology that promotes a distorted notion of the potential for individuals to succeed in spite of financial and other impediments inflicted and enforced through structures of power and domination that privilege the already-successful and those with the means to win in a dramatically inequitable system (Giroux, 2019; Smith, 2015; Smith et al., 2018). Federal funding is available to schools with a relatively impoverished local tax base, but this tends not to be directed to paying for music education, at a time when teachers and schools are under unprecedented pressure to perform competitively on standardized tests in STEM subjects–despite the widespread understanding of surely every classroom teacher that children, classrooms, and communities are anything but “standard” (Reay, 2017; Wright, 2010).
There are increased calls for decision-makers in the profession to rethink what music education in the US is, whom it serves, and, in particular, how teachers can facilitate the most meaningful, relevant, and valuable experiences for all young people (Campbell et. al., 2016; Hendricks, 2018; Kratus, 2007; Powell et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2018). Given the ubiquity of popular music, its familiarity to, and popularity among young people and others, it would seem reasonable to include contemporary popular styles of music in the music classroom. Bowman (2004) underscores the challenges and opportunities presented by such a proposition, noting that once welcomed into school contexts:
We must allow [popular music] to complicate our professional lives, to enrich our understandings of music's nature and power, to extend our assumptions about which students we presume to educate, to broaden our vision of the ways music education can occur, and to reconstruct our views of who music educators are, what they do, and how they do it. (p. 45)
In the following pages, we address these issues to varying degrees and through examples of practice.
There are increased calls for decision-makers in the profession to rethink what music education in the US is, whom it serves, and, in particular, how teachers can facilitate the most meaningful, relevant, and valuable experiences for all young people (Campbell et. al., 2016; Hendricks, 2018; Kratus, 2007; Powell et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2018). Given the ubiquity of popular music, its familiarity to, and popularity among young people and others, it would seem reasonable to include contemporary popular styles of music in the music classroom. Bowman (2004) underscores the challenges and opportunities presented by such a proposition, noting that once welcomed into school contexts:
We must allow [popular music] to complicate our professional lives, to enrich our understandings of music's nature and power, to extend our assumptions about which students we presume to educate, to broaden our vision of the ways music education can occur, and to reconstruct our views of who music educators are, what they do, and how they do it. (p. 45)
In the following pages, we address these issues to varying degrees and through examples of practice.
Research Interests:
The rhythmic aspects of music are intuitively accessible for all people. It is rhythm to which people tap their feet, move, and dance; rhythm that motivates people as they run and work out in the gym; and an avenue for Hip-Hop artists to... more
The rhythmic aspects of music are intuitively accessible for all people. It is rhythm to which people tap their feet, move, and dance; rhythm that motivates people as they run and work out in the gym; and an avenue for Hip-Hop artists to articulate their thoughts and feelings. As one of the oldest forms of instrumental music, playing percussion instruments connects us with the rhythms of ancient and vital pastimes and is associated with dancing, rituals, battles, celebrations, and the vast richness of human culture.
Rhythmic musical experiences will engender genuine student interest in your general music classroom. For example, when you strike a drum, it produces an instantaneous response. The immediate success of producing a sound on an instrument is an exhilarating and captivating experience for students. Yet, each drum, percussion instrument, or drum kit contains an infinite number of subtle sounds and nuances that can be teased, coaxed, and battered to emerge from within. Entrancing and captivating when played quietly, and exhilarating when played loudly, a world of rhythmic sound is ready for your students to explore.
Rhythmic musical experiences will engender genuine student interest in your general music classroom. For example, when you strike a drum, it produces an instantaneous response. The immediate success of producing a sound on an instrument is an exhilarating and captivating experience for students. Yet, each drum, percussion instrument, or drum kit contains an infinite number of subtle sounds and nuances that can be teased, coaxed, and battered to emerge from within. Entrancing and captivating when played quietly, and exhilarating when played loudly, a world of rhythmic sound is ready for your students to explore.
Research Interests:
In this chapter we explore links between popular music, policy, and education from two broad perspectives. We examine the impacts of popular music and cultural policy on music education, and links between education policy and popular... more
In this chapter we explore links between popular music, policy, and education from two broad perspectives. We examine the impacts of popular music and cultural policy on music education, and links between education policy and popular music education (PME). Our use of the term ‘education’ in this chapter is deliberately broad and multifaceted. In addition to considering education by focusing on institutions and stakeholders, for example, we also focus on the way in which policy impacts or drives wider economic and ideological issues, thus functioning as a form of ‘public pedagogy’ (Giroux 2003). Our focus is as much on economic, political, and social policies as de facto educational texts and discourses. Due to the inherent ambiguity of the terms ‘policy’ and ‘PME’, consideration of these areas is potentially problematic. Additionally, we are aware of almost no policy texts pertaining specifically to popular music education or on popular music in education, with the exception of a white paper from the Association for Popular Music Education (APME). Given the small size of that organization, its minimal reach, and the dearth of references to, or apparent impact of its paper, we note for now simply that ‘the mission of the Association for Popular Music Education (APME) is to promote and advance popular music at all levels of education both in the classroom and beyond’ (Association for Popular Music Education, 2020a). We have found no other documents so clearly intended to address, or indeed to promote, popular music and education.
Research Interests:
Harald Jørgensen (2009, pp. 14–15) notes that a relatively small minority of publications in music education tend to be on higher music education institutions, or on the institution of higher music education (Hebert et al. 2017). In this... more
Harald Jørgensen (2009, pp. 14–15) notes that a relatively small minority of publications in music education tend to be on higher music education institutions, or on the institution of higher music education (Hebert et al. 2017). In this chapter, I attempt to describe elements of the particular case of higher music education in England, focusing especially on higher popular music education (HPME) (Hall 2017; Hunter 2019). I hope that readers may find resonance for their own contexts. I focus discussion in this chapter on what appears to be a paradox or at least an unresolved inconsistency in UK government rhetoric regarding music and the value(s) of it as articulated through higher education policy.
On the one hand, the UK government overtly favours ‘high culture’, or just ‘culture’ as Roger Scruton (2016) has it, both in policy terms (Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2016) and in funding practice. In the most recent iteration of a 4-year government arts funding cycle, money was spent almost entirely on subsidizing ‘high culture’ venues and companies including the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company, whereas grassroots popular music across the UK has been suffocated through under-funding – as an example, over half of London’s 430 music venues closed in the decade leading up to 2017 (Doward 2017; Parkinson et al. 2015). Policies that enable and ultimately guarantee the closure of many dozens of local venues around the country for live music, make conditions impossibly difficult for young musicians and artists to rent homes or to make a living as innovative, start-up creative workers in thriving urban centres such as London (Hewison 2014). On the other hand, recent legislation for higher education in England has opened the door for ‘challenger institutions’ to enter the higher education ‘marketplace’ and compete for the attention and tuition fees of students (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 2016, p. 5). Such challenger providers come in the shape of private music schools such as the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM) and its clone colleges like the Academy of Contemporary Music that focus on training students in popular music performance, production, songwriting, and business skills (British and Irish Modern Music Institute 2018; Academy of Contemporary Music 2018). The policy encouraging these and other similar institutions overtly encourages the growth of popular music and the numbers of musicians making music in popular styles, while the heart is wrenched from the body of the industry that has supported vernacular music making for decades. This occurs alongside a culture policy which indicates that such a low view of ‘the music of the people’ is only proper.
The government is, with the left hand, feeding a sector that creates professional popular musicians at ever higher rates, while, with the other hand it enacts policies that de-emphasize popular culture in curriculum, public spaces, and discourse. As Sterling emphasizes, ‘knowledge is only knowledge. But the control of knowledge – that’s politics’ (Sterling 1999, p. 381, emphasis in original). I suggest that thus promoting and pursuing, and perhaps even believing in, mutually contradictory policies provides an example of vicious governmental ‘doublespeak’, that is, the use of language at best in order ‘to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’ (Orwell 1946, n.p.). The policies are as fatuous as they are flatulent, betraying the bullshit (Frankfurt 2009) that characterizes the habitual, normative doublespeak of contemporary political discourse. As Lutz (1996) explains:
[Politicians] live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, using doublespeak to resolve the continuing contradictions between words and actions, using doublespeak to explain and justify their actions, or to say that they didn’t do what they did, or what they did isn’t what we think they did. (Lutz 1996, p. 152)
In such a climate, governments and politicians are able to say and do whatever they like and to parse this as democracy in action.
The education policy landscape in the United Kingdom is somewhat complicated, owing to the implementation of varying degrees of devolved government in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. As such, I will for the sake of prudence and accuracy refer mostly throughout this chapter to the specific context of England, although much of what applies in England (for instance in terms of colonial ideology and cultural hierarchy) resonates in the United Kingdom more broadly, albeit that much of the reason for this would be the deliberate (and previously violent) cultural and linguistic dominance of England over the other nations comprising the union. Current circumstances are perhaps the product of a heady mixture of multiple governments’ attempts to reconcile the past with the future, and – if one is to believe the relentless repeated rhetoric and ignore the insights of political scientists and sociologists working in education – to democratise higher education and provide opportunities for all in a more equitable British society. At the heart of this is an especially stark dualism. Mark Hunter describes it as follows:
The normative expectation that candidates wishing to study music in Higher Education in England and Wales are equipped with Western art music instrumental performance skills and music theory is intimately bound up with the cultural mores and financial capacity of a specific and limited socio-economic group. Conversely, popular music in the public imagination is the realm of the youthful amateur, even when framed within the high-production values of 21st century talent shows, that is The X-Factor, The Voice, etc.
(Hunter 2019, p. 45)
This chapter proceeds by presenting the British government’s positionality with regard to culture and education, before discussing aspects of policy and ideology that impact perception higher music education in England and practice of popular music and HPME in England. I close the chapter by suggesting possible means to resolve or balance some of the contradictions perceived in the current situation, and suggest ways in which music educators and readers of this chapter might seek to manage the conflicting messages that guide, direct, and confound their work every day with music students and teachers.
On the one hand, the UK government overtly favours ‘high culture’, or just ‘culture’ as Roger Scruton (2016) has it, both in policy terms (Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2016) and in funding practice. In the most recent iteration of a 4-year government arts funding cycle, money was spent almost entirely on subsidizing ‘high culture’ venues and companies including the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company, whereas grassroots popular music across the UK has been suffocated through under-funding – as an example, over half of London’s 430 music venues closed in the decade leading up to 2017 (Doward 2017; Parkinson et al. 2015). Policies that enable and ultimately guarantee the closure of many dozens of local venues around the country for live music, make conditions impossibly difficult for young musicians and artists to rent homes or to make a living as innovative, start-up creative workers in thriving urban centres such as London (Hewison 2014). On the other hand, recent legislation for higher education in England has opened the door for ‘challenger institutions’ to enter the higher education ‘marketplace’ and compete for the attention and tuition fees of students (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 2016, p. 5). Such challenger providers come in the shape of private music schools such as the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM) and its clone colleges like the Academy of Contemporary Music that focus on training students in popular music performance, production, songwriting, and business skills (British and Irish Modern Music Institute 2018; Academy of Contemporary Music 2018). The policy encouraging these and other similar institutions overtly encourages the growth of popular music and the numbers of musicians making music in popular styles, while the heart is wrenched from the body of the industry that has supported vernacular music making for decades. This occurs alongside a culture policy which indicates that such a low view of ‘the music of the people’ is only proper.
The government is, with the left hand, feeding a sector that creates professional popular musicians at ever higher rates, while, with the other hand it enacts policies that de-emphasize popular culture in curriculum, public spaces, and discourse. As Sterling emphasizes, ‘knowledge is only knowledge. But the control of knowledge – that’s politics’ (Sterling 1999, p. 381, emphasis in original). I suggest that thus promoting and pursuing, and perhaps even believing in, mutually contradictory policies provides an example of vicious governmental ‘doublespeak’, that is, the use of language at best in order ‘to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’ (Orwell 1946, n.p.). The policies are as fatuous as they are flatulent, betraying the bullshit (Frankfurt 2009) that characterizes the habitual, normative doublespeak of contemporary political discourse. As Lutz (1996) explains:
[Politicians] live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, using doublespeak to resolve the continuing contradictions between words and actions, using doublespeak to explain and justify their actions, or to say that they didn’t do what they did, or what they did isn’t what we think they did. (Lutz 1996, p. 152)
In such a climate, governments and politicians are able to say and do whatever they like and to parse this as democracy in action.
The education policy landscape in the United Kingdom is somewhat complicated, owing to the implementation of varying degrees of devolved government in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. As such, I will for the sake of prudence and accuracy refer mostly throughout this chapter to the specific context of England, although much of what applies in England (for instance in terms of colonial ideology and cultural hierarchy) resonates in the United Kingdom more broadly, albeit that much of the reason for this would be the deliberate (and previously violent) cultural and linguistic dominance of England over the other nations comprising the union. Current circumstances are perhaps the product of a heady mixture of multiple governments’ attempts to reconcile the past with the future, and – if one is to believe the relentless repeated rhetoric and ignore the insights of political scientists and sociologists working in education – to democratise higher education and provide opportunities for all in a more equitable British society. At the heart of this is an especially stark dualism. Mark Hunter describes it as follows:
The normative expectation that candidates wishing to study music in Higher Education in England and Wales are equipped with Western art music instrumental performance skills and music theory is intimately bound up with the cultural mores and financial capacity of a specific and limited socio-economic group. Conversely, popular music in the public imagination is the realm of the youthful amateur, even when framed within the high-production values of 21st century talent shows, that is The X-Factor, The Voice, etc.
(Hunter 2019, p. 45)
This chapter proceeds by presenting the British government’s positionality with regard to culture and education, before discussing aspects of policy and ideology that impact perception higher music education in England and practice of popular music and HPME in England. I close the chapter by suggesting possible means to resolve or balance some of the contradictions perceived in the current situation, and suggest ways in which music educators and readers of this chapter might seek to manage the conflicting messages that guide, direct, and confound their work every day with music students and teachers.
Research Interests:
This chapter explores experiences of the Irish diaspora through song lyrics, interview data, and participant observations from performing and touring in London Irish ‘psycho ceilidh’ punk band, Neck. It discusses issues of ethnicity and... more
This chapter explores experiences of the Irish diaspora through song lyrics, interview data, and participant observations from performing and touring in London Irish ‘psycho ceilidh’ punk band, Neck. It discusses issues of ethnicity and identity forged in the fires of family, nationhood, history, and tradition. It examines in particular the complex nature of being both Irish and English, through the experiences of the band’s leader and songwriter, and its drummer.
Research Interests:
Racism is a manifestation of hate woven into the fabric of US American society. Fischer et al. state that “hatred is a hostile feeling directed toward another person or group that consists of malice, repugnance, and willingness to harm... more
Racism is a manifestation of hate woven into the fabric of US American society. Fischer et al. state that “hatred is a hostile feeling directed toward another person or group that consists of malice, repugnance, and willingness to harm and even annihilate the object of hatred” (2018, 311). They further construe “hatred as the desire to harm, humiliate, or even kill its object—not always instrumentally, but rather to cause harm as a vengeful objective in itself”. Criminology scholar, Hall (2011), tells us that feelings of hate and hate-fuelled action stem from prejudice. He further asserts that hate crime refers to any crime “perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice” (2011, 11). Crucial in this view is that an action or attitude need not be of hateful intent in order to be hateful. Hate is the expression of prejudice, and hateful action comprises treating anyone “as an object of disgust, contempt, or disdain, as a lower kind of being merely in virtue of belonging to a group that is for some reason disvalued” (Kauppinen 2015, 1720-1721).
One of the most overt historical manifestations of hate as racism in Northern America is the 250 years of slavery and White Americans’ invention of the negro as category of subhuman (Baldwin 1962). While Black Americans have been legally free since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the presumed innate superiority of White people over people of colour is fundamental to US American culture and is reproduced as hegemony through policy and the resultant societal hierarchy (Kendi 2019). As hip-hop[1] education researcher, Love, writes, “racism is indelible to the Black body and the spirit, and the physical and spirit murdering of Black bodies is unfortunately part-and-parcel of America’s history. It is, in many ways, what makes America, America” (2016, 24). To reduce talk of race to “Black” and White” is arguably as clumsy as it is clearly incomplete, but it is helpful for the purposes of this chapter, since, writer and activist Baldwin tells us, “color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality” (1962, 104). Following the groundbreaking sociological work of Du Bois (1903), contemporary sociologist, Dyson (2017), notes that “the black-white divide has been the major artery through which the meaning of race has flowed” in the US (p. 5), calling the United States of America “a society that hates black folks in its guts” (p. 27).
The phenomenal economic growth of the US as a young nation in the 18th and 19th centuries, leading to the nation’s global economic domination today, was possible in large part due to slavery (Anderson 2016; Baptist 2014). As Leonardo (2002) notes, “a close relationship exists between economic exploitation and racial oppression” (30); this was nowhere more true than in the US. Critical racial and social justice scholar, DiAngelo, underlines how “American wealth was built on the labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants” (2018, xiii), which has led to the contemporary US social milieu in which “Black and white people… seem to occupy different universes, with worldviews that are fatally opposed to one another” (Dyson 2017, 3). These opposing perspectives and sets of experiences are a manifestation of “white America [operating as] as syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control [Black] bodies” – power without which “‘white people’ would cease to exist for want of reasons” (Coates 2015, 42).
Whiteness is a fabricated and violently maintained ideology that privileges White people above all Others, and at any cost to those Others – “civilization secured and ruled by savage means” (Coates 2015, 32). Whiteness “protects some people through a safety net of schools, government-backed home loans, and ancestral wealth but can only protect [Black Americans] with the club of criminal justice” (Coates 2015, 17-18). The ideology of Whiteness perpetuates the false and pernicious idea that to be White is to be racially neutral; this notion is central to colourblindness, a key component of hegemonic Whiteness which “pretends that racial recognition rather than racist rule is the problem to be solved”, and in doing so “reinforces whiteness as the unmarked norm against which difference is measured” and understood (Lipsitz 2019, 24).
Whiteness and White privilege are fundamental in maintaining systemic racism in the US. These terms speak to White people experiencing life (albeit often unconsciously), and being perceived, as individuals who represent the racial norm in relation to which Black people and others are construed as deviant or Other (Diangelo 2018; Eddo-Lodge 2017; Gallagher 1994; Martin et. al. 1996). White privilege is “the fact that if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way. And you probably won’t even notice it”; at best, it is “dull, grinding complacency” (Eddo-Lodge 2017, 87) regarding the pervasiveness of systemic, racist injustice. Cooper (2019) notes accordingly how White America is “not compassionate, only polite, not good, but well-behaved” (361). Throughout this paper “White” and “Whiteness” are capitalized to reflect these meanings. “Black” and “Blackness” are also capitalized to refer to the experience and perception of people of colour being Othered as not-White and as less-than-White.
This power imbalance in America society is controlled and power wielded by the state and its agents, including the police, to whom I turn more below, creating of African Americans what civil rights law professor, Alexander (2010, 190), refers to as “a racial undercaste – a group defined wholly or largely by race that permanently locked out of mainstream society by law, custom, and practice”. The institution of schooling serves aso to maintain this racial hierarchy (Hodge 2018; Love 2012, 2016; Urbach 2019). Journalist and author, Coates, reflecting on his own experience in public school, notes that “schools did not reveal truths [about race], they concealed them” from children (2015, 27), and hip-hop scholar, Peterson (2016), illustrates how policy has prioritized criminalizing and incarcerating Black Americans over funding their education. Given that it costs almost nine times more to imprison a person for a year than it does to teach them in a public school (Peterson 2016, 32), it is difficult to imagine this reality as the result of anything other than ideology and deliberate intent. After all, education, which is always, fundamentally, political, is about who has and who controls knowledge, and by whom that knowledge is valued (Freire 2000; Giroux 2001; Illich 1970).
Love asserts her conviction that “dark people have never truly mattered in this country except as property and labor” (2019, 7). As Baldwin explains, for African Americans:
This world is white and they are black. White people hold the power, which means they are superior to blacks (intrinsically that is: God decreed it so), and the world has innumerable ways of making this difference known and felt and feared. (Baldwin 1962, 25-26).
As Akitunde observes, “racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every aspect of our reality”, calling racism a “multilayered syndrome” (1999, 2). What is presumed and enacted as normative and for White people in the US as just being, or being American, or being patriotic, is often felt by people of colour as “racist dehumanization” (Coates 2017, xv).
Following a short statement on my own positionality in relation to the US, racism and whiteness, I outline the theoretical lens of punk pedagogy. I then present a short description of my research method before entering into a brief discussion around punk pedagogy in rap music, providing examples of songs. I close with some concluding thoughts on rap, racism and punk pedagogy, urging music American music educators to do more to address the institutional racism at the core of US society.
One of the most overt historical manifestations of hate as racism in Northern America is the 250 years of slavery and White Americans’ invention of the negro as category of subhuman (Baldwin 1962). While Black Americans have been legally free since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the presumed innate superiority of White people over people of colour is fundamental to US American culture and is reproduced as hegemony through policy and the resultant societal hierarchy (Kendi 2019). As hip-hop[1] education researcher, Love, writes, “racism is indelible to the Black body and the spirit, and the physical and spirit murdering of Black bodies is unfortunately part-and-parcel of America’s history. It is, in many ways, what makes America, America” (2016, 24). To reduce talk of race to “Black” and White” is arguably as clumsy as it is clearly incomplete, but it is helpful for the purposes of this chapter, since, writer and activist Baldwin tells us, “color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality” (1962, 104). Following the groundbreaking sociological work of Du Bois (1903), contemporary sociologist, Dyson (2017), notes that “the black-white divide has been the major artery through which the meaning of race has flowed” in the US (p. 5), calling the United States of America “a society that hates black folks in its guts” (p. 27).
The phenomenal economic growth of the US as a young nation in the 18th and 19th centuries, leading to the nation’s global economic domination today, was possible in large part due to slavery (Anderson 2016; Baptist 2014). As Leonardo (2002) notes, “a close relationship exists between economic exploitation and racial oppression” (30); this was nowhere more true than in the US. Critical racial and social justice scholar, DiAngelo, underlines how “American wealth was built on the labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants” (2018, xiii), which has led to the contemporary US social milieu in which “Black and white people… seem to occupy different universes, with worldviews that are fatally opposed to one another” (Dyson 2017, 3). These opposing perspectives and sets of experiences are a manifestation of “white America [operating as] as syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control [Black] bodies” – power without which “‘white people’ would cease to exist for want of reasons” (Coates 2015, 42).
Whiteness is a fabricated and violently maintained ideology that privileges White people above all Others, and at any cost to those Others – “civilization secured and ruled by savage means” (Coates 2015, 32). Whiteness “protects some people through a safety net of schools, government-backed home loans, and ancestral wealth but can only protect [Black Americans] with the club of criminal justice” (Coates 2015, 17-18). The ideology of Whiteness perpetuates the false and pernicious idea that to be White is to be racially neutral; this notion is central to colourblindness, a key component of hegemonic Whiteness which “pretends that racial recognition rather than racist rule is the problem to be solved”, and in doing so “reinforces whiteness as the unmarked norm against which difference is measured” and understood (Lipsitz 2019, 24).
Whiteness and White privilege are fundamental in maintaining systemic racism in the US. These terms speak to White people experiencing life (albeit often unconsciously), and being perceived, as individuals who represent the racial norm in relation to which Black people and others are construed as deviant or Other (Diangelo 2018; Eddo-Lodge 2017; Gallagher 1994; Martin et. al. 1996). White privilege is “the fact that if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way. And you probably won’t even notice it”; at best, it is “dull, grinding complacency” (Eddo-Lodge 2017, 87) regarding the pervasiveness of systemic, racist injustice. Cooper (2019) notes accordingly how White America is “not compassionate, only polite, not good, but well-behaved” (361). Throughout this paper “White” and “Whiteness” are capitalized to reflect these meanings. “Black” and “Blackness” are also capitalized to refer to the experience and perception of people of colour being Othered as not-White and as less-than-White.
This power imbalance in America society is controlled and power wielded by the state and its agents, including the police, to whom I turn more below, creating of African Americans what civil rights law professor, Alexander (2010, 190), refers to as “a racial undercaste – a group defined wholly or largely by race that permanently locked out of mainstream society by law, custom, and practice”. The institution of schooling serves aso to maintain this racial hierarchy (Hodge 2018; Love 2012, 2016; Urbach 2019). Journalist and author, Coates, reflecting on his own experience in public school, notes that “schools did not reveal truths [about race], they concealed them” from children (2015, 27), and hip-hop scholar, Peterson (2016), illustrates how policy has prioritized criminalizing and incarcerating Black Americans over funding their education. Given that it costs almost nine times more to imprison a person for a year than it does to teach them in a public school (Peterson 2016, 32), it is difficult to imagine this reality as the result of anything other than ideology and deliberate intent. After all, education, which is always, fundamentally, political, is about who has and who controls knowledge, and by whom that knowledge is valued (Freire 2000; Giroux 2001; Illich 1970).
Love asserts her conviction that “dark people have never truly mattered in this country except as property and labor” (2019, 7). As Baldwin explains, for African Americans:
This world is white and they are black. White people hold the power, which means they are superior to blacks (intrinsically that is: God decreed it so), and the world has innumerable ways of making this difference known and felt and feared. (Baldwin 1962, 25-26).
As Akitunde observes, “racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every aspect of our reality”, calling racism a “multilayered syndrome” (1999, 2). What is presumed and enacted as normative and for White people in the US as just being, or being American, or being patriotic, is often felt by people of colour as “racist dehumanization” (Coates 2017, xv).
Following a short statement on my own positionality in relation to the US, racism and whiteness, I outline the theoretical lens of punk pedagogy. I then present a short description of my research method before entering into a brief discussion around punk pedagogy in rap music, providing examples of songs. I close with some concluding thoughts on rap, racism and punk pedagogy, urging music American music educators to do more to address the institutional racism at the core of US society.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The author is rarely certain of his purpose in life—a condition that is heightened by a busy yet reluctant level of engagement with social media. The author utilizes Facebook and Twitter to promote activity around popular music education... more
The author is rarely certain of his purpose in life—a condition that is heightened by a busy yet reluctant level of engagement with social media. The author utilizes Facebook and Twitter to promote activity around popular music education and sociology of music education. There is considerable overlap in the author’s life between professional and personal domains, which seems amplified by social media. Facebook and Twitter provide less formal, more direct means to engage with the world than traditional modes of peer-reviewed communication among academic colleagues. Social media provide a platform for working through ideas and for addressing problems with urgency and immediacy. As such, and despite some messiness and increased levels of vulnerability and risk, the author encourages peers to engage with social media’s immediate and powerful, punk pedagogical potential.
Keywords: confessions, Facebook, Twitter, punk, punk pedagogy, sociology, popular music education
Keywords: confessions, Facebook, Twitter, punk, punk pedagogy, sociology, popular music education
Research Interests:
This chapter offers a focused discussion of the interconnected areas of informal learning and musical creative process. It draws together scholarship on musical creativities and music learning from inside and outside of school or other... more
This chapter offers a focused discussion of the interconnected areas of informal learning and musical creative process. It draws together scholarship on musical creativities and music learning from inside and outside of school or other institutional educational con texts, combining these in exploration of learning realization and identity realization. Through the framework of the “four Ps” of creativity, the chapter shows how informal learning both requires and nurtures creativity among individuals and groups. Drawing on scholarship by Lucy Green, Ruth Wright, and other key figures in music education, the chapter concludes by discussing the empowering, democratizing potential of informal learning approaches in schools. Informal learning is an inherently creative phenomenon, with a particular emphasis on and benefits for the development, agency, and empowerment of individuals.
Keywords: creative process, music, shaping creativities, informal learning, identity, identity realization, agency, pedagogy, Lucy Green
Keywords: creative process, music, shaping creativities, informal learning, identity, identity realization, agency, pedagogy, Lucy Green
Research Interests:
Inhabitants of the 21st century live and work in a world in which many aspects of daily interactions with other humans are no longer hampered by physical distance. Indeed, scholars and practitioners in fields such as music and... more
Inhabitants of the 21st century live and work in a world in which many aspects of daily interactions with other humans are no longer hampered by physical distance. Indeed, scholars and practitioners in fields such as music and communications are finding that there is much to be gained, both epistemologically and experientially, through collaborating across (often) vast distances. Relatively recent developments in Internet technology seem to have “led to the advancement of new collaborative cultures which use the network as a medium for exchanging creative materials in an electronic form” (Renaud et al., 2007). The tremendous potential in such collaborative endeavors has been explored in depth by social scientists such as Richard Sennett (2012) and by management researcher Peter Gloor (2006, 2017), whose groundbreaking work on collaborative innovation networks (COINs) illuminates an exciting and dynamic mode of activity. Smith and Gillett (2015) describe COINs in the domain of DIY of the punk scenes.
People in today’s technologically advanced societies frequently engage in almost instantaneous communication with friends and colleagues across physical distance, often in remote locations, in the form of email, SMS, social media, and various messaging apps. We have free-to-use software (such as Skype and Google Hangouts) that allows us to conduct meetings with people anywhere in the world. We employ cloud-based word processor and spreadsheet tools (such as Google Docs) and online file-sharing repositories (such as Dropbox and Google Drive) to facilitate real-time workflows that allow us to collaborative and interact productively with people anywhere on the planet, provided they have an Internet connection. However convenient these systems may be for users, issues impact the functionality of some of the technologies that enable us to work in this way.1 Specifically, we have to wait for files to upload or documents to update, for example; or, in the case of video calls, we deal with imperfections in audio or video signals (or both). In many everyday scenarios, such problems with the usability of these technologies rarely prove catastrophic because users do not typically engage in activities that require actual real-time interaction. That is to say that a short delay in file transfer is unlikely significantly to hinder the collaborative editing of a text document, and a slight lag in a video call is probably not going to render a conversation incomprehensible or futile. However, when playing music over the Internet, such glitches can prove disastrous.
Recent studies (e.g., Ferguson, 2013, 2015) have shown that, given sufficient Internet connectivity and specific hardware resources, musicians and producers working in different parts of the world are able to collaorate and engage in recording sessions remotely and in real time. Pig- nato and Begany (2015: 121) borrow from Jordan’s (2008) work to help explain how, by extending experience through technology, people’s inter- actions have become increasingly “deterritorialized”, which was certainly the case for the research team in the projects discussed in this chapter.2 In keeping with this, it is also worth invoking here the notion of multilocality (Rodman, 1992), since the participants were clearly in plural, respective locations. Pignato and Begany (2015: 121) note how “multilocated experiences are decentered experiences”, and we describe, in the following, how each participant musician experienced de-centering with a simultaneous feeling of conjoining in the newly curated “virtual” space.
Through low-latency networks and emerging cloud-based workflows (described in greater detail later) that enable musicians/producers to collaborate on the same project/session, real-time, remote music production will soon be a functional reality – and not just the outcome of an elaborate and perhaps esoteric research project – regardless of physical distance. From a commercial perspective, this is very attractive (particularly in the cur- rent economic eco-conscious climate), as it allows for projects to happen without the financial, temporal, logistical, and environmental implications of musicians having to travel or transport equipment to a single physical studio in a specific geographic location. The authors are currently working on a project of this nature in which the goal is to produce an album of original music using low-latency networks and cloud-based collaborations – to date, this project has reached two milestones. First, in November 2016, the team engaged in a highly successful real-time, interactive recording session in which musicians at Edinburgh Napier University played with a drummer at the Royal College of Music in London (separated by a distance of approximately 415 miles). Second, in July 2017, we achieved what we believe to be the world’s first real-time transatlantic recording session, in which musicians at Edinburgh Napier University collaborated and recorded in real-time with a remote guitar player at Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Despite many developments in the use of network technologies in this emerging area, more work needs to be done to investigate the relation- ships between technical (i.e., hardware and software) and musical (i.e., musicians’ experiences and communication) aspects when working in this way if it is going to be taken up more widely. This chapter is an exploration of the authors’ experiences in this area and the ways in which our workflow influences our perspectives on music production. We continue by presenting a brief historical overview of attempts at network performance and the current state of development in this area, before examining potential technical issues that may affect the quality and usability of the recorded material. Finally a discussion is presented, drawing on our experiences of engaging in the project and the ways in which these were impacted by various technical and interpersonal issues (including latency, quality/reliability of visuospatial information, musician/producer communication, and social interaction). We discuss how these affected the experiences of the musicians and producers participating and suggest some potential implications for meaningful, creative collaboration using the technologies and methods illustrated herein.
People in today’s technologically advanced societies frequently engage in almost instantaneous communication with friends and colleagues across physical distance, often in remote locations, in the form of email, SMS, social media, and various messaging apps. We have free-to-use software (such as Skype and Google Hangouts) that allows us to conduct meetings with people anywhere in the world. We employ cloud-based word processor and spreadsheet tools (such as Google Docs) and online file-sharing repositories (such as Dropbox and Google Drive) to facilitate real-time workflows that allow us to collaborative and interact productively with people anywhere on the planet, provided they have an Internet connection. However convenient these systems may be for users, issues impact the functionality of some of the technologies that enable us to work in this way.1 Specifically, we have to wait for files to upload or documents to update, for example; or, in the case of video calls, we deal with imperfections in audio or video signals (or both). In many everyday scenarios, such problems with the usability of these technologies rarely prove catastrophic because users do not typically engage in activities that require actual real-time interaction. That is to say that a short delay in file transfer is unlikely significantly to hinder the collaborative editing of a text document, and a slight lag in a video call is probably not going to render a conversation incomprehensible or futile. However, when playing music over the Internet, such glitches can prove disastrous.
Recent studies (e.g., Ferguson, 2013, 2015) have shown that, given sufficient Internet connectivity and specific hardware resources, musicians and producers working in different parts of the world are able to collaorate and engage in recording sessions remotely and in real time. Pig- nato and Begany (2015: 121) borrow from Jordan’s (2008) work to help explain how, by extending experience through technology, people’s inter- actions have become increasingly “deterritorialized”, which was certainly the case for the research team in the projects discussed in this chapter.2 In keeping with this, it is also worth invoking here the notion of multilocality (Rodman, 1992), since the participants were clearly in plural, respective locations. Pignato and Begany (2015: 121) note how “multilocated experiences are decentered experiences”, and we describe, in the following, how each participant musician experienced de-centering with a simultaneous feeling of conjoining in the newly curated “virtual” space.
Through low-latency networks and emerging cloud-based workflows (described in greater detail later) that enable musicians/producers to collaborate on the same project/session, real-time, remote music production will soon be a functional reality – and not just the outcome of an elaborate and perhaps esoteric research project – regardless of physical distance. From a commercial perspective, this is very attractive (particularly in the cur- rent economic eco-conscious climate), as it allows for projects to happen without the financial, temporal, logistical, and environmental implications of musicians having to travel or transport equipment to a single physical studio in a specific geographic location. The authors are currently working on a project of this nature in which the goal is to produce an album of original music using low-latency networks and cloud-based collaborations – to date, this project has reached two milestones. First, in November 2016, the team engaged in a highly successful real-time, interactive recording session in which musicians at Edinburgh Napier University played with a drummer at the Royal College of Music in London (separated by a distance of approximately 415 miles). Second, in July 2017, we achieved what we believe to be the world’s first real-time transatlantic recording session, in which musicians at Edinburgh Napier University collaborated and recorded in real-time with a remote guitar player at Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Despite many developments in the use of network technologies in this emerging area, more work needs to be done to investigate the relation- ships between technical (i.e., hardware and software) and musical (i.e., musicians’ experiences and communication) aspects when working in this way if it is going to be taken up more widely. This chapter is an exploration of the authors’ experiences in this area and the ways in which our workflow influences our perspectives on music production. We continue by presenting a brief historical overview of attempts at network performance and the current state of development in this area, before examining potential technical issues that may affect the quality and usability of the recorded material. Finally a discussion is presented, drawing on our experiences of engaging in the project and the ways in which these were impacted by various technical and interpersonal issues (including latency, quality/reliability of visuospatial information, musician/producer communication, and social interaction). We discuss how these affected the experiences of the musicians and producers participating and suggest some potential implications for meaningful, creative collaboration using the technologies and methods illustrated herein.
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With the expanding landscape of and proliferation of activity related to popular music education, philosophies underpinning and informing the assessment of students participating in popular music programs have come to the forefront of... more
With the expanding landscape of and proliferation of activity related to popular music education, philosophies underpinning and informing the assessment of students participating in popular music programs have come to the forefront of discussion. This chapter dis cusses the relationships among music education, higher education, and popular music as commoditized product(s), as well as the context for and a set of (sub)cultural practices, and looks through the lens(es) of authenticity before exploring canon and repertoire in popular music education. It highlights examples of assessment practices in particular popular music education contexts and the ideologies and philosophies that consciously or unconsciously undergird these. The chapter then presents a model of assessment derived from working in an innovative way—called “negotiated assessment” (Kleiman, 2009, p. 2) —with undergraduate arts students across disciplines. The chapter proposes this as one possible broad, inclusive approach to establishing a philosophy of assessment for popular music education.
Keywords: popular music education, negotiated assessment, music education assessment, philosophy of assessment, higher education
Keywords: popular music education, negotiated assessment, music education assessment, philosophy of assessment, higher education
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Gareth Dylan Smith emphasizes identity realization, aesthetic experience, and eudaimonia, urging consideration of social, political, economic, and cultural power as core to the transformative potential of music education.
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In the film School of Rock, the disgruntled, energetic music teacher character, Mr. S., jokes over lunch with other staff, saying that, having failed an audition to play for the Polish Philharmonic, “I just decided to give up on myself... more
In the film School of Rock, the disgruntled, energetic music teacher character, Mr. S., jokes over lunch with other staff, saying that, having failed an audition to play for the Polish Philharmonic, “I just decided to give up on myself and become a teacher, because those that can’t do, teach . . . am I right?” (Rudin and Linklater 2003). His comment is met with awkward laughter from the other staff, who recognize that teachers are sometimes seen as failed professionals in other domains. Mr. S is an impoverished guitarist, teaching under false pretenses primarily to make rent money, having been kicked out of his rock band. He finds during the film that teaching is actually in many ways more rewarding than only pursuing his fading dream of rock stardom, and in the final scenes he sets up his own music school. Mr. Holland’s Opus (Field et al. 1995) is a more deliberate parable, in which the protagonist is a composer who discovers how a fulfilling, complex life as a high school teacher and father leads to neglect of his work as a composer. At the end of the thirty-year arc of that film’s narrative, the piece of music that Mr. Holland has been trying to write since the start of the film is performed by current and former students. His “opus,” then, is both the musical composition and, moreover, his impactful life’s work as a school music teacher.
The view of teachers as unsuccessful musicians, although widespread, is not ubiquitous nor upheld by evidence. It simultaneously celebrates the notion of the professional or career musician (Hallam and Gaunt 2012; Rowley et al. 2015; Smith 2013) while downplaying the work of musicians as teachers. This discourse is reinforced in popular public consciousness by legislation and attitudes from governments seen across education sectors internationally, where teachers are increasingly distrusted, held accountable to and, moreover, punish- able by measures of evaluation that include performance-related pay, teaching...
The view of teachers as unsuccessful musicians, although widespread, is not ubiquitous nor upheld by evidence. It simultaneously celebrates the notion of the professional or career musician (Hallam and Gaunt 2012; Rowley et al. 2015; Smith 2013) while downplaying the work of musicians as teachers. This discourse is reinforced in popular public consciousness by legislation and attitudes from governments seen across education sectors internationally, where teachers are increasingly distrusted, held accountable to and, moreover, punish- able by measures of evaluation that include performance-related pay, teaching...
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In the following pages I discuss becoming musical through incorporating popular music into the school music classroom. I present a brief account of my own musical becoming, and in so doing I invite readers to reflect on the manifold ways... more
In the following pages I discuss becoming musical through incorporating popular music into the school music classroom. I present a brief account of my own musical becoming, and in so doing I invite readers to reflect on the manifold ways in which musicians are, and are not, musical. “Popular music” is a catchall term for a diverse array of musicking practices, so I urge readers to be cautious of interpretations of literature in our field that can appear to obscure the tremendous variety in popular music, and the many ways of engaging with learning it. This short essay is necessarily incomplete in its representation of popular music and musicians, so I encourage you to critique my thoughts and fill in the blanks, in the hope that you may be able to use this piece to help frame your own considerations around popular music learning in the classroom.
I have worked as a professional musician for almost 20 years, mostly playing drums in rock bands and musical theatre productions. My preference is for music that I can play very loudly and with a tremendous application of physical energy. I play guitar badly at home, and I am (at the time of writing, and for reasons still somewhat unclear even to me) about to purchase a ukulele with a view of learning to play over the next couple of years. I play bodhrán under-confidently in Irish music sésiuns when I get the chance, I have vague plans to return one day to choral singing, and I am generally overawed by the accomplishment of the musicians with whom I get to hang out with.
I “became musical” through experiences in a variety of contexts, and was very fortunate that my parents and teachers emphasized the importance of learning to make music. I studied recorder at school for a couple of years from age six, then took clarinet in group and individual lessons from age ten to age 20. I played clarinet in a concert band for seven years (and eventually drummed with that band for a season), and in an orchestra for two years around the same time I was made to sing madrigals in a school choir. I taught myself guitar, strumming chords that friends showed me, and found it impossible to pick individual strings or play melodies. I took piano lessons and graded exams157 so I could get into music college as a clarinetist and drummer. I played snare drum very badly in a Boys’ Brigade marching band for six years, and took drum kit lessons for five years from a former Royal Air Force band percussionist, also leading to graded exams. I then studied for a classical music degree at a UK conservatoire, and took principal study jazz drums as part of the program at the discretion of the Head of Woodwind, Brass, and Percussion. Alongside all this, from the age of 12 to the time of writing, I have played in rock bands in almost all of my spare time. Nearly everything I have learned about playing in rock bands, I learned by playing in rock bands.
I do not have much of an ear (or brain, or body) for harmony. I can hear more obvious chord changes with ease, and can after many attempts usually replicate them on a guitar (albeit with incorrect voicings). I just have not spent a great deal of time developing this aspect of my musicianship, since instruments with the most harmonic and melodic potential suit people with different temperaments and predispositions to mine. I like to move big, and do not take well to tasks that involve fine, delicate motor control (with the possible exception of typing, although I do this with all the subtlety and finesse of an angered bull in a china shop). My abortive music college career as a clarinet player confirmed that I do not express myself well through tiny movement of my fingers. Drumming in rock bands, on the other hand, suits me down to the ground.
I have played drums in scores of popular music bands, usually with an inclination towards rock, blues, or heavy metal. Without achieving tremendous commercial success—something that eludes most of even the very best musicians writing, recording, and performing in popular styles—being an (un)popular musician requires a terrifically high level of commitment in terms of time, energy, and financial resources, to a thing that will provide probably no financial return on investment, and which will bring pleasure to few but the project’s participants. But I always have the best time making (un)popular music, because the people with whom I do it are fully committed to making the best music they can. The experience is usually its own reward—and that includes every mid-week, late-night rehearsal experience in a dingy, damp, carpeted cave of a “studio” in the bowels of a former railway station, and the drives halfway across the city for hours in stationary traffic to play for 20 minutes in the freezing cold in an abandoned shopping mall for a handful of drunken hippies who can’t wait for the chance to pogo like it’s still 1976.
I have worked as a professional musician for almost 20 years, mostly playing drums in rock bands and musical theatre productions. My preference is for music that I can play very loudly and with a tremendous application of physical energy. I play guitar badly at home, and I am (at the time of writing, and for reasons still somewhat unclear even to me) about to purchase a ukulele with a view of learning to play over the next couple of years. I play bodhrán under-confidently in Irish music sésiuns when I get the chance, I have vague plans to return one day to choral singing, and I am generally overawed by the accomplishment of the musicians with whom I get to hang out with.
I “became musical” through experiences in a variety of contexts, and was very fortunate that my parents and teachers emphasized the importance of learning to make music. I studied recorder at school for a couple of years from age six, then took clarinet in group and individual lessons from age ten to age 20. I played clarinet in a concert band for seven years (and eventually drummed with that band for a season), and in an orchestra for two years around the same time I was made to sing madrigals in a school choir. I taught myself guitar, strumming chords that friends showed me, and found it impossible to pick individual strings or play melodies. I took piano lessons and graded exams157 so I could get into music college as a clarinetist and drummer. I played snare drum very badly in a Boys’ Brigade marching band for six years, and took drum kit lessons for five years from a former Royal Air Force band percussionist, also leading to graded exams. I then studied for a classical music degree at a UK conservatoire, and took principal study jazz drums as part of the program at the discretion of the Head of Woodwind, Brass, and Percussion. Alongside all this, from the age of 12 to the time of writing, I have played in rock bands in almost all of my spare time. Nearly everything I have learned about playing in rock bands, I learned by playing in rock bands.
I do not have much of an ear (or brain, or body) for harmony. I can hear more obvious chord changes with ease, and can after many attempts usually replicate them on a guitar (albeit with incorrect voicings). I just have not spent a great deal of time developing this aspect of my musicianship, since instruments with the most harmonic and melodic potential suit people with different temperaments and predispositions to mine. I like to move big, and do not take well to tasks that involve fine, delicate motor control (with the possible exception of typing, although I do this with all the subtlety and finesse of an angered bull in a china shop). My abortive music college career as a clarinet player confirmed that I do not express myself well through tiny movement of my fingers. Drumming in rock bands, on the other hand, suits me down to the ground.
I have played drums in scores of popular music bands, usually with an inclination towards rock, blues, or heavy metal. Without achieving tremendous commercial success—something that eludes most of even the very best musicians writing, recording, and performing in popular styles—being an (un)popular musician requires a terrifically high level of commitment in terms of time, energy, and financial resources, to a thing that will provide probably no financial return on investment, and which will bring pleasure to few but the project’s participants. But I always have the best time making (un)popular music, because the people with whom I do it are fully committed to making the best music they can. The experience is usually its own reward—and that includes every mid-week, late-night rehearsal experience in a dingy, damp, carpeted cave of a “studio” in the bowels of a former railway station, and the drives halfway across the city for hours in stationary traffic to play for 20 minutes in the freezing cold in an abandoned shopping mall for a handful of drunken hippies who can’t wait for the chance to pogo like it’s still 1976.
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In this chapter I describe my career trajectory as a musician, teacher and academic, framing an instinct for criticality and the pursuit of my personal agenda through the Aristotelian concept of Eudaimonism. Drawing together strands from... more
In this chapter I describe my career trajectory as a musician, teacher and academic, framing an instinct for criticality and the pursuit of my personal agenda through the Aristotelian concept of Eudaimonism. Drawing together strands from punk, and anarchist and critical pedagogies, I discuss my prior experiences of learning, my writing practice, and the teaching that I do through three themes in punk pedagogical praxis: performativity, autodidactism, and experience. The chapter combines understandings of a punk pedagogical ethos with wider historical and contemporary calls for individual empowerment through re-envisioning democratic ideals. The chapter closes by placing punk pedagogy within the social justice education agenda, calling upon teachers and academics to embrace the potential of effecting and enacting meaningful change through their lives and work. Let us go forth and be punk.
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The author introduces himself as a popular musician making unpopular music. He is a drummer, living his life according to the Aritostelian concept of eudaimonism, which he explains as a socio-psychological construct. The author reviews... more
The author introduces himself as a popular musician making unpopular music. He is a drummer, living his life according to the Aritostelian concept of eudaimonism, which he explains as a socio-psychological construct. The author reviews literature on identity, fulfillment, work, play, and leisure, before presenting findings from interviews with 11 other contemporary musicians. Their accounts are discussed under the headings of “motivation,” “making music,” “making time,” and “is it leisure?” with reference to the constructs of eudaimonism and serious leisure. The author then considers practical and ideological challenges posed by pursuit of the daimon, critiquing eudaimonism as both opposed to and inseparably bound up with the pervasive neoliberal pact in today’s Western societies. In conclusion, the author highlights the complexity of eudaimonsim, suggesting that, in combination with a reconsideration of leisure, the concept might help scholars and others to better understand success and the meanings of lives lived in music.
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Roger Mantie (2015, 169), writing about an American context, observes that “In the first half of the 20th century the learning and teaching of music was connected with an appreciation of leisure and recreation, aspects viewed as central... more
Roger Mantie (2015, 169), writing about an American context, observes that “In the first half of the 20th century the learning and teaching of music was connected with an appreciation of leisure and recreation, aspects viewed as central to ‘the good life’ and the ‘art of living.’ ” He goes on to note, however, that “leisure and recreation do not currently register as the proper concerns of music educators” (170). In this chapter we argue, simiarly, that making music for purposes of leisure is not valued highly within the formal construct of many English secondary school music classrooms. While we acknowledge that this is a concern in other territories (Kratus 2007; Music Learning Profiles Project forthcoming), we concentrate on England for the purposes of this chapter.
The focus of our discussion is Musical Futures (MF),1 an organization “with a charitable purpose to transform, engage and inspire people through making music that is meaningful to them” (Musical Futures 2015). MF provides resources to schools and school teachers, including training in music pedagogy, continued professional development, and a range of tools for use in the music classroom. We explore the impact that the informal making and learning of music can have on teenagers’ social, personal, and emotional development and how bringing leisure-oriented musicking practices into schools can help to improve students’ overall perceptions of and attitudes toward school in general, and their identities and agency into the future (Wright 2010). We also discuss the transformative effect MF can have on teachers who implement its strategies and we explore conflicts that can arise from bringing informal “real-world” learning approaches into the classroom.
Drawing on empirical data gathered from two studies on MF take-up and long-term impact with teachers and students, we present evidence from one school as an example
of how an MF pedagogical approach has provided a positive influence. We further out- line how a global community of practice is developing around MF as part of an international movement to improve the provision of music education in schools—what Randles (2015a, 195) refers to as a dynamic “change movement.” Thus, we propose that educators, parents, students, and other stakeholders conspire to construe, construct, create, and curate liminal music education spaces (Smith and Shafighian 2014) through MF pedagogy, aspiring to music making as leisure in and beyond school music provision.
The focus of our discussion is Musical Futures (MF),1 an organization “with a charitable purpose to transform, engage and inspire people through making music that is meaningful to them” (Musical Futures 2015). MF provides resources to schools and school teachers, including training in music pedagogy, continued professional development, and a range of tools for use in the music classroom. We explore the impact that the informal making and learning of music can have on teenagers’ social, personal, and emotional development and how bringing leisure-oriented musicking practices into schools can help to improve students’ overall perceptions of and attitudes toward school in general, and their identities and agency into the future (Wright 2010). We also discuss the transformative effect MF can have on teachers who implement its strategies and we explore conflicts that can arise from bringing informal “real-world” learning approaches into the classroom.
Drawing on empirical data gathered from two studies on MF take-up and long-term impact with teachers and students, we present evidence from one school as an example
of how an MF pedagogical approach has provided a positive influence. We further out- line how a global community of practice is developing around MF as part of an international movement to improve the provision of music education in schools—what Randles (2015a, 195) refers to as a dynamic “change movement.” Thus, we propose that educators, parents, students, and other stakeholders conspire to construe, construct, create, and curate liminal music education spaces (Smith and Shafighian 2014) through MF pedagogy, aspiring to music making as leisure in and beyond school music provision.
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The chapter discusses the centrality of music making to the lives of young people, framing teenagers’ out-of-school music making and attendant identity realization as leisure activities. It presents arguments for including in school music... more
The chapter discusses the centrality of music making to the lives of young people, framing teenagers’ out-of-school music making and attendant identity realization as leisure activities. It presents arguments for including in school music classrooms the music that students enjoy outside of school. It describes Musical Futures, an approach to informal music learning developed from understanding how popular musicians learn and adopting these practices for the music classroom. Citing examples of nationwide research on Musical Futures from secondary schools in England, the chapter balances benefits and challenges of adopting the approach, and considers implications of a focus in school on the process rather than the product of music making. The authors argue that framing and aspiring to music making as leisure through this particular pedagogical approach could stand to benefit students, teachers, schools, and society.
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Cultural Capital(s) and Symbolic Violence in Higher Popular Music Education This paper critiques higher music education, with a particular focus on higher popular music education (HPME) in the UK. Undergraduate degrees are increasingly... more
Cultural Capital(s) and Symbolic Violence in Higher Popular Music Education
This paper critiques higher music education, with a particular focus on higher popular music education (HPME) in the UK. Undergraduate degrees are increasingly available through vocational training in popular music with a range of foci including performance, songwriting, business, production, technology, and tour management. As government requires higher education institutions to produce annual employment statistics, colleges strive for high levels of graduate job placement in an industry that is notoriously unjust, sexist, and undemocratic, not least through its perpetuation and deepening of segregation and discrimination through overt attempts to define individuals and groups of people through heavily stylized, weakly constructed, narrowly construed, and heavily marketed and promoted stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, and “race”. The marketplace for employment in popular music is highly competitive. By helping students to achieve in HPME, faculty and institutions subscribe to the aforementioned injustices, and we set graduates up against one another and against other members of society in a global competition to “succeed” and to earn more money. In doing so we reduce the opportunities and quality of life of those who succeed less well, in wealthy nations and in the “developing” world, upon the colonization and pillage of whose natural, economic, social and cultural resources “civilized” Western societies and institutions continue to thrive.
This paper addresses the symbolic violence inherent in the system of “higher” education, whose very name perpetuates social stratification and embeds historically situated socio-cultural structures that value (and, therefore, devalue) the cultural capital of social agents. By working in, subscribing to, and writing (exclusively) for a system that so blatantly celebrates and contributes to a false and cruel hierarchy, scholars should approach with caution the compulsion to write and to speak about injustice and seeking greater democracy, when everything we do and stand for further entrenches the status quo. The cultural capital(s) that higher music education jealously guards, and the symbolic violence (including, for instance through the writing, editing, selective distribution and prohibitive pricing of academic books, and the esoteric, self-serving inaccessibility of conferences) through which it maintains its iron grip on the structures and systems required to uphold it need to be uprooted, reconstructed, and redistributed.
If music are to be genuinely popular, those of us working in positions of privilege in higher music education must be ready to step aside, and take political action to allow people access to music, permitting conditions for musicking by and for all. Popular music ought be freed from the neoliberal, globalizing capitalist imperatives to which few who enjoy or make popular music actively subscribe. Whatever democracy, agency, or justice we seek to achieve for students of music, it is the responsibility of faculty members in higher education to promote critically aware, global citizenship amongst those in our care. To fail to do so only serves the neo-liberal capitalist ideology insidiously gaining control of higher education institutions and systems, and makes a mockery of any aspirations to democracy, diversity and social justice.
This paper critiques higher music education, with a particular focus on higher popular music education (HPME) in the UK. Undergraduate degrees are increasingly available through vocational training in popular music with a range of foci including performance, songwriting, business, production, technology, and tour management. As government requires higher education institutions to produce annual employment statistics, colleges strive for high levels of graduate job placement in an industry that is notoriously unjust, sexist, and undemocratic, not least through its perpetuation and deepening of segregation and discrimination through overt attempts to define individuals and groups of people through heavily stylized, weakly constructed, narrowly construed, and heavily marketed and promoted stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, and “race”. The marketplace for employment in popular music is highly competitive. By helping students to achieve in HPME, faculty and institutions subscribe to the aforementioned injustices, and we set graduates up against one another and against other members of society in a global competition to “succeed” and to earn more money. In doing so we reduce the opportunities and quality of life of those who succeed less well, in wealthy nations and in the “developing” world, upon the colonization and pillage of whose natural, economic, social and cultural resources “civilized” Western societies and institutions continue to thrive.
This paper addresses the symbolic violence inherent in the system of “higher” education, whose very name perpetuates social stratification and embeds historically situated socio-cultural structures that value (and, therefore, devalue) the cultural capital of social agents. By working in, subscribing to, and writing (exclusively) for a system that so blatantly celebrates and contributes to a false and cruel hierarchy, scholars should approach with caution the compulsion to write and to speak about injustice and seeking greater democracy, when everything we do and stand for further entrenches the status quo. The cultural capital(s) that higher music education jealously guards, and the symbolic violence (including, for instance through the writing, editing, selective distribution and prohibitive pricing of academic books, and the esoteric, self-serving inaccessibility of conferences) through which it maintains its iron grip on the structures and systems required to uphold it need to be uprooted, reconstructed, and redistributed.
If music are to be genuinely popular, those of us working in positions of privilege in higher music education must be ready to step aside, and take political action to allow people access to music, permitting conditions for musicking by and for all. Popular music ought be freed from the neoliberal, globalizing capitalist imperatives to which few who enjoy or make popular music actively subscribe. Whatever democracy, agency, or justice we seek to achieve for students of music, it is the responsibility of faculty members in higher education to promote critically aware, global citizenship amongst those in our care. To fail to do so only serves the neo-liberal capitalist ideology insidiously gaining control of higher education institutions and systems, and makes a mockery of any aspirations to democracy, diversity and social justice.
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The aim of this chapter is to use Bourdieu’s theory of ‘masculine domination’ (Bordieu, 2001) to explore the fields of popular music performance, entrepreneurship and music education as they intersect at a music college where I work. The... more
The aim of this chapter is to use Bourdieu’s theory of ‘masculine domination’ (Bordieu, 2001) to explore the fields of popular music performance, entrepreneurship and music education as they intersect at a music college where I work. The college is one of a handful of small, privately owned UK colleges offering education in popular music. With a few exceptions (for example, McKinna, 2014; Smith, 2011, 2013b and c; Smith and Shafighian, 2013) this sector remains largely uncritiqued in scholarly discourse. Lamb et al (2002) call for more scholarship that ‘challenges’ music education, rather than merely reporting on it, and Rawolle and Lingard (2013) argue that a reflexive, critical stance is invaluable. Thus, I feel an ethical and pedagogical obligation to write this chapter, located in sociology of music and a culture of healthy and vibrant critique of current practices, structures and assumptions in higher music education (for example, Burnard [ed.] 2013, Carey and Lebler, 2012; Feichas, 2010; Gaunt and Westerlund [eds], 2013; Lebler, 2007, 2008; Smith, 2013c). After presenting my perspective and my methodological approach, I summarise key aspects of Bourdieu’s framework before proposing examples of masculine domination in practice in popular music performance, entrepreneurship and music education. I then briefly critique five elements of the college’s culture before suggesting implications for the music education profession. This chapter proposes a use of a Bourdieusian critical framework for exploring culture and practices in and beyond an institution where, arguably, “we seem to be more prone to acting our way into implicit thinking than we are able to think our way explicitly into acting.” (Bruner, 1996, p. 79).
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This paper considers innovating on networks as they pertain to marketing, promoting and selling independent music. The focus is on emerging musicians, although without loss of generality. That is, it is believed that the proposed... more
This paper considers innovating on networks as they pertain to marketing, promoting and selling independent music. The focus is on emerging musicians, although without loss of generality. That is, it is believed that the proposed framework and application is applicable across the entertainment sector and beyond. Following the Introduction, Section II of the paper sets forth key concepts including a seven-point business process. The authors’ understanding of network under consideration is described and the concept of value is introduced. Section III places the primary focus on “orchestration” defined in terms of efforts to achieve success by finding and managing creative combinations for value. Section IV of the paper elaborates on the artist’s touch points and value in the context of orchestration. Section V offers a summary and conclusions.
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This chapter focuses on a project organized by one of the authors to facilitate and observe development of creativities among a small number of popular music graduates of the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) in London,... more
This chapter focuses on a project organized by one of the authors to facilitate and observe development of creativities among a small number of popular music graduates of the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) in London, England, where the authors work as teachers and programme leaders. The project is typical, in scale and duration, of initiatives that the authors and others on the programme leadership (middle management) team at the ICMP are encouraged to incorporate into their roles, developing their own creativities as teachers and educational leaders at the school. This forms part of a wider culture of institutional creativity at the ICMP in which programme leaders are enabled to effect changes with relative ease and speed. The authors teach across programmes, on modules covering aspects of music theory, listening, performance, composition, technology, history, business / entrepreneurship and research. We acknowledge that not all of our peers in the higher music education sector can be as creative on a programme or institutional level. For instance, Kratus (2007) and Williams (2007) have highlighted the self-perpetuating closed circuit of traditional music education in the US that can frustrate creativities on every level – institutionally, down to those of individual students and teachers.
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This chapter focuses on two modules of a two-year Foundation Degree (FdA) in Creative Musicianship at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, UK. This Foundation Degree was established to cater to a group of popular... more
This chapter focuses on two modules of a two-year Foundation Degree (FdA) in Creative Musicianship at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, UK. This Foundation Degree was established to cater to a group of popular musicians whose needs it was perceived were not sufficiently addressed by the Institute’s existing BMus offering providing vocational skills training. The FdA is aimed at musicians in bands, emphasising different types of collaboration on two modules. These are ‘Live Performance Workshop’ and ‘Personal Management’. The modules embody notions of student-centred learning that have been garnering attention throughout the music sector in higher education, empowering students to explore, develop and express their musical personalities in a nurturing and supportive environment, and engaging with the sorts of collaborative relationships that characterise much of practice in popular music outside of the academy.
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Symposium on Music Education, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil.
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Universidade Católica de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
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20 years ago I realized the holy spirit I was channeling while drumming in the worship band at my church was probably just adrenalin, since I got the same feeling in every good band I played with; in fact, it was usually heightened in... more
20 years ago I realized the holy spirit I was channeling while drumming in the worship band at my church was probably just adrenalin, since I got the same feeling in every good band I played with; in fact, it was usually heightened in non-praise contexts. After exploring drummers’ identities and learning (2013), in recent years I have turned my research inward (Smith 2017, 2019, 2020), exploring feeling, sensation, embodied cognition, liminality and timespace to try to account for my experiences playing drums alone and in bands. In this presentation I use Boyce-Tillman’s (2011) five-part framework of non-religious spirituality to explain aspects of why and how I play drums, leading to suggested takeaways for music learners.
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Drawing from research in phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), aesthetic experience (Shusterman, 2000), somaesthetics (Shusterman, 2008), embodiment in drum set performance (Smith, 2014), philosophy of sound art (Voegelin, 2010), and... more
Drawing from research in phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), aesthetic experience (Shusterman, 2000), somaesthetics (Shusterman, 2008), embodiment in drum set performance (Smith, 2014), philosophy of sound art (Voegelin, 2010), and authenticities in higher popular music education (HPME) (Parkinson & Smith, 2015), this paper explores tensions and challenges around facilitating and assessing ensemble performance in collegiate settings. The presenter is a professional drummer and educator working in HPME in the UK and internationally; as such this paper represents insights from a confluence of experiences in teaching and performance, also drawing on analysis of empirical data from collegiate drummers.
The presenter argues that drummers can face a unique set of challenges in educational settings, and that these may be heightened in the context of HPME because of political, financial and, arguably, ethical imperatives to have students progress from undergraduate programmes into employment. The paper addresses a particular set of issues in ensemble performance, stemming from the fact that the acoustic drum set can be very loud and that, moreover, in order to replicate physical, visual, sonic and other tropes across styles of popular music, it is necessary to play very loudly.
Drummers’ loudness is not an issue in the context of contemporary multi-track recordings, where sound recorded at any level can be mixed to desired levels. Neither is it a problem in the larger performance spaces in which the vast majority of commercial popular music performances occur (Music Venues Trust, 2014), since to be heard adequately in a sports/music arena everything must be highly amplified. However, in collegiate settings where performances – meant to replicate and help students prepare for ‘real-world’ scenarios – frequently take place in rooms just a few meters square, volume is (un)necessarily kept to a healthy low. While guitarists, singers and computer musicians can make physical gestures in these settings identical to those used beyond educational contexts, drummers drastically limit their physical movements in order commensurately to reduce volume. Placing this limitation on (only) drummers impacts on their energy and engagement in performance.
Requiring student drummers always to ‘keep it down’ is akin to asking trainee Olympic runners to walk when training for sprints, or expecting high jumpers to skip over knee-high obstacles in preparation for competitive field events. These widespread educational practices disadvantage current and future generations of drummers, and, in turn, many more musicians and audience members. By assessing and grading musicians on such unbalanced terms, we serve them poorly, and fail in our obligations as educators.
The presenter argues that drummers can face a unique set of challenges in educational settings, and that these may be heightened in the context of HPME because of political, financial and, arguably, ethical imperatives to have students progress from undergraduate programmes into employment. The paper addresses a particular set of issues in ensemble performance, stemming from the fact that the acoustic drum set can be very loud and that, moreover, in order to replicate physical, visual, sonic and other tropes across styles of popular music, it is necessary to play very loudly.
Drummers’ loudness is not an issue in the context of contemporary multi-track recordings, where sound recorded at any level can be mixed to desired levels. Neither is it a problem in the larger performance spaces in which the vast majority of commercial popular music performances occur (Music Venues Trust, 2014), since to be heard adequately in a sports/music arena everything must be highly amplified. However, in collegiate settings where performances – meant to replicate and help students prepare for ‘real-world’ scenarios – frequently take place in rooms just a few meters square, volume is (un)necessarily kept to a healthy low. While guitarists, singers and computer musicians can make physical gestures in these settings identical to those used beyond educational contexts, drummers drastically limit their physical movements in order commensurately to reduce volume. Placing this limitation on (only) drummers impacts on their energy and engagement in performance.
Requiring student drummers always to ‘keep it down’ is akin to asking trainee Olympic runners to walk when training for sprints, or expecting high jumpers to skip over knee-high obstacles in preparation for competitive field events. These widespread educational practices disadvantage current and future generations of drummers, and, in turn, many more musicians and audience members. By assessing and grading musicians on such unbalanced terms, we serve them poorly, and fail in our obligations as educators.
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Research Interests: Popular Music Studies, Popular Music, Performance Studies, Performance, Performance Studies (Music), and 13 morePopular musicology, Eudaimonia, Drums, Psychological eudaimonism, Musical Performance, Musical perfromance, Phenomenology of Music, Phenomenology of Musical Performance, Drum Kit, Drum Set, Eudaimonism, Western kit drumming, and Higher Popular Muisc Education
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Students, a graduate and one faculty member from undergraduate programs in popular music performance, song-writing, and creative musicianship at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England present a 30-minute series... more
Students, a graduate and one faculty member from undergraduate programs in popular music performance, song-writing, and creative musicianship at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England present a 30-minute series of lightning talks that address a range of issues surrounding women, gender, and feminism in the popular music industry and business. Popular music is burgeoning in the academy internationally, with many programs in higher popular music education (HPME) having a strongly vocational, instrumental focus aimed at preparing students for jobs and careers in the popular music sector (Parkinson & Smith 2015). This timely session brings together theoretical perspectives and discursive presentation of practical issues highlighted by and relevant to presenters studying and teaching at the Institute.
Talks will focus on:
• Feminists and feminism in mainstream print journalism, celebrity feminists, constructing and construing multiple genders, Douglas’s (2010) “enlightened sexism;”
• Drummers in the music industry print and video media, role models for females, femininity in drumming, perceptions by and of a drumming female, Bourdieu (2001) and the gendered drumming habitus;
• Feminist music scenes, gendered oppression and hetero-patriarchy, possibilities for empowerment through activism in grassroots feminist cultural communities, DIY feminist subcultures (Downes 2010).
• Female adolescent identity development and behavior in popular culture, viewed through the lens of individuation (Jung 1933), cultural messages and communities of practice, popular music fandom, empowerment, and the self;
• Career impacts and implications for female popular musicians of sexualization and sexual objectification in music videos and on social media, pornification in popular music videos, and alternatives for females seeking a pop music career.
The session will conclude with discussion of potential implications of issues raised for progam planning and curriculum design, including an invitation for participation from colleagues. As popular music education becomes an increasing focus in literature (e.g. Till et al (eds) 2015, Smith et al (eds) 2016) conferences (APME, ISME, ICMP), on programs and at institutions around the world, the personal, collective and theoretical perspectives presented here aim to frame, highlight, and help progress discussion of these salient contemporary issues.
Talks will focus on:
• Feminists and feminism in mainstream print journalism, celebrity feminists, constructing and construing multiple genders, Douglas’s (2010) “enlightened sexism;”
• Drummers in the music industry print and video media, role models for females, femininity in drumming, perceptions by and of a drumming female, Bourdieu (2001) and the gendered drumming habitus;
• Feminist music scenes, gendered oppression and hetero-patriarchy, possibilities for empowerment through activism in grassroots feminist cultural communities, DIY feminist subcultures (Downes 2010).
• Female adolescent identity development and behavior in popular culture, viewed through the lens of individuation (Jung 1933), cultural messages and communities of practice, popular music fandom, empowerment, and the self;
• Career impacts and implications for female popular musicians of sexualization and sexual objectification in music videos and on social media, pornification in popular music videos, and alternatives for females seeking a pop music career.
The session will conclude with discussion of potential implications of issues raised for progam planning and curriculum design, including an invitation for participation from colleagues. As popular music education becomes an increasing focus in literature (e.g. Till et al (eds) 2015, Smith et al (eds) 2016) conferences (APME, ISME, ICMP), on programs and at institutions around the world, the personal, collective and theoretical perspectives presented here aim to frame, highlight, and help progress discussion of these salient contemporary issues.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Performance Studies, Embodiment, Sociology of Music, Performance Studies (Music), and 7 moreDrumming and Percussion, Music Performance, Phenomenology- Mind/Body Problems/ Merleau-Ponty's Philosophical Thought/Phenomenology and Embodiment, Drums, Musical Performance, Sociology of Popular Music, and Drumming
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This paper questions the extent to which diversity or social justice is sought by, or even possible within, the higher music education sector, with a particular focus on higher popular music education (HPME) in the UK. Undergraduate... more
This paper questions the extent to which diversity or social justice is sought by, or even possible within, the higher music education sector, with a particular focus on higher popular music education (HPME) in the UK. Undergraduate degrees are increasingly available through vocational training in popular music with a range of foci including performance, songwriting, business, production, technology, and tour management. As government requires higher education institutions annually to produce employment statistics, colleges strive for high levels of graduate job placement in an industry that is notoriously unjust, sexist, and undemocratic, not least through its perpetuation and deepening of segregation and discrimination through overt attempts to define individuals and groups of people through heavily stylized, weakly constructed, narrowly construed, and heavily marketed and promoted stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, and “race”. The marketplace for employment in popular music, as in other domains, is highly competitive. By helping students to achieve in HPME, faculty and institutions subscribe to the aforementioned injustices, and we set graduates up against one another and against other members of society in a global competition to “succeed” and to earn more money. In doing so we reduce the opportunities and quality of life of those who succeed less well, in our own nation and in the “developing” world, upon the colonization and pillage of whose natural, economic, social and cultural resources “civilized” Western societies and institutions continue to thrive.
This paperalso explores the symbolic violence inherent in the system of “higher” education, whose very name perpetuates social stratification and embeds historically situated socio-cultural structures that value (and, therefore, devalue) the cultural capital of social agents. By working in, subscribing to and writing (exclusively) for a system that so blatantly celebrates and contributes to a false and cruel hierarchy, scholars should approach with caution the compulsion to write papers and to give talks bemoaning injustice and seeking greater democracy, when everything we do and stand for further entrenches the status quo. The cultural capital that the higher music education sector jealously guards, and the symbolic violence through which it maintains its iron grip on the structures and systems required to uphold it need to be uprooted, reconstructed, and redistributed.
If a music to is to be genuinely popular, those of us working in positions of privilege in higher music education must be ready to step aside, and take political action to allow people access to music, permitting conditions for musicking by and for all. Popular music, if democratized, must be freed from the neoliberal, globalizing capitalist imperatives to which few who enjoy or make popular music actively subscribe. Whatever democracy or justice we seek to achieve for students of music, it is the responsibility of faculty members in higher education to promote critically aware, global citizenship amongst those in our care. To fail to do so only serves the neo-liberal capitalist ideology insidiously gaining control of higher education institutions and systems, and makes a mockery of any aspirations to democracy, diversity and social justice.
This paperalso explores the symbolic violence inherent in the system of “higher” education, whose very name perpetuates social stratification and embeds historically situated socio-cultural structures that value (and, therefore, devalue) the cultural capital of social agents. By working in, subscribing to and writing (exclusively) for a system that so blatantly celebrates and contributes to a false and cruel hierarchy, scholars should approach with caution the compulsion to write papers and to give talks bemoaning injustice and seeking greater democracy, when everything we do and stand for further entrenches the status quo. The cultural capital that the higher music education sector jealously guards, and the symbolic violence through which it maintains its iron grip on the structures and systems required to uphold it need to be uprooted, reconstructed, and redistributed.
If a music to is to be genuinely popular, those of us working in positions of privilege in higher music education must be ready to step aside, and take political action to allow people access to music, permitting conditions for musicking by and for all. Popular music, if democratized, must be freed from the neoliberal, globalizing capitalist imperatives to which few who enjoy or make popular music actively subscribe. Whatever democracy or justice we seek to achieve for students of music, it is the responsibility of faculty members in higher education to promote critically aware, global citizenship amongst those in our care. To fail to do so only serves the neo-liberal capitalist ideology insidiously gaining control of higher education institutions and systems, and makes a mockery of any aspirations to democracy, diversity and social justice.
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Popular music education is becoming firmly established as an academic field, in the UK and internationally. In order to help ensure that scholarship and practice within the field develop in reflexive and ethical ways appropriate to... more
Popular music education is becoming firmly established as an academic field, in the UK and internationally. In order to help ensure that scholarship and practice within the field develop in reflexive and ethical ways appropriate to particular traditions, musics, people and institutional contexts, the authors advocate a discursive and iterative approach to the question of what it means to be “authentic” across higher popular music education (HPME). With reference to current research, policy and industry documentation, the authors present a discussion framed by theories concerning authenticity in the domains of the vocational and academic, employability, music, gender and pedagogy. The authors conclude that institutions and individuals working higher popular music education have a responsibility to place the issue of authenticity at the centre of pedagogy, curriculum design, institutional strategy and disciplinary knowledge share, in order for the field to develop in ways that are beneficial to all involved.
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Musicians are acknowledged to lead complex working lives, often characterized as portfolio careers. The higher music education research literature has tended to focus on preparing students for rich working lives and multiple identity... more
Musicians are acknowledged to lead complex working lives, often characterized as portfolio careers. The higher music education research literature has tended to focus on preparing students for rich working lives and multiple identity realizations across potential roles. Extant literature does not address the area of work-life balance, which this paper begins to explore. The paper is developed from an undergraduate dissertation, the author of which wished better to understand potential challenges around combining her ambitions as a musician and a parent. Rich data are presented, following interviews with professional musicians in London, England, discussing health, portfolio careers and family. The authors conclude that more research is required to gain a deeper understanding of work-life balance for musicians, and that pedagogical approaches in higher music education could more effectively help students to prepare for their futures in a more holistic way.
Keywords: portfolio careers, work-life balance, higher music education, career preparation, undergraduate research.
Keywords: portfolio careers, work-life balance, higher music education, career preparation, undergraduate research.
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Research in music education, and in higher music education especially, increasingly draws and draws on connections between the triple musical and career imperatives of creativity, collaboration, and entrepreneurship (Cartwright, Gillett &... more
Research in music education, and in higher music education especially, increasingly draws and draws on connections between the triple musical and career imperatives of creativity, collaboration, and entrepreneurship (Cartwright, Gillett & Smith 2013, Smith & Shafighian 2013). Conservatoires and university music departments often discuss a “pedagogy for employability” (Smith 2013), and grapple with translating this into advice for students (Gaunt & Westerlund (eds.) 2013). As literature and institutions incorporate more diverse music/education paradigms such as community music and popular musics, there is a need to expand notions of what it is to be a ‘musician’ (Bennett 2008, Cottrell 2004). A portfolio or protean career is the norm for most ‘popular’ musicians, but is unrecognized as a ‘success’ by mainstream media narratives and rhetoric from institutions of higher music education, that tend to emphasize outdated notions of the Romantic, lone artist (performer, conductor, composer, producer, etc.).
This is an age of decreasing opportunities for traditional monetization of music such as unit sales of albums and singles, and even touring for all but the ‘biggest’ acts. We are witnessing, conversely, increasing convergence between entertainment media and multi-platform branding with computer games, film, clothing, and advertising. Narratives from mainstream media, discourse in higher music education, and the literature in popular music studies all risk marginalizing and even disabling true successes such as graduates and students who, sometimes despite their (institutional) education, to forge careers as ‘popular’ musicians.
This is an age of decreasing opportunities for traditional monetization of music such as unit sales of albums and singles, and even touring for all but the ‘biggest’ acts. We are witnessing, conversely, increasing convergence between entertainment media and multi-platform branding with computer games, film, clothing, and advertising. Narratives from mainstream media, discourse in higher music education, and the literature in popular music studies all risk marginalizing and even disabling true successes such as graduates and students who, sometimes despite their (institutional) education, to forge careers as ‘popular’ musicians.
Following Bourdieu’s recognition of the centrality of reflexivity to sociological inquiry, the author, a “popular” musician and music educator, explores from a partially autoethnographic perspective the triadic relationship between the... more
Following Bourdieu’s recognition of the centrality of reflexivity to sociological inquiry, the author, a “popular” musician and music educator, explores from a partially autoethnographic perspective the triadic relationship between the fields of popular music performance (populated by musicians and ‘industry’ professionals), business (investors and entrepreneurs), and private-sector popular music performance education in the UK, where these fields all merge. The presentation centres around the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England, where stakeholders typically engage in practices in at least two of the three identified fields. Teachers are performers, entrepreneurs, shareholders and producers; students are learners, performers, entrepreneurs and teachers; administrators are shareholders, entrepreneurs and teachers. Tensions abound in these symbiotic and conflicting fields. Through the lens of “masculine domination” (Bourdieu 2001), practices and structures in popular music, music business and popular music performance education are discussed in relation to the Institute’s mission, “to inspire, encourage and equip our students to succeed by delivering relevant and innovative education of the highest quality”. Drawing on annual reports, other publicly available data, and personal experience, this paper discusses challenges and tensions in meeting the aims of the mission. To this end, the presenter draws on aspects of Smith’s (2005) “institutional ethnography” and autoethnography (Chang 2008) to address the under-theorized field of poplar music performance education in which, to date “we seem to be more prone to acting our way into implicit thinking than we are able to think our way explicitly into acting” (Bruner, 1996: 79).
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This paper explores the facilitation of creative development at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England. It focuses on a composition and audio recording project from November 2012, undertaken to help develop... more
This paper explores the facilitation of creative development at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England. It focuses on a composition and audio recording project from November 2012, undertaken to help develop understanding of creativities and working practices among contemporary popular musicians, in order that pedagogy and curricula at the institution could best serve the needs of students and alumni in a changing global musical workplace. Renowned US-based fusion group Snarky Puppy collaborated with Institute students and alumni to compose and record a work entitled ‘Creative Destruction’. Data were gathered through various means, including videos of interviews, practice sessions and performances with participating students, alumni and members of Snarky Puppy. Exploring the ‘4 Ps’ – process, person, product and place – the paper focuses on creation and use of liminal space, and the interaction of various individual, curricula, programme-level and institutional creativities. Hopefully this paper will provoke questions regarding a range of creativities in and beyond the particular case study presented.
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In the UK, most music teachers do not study for undergraduate degrees in music education. The norm is to study for a degree in music, and then to add a “top-up” year completing a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) or a Diploma... more
In the UK, most music teachers do not study for undergraduate degrees in music education. The norm is to study for a degree in music, and then to add a “top-up” year completing a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) or a Diploma in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (DTLLS); these both lead to Qualified Teacher Status, which is required to teach music in state-funded schools. Arguably, then, teaching music (or any subject) is a career route that is presented systemically as an after-thought.
In the professional and student music communities there is a wariness around describing oneself as a teacher. As Smith (2013) points out, it is perfectly “acceptable” for a musician to self-define as also a record producer or sound engineer; the discrete, highly complex skill-sets required for those roles are not seen to detract from the core business of performance expertise. However, if one admits to being a teacher, this can be tantamount to admitting defeat. Presumably it is for this reason that the UK Musicians’ Union has a membership option not for music teachers, but for “musicians who teach”.
Against this backdrop of setting musicians up to avoid, hide or even regret identities as music teachers, the presenter considers the realization of multiple identities using the Snowball Self model, and emphasizes the importance for musicians, and especially student musicians about to embark on protean, portfolio careers, of seeing “success” in music as a plethora of possibilities.
In the professional and student music communities there is a wariness around describing oneself as a teacher. As Smith (2013) points out, it is perfectly “acceptable” for a musician to self-define as also a record producer or sound engineer; the discrete, highly complex skill-sets required for those roles are not seen to detract from the core business of performance expertise. However, if one admits to being a teacher, this can be tantamount to admitting defeat. Presumably it is for this reason that the UK Musicians’ Union has a membership option not for music teachers, but for “musicians who teach”.
Against this backdrop of setting musicians up to avoid, hide or even regret identities as music teachers, the presenter considers the realization of multiple identities using the Snowball Self model, and emphasizes the importance for musicians, and especially student musicians about to embark on protean, portfolio careers, of seeing “success” in music as a plethora of possibilities.
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Students in higher music education institutions and programs are increasingly encouraged to be entrepreneurial, and to plan for portfolio careers in the music industry (Hallam and Gaunt, 2012; Bennett, 2008, 2013), yet this emphasis... more
Students in higher music education institutions and programs are increasingly encouraged to be entrepreneurial, and to plan for portfolio careers in the music industry (Hallam and Gaunt, 2012; Bennett, 2008, 2013), yet this emphasis exists in tension with prevailing and models of success perpetuated by educational institutions, mainstream media, and scholarship in popular music studies (Smith, 2013). Success as a popular musician is construed by institutions in terms of a music industry model which has since the 1930s created and publicized “popular” musicians playing overtly commercial music produced and marketed for consumption as commodity in a mass consumer market. This construction of success exists in direct contrast with the paragons of pedagogic authority (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) exemplified (implicitly and explicitly) in the teaching faculty at higher music education institutions, many of whom are, by contrast, unpopular in terms of the market share of their musical output (Smith, 2013). Alumni, students, and faculty members who are foregrounded in institutional advertising and marketing are those who appear to fit most easily with outdated, received notions of success in popular music (Parkinson, 2014), despite this paradigm existing in open conflict with the stated aims of such institutions to be, and/or to provide education that is innovative and relevant for students today (ICMP, 2013).
This paper presents case studies of two new businesses – Caramel Music and Lemongrass Productions – begun in 2013 by senior-year students at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England. These young start-ups are exemplars of “entrepreneurial creativity” (Burnard, 2012), “orchestration” (Cartwright and Smith, 2014), and “collaborative innovation networks” (Gloor, 2006), typifying alternative approaches to the business of music (Netto, 2012). These start-ups are discussed using the model of the Four P’s (Hickey and Webster, 2001) – person, process, product, place – also introducing a key “fifth P”: problematization. This “fifth P”, largely absent from discourse in higher popular music education to date, is essential if the sector is move beyond chasing and adhering to myths of a largely irrelevant, tired and inaccessible music industry. Through data collected from company documentation and in interviews with stakeholders at Caramel Music and Lemongrass Productions, the author suggests ways in which the approaches taken by these companies challenge and problematize curricula, pedagogy, and conceptualizations of the music “industry” and success across higher popular music education and scholarship. In the context of vocational, commercial training in popular music, there is often pressure to prepare students for employment (Smith, 2013; Parkinson, 2014); these two new business models highlight the value in critical engagement with the past and present, encouraging students, faculty and institutions to be creative with their music and their futures.
This paper presents case studies of two new businesses – Caramel Music and Lemongrass Productions – begun in 2013 by senior-year students at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England. These young start-ups are exemplars of “entrepreneurial creativity” (Burnard, 2012), “orchestration” (Cartwright and Smith, 2014), and “collaborative innovation networks” (Gloor, 2006), typifying alternative approaches to the business of music (Netto, 2012). These start-ups are discussed using the model of the Four P’s (Hickey and Webster, 2001) – person, process, product, place – also introducing a key “fifth P”: problematization. This “fifth P”, largely absent from discourse in higher popular music education to date, is essential if the sector is move beyond chasing and adhering to myths of a largely irrelevant, tired and inaccessible music industry. Through data collected from company documentation and in interviews with stakeholders at Caramel Music and Lemongrass Productions, the author suggests ways in which the approaches taken by these companies challenge and problematize curricula, pedagogy, and conceptualizations of the music “industry” and success across higher popular music education and scholarship. In the context of vocational, commercial training in popular music, there is often pressure to prepare students for employment (Smith, 2013; Parkinson, 2014); these two new business models highlight the value in critical engagement with the past and present, encouraging students, faculty and institutions to be creative with their music and their futures.
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The researcher is a drummer, based in London. Presenting data from an emic, cultural-psychological study of teenage and adult drummers, the researcher explores his and others’ individual senses of ethnic British identities as... more
The researcher is a drummer, based in London. Presenting data from an emic, cultural-psychological study of teenage and adult drummers, the researcher explores his and others’ individual senses of ethnic British identities as drummers.
Interviews were conducted with 27of drummers in London to address the question: ‘how are drummers drummers?’ 100 additional drummers completed questionnaires. Responses indicated that ‘ethnicity’ was, on the surface, of little or no importance to drummers. Drummers were mostly fairly eclectic in their approach to their craft, using musics as resources in their respecitve creativities (Burnard 2012) and musicalities (Smith & Shafighian 2013). Adult interviewees revealed that their sense of who they are as drummers is often deeply connected to a sense of national heritage in the art-form. For teenagers, ethnicity seemed less geographically centred, and more connected to other drummers regardless of nationality or ‘ethnicity’.
The author shares from personal experience situational synonymizing of British-ness and drumming, and concludes that a British national identity is perhaps latent for all drummers, if seldom and accidentally realized. Through the new socio-cultural-psychological model of the Snowball Self, the author explores meta-identities, contextual identities, passive and active identity realization, and discusses implications of construing and constructing British musical ethnicities in contexts of performance and higher music education.
Interviews were conducted with 27of drummers in London to address the question: ‘how are drummers drummers?’ 100 additional drummers completed questionnaires. Responses indicated that ‘ethnicity’ was, on the surface, of little or no importance to drummers. Drummers were mostly fairly eclectic in their approach to their craft, using musics as resources in their respecitve creativities (Burnard 2012) and musicalities (Smith & Shafighian 2013). Adult interviewees revealed that their sense of who they are as drummers is often deeply connected to a sense of national heritage in the art-form. For teenagers, ethnicity seemed less geographically centred, and more connected to other drummers regardless of nationality or ‘ethnicity’.
The author shares from personal experience situational synonymizing of British-ness and drumming, and concludes that a British national identity is perhaps latent for all drummers, if seldom and accidentally realized. Through the new socio-cultural-psychological model of the Snowball Self, the author explores meta-identities, contextual identities, passive and active identity realization, and discusses implications of construing and constructing British musical ethnicities in contexts of performance and higher music education.
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The presenter – a drummer in punk, blues, and riff-rock bands – explores the real-time, spatial, embodied experience of playing the drums, in an attempt to convey the essence of what it feels like to make music on the instrument, alone... more
The presenter – a drummer in punk, blues, and riff-rock bands – explores the real-time, spatial, embodied experience of playing the drums, in an attempt to convey the essence of what it feels like to make music on the instrument, alone and with others, in various musical situations. The presenter draws on audio, video, metaphor, analogy and rich, intimate personal descriptions to convey the intangible – but known and, to many, familiar – sense of what it is to be a drummer in time, body and space. He uses the writing of Merleau-Ponty as a framework to discuss the ‘re-creation and re-constitution of the world [and of music] at every moment’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945: 240). Also referencing ‘trancing’ (Becker, 2004), ‘groove’ (Feld and Keil, 1994), ‘listening’ (Jean-Luc Nancy, 2002), and the ‘magic ride’ (Hart, 1990), the presenter argues that a phenomenological lens is an essential element in understanding the art of drumming. Evidence from other musical instruments and disciplines is considered to build the case that such a view of how music is realised may be crucial to understanding musical experiences in cultures around the world, including in popular music where the drum kit and its emulation retain central roles.
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Preface to the original publication, by Brian Roberts, editor of the proceedings: Something extraordinary occurred in July 2007 when a collection of scholars met for four days in the Senate Chambers of Memorial University. Tis was the... more
Preface to the original publication, by Brian Roberts, editor of the proceedings:
Something extraordinary occurred in July 2007 when a collection of scholars met for four days in the Senate Chambers of Memorial University. Tis was the fifth symposium on the sociology of music education. It was clearly the largest and the program suggested that it was also the strongest academically as well. Several of the participants had attended some of the previous four symposia so there was a strong feeling of collegial ownership and a substantial excitement to welcome the newcomers to the group. The first of this series of symposia was held at the University of Oklahoma in April of 1995. It was the brainchild of Hildegard Froehlich, Stephen Paul and Roger Rideout. It was an invitation only affair that brought together many of the small community of scholars who were re-searching in the sociology of music education field. A spark there ignited this small tradition. Ten in April of 1999 we met again in Oklahoma, followed in April of 2003 in Denton at the University of North Texas and then in October 2005 at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Tis solid tradition had included scholars from around the world from the very beginning and it was time to move beyond the borders of theUSA and accept the invitation of Memorial University in Canada to host this, the fifth International Symposium.Among the many presenters were a large number of doctoral students. Te importance of this cannot be overstated. If research into the sociology of music education has an academic future, it lies with these younger scholars. The fact that such a substantial number of the participants came from this group and from many different universities around the globe bodes very well for the future. The papers in this collection were requested to be “as read”. Some authors have made some minor alterations to reflect interaction at the symposium but, for the most part, our goal to represent the size, scope and feeling of the symposium has been met. Missing is the wonderful and personable address to the symposium by Memorial’s President, Dr. Axel Meisen. Dr. Meisen, who has just recently stepped down as President, grew up in a strong professional music environment and remained a positive and aggressive supporter of the music and music education programs at Memorial University throughout his time at MUN.It is my hope, as editor, that you will enjoy the papers in this volume and will find inspiration and challenge in the pages that follow.
Dr. Brian A. Roberts, Editor.
Something extraordinary occurred in July 2007 when a collection of scholars met for four days in the Senate Chambers of Memorial University. Tis was the fifth symposium on the sociology of music education. It was clearly the largest and the program suggested that it was also the strongest academically as well. Several of the participants had attended some of the previous four symposia so there was a strong feeling of collegial ownership and a substantial excitement to welcome the newcomers to the group. The first of this series of symposia was held at the University of Oklahoma in April of 1995. It was the brainchild of Hildegard Froehlich, Stephen Paul and Roger Rideout. It was an invitation only affair that brought together many of the small community of scholars who were re-searching in the sociology of music education field. A spark there ignited this small tradition. Ten in April of 1999 we met again in Oklahoma, followed in April of 2003 in Denton at the University of North Texas and then in October 2005 at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Tis solid tradition had included scholars from around the world from the very beginning and it was time to move beyond the borders of theUSA and accept the invitation of Memorial University in Canada to host this, the fifth International Symposium.Among the many presenters were a large number of doctoral students. Te importance of this cannot be overstated. If research into the sociology of music education has an academic future, it lies with these younger scholars. The fact that such a substantial number of the participants came from this group and from many different universities around the globe bodes very well for the future. The papers in this collection were requested to be “as read”. Some authors have made some minor alterations to reflect interaction at the symposium but, for the most part, our goal to represent the size, scope and feeling of the symposium has been met. Missing is the wonderful and personable address to the symposium by Memorial’s President, Dr. Axel Meisen. Dr. Meisen, who has just recently stepped down as President, grew up in a strong professional music environment and remained a positive and aggressive supporter of the music and music education programs at Memorial University throughout his time at MUN.It is my hope, as editor, that you will enjoy the papers in this volume and will find inspiration and challenge in the pages that follow.
Dr. Brian A. Roberts, Editor.
Research Interests:
Call for Contributions The Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education Popular music education means, according to context, youth music, guitar bands, pop-rock, urban musics, hip-hop, songwriting, music industry, DIY, punk, informal... more
Call for Contributions
The Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education
Popular music education means, according to context, youth music, guitar bands, pop-rock, urban musics, hip-hop, songwriting, music industry, DIY, punk, informal learning, facilitation / non-formal learning, online and leisure-time music-making, performance career preparation, production and engineering, and more. Popular music is sometimes conflated with vernacular music, and at other times with urban music, “bedroom” production, garage bands, or aligned with fan studies or celebrity culture. It overlaps with popular music studies, music education, jazz education, musical theatre, punk pedagogies, hip-hop pedagogy, communication studies, entrepreneurship, identity studies and more.
Issue 2 (3) of the Journal of Popular Music Education (November/December 2018) contains a White Paper written by board members of the Association for Popular Music Education that outlines what is currently understood by the term, popular music education. The white paper’s authors include caveats acknowledging their relative lack of diversity (all are from the US or UK and all are white, between the ages of 40 and 70), as the white paper is inevitably far narrower in scope than popular music education globally conceived. The editors aim for this book to extend and expand the vision of the Association for Popular Music Education by bringing more voices into the conversation around what popular music education is, what it does, for whom it works, when, how, where and why.
A primary interest of the editors in curating this volume is to highlight and emphasize connections, rather than to reinforce silos that prevent progress and stifle discourse in and across the fields intersecting and overlapping with popular music education. This book will therefore draw together authors from diverse disciplines, perspectives and subject areas to articulate what for them are the places and purposes of popular music education. We invite authors to consider, unpick and critique the philosophies, ideologies, biases and professional pressures that inform their perspectives on any and all aspects of popular music education.
We invite concise essays (of roughly between 1,000 and 2,000 words). Some essays will include citations, frameworks, or other hallmarks of scholarly writing while others will focus more on the perspectives, practices and experiences of the author/s and might not include any citations. This collection will not include descriptions of curricula or specific classroom practices. We especially encourage submissions that outline a clear vision or philosophy, take a provocative stance, and that emphasize the specific, personal views of contributors.
The deadline for submitting essays is January 1, 2020 with an anticipated publication date in 2021. The Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education is under contract with Intellect Books. Please send any questions and/or submit essays for consideration to Bryan Powell and Gareth Dylan Smith at (powellb@montclair.edu).
The Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education
Popular music education means, according to context, youth music, guitar bands, pop-rock, urban musics, hip-hop, songwriting, music industry, DIY, punk, informal learning, facilitation / non-formal learning, online and leisure-time music-making, performance career preparation, production and engineering, and more. Popular music is sometimes conflated with vernacular music, and at other times with urban music, “bedroom” production, garage bands, or aligned with fan studies or celebrity culture. It overlaps with popular music studies, music education, jazz education, musical theatre, punk pedagogies, hip-hop pedagogy, communication studies, entrepreneurship, identity studies and more.
Issue 2 (3) of the Journal of Popular Music Education (November/December 2018) contains a White Paper written by board members of the Association for Popular Music Education that outlines what is currently understood by the term, popular music education. The white paper’s authors include caveats acknowledging their relative lack of diversity (all are from the US or UK and all are white, between the ages of 40 and 70), as the white paper is inevitably far narrower in scope than popular music education globally conceived. The editors aim for this book to extend and expand the vision of the Association for Popular Music Education by bringing more voices into the conversation around what popular music education is, what it does, for whom it works, when, how, where and why.
A primary interest of the editors in curating this volume is to highlight and emphasize connections, rather than to reinforce silos that prevent progress and stifle discourse in and across the fields intersecting and overlapping with popular music education. This book will therefore draw together authors from diverse disciplines, perspectives and subject areas to articulate what for them are the places and purposes of popular music education. We invite authors to consider, unpick and critique the philosophies, ideologies, biases and professional pressures that inform their perspectives on any and all aspects of popular music education.
We invite concise essays (of roughly between 1,000 and 2,000 words). Some essays will include citations, frameworks, or other hallmarks of scholarly writing while others will focus more on the perspectives, practices and experiences of the author/s and might not include any citations. This collection will not include descriptions of curricula or specific classroom practices. We especially encourage submissions that outline a clear vision or philosophy, take a provocative stance, and that emphasize the specific, personal views of contributors.
The deadline for submitting essays is January 1, 2020 with an anticipated publication date in 2021. The Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education is under contract with Intellect Books. Please send any questions and/or submit essays for consideration to Bryan Powell and Gareth Dylan Smith at (powellb@montclair.edu).
Research Interests: Music, Music Education, Musicology, Epistemology, Education, and 15 moreInformal Learning, Popular Music Studies, Popular Music, Ethnomusicology, Sociology of Music, Community Music, Music Industry, Philosophy of Music Education, Music Teacher Education, Higher Education Popular Music Studies, Ethnomusicology and Music Education, Music Pedagogy in Community Music, Popular Music Education Creative Industries, Popular Music Education, and Higher Popular Music Education
As noted by the likes of Hobsbawm and Ranger (1992), Ellis (2000), Hill (2007) and Carr (2010), Wales has a unique landscape culturally, politically, linguistically and of course musically. Like other Small Nations, the country, which was... more
As noted by the likes of Hobsbawm and Ranger (1992), Ellis (2000), Hill (2007) and Carr (2010), Wales has a unique landscape culturally, politically, linguistically and of course musically. Like other Small Nations, the country, which was devolved in 1998, has a distinct set of challenges in order to ensure it exploits the full potential of Creative Industries such as music. In terms of popular music education, this broader landscape is/has been informed via initiatives funded by Welsh Government (The Welsh Music Foundation), the Arts Council (Forté, the Music Industry Development Fund, Horizons 12, Community Music Wales), Wales Arts International (the International Development Fund) and local councils. Cardiff Council for example are working with Sound Diplomacy, who are developing a strategy to make Cardiff the UKs first ‘Music City’, while Rhonnda Cynon Taff co-fund the Forté project. All of these initiatives, some of which are co -funded by the likes of the PRS Foundation, The British Council and the BBC, are intended at least in part to ‘educate’ stakeholders within the Welsh Music Industry, from grass roots to international engagement.
In addition to these funded activities, a number of musicians such as Martyn Joseph, Meic Stevens, The Super Furry Animals, The Alarm, and Gwenno Saunders (whose recent album Le Kov, (2018) was sung in Cornish) can be regarded as indicative examples of musicians whose agendas are at least partially related to educating the general public, in subject matters ranging from the importance of minority languages, the Aberfan disaster and the impacts of Thatcherism on the demise of the mining industry.
In terms of education, all of these practices are positioned outside of ‘mainstream’ education, but can be regarded as existing in tandem with discussions such as the place of popular music in the school curriculum, which has been a minor but pervasive part of ongoing recent debates in the Senedd. Indeed, over the last few years, Wales has received a great deal of negative press concerning the lack of importance the Welsh Assembly places on music and although the ‘decline of instrumental teaching’ is by far the most pervasive subject, the place of popular music within this landscape is an interesting subject for popular music scholars to consider. With a recent report by the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee mentioning a “distinct lack of infrastructure for rock, pop and folk”, suggesting that a “separate line of enquiry” is implemented (Hitting the Right Note, p. 46), it begs the questions, what would this enquiry look like and why is popular music such a peripheral part of mainstream Welsh education nationally? Interestingly and perhaps alarmingly, the aforementioned recommendation by the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee was rejected by Education Minister Kirsty Williams in her official response dated July 27th 2018, although she does verify the intension to “continue working with the Minister for Culture, Tourism and Sport and the Welsh Local Government Association, to support “less traditional forms of music, including rock and pop ensembles”.
These examples represent indicative examples of debates and initiatives related to popular music education in Wales, some of which are happening now. This collection of essays for the Journal of Popular Music Education hopes to examine this complex infrastructure. Potential essays may include, but are not limited to:
• Case Studies of good practice in Wales, in which popular music has been used as a means of education. This could include government/Arts Council/charity funded projects or those that are initiated by the community. Practices could range from popular music-based exhibitions, community plays, to funded projects such as Community Music Wales and Forté.
• Considerations of the historical practices of Welsh Government interaction with popular music education.
• The impact of practitioners such as Martyn Joseph, American vocalist Paul Robeson, Meic Stevens and The Super Furry Animals on educating communities on historical and political events related to Wales’ industrial past and present.
• Analysis of the impacts (positive and negative) and infrastructures of popular music in school, further and higher education in Wales.
• Critical considerations of the ways in which the Welsh popular music industry has worked or could work with mainstream education systems.
• Factors considering The Welsh Language within Popular Music Education
• The impacts of popular music education on careers in Wales
Please submit a 300-word abstract of your intended area of study to either professor Paul Carr (paul.carr@southwales.ac.uk) or professor Helena Gaunt by (Helena.gaunt@rwcmd.ac.uk) by March 1st 2019. Once authors have been confirmed, essays of circa 7000 words need to be complete for December 1st 2019, for publication in the November 2020 edition of The Journal of Popular Music Education.
In addition to these funded activities, a number of musicians such as Martyn Joseph, Meic Stevens, The Super Furry Animals, The Alarm, and Gwenno Saunders (whose recent album Le Kov, (2018) was sung in Cornish) can be regarded as indicative examples of musicians whose agendas are at least partially related to educating the general public, in subject matters ranging from the importance of minority languages, the Aberfan disaster and the impacts of Thatcherism on the demise of the mining industry.
In terms of education, all of these practices are positioned outside of ‘mainstream’ education, but can be regarded as existing in tandem with discussions such as the place of popular music in the school curriculum, which has been a minor but pervasive part of ongoing recent debates in the Senedd. Indeed, over the last few years, Wales has received a great deal of negative press concerning the lack of importance the Welsh Assembly places on music and although the ‘decline of instrumental teaching’ is by far the most pervasive subject, the place of popular music within this landscape is an interesting subject for popular music scholars to consider. With a recent report by the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee mentioning a “distinct lack of infrastructure for rock, pop and folk”, suggesting that a “separate line of enquiry” is implemented (Hitting the Right Note, p. 46), it begs the questions, what would this enquiry look like and why is popular music such a peripheral part of mainstream Welsh education nationally? Interestingly and perhaps alarmingly, the aforementioned recommendation by the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee was rejected by Education Minister Kirsty Williams in her official response dated July 27th 2018, although she does verify the intension to “continue working with the Minister for Culture, Tourism and Sport and the Welsh Local Government Association, to support “less traditional forms of music, including rock and pop ensembles”.
These examples represent indicative examples of debates and initiatives related to popular music education in Wales, some of which are happening now. This collection of essays for the Journal of Popular Music Education hopes to examine this complex infrastructure. Potential essays may include, but are not limited to:
• Case Studies of good practice in Wales, in which popular music has been used as a means of education. This could include government/Arts Council/charity funded projects or those that are initiated by the community. Practices could range from popular music-based exhibitions, community plays, to funded projects such as Community Music Wales and Forté.
• Considerations of the historical practices of Welsh Government interaction with popular music education.
• The impact of practitioners such as Martyn Joseph, American vocalist Paul Robeson, Meic Stevens and The Super Furry Animals on educating communities on historical and political events related to Wales’ industrial past and present.
• Analysis of the impacts (positive and negative) and infrastructures of popular music in school, further and higher education in Wales.
• Critical considerations of the ways in which the Welsh popular music industry has worked or could work with mainstream education systems.
• Factors considering The Welsh Language within Popular Music Education
• The impacts of popular music education on careers in Wales
Please submit a 300-word abstract of your intended area of study to either professor Paul Carr (paul.carr@southwales.ac.uk) or professor Helena Gaunt by (Helena.gaunt@rwcmd.ac.uk) by March 1st 2019. Once authors have been confirmed, essays of circa 7000 words need to be complete for December 1st 2019, for publication in the November 2020 edition of The Journal of Popular Music Education.
Research Interests:
There is much to learn regarding the skills people use to learn, teach and make popular music in global online contexts. Furthermore, research and pedagogy should address how popular musicians' practices online might be translated to... more
There is much to learn regarding the skills people use to learn, teach and make popular music in global online contexts. Furthermore, research and pedagogy should address how popular musicians' practices online might be translated to learning institutions. Research has examined pedagogical approaches to popular music learning, lived experiences of contemporary musicians, and interactions in modern musical communities. Online music making has popularized terms including " virtual ensemble " , while affordability and accessibly of do-it-yourself recording studios have proliferated user-generated musical content on the internet. Musicians use diverse social media platforms to develop new techniques, brand their personae, and hone producing skills in virtual places which act as spaces for music learning, teaching and making. The purpose of this special issue is to consider popular music making and learning in virtual, digital and online arenas. We welcome research, historical, practical and theoretical pieces that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
Research Interests: Music Education, Popular Music Studies, Popular Music, Online Instruction, Virtualization, and 15 moreCommunity Music, Online Learning, Youtube, Online Gaming, Gaming, Online Media, Virtual Learning, Autodidactism, Higher Education Popular Music Studies, Informal music learning, Autodidact, Contemporary issues in Education, Popular Music Education, Higher Music Education, and Higher Popular Music Education
Research Interests:
Call for Papers: Songwriting The editors of the Journal of Popular Music Education invite papers for a special issue on songwriting, guest edited by Andrew West. Songwriting has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years,... more
Call for Papers: Songwriting
The editors of the Journal of Popular Music Education invite papers for a special issue on songwriting, guest edited by Andrew West.
Songwriting has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years, commensurate with growth of programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and expansion of songwriting provision in schools. Songwriting practices have evolved to encompass domains formerly the preserve of producers, engineers, composers, and arrangers. Songwriting can be found at the heart of work in music therapy, community projects, and big business. The realm of the genius, the muse, the pop culture icon, and the person on the street, songwriting to many people is at the core of what it means to be human.
We invite submissions reporting on empirical research and diverse disciplinary perspectives on topics including but not limited to songwriting issues in contexts of curriculum design, teaching and learning, assessment, history, music theory, collaboration and entrepreneurship, ideology, diversity, creativities, therapy, gender, improvisation, combined arts, disability, STEM, performance and performativity, spirituality, copyright, leisure perspectives, polemic, and politics.
In this songwriting special issue of the Journal of Popular Music Education, the editors continue to seek to define, delimit, debunk, disseminate, and disrupt practice and discourse in and around popular music education.
Please refer to JPME submission guidelines and Intellect style guide when preparing an submissions.
Articles should be emailed to jpmesongwritingspecialissue@gmail.com by 1 June 2018.
The editors of the Journal of Popular Music Education invite papers for a special issue on songwriting, guest edited by Andrew West.
Songwriting has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years, commensurate with growth of programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and expansion of songwriting provision in schools. Songwriting practices have evolved to encompass domains formerly the preserve of producers, engineers, composers, and arrangers. Songwriting can be found at the heart of work in music therapy, community projects, and big business. The realm of the genius, the muse, the pop culture icon, and the person on the street, songwriting to many people is at the core of what it means to be human.
We invite submissions reporting on empirical research and diverse disciplinary perspectives on topics including but not limited to songwriting issues in contexts of curriculum design, teaching and learning, assessment, history, music theory, collaboration and entrepreneurship, ideology, diversity, creativities, therapy, gender, improvisation, combined arts, disability, STEM, performance and performativity, spirituality, copyright, leisure perspectives, polemic, and politics.
In this songwriting special issue of the Journal of Popular Music Education, the editors continue to seek to define, delimit, debunk, disseminate, and disrupt practice and discourse in and around popular music education.
Please refer to JPME submission guidelines and Intellect style guide when preparing an submissions.
Articles should be emailed to jpmesongwritingspecialissue@gmail.com by 1 June 2018.
Research Interests: Music, Musical Composition, Music Education, Popular Music Studies, Popular Music, and 16 moreCreativity, Songwriting, Music Industry, Digitization and the Music Industry, Higher Education Popular Music Studies, Songs, Music Business, Music Business and the Entertainment Industries, Contemporary Music and Composition, Songwriting study, Popular Music Education, Singer-Songwriters, Music Composition and Songwriting, Higher Music Education, Higher Popular Music Education, and Songwriting Pedagogy
Call for Papers Journal of Popular Music Education Special issue on Hip-hop Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal,... more
Call for Papers
Journal of Popular Music Education
Special issue on Hip-hop
Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal, subcultural, marginal and mainstream. Hip-hip is cliché and iconoclast, rebellion and conformity. It is characterized by aspirations to individual wealth, as well as embodying and embracing movements for democracy and emancipation. It is about lyrics and beats, ‘brain and booty’, defamation, reclamation, provocation, subjugation and emancipation. It is masculine, homophobic, misogynistic and sexualized. It objectifies, reifies and empowers. The music is frequently highly dependent on technology, yet requires nothing but a human beat-box and articulate speech to succeed. It is music of the streets and the studio. Hip-hop is truly a world music.
Education in, through and about hip-hop is increasingly embedded in courses in school and higher education on literature, music history, performance, production and appreciation. It is also frequently excluded from ‘popular music education’ practice and discourse. Hip-hop can prove a relevant and powerful means of engaging, teaching and inspiring students at all levels. Like all musics, it is politically charged, and thus can also be difficult and divisive (Kruse 2016; Snell and Söderman 2014). Educators, educational institutions and learners – within and without formal teaching environments – can learn from studying and incorporating elements of hip-hop culture (Söderman and Sernhede 2015). With hip-hop musicians, dancers and visual artists embracing change faster than teachers and curricula can imagine relevant pedagogical approaches, new opportunities for education constantly emerge. This special issue of JPME invites colleagues to submit papers on topics including, but not limited to:
• Interplay and interdependence of elements of hip-hop culture (graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, DJ-ing, fashion);
• Hip-hop as a global and globalized, local phenomenon;
• Hip-hop and marginalization;
• Commercial hip-hop and popular culture;
• Hip-hop as radical / emancipatory praxis and process;
• Hip-hop and/as appropriation;
• Hip-hop and/as language;
• Authenticity and hip-hop;
• Pedagogy, hip-hop and activism;
• Dangers of hip-hop education;
• Music of the oppressed and marginalized;
• Hip-hop, gender, homophobia and misogyny;
• Music, technology and the hip-hop classroom;
• Negotiating performance, (social) media and intellectual property in hip-hop performance;
• Identity in hip-hop performance and production.
Please email manuscripts of between 6,000 and 8,000 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman, font size 12) for the attention of editors Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell to jpmejournal@gmail.com by 1 June 2017.
Journal of Popular Music Education
Special issue on Hip-hop
Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal, subcultural, marginal and mainstream. Hip-hip is cliché and iconoclast, rebellion and conformity. It is characterized by aspirations to individual wealth, as well as embodying and embracing movements for democracy and emancipation. It is about lyrics and beats, ‘brain and booty’, defamation, reclamation, provocation, subjugation and emancipation. It is masculine, homophobic, misogynistic and sexualized. It objectifies, reifies and empowers. The music is frequently highly dependent on technology, yet requires nothing but a human beat-box and articulate speech to succeed. It is music of the streets and the studio. Hip-hop is truly a world music.
Education in, through and about hip-hop is increasingly embedded in courses in school and higher education on literature, music history, performance, production and appreciation. It is also frequently excluded from ‘popular music education’ practice and discourse. Hip-hop can prove a relevant and powerful means of engaging, teaching and inspiring students at all levels. Like all musics, it is politically charged, and thus can also be difficult and divisive (Kruse 2016; Snell and Söderman 2014). Educators, educational institutions and learners – within and without formal teaching environments – can learn from studying and incorporating elements of hip-hop culture (Söderman and Sernhede 2015). With hip-hop musicians, dancers and visual artists embracing change faster than teachers and curricula can imagine relevant pedagogical approaches, new opportunities for education constantly emerge. This special issue of JPME invites colleagues to submit papers on topics including, but not limited to:
• Interplay and interdependence of elements of hip-hop culture (graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, DJ-ing, fashion);
• Hip-hop as a global and globalized, local phenomenon;
• Hip-hop and marginalization;
• Commercial hip-hop and popular culture;
• Hip-hop as radical / emancipatory praxis and process;
• Hip-hop and/as appropriation;
• Hip-hop and/as language;
• Authenticity and hip-hop;
• Pedagogy, hip-hop and activism;
• Dangers of hip-hop education;
• Music of the oppressed and marginalized;
• Hip-hop, gender, homophobia and misogyny;
• Music, technology and the hip-hop classroom;
• Negotiating performance, (social) media and intellectual property in hip-hop performance;
• Identity in hip-hop performance and production.
Please email manuscripts of between 6,000 and 8,000 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman, font size 12) for the attention of editors Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell to jpmejournal@gmail.com by 1 June 2017.
Call for Papers Journal of Popular Music Education Special issue on Hip-hop Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal,... more
Call for Papers
Journal of Popular Music Education
Special issue on Hip-hop
Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal, subcultural, marginal and mainstream. Hip-hip is cliché and iconoclast, rebellion and conformity. It is characterized by aspirations to individual wealth, as well as embodying and embracing movements for democracy and emancipation. It is about lyrics and beats, ‘brain and booty’, defamation, reclamation, provocation, subjugation and emancipation. It is masculine, homophobic, misogynistic and sexualized. It objectifies, reifies and empowers. The music is frequently highly dependent on technology, yet requires nothing but a human beat-box and articulate speech to succeed. It is music of the streets and the studio. Hip-hop is truly a world music.
Education in, through and about hip-hop is increasingly embedded in courses in school and higher education on literature, music history, performance, production and appreciation. It is also frequently excluded from ‘popular music education’ practice and discourse. Hip-hop can prove a relevant and powerful means of engaging, teaching and inspiring students at all levels. Like all musics, it is politically charged, and thus can also be difficult and divisive (Kruse 2016; Snell and Söderman 2014). Educators, educational institutions and learners – within and without formal teaching environments – can learn from studying and incorporating elements of hip-hop culture (Söderman and Sernhede 2015). With hip-hop musicians, dancers and visual artists embracing change faster than teachers and curricula can imagine relevant pedagogical approaches, new opportunities for education constantly emerge. This special issue of JPME invites colleagues to submit papers on topics including, but not limited to:
• Interplay and interdependence of elements of hip-hop culture (graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, DJ-ing, fashion);
• Hip-hop as a global and globalized, local phenomenon;
• Hip-hop and marginalization;
• Commercial hip-hop and popular culture;
• Hip-hop as radical / emancipatory praxis and process;
• Hip-hop and/as appropriation;
• Hip-hop and/as language;
• Authenticity and hip-hop;
• Pedagogy, hip-hop and activism;
• Dangers of hip-hop education;
• Music of the oppressed and marginalized;
• Hip-hop, gender, homophobia and misogyny;
• Music, technology and the hip-hop classroom;
• Negotiating performance, (social) media and intellectual property in hip-hop performance;
• Identity in hip-hop performance and production.
Please email manuscripts of between 6,000 and 8,000 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman, font size 12) for the attention of editors Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell to jpmejournal@gmail.com by 1 June 2017.
Journal of Popular Music Education
Special issue on Hip-hop
Hip-hop is a highly marketized, global cultural phenomenon, also experienced and created in local, regional underground scenes. It is individual, tribal, subcultural, marginal and mainstream. Hip-hip is cliché and iconoclast, rebellion and conformity. It is characterized by aspirations to individual wealth, as well as embodying and embracing movements for democracy and emancipation. It is about lyrics and beats, ‘brain and booty’, defamation, reclamation, provocation, subjugation and emancipation. It is masculine, homophobic, misogynistic and sexualized. It objectifies, reifies and empowers. The music is frequently highly dependent on technology, yet requires nothing but a human beat-box and articulate speech to succeed. It is music of the streets and the studio. Hip-hop is truly a world music.
Education in, through and about hip-hop is increasingly embedded in courses in school and higher education on literature, music history, performance, production and appreciation. It is also frequently excluded from ‘popular music education’ practice and discourse. Hip-hop can prove a relevant and powerful means of engaging, teaching and inspiring students at all levels. Like all musics, it is politically charged, and thus can also be difficult and divisive (Kruse 2016; Snell and Söderman 2014). Educators, educational institutions and learners – within and without formal teaching environments – can learn from studying and incorporating elements of hip-hop culture (Söderman and Sernhede 2015). With hip-hop musicians, dancers and visual artists embracing change faster than teachers and curricula can imagine relevant pedagogical approaches, new opportunities for education constantly emerge. This special issue of JPME invites colleagues to submit papers on topics including, but not limited to:
• Interplay and interdependence of elements of hip-hop culture (graffiti, break dancing, emceeing, DJ-ing, fashion);
• Hip-hop as a global and globalized, local phenomenon;
• Hip-hop and marginalization;
• Commercial hip-hop and popular culture;
• Hip-hop as radical / emancipatory praxis and process;
• Hip-hop and/as appropriation;
• Hip-hop and/as language;
• Authenticity and hip-hop;
• Pedagogy, hip-hop and activism;
• Dangers of hip-hop education;
• Music of the oppressed and marginalized;
• Hip-hop, gender, homophobia and misogyny;
• Music, technology and the hip-hop classroom;
• Negotiating performance, (social) media and intellectual property in hip-hop performance;
• Identity in hip-hop performance and production.
Please email manuscripts of between 6,000 and 8,000 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman, font size 12) for the attention of editors Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell to jpmejournal@gmail.com by 1 June 2017.
Research Interests:
Call for Papers The organizing committee of the 10th biennial International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education and the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance are pleased to announce a call for papers. We welcome proposals... more
Call for Papers
The organizing committee of the 10th biennial International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education and the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance are pleased to announce a call for papers. We welcome proposals from a broad range of perspectives, related to sociology and music education. Colleagues are invited to submit individual papers (twenty minutes, plus five minutes for discussion) or panels of three to five presenters (50 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion). Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, sociological studies of music education that relate to:
• Communities of musical practice
• Music, multimedia, and online learning
• Transdisciplinary, hybrid and sound-based music
• Power and (symbolic) violence
• Aspiration and social mobility
• Social justice and citizenship
• Feminist, gender, queer and trans theories
• Punk, hip-hop and anarchist pedagogies
• Critical studies of creativity
• Practice-led and arts-based research methods
• Music making, leisure, cultural participation
• Intergenerational learning, health and creative aging
• Internationalization and globalization
• Neoliberalization of schooling and higher education
• Public–private partnerships
• Religion and spirituality
• An age of polarized politics
• An anti-intellectual age
We also welcome proposals for 60-minute performance/teaching workshops that illustrate effective practical responses to social issues in music. Please contact Gareth Dylan Smith with any informal enquiries at gareth.smith@icmp.ac.uk.
Abstracts should be 300-350 words in length, and should be accompanied by a 150-word biography for each presenter. Email submissions to gareth.smith@icmp.ac.uk, including full name/s and institutional affiliation/s. The closing date for submissions is 1 December 2016. All submissions will be reviewed by the organizing committee: Dr Clare Hall, Dr David Hebert, Dr Danielle Sirek and Dr Gareth Dylan Smith. All presenters will be notified of acceptance by 1 January 2017. The Symposium will be held at the ICMP’s London campus, 11-14 June 2017. Registration, and information regarding travel, accommodation and scheduling, will be available (from spring 2017) via: http://www.icmp.ac.uk/issme2017.
Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education will publish a special Sociology of Music Education issue in early 2018, including articles based on ISSME 2017 presentations, and guest edited by Gareth Dylan Smith and Clare Hall. Submissions should meet ACT standards (http://act.maydaygroup.org/submissions/) and will be subject to double-blind peer review. Submissions to the guest editors will be due by September 1, 2017.
The organizing committee of the 10th biennial International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education and the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance are pleased to announce a call for papers. We welcome proposals from a broad range of perspectives, related to sociology and music education. Colleagues are invited to submit individual papers (twenty minutes, plus five minutes for discussion) or panels of three to five presenters (50 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion). Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, sociological studies of music education that relate to:
• Communities of musical practice
• Music, multimedia, and online learning
• Transdisciplinary, hybrid and sound-based music
• Power and (symbolic) violence
• Aspiration and social mobility
• Social justice and citizenship
• Feminist, gender, queer and trans theories
• Punk, hip-hop and anarchist pedagogies
• Critical studies of creativity
• Practice-led and arts-based research methods
• Music making, leisure, cultural participation
• Intergenerational learning, health and creative aging
• Internationalization and globalization
• Neoliberalization of schooling and higher education
• Public–private partnerships
• Religion and spirituality
• An age of polarized politics
• An anti-intellectual age
We also welcome proposals for 60-minute performance/teaching workshops that illustrate effective practical responses to social issues in music. Please contact Gareth Dylan Smith with any informal enquiries at gareth.smith@icmp.ac.uk.
Abstracts should be 300-350 words in length, and should be accompanied by a 150-word biography for each presenter. Email submissions to gareth.smith@icmp.ac.uk, including full name/s and institutional affiliation/s. The closing date for submissions is 1 December 2016. All submissions will be reviewed by the organizing committee: Dr Clare Hall, Dr David Hebert, Dr Danielle Sirek and Dr Gareth Dylan Smith. All presenters will be notified of acceptance by 1 January 2017. The Symposium will be held at the ICMP’s London campus, 11-14 June 2017. Registration, and information regarding travel, accommodation and scheduling, will be available (from spring 2017) via: http://www.icmp.ac.uk/issme2017.
Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education will publish a special Sociology of Music Education issue in early 2018, including articles based on ISSME 2017 presentations, and guest edited by Gareth Dylan Smith and Clare Hall. Submissions should meet ACT standards (http://act.maydaygroup.org/submissions/) and will be subject to double-blind peer review. Submissions to the guest editors will be due by September 1, 2017.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The Journal of Popular Music Education seeks to define, delimit, debunk, disseminate, and disrupt practice and discourse in and around popular music education. Popular music education takes place at the intersections of identity... more
The Journal of Popular Music Education seeks to define, delimit, debunk, disseminate, and disrupt practice and discourse in and around popular music education. Popular music education takes place at the intersections of identity realization, learning, teaching, enculturation, entrepreneurship, creativity, a global multimedia industry, and innumerable instances of music making as leisure. Through drawing together diverse, rigorous scholarship concerning learning in, through and about popular music worldwide, JPME seeks to identify, probe and problematize key issues in this vibrant, evolving field. Scholarship from and across all relevant research methods and disciplines is welcome. Areas for consideration could include but should not be limited to:
Research Interests:
This report presents the findings of a research project undertaken by the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (hereafter The Institute) investigating the experiences of small music venues in the UK. The project was commissioned by... more
This report presents the findings of a research project undertaken by the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (hereafter The Institute) investigating the experiences of small music venues in the UK. The project was commissioned by the Music Venue Trust (MVT) and funded by Arts Council England (ACE) via an allocation of a grant awarded to MVT (Grant for the Arts ref. 27555752) and by The Institute.
All of the authors are interested in this debate as performers as well as teachers and researchers in higher education, and we greatly welcome the opportunity to contribute to the vital discussion around music venues in the UK.
All of the authors are interested in this debate as performers as well as teachers and researchers in higher education, and we greatly welcome the opportunity to contribute to the vital discussion around music venues in the UK.
Research Interests: Music, Musicology, Popular Music Studies, Popular Education, Popular Music, and 14 morePerformance Studies, Popular Culture, Performance Management, Cultural Musicology, Performance Studies (Music), Music Industry, Critical Musicology, Popular musicology, Music Performance, Digitization and the Music Industry, Historical Musicology, Music performance and improvisation, Music Industry Piracy, and NEW BUSINESS MODELS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Despite decades of discussion, debate, and incremental gains, acceptance of popular music education in collegiate institutions is still in its inception. Higher education (and indeed, education in general) in the United States is rife... more
Despite decades of discussion, debate, and incremental gains, acceptance of popular music education in collegiate institutions is still in its inception. Higher education (and indeed, education in general) in the United States is rife with pervasive inequality and injustice, excluding large numbers of potential students on the basis of race, class, income, and cultural orientation. If music education is to continue and thrive in the 21st century and beyond, widespread curricular changes are needed in preservice music teacher education to move toward a model that is inclusive, equitable, diverse, and culturally responsive. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate several music programs across the United States as samples of the numerous collegiate institutions wrestling with curricular change. Though differing in size, scope, and population, these programs have one thing in common: faculty with a desire to enact change. Through the examples illustrated here, it is our hope that oth...