The Routledge Handbook To Sociology of Music Education

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK TO
SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC EDUCATION
The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education is a comprehensive, authoritative, and

state-of-the-art review of current research in the field. The opening introduction orients the
reader to the field, highlights recent developments, and draws together concepts and research
methods to be covered. The chapters that follow are written by respected, experienced experts
on key issues in their area of specialisation. From separate beginnings in the United States,
Europe, and the United Kingdom in the mid-twentieth century, the field of the sociology of
music education has and continues to experience rapid and global development. It could be
argued that this Handbook marks its coming of age. The Handbook is dedicated to the exclusive
and explicit application of sociological constructs and theories to issues such as globalisation,
immigration, post-colonialism, inter-generational musicking, socialisation, inclusion, exclusion,
hegemony, symbolic violence, and popular culture. Contexts range from formal compulsory
schooling to non-formal communal environments to informal music making and listening. The
Handbook is aimed at graduate students, researchers, and professionals, but will also be a useful
text for undergraduate students in music, education, and cultural studies.
Ruth Wright is professor of music education in the Don Wright Faculty of Music at Western
University in Canada.
Geir Johansen is professor emeritus of music education and music didactics at the Norwegian
Academy of Music, Oslo, Norway.
Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos is associate professor of music education at the University of

Thessaly, Volos, Greece.
Patrick Schmidt is professor of music education at Western University, Canada.

THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK TO
SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC
EDUCATION
Edited by Ruth Wright, Geir Johansen,

Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos, and Patrick Schmidt
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Ruth Wright, Geir Johansen, Panagiotis A.
Kanellopoulos, Patrick Schmidt individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Ruth Wright, Geir Johansen, Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos, Patrick Schmidt
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-58636-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-70416-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-50463-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
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CONTENTS
List of Figures x
List of Tables xi
Contributors xii
Acknowledgements xxiii
Foreword xxiv
Professor Lucy Green
Introduction 1
Ruth Wright, Geir Johansen, Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos, and Patrick Schmidt
PART I
Post-structuralism, Globalisation, Internationalisation,
Post-colonialism 19
Introduction 21
Patrick Schmidt
1 Music education and the colonial project: Stumbling toward

anti-colonial music education 23
Juliet Hess
2 Sociological perspectives on internationalisation and music education 40

Alexandra Kertz-Welzel
v
Contents
3 Challenges of the post-colonisation process in Hong Kong schools: In

search of balanced approaches to the learning and teaching of
Putonghua songs 52
Ti-Wei Chen
4 Habitual play: Body, cultural sacredness, and professional

dilemmas in classical musician education 67
Dan Sagiv and Yael (Yali) Nativ
5 Toward a sociology of music education informed by

indigenous perspectives 80
Anita Prest and J. Scott Goble
6 Nation, memory, and music education in the republic of Turkey:

A hegemonic analysis 97
Tom Parkinson and Olcay Muslu Gardner
7 In search of a potentially humanising music education: Reflections

on practices at two Brazilian universities 108
Flávia Narita and Heloisa Feichas
8 Questioning convergences between neoliberal policies, politics, and

informal music pedagogy in Australia 121
Clare Hall, Renée Crawford, and Louise Jenkins
9 Socio‐cultural background and teacher education in Chile:

Understanding the musical repertoires of music teachers of Chile 136
Carlos Poblete Lagos
10 Jump up, wine, and wave: Soca music, social identity, and
symbolic boundaries in Grenada, West Indies 153
Danielle Sirek
PART II
Capital, Class, Status, and Social Reproduction 165
Introduction 167
Geir Johansen
11 Music education as qualification, socialisation, and subjectification? 169

Petter Dyndahl
vi
Contents
12 Fish out of water? Musical backgrounds, cultural capital,

and social class in higher music education 184
Gwen Moore
13 A field divided: How Legitimation Code Theory reveals problems

impacting the growth of school music education 196
Christine Carroll
14 Music and the social imaginaries of young people 209

Athena Lill
15 Doublespeak in higher music education in England: Culture,

marketisation, and democracy 219
Gareth Dylan Smith
16 Multiple hierarchies as change-innovation strategy: Ambivalence

as policy framing at the New World Symphony 232
Patrick Schmidt
17 Neoliberalism as political rationality: A call for heretics 247

Øivind Varkøy
18 Mobilising capitals in the creative industries: An investigation of

emotional and professional capital in women creatives navigating
boundaryless careers 258
Pamela Burnard and Garth Stahl
19 Curriculum and assessment in the secondary school in

England: The sociology of musical status 275
Martin Fautley
20 Structure and agency in music education 288

Chris Philpott and Gary Spruce
21 The hidden curriculum in higher music education 300

Geir Johansen
22 Countering anomie and alienation: Music education as

remix and life-hack 312
Ruth Wright
vii
Contents
PART III
Crossing borders – problematising assumptions 325
Introduction 327
Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos
23 Art-music-pedagogy: A view from a geopolitical cauldron 330

Marion Haak-Schulenburg and Felicity Laurence
24 Music education, genderfication, and symbolic violence 343

Siw Graabræk Nielsen and Petter Dyndahl
25 Reading Audre Lorde: Black lesbian feminist disidentifications

in canonical sociology of music education 354
Elizabeth Gould
26 Engaging contemporary ideas of community music through

historical sociology 366
Deanna Yerichuk
27 Cage(D): Creativity and ‘the contemporary’ in music

education – a sociological view 377
28 Towards a music education for maturing, never arriving 393

Susan Young
29 From parallel musical identities to cultural omnivorousness

and back: Strategies and functions of multi-layered musical conduct 406
Sidsel Karlsen
30 Hunka, hunka burning love: Vernacular music education 418

Kari K. Veblen and Stephanie Horsley
31 Challenges in music and inclusive education: Diversity,

musical canon, and trialectic contract 432
Ylva Hofvander Trulsson
32 Collaborative video logs: Virtual communities of practice

and aliveness in the music classroom 443
Christopher Cayari
viii
Contents
33 Digital sociology, music learning, and online communities

of practice 456
Kari K.Veblen and Janice L. Waldron
34 The creative youth club: Double features of organic

music education in a post-industrial city 467
Johan Söderman
35 Intergenerational transmission of music listenership values in five US

families: Music listening guidelines and sociolinguistic analysis 479
Jillian L. Bracken
36 Engagement and agency in music education across the lifespan 490

Jennifer Lang
Index 504
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
9.1 Repertoires from university context 146

9.2 Historical evolution of musical genres of university education 146
13.1 Specialisation codes 198
13.2 Candidature statistics for music 201
18.1 A framework for theorising an accumulated array of capitals
at work in boundaryless careers 269
20.1 A framework for understanding agency in the context of music education 290
20.2 A framework for critical agency in music education 297
36.1 Themes of heightened engagement 497
36.2 The relationship between engagement and agency 499
x
LIST OF TABLES
3.1 Perceptions towards Learning and Teaching of Putonghua Song

in Hong Kong (N = 218) 61
9.1 Taxonomy of classification of musical repertoires 141
9.2 Evolution of MTEP 1969–2010 questions 143
9.3 Examples of general responses on musical repertoires 144
9.4 Examples of response types according to category 144
9.5 Percentage of composers named in the socio‐cultural background,
university education, and teaching practices contexts 144
9.6 Patterns of musical genres according contexts of realization 145
12.1 Rank ordering of parental influence/support factors (number of mentions) 188
12.2 Six survey cases that illustrate the affirmation and alienation in
students’ experiences of higher education 192
18.1 Forms of capital and their characteristics summarised 263
19.1 Top ten KS3 topics reported by teachers in London and Birmingham 278
19.2 Thematic analysis of KS3 topics taught 280
24.1 Number of female- and male-authored theses in popular music styles 349
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Jillian L. Bracken completed her Ph.D. in music education at the University of Western
Ontario. She also holds an M.M. (Ethnomusicology) and M.S. (Education) from Florida State
University, and a B.M. (Honours, Music Education) from the University of Western Ontario.
Jillian currently works as the Community Arts and Culture Manager for the City of Lethbridge
(Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada).
Pamela Burnard is Professor of Arts, Creativities, and Educations at the Faculty of Education,
University of Cambridge (www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/Burnard/). She is Chair of the
Faculty Board and the Arts and Creativities Research Group (https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/
research/groups/artsandcreativities/). She has published widely with 20 books and over 100
articles which advance and expand the conceptualisation and plural expression of diverse
creativities across early years, primary, and secondary school settings, through to higher
education, doctoral research practices, and creative and cultural industry sectors. She is co-
editor of the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity. Some of most recent projects include: higher
education and creative graduate futures; the participation and representation of creative
Women in social enterprises (WISE); women’s musical creativities in practice; and gender
equality, career creativities, and strategies for change in institutional leadership.
Christine Carroll graduated in 2017 with a Ph.D. in Music Education from the Sydney
Conservatorium of Music/The University of Sydney, Australia. Christine’s research and
publications fuse discourses in curriculum design, informal learning, and ethnomusicology
utilising Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) from the sociology of education. These research
interests stem from her teaching experiences with student popular musicians in both secondary
and tertiary contexts, and extend to her more recent work and research in pre-service teacher
training at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and, at the Australian Catholic University.
Christine has presented her research at conferences both nationally and internationally, and is an
alumni member of the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) Centre for Knowledge-Building, the
University of Sydney, Australia.
Christopher Cayari (he/they; Twitter: DrCayari) is an assistant professor of music education

at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Christopher’s main research trajectory
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List of Contributors
focuses on mediated musical performance, YouTube, informal music learning, virtual

communities, video game music, and online identity. Their secondary research agenda
addresses marginalised voices in music education, specifically sexuality- and gender-diverse
individuals (LGBTQIA+) and Asian Americans. They work at blending traditional and
innovative research methodologies, particularly working with Internet inquiry, performance-
based research, autoethnography, and case study. His work has recently appeared in Oxford
Handbooks, Music Education Research, International Journal of Music Education, International Journal of
Education & the Arts, and International Journal of Community Music. They is an avid YouTube
video creator. Christopher regularly publishes online performances, tutorials, and vlogs. He
enjoys collaborating with his students to make user-generated content for YouTube, and their
students have virtually performed with other musical collaborators from across the world.
Ti-wei Chen is a prolific music educator, voice teacher, conductor, and performer. Ti-wei is
fully engaged in community music, including conducting a wide range of community choirs
with a focus on social justice and inclusiveness as well as empathetic participation through group
singing and performing. A former lecturer for Kingston University, UK, and Hong Kong
Baptist University as well as assistant professor at the Education University of Hong Kong, Ti-
wei has accumulated an extensive profile in leading quality assurance and programme
administration for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, coordinating performance
practice, admission and scholarship, also initiating and organising large post-secondary
community music programmes and a variety of other service learning, experiential learning
of community music internships, overseas study, and performance tours for students and
university choruses. Additionally, Ti-wei is a published scholar with a focus on music education
in the post-colonial era in Hong Kong and quantitative and qualitative studies on the use of
metaphors and verbal imageries in the teaching of singing. Ti-wei lectures and presents widely
to music teachers and international audiences on a range of pedagogical and community music
topics.
Renée Crawford is a senior lecturer with extensive experience as a teacher educator,

secondary music classroom, instrumental and ensemble teacher. As an international leader in the
field of technology in music education and authentic learning contexts for teaching and
learning, Renée’s research is driven by a commitment to advance the impact and value of music
(arts) in education and to investigate, develop and implement effective pedagogy and
curriculum. This includes the impact of arts and music engagement in education from a
sociological and intervention perspective. Research interests are linked by discipline, a teacher-
led belief about improving and strengthening educational outcomes, and commitment to
innovative practice in teaching and learning. Renée’s research uses mixed methodological
approaches and focuses on teacher-led research practice in blended and authentic educational
contexts; pedagogy and curriculum development that is informed by both current and historical
perspectives.
Petter Dyndahl is professor of musicology, music education, and general education at the
Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. He has published research results in a wide
range of disciplines, including music education, sociology of education and culture, cultural
studies, popular music studies, music technology, and media pedagogy. In recent years,
professor Dyndahl has been project manager for the research projects Musical gentrification and
socio-cultural diversities (2013–2017), and DYNAMUS – The social dynamics of musical upbringing
xiii
and schooling in the Norwegian welfare state (2018–2022). Both projects have been funded by The
Research Council of Norway.
Martin Fautley is professor of education at Birmingham City University, UK. After many
years as a classroom music teacher, he then undertook full-time doctoral research at Cambridge
University, investigating teaching, learning, and assessment of classroom music making. He has
authored ten books, including Assessment in Music Education, published by Oxford University
Press, and has written and published over 60 journal articles, book chapters, and academic
research papers on various aspects of music teaching and learning. He is co-editor of the British
Journal of Music Education.
Heloisa Feichas holds a Ph.D. in music education from the Institute of Education, University
of London. She did a post doc at UNESP (State University of São Paulo, Brazil) linking ideas of
Paulo Freire with collaborative learning concepts. She is senior lecturer at the Music School of
the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. She is also a pianist performing
mainly Brazilian Popular Music in different ensembles. Her main research interests are popular
music education and sociology of music education. She has worked in cooperation with the
Music School of Pitea, Lulea University, in Sweden and also with Guildhall School of Music
and Drama (Connect Project).
Olcay Muslu Gardner is assistant professor and founding member of the Hatay Mustafa Kemal
University Antioch State Conservatory where she teaches Ottoman/Turkish music (maqam-
usûl) and traditional dances and music. She is a co-editor and contributing writer of four
forthcoming books, Albert Bobowski, Otherwise Known As Ali Ufki: Research and Analysis,
which takes as its subject the Ottoman/Turkish maqam music manuscripts of the seventeenth-
century composer Ali Ufki; Music Bibliography of Şanlıurfa, Turkey; Music in Higher
Education in Turkey and Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in Turkey: Governmental
and non-Governmental Efforts Focusing on the UNESCO 2003 Convention. Dr. Muslu
Gardner is the first recipient of the Visiting Scholars Scheme to be jointly supported by
University College London (UCL) and the British Institute at Ankara, and is also conducting
projects in the fields of cultural sustainability, applied ethnomusicology, music in higher
education, and Ottoman/Turkish music.
J. Scott Goble is associate professor of music education at the University of British Columbia,
where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses and supervises work of M.Ed., M.A., and
Ph.D. students. A specialist in vocal and choral music, he taught music in public schools near
Seattle, Washington, later serving on the music faculties of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges,
Boston University, and San Francisco State University. Scott has conducted choirs and
orchestras in educational, professional, church, and community contexts throughout North
America. His book What’s So Important About Music Education? is published by Routledge, and
he presently serves as co-editor (with Deborah Bradley) of the online, open-access journal
Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education (ACT). His current research focuses on
Indigenous knowledge and musical practices.
Elizabeth Gould serves as associate professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music
where she teaches philosophically based courses in music, music education, and sexual diversity
studies.
xiv
Marion Haak-Schulenburg is a community musician, music educator, and researcher in the

field of community music. She studied music education at the University of the Arts, Berlin,
with a focus on voice and choir conducting and English linguistics and literature at the
Humboldt-University Berlin. Based on her experiences in over three years as choir conductor
and voice teacher for the music school of the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Ramallah, PoT,
(2006–2009), she currently researches in her Ph.D. the work of two international music
projects working in Palestine. She is research assistant in the MA ‘Inclusive Music pedagogy/
Community Music’ at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. She is engaged as choir
conductor, workshop leader, vocal coach, and trainer in the field of community music in
various projects in and outside of Germany. Since 2016, she is a trainer of Musicians without
Borders (NL).
Clare Hall is lecturer in performing arts in the Faculty of Education, Monash University,
Australia. Her practice-based research at the intersection of music, sound, and performance is
committed to social justice by promoting diversity in creative arts engagements across the
lifespan. Clare’s sociological scholarship contributes to understandings about performing arts
participation and pedagogy, with a focus on how aspects of gender, class, ethnicity, race, and
age influence cultural transmission and change. Her work with pre-service teachers in primary
and early childhood education degrees brings together her experience in music and dance
performance and K–12 teaching in schools and community. Clare has co-convened the
International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education 2017 and 2019 and she is co-founder/
convenor of the ISME Decolonising and Indigenising Music Education Special Interest Group. Her
book, Masculinity, Class and Music Education: Choirboys Performing Middle-class Masculinities
(2018), is published by Palgrave, based on her multi-award winning doctoral study.
Juliet Hess is an assistant professor of music education at Michigan State University, having
previously taught elementary and middle school music in Toronto. Her book, Music Education
for Social Change: Constructing an Activist Music Education, explores the intersection of activism,
critical pedagogy, and music education. Juliet received her Ph.D. in sociology of education
from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her research
interests include anti-oppression education, activism in music and music education, music
education for social justice, and the question of ethics in world music study.
Stephanie Horsley is the acting associate director of eLearning at the Centre for Teaching and
Learning at Western University, Canada, where she is also an adjunct assistant professor of
music education in the Don Wright Faculty of Music. Her research interests include music
education policy, democratising access to sites of music education, and ‘fringe’ musical learning
spaces. Her latest publications include The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning as
well as chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice and Music Education and Policy and the
Political Life of the Music Educator. Her work has been presented at various international
conferences.
Louise Jenkins is a senior lecturer and pre-service teacher educator who focuses on inclusive
practices in education at the school and university level. She brings an extensive background in
performing arts education to her work and uses this expertise to promote engaging and
enriching educational practices. Combined with her background in culturally inclusive teaching
and current research about the attitudes of pre-service teachers to LGBTQI students, Louise is
driving inclusive educational practices at the university level. Louise aims to inform inclusive
xv
pre-service teacher education through a more nuanced understanding of school and university
student experiences and how these impact educational outcomes. Louise uses action research to
drive flexible and contemporary higher educational practice, implementing a blended learning
and team approach in her adult education. These implementations have underpinned
innovative changes to her inclusive work with her pre-service teachers, including a better
understanding of the experience of international students.
Geir Johansen (Editor) is professor emeritus of music education and music didactics at the
Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, Norway. Johansen holds a Ph.D. in music education and
has contributed widely in international conferences as well as international research journals and
anthologies. His research interests are directed towards all sides of the sociology of music
education, theoretical as well as empirical, including curriculum implementation, educational
quality, identity, professions and professionalism, talent education, hidden curricula, and
conservatoires in society. Johansen teaches and supervises on the master’s and Ph.D. level, and
serves as a Ph.D. defence opponent in Norway and abroad.
Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos (Editor) serves as associate professor at the University of

Thessaly, Volos, Greece, where he teaches creativity-based music education courses. Active as a
researcher and a music maker, he is particularly interested in politico-philosophical, theoretical
and field-based explorations of creative music making, its educative uses, mis-uses, and
potentialities.
Sidsel Karlsen is professor of music education at the Norwegian Academy of Music. She is also
a docent at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, in Finland. Karlsen has
published widely in international research journals, and is a frequent contributor to
international anthologies and handbooks. Her research interests include, among other things,
cultural diversity in music education, the interplay between formal and informal arenas for
music learning, and the sociology of music education. She is one of two PIs (with professor
Heidi Westerlund) of the research project Global visions through mobilizing networks: Co-developing
intercultural music teacher education in Finland, Israel and Nepal (funded by the Academy of Finland
2015-2020). She is also one of the researchers working within the project The social dynamics of
musical upbringing and schooling in the Norwegian welfare state (DYNAMUS; funded by the
Research Council of Norway 2018–2022).
Alexandra Kertz-Welzel, is professor, chair of music education, and currently executive

director of the School of Arts at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich (Germany). She
obtained her Ph.D. in musicology from Saarland University in Saarbruecken (Germany), as well
as master’s degrees in music education, German studies, philosophy, piano performance, and
harpsichord performance. From 2002–2005, she was visiting scholar and lecturer in music
education at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA (United States), and from
2005–2011, lecturer in music education at the University of Music in Saarbruecken
(Germany). With research interests in international music education, philosophy of music
education, music education policy, community music, and children’s musical cultures, she has
regularly presented at national and international conferences. She is author and editor of several
books and a frequent contributor to leading journals in music education. Her book, Globalizing
Music Education: A Framework, was published by Indiana University Press in 2018. She was co-
chair of the ISME Commission on Policy: Culture, Education and Media from 2016–2018, and chair
of the International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education (ISPME) from 2017–2019.
xvi
Additionally, she is editorial board member of international peer-reviewed journals, such as the
Philosophy of Music Education Review, Arts Education Policy Review, or the Journal of Historical
Research in Music Education.
Carlos Poblete Lagos is music teacher (B.Ed.), musician (BMus), and doctor in music
education (Ed.D.). He worked as music teacher for secondary school, participating in diverse
initiatives in the areas of curriculum, assessment, and teacher education policies for the Ministry
of Education of Chile and working for various public universities in academic and
administrative positions. His scholarly interests lie at the intersection of policies, music
learning, and sociology of music education. Member of ISME since 2010, he was chair of
9th Latin American and 2nd Panamerican Regional Conference of Music Education of ISME,
in 2013. He has been a member of the Policy Commission since 2016. Currently, he is working
as postdoctoral researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (Munich), researching in the field
of internationalisation, policies, and multicultural pedagogical practices in music education.
Jennifer Lang is an assistant professor of music education and the director of choral activities at
the University of Saskatchewan. She is the organizer of the Department of Music’s Music
Education in Action Series, the founder and organizer of the uSing uSask Choral Festival, and
the director of the Greystone Singers and Aurora Voce choirs. Dr. Lang’s research examines
engagement and agency in music education programs, including informal music learning in a
variety of educational contexts, musicking with seniors with dementia, and intergenerational
singing programs. Jennifer is also active as a conductor, choral adjudicator, clinician, and
conference presenter with local, provincial, national, and international invitations.
Felicity Laurence has worked over five decades as children’s singing specialist, composer, and
teacher at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels (most recently as director of the MA in music
education at Newcastle University, until her retirement in 2015). Her research includes
investigations of the problematic question of empathy and its potential connections with
musical expression and activity, drawing on fieldwork in areas of current and earlier conflict
including Israel, Palestine, and South Africa; children’s voice within education; and most
recently, the role of musicking in the memorialisation of the Holocaust in post-1989 Germany.
Publications include an edited collection of essays Music and Solidarity: Questions of Universality,
Consciousness and Connection (2011), and the inaugural Prologue ‘Revisiting the Problem of
Empathy’, in Music and Empathy (2017, eds. King and Waddington). She is currently active within
the UK refugee support and campaigning organisation City of Sanctuary, and chair of its
Hastings, UK, branch.
Athena Lill completed her Ph.D. at the University of Sydney, where she focussed on the
musical life of children and young people in primary and secondary schools. She currently
teaches music at a state secondary school in Cambridgeshire, UK, having taught in a variety of
settings internationally. Her other research interests include informal learning in music, the
musical games of children and teenagers, and the online transmission of musical cultures. She
has been published in a range of edited books and journals.
Gwen Moore is senior lecturer in music education and director of teaching and learning at
Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland. Gwen’s research interests include the inequality
in music education; higher music education; and teaching, learning, and assessment in higher
education. She serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Music Education and
xvii
the British Journal of Music Education and was elected Chairperson of the Society for Music
Education in Ireland for two consecutive terms (2013–2017).
Flavia Narita completed her first degree in music teacher education at the Universidade de
São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and carried out her M.A. and Ph.D. studies at the UCL Institute of
Education, where she studied under the supervision of Professor Lucy Green. Since 2006,
Flávia has been a lecturer at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB), Brazil, where she coordinated
the Distance Education Undergraduate Music course (2007–2010), the Music Teacher
Education course (2015–2017), and from Jan/2018 to Jan/2020 was the deputy head of the
Music Department. Her research interests include informal learning, critical pedagogy, popular
music, social justice, and music teacher education.
Yael (yali) Nativ is a dance scholar with sociological and anthropological orientations. She is a
senior lecturer at The Academic College for Society and Arts, and a lecturer at Levinsky
College for Education and at Masson Gross School of the Arts Online at Rutgers, State
University of New Jersey. In her writing and research, she explores social and cultural issues
looking at the linkage between dance, body, culture, education, gender, and creativity. Her
book, Fractured Freedom: Body, Gender and Ideology, which she co-wrote with Dr. Hodel Ophir,
was published in 2016 (in Hebrew). Currently she is engaged in an ethnographic research,
looking at the experience of the body among professional Israeli ageing dancers who still
perform on stage.
Siw Graabræk Nielsen is professor of music education at the Norwegian Academy of Music,
where she also serves as co-director for the Centre for Educational Research in Music (CERM).
She has published research results in music education, psychology of music education, and
sociology of music education. Professor Nielsen has participated as a senior researcher in the
research projects Musical gentrification and socio-cultural diversities (2013–2017), and
DYNAMUS – The social dynamics of musical upbringing and schooling in the Norwegian
welfare state (2018–2022). Both projects have been funded by The Research Council of Norway.
Tom Parkinson is senior lecturer in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) at
the University of Kent, where he has also taught in the School of Music and Fine Arts. His
recent interdisciplinary research sits across the fields of music, education, sociology, and
development studies, with a focus on the Middle East. Previously Tom taught music in several
universities, colleges, and schools in the UK. As a musician, he continues to write, produce, and
perform for a number of projects, most recently collaborating on a collection of children’s songs
for National Geographic. He is a founding member of the criminally overlooked power pop
band SCANDINAVIA.
Anita Prest is assistant professor of music education in the Department of Curriculum &
Instruction at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada), where she teaches music
education courses to both secondary music specialist and elementary generalist teacher
candidates. Her current research, in partnership with Indigenous organisations and funded by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC), examines the ways in which
public school music educators in British Columbia, together with First Nations community
members, might facilitate the appropriate embedding of local Indigenous knowledge,
pedagogy, and cultural practices in music classes. Anita has presented papers in Canada,
Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United
xviii
States. Prior to her appointment at the University of Victoria, Anita taught K–12 music for 20
years in British Columbia, in both rural and metropolitan settings.
Chris Philpott is a reader in music education at the University of Greenwich, London. Until
recently, he was deputy pro vice-chancellor and then interim pro vice-chancellor in the
university’s Faculty of Education and Health. Before moving to Greenwich, he was a secondary
music teacher for 16 years, with a background in the Brass Bands of East Kent, after which he
became a teacher educator at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has written and edited
books, articles, online texts, and resources which are widely used in initial teacher education
and academic music education programmes. He has also led UK government-funded projects in
relation to ITE in music. In semi-retirement he cycles, plays cricket, and walks.
Dan Sagiv is chair of the undergraduate B.Ed. program of music education and lecturer in
sociology and music education at Levinsky College of Education, Israel. A doctoral graduate of
the Sociology of Education Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holder of a
B.A. and M.A. in musicology from Tel Aviv University. He works with music specialists and
early childhood educators as a professional development educator for the Israeli Ministry of
Education. His research interests include instrumental pedagogy, embodied learning, musical
identities, critical theory, and sociology of music education.
Patrick Schmidt (Editor) is professor of music education at Western University, Canada.

Schmidt’s innovative work in critical pedagogy and policy is recognised internationally. Recent
publications can be found in the International Journal of Music Education, Theory into Practice, Arts
Education Policy Review, and Research in Music Education. Schmidt has led several consulting and
evaluative projects, including the National YoungArts Foundation and the New World
Symphony, US and the Ministry of Culture and Education, Chile. Schmidt co-edited the
Oxford Handbook of Music Education and Social Justice released in 2015, and co-edited a two-
volume book on Leadership in Higher Music Education, published by Routledge through its ISME
series. His books Policy and the Political Life of Music Education co-edited with Richard Colwell,
and Policy as Practice: A Guide for Music Educators were released by Oxford in 2017 and 2020,
respectively.
Danielle Sirek instructs in the Faculty of Education and School of Creative Arts at the University
of Windsor, Canada, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music and arts
education. Prior to teaching in higher education, she taught preschool through grade 12 music in
Canada and Grenada, West Indies. Sirek received her Ph.D. from the Royal Northern College of
Music, UK. She also holds a bachelor of music from Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada), and a
master of music from the University of Toronto (Canada). Danielle’s program of research is
primarily focussed on music teacher education, sociology of music education, and intersections
between music education and ethnomusicology. Her most recent work can be found in the
International Journal of Music Education (2018) and Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education
(2018). Danielle also sings professionally with the JUNO-nominated 18-voice Canadian Chamber
Choir, comprised of singers from coast to coast.
Gareth Dylan Smith is visiting research professor of music at New York University and
adjunct professor in music education at Boston University. His teaching and research interests
include qualitative and (auto)ethnographic methods, social justice, and meaning in making
music. He plays drums with Stephen Wheel, Build a Fort, Eruptörs, and Black Belt Jesus.
xix
Johan Söderman is professor in child and youth studies at the University of Gothenburg. He
is also reader in music education at Lund University, Sweden. Between 2009 and 2011,
Söderman was a visiting scholar at the Department of Music and Music Education at Teachers
College, Columbia University, USA. His research interests regard hip-hop culture and its
parallels to music education; the Scandinavian educational tradition called ‘folkbildning’;
academisation processes of youth music; and also issues surrounding social mobilisation/
marginalisation in the post-industrial society. Söderman has published articles, books, and
chapters in the fields of music education, cultural studies, and education. Some of Söderman’s
previous work include books such as Hip-hop within and without the Academy (with co-author
Karen Snell) and Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Education (with co-authors Pamela Burnard
and Ylva Hofvander Trulsson) and articles in journals like Music Education Research, British
Journal of Music Education, Finnish Journal of Music Education, and International Journal of
Community Music.
Gary Spruce was a secondary school music teacher for 17 years before joining the Open
University as subject leader for their Music PGCE course. He left the Open University in 2016
and is now a visiting lecturer in music education at Birmingham City University, course leader
for the university’s PGCE music course, and academic consultant at Trinity College, London.
From 2007–2012 he was co-editor of the British Journal of Music Education. He has written and
published widely on music education particularly around the areas of teacher education and
professional development, music education and social justice, and has presented papers at
national and international conferences. He is a practising musician with a particular interest in
music theatre.
Garth Stahl is an associate professor at the School of Education at the University of

Queensland. His research interests lie on the nexus of neoliberalism and socio-cultural studies of
education, identity, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects and
publications encompass theoretical and empirical studies of learner identities, gender and youth,
sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, gendered subjectivities, equity and difference, and
educational reform.
Ylva Hofvander Trulsson is an associate professor with a M.Ed. and Ph.D. in music
education, focus migration, at Linneaus University, is senior lecturer at Lund University and
Stockholm University of the Arts (Uniarts). She is flutist and teacher and has studied author
program. Postdoc at Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK, Musical Learning and
Discipline – discourses on social mobility of immigrant parents and their children. Recently PI
for the project ARTIS: ARTs, agency and social mobility: Intergenerational transmission of
Sami culture in family, educational and community settings. Ylva has teaching experience from
Lund University, University of Cambridge, Uniarts in Stockholm, and Linnaeus University (as
head of subject in music education department) and earlier as a music teacher in Sweden, Faroe
Islands, and Norway. She is co-editor of Bourdieu and the sociology of music education
(Routledge), as well as of three more books. She has been chairperson of several national
evaluations for Swedish higher education authority and works with quality assurance, higher
education development, and equality.
Øivind Varkøy is professor in music education at Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo,

Norway) since 1994. Since 2014 he is head of the Ph.D. program at this institution. From 2016
he is visiting professor in music at Oslo Metropolitan University. From 2008 to 2011 Varkøy
xx
was professor in musicology at Örebro University (Sweden), and from 2011 to 2018 visiting
professor at the same institution. Varkøy is educated both as a musicologist and as a music
educator, with a doctor’s degree in musicology from the University of Oslo in 2001. He has
published a number of articles and books, as well as edited a number of books, in Norwegian,
Swedish, German, and English, on topics such as justification of general music education,
Bildung, instrumentalism, neoliberalism, the intrinsic value of musical experience, and musical
experience as existential experience. In June 2017, Varkøy was a keynote speaker at International
Society for Philosophy of Music Education conference in Greece.
Kari K. Veblen serves as research associate and professor emeritus of music education at
Western University in Canada. Thus far, her career spans four decades of work as an elementary
public school music teacher, community musician, faculty member at University of Wisconsin-
Stevens Point, curriculum consultant to orchestras and schools, visiting scholar at University of
Toronto, and research associate at University of Limerick. Veblen has served in numerous
professional capacities, including the International Society for Music Education board, and as
co-founder, now board member of the International Journal of Community Music. Her research
interests include community music networks, lifespan music learning, traditional transmission,
vernacular genres, interdisciplinary curriculum, musical play, and social media and music
learning. Author and co-author of five books and 90 peer-reviewed works, Veblen’s work on
music learning in on- and offline convergent music communities of practice is funded by the
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Janice L. Waldron is an associate professor of music education at the University of Windsor; her
research interests include informal music learning practices, online music communities, social
media and music learning, vernacular musics, adult music learning, Irish and Scottish traditional
musics, and wind band conducting. Janice is published in numerous international peer-reviewed
music education journals and also has chapters in a variety of Oxford Handbooks and Routledge
Companions. Her latest in-press publication is The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music
Learning, of which she is principal editor (with Dr Stephanie Horsley and Dr Kari Veblen, co-
editors). Her research has been funded by the Social Science and Humanites Council of Canada
since 2011. In addition to being a classically trained wind ensemble conductor, Janice is an
accomplished Irish traditional musician on tin whistle, flute, and Uilleann pipes.
Ruth Wright (Lead Editor) is professor of music education in the Don Wright Faculty of
Music at Western University in Canada. She has served as chair of music education and assistant
dean of research at this university after 16 years teaching and lecturing in secondary school
music education in the UK. Her 2010 book Sociology and Music Education, Ashgate Press, is a
frequently used textbook in courses exploring this field. She is a frequent presenter and keynote
speaker at music education international conferences. Her research interests are the sociology of
music education, informal learning, popular music pedagogy, and social justice.
Deanna Yerichuk has dedicated her academic and music career to community-engaged social
change. Through her Ph.D. in music education (University of Toronto), she investigated the
emergence of Canada’s community music schools in the early twentieth century, and is
currently working on a monograph. Dr Yerichuk has begun investigating contemporary issues
of inclusion and justice in cross-cultural collaborations through music, leading a pilot project on
music and racial justice in high schools funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council Canada. She has earned several awards, including the SOCAN Foundation Award for
xxi
Writings on Canadian Music, and the Dr. Franklin Churchley Graduate Essay Competition
Prize. As an assistant professor, Dr Yerichuk coordinates the Community Music program at
Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and teaches courses in community music and singing
foundations.
Susan Young recently retired as senior lecturer in childhood studies and music education at
the University of Exeter, UK. She is now a senior research fellow at the Applied Music
Research Group (AMRG), University of Roehampton, London and Research Associate of the
Centre for Research in Early Childhood, Birmingham. Originally trained as a pianist at the
Royal College of Music London, winning the final year prize for the most outstanding student,
she spent her early career teaching music in secondary and primary schools and in early years
settings. She holds qualifications in Dalcroze Eurhythmics (Geneva) and Kodaly (Kecskemét),
and postgraduate degrees in education (Bathspa University), biological anthropology (Bristol
University), and a Ph.D. (Surrey University) on the topic of music in early childhood. She has
published widely in professional and academic journals and has authored and co-authored
several books.
xxii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors of this Handbook would like to extend sincere thanks to our contributing authors for
their scholarship and their positive responses to editorial suggestions. It was a pleasure to work
with all of you. Particular thanks to Professor Lucy Green for reading the entire text and writing
such an insightful Foreword. We would also like to express our gratitude to the review readers
who supported publication of the text and provided peer review and excellent advice. Thank
you to everyone at Routledge for being so efficient and friendly. You made the publication
process seamless and enjoyable. Thanks also to Beth Tuinstra, our editorial assistant at Western
University, for providing such excellent organisational support and in particular for compiling
the index.
We hope that the critique and analysis offered by this text, coming at such a dark time in
global history and politics, may support not only the further development of the field of the
sociology of music education but also the conscientisation of future generations of educators.
The Editors.
xxiii
FOREWORD
Lucy Green
The sociology of music is reaching a level of maturation, which is amply demonstrated by this
collection of research from scholars in many parts of the world. There has always been a danger
that the term ‘sociology’ can be used loosely in relation to music and music education, without
any theoretical underpinnings connected to the purported umbrella field of sociology at all. But
merely to investigate music and musical practices alongside an account of their social setting, or
postulating analogies, metaphors and similes concerning music and society, does not add up to
being sociology. It can be interesting and informative but if such work remains at the level of
description, we cannot call it sociology. What makes the difference is that (as with all disciplines
of study) sociology is both a science and an art; and like science and art, it has a history of
thought, knowledge and ideas, which meet with challenges and change as time goes by. Some
knowledge and understanding of this history are required for authors to see things and represent
things in useful, original, and challenging ways. The writers in this volume all work with a
critical awareness of this history, and thus rise above the level of mere description, to carve out
truly critical interpretations of their field, offering valuable insights and new ways forward.
Criticism is of course a part of sociology and always has been. It is a basic sociological
principle that the researcher should stand back from what appears to be natural, normal, and
accepted within a social setting, and question it. In doing so, the researcher will inevitably
attempt to find out whether things only appear to be natural, normal, and accepted from the
perspective of certain social groups and not others; or whether the appearance of being natural,
normal, and accepted itself functions, for example, to maintain the relations between social
groups in ways that are advantageous to certain sectors, and disadvantageous to others.
Sociology never sets out, as some critics of the field seem to think, purposely to be critical,
political, and left-wing. Criticism is what happens when one questions how things come to
appear natural, normal, and accepted, because that in turn can lead to perceiving problems in
the actions and effects of social institutions. Such problems might include for example,
unfairness, exclusion, labelling, lack of opportunity, and many others; as well as the justification
of all these, in ways that make them seem to be acceptable or even unavoidable. What is the
point of uncovering such problems? Ultimately, to improve things. To make them fairer, more
inclusive, more open.
Of course, any social change is itself subject to institutionalisation and assimilation into
existing norms; what was once radical and transformative becomes swept up and turns into the
xxiv
Foreword
new unquestioned norm or becomes diluted beyond recognition. From that new position, it
can of course begin to participate in reproducing old systems. This is a part of any social process,
and if it weren’t, there would be no need for sociological critique to carry on. But because it
happens, the need to be aware of it remains. There will always be ways of improving the world.
When I first heard about preparations for this volume, and Ruth Wright soon afterwards
invited me to write the Foreword, the first words that came to my mind were: ‘The sociology
of music education has come of age’. However, I had used that same expression when I wrote a
Foreword a couple of years previously, for the Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music
Education, only of course with reference to popular music studies, not sociology. One does try
to avoid repeating the same phrase in two completely separate pieces of writing. But I think it is
no coincidence that the phrase came straight to mind in both cases: for there is a historical
connection between the simultaneous growth of these two relatively new fields – popular
music education and the sociology of music education. This is because sociologists of music
look into the social uses, functions, and meanings of music, and that means literally all music: any
music that any social group – from an international listenership to a family – considers to be
‘music’. This perspective logically entails an interest in popular music, but of course it doesn’t
stop there, because it also includes all those other kinds of music and musical practices that can
be found anywhere where there are human beings. Interest in ‘multi-cultural music education’,
as it was first termed, has a longer history than interest in the sociology of music education, but
now I feel the two areas are working effectively as one. In this volume, given of course that the
work is limited to the English language, the range of perspectives covered by writers is truly
impressive. This is so, not only in relation to the diversity of nations where their work is
situated, but also the diversity of social groups and the musical and music-educational practices
that are included.
There is much in common between ethnomusicology and the sociology of music.
Ethnomusicologists and sociologists of music have always taken seriously the music of
anyone, anywhere, without regard to how the music might or might not be recognised or
valued by external agents. But one thing that the sociology of – specifically – music education
brings to the table, concerns one of its differences from ethnomusicology and the sociology of
music per se. This is that ethnomusicologists and sociologists of music refrain from attempting
to change their object of study. In fact, the idea of attempting to cause change would in a strict
sense, horrify them. Although they are abundantly aware that just by their presence in a social
group, they are already creating some change, their usual aim would be to resist this as much as
possible so as to be able to study the group as it is, or was, without their presence. As
anthropologists in the broad sense, their aims include uncovering, understanding, and
appreciating the musical practices and values of particular groups, and then educating other
people than those they have studied, so as to increase these others’ knowledge. Certainly, to
seek to make changes would in most cases be regarded as unethical. Music educators, on the
other hand, have to countenance the fact that by default, they do ultimately seek to cause
change. Education already implies the goal of changing – changing the knowledge and skills of
those involved, so as to open up their opportunities and perspectives. It is perhaps in the
transformative potential of developing, implementing, and analysing such change, that this
volume makes one of its most important contributions to the overall field of music education
studies. I congratulate the editors and authors on their production of such a landmark
publication, and I look forward to more such work in the future.
Professor Lucy Green,
Institute of Education, University College London, UK
xxv
INTRODUCTION
Ruth Wright, Geir Johansen, Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos,
and Patrick Schmidt
What is the sociology of music education?

The sociology of music education is the field of study applying sociological constructs and
theories including among some, structure, agency, culture, class, race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, and identity to music learning and teaching. The locations to which such con-
siderations relate include social contexts that range from the formality of compulsory schooling
to non-formal communal environments, from informal efforts by individuals of all ages to
engage in music making as well as listening to unwitting, unconscious engagements with music
such as those occuring in an elevator. The scope, therefore, is broad and the topics to which the
sociological gaze may be applied, varied.
The reader will see this in the range and scope of chapters in this book which apply so-
ciological analysis to issues located variously at the largest scale, the macro level of society
considering matters related to nation states, national identity, colonialism, anti- and post-
colonialism, internationalisation, geopolitics, and globalisation for example. At the meso and
micro levels, often intertwined, sociological considerations are given to matters such as youth,
gender and sexual identity, culture and cultural hegemony, community in real life or the virtual
world, generational music transmission and educational involvement, capital, class, and status.
The empirical fields discussed are located around the globe and range from school music
classrooms to rappers and hip-hop artists in youth and community music education settings,
from Elvis impersonators pursuing informal music education in the community to members of
the New World Symphony Orchestra in the US and students in institutions of higher music
education in formal music learning environments.
There is also theoretical sociological work that extends our understandings of the re-
lationships between music, society, and education. This illustrates the power of seminal and
contemporary sociology and its concepts to advance comprehension and conceptualisation of
the problems facing music education throughout society from the cradle to the grave. Above
all, what we hope this volume demonstrates is the fact that sociology is powerful to think with.
It helps us to see our familiar contexts and problems in music education in new ways. Sociology
disposes us to become more sensitive to the embedded and unseen forces that act to affect
individuals’ experiences of music differentially according to social group/s. Above all, it enables
us to imagine and strategise for change. Through sociological understanding of the world we
1
Ruth Wright et al.
inhabit we can be equipped to act towards the more equitable distribution and recognition of a
wide range of musical skills and develop throughout populations the more widespread capacity
to engage in active musical participation and to celebrate in the identity of musician.
Origins
The birth of a field now known as the ‘sociology of music education’ dates to no earlier than
the late 20th century, with the first English language book explicitly connecting the words
music, society and education being Christopher Small’s (1977) book of that name. Important
sociological research was subsequently conducted in the field of music education by Lucy
Green in the UK on issues such as ideology, hegemony and social reproduction, (1988), gender
and music education (1997), and popular culture, pedagogy, and music education (2001, 2008).
Green also published in 1999 an important paper titled ‘Research in the Sociology of Music
Education: Some Introductory Concepts’ in which she presented key sociological concepts
related to the study of music and to music education. During a similar period, Hildegard
Froehlich was also conducting important early work in the field in the United States. This has
led since 1995 to the organisation of 12 international symposia on the sociology of music
education in various global locations, attracting an international array of scholars and students.
These symposia have been documented in proceedings and journal special issues (Froehlich,
Coan, and Rideout 2003/4; Dyndahl et al. 2014; McLellan et al. 2016; O’Flynn 2011; Rideout
1997, 2006; Rideout and Paul 2000; Roberts 2008).
Books dedicated exclusively to this field include Sociology for Music Teachers: Perspectives for
Practice (Froehlich 2007), Sociology and Music Education (Wright 2010), Sociology for Music
Teachers: Practical Applications (Froehlich and Smith 2017), and Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music
Education (Burnard, Hofvander Trulsson, and Söderman 2015).
The field of sociology of music education in the twenty-first century

It is not easy to map the field of the sociology of music education in the twenty-first century. It
has experienced rapid and global development in the first two decades of the century, with an
increasing number of graduate theses conducted within this discipline. The broadening of scope
of this and other scholarly work, both empirical and theoretical, is reflected in this Handbook.
Alongside this expansion is an increasingly obvious concern with issues of social critique and the
uncovering of injustice, exclusion, and inequity in music education following the lead given by
Small in his seminal work. We shall return to this point later in this chapter.
Key concepts
In Sociology and Music Education, Wright (2010), gave an introductory and of necessity, very brief,
overview of the field of sociology, introducing key originating thinkers and concepts to help
those who were not familiar with sociology as a discipline. From early theorists such as
nineteenth-century thinker Auguste Comte, through the work of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim,
and Max Weber to early- and mid-twentieth century scholars such as Talcott Parsons, George
Herbert Mead, Peter Berger, and Thomas Luckman to end-century figures such as Anthony
Giddens, Basil Bernstein, and Pierre Bourdieu, an attempt was made to present a somewhat
coherent story of the development of sociology and some of its major thinkers.1 Wright then
proceeded to show how the discipline of sociology may be linked to the field of music education.
2
Introduction
To conduct the same type of process at this time for twenty-first-century sociology and its
applications to music education is a daunting task.
The reason why it is increasingly difficult to map development in the field of sociology of
music education in a similarly linear and coherent way to the earlier work may be explained as
deriving from the nature of sociology as a form of knowledge or discourse as conceptualised by
Bernstein.
In one of his last published works, Bernstein (1999) turned his attention to the construction
and social base of different forms of knowledge or discourse. He identified two basic types of
discourse. One was seen as common sense or everyday knowledge, ‘likely to be oral, local,
context dependent and specific, tacit, multi-layered, and contradictory across but not within
contexts’ (p. 159). The organisation of this knowledge form, which he asserted was segmental,
was of central concern to Bernstein. Each site of realisation (context or location) or specific
segment of culture requires a specific, specialised type of common sense or everyday knowl-
edge, he held. Therefore, Bernstein (1999) claimed this kind of knowledge to be ‘segmentally
differentiated’ (p, 159). He termed this horizontal discourse.
By contrast, the other form of knowledge was identified as a different form of discourse,
taking the form of the knowledge produced in what some term the official realm. This
knowledge, seen in education as ‘school(ed) knowledge’ (Bernstein 1999, p. 158), is context
independent and termed by Bernstein (1999, p. 159) vertical discourse:
Briefly, a vertical discourse takes the form of a coherent, explicit, and systematically
principled structure, hierarchically organised, as in the sciences, or it takes the form of
a series of specialised languages, with specialised modes of interrogation and specialised
criteria for the production and circulation of texts, as in the social sciences and
humanities.
Circulation of knowledge is different in each of these discourses. Horizontal discourse,

Bernstein asserts, is circulated through tacit recontextualisation processes according to dis-
tributive rules relating to status and position.
In vertical discourse, on the other hand, strong rules control who receives the knowledge
and how it is transmitted and evaluated. It is explicitly recontextualised (transformed for re-
production) through the action of these rules to determine when, where, and who may transmit
and receive it.
Bernstein then turns to the distinction within forms of vertical discourse that he had earlier
identified: one a ‘coherent, explicit and systematically principled structure, hierarchically or-
ganised; and the second (takes the form of) a series of specialised languages with specialised
modes of interrogation, specialised criteria for the production and circulation of texts, e.g. the
natural sciences, humanities and social sciences’ (p. 161). He terms these somewhat confusingly
hierarchical knowledge structures and horizontal knowledge structures (p. 162). So, to recapitulate, we
have vertical and horizontal discourses and then within vertical discourse itself we have two
forms of knowledge structure: hierarchical knowledge structures and horizontal knowledge
structures. Hierarchical knowledge structures resemble a pyramid, with the attempt to develop
broad theoretical explanation necessitating the constant integration of earlier propositions and
theories and greater and greater abstraction. Bernstein termed this an integrating code (p. 162).
Horizontal knowledge structures conversely require production of specialised languages pro-
ducing specialised practices of inquiry and their own criteria for the development and sharing of
knowledge. These knowledge structures therefore resemble a chain of linked but separate
languages. Bernstein relates horizontal knowledge structures to sociology and the languages of
3
Ruth Wright et al.
Marxism, functionalism, etc. as examples. He therefore suggests that these structures are based
on collection or serial codes (p. 163).
If, as Bernstein asserted, sociology is one of these horizontal knowledge structures, it may
now become easier to see why providing a definitive overview of the current state of the field
of the sociology of music education is difficult. Where production of knowledge requires
generation of new languages of description, it is likely, in the post-modern era to involve
proliferation of such languages or theoretical perspectives, each with their own claims to le-
gitimation. Moreover, whereas in vertical knowledge structures development is perceived to
take the form of generation of a theory capable of integrating most of the previously produced
theory, in horizontal knowledge structures this is not the case.
It cannot apply because the set of languages which constitute any one horizontal
knowledge structure are not translatable, since they make different and often opposing
assumptions, with each language having its own criteria for legitimate texts. (p. 163)
Advancement in such knowledge structures therefore happens by the development of new

languages and new speakers. It is, therefore, difficult to map definitively the ‘state of the art’ in
the field in the way one might within a vertical knowledge structure as many competing
languages abound.
Bernstein later proceeds to attest that ‘recognising and realising what counts as an “au-
thentic” sociological reality’ (p. 165) is dependent upon acquisition of a ‘gaze’. ‘(W)hat counts
in the end is the specialised language, its position, its perspective, the acquirer’s ‘gaze’, rather
than one exemplary theory’. In these instances, ‘truth’ is a matter of acquired ‘gaze’; no-one can
be eyeless in this Gaza’ (p. 165). At the conclusion of his paper, Bernstein suggests that such
fields can become overly concerned with the development and defence of the languages and
distracted from empirical application and that ‘the view would be markedly improved if the
discursive centre of gravity shifted from the specialised languages to issues of empirical de-
scription: a shift from commitment to a language to dedication to a problem and its vicissitudes’.
This is a challenge that many of the authors in this Handbook have taken up. So, also, has
sociologist Erik Olin Wright (2010), who has termed his work towards social justice within the
discipline of sociology ‘emancipatory social science’. He links the word emancipatory to ‘a central
moral purpose in the production of knowledge – the elimination of oppression and the creation
of the conditions for human flourishing’ (p. 7). Furthermore, he sees such change as dependent
upon transformation of the social world ‘the word social implies the belief that human eman-
cipation depends upon the transformation of the social world, not just the inner life of persons’
(Wright 2010, p. 7).
For Wright (2010, p. 8), emancipatory social science has three fundamental tasks:
elaborating a systematic diagnosis and critique of the world as it exists; envisioning

viable alternatives; and understanding the obstacles, possibilities, and dilemmas of
transformation. In different times and places one or another of these may be more
pressing than others, but all are necessary for a comprehensive emancipatory theory.
In this book, we see a number of authors engaged in these three tasks to varying degrees
according to the requirements of their time and context. They are seriously engaged with their
‘problem’. They are seeking alternative possibilities. This is a vital contribution that a socio-
logical perspective may contribute to the field of music education. This is where the ‘socio-
logical imagination’ so famously described by Charles Wright Mills in 1959 may provide insight
4
Introduction
not only into what is but also to what may be. E.O. Wright (2010, p. 3) discusses here the
potential of what he terms ‘real utopias’, in bridging the divide between dreams and reality,
between imagined possibilities and the practicalities required for substantive social change. His
book, Envisioning real utopias (2010), is motivated by ‘the belief that what is pragmatically
possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations but is itself shaped by our visions’
(Wright 2010, p. 4). To do so requires, perhaps, the forms of scholarly work we present in this
Handbook because:
Nurturing clear-sighted understandings of what it would take to create social institutions

free of oppression is part of creating a political will for radical social changes to reduce
oppression. A vital belief in a utopian ideal may be necessary to motivate people to leave
on the journey from the status quo in the first place, even though the likely actual
destination may fall short of the utopian ideal. Yet, vague utopian fantasies may lead us
astray, encouraging us to embark on trips that have no real destinations at all, or worse
still, which lead us toward some unforeseen abyss. Along with “where there is a will
there is a way”, the human struggle for emancipation confronts “the road to hell is
paved with good intentions”. What we need, then, is “real utopias”: utopian ideals that
are grounded in the real potentials of humanity, utopian destinations that have accessible
waystations, utopian designs of institutions that can inform our practical tasks of navi-
gating a world of imperfect conditions for social change.
(Wright 2010, p. 3)
To these ends, we editors have attempted to assemble a wide range of speakers and ‘languages’
from the field of the sociology of music education and to include the voices of scholars at
various stages of their academic careers, including newer speakers. As an introduction to the
‘state of the art’ of sociology of music education we hope that we have assembled a variety of
‘gazes’ and that from among these the reader may find a powerful lens through which to view
their particular problem of interest in the field of music education and to enact with it and
through it at least one of the three tasks of emancipatory social science.
Volume overview
Section I: Post-structuralism, globalisation, internationalisation, post-

colonialism
This first section brings together a diverse group of authors, presenting critical views on myriad
issues, spanning from colonialism and post-colonialism in music education, to issues sur-
rounding indigeneity, to internationalization, to multiple cultural-musical practices and their
sociological challenges and openings.
The section begins with a compelling chapter by Juliet Hess, where the author situates the
role music education has played in the colonial project, and explores how, as an oppositional
framework, anti-colonialism could help music educators to resist colonialism operating within
and through the field. The aim of the chapter, as Hess states, is to explore ‘an intervention into
ongoing coloniality through engaging a theoretical framework of anti-colonialism’. She ex-
plores sociological theories of coloniality, establishing relationships between the conceptual and
its material manifestations; impacting social spaces from schooling, to prisons and policing, to
cultural materials, to governmental policy. She ends the chapter by articulating potential
5
Ruth Wright et al.
pathways for action that are derived from social theories in the areas of resistance, agency,
power, and positionality.
In chapter 2, Alexandra Kertz-Welzel intersects sociological theory and challenges sur-
rounding the internationalization of music education. She focuses on critiques of hegemony
and power, advocating for the formation of a global community and their potential positive
impact on strengthening theory, research, and practice. She highlights the notion that ‘inter-
nationalisation practices are not value-neutral and cannot be devoid of cultural dimensions’.
Thus, they benefit from critical sociological lenses and analyses. Throughout the chapter, she
explores these notions in several contexts, with a particular interest in community-oriented
spaces, hoping to clarify for the reader the ways in which a global music education community
could become ‘sociologically sound’.
Tiwei Chen authors chapter 3, placing its focus on the sociological relations within complex
and diverse environments such as Hong Kong. She argues that uncertain and even paradoxical
social relations ‘inevitably have direct and indirect impact on local music educators’ pedagogical
philosophy and behaviours, as well as decision making in relation to curriculum design and
teaching materials’. In this chapter, the author then explores Putonghua songs and how they
function as policy and practice within the music curriculum in Hong Kong schools, using them
as a foil to also explore and document historical and ongoing process of post colonisation;
specifically, decolonisation, neocolonisation, and recolonization. Of particular interest are
discussions on the depoliticisation of music education and the challenging intersection between
censorship and self-censorship that regularly creep into institutional spaces, including higher
education – all with noteworthy impact on how the field continues to develop today in this
context.
Chapter 4 makes use Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to examine the practices of classical music
instruction pedagogy in the work of conservatory music teachers in Israel. Here, the authors,
Dan Sagiv and Yael Nativ, add to a critical tradition in music that looks at habitus formation
within Western classical teaching and learning. Central to the chapter is an analysis, based on
empirical evidence from Israel, of the coded subtleties of the field and how they are imparted
within instrumental lessons. The authors weave a careful text in which larger macrological
conceptions are exemplified at micro-level detail of daily practice, linking perceptions of au-
tonomy and agency to embodied apprenticeship. While providing critical insight into a chal-
lenged social practice, the authors invite the reader to consider how a ‘specific habitus of
intimate precision and punctuality’ exacts an essential characteristic of the culture of classical
music, one that can also have productive outcomes from those successfully immersed in it.
In a compelling chapter, Anita Prest and Scott Goble collaboratively outline ‘how a so-
ciology informed by local Indigenous perspectives could make possible a more ethical socio-
logical investigation of the embedding of local Indigenous musics in school settings’. Chapter 5
then offers a rich opportunity for engagement with an emergent sociology framed by scholars
from several First Nations as well as with data from Prest and Goble’s own research in British
Columbia. The authors offer a strong critique of normative sociological positionings, arguing
that ‘unfortunately, in those countries with a history of settler colonialism, the field of so-
ciology, until recently, has either largely ignored colonized cultures (thereby rendering them
invisible) or considered the people of those cultures only from a deficit lens’. Their central
contribution unfolds out of the notion that ‘in drawing distinctions between Indigenous and
conventional (i.e., Western European) understandings of sociological terminology, it may
become possible to develop new, syncretic understandings and bi-directional terms, for use in
the fields of both sociology and music education’.
6
Introduction
In chapter 6, Tom Parkinson and Olcay Muslu Gardner consider the ‘legacy of music
education reforms in the Republic of Turkey, with a conceptual focus on memory and tra-
dition’. The authors look in particular to the bifurcated traditions of both traditional Turkish
and Western musics within higher education in the country, considering the governing so-
ciological patterns of practice that are supported by them and how they are likely to contribute
to continued music teaching and learning in the country. The historical discourse and analysis
provided by the chapter helps us to see the political tensions that characterized an ebb and flow
often marked by depoliticization and forms of cultural amnesia; often with implications for how
orality and literacy have marked cultural policy in Turkey. The chapter weaves together these
and other tensions while also making use of a diversely rich articulation of Turkish cultural
concepts, and the ways in which their own sociological meanings are key in better under-
standing musical practices today.
Flavia Narita and Heloisa Feichas, two music educators in Brazil, offer a critical outlook on
the work of Paulo Freire, articulating the ways in which dialogical and problem-posing ped-
agogical positions can still have a meaningful impact in humanizing education, particularly in
times of rampant neoliberalism. Their focus is higher education and their concerns surround the
ways in which ‘the alienated marketised conception of human relations prevent people from
finding ways to meaningfully connect with other people and to articulate this connectedness’.
In chapter 7, they use the sociological concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ to situate and critically
analyse alternative musical pedagogies, using a case study of an Integrated School Program in Brazil,
where a public school collaborated with local universities. Music students in the study work
within a creative laboratory that makes use of non-formal teaching approaches while focusing
on musical leadership.
The examination of the unprecedented growth of the Musical Futures organisation in
Australia through policy thinking is the subject of chapter 8. Collaboratively written by Clare
Hall, Renée Crawford, and Louise Jenkins, they question how the possible convergence be-
tween informal music pedagogy and global trends towards neoliberal policies and practices is
influencing music education, exploring how ‘trace elements’ of neoliberal ideology may be in
tension with social justice imperatives. The authors use a number of policy documents, in-
cluding curriculum, educational ‘frameworks’, and public domain publications as policy in
action, in order to explore whether the migration of musical futures, in the absence of local,
research-led structural changes to music education, has led to the substitution of one form of
cultural hegemony for another. They powerfully argue that ‘when we question whose real
world we are trying to include, issues of musical style become infantile in the face of the
epistemic diversity that Australian society presents to school education’.
Carlos Poblete brings the sociology of Basil Bernstein, and the concepts of repertoire and
reservoir, to frame an analysis of higher music education practices in Chile and what underlines
the constitution of musical experience and musical repertoires within this context. Using a
historical research design, Poblete invites us to consider how socio-cultural background and
university programmatic and curricular habitus structure how music educators frame repertoire
choices. The goal is to distinguish the nuclear elements that, participating in the configuration
of the personal taste of music teachers in Chile, constitute key elements of the work of music
educators and consequently the teaching and learning processes carried out inside the classroom.
Poblete sees this as significant, as such practices and understandings participate in mechanisms of
cultural reproduction and end up shaping the musical experiences of school-aged children and
youth. Poblete argues that his findings may help us to ‘reflect on the meaning of inclusion and
emphasis on certain repertoires within university education’ and how music teacher preparation
might be reformed.
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Ruth Wright et al.
In the last chapter of section one, chapter 10, Danielle Sirek looks at cultural practices as a
way of creating and maintaining social group identity. Specifically, she explores the symbolic
boundaries enacted by Soca musicking in Grenada, West Indies, and music education in-
itiatives, investigating in what contexts boundaries shift or temporarily disintegrate.
Throughout she draws from the social identity theory, using an interactionist position to analyse
issues related to self-concept, group processes, and intergroup relations. The chapter offers an
in-depth, critical evaluation of Soca practices, with an eye on their inter-sonic and delineated
meanings; as per Lucy Green’s work. Sirek suggests that ‘symbolic boundaries can map how
musical knowledge is transmitted to distinct social groups; and make perceptible who has
control over access, transmission, and assessment in formal and informal music education’.
Section II: Capital, class, status and social reproduction

Section II includes chapters 11–22, describing a wide variety of ways in which perspectives of
capital, class, status, and social reproduction constitute fruitful points of departure as well as
focus areas for discussing the social functions and consequences of music education. Indirectly,
these descriptions and discussions also indicate how music education may contribute to the
larger, public conversation of society. Moreover, by doing so they also point to the social
responsibility of music education as well as music educators in these matters.
The array of theoretical perspectives vary from foundational theories of the social lives of
people, groups, and societies together with the dynamic relationships included, such as the
theoretical worlds of Pierre Bourdieu or Basil Bernstein, to theory and research addressing
particular issues such as, for example, socialization and subjectification, social imaginaries, and
marketization as well as technical and ritual rationality.
The section opens with chapter 11, wherein Petter Dyndahl carries out a systematic analysis
of the entailments for music education and music education research of Gert Biesta’s inter-
connected dimensions of qualification, socialisation, and subjectification. Focusing on
Ranciére’s influence on Biesta, he presents a critical review of Biesta’s philosophical founda-
tions, as a basis for discussing how, under certain conditions and modifications, the threefold
domains may be useful for a sociological approach to music education.
As different from the theoretical basis of Dyndahl’s analysis, chapter 12 is empirically
founded. Here, Gwen Moore takes a national, Irish study about undergraduate student’s musical
backgrounds and experiences of higher music education as her point of departure. She in-
vestigates the ways in which Bourdieu’s theoretical tools of habitus, cultural capital, and field
can further our understanding of how different musical pathways shape student experiences. By
drawing on an application of Bourdieu’s concepts to musical enculturation and the social re-
production of musical value, Moore investigates the ways in which social class factors work in
the pursuit of higher music education.
Another author who also draws on empirical data is Christine Carroll, who authors chapter 13,
reporting from an instrumental case study carried out on two levels of Australian school music
education. On both levels, legitimation code theory, which extends sociological ideas such as the
ones by Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu, served as an overarching, explanatory tool. The first
exposed the emergence and orientation of a ‘code division’ in curriculum documents, spanning a
60-year period through to the present day. The second examined this ‘code division’ from the
ground up, via classroom research implemented at a school in Sydney, New South Wales. Even if a
spectrum of knowledge and skills spanning the code distinctions was revealed, yet, teaching and
assessment practices maintained the code divide, Carroll reports. Hence, she suggests that by
8
Introduction
making knowledge practices more visible, the underlying mechanisms maintaining division can be
both acknowledged and new possibilities considered.
In chapter 14, Athena Lill lifts the concept of tweenage to the fore, a concept designating
broadly Westernised children between the ages of 8–15 years. She discusses the roles musical
production, distribution, and consumption may have in the creation and performance of a
tweenage social imaginary, based on theoretical strands such as the ones of Anderson,
Appadurai, Castoriadis, and Taylor, and seen as the active co-production and consumption of
cultural artefacts, specific social values, and group practices. In focus are the ways in which the
two key spaces of the school and the Internet enable this co-production. Based on empirical
data from her own doctoral study, Lill argues that through an examination of musical play,
musical fandoms, and the production and consumption of Internet-based musical texts, music
appears as integral to the creation and performance of this particular imaginary.
Chapter 15 is written by Gareth Dylan Smith, who takes the social context of a society
guided by what he calls an aggressive individualist, neoliberal ideology as his point of departure.
Focusing on inconsistencies in UK government rhetoric regarding music and the values ac-
corded to it as articulated through policies on culture and higher education, he suggests the
concept ‘intentional doublespeak’ as designating systematic efforts to diminish opportunities for
popular musicians at the grassroots level, while access to higher popular music education
dramatically expands. Smith suggests that this is driven by national governments who on the
one hand urge creators and artists in popular cultural domains to strive for success as en-
trepreneurs, while on the other they channel huge amounts of public funding away from
popular culture and into ‘high’ cultural forms such as ballet and opera. In conclusion, he
proposes a critical punk perspective that might empower musicians and educators to challenge
dominant ideology in the hope of working collectively toward a more democratic, compas-
sionate world.
In chapter 16, Patrick Schmidt explores the social space of an orchestral institution, the New
World Symphony in the USA, which he finds hybrid, changing, and an unevenly structured
social space where ambivalence places institutional and individual actions as a process of sub-
jectification in constant dispute, rather than a harmonious process of self-reinforcement and
reification. Drawing on sociological conflict theory, he suggests that central questions in-
forming research in higher music education and/or orchestral institutions might move away
from why hierarchy remains. Rather we might focus on the ways in which multiple and
contending hierarchical values can and do function within such communities; and if, by pro-
ducing multiple ‘repertoires of positions of power and resistance’ hierarchies can play a role in
democratising the social space. Then greater investigative care might be placed on how multiple
and contending hierarchical environs are able to provide democratising opportunities, Schmidt
suggests.
Øivind Varkøy authors chapter 17, directing the attention towards the influences of neo-
liberalism in the field of music education. Asking if music education scholars label everything
we do not like as neoliberalism, he calls for heretics and a heretical consciousness in our dealing
with it. Drawing on the Foucauldian tradition, Varkøy discusses neoliberalism in terms of a
political rationality. It is related to the hegemony of instrumental reason, as we find this way of
thinking both in technical and ritual rationalities characterizing our cultural situation, including
issues such as the justification of music education, he maintains. In this situation, music as a
general education subject is caught between technical rationality on the one hand, and ritual
arguments within the field of music education itself on the other, both characterised by the
hegemony of instrumental reason. Standing opposed to the neoliberal power of domination and
9
Ruth Wright et al.
the hegemonic discourses of instrumentalism, we need to recognize philosophical critique as a

fundament for profound political and social critique and action, Varkøy concludes.
Chapter 18 is written by Pamela Burnard and Garth Stahl, expanding how theories of
capital can be used to explore the professional lives of two highly respected women working in
the creative industries. The attention is directed towards how the women recognise and op-
erationalise their capitals, which capitals are seen as valuable and how they are valued, and what
characterises the ‘practices’ they use to generate capital. As a basis for their discussion, Burnard
and Stahl draw on Bourdieu’s approach to capital as well as some Bourdieusian-inspired
conceptual expansions of emotional capital and professional capital. They work implicitly with
these theories when focusing on two case studies of women creatives who are currently na-
vigating boundaryless careers. This enables Burnard and Stahl to make a theoretical con-
tribution to how emotional and professional capitals work in tandem, influencing each other. It
opens up new ways of thinking critically about how we accumulate capitals and use them to
reveal the conditions favouring their concentration and expansion by women creatives.
In chapter 19, Martin Fautley looks at the ways in which hegemony, especially as seen in the
valorisation of musical types, has had a significant impact upon classroom music curriculum and
assessment in England, with consequences for the interrelationship between curriculum and
assessment. He finds that views of curriculum can enforce valorisations of music’s status that
may be at odds with those of the children and young people receiving music classes at school. In
particular, this concerns the notion that Western classical music trumps all other types, an
established part of socio-political systems and demonstrated in the curricula produced by tea-
chers who themselves often come from a Western classical background. Consequently, Fautley
suggests that hegemony is important in considering the ways in which different types, forms,
and instantiations of musical knowledge find their outworking in the day-to-day curricula of
secondary school music education, and how assessment functions in this system. Following this,
we need to discuss whether the need for production of assessment data has overtaken musical
priorities such as those about musicality in some school settings.
Chris Philpott and Gary Spruce wrote chapter 20, wherein they address structure and agency
in music education and raise the question if it is possible for music teachers to exercise agency as
part of their practice. In answering this question, they present a framework for the analysis of
agency by drawing on the concept of structuration and the ecology surrounding the potentially
agentic teacher. If the music teacher is to be seen as agentic, hidden, and pervasive ‘structural
binds’ implicit in the discourses of music and music education need to be interrogated, they
maintain, pointing to Western classical music and its manifestation and influence on the
dominant discourses of music and music education as their example. In order to be agentic,
music teachers need to be knowledgeable and morally responsible, critical pedagogues, in-
tentionally engaged with the discourses of education, music education, and musicology,
they hold.
In chapter 21, Geir Johansen discusses the hidden curriculum of higher music education.
Setting out from a comprehensive view of hiddenness, a reflective ground is established by
drawing on works within the scholarship of music education as well as hidden curricula in
general, further reflected in perspectives such as recontextualisation, doxa, and critical discourse.
By sorting traits of hidden curricula in ‘hidden in plain sight’, ‘yet to be discovered’, and
‘revealed to some, hidden for others’, the attention is drawn towards musical value hierarchies,
the hidden ideology of entrepreneurship courses, and the possible reproduction of ideology on
a more general basis, and sexual discrimination and harassment across various sexual orienta-
tions. Finally, some concluding remarks address Jane Martin’s question: ‘what should we do
with a hidden curriculum when we find one’?
10
Introduction
In the last chapter of section II, chapter 22, Ruth Wright takes the story of rapper Plan B as
her point of departure for considering issues of democracy, social exclusion, and music edu-
cation, first through the lenses of classical sociological concepts of anomie and alienation and
then through additional contemporary sociological lenses of remix and life-hack. On that
ground, she examines the ways in which music education might act to reproduce undemo-
cratic, exclusionary practices or to counter them by enabling people to utilise their musical
cultural resources to remix and life- hack their subjectivities, thereby making sense of them-
selves and their worlds. In order to move in that direction, we might conceptualise music
education as musical remixing and life-hacking, positioning students alongside teachers and
artists as co-constructers of both their own subjectivities and contemporary culture, and hence
of contemporary society, not its hereditary recipients or excluded bystanders, Wright
concludes.
Section III: Crossing borders – problematising assumptions

The third section includes chapters that take an in-depth look at a wide variety of formal and
informal music education practices, taking us to extremely diverse settings spanning from the
work of the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Palestine to inclusive music education projects in
Sweden, and from the uses of collaborative video logs in higher music education to the music
education trajectories of Elvis tribute artists, or to Lowell Mason’s work in antebellum Boston.
Here again, a diverse group of authors present critical views on issues ranging from formation
and sustainment of communities of practice to various forms of colonialism, to musical identity
formation, to notions of growth and maturity, to constructions of notions of ‘creativity’, to the
ambiguities of multicultural and inclusive music education, to gender and race inequalities, to
informal learning trajectories, to issues of musical socialisation in family contexts.
The section begins with a powerful chapter (23) co-authored by Marion Haak-Schulenburg
and Felicity Laurence, focusing on two case studies of important music educational projects run
in the geopolitical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Haak-Schulenburg and Laurence
build on the legacy of Christopher Small, his socio-political critique of the imposed passivity in
our engagement with music, and his vision of music as form of engagement with multi-layered
exploration and shaping of selves, relationships, experiences and contexts. This Smallean ap-
proach is complemented with Gaztambide-Fernández (2013)’s critique of ‘the rhetoric of ef-
fects’ (p. 216) that dominates arts education. Gaztambide-Fernández (2013) argues that we
should actively oppose reification of art as something that does ‘something to people’ (p. 226),
focusing instead on musical engagement as a form of cultural production, focusing on what
people do themselves in their creative engagement with artistic processes. Based on this frame-
work, the authors critically analyse the music education practices of projects run by
the Barenboim-Said Foundation, showing how they (re)produce the cultural hegemony of
Western Art Music, imposing normalising conceptions of music(al) consumption as a means to
civility. As a counterexample to this form of ‘hegemonic musicking’, the authors engage in an
analysis of projects led by Musicians without Borders ‘just a stone’s throw away’ from
Barenboim-Said Foundation. The critical commentary advanced in this chapter is based on
their deep concern for socially engaged scholarly work that helps shaping music education
practices that are of and for the people, with and not without them.
In chapter 24, Siw Graabræk Nielsen and Petter Dyndahl adopt a theoretical framework that
derives from Pierre Bourdieu’s oeuvre, looking at higher music education as ‘a social field
where gender relations and hierarchies are produced and reproduced in particular ways’. The
chapter builds ‘on a previous survey of all master’s and PhD theses approved within Norwegian
11
Ruth Wright et al.
music academia from 1912 through 2012’. Based on the Bourdieusian premise that there exists
an ‘homology between social, spatial and mental structures’, an homology that results from the
intertwined workings of symbolic power and symbolic violence, Graabræk Nielsen and
Dyndahl examine what they refer to as the genderfication of popular music in Norwegian music
academia in terms of symbolic violence, showing how genderfication is deeply implicated in
musical gentrification (Dyndahl et al. 2014), that is, to the processes of academisation of popular
music in music education and research.
In chapter 25, Elizabeth Gould challenges heteropatriarchal and racially biased canonical
socio-historical narratives that relate to the origins of public school music education in the US.
Based on Roderick Ferguson’s (2004) ‘queer of color critique’, and on José Esteban Muñoz’s
concept of disidentification (1999), Gould examines ‘the social formations and relations that made
Lowell Mason’s work in antebellum Boston the founding canonical narrative of public school
music education in the US, and disqualified, disallowed and necessarily excluded African
American freewoman Susan Paul’s music education work which she undertook in the same
historical moment, city, and society’. Gould carefully shows how canonical music and music
education historiographies have ignored important sides of a contested past, suppressing het-
erogeneity, constructing and perpetuating ‘norms of acceptability that reflect those of the so-
ciety in which it is enacted’. Understanding (sociological) research as an ethical practice
highlighting and critiquing silences imposed by canonical narratives, Gould draws on American
writer, feminist, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde, whose work, Gould argues, provides the
language to express these silences. She suggests that music education sociology might imple-
ment Lorde’s strategy of critical self-reflection related to racism and homophobia as a way to
engage with the potentiality of difference.
In Chapter 26, Deanna Yerichuk employs a historical sociology perspective on the particular
history of music training in Toronto’s settlement music schools during the 1930s. In a way that
can be directly linked to Haak-Schulenburg and Laurence’s piece in this volume (chapter 23),
Yerichuk develops a critical historical reading of the uses of ‘classical music’ as a ‘corrective’
tool, as means to nurture social development in disadvantaged youth. Aware of the lack of
historical sociological studies in music education, Yerichuk first provides an introduction to
historical sociology, focusing on critical histories, arguing that ‘the methodology offers robust
analytical tools to critique contemporary values, assumptions, and ideas that underpin questions
of social organisation through music’. She then employs a Foucauldian critical history approach
to interrogate ‘the trope of good music’, and its resultant function as a way to dismiss other
musics, as ‘an effective, inconspicuous trope that normalised truths about the rightness of both
musical and social hierarchies that reinforced each other’. Most significantly, Yerichuk shows
how critical historical studies of music education’s past may help us ‘reconsider present-day
values and assumptions circulating in the field of community music’, enabling us to understand,
uncover, and critique contemporary ways of exercising social control through music.
In chapter 27, Panagiotis (Panos) A. Kanellopoulos presents a socio-historical study of the
‘Creative Music in Education’ movement [CMinED], a term that refers to a cluster of music
education experiments that in the 1960s and 1970s sought to redefine the relationship between
music, education, creativity, and notions of ‘contemporary’ music. The chapter unfolds in two
parts: the first introduces select fragments from the European history of efforts to create inroads
into a new relationship between creativity, children, and contemporary music. In the second
part, a sociological reading of the ideological underpinnings of creative music in education is
attempted. The study suggests that the language of legitimation created by CMinED was based
on (1) a universalist approach, with regard to constructions of ‘the young’ and of the music
creative process, (2) an egalitarian conception of creativity, and (3) an avant-garde educational
12
Introduction
approach that derived from the tradition of child art and led to a particular framing of the
‘contemporary’ in music. These constructs functioned as ‘invisible authorities’, delineating a
certain sense of what is educationally possible and worthwhile. Such a critical reading of
CMinED wishes to show the deep relevance it can have for us today, urging us to re-turn ‘not
by returning as in reflecting on or going back to a past that was, but re-turning as in turning it
over and over again’ (Barad 2014, p. 168).
In chapter 28, Susan Young probes the role of sociological thinking in questioning notions
of growth and maturity. Her approach shows the important role that the tradition of childhood
studies may play in music education, both in terms of methodological approaches to researching
children’s musical worlds, and also through offering us a wealth of critical perspectives. Young
turns her attention to the problematics of representation of young children, poignantly arguing
that developmentalist discourses, ‘construct the figure of the child upon ideas of linearity,
progress and standardisation’ and thereby colonise our conceptions of ‘childhood’, leading to
marginalisation of children on the basis of an ‘always-lagging-behind’ view that pervades ev-
eryday routines, modes of acting and modes of discourses through which children’s relationship
to music is being constructed. Young also raises that issue of the marginalisation of all those who
work with young children, as the pervading gendered division of labour that exists is deeply
intertwined to embedded assumptions of lower status. Based on select ideas from the work of
sociologist Nick Lee (1998; 2001) the paper challenges traditional divisions between adults and
children which construe children as dependent, changeable, and incomplete calling for a shift in
theoretical thinking that upsets notions of maturity implied in developmental accounts, sug-
gesting that ‘we are all, always, in a state of maturing; we never arrive’. The author notes that a
flat ontology of musical maturing/never arriving does not, though, cancel the need for grad-
uated, flexible and subtle distinctions (bodily distinctions, levels of experience, and levels of
material and emotional dependency) that may differentiate young children from adults.
However, she emphasises that such distinctions ‘are intrinsic to musical experience for ev-
eryone, irrespective of age – or any other social category’. On this basis, Young calls for ‘music
education as a practice to be understood in relational terms and for pedagogy not to be subject-
centred, but processual and relational in conception’.
In today’s world, perhaps more than ever, multi-layered and multi-sided musical conduct
seems to be the rule, rather than the exception. On the basis of recent empirical research, Sidsel
Karlsen, author of chapter 29, examines individual and collective strategies for multi-layered
musical conduct as well as some of its functions. Most significantly, the author develops a rather
meta-theoretical stance, constructing a critical perspective of how research of multi-layered
musical identities has been conducted. And she does so by examining specific research per-
spectives (developed around the notions of parallel musical identities, musical agency, and
cultural omnivorousness), with respect to their underlying assumptions about how and why
multi-layered musical conduct takes place, as well as to the methodological choices through
which such conduct can best be investigated. By examining different ontological points of
departure, theoretical assumptions, and methodological consequences of different research
perspectives, Karlsen makes us aware of the non-neutrality of the process of research.
Chapter 30 is co-authored by Kari Veblen and Stephanie Horsley, and looks at the learning
trajectories of four Elvis tribute artists (ETAs), contributing to the expansion of the horizon of
music education by showing how there is more than meets the eye in oft-dismissed practices of
‘imitation’. Data for this chapter come from a qualitative study of self-reported perceptions and
musical enactments of four ETAs in Southern Ontario, Canada. Analysis focuses on how these
artists develop and negotiate skills and identities in the process of becoming an ETA. The study
identifies several themes related to skills acquisition and identity formation of an ETA. These
13
Ruth Wright et al.
include early, passionate involvement, based on deep admiration; family support; networking
that leads to situating oneself within a wider ‘Elvis community’; delving in a self-directed,
multileveled, and dense process of skill building (cognitively, intuitively, emotionally, or
technically) that allows them to explore and shape particular creative and expressive possibilities;
sense of good fortune; Elvis as platform for larger life goals that leads to personal fulfilment; and
affinity with Elvis’s humanitarian outreach. Most importantly, Veblen and Horsley conclude
that the study participants’ ‘desire “to Elvis” is transcended by the acquisition of their own
musical identities and the ways in which they have appropriated the work of “Elvising” to reach
their own personal and professional goals and support the communities around them’.
In chapter 31, Ylva Hofvander Trulsson problematises notions of inclusion, revealing the
difficulties one has in making clear-cut judgments to questions such as: how can one frame
notions of inclusiveness that value otherness without ‘othering’ the other? More specifically, the
chapter focuses on the challenges faced and the possible openings offered to children with
different minority backgrounds, as well as to the varied circumstances that can affect work with
inclusion in music education. Of particular interest here is the notion of trialectic contract, used by
the author to describe the web of interactions between teacher and parent, parent and child, and
student and teacher that shape a teaching situation. By working with creativity in art and music,
opportunities arise for intercultural forms of interaction; but the complexities that emerge as a
result of the trialectic relationship between teachers, students, and parents posit challenges to
naïve conceptions of intercultural music education. Based on a primarily Nordic research
perspective, this chapter offers a sociological analysis of the complexities and the contradictions
faced by inclusive music education.
Chris Cayari, author of chapter 32, uses the social learning theory of Jean Lave and Etienne
Wenger to look at how collaborative video logs (CVLs) may act as learning resources, leading
to the creation of communities of practice (Wenger 1998) both within a classroom context and
beyond. The author carefully unravels the core elements and the importance of understanding
learning as a result of participation in communities of practice, proceeding to an analysis of how
CVLs can actually create communities of practice. Data for this study come from the author’s
implementation of CVL projects to seven different courses at three public US universities. To
explore the sociological vectors of culture and identity, Cayari studied ‘the situated learning
experiences (Lave and Wenger 1991) of students within CVLs and used the seven principles of
aliveness discussed by Wenger et al. (2002) to analyse student reflections on CVL projects in
music courses that serviced music education majors, elementary education majors, and students
from a variety of majors who took music as an elective’. This chapter is a clear example of how
sociologically informed scholarly work might help music education to expand its horizons and
embrace new technologies in a critical and informed manner.
Chapter 33, co-authored by Kari Veblen and Janice Waldron, is also drawing and expanding
on Lave and Wenger’s notion of communities of practice and the value of researching the role
of new technologies in music learning via this perspective. Extending the discussion that began
in the previous chapter, the authors discuss how music education might expand its under-
standing of means and processes of learning via borrowing perspectives from fields of new
media, social media, communications, and the cross-disciplinary fields of digital sociology and
digital anthropology. Veblen and Waldron take us beyond restricted conceptions of ‘the digital’
and its role in education and music education, but they also comment on its potential in
transforming social research itself. Thus, they strongly argue that ‘music education scholars
[should] consult, consider, and understand literature on internet enquiry and online research
methodologies before undertaking any investigations that involve the internet and/or the
“digital”, and especially so in sociological research focused on social media sites (SMSs) and
14
Introduction
music learning’. After articulating the immense relevance of digital sociology, digital anthro-
pology and online ethnography perspectives to music education, Veblen and Waldron survey
research on musical online communities of practice in formal settings such as schools and
institutions.
In chapter 34, Johan Söderman examines the cultural and informal music learning practices
that emerge through creative youth associations in post-industrial cities. The chapter is based on
a case study of Rörelsen Gatans Röst och Ansikte (The Movement of the Voice and Face of the
Streets) [RGRA], a youth association in Malmö, Sweden, that engages in important community
music work based on principles drawn from hip-hop culture, and involves young people with
immigrant backgrounds that live in disadvantaged areas of the city. Söderman sees the work
done in RGRA as a kind of Freirean empancipatory education that maintains firm links with
the Scandinavian folkbildung educational tradition. Söderman builds his analysis of the cultural
practices that evolve in the context of RGRA on three themes, referred to as ‘double features’.
A common feature of all three themes is that contradictory discourses are employed, discourses
that relate to the perennial debate between an ‘autonomist’ view of the value of aesthetics vs.
the possible social benefits of musical engagement. Furthermore, Söderman focuses on the
informal music and music learning practices within RGRA, analysing the ways in which young
leaders without formal music education shape a role that can be referred to as that of an ‘organic
educator’, passionate to share their innovation skills and committed to cultivate an ongoing
involvement in civil society.
Chapter 35, written by Jillian Bracken, turns our attention to the role of language as a bridge
between exposure to music and the cultivation of music listening preferences. Bracken invokes
Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1990) point that ‘no one acquires a language without thereby ac-
quiring a relation to language’ (p. 116). Extending this to music, one might appropriately state
that we are learning music at the same time that we acquire a relation to music. In this process of
learning music and forming a relation to music, words matter deeply. Thus, Bracken develops a
perspective based on sociolinguistics, which, together with family script theory (Byng-Hall
1988, 1995, 1998), form the basis for examining how discursive practices that emerge in family
contexts actually transmit music listenership values. Here, sociolinguistic analysis of families’
scripts is based on ‘an examination of the family as a discourse community (how information is
transmitted within the family domain), register (ways to categorise how parents talk to their
children/collective bodies of family language), taboo (discussing larger notion of societal
function, censorship of offensive language), and age appropriateness (a factor that determines
how/when/why/where parents enforce music listening guidelines)’. Bracken concludes that
‘sociolinguistic elements found within shared family discourse comprise each family’s script
around music listening and provide a blueprint for the “musical manners” that are transmitted
to children as members of their respective families’.
In chapter 36, the last in this volume, Jennifer Lang brings forth the power of music edu-
cation to enable people of all ages to enrich their lives via participating in music making. On
this basis, her study considers the conditions under which musicking may function as a life-long
pursuit. And she does this by bringing together three case studies that investigate the re-
lationship of musical engagement and musical agency employing a theoretical framework that is
based on Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (1985) related to engagement,
and on Karlsen’s (2011) ‘exploration of musical agency’. Once again, Small’s (1998) notion of
musicking as a form of social action through which we explore, celebrate, and affirm re-
lationships provides a theoretical umbrella that permits a multidimensional approach to the
notions of agency and engagement. In relation to engagement, data revealed enjoyment,
choice, variety, social camaraderie, comfortable environment to take safe risks, and experiences
15
Ruth Wright et al.
of success and confidence building, as core themes. As Lang notes in her chapter, ‘[a]ccom-
panied by an underlying temporal field of continuity and reinforcement these fundamentals
were then successful in affording learner agency through developing the participants’ will,
ability, and power to act in musical situations’. Lang concludes that the iterative relationship
between engagement and agency is of fundamental importance to ongoing participation in
musicking.
Note
1 It is suggested that readers unfamiliar with sociology and its application to the field of education
generally, and music education in particular also consult Sociology and Music Education
(Wright 2010).
References
American Sociological Association, What Is Sociology. Viewed 10 January 2020. Available from: https://
www.asanet.org/about-asa/asa-story/what-sociology.
Barad, K., 2014. Diffracting diffraction: cutting together-apart. Parallax vol. 20 (no. 3), 168–187.
Bernstein, B., 1999. Vertical and horizontal discourse: an essay. British Journal of Sociology of Education vol.
20 (no. 2), 157–173.
Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.C., 1990. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Sage, London.
Burnard, P., Hofvander Trulsson, Y., Söderman, J., 2015. Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Education.
Ashgate, Farnham.
Byng-Hall, J., 1995. Rewriting Family Scripts. Guilford, London.
Deci, E.L., Ryan, R.M., 1985. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Direction Behavior. Plenum, New York.
Dyndahl, P., Karlsen, S., Skårberg, O., Nielsen, S.G., 2014. Cultural omnivorousness and musical gen-
trification: an outline of a sociological framework and its applications for music education research.
Action Criticism Theory for Music Education vol. 13 (no. 1), 40–69. Viewed 11 October 2018. Available
from: http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/DyndahlKarlsenSk%C3%A5rbergNielsen13_1.pdf.
Ferguson, R.A., 2004. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis and London.
Froehlich, H., Coan, D., Rideout, R.R. (Eds.), 2003/4. Sociology of music education symposium III.
Social dimensions of music, music teaching and learning. Proceedings from the Music Education Symposium
at the University of North Texas, Department of Music and Dance. University of Massachusetts,
Massachusetts, Amherst.
Froehlich, H.C., 2007. Sociology for Music Teachers: Perspectives for Practice. Pearson, New York.
Froehlich, H.C., Smith, G.D., 2017. Sociology for Music Teachers: Practical Applications (Second ed.).
Routledge, New York.
Gaztambide-Fernández, R.A., 2013. Why the arts don’t do anything: toward a new vision for cultural
production in education. Harvard Educational Review vol. 83 (no. 1), 211–236.
Green, L., 1988. 2008. Music on Deaf Ears: Musical Meaning, Ideology and Education. Arima, Manchester.
Green, L., 1997. Music, Gender, Education. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Green, L., 1999. Research in the sociology of music education: some introductory concepts. Music
Education Research vol. 1 (no. 2), 159–169.
Green, L., 2001. How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education. Ashgate, Farnham.
Green, L., 2008. Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy. Ashgate, Farnham.
Karlsen, S., 2011. Using musical agency as a lens: researching music education from the angle of ex-
perience. Research Studies in Music Education vol. 33 (no.2), 107–121.
Lave, J., Wenger, E., 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Lee, N.M., 1998. Towards an immature sociology. The Sociological Review vol. 46 (no. 3), 458–482.
Lee, N.M., 2001. Childhood and Society: Growing Up in an Age of Uncertainty. Open University Press,
Buckingham.
16
Introduction
McLellan, E., Bates, V.C., Talbot, B.C. (Eds.) 2016. Action Criticism Theory for Music Education, vol. 15, no.
3, Available from: http://act.maydaygroup.org/volume-15-issue-3/.
Muñoz, J.E., 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis.
O’Flynn, J. (Ed.), 2011. Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education.
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland 5–9 July 2009, St Patrick’s College, Dublin.
Rideout, R.R. (Ed.), 1997. On the Sociology of Music Education. Papers delivered at the Oklahoma
Symposium for Music Education in April 1995, School of Music, University of Oklahoma,
Norma, OK.
Rideout, R.R., Paul, S. (Eds.), 2000. On the Sociology of Music Education II: Theoretical Underpinnings and
Practical Applications. Papers from the Music Education Symposium at the University of Oklahoma,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
Roberts, B. (Ed.), 2008. Sociological explorations: proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on the Sociology
of Music Education. Memorial University of Newfoundland, July 2–5, 2007, The Binder’s Press, St.
John’s, Newfoundland.
Small, C., 1977. Music, Society, Education. Wesleyan University Press, Hanover.
Small, C., 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Wesleyan University Press,
Havover, NH.
Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R.A., Snyder, W., 2002. Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing
Knowledge. Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA.
Wright, E.O., 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso, London.
Wright, R. (Ed.), 2010. Sociology and Music Education. Ashgate, Farnham.
17
PART I
Post-structuralism, Globalisation,
Internationalisation, Post-colonialism
INTRODUCTION
Patrick Schmidt
Section one of this Handbook speaks of the challenging intersections between larger social
phenomena and how they are made manifest as micro-logical concerns within the local social
spaces where music making, teaching, and learning take place. The chapters in this section do
not follow the types of corrective sociology of the functionalists, but macro-level concerns are
always around the corner – their presence felt in the careful locating of multiple geographies,
social norms, and cultural practices. Gathered here are contributions that approximate larger
and contemporary societal challenges to their representations and manifestations in musical
praxis, clarifying complex challenges faced by the field, while keeping the work of music
labourers at centre.
The ten chapters in this section span issues from colonialism and post-colonialism in music
education, to those surrounding indigeneity, internationalisation, and multiple cultural-
musical practices and their sociological challenges and openings. They provide a diverse set of
standpoints, illuminating specific fields of action in music, while underlining the significance
of what C. Wright Mills has called the ‘sociological imagination’. Whether they highlight
the ways in which individuals’ private troubles interface with the context of the broader
social processes structuring them, or explore the ‘extraordinary multitude and variety of
interactions [that] operate at any one moment’ (Simmel 1908/1971), the authors represented
exemplify why sociological thinking within music education remains powerfully rich and
potentially disruptive.
Regardless of these larger underpinnings, most texts in this section could be characterised as
following trends in two critical traditions: those influenced by neo-Marxian thinking and
Bourdieu’s sociological theory, and those aligned with what might be called ‘connected so-
ciologies’ (Bhambra 2014), associated with issues explored by post-colonial and decolonial
theories. Through it all what is salient – and this almost goes without saying – is the manner in
which music and its teaching and learning practices, are nothing if not political.
The outcome of this collection is both exciting and unsettling. Exciting in that we hear
connections between music education and activism; we learn the epistemic shifts and openings
that emerge as the field takes seriously the need to engage meaningfully with First Nations
and Indigenous cultures and practices; we are asked to critically engage with the reification of
informality, or invited to consider the ever-fluid boundaries within cultural practices.
Unsettling in that we are faced, broadly as well as specifically, with the myriad ways in which
21
Patrick Schmidt
normativity, hegemonic tendencies, inequitable practices, and uninvestigated traditionalism

continue to broadly inform music education as a social fact.
At the end, however, a careful reading of the chapters below will unearth what sociological
work and social theory does best: help us reveal, trouble, and find pathways for renewed
engagement with our environment and with those for whom we care. For those who value the
complex manner in which music intersects with social life, what follows will serve as a reminder
as to why we return to the work we do and why it matters.
References
Bhambra, G.K., 2014. Sociology for an ‘always-already’ global age. Connected Sociologies. Bloomsbury
Academic, London, pp. 141–156.
Simmel, G., 1971. The problem of sociology. In: Levine, D. (Ed.), Georg Simmel: On Individuality and
Social Forms. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, pp. 23–27. (original work published 1908.)
22
1
MUSIC EDUCATION AND THE
COLONIAL PROJECT
Stumbling toward anti-colonial music education
Juliet Hess
Introduction
In spite of the concerns raised by music educators, the dominance of singing in music
lessons in Ghanaian elementary schools would continue for many years. Ofei (1973, p. 33)
observed that, in practice, “the main objective of music education in the elementary
school appears to be the building up of a large repertoire of Western songs, hymns and
anthems.” … Many Ghanaian schools still followed “the nineteenth century colonial
tradition of preparing children to perform at worship services and on speech days.”
(Akrofi 2002, p. 495, citing Evans, 1975, p. 18)
Music education, historically and presently, has played an important role in the colonial project.
Even in now-independent countries such as Ghana, colonial influences on music education
linger, as Akrofi describes. This chapter examines how coloniality manifests in different music
education contexts through curriculum and pedagogy. Examining colonialism and its manifes-
tations is a vital part of sociology. Following Merriam-Webster, this Handbook defines sociology as
‘the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships; specifically: the systematic study
of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human
beings’. Colonialism has served as a violent mechanism of organising society through an active
practice of domination that has structured relations, institutions, and behavior in ways that have
ongoing social, political, and economic consequences. Critiques of coloniality identify and
challenge colonialism as one of the primary organising structures of social groups through relations
of domination and subjugation in ways that have led to systematic physical and cultural genocide.
Because colonialism shapes society’s organisation as a structure of both domination rooted in
identity and of the economic appropriation of land and resources, challenging ongoing colonial
relations is vital to sociology in its aims to reveal power relations within institutions and
social groups.
This chapter ultimately makes an intervention into ongoing coloniality through engaging a
theoretical framework of anti-colonialism. I explicate tenets of anti-colonialism as a framework
and position it as a potential orientation to resist colonial practices operating in music education.
Employing anti-colonialism theoretically and pedagogically may allow music educators to move
toward anti-colonial music education. As I take it up in the chapter, theory facilitates an
23
Hess Juliet
understanding of the way that colonialism operates both in society and in music education,
while the pedagogical comprises action – interventions that music educators can make that
unsettle the ongoing colonial project. Combining theory and practice is vital to the
implementation of anti-colonialism in music education.
Defining colonialism, imperialism, coloniality, indigeneity,

and the colonial project
Clearly defining terms related to colonialism is crucial to addressing coloniality in music
education. Tuck and Yang (2012) identify two forms of colonialism typically addressed in
theories of coloniality: external colonialism and internal colonialism. External colonialism
describes the
expropriation of fragments of Indigenous worlds, animals, plants and human beings,

extracting them in order to transport them to—and build the wealth, the privilege, or
feed the appetites of—the colonizers, who get marked as the first world. (p. 4)
External colonialism follows extractive logic and identifies entitlement to Indigenous bodies and
resources which settlers see as readily available to further desires of dominant global powers.
Internal colonialism involves ‘the biopolitical and geopolitical management of people, land, flora
and fauna within the “domestic” borders of the imperial nature’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 4).
They identify several particularised modes of control that enable internal colonialism including
prisons, ghettos, minoritising processes, schooling, and policing to ‘ensure the ascendancy of a
nation and its white elite’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 5). Established in many cases directly as a
result of colonialism, the State invests in projects of dispossession and genocide to assure the
ascendancy that Tuck and Yang identify. The function of the State in colonialism involves
inscribing and reinscribing the settler population as the rightful occupants of the land while
systematically eliminating the rights of the land’s Indigenous and original occupants. Education
and schooling have come to play a vital role in the colonial project through concentrated efforts at
cultural genocide in particular.
Colonialism intricately connects to capitalism. Loomba (1998, p. 20) defines colonialism as:
the forcible takeover of land and economy, and, in the case of European colonialism, a
restructuring of non-capitalist economies in order to fuel European capitalism. This
allows us to understand modern European colonialism not as some transhistorical
impulse to conquer but as an integral part of capitalist development.
She distinguishes between
colonization as the take over of territory, appropriation of material resources,

exploitation of labour and interference with political and cultural structures of another
territory or nation, and imperialism as a global system. (p. 6)
Quijano (2007) and Mignolo (2007) recognise modernity and coloniality as inseparable.
Coloniality, as an ongoing, distinctly place-based process, deliberately marked certain land
territories as primitive, justifying the subjugation of their human occupants (Wynter 2003). This
subjugation and extractive logic enable capitalist efforts and desires. To identify the colonial
project points to ongoing processes of subjugation, extraction, and erasure to facilitate the
24
Music education and the colonial project
ascendancy of the dominant and imperial group (the State). Dei (2006, p. 3) further defines
colonialism as ‘anything imposed and dominating rather than that which is simply foreign and
alien’. Rather than allow his definition to become metaphorical, I connect notions of the
imposed and dominating to the systems Tuck and Yang (2012, p. 5) identify as mechanisms for
colonialism and the ongoing colonial project including schools, prisons, minoritising processes,
and policing within internal colonialism.
The violence of colonialism and its focus on the genocide of Indigenous people has
invariably impacted Indigeneity. Scholars working against colonialism call for specificity within
discourse and action about colonialism (Tuck and Yang 2012; Loomba 1998). Similarly,
generalising Indigeneity remains impossible as Indigeneity can only be understood contextually.
Sharma and Wright (2008–09) critique discourse about Indigeneity as ‘autochthonous
discourse’ – a term that Merriam-Webster defines as ‘indigenous or native; and formed or
originating in the place where found.’1 Discourses about Indigeneity are entangled with place
and sometimes make assumptions about place in relation to what it means to be Indigenous.
Such discourses may fail to account for the forced migration many Indigenous people have
endured and continue to endure and further imply that one must inhabit the land to which you
are Indigenous to be Indigenous – a settler definition of Indigeneity. The quest by colonial
powers to limit the definition of Indigeneity in order to discount Indigenous land claims
complicates definitions of Indigeneity as colonial interests support the disappearing of
Indigenous peoples (Tuck and Yang 2012). To consider what Indigeneity might mean in
ongoing colonial projects such as Canada and the United States and in post-colonial and
neocolonial countries that have declared independence after overthrowing colonial rule,
centering specificity, locality, and Indigenous voices and avoiding totalising discourses becomes
crucial to imagining how anti-colonialism could manifest in each context.
Positionality
I come to this work as a settler. I am a White, Jewish woman from Canada, living in the US
While my German Jewish family did not emigrate to North America by choice, I nonetheless
have a settler relationship initially to Canada and now to the US. Tuck and Yang (2012)
distinguish between settlers and immigrants. While ‘[i]mmigrants are beholden to the
Indigenous laws and epistemologies of the lands they migrate to … [s]ettlers become the law,
supplanting Indigenous laws and epistemologies’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, pp. 6–7). As a music
educator and a settler, I see multiple ways that settler colonialism operates through music
education and wish to work against these dynamics, as a way of ‘unsettling’ settler logics. Often
held up in public discourse as an unequivocal good, music education actually readily participates
in injustice, and indeed cultural genocide,2 and attending to these possibilities must become part
of addressing ongoing colonial violence.
Music education: an important player in the colonial project

Music education plays an important role in the colonial project and enacts colonialism in
multiple ways. Before considering anti-colonialism as an intervention, understanding the way
colonialism operates in music education becomes important. This section explores how music
education perpetuates colonialism through the pervasiveness of Western classical music teaching
globally (Bradley 2007, 2017; Hess 2015a; Kratus 2015; Martin 1995; Regelski 2006), the
imposition of Western musical epistemologies to study non-Western musics (Bowman 1998;
Countryman 2009; Seddon 2004), the use of music education as a cultural civiliser
25
Hess Juliet
(Gaztambide-Fernández 2008; Gustafson 2009; Vaugeois 2013), the practice of musical tourism
(Dunbar-Hall 2001; Hess 2013, 2015a; Morton 2003; Wasiak 2009), and the representation of
particular groups in music education (Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000; Solís 2004). Given music
education’s function in the colonial project, identifying how music education perpetuates
colonialism allows music educators to resist and challenge these practices.
Western classical music education across global contexts

First, music educators might consider the ubiquity of Western classical music teaching across
global contexts. These contexts may differ greatly in relation to colonialism and include
ongoing colonial projects (countries shaped by settler colonialism, for example), countries
marked by neocolonialism post-independence, and colonial powers with ongoing dominating
relationships to former colonial projects.3 As a music with roots in Western Europe, Western
classical music’s pervasiveness across many countries reflects the status of Europe as a global,
imperial power. In countries identified as postcolonial and independent and in countries with
ongoing colonial projects, classical music practices often occupy the center of music education.
Indigenous musics and non-Western musical practices remain peripheral in music education.
Western classical music becomes a type of cultural hegemony (Bradley 2007, 2017; Hess 2015a;
Kratus 2015; Martin 1995; Regelski 2006). Consistent with minoritising processes and
schooling as tools of internal colonialism, the centering of Western musical practices minoritise
Indigenous and non-Western musics and reinscribe Western music (and specifically Western
classical music) as superior. Akrofi (2008) suggests multiple reasons for the curricular privileging
of Western musics in his study of ‘traditional musical arts’ in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South
Africa. He argues that foreign (Christian) missionary activities which emphasised Western music
education including hymns, the imported school systems and curricular content based on
foreign models and standards coupled with educators unfamiliar with traditional musical arts,
and the ubiquity of foreign media permeating local values and musics have contributed to the
diminishing of traditional musical arts in these countries. This internal colonialism enacted
specifically through schooling and through the minoritisation of Indigenous and non-Western
musics operates as a form of cultural imperialism that reinforces the privileged status of Western
classical music.
School music education often fails to reflect vibrant Indigenous musics, and musics
themselves, as Akrofi indicates, play a less central role in society due to colonial practices. In
Ghana, students use an acronym for music education classes – ‘Most Useless Subject In Class’
(Akrofi 2002). Students do not perceive that music class, as they know it, influences their
material reality. Akrofi discusses the disconnect between Western rudiments taught in school
and initiatives (particularly in Ghana and Nigeria) to teach Indigenous music. In postcolonial,
neocolonial, and ongoing colonial contexts, Western classical music often assumes a central
place in curriculum. Recognising its privileged place across vastly different global contexts
becomes part of the work necessary to address colonialism in music education.
Western ethnocentrism as cognitive imperialism

Second, music educators readily employ Western musical epistemologies and constructs to
engage with a range of musics (Bowman 1998; Countryman 2009; Seddon 2004). Rather than
recognising the multiplicity of epistemologies used readily by different groups, music educators
frequently take a Western ethnocentric singular approach to education. Seddon (2004), for
example, notes that when teachers expand the scope of classroom musics, they typically employ
26
a Western classical framework, often utilising Western ‘elements’ of music and Western
standard notation to engage with musics in schools. Western elements of music such as melody,
harmony, form, rhythm, and dynamics do not necessarily apply across multiple musics, as
Countryman (2009) notes in her search for broadly applicable musical elements. In music
education, however, utilising these constructs across musics remains common practice and
constitutes an ethnocentric approach to music education. In considering ‘world music ensemble
encounters,’ for example, Averill (2004) observes that students often ask ‘Where’s One?’ when
encountering new musics – looking for the Western classical downbeat to help them grapple
with musics that utilise different musical epistemologies. Bowman (1998, p. 12) challenges:
‘How do we avoid the tendency to hear other musics as variants of our own?’ He argues for a
relativist approach to music and music education as opposed to a universalist pedagogy.
The use of Western standard notation and the emphasis on notational literacy in music
education further delimits the musics studied to musics that can be notated readily or restricts
the expression of musics to what can be easily notated. Music, for example, that would require
double dots or 32nd notes in notation may be omitted or simplified, reducing its complexity.4
This ethnocentrism in music (Bowman 1998; Countryman 2009; Seddon 2004)5 – the use of
Western elements and Western standard notation to understand all musics – becomes ‘cognitive
imperialism’ (Battiste 1998). Understanding multiple musics through Western constructs
represents the imposition of a Western knowledge system on non-Western musics and
contributes to the ascendancy of Western epistemologies demanded by internal colonialism. As
noted, Dei (2006, p. 3) defines colonialism as ‘anything imposed and dominating’. Imposing a
Western epistemology on non-Western musics thus operates as both cognitive imperialism – a
demand to think all music through a particular lens – and a reinscription of Western European
ways of knowing at the center of epistemologies. Moreover, given Western classical music
education’s ubiquity in postcolonial, neocolonial, independent countries, as well as in countries
with ongoing settler colonialism, this musical cognitive imperialism operates across multiple
contexts. In Ghana, for example, where students describe music as the ‘Most Useless Subject in
Class,’ to engage with school music education, students must adopt a Eurocentric approach to
successfully master the Western ‘rudiments’ taught (Akrofi 2002). Utilising a non-Eurocentric
epistemology, conversely, will likely not allow students to successfully replicate the material
taught. Not adopting a Eurocentric epistemology may thus negatively impact students’ grades.
Indigenous students subjugated in residential schools in Canada and in the US similarly
reproduced Western classical music (Vaugeois 2013) and would have needed to employ
Western epistemologies. Music education thus participated in what is referred to in Canada as
‘killing the Indian in the child’ (Fournier and Crey 2006).
Music education as a civilising project

Third, historically, music education has been employed as a civilising project (Gustafson 2009;
Vaugeois 2013). Music education as civilising project encompasses multiple facets: (i) delib-
erately cultivating the White subject through classroom repertoire and strategic curricular
choices (Gustafson 2009); (ii) installing hierarchies of the human as natural (Vaugeois 2013); and
(iii) disappearing Indigenous bodies through Whitening processes and marking Indigenous
Others as ‘degenerate.’
Gustafson explains how lyrics and accompanying illustrations in vocal music textbooks
beginning in the 1830s sought to produce the ‘civilised’ singing subject – the White subject.
She views school music instruction as implicated in imagining ‘ideal citizens’ as White
citizens. Her historical research explores how lyrics modeling specific behaviors and
27
Hess Juliet
nationalistic ideals, strict notions of physical comportment, textbooks, and music appreciation
nurture this ideal citizen. Lyrics were strategically chosen to foster patriotism and convey the
value of bucolic and pastoral life. Songs taught students to behave ‘appropriately’, cultivate
dedicated work ethics, mind their teachers and parents, and be physically active (but not
sexually active). She argues that ideal music listeners should listen without moving their bodies.
The values conveyed centered priorities of the White, middle class. The cultivation of the
White subject served to elevate Whiteness and further participate in the minoritising processes
inherent in internal colonialism.
When music education shifted to a music appreciation approach in the 1920s, Black and
Indigenous musics previously omitted in music curricula assumed a marginal position as sim-
plistic musics for younger grades. The more ‘sophisticated’ Western European and American
folk and patriotic music comprised the majority of the curriculum (Gustafson 2009). This
presentation and purposeful minoritisation of musics further reinscribed White subjects at the
center of music education and diminished the music of Others – in this case, Black and
Indigenous peoples. This cultivation of the White subject through music further valourised
practices including still comportment,6 patriotic sentiments, and compliance, while negating
minoritised Others through careful selection of music for study. Vaugeois (2013, p. 33) writes
that music has
the power to shape identity, invoke emotional responses, help or hinder the devel-
opment of “good” citizens, and even create national unity and national loyalty. These
musicians [explored in the study] believe that the “right” music can bring about the
“right” outcomes and, likewise, that the “wrong” music can support rebellious or
degenerate behaviours.
Considering music education’s role as a civilising force within the colonial project requires
recognising how music educators may employ music to encourage particular forms of citi-
zenship and civic engagement. Gustafson’s description of the strategic use of lyrics to promote
certain behaviours and the curricular representation of various musics identify efforts in music
education to produce subjects who replicate White, middle-class values.
Music education thus also reproduces hierarchies of the human – the ‘rationalities of race,
gender and class, as they become embodied and normalized in colonial institutional structures
and discourses of national identity’ (Vaugeois 2013, p. ii). Vaugeois’ research examines how
musical practices rationalise the displacement of Indigenous peoples and inscribe White
entitlement. The marginalisation of Indigenous and Black musics in music appreciation
curricula in the early to mid-twentieth century (Gustafson 2009), for example, portrays these
musics as simplistic and less worthy of attention, reinscribing Western European classical music
at the top of musical (and human) hierarchies. The limited place of non-Western musics in
school music curricula has not shifted significantly since that era; in the United States and
Canada in particular, the Western ensemble paradigm still pervades music education practices
(Bartel 2004; Sarath et al. 2016), pushing Other musical practices to the margins. Centering
Western music above all Other musics reinscribes individuals of Western European descent –
settlers in the Canadian and US context – at the top of the hierarchies of the human.
Cultivating the White subject and the reinstalling descendants of Western Europeans at the
top of the hierarchy of civilisations facilitates the disappearing of Indigenous bodies through
explicit processes of Whitening and marking Indigenous Others as ‘degenerate.’ Erasing
Indigenous populations is fundamental to legitimising settler land claims in the United States
28
and Canada. The racialisation of Black people and Indigenous people in these countries thus
differs vastly. Tuck and Yang (2012, p. 12) explain US processes of racialisation:
Through the one-drop rule, blackness in settler colonial contexts is expansive, ensuring
that a slave/criminal status will be inherited by an expanding number of ‘black’
descendants. Yet, Indigenous peoples have been racialized in a profoundly different
way. Native Americanness is subtractive: Native Americans are constructed to become
fewer in number and less Native, but never exactly white, over time. Our/their status
as Indigenous peoples/first inhabitants is the basis of our/their land claims and the goal
of settler colonialism is to diminish claims to land over generations (or sooner, if
possible). That is, Native American is a racialization that portrays contemporary
Indigenous generations to be less authentic, less Indigenous than every prior
generation in order to ultimately phase out Indigenous claims to land and usher in
settler claims to property.
Whitening projects, including music education practices that cultivate the White subject, then
contribute to displacing and erasing Indigenous peoples and facilitating settler land claims.
Vaugeois (2013, p. 158) argues:
If Aboriginal students were successful learning Western music, their success was used
to demonstrate that the residential schools were succeeding in “civilizing the savages.”
Successful student bands, for example, were showcased at public and Mission
sponsored events (in Canada, the United States and South Africa).
Through this so-called civilising process, music education has played and continues to play an
important role in the subtractive logic Tuck and Yang (2012) describe.
Musical tourism: mastery and simplification

Fourth, music educators often include multiple musics at the elementary level in particular
(Campbell 2004; Campbell et al. 2005). Teachers may introduce musics from many different
contexts. Like the early inclusion of Indigenous and Black musics in music appreciation in the
US (Gustafson 2009), however, these musics often remain peripheral to the Western musical
core, serving again to minoritise them.7 Moreover, their representation frequently remains
simplistic. The dominant paradigm of music education in many places remains ensemble-based
and some teachers have knowledge bases rooted in classical music (Bartel 2004) with limited
education outside of Western traditions (Wasiak 2009). Presently, however, many music tea-
chers can weave between two or three musical traditions – Western classical music and Western
pop music, for example, or in my case, Western classical music and Ewe (Ghanaian) music,
allowing these teachers to teach beyond the classical ensemble paradigm. Intimate knowledge of
more than two or three musical traditions is rare, however, and not a realistic or fair expectation
of music teachers. This lack of knowledge of many traditions paired with the emphasis on
engaging multiple musics in the classroom forces teachers to rely on resources for support.8 As
noted, many musics learned through oral tradition do not notate easily.9 Because knowledge of
and competence in classical music frequently remains a requirement for admission to post-
secondary music education programs (Koza 2008), music educators often navigate musics
through notation. As such, resources representing different musical traditions often commu-
nicate these musics through notation. Doing so, however, often results in simplifying
29
Hess Juliet
complex rhythms10 and reducing the ineffable to the concrete within Western epistemologies.
Given the reduction of various musics to simple forms, educators and students may understand
the musics themselves as simple and determine it possible to master them quickly.11
These inclusive curricular moves contribute to music education’s coloniality. First, including
multiple musics in school curricula indicates mastery over foreign territory coupled with an
entitlement to the musics of Others.12 This mastery extends to notating different musics. The
‘business’ of music education – music publishers – can reduce musics that do not utilise Western
standard notation to simplified versions of themselves – a literal ‘capturing’ and ‘freezing’ of
musics in time. Hierarchies of musics that privilege Western musics often remain firmly in place,
cementing the hierarchies of the human Vaugeois (2013) explicates and contributing to the as-
cendancy of the dominant group vital to internal colonialism. The entitlement inherent in in-
cluding multiple musics in school curricula further follows extractive logic (Kuntz 2015; Tuck
and Yang 2012) – the same logic that facilitated extracting and exporting valuable
resources under colonialism. Music education’s move toward multiculturalism (Campbell 2004;
Volk, 1998), critical multiculturalism (Morton 2001), and subsequently social justice (Benedict
et al. 2015) and culturally responsive teaching (Lind and McKoy 2016) involves music
educators extracting musics of peoples in groups with whom teachers do not identify and utilising
them in classes.13 Musics selected often include those embedded in colonial legacies. The move to
include then can doubly serve to reinscribe the extractive logic that underpins colonialism.
Representation, mastery, dehumanisation, and erasure

Finally, representation, mastery, and dehumanisation weave together to facilitate erasure.
Representing Indigenous musics as simplistic and the mastery implied as possible when complex
musics are reduced to what can be notated encourages stereotyping among students who engage
with the musics.14 As a practice, stereotyping fails to recognise the humanity present in all groups
and instead elides complexities into understandable signifiers that become shorthand for different
groups. As such, stereotyping participates in dehumanisation – a specific need of settler colonialism
(Patel 2016, p. 89) and an essential part of the minoritising process. When dominant groups fail to
recognise the complexities of individuals in other groups, it becomes easier not to acknowledge
their humanity. Understanding Others as subhuman or less-than-human has continually
underpinned colonial and racialising logics (Goldberg 1993; Mills 1997; Wynter 2003).
The differing processes of racialisation of Indigenous and Black groups in the US as
explicated by Tuck and Yang (2012) above necessitates a subtractive logic of Indigenous
peoples – an erasure. Erasure often operates in terms of colorblindness – a staunch refusal to
recognise difference. Colorblindness functions as a liberal response to accusations of racism
(Bonilla-Silva 2006). In the case of Indigeneity, erasure operates differently and is both insidious
and dangerous when paired with subtractive logic. Tuck and Yang (2012, p. 9) write:
Everything within a settler colonial society strains to destroy or assimilate the Native
in order to disappear them from the land—this is how a society can have multiple
simultaneous and conflicting messages about Indigenous peoples, such as all Indians
are dead, located in faraway reservations, that contemporary Indigenous people are less
indigenous than prior generations, and that all Americans are a “little bit Indian.”
These desires to erase—to let time do its thing and wait for the older form of living to
die out, or to even help speed things along (euthanize) because the death of
pre-modern ways of life is thought to be inevitable—these are all desires for another
30
kind of resolve to the colonial situation, resolved through the absolute and total
destruction or assimilation of original inhabitants.
Representing Indigenous musics in ways that facilitate stereotyping enables dehumanisation,

and further makes erasure – a practice fundamental to colonialism – possible. Music education
communicates these messages through its typical musical representation of Indigeneity (see
Gorbman 2000). It is difficult to grapple with another’s humanity when musics rely upon
stereotypes of Indigeneity that reduce, for example, Native American traditions to drum sounds
in a beginner band piece. Such representations encourage understandings that ‘all Indians are
dead’ or ‘located in faraway reservations.’ Nothing in a percussive signifier of Indigeneity in a
band piece requires students to consider coloniality. Representations of musics beyond Western
classical and popular musics typically do not reckon with the people who practice the music,
but rather engage with music education resources as simulacrum.
Summary
Together, these practices – the imposition of Western classical music curricula across
contexts, the ethnocentric approach to different musics, the use of music education as
civiliser, the seeming entitlement to Other musics in music classrooms, and the representation
of these musics – elucidate music education’s complicity in the colonial project. Music
education readily participates in internal colonialism and further facilitates minoritising
processes. Music education’s implication in colonialism is distinctly cultural, and culture plays
an important role in colonialism’s subtractive logic. Negating particular musics in curricula
while centering Western classical music cements the hierarchies of the human
(Vaugeois 2013). The civilising project facilitates the settler land claim. The manner in which
music educators include Indigenous musics through tokenism and simplification further
negates and dehumanises Indigenous groups through stereotyping in particular. Music
education enables the colonial project. As such, the field requires a framework to address
colonial tendencies in these practices. The next section introduces anti-colonialism as a
theoretical framework and subsequently explores how this framework may allow us to engage
and challenge the dynamics explicated above.
Anti-colonialism: a crucial theoretical framework to address the coloniality of

music education
Accounting for colonialism in music education requires a mechanism to understand the
practices above not as disparate, but as connected, and situated in the larger colonial project. As
a theoretical framework, anti-colonialism provides music educators with language to consider
these practices and understand their colonial potential. Moreover, as an oppositional frame-
work, anti-colonialism allows music educators to resist colonialism operating within
and through music education and move toward something more hopeful. Schools as institutions
and the minoritising processes they facilitate readily participate in internal colonialism as
described above. This section briefly describes elements of anti-colonialism.
Dei (2006, p. 2) asserts that anti-colonialism is
an approach to theorizing colonial and re-colonial relations and the implications of

imperial structures on the processes of knowledge production and validation, the
understanding of indigeneity, and the pursuit of agency, resistance and subjective politics.
31
Hess Juliet
Anti-colonialism draws on multiple discursive traditions and relies on many of the same key
texts as postcolonial theory and critical race theory. Differentiating anti-colonialism from
postcolonial theory is more a question of orientation than a conceptual distinction. The ‘anti-’
of anti-colonialism identifies an action-oriented approach. Anti-colonialism ‘seeks to resist
[colonialism], change it, and build something new’ (Angod 2006, p. 165); it is the path toward
decolonisation. ‘Anti-‘stances allow educators to challenge oppression and work toward
breaches (Rebollo-Gil and Moras 2006). An ‘anti-’ stance then is distinctly productive. This
section explores several elements of anti-colonialism: (i) its capacity to facilitate understanding
colonial and re-colonial relations and their effects on knowledge production; (ii) its emphasis on
Indigeneity and multiple epistemologies; (iii) its stress on resistance; (iv) its connecting of
resistance to identity politics; (v) its emphasis on agency; (vi) its potential for facilitating analysis
of power structures and dynamics; and (vii) its explicit centering of positionality.
Understanding the effects of colonial and re-colonial relations

on knowledge production
Anti-colonialism provides a mechanism to understand how colonial and re-colonial15 relations
shape knowledge production. Dei (2006, p. 3) asserts that all knowledges are socially situated
and politically contested. Colonialism has dramatically shaped what counts as legitimate
knowledge, privileging, for example Western science and philosophy over local Indigenous
sciences and philosophies across multiple contexts (Dei 2011; Asabere-Ameyaw et al. 2012).
Anti-colonialism facilitates recognising which knowledges count as legitimate alongside active
critique of privileging of particular knowledges over others and processes of knowledge
production that place Western ways of knowing at the top of the hierarchy of knowledges.
Employing this theoretical orientation further allows educators to critique and subvert
dominant thinking (Dei 2006).
Honoring Indigeneity and creating space for multiple epistemologies

Dei (2006) roots anti-colonialism in Indigenous ways of knowing. He asserts that anti-
colonialism facilitates reclaiming the past (Dei, 2006, p. 1). Loomba (1998), however,
positions pre-colonial history as inseparable from colonialism. Educators might then
consider reclamation coupled with grappling with colonial legacies rather than an exercise
that obfuscates colonial histories of trauma, subjugation, and violence. Reclamation may
then involve honoring ways of knowing following oppression. Key anti-colonial thinker
Albert Memmi (1965, p. 152) argues that the colonised must ‘cease defining himself [sic]
through the categories of the colonisers’ thus opening up space to reclaim Indigenous
religion, culture, language (pp. 133–134), and different ways of knowing. Music often
emerges at the intersection of religion, culture, and language. Anti-colonialism allows
educators to consider multiple epistemologies – different ways of knowing music and the
world – and resist cognitive imperialism (Battiste 1998)
Prioritising resistance and linking resistance with identity politics

Anti-colonialism, given its oppositional orientation, prioritises resistance. Anti-colonial thinkers
Fanon (1963), Gandhi (Gandhi and Dalton 1996), Césaire (1972/2000), and Memmi (1965)
describe resistance as vital to anti-colonialism. Memmi (1965) concludes that given the choice
between assimilation and revolt, the colonised must revolt. Inherently oppositional,
32
anti-colonialism opposes Eurocentrism and ethnocentric approaches to knowing and knowl-

edge production. Anti-colonialism further challenges dominant power structures and inter-
rogates power relations that sustain them (Dei 2006). This orientation moreover resists the
notion that the colonised can be ‘known’ (Dei 2006, p. 4) as objects. Resistance in anti-
colonialism is inseparable from identity politics. Opposing Eurocentricism, for example, is
rooted in resistance to European colonisers and the desire for the representation of different
ways of knowing in education and other spheres.
Emphasising agency
Inherent in colonisation is a process Césaire (1972/2000, p. 42) describes as ‘thingification.’ He
contends that the power relations immanent in colonialism transform the colonised into objects:
[n]o human contact, but relations of domination and submission which turn the
colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave
driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of production.
(p. 42, emphasis added)
Colonialism propagates the understanding of the colonised as ‘subhuman’ (Mills 1997). Anti-
colonialism must therefore involve reclaiming subjectivity and asserting agency, a call Dei
(2006, p. 15) affirms. By definition, taking an anti-stance involves the seizing of agency to
oppose and resist the effects of both internal and external colonialism. Reclamation of agency
facilitates the refusal of colonial conditions and assuming an active oppositional and insurgent
position in response.
Facilitating an analysis of power

Anti-colonialism foregrounds race, dominance, and difference (Dei 2006). In doing so, this
orientation facilitates careful analysis of power relations that reify dominant power structures
and Eurocentric institutions, as well as meticulous examination of the relationship between Self
and Other. Loomba’s (1998, p. 20) description of colonialism cited earlier details colonialism as
integral to capitalist development. By focusing on interrogating power, anti-colonialism
encourages the recognition of the entanglements of colonialism with capitalism and allows
for the examination of the effects of these enmeshments in order to analyse and resist their
consequences.
Centering positionality
Ultimately, anti-colonialism purposefully centers positionality and considers subject locations of
all individuals and groups. Centering positionality allows for a careful accounting of intersecting
identities (Collins 2000; Crenshaw 1995) and a clear analysis of the social and political con-
ditions that shape one’s position in the world. Anti-colonialism facilitates the consideration of
‘subjectivity, positionality, location and history’ (Dei 2006, p. 3). Moreover, it emphasises
positionality while accounting for the specificity of different contexts that reckoning with
colonialism demands (Loomba 1998; Tuck and Yang 2012). This focus on positionality moves
beyond considering individuals and groups subjected or previously subjected to colonisation to
gaze at bodies ‘racializing’ the subjects (Dei 2006, p. 10).
33
Hess Juliet
Summary
As a theoretical and political orientation, anti-colonialism facilitates examining colonial and
re-colonial relations and their effects on knowledge production and emphasises Indigeneity,
making room for multiple epistemologies. It stresses resistance and agency, and links resistance
to identity politics. Ultimately, it facilitates an analysis of power that explicitly centers
positionality.
Resisting coloniality in music education through anti-colonialism

This final section considers how employing anti-colonialism may allow music educators to
address the underlying coloniality in music education. I focus attention on schooling and
minoritising processes as facets of internal colonialism. Anti-colonialism may enable the field to
both account for and respond to: (i) Western classical music’s ubiquity across global contexts,
(ii) Western ethnocentric practices, (iii) the use of music education as a civilising project, (iv)
musical tourism practices, and (v) issues of representation, mastery, and erasure.
Western classical music education across global contexts

Western classical music’s ubiquity across global music education contexts exemplifies coloni-
alism’s manifestation in music education. As a theoretical orientation, anti-colonialism allows
music educators to notice the effects of colonialism on knowledge production and recognise the
privileging of particular knowledges and musics over others. Such privileging reflects the
ascendancy of the dominant group targeted by internal colonialism. By emphasising resistance,
anti-colonialism further allows educators to resist Eurocentricity embedded in Western classical
models of music education and instead ask critical questions about which musics best serve local
students. Moreover, its focus on power allows for analysis of the structures that privilege these
musical practices across different global contexts. In recognising Western classical music
education’s ubiquity, anti-colonialism allows educators to see the coloniality present in
implementing Western musics in post-colonial countries, for example, and work to both make
the colonialism visible and counter these practices by honoring each locale’s specificity and
considering what it might mean to provide ethical music education in local communities.
Western ethnocentrism as cognitive imperialism

Music education practices often utilise Western epistemologies and frameworks to approach all
musics. This ethnocentric approach might involve using notation, for example, or Western
‘elements of music’ such as melody, rhythm, dynamics, texture, timbre, and form to com-
municate musics beyond Western traditions. In ethnocentric approaches, music educators
privilege one epistemology over others and may ultimately enact cognitive imperialism when
they encourage students to adopt a particular epistemology. Anti-colonialism, conversely,
creates room for multiple epistemologies and facilitates naming ethnocentric practices such as
the use of Western standard notation to communicate music rather than permitting their
invisibility in education discourse. It makes ethnocentrism explicit and allows educators to
consider ways of knowing students may bring to music classrooms. Multicentricity – or the
acknowledgment of multiple epistemologies – becomes possible (Dei 1996; Hess 2015b). Music
teachers who facilitate multicentric classrooms draw upon students’ own knowledges and
validate these varied epistemologies (Hess 2015b).
34
Music education as civilising project

Music education as a civilising project, as noted, can participate in disturbing practices that
include cultivating the White subject, installing hierarchies of the human, and disappearing
Indigenous bodies through Whitening projects. Anti-colonialism facilitates explicitly naming
these practices, their effects, and directly analysing power. While historically these pedagogical
moves were carefully instituted, current practices often occur unconsciously rather than
through deliberate pedagogy. As such, illuminating these possibilities allows educators to
subvert them and choose a different way forward. Upon considering the notion of ‘civilised’ for
example, music educators can resist its signification in Whiteness. Moreover, anti-colonialism
facilitates consideration of the hierarchies of the human (Vaugeois 2013) and provides a means
to problematise such hierarchies and resist their possible manifestation in curricular and
pedagogical practices. Music teachers aiming to challenge music education as a civilising project
may also aim toward multicentric classrooms (Hess 2015b) that value multiple musics while
refusing to hierarchise or order musics or epistemologies.
Musical tourism: mastery and simplification

When including musics beyond Western musics, music education curricular practices often
keep Other musics on the periphery, perhaps representing them as simple and easily mastered.
The market drive for resources that represent non-Western musics often results in greatly
simplified versions of complex musics. Moreover, the entitlement that educators may feel in
relation to bringing different musics into music classrooms can draw upon extractive logic, as
noted. Anti-colonialism, however, again facilitates an explicit power analysis and direct
examination of representation. It allows educators to both recognise and account for coloni-
alism’s effects on knowledge production. It also allows educators to notice (and not erase)
simplification. Discerning how musics have been simplified will help students recognise their
complexities and may lead to interesting conversations about reducing musics to notated forms
and the implications of that exercise.
Representation, mastery, dehumanisation, and erasure

Representing particular musics as simple may further lead to stereotyping, dehumanisation, or
erasure, as described. Similar to the other possibilities anti-colonialism offers, this framework
allows educators to make these detrimental and oppressive effects visible and resist them. When
educators and students notice how representations of particular musics can dehumanise groups
of people, they can counter this tendency and look for other practices that function similarly to
illuminate these actions. Music teachers can purposefully push beyond stereotypes and resist
practices that contribute to stereotyping such as performing musics without providing detailed
contextualisation (Bradley 2003).
Summary
Anti-colonialism provides a mechanism to address the coloniality operating in music education.
It facilitates a means to analyse colonialism’s effects on knowledge production and explicitly
identify power relations operating in music education practices. As an action-oriented
anti-stance, anti-colonialism calls upon educators to resist and oppose coloniality in music
education, but also to create a more productive way forward.
35
Hess Juliet
Moving forward: stumbling toward anti-colonial music education

Given anti-colonialism’s potential to reveal both coloniality and power relations in music
education alongside its demand for resistance and change, employing this framework allows
educators to elucidate the operation of colonialism in music education and further assert their
agency to create different possibilities. Moreover, recognising coloniality across disparate music
education practices allows educators to understand these practices as interrelated, which facil-
itates coherence in resistance. Anti-colonialism’s emphasis on analysis and the revelation of
underlying power relations will further help youth develop their ability to look for power
dynamics operating in the structures, representations, and ideologies they encounter and de-
velop a practice of critique that refuses to accept status quo practices without analysis. Anti-
colonialism, then, is not just a useful framework for music educators to employ in resisting
music education’s coloniality, but also important for students to engage as they develop their
abilities to critique and analyse. Coloniality manifests in many dominant music education
practices; anti-colonialism, however, facilitates a means to recognise and analyse these practices
and deliberately create a different way forward.
Reflective questions
1. How might music educators apply anti-colonialism to their praxis?
2. What might anti-colonial music education look/sound like when integrated in curriculum?
Notes
1 Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autochthonous on November 1, 2018.
2 I explain the ways that colonialism operates through music education in the next section.
3 See, for example, France’s ongoing maltreatment of immigrants from former colonies (Hargreaves, 2007).
4 See Hess (2018) for extended discussion.
5 The Oxford dictionary defines ethnocentrism as the ‘evaluation of other cultures according to
preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture’. See https://www.
lexico.com/en/definition/ethnocentrism.
6 Still comportment is antithetical to many musicking practices. For an extended discussion, Hess (2018).
7 I draw on the US context as an example of the way that musical tourism manifests. This phenomenon
operates similarly in other contexts and examining the US allows for a deep consideration of the
dynamics at play and the illumination of other contexts.
8 Wasiak (2009) remarks that the ease of these pre-packaged instruction contributes to a touristic
approach to non-Western musics.
9 See Trinka (1987) for an example with US folk songs.
10 Trinka (1987), for example, identifies the way this simplification operates in US folk songs in
textbooks.
11 In the context of the ‘world music’ ensemble, Trimillos (2004) discusses the way that the 12-week
world music course model leads students to believe they can ‘master’ a music in 12 weeks.
12 See Hess (2013) for a spatial examination of musical tourism.
13 See Aoyama (2009), Dunbar-Hall (2001), Hess (2013, 2015a), and Wasiak (2009) for a discussion of musical
tourism. The Aoyama article focuses on Flamenco as a dance form while the other articles address music.
14 See Bradley (2003) for a related discussion.
15 Dei’s (2006) use of the word ‘re-colonial’ seems to imply absence and recurrence. In countries where
colonialism has been ongoing, this word seems inappropriate. The word ‘neocolonialism’ typically
describes the use of capitalist or economic power to control formerly colonised countries through the
market economy following independence in these countries (Sartre, 1964).
36
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2
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON INTERNATIONALISATION
AND MUSIC EDUCATION
Introduction
In many fields, internationalisation is seen as a rather positive development, supporting the
formation of a global community and thereby improving theory, research, or practice (De
Wit 2011). Even though internationalisation has its downsides, as studies in higher education
indicate (Knight 2011), there has rarely been a comprehensive critical discussion about it. This is
surprising since internationalisation has gained growing significance in recent years, also in music
education (Schmidt 2013; Hofvander Trulsson et al. 2015). Sociological perspectives on inter-
nationalisation can facilitate a critical analysis of what internationalisation means, raising awareness
for issues of power and hegemony in music education worldwide, utilising the notion of com-
munity to develop new visions in view of today’s increased global connectedness and cultural
diversity. Therefore, this chapter applies to music education research results presented in recent
publications on sociology (Kalekin-Fishman and Denis 2012; Delanty 2018), sociology of edu-
cation (Apple et al. 2010), and studies in higher education (Proctor and Rumbley 2018). Connell
(2012, p. 188) justifies a critical perspective on internationalisation as a significant part of
sociological research when stating that during the last decades, sociology as a discipline has been
much concerned with scrutinising class and gender aspects, ‘but we have not yet paid the same
attention to the geopolitical dimension of our collective being, and how this affects thinking about
central sociological issues.’ It might indeed be the time to more thoroughly investigate the notion
of internationalisation in sociology and sociology of music education, thereby developing the
vision of a culturally sensitive internationalisation of music education (Kertz-Welzel 2018).
The chapter starts with an analysis of what internationalisation is, in general, regarding
higher education and music education. Then, the notion of community and global community
is scrutinised. Finally, a new vision of the global music education community is presented,
emphasising the need for a united, yet diverse global music education community.
What is internationalisation?
At first glance, internationalisation appears to be a rather neutral term, indicating desirable
transnational collaborations in various fields. But when taking a closer look, it becomes obvious
that ‘internationalisation practices are not value-neutral and cannot be devoid of cultural
40
Sociological perspectives
dimensions’ (Aw 2017, p. xxii). It is most often related to ideas from English-speaking countries
or Western Europe, often marginalising knowledge and concepts from other parts of the world.
However, the most common definition of internationalisation does certainly not imply issues of
power. Rather, it is based on the notion of nation-states and aims at connecting various
countries and their respective institutions. While internationalisation has been a common term
in political science and governmental relations, indicating the goal of connecting beyond
borders, it was also used in the business world – first concerning software that can easily be
adapted to the needs of other countries, and second, to describe initiatives going beyond na-
tional borders (Business Dictionary). While the term internationalisation is most common, it has
not been of much interest for comprehensive scholarly investigations, regarding analysing the
term, its use, and history. So far, it has mostly been briefly analysed in publications focused on
internationalisation in certain areas such as law (Varella 2014) or in higher education
(Knight 2012). Sociological research addresses issues related to internationalisation, too, but is
rather more focused on related concepts such as globalisation (Lamo de Espinoza 2012),
modernity (Kalekin-Fishman 2012) or narratives of global change (Connell 2012).
However, particularly from 2007 to 2011, there has been an intense discussion about
internationalisation in higher education studies. While defining internationalisation regarding
academia was a crucial mission, criticising its mostly positive notion has also been important.
Generally, internationalisation regarding higher education describes ‘integrating an interna-
tional, intercultural, and global dimension into the goals, functions, and delivery of higher
education’ (Knight 2012, p. 2). This means that universities do not only become international
when they have students and scholars from abroad or participate in international research
projects and rankings. Rather, internationalisation affects the very structure of universities,
opening them for different models of research and teaching, including intercultural under-
standing. It is also defined as intentional process, with a clear purpose and consciously shaped by
the goal to ‘enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff, and to make
a meaningful contribution to society’ (De Wit and Hunter 2015, p. 245). This indicates that
internationalisation is connected to universities’ responsibility for the society, particularly
regarding the need to address diversity, but also nurturing cultural identity. Internationalisation
is certainly a concept that suggests inclusivity in terms of being open for people from various
cultures – but at the same time, has a tendency to support a differentiation between people from
the home country of a university and people ‘from abroad’ (Turner and Robson 2008, p. 10).
Therefore, Turner and Robson (p. 11) state that internationalisation might be a dialectical
concept, raising the issue of national and local educational cultures in view of the global –
including the interesting question of which academic culture and practices should dominate
higher education in a global world. This question has been recently intensely discussed in
higher education, emphasising the need to reconcile the local and the global, in view of the
‘globalisation of internationalization’ (De Wit et al. 2017; Proctor and Rumbley 2018).
In view of the lack of theoretical and conceptual precision regarding internationalisation,
Turner and Robson (2008, pp. 12–14) suggest 12 dimensions of internationalisation to illustrate
its complexity. They break it down into specific categories which can be approached more
easily in terms of international engagement, mobility, revenues, international professional,
communication, knowledge, language, programming and curriculum, academic practices, and
reciprocity/Westernisation. While the meaning of most of these dimensions as subcategories of
internationalisation is obvious (for example, the international professional as staff, dealing with
international matters), others such as academic practices or reciprocity/Westernisation might
need more explanation: whereas the first one is concerned with the academic learning style, for
example, in seminars where discussions or the presentation of knowledge by scholarly
41
authorities might dominate, the second one describes the fact that internationalisation can either
be inspired by the notion of diversity and global exchange or have an emphasis on the national
culture of a specific university–or even on an internationally dominant ‘Western’ scholarly
culture. This indicates that internationalisation can have an ideological dimension in terms of
how the multiplicity of global academic knowledge and cultures is interpreted and whose ideas
dominate discourses and practices at universities.
Internationalisation is certainly not easily accomplished, because it concerns the very nature
of universities. If taken seriously, universities must change their mission or goals and need to
become more culturally sensitive in research and the delivery of knowledge. The American
Council on Education underlines these facts by describing internationalisation as a ‘strategic,
coordinated process that seeks to align and integrate international policies, programs, and
initiatives, and positions colleges and universities as more globally oriented and internationally
connected’ (American Council on Education). Highlighting its complexity, De Wit (2011,
p. 245) underlines that, in addition to academic reasons, there are four other rationales for
internationalisation in terms of political, economic, social, and cultural reasons. Knight (2012,
pp. 3–4) emphasises that it is crucial to be careful with the notion of internationalisation. The
local context is important and should not be disregarded. Internationalisation can only be
successful if it addresses global, national, regional, and local needs, including intercultural issues.
Internationalisation is different in various countries and institutions, depending on the social
and cultural context. Certainly, internationalisation also has its problems, as Knight (2011,
pp. 14–15) indicates by identifying five myths, questioning a superficial understanding of
internationalisation only concerned with, for instance, the number of foreign students or the
position in international rankings. Brandenburg and De Wit (2011, p. 15) even refer to nine
problems of internationalisation, indicating the urgent need for a more critical approach.
Additionally, internationalisation is often confused with globalisation. But there are clear
differences. While the former is still guided by the notion of nation states and aims at creating
networks across borders, the latter implies a completely new world order, beyond nations,
creating a new space were everybody is included (Daly 1999). In higher education, there also
has been the impression that globalisation is something which is happening to universities,
while internationalisation is something which can be done and shaped (Egron-Polak and
Marmolejo 2017, p. 14). Even though the reality might be more complex than this differ-
entiation suggests, it emphasises an interest in demarcation. Another distinction between
internationalisation and globalisation concerns the fact that globalisation is often seen as
something negative, connected to exploiting developing countries – while internationalisation
is supposed to be positive, ‘the white knight of higher education,’ as Brandenburg and De Wit
(2011, p. 16) state. They criticise this differentiation, saying:
Internationalization is claimed to be the last stand for humanistic ideas against the
world of pure economic benefits allegedly represented by the term globalization. Alas,
this constructed antagonism between internationalization and globalization ignores the
fact that activities that are more related to the concept of globalization (higher
education as a tractable commodity) are increasingly executed under the flag of
internationalization. (pp. 16–17)
Due to the ongoing critique of globalisation regarding exploiting countries, while only a few
countries benefit, internationalisation has been used as a more elegant term to cover mostly the
same activities. Since many fears regarding being overpowered by economically stronger
countries or losing one’s own identity are frequently discussed in globalisation studies,
42
internationalisation seems to help as a terminological alternative – even though there is a need

for refining it and opening the discourse for researchers from parts of the world which have
often been marginalized (Proctor and Rumbley 2018).
However, internationalisation is not a neutral term and free of issues of hegemony. It would
be important to raise this issue in global music education, particularly from a sociological
perspective. Most often, knowledge from the North, English-speaking countries, or Western
Europe is privileged. Aw (2017, xxii) states:
Internationalization involves knowledge exchange and transfer. However, the current

practice is to privilege a form of knowledge originating from the North and flowing to
the South. It is important that knowledge flows be multidirectional. Knowledge
generation and dissemination need to be decolonized.
We need to be more critical regarding what internationalisation is, if it implies the dominance
of Western knowledge and concepts, or might even equal Americanisation, promoting Anglo-
American ideas as being international (Appadurai 1996, p. 29).1 Connell (2012, p. 188)
discusses this issue from a sociological perspective in his analysis of sociology’s narratives of
global change which often ignore the fact that sociology as field of research has historically been
dominated by the ‘North Atlantic society’ and its knowledge production. Issues of hegemony
and the marginalisation of knowledge produced in the ‘peripheries’ such as Latin America or
Arabian countries, proves and calls for a critical self-examination of what the foundation of
sociology is and what new narratives or perspectives would be necessary in times of
globalisation and internationalisation.
Similar issues concern music education, where the dominance of Anglo-American standards
in international music education theory and practice, including research, still prevails, mostly
without being critically discussed (Kertz-Welzel 2018). In view of the further formation of the
global music education community, we need to critically address these issues. Sociological
concepts can facilitate shaping the global music education community as united, yet
diverse–thereby helping to overcome the hegemony of certain knowledges or music education
cultures. In fact, internationalisation in music education is certainly not easy, but can be shaped
in a culturally sensitive way.
Internationalising music education

Internationalising music education has been a recurring topic in music education for some
time (McCarthy 2012; Kertz-Welzel 2018). There are different reasons for this fact, ranging
from pure interest in various music education cultures to the aim of copying from successful
music education systems. However, what internationalising music education really means and
what it concerns, has rarely been comprehensively analysed. McCarthy (2012, p. 40) points
out that music educators worldwide ‘are united by a common purpose: to engage children
and youth in music and to develop their artistic life and their humanity’. They are connected
by similar ideas and intentions. Rationales for music education as part of the public-school
curriculum worldwide are also similar. In most countries, patriotism and nationalism have
played significant roles (Hebert & Kertz-Welzel 2012). Furthermore, McCarthy (2012, p. 42)
identifies six challenges which music education faces globally: the status of music education in
schools, music education advocacy, curriculum development and reform, whose music is
presented in the curriculum, the changing culture of pedagogy, and professional networks.
The first aspect describes that even though music education is in many countries part of the
43
public-school curriculum, its status is quite fragile, often only an elective or extracurricular
activity. Even if music education is a mandatory school subject, there frequently is a dis-
crepancy between what is stated in political documents and what is happening in schools.
Policies supporting music education are often not implemented (Hentschke 2013). To ensure
music education’s place in the school curriculum, music education advocacy is a global
concern, uniting music educators worldwide to justify their subject convincingly. Regarding
curriculum development and reform, the standards movement has been one example for
challenges to music education worldwide. The question of whose music is taught in schools is
another significant issue, raising awareness for culturally responsive teaching in terms of
critically selecting the musical content of lessons. Renewing the culture of pedagogy re-
garding including new pedagogical approaches, for instance informal learning, is also one
aspect music educators worldwide face. Finally, professional networks and forums for research
play a significant role in promoting music education worldwide. International organisations,
such as ISME (International Society for Music Education) or ISPME (International Society
for the Philosophy of Music Education) connect music educators and researchers worldwide.
They foster music education as an international endeavour and support the formation of the
global music education community.
But there are not only general global challenges which music educators face, but also
sociological dimensions which unite music educator worldwide. Teacher identity, sociali-
sation, race and class, or gender issues have been identified as sociological topics in music
education (Wright 2010). Furthermore, topics such as the history of sociology of music
education and defining the field are important, particularly the distinction from related areas
such as sociology of education or social psychology. One major aspect is certainly the
question of how to apply sociological concepts to music education. Globalisation is also a
crucial topic for sociology of music education, for instance, regarding global and local
practices in music and music education. Finally, issues of social justice and power in music
education practice and scholarship are significant topics for sociology of music education
today.2 This research agenda is an summary of what has been important so far in sociology of
music education and what will be important topics for the future. Significant publications
such as ‘Sociology and Music Education’ (Wright 2010), ‘Bourdieu and the Sociology of
Music Education’ (Burnard et al. 2015) or ‘Sociology for music teachers’ (Froehlich and
Smith 2017) support this agenda. By addressing these issues, sociology of music education
bridges a gap in music education research and offers guidance to scholars and practitioners.
Even though sociology of music education is in many regards an emerging field of research,
something it shares with many other fields such as comparative or international music
education, it has already proved its significance to the global music education community in
many ways, for instance by addressing sociological perspectives of music teaching and of-
fering help through research (Froehlich and Smith 2017). Above all, sociology of music
education fosters an attitude of challenging most common assumptions about music edu-
cation towards developing new concepts, utilising and adapting knowledge from related
disciplines, particularly regarding internationalisation. This means with regard to music
education, that we have to raise awareness for the unquestioned dominance of knowledge
and concepts from the North, Western Europe, or Anglo-American countries in music
education. We need to redefine and refine what internationalisation means in music edu-
cation in terms of fostering a united, yet diverse community. But this also means developing
new perspectives on internationalisation, for instance taking into account educational
transfer and then addressing geographical, geopolitical, and geolinguistic aspects of global
knowledge production.
44
The internationalisation of music education has long been connected to fields of research
such as comparative music education, identifying similarities and differences in various
countries with the goal to learn from each other (Kemp and Lepherd 1992; McCarthy 2012).
While this is certainly a useful approach supporting the global connectedness and improve-
ment of music education, it often fostered music education in specific countries, for instance
of Western Europe, the North, or Anglo-American countries to be seen as role models.
Furthermore, in view of globalisation and an increased sensitivity for various exchange
processes, another approach might be a supplement to comparative music education: ana-
lysing educational transfer. Educational transfer in terms of copying a successful educational
strategy or policy from another country has been going on for many centuries (Steiner-
Khamsi and Waldow 2012). Educational travellers of the eighteenth or nineteenth century,
looking for superior music education methods they could learn from, or the worldwide
success of the Orff approach exemplify what educational transfer is. However, educational
transfer has not always been free of power issues as processes of transfer in colonial context
exemplify, for instance regarding a colonial power forcing its music education system to
colonies. An interesting example for this kind of educational is certainly Latin America where
the music education system of colonial powers such as Spain was copied (Torres-
Santos 2017). English researcher Phillips (2005) developed the so-called Oxford models to
describe the various stages and circumstances of educational transfer. The spectrum-model
analyses particularly different ways of educational transfer such as ‘imposed’, ‘required under
constraint’, ‘negotiated under constraint’, and ‘borrowed purposefully’. This approach could
help better understanding of how systems of music education worldwide emerged and what
role hegemony and power played – including how to possibly ‘decolonise’ certain music
education systems. Aside from colonial issues, educational transfer can support neo-liberal
educational philosophies of schooling, for instance regarding the standards movement.
International student assessment programs, such as PISA (Program for International Student
Assessment) require less successful countries to copy strategies or polices from successful ones.
Raising awareness of educational transfer and critically investigating its impact on education
and music education, including trying to utilise it deliberately for improving music education
worldwide could be a starting point for a critical and culturally sensitive approach to inter-
nationalising music education. This certainly also concerns hidden power structures in
knowledge generation in music education worldwide.
The question what kind of knowledge is thought of as global knowledge is a significant
issue in each field of research. This concerns the process in which local knowledge is turned
into knowledge of interest for all. Hyland (2015, p. 35) refers to the Enlightenment as one
example of ‘the most successful transformation of local knowledge into global’: Knowledge
originally connected to Western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century is de-
clared as global. Hall (1997, p. 19) might be right that global knowledge is most often the way
a dominant culture represents itself. Connell (2012, p. 188) even refers to sociology as a
discipline which has, since its inception, been dominated by knowledge from the ‘North
Atlantic society’, from Western Europe and North America. McCarthy (2012, p. 55) states
regarding music education that ‘international perspectives in music education are founded on
and dominated by narratives from Western countries and those influenced by the colonial
presence of European countries’. This is indeed correct, since most significant publications
worldwide, most presenters at international conferences or involved in international orga-
nizations are certainly from these countries. Even though more scholars from other parts of
the world have become engaged in international music education in various ways, the
‘periphery’ as opposed to the centre (Connell 2012, p. 193) is still marginalized.
45
Geographical, geolinguistic and geopolitical aspects have an impact on knowledge production

in music education worldwide. It might seem that knowledge from Anglo-American or
Western European countries is more relevant and is easily declared as global knowledge –
because respective models and standards of music education and research have their origin in
precisely this tradition. This also concerns peer-review, where in international music edu-
cation, standards of good writing in English function as an international standard and a cri-
terion for acceptance. This can cause problems for non-native English-speaking authors, even
if their English language abilities might be good. The problem is often not a grammatical one,
but rather a rhetorical one because, as sociolinguistic research indicates, rhetoric varies across
culture, even in academic contexts. Mauranen et al. (2010, p. 639) state:
In absence of clear standards of text organization, it has been easy to make a leap in the
thought chain and assume that if English is the language of scientific publication, we
should not only observe basic grammatical rules of correctness of Standard English, but
follow the Anglo-American lead in matters of stylistic and rhetorical preferences
as well.
Most often, reviewers of journals do not know that and rather follow, consciously or
unconsciously, Anglo-American rhetorical standards. Reviewers might even confuse unfamiliar
rhetorical choices with a lack of general scholarly abilities. Lillis and Curry (2010, p. 152)
exemplify this by presenting reviewers’ comments to Spanish papers:
These papers do not want reading, they want translation. Poor writing doesn’t
encourage the reader to turn the page … The comment is not about the authors’
competence in scientific English. It is about thinking.
This clearly illustrates that the reviewer is unable to distinguish between clarity of thinking
and different rhetorical choices. Sociolinguistic research has for some time analysed
these kinds of problems (e.g., Kaplan 1966; Mauranen 1993; Lillis and Curry 2010). It
might be useful to apply this knowledge to music education as part of a critical inter-
nationalisation of music education. There clearly is a need for a new vision of international
music education where neither Anglo-American nor Western Europe or North Atlantic
standards solely dominate, marginalising other approaches and research cultures. The vision
of a united, yet diverse global music education community can serve as such a goal, utilising
the sociological concept of community. Particularly applying new sociological approaches
to community can offer points of reference for such a culturally sensitive inter-
nationalisation of music education.
The global music education community

Traditionally, community has been defined as a group of people united by a common purpose,
based on locality, ethnicity, language, or values. However, when taking a look at the history of
the term community, it is obvious that is has been considerably transformed over time: From
being the essence of society in the Greek Polis to the universal community of Christianity or
the loss of community in modernity, as indicated in the works of Toennies or Weber, to
cosmopolitan or virtual communities today (Delanty, 2018). Authors such as Cohen (1985),
Bauman (2001), Kellner (2003), Putnam and Feldstein (2003), or Studdert (2006) have
significantly contributed to sociological research about community. However, the sociological
46
perspective on community might be somehow paradoxical, as Humphrey (2012, p. 155) in-

dicates: While the death of the traditional community has been stated since the beginning of the
industrialisation, ‘sociologists … continue to find community everywhere’. No matter if in
expressions such as community development, national or global community, or in words which
imply community such as civil society or cultural identity, community still seems to be present
everywhere. It is both a social construct and a metaphor utilised by various groups to generate a
sense of identity or solidarity, ‘to give shape to experience of greater social complexity and to
articulate the local relation in larger social imaginaries including the “nation” and the “global”’
(Humphrey 2012, p. 156). New notions of community in view of globalisation seem to
connect the local and the translocal, offering various kinds of identity not bound to locality,
ethnicity, or language anymore. Rather, the concept of community is more open. Humphrey
(2012, p. 169) states that ‘today[,] community is an idiom used to locate, represent and narrate
oneself within translocal worlds that are now articulated globally’. This indicates that individuals
have the opportunity to choose the kind of community they would like to be part of, de-
pending on their interests. Community might even be a way ‘to articulate the local in global
discourses’ (Humphrey, 2012, p. 169). Digital media support this by facilitating communica-
tion, thereby giving technology a new significance in the formation of communities.
While community is generally of great significance in music education, for instance
regarding music making in ensembles, in view of internationalisation, the global community is
of particular interest (McCarthy 2012; Kertz-Welzel 2018). It is a community which goes
beyond national borders, uniting music educators and scholars worldwide by their interest in
engaging people in music and musical learning. Therefore, Froehlich (2009, p. 92) asserts that
the global music education could be a symbolic community which is characterised by shared
beliefs, values, and practices. They create a sense of joint identity and belonging. Members of
music education as a symbolic community might share visions such as offering everyone the
opportunity for musical engagement and development. From this perspective, community
might be a specific world view. It is an ‘open system of cultural interpretation’ which leaves
much room for how its members understand symbols and the world they represent
(Delanty 2018, p. 51). While such a community is not bound to a specific locality or language
and can be facilitated by various kinds of communication technology, identity formation is
crucial. Becoming a part of music education as a symbolic community happens in various
contexts, in university programs; at regional, national, or international conferences; or through
engaging with research and publications. Thereby, a basic set of important beliefs is established
which gives members of such a community an identity, even though not everyone has to agree
on everything. Rather, ‘diversity can be shared and celebrated best if a sense of belonging has
been established’ (Froehlich 2009, p. 94). While the notion of symbolic community has not
been completely implemented in global music education so far, it is a useful point of reference
for overcoming hegemonic structures in international music education towards a united, yet
diverse global music education could function, thereby facilitating a culturally sensitive inter-
nationalisation of music education. But there are more sociological concepts of community
which could contribute to this vision.
In view of internationalisation and the power issues involved, the notion of community
beyond unity could be a useful sociological concept for music education. Delanty (2018, p. 168)
indicates that such a community is typical for today, characterised by diversity, but also by basic
beliefs which unite its members. The publication ‘Community without unity’ (Corlett 1989) is
one example for the promotion of this approach to community. In this understanding, there are
many different kinds of communities and ways of belonging. Group membership is flexible, can
change, and is based on various factors beyond locality or ethnicity. But this likewise makes
47
communities more vulnerable, fragile, and more fluid as things change faster, following the flow
of globalisation. However, a constant factor of community has been that it offers some kind of
security and belonging. Community today is experienced through relationships which give not
only the group, but also its members an identity. Delanty (2018, p. 162) states that ‘community
is what takes place through others and for others’. This kind of community goes beyond a unity
of minds and is particularly maintained through diversity. Therefore, the global music education
community could be a community beyond unity, celebrating diversity, but at the same time
being based on ideas that connect music educators worldwide. Organisations such as ISME
(International Society for Music Education) play a critical role in the formation of such a
community, providing organisational structures and spaces where people from various countries
can meet. They also offer the experience of special moments which the members share in terms
of celebrating a community’s values and relationships. Times of celebration strengthen the joint
identity of a group and personal relationships among its members. ISME World Conferences
can offer such moments. This liminality (Delanty 2018, p. 168) is a significant part of what
constitutes communities that go beyond unity. This might likewise support the creation of a
cosmopolitan community.
The notion of cosmopolitan community is another useful concept which could foster
developing the vision of a united, yet diverse, global music education community.
Cosmopolitan communities exemplify the close connection between the local and the
global, a diversity of perspectives and worldviews which is united by basic beliefs.
Cosmopolitan communities seem to rehabilitate the notion of community in a way
appropriate in view of globalisation (Delanty 2018, p. 182).3 While globalisation does not
make the notion of community dispensable, it emphasises the need for its transformation, for
instance regarding communication. Since cosmopolitan communities are not bound to
locality, communication plays a major role. They are even communicatively constructed in
discourses and their powers are ‘in the emergence of definitions, principles and cognitive
models for imaging the world’ (Delanty 2018, p. 186). Human rights or ecological move-
ments exemplify the power of cosmopolitan communities with global members, sharing a
similar perspective and imagining a better world. Cosmopolitan communities construct a
global totality and identity which is strong through the power of its vision. They are focused
on something which concerns humanity or the global civil society. The global music
education community would certainly qualify as cosmopolitan community in terms of being
transnational and diverse, while being united by basic beliefs, such as everyone’s access to
music making. The notion of cosmopolitan community exemplifies that a united, yet diverse
global community is possible, without certain music education or research cultures dom-
inating the international discourse. More research about music education in specific coun-
tries, which ideas would be valuable for the global community, and what unites and
differentiate us would be useful for applying the notion of cosmopolitan community to
music education. Canagarajah (2005, p. 20) imagines a networks of various research centres,
supporting ‘diversity as universal project’ and ‘to develop a pluralistic mode of thinking
where we celebrate different cultures and identities, yet engage in projects common to our
shared humanity’. Cosmopolitan communities exemplify how the dialectics of diversity and
unity could be implemented worldwide, thereby illustrating the new visions sociology can
offer music education.
The variety of sociological concepts of community today is an enrichment. They
help understanding and transforming various dimensions of societal, professional, or pri-
vate life.
48
When used reflectively and diligently, the notion of community in terms of a united, yet
diverse, global music education community can provide an important vision for music
education internationally.
Conclusion
Internationalisation and the notion of community exemplify how much we need sociological
perspectives on well-known concepts in music education. They offer opportunities to challenge
what we usually take for granted, revealing hidden aspects such as power structures. But sociological
perspectives also facilitate developing new visions. If the sociological notion of community is
applied reflectively to music education regarding the global music education community, this leads
to a new vision and a new understanding of what internationalisation is. It provides a framework for
acknowledging the diversity of music education and research cultures and thereby supports the
formation of a united, yet diverse, music education community worldwide.
However, we need to be critical regarding sociological concepts such as community to avoid
a superficial understanding and aim towards a refined meaning of such terms in music
education. In recent years, sociology as a discipline has engaged much more in critical
self-examination, for instance questioning well-known concepts such as internationalisation
from the perspective of sociology’s narrative of global change and hidden power structures in
knowledge creation (Connell 2012) or understanding community as a social metaphor
(Humphrey 2012). Furthermore, Bauman (2001) warns about community and the search for
belonging in an insecure world, including the danger of getting lost in a utopia. Nationalist and
populist movements prove these dangers, while their success often depends on their ‘capacity to
generate a sense of community’ (Delanty 2018, p. 225). However, the notion of community is
vital again and a useful point of reference for critical concepts addressing issues of hegemony,
diversity, and cosmopolitanism. Reflectively applied to music education, the notions of
community mentioned above can support the formation of the global music education
community.
As a global music education community, we need to understand who we are right now and
who we want to be. It might be time to critically examine our dreams and visions. By
addressing issues of hegemony and diversity, the global music education community could
become ‘sociologically sound’. Sociology can indeed play an important role in supporting the
culturally sensitive internationalisation of music education, aiming towards a united, yet diverse
global music education community.
1. If you would write a manifesto for the global music education community, describing its
basic principles and goals, what would be important aspects?
2. How did the sociological concept of community change in view of globalisation? What is
the role of community in music education and what are its pressing issues, in your context?
Notes
1 For more information about this topic see Bach et al. (2003) and Marling (2006).
2 For more information see: https://musiced.music.unt.edu/issme-2019.
3 Delanty (2018, p. 181) distinguishes two kinds of cosmopolitan communities, world community and
transnational community.
49
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3
CHALLENGES OF THE POST-
COLONISATION PROCESS IN
HONG KONG SCHOOLS
In search of balanced approaches to the
learning and teaching of Putonghua songs
Ti-Wei Chen
Overview
Hong Kong is a melting pot of Chinese cultures and colonial influences. As such, it has always
been an interesting hot spot in the sense of its geographical, historical, cultural and educational
context, where the East meets the West with multicultural complexity in terms of values
education, civic responsibility and national identity. Since the handover of sovereignty from
Britain to China in 1997, the learning and teaching of Putonghua as the official language is
expected to be an indispensable part of Hong Kong school curricula; but has that become a
reality? The social movements in the recent decade, such as ‘Protests to National Education
Programme’ (BBC News 2012), ‘Occupy Central’ (BBC News 2014a) and ‘Umbrella
Revolution’ (BBC News 2014b) in response to the controversial policy proposal concerning
national education have been overwhelming. Moreover, the continuous power struggle in
politics, economy and social justice between Hong Kong and mainland China certainly raises
many important questions concerning the perception and complexity of national identity issues
among Hong Kong citizens. As significant, such undercurrent uncertainty and paradox in-
evitably have direct and indirect impact on local music educators’ pedagogical philosophy and
behaviours as well as decision making in relation to curriculum design and teaching materials.
This chapter examines, highlights and unravels the current perception and impact of using
Putonghua songs as part of the music curriculum through an analysis of surveys and interviews
of undergraduate students studying music teacher education (N = 218 for questionnaires;
N = 25 for interviews). Not only has this group of participants experienced school education
locally in Hong Kong after the handover, but they were also taught and influenced by the
newly implemented education and language policy implemented in 1997. Given their position
as student teachers and culture administrators in training, their perceptions and viewpoints
toward using Putonghua songs as teaching material are particularly noteworthy and important.
The findings and results of data analysis are discussed and examined based on aspects of
linguistic, cultural and socio-political elements in Hong Kong society, together with scholarship
52
Challenges of the post-colonisation process
in music education related to hegemony, resistance and self-censorship. In this chapter, I hope
to unravel the circumstances and challenges of music educators and administrators at large in
21st century Hong Kong, where the role and use of Putonghua are essential as part of music
curricula and curriculum design. This work takes into consideration a newly proposed peda-
gogical philosophy and strategy in line with cultural citizenship (Leung 2003a) and a collective
insight of national identity in the context of Hong Kong education (Fairbrother 2003;
Flowerdew 2012; Morris 1997) to incorporate Putonghua songs in order to embrace multi-
culturalism, nationalism, internationalism and values education, commonly agreed upon and
recognized by Hong Kong society. Furthermore, the findings of this investigation are intended
to document the process of post-colonisation (e.g. decolonisation, neocolonisation and re-
colonization) by embarking on this unique historical, social, political, economic and cultural
change in Hong Kong education, and ultimately offer recommendations toward a balanced
Putonghua music curriculum model for all stakeholders, including policy makers, school
administrators, music educators, parents, students and youth in Hong Kong.
Post-colonisation: Decolonisation, neocolonisation and recolonisation

At this point, it is important to highlight the fundamental changes in Hong Kong which have
been taking place since the handover in 1997, including those that are still very much in action.
In the process of sovereignty transfer, the removal and replacement of policies and mechanisms
in favour of the coloniser is an essential and common transformation in the historical, cultural,
economic, political and social context (Law 1997b). Moreover, as stated by Law (1997a), during
the post-colonial period there are three major types of sovereignty transfer: 1) decolonisation,
such as in the case of Malaysia and South Korea where the former colonial identity was re-
moved and restored to the pre-colonial identity (Haggard 1990); 2) neocolonisation, i.e. other
foreign powers interfere with and manipulate the transition of political power from the former
coloniser to the new government, for example the chaotic state in Brazil after independence
(Raghavan 1990) and the use of English in Singapore despite the majority of the population
being ethnic Chinese (Lim 1995); and 3) recolonisation, in which the colonial identity is re-
placed by the newly established political system, e.g. the change of official language in Taiwan
from Japanese to Mandarin after the end of Japanese occupancy (Law 1996).
According to Law (1997a), there are already signs of decolonisation, neocolonisation and
recolonisation in Hong Kong’s Higher Education institutions. I argue that the findings
presented by this study demonstrate evidence of ‘recolonisation’ which has surfaced in Hong
Kong schools prior to and since the handover in 1997. Examples of this include the dis-
connection between the youth and the Chinese national anthem; lack of affection and active
participation during the flag raising ceremony; and the acceptance and general recognition of
being unique Hong Kongese, as opposed to mainland Chinese. Furthermore, although the
population that speaks Putonghua in Hong Kong has doubled since the change of sovereignty
in 1997, speaking Putonghua among Hong Kong youth is almost a sign of taboo. This serves
as a reluctant reality check that Hong Kong as a society is increasingly being forced to become
more like their mainland Chinese counterpart (BBC News 2017a & 2017b). Although na-
tional identity is largely identified by the nationality of one’s passport, it is evident that Hong
Kong people’s national identity towards mainland China remains extremely polarized. This is
seen as people define their identities based on environmental upbringing to conform with
those social groups with which they feel most comfortable, rather than have their identities
decided by family origin or background, and certainly not dictated by the government
(Leung and Lee 2006).
53
Ti-Wei Chen
Prior to the signing of Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 regarding the future of Hong
Kong, the topic of national identity was non-existent in curriculum. This was preferred by the
then colonial government in order to maintain a status quo situation to cope with complex
issues of citizenship in Hong Kong (Fairbrother 2003). In preparation for the handover, the
colonial government in transition introduced education reforms in 1985 and 1996 that were
geared toward the necessary changes in curriculum (Curriculum Development Council 1985;
Curriculum Development Council 1995, 1996). It is commonly criticized that such political
socialization was only a symbolic gesture and involved little significant impact to schools and
the implemented curriculum (Cuban 1992, cited in Fairbrother 2003 and Morris 1997).
Specifically, Law (1997b) pinpoints during this transitional colonial period between 1982 to
1997 the colonial transition processes, i.e. decolonisation, neocolonisation and recolonization
progressively took place in Hong Kong where resistance and accommodation occur in between
those processes in order to reach social consent of cultural and national identities among Hong
Kong people, and the three major stakeholders participated in such complicated triangular
conflicts are the incoming PRC government, the outgoing British government and local groups
including teachers and students. After the sovereign change in 1997, resistance and tension grew
as those social movements that developed from the grassroots level increased drastically by
frequency and level of violence. Each social movement intensified until the Hong Kong people
expressed their opinions towards the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (SAR) and
People’s Republic of China (PRC) governments in the District Council Election of 2019
during which candidates of opposition secured an overwhelming victory across majority of
districts in Hong Kong.
The use of Putonghua in Hong Kong

As indicated by Sweeting (1995), up to 97% of the population of Hong Kong are ethnic
Chinese, though Chinese and English are both official languages. The diverse definition of
Chinese as a spoken language can at times be confusing, as in Hong Kong, one can refer to
spoken Chinese as Hong Kong Cantonese, Guangdong Cantonese, Chiu Chow, Hakka,
Shanghainese, Fujianese, Taiwanese or Putonghua (Adamson and Lai 1997). Since the
handover of Hong Kong to mainland China in 1997, the implementation of speaking
Putonghua as a proficient language in Hong Kong has become an integral part of language
policy and education reform in Hong Kong schools. With such a boost of interest in
Putonghua, the Hong Kong SAR government has carried out a series of measures to facilitate
and foster the use of Putonghua. For example, they announced that Putonghua was to be-
come a core subject from primary 1 to secondary 3 in 1998, and further extended this policy
to secondary 5 in 2000. These implementations are based on an emphasis of oral and aural
skills in Putonghua and the appreciation and understanding of Chinese culture and folklore
(Curriculum Development Council 1996). According to a study on the use of language in
Hong Kong (Leung and Lee 2006), Cantonese remains the most spoken language/dialect in
Hong Kong, even after nearly two decades of Putonghua learning and teaching in Hong
Kong schools and the 1997 education and language policy implementing Putonghua as the
official language. This phenomenon shows the uncertainty of Hong Kong citizens in relation
to issues of national identity—a topic that was non-existent throughout Hong Kong’s colonial
history prior to the handover in 1997 (Leung 2003a) and one that can be best described as a
depoliticized civic education (Fairbrother 2003). This phenomena of depoliticization in
Hong Kong can be observed in government educational policies for civic education and
school curriculum where scholars widely expressed their opinions and frustration that the
54
dirge of cultivation and debate about democracy, and political and citizenship issues directly
results in a lack of discussion, involvement and participation for public affairs among Hong
Kong people (Fairbrother 2003; Leung 2003b; Morris and Morris 1999).
Learning and teaching Putonghua songs in Hong Kong

Although Hong Kong music curricula have been predominantly focusing on Western music as
influenced by British colonial history since 1842 (Everitt 1998; Ho 2006; Leung 2004; Yeh 1998;
Yu-Wu 1998; Yu-Wu and Ng 2000), it is believed that performing and appraising traditional
Chinese music would be an effective means of cultivating national identity in creating social
harmony and Chinese nationalism among Hong Kong citizens (Curriculum Development
Council 2002). One has to acknowledge and understand, however, that the Chinese national
anthem carries unique and symbolic gestures in politics and patriotism which are vastly different
from any other genres of Putonghua songs; it goes without saying that all national anthems carry
special meanings to their respective citizens. Therefore, the Hong Kong SAR government has
naturally encouraged all schools to perform a flag ceremony on the national day of October
1—the official date of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—with an aim
to create social harmony and maintain a sense of political stability, as advocated by the Curriculum
Development Council (2002). However, with the custom of social disposition and depoliticized
civic education in Hong Kong, flag ceremonies at schools are often only a formality, as teachers
and students do not actively sing, but merely stand and listen to the recording while the Chinese
national anthem is played in the background (Ho and Law 2006).
Needless to say, the learning and teaching of Putonghua carries multiple functions and pur-
poses, apart from the obvious political ones. Based on Confucianism which has been the core and
essential belief in Chinese cultures for thousands of years (i.e. in Han culture which represents the
majority of the Chinese population), singing and performing appropriate styles of Chinese
music is believed to cultivate one’s ethics and appreciation of Chinese traditional cultures such as
history, literature and aesthetics, philosophy, language, poetry, lyrics, art, painting, calligraphy,
fashion, dance, and drama (Leung 1995, p. 34). Moreover, the linguistic rhythm of Guoyu
(formerly known as Mandarin, now commonly referred to as Putonghua) is suggested to form
harmony, not only in nature but also between human beings, as well as foster proper tempera-
ment and characteristics of humanity, and elevate one’s social prestige (as cited in Kang Chi (1996,
p. 14–15)). Therefore, as part of understanding and appreciation of Chinese history and culture,
Putonghua songs are mainly taught in Hong Kong schools to develop students’ values education
(Law and Ho 2004). The content of values education can be diverse but it is in accordance with
the shared beliefs of moral education, civic responsibility and ethics, as well as a sense of global
citizenship among members of Hong Kong society.
In my 2008 pilot study examining the beliefs of 15 postgraduate music students who were
full-time music teachers in Hong Kong, however, the data suggested Hong Kong music
educators tended to prefer teaching Western music over Chinese music due to their own music
training background and the fact that a lack of exposure to Putonghua and Putonghua songs
undermined their motivation to teach Putonghua songs as part of the music curriculum. This
echoes the evidence as to why Western music is still the major part of music curricula in Hong
Kong schools (Law and Ho 2004; Leung 1995). As a result, for music teachers in Hong Kong,
consolidating a large quantity of Putonghua songs as teaching materials is not an easy task,
although recommendations of music textbooks are available to music teachers and school
administration. Whilst the majority of teachers and students in Hong Kong primarily adopt
Cantonese as the main medium of instruction in classroom setting, to construct and organize
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Ti-Wei Chen
Putonghua songs for pedagogical use and lesson plans can be a daunting undertaking for most
Hong Kong music teachers. To consistently source innovative Putonghua songs with origin-
ality and creativity, in particular for music performances, choral competitions and music fes-
tivals, Hong Kong music teachers often adopt and purchase music scores and textbooks from
publishers and bookshops in Taiwan for supplementary teaching materials.
Curriculum design of Putonghua songs and pedagogical philosophy

Ho and Law (2006) state that there are five major categories of Putonghua songs that Hong
Kong students experience as part of their music exposure, including 1) Chinese folk songs,
2) traditional Chinese music, 3) popular music from mainland China, 4) Taiwanese folk music,
and 5) popular music from Taiwan. Moreover, since establishing a Chinese orchestra in Hong
Kong schools is believed to be more financially feasible than developing a Western orchestra,
many Hong Kong schools are keen to support the learning of Chinese musical instruments and
performances of Chinese orchestras as part of extra-curricular activities (Leung 2004).
Furthermore, Leung (2003a, p. 3) promotes a multifaceted model of music curriculum in which
the learning content needs to consider the following aspects: 1) popularisation, traditionaliza-
tion, and contemporisation of music; 2) localization, nationalization, and globalization of music;
3) embedding considerations of aesthetics (i.e. questions of art theory, ‘beauty’, taste, etc.),
music theory, history, and philosophy within composition, appreciation, and performance; and
4) integrating elements of culture in the teaching of music.
Music education is believed to create, and is praised for creating, multiplicity in cultural ex-
posures and meaningful music and arts education experiences for students (Campbell 2002; Green
2005; Regelski 2005). Furthermore, as Ho & Law’s study (2006) identified, whilst school music
teachers are the main source for Hong Kong students to learn music knowledge, the mass media
and private music tutors are the second and third means of music education. Teaching materials
and curriculum structure for using Putonghua songs in Hong Kong music classrooms are also
essential to reproduce a wide experience of cultural exposure, among others (e.g. in the context of
musical, political, social, economic, and historical aspects). Hence, the role of school music
educators becomes an dispensable indispensable part of the development of values education and
cultural activities in Hong Kong society. Therefore, it is crucial to examine and study how
students respond to the existing teaching content of Putonghua songs as taught by music edu-
cators in Hong Kong schools since 1997 handover if we hope to begin to unravel Hong Kong
students’ cultural and national identities in terms of sociopolitical perspectives.
Popular songs from mainland China and Taiwan, however, are largely well-known among
Hong Kong youth. On the other hand, Chinese art songs embed the perfect marriage between
Chinese poetry and music; no matter whether the poetry is ancient or modern, it is an effective
way to introduce Hong Kong students to appreciation of the aesthetics of Chinese language and
the characteristics of Chinese music. Through singing and interpreting lyrics in Putonghua,
Hong Kong students can acquire appreciation and understanding of Chinese language, culture
and history without interference or worries about political correctness and social dispositions.
Aspects and comparative analysis of hegemony and depoliticization will also be included in the
following discussion.
Methods and procedures

The purpose of this study was to identify and investigate the previously mentioned aims and
objectives relating to the role of Putonghua songs as part of music curricula in Hong Kong
56
since the handover in 1997; the ways in which the five major categories of Putonghua songs
are perceived and incorporated as learning and teaching materials in Hong Kong music
classrooms; and the ways in which the Chinese national anthem is perceived and incorporated
in the context of values education, citizenship education, multiculturalism, nationalism and
globalisation.
Data collection for this study is divided into two parts: questionnaires (N = 218) followed by
semi-guided interviews in voluntary basis (N = 25). The questionnaire required participants to
focus on addressing their past experiences and current perception of the learning, teaching,
singing and performing of Putonghua songs as well as the singing, performing, learning and
teaching of the Chinese national anthem at local schools. All music undergraduates who are
studying to become music teachers, community-based musicians and music administrators and
who have been under the influence and implementation of education and language policy after
the handover were approached for data collection. The purpose of semi-guided interview was
mainly to focus on comparison, validity and triangulation with the questionnaire data, and to
investigate in details individual participants’ former and current exposure to Putonghua songs
and the singing and performing of the Putonghua songs as well as the Chinese national anthem
at local schools.
Discussion
While the participants expressed their enjoyment in learning and singing Putonghua songs, the
negative views of such songs outweighed the positive ones during their primary and secondary
school education. Participants agreed that singing Putonghua songs helped in their learning of
the language and supported them to teach Putonghua songs with creative approaches when
they set out to teach in the near future (e.g. to make efforts to re-arrange instrumental parts for
orchestra and band so that students can explore different means of performing Putonghua song
while singing at the same time). However, most participants articulated reluctance and dislike
for singing the Chinese national anthem, also showing little interest in teaching it. However,
the majority of participants shared a consensus that Hong Kong citizens should learn and sing
the Chinese national anthem to create a sense of unity. Such contradicting and polarized
perceptions towards the Chinese national anthem echo with the controversy over the im-
plementation of national education as well as the increasing confrontation between the state of
Hong Kong SAR and PRC governments, and the pro-democracy social movements.
In one of the interview sessions, the participant expressed as follows:
The lyrics of the Chinese national anthem were written under the brutal circum-
stances of war; the mood and meaning of the words are totally irrelevant to modern
Chinese society, let alone Hong Kong in the 21st century!
In light of this comment, it is important to analyze and understand the lyrics and historical
background of the Chinese national anthem in order to unravel the reasons that Hong Kong
youth feel strongly disconnect with and unrelated to it1. Moreover, scholars argue that the
meaning of the lyrics and the content of the Chinese national anthem do not reflect the reality
of modern society and students often feel a sense of awkwardness and disconnection when
singing the Chinese national anthem in public (Chen 2008). As suggested by Law and Ho
(2004), the establishment of national identity cannot be separated from the teaching of Chinese
music as part of music curricula in Hong Kong schools. Could the learning of Putonghua songs
be another effective method of strengthening the national identity of PRC?
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Ti-Wei Chen
As March of the Volunteer, the Chinese national anthem, was written during the Japanese
invasion, the lyrics suggest a provocative message and the words are meant to arouse public
awareness and encourage civil responsibility of national security in defending one’s country.
The lyrics are as follows:
Arise! All who refuse to be slaves!

Let our flesh and blood become our new Great Wall!
As the Chinese nation faces its greatest peril,
All forcefully expend their last cries.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Our million hearts beat as one,
Brave the enemy’s fire, March on!
March on! March on! On!
With such historical underpinnings, it is crucial to instil in and teach Hong Kong students the
story and history of the Chinese national anthem (e.g. how and why it was written, the reason
it became politically incorrect during Cultural Revolution and revived later as the national
anthem etc). When a song or national anthem is being explained and taught from the historical,
social, cultural and musical viewpoints (i.e. without bias but with sufficient musical analysis),
students are likely to perceive it neutrally with ease. This is the kind of understanding
and unbiased attitude with which music educators can use to help students learn sociology and
culture through musical activity. In particular, under the influence of social movements and
political paradox of national identity, how to select a balanced, student-oriented music curri-
culum is an indispensable task for music educators in order to avoid unnecessary confrontation
and uneasiness among Hong Kong students.
National identity and nationalisation

Among the five categories of Putonghua songs, the Chinese national anthem stands out as a
significant symbol of nationalism. As suggested by Leung (2004) and Ho and Law (2006), one
of the major concepts and philosophies in education reform and music curricula is to develop
from localization to nationalisation in order to further extend to globalization. This has been a
strong factor which has provided Hong Kong with a definite competitive edge among Chinese
societies such as mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Therefore, the implementation of
singing the Chinese national anthem would be a crucial step to reinforce Hong Kong students’
loyalty to the PRC. The consent of a Hong Kong Chinese identity among stakeholders in
society needs to constructed and developed based on ideology and traditions of Chinese cultural
heritage as foundational and executed with cognitive and affective means of educational sources
such as schooling (Law and Ho 2004).
Since the handover in 1997, the raising of the national flag and the singing of the Chinese
national anthem has been gradually encouraged as part of the school curricula and timetables
implemented in public schools; and less than 1 year later, the Hong Kong SAR government
also issued a memo to aided and private schools to announce the implementation of similar
policy (Fairbrother 2003; Law and Ho 2004). As reported by the Hong Kong Federation of
Education Workers (2002), the majority of kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary
schools only raised the national flag of the PRC and sang the Chinese national anthem on the
National Day; whereas 1/5 of those schools did not plan any celebration of the National Day.
In fact, the national flag only flies on Handover Day (July 1) and National Day (October 1), and
58
not for other official school events. Moreover, the Chinese national anthem is not even sung
in public in many schools. However, many among the 25 participants who participated on a
voluntary basis in the interviews shared a sense of national pride when they watched the
Chinese national anthem being sung at the Beijing Olympic award ceremonies as the athletes
from Hong Kong and mainland China received medals. Some also shared heartfelt views as
student teachers on their perspective towards the Chinese national anthem and national
identity. This phenomenon further echoes the contradiction and disposition among Hong
Kong citizens towards national identity and political issues relating to the One Country Two
Systems principle. In sum, Hong Kong people could choose to carry both a local Hong Kong
and a national identity. This is further supported by the Oxford English Dictionary in which
‘Hongkongers’ and ‘Hong Kongese’ were accepted as newly added terms in 2014. Combining
the symbolic meaning of being a Hongkongers or Hong Kongese and the consented anti-
government result of District Council Election in 2019, the unique social identity of Hong
Kong people has formed after long period of resistance and accommodation, which further
echoes the colonial transition process of recolonisation.
The following participant was obviously concerned about how to be ‘depoliticized’ and
conformed in music classroom, and offered a feasible situation under the challenging
circumstances:
I was told one day at school that we need to sing the national anthem the next
morning at the flag raising ceremony, to avoid us looking bad or unprepared the
teacher taught us the song. Since the national anthem inevitably carries political
symbols in one way or another, I think I will use the same excuse when I become a
music teacher in the future, because I think being neutral in politics is a must as an
educator, and the excuse my teacher gave was convincing and a rather useful strategy
to get job done and not being political at the same time.
On the other hand, a rather sensible, idealistic and well-rounded response as shown below:
In any ordinary situation, it is very difficult for a student to feel a sense of pride as a
Chinese when singing or listening to the national anthem, one has to be well informed
about his/her country’s history, cultures and circumstances of current society to have a
sense of belonging and feeling related to the national identity. I want to teach my
students the history about the national anthem, including why and under what cir-
cumstance it was composed, and why it was chosen to become the national anthem
and its symbolism etc. Only until my students can truly feel proud being a Chinese,
they won’t be able to sing the national anthem from their heart.
In addition, a couple of honest reflections were presented on their experiences of singing the
national anthem as listed below:
As a Chinese, it is essential to know the national anthem, it is an important song for all
Chinese to know and sing, but there is no need to exaggerate its lyrics and meanings –
a song is just a song.
I was forced to sing the national anthem at the flag raising ceremony. Ever since
then, I hate it when I listen to the song, because it reminds me of that awful
experience I had at school.
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Ti-Wei Chen
Furthermore, some relate to the understanding of the historical background and lyrics of the
national anthem:
Many people think they are Hongkongers not Chinese, of course they don’t feel
related to the national anthem and its meaning. In addition, the lyrics are all about war
and human suffering, Hong Kong people nowadays can’t feel associated with those
emotions at all.
The lyrics of the national anthem include many negative words, such as blood and
slaves, which is so far away from the life we live now in Hong Kong.
In contrast, some expressed their frustration and anxiety as music educators:
I know I’m suppose to feel proud when I sing the national anthem and teach my
students the same national identity, but I am yet to feel it.
When I teach the national anthem, I definitely won’t emphasize that we need to sing
the national anthem because we are Chinese. I probably will teach my students to
sing the song first followed by introducing them the background and story about the
national anthem, but up until now, I have no guidelines and support as how to teach
the national anthem in music classroom.
Hegemony, resistance and depoliticization in music education

Based on the questionnaire data (see Table 3.1), it is evident that while the self-perceived level
of Putonghua sufficiency has risen among Hong Kong youth, students enjoy singing Putonghua
songs for leisure much more than learning them at school, although it is agreed that singing
Putonghua songs does facilitate and enhance students’ ability to learn the language more
effectively (Leung and Lee 2006), and facilitates direct connection and association with Chinese
musical cultures and heritage (Leung 1995). It is worth noting that 1/5 of the participants did
not agree with the incorporation of Putonghua songs as part of music curriculum whereas
almost 2/5 of the participants agreed that Putonghua songs should be learned in music class-
rooms. The remaining participants were neutral in this regard. Such polarized opinions about
the role and use of Putonghua songs as curriculum also exposes uneasy and uncertain social
dispositions in light of the recent social movements and conflicts in Hong Kong society. With
the proposed policy for national education in 2012, distrust and aggravation towards the state
(i.e. the PRC and Hong Kong SAR government), and frustration towards the education system
in Hong Kong was elevated to a new height in 2014 and 2019 as unsettling social dispositions
and paradoxes were commonly outpoured and conflicted among the Hong Kong public.
It is not surprising that the data shows lack of support from teachers and school adminis-
tration in learning Putonghua songs at schools as no clear, constructive curriculum guidelines
were in place from the state (Fairbrother 2003; Ho and Law 2006; Leung 1995). Under such an
ambiguous and polarized social outlook, music educators in Hong Kong are cautious and re-
luctant to display their thinking and political opinions towards Putonghua songs as the data
reflects in this study. Such phenomenon is also reflected in the ratio of ‘whether or not one was
asked to learn Putonghua songs at school’ for which the percentages of positive and negative
responses are very similar. A lack of especially clear social consent towards national and cultural
identities has caused the norm of social atmosphere and education system to be depoliticized
60
Table 3.1 Perceptions towards Learning and Teaching of Putonghua song in Hong Kong (N = 218)
Past experiences about Putonghua songs as a music learner: Agree/Strongly Disagree/Strongly

Agree Disagree
I enjoyed learning Putonghua songs at school. 37.6% 19.3%

I enjoyed singing Putonghua songs in general. 45.4% 14.2%
My ability of Putonghua is adequate to sing Putonghua songs. 47.7% 15.6%
Putonghua songs helped me to learn and speak Putonghua. 53.2% 11.5%
Singing Putonghua songs should be part of my music learning. 39.4% 20.2%
I tried to learn Putonghua songs with creative ideas. 23.9% 34.4%
I was asked by others to learn Putonghua songs, e.g. parents, 32.1% 30.7%
music teacher, peers, school etc.
My teachers offered adequate support to sing Putonghua songs. 24.8% 22.5%
and polarized among the Hong Kong people for decades since the era of the British colony
(Bray and Lee 1993; Leung 1995; Fairbrother 2003). Therefore, it would not be in the best
interest of music educators and school administrators, nor parents and students to openly
encourage or discourage others to learn Putonghua songs. Such social paradoxes and paradigms
have not changed even as mainland China has been the sovereign for over two decades under
the framework of One Country Two Systems.
When responding to means of creative approaches to learn Putonghua songs, most
questionnaire participants mentioned using YouTube and other online resources to enhance
their knowledge and understanding of the language, musical styles and interpretations. This is
very similar to how Hong Kong youth gain access to popular culture and music in everyday life
(Ho 2003a; Leung 1995). Participants often cited that they like to watch TV programmes and
drama series from Taiwan. Therefore, it is evident that the role and use of the Internet, mass
media and popular culture are crucial and indispensable during the process of post-colonisation
in transitional Hong Kong. The accessibility of those means can reach and connect to Hong
Kong youth directly, and such a bottom-up approach and initiative of learning Putonghua
songs produces the most effective and non-biased outcomes, as opposed to the top-down
approach (i.e. initiated by school, State such as Education Bureau and Hong Kong SAR and
governments). Another successful example of the influential and prevailing impact of popular
culture would be the growing popularity of K-Pop in recent years, which has been an as-
tonishing global phenomenon. Such means of cultural transition and promotion are considered
to be non-invasive, yet extremely powerful and non-tracible.
One of the main reasons that the Hong Kong public is on the defence about the proposed
national education curriculum is because it was considered a drastic gesture from the PRC
government to influence the curriculum content and ‘brainwash’ Hong Kong students about
political beliefs and idolization of the Chinese Communist Party. After a major outcry and
confrontation occurred between law enforcement and protesters during Occupy Central and the
Umbrella Revolution, former and then Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR, Leung Chun Ying,
announced that the implementation of national education courses in primary and secondary
schools was temporarily withdrawn until the revision of guidelines for moral, civil and national
education, which have caused many concerns to Hong Kong public, have been addressed.
Scholars strongly suggested that for all teaching and learning content of civic messages in values
education, ‘many learning activities taking place inside classroom appear to have negative asso-
ciation with students’ civic knowledge, signifying even further the importance of informal civic
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Ti-Wei Chen
learning outside of classroom and school’ (Fairbrother & Kennedy 2011, p. 439). Therefore, the
teaching and learning of the Chinese national anthem requires carefully planned strategies that
consist of a mixed mode of formal and informal learning for effective outcomes and long-lasting
positive impact so that students can engage and learn comfortably during activities which are held
with ‘an open classroom climate, and [through] a variety of organizations and associations in-
cluding art, music, and drama’ (Fairbrother 2003, p. 440). To successfully encourage and facilitate
students’ critical thinking in civic topics such as national and cultural identity, citizenship, de-
mocracy and patriotism, it is highly advocated that engaging young people in formal and informal
environments for civic learning would be the most appropriate approach in comparison to
traditional classroom teaching (Fairbrother 2008; Fairbrother and Kennedy 2011).
Self-censorship in music education

When I first applied for the internal research grant at the university (long before the government
announced the proposed policy of national education), I was informed by the Human Ethical
Research Committee that my application would not be successful unless I promised not to
publish any research findings due to political sensitivity, and to change the topic from ‘To Sing or
Not to Sing: Investigation of the Perception and Teaching of National Anthem and Putonghua
Music as Part of Hong Kong School Curriculum’ to something less provocative. In order to
secure the funding, I complied with the latter suggestion and resubmitted my application. Surely
that incident was an indication of self-censorship exercised by the university, but it was utterly
disappointing to me as a researcher and academic because it occurred at a university where
academic freedom was promised, not to mention that being curious about the world is supposed
to be tremendously important to all learners. While an organization (in this case the university)
exercises self-censorship out of fear of punishment or tries to prevent unnecessary attention and
pressure from authority, it represents the gatekeepers and bosses of the organization as upholding
more conservative views, hence unspoken rules and ambiguous instructions become a norm in
the organization as social control and conformity takes place (Lee and Chan 2009).
During the process of this project, I was made aware that an inappropriate edition of a Chinese
folk song was adopted as one of the set songs for the Hong Kong Schools’ Music and Speech
Festival for which thousands of Hong Kong students apply annually. The inappropriateness of
the edition was because the second verse was changed to specifically praise the Chinese
Communist Party and its symbolic socialism. There are other editions available to choose from,
but the organization chose the one from the People’s Music Publishing House, which is the
official music publisher affiliated with the PRC government. Some students and parents made a
conscious decision not to go through with the competition (although the registration fee was
already paid upfront) to express their frustration and resistance to hegemony. This incident shows
a lack of self-censorship, which was supposed to be exercised at the level of organization to avoid
upsetting cultural groups and individuals in the Hong Kong society with different political views,
but obviously was not properly executed, and made a lot of parents and students uneasy about
learning and singing that particular Chinese folk song for the competition. Horton (2011) de-
scribes self-censorship as causing conflicted thoughts between the self-censor and the author by
which moral ambivalence is developed as a result. I further supplement that in the processes of
self-censorship and the lack of it in post-colonisation Hong Kong, tension caused by resistance
to hegemony on the one hand and the ownership of freedom to expression on the other often
creates self-doubt, frustration and actions for further resistance or conformity among the author,
self-censor, and stakeholders who are at the receivers’ end.
62
In the months post completion of data collection and analysis, I intended to expand this
research to primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong and reach out to music teachers and
students who are currently on the forefront of the post-colonisation process in Hong Kong.
I first contacted several music teachers whom I know very well, but they all expressed concerns
about my research into Putonghua songs and the national anthem, and how it would be
perceived by their school administrators. After some persuasion and promises that their con-
fidentiality would be protected and respected, some allowed me to collect data from them and
their students in music classrooms. For those who were still in doubt, I had to meet with their
school principals and get the consent form signed before data collection. A couple of principals
expressed their concerns, ‘Our school doesn’t want to be labelled as pro or con to the PRC
government – everything is too political nowadays.’
While censorship is strictly implemented by the mainland Chinese government over mass
media and the Internet (e.g. social media and websites such as YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp,
Line etc., are not allowed), it was disconcerting to observe and realize that self-censorship is
commonly practised among Hong Kong people to avoid unnecessary attention or troubles with
the authorities; it is more so since the newly imposed national security law in Hong Kong since
July 2020. The ruling of ‘One Country Two Systems’ which was supposed to keep Hong Kong at
status quo as agreed between the British and PRC government has undoubtedly changed in
recent years in the light of 20+ years under Chinese sovereignty.
Cultural perceptions in formal and informal learning

In the transitional Hong Kong of the early 21st century, many issues concerning the role and
development of Putonghua songs as part of music curricula remain unclear and inconclusive,
and there is a great demand to critically examine and study such phenomena in depth in the
context of musical, social, cultural, economic, historical and cultural aspects. Putonghua songs
are also thought to be a useful tool in enhancing values education which includes a wide range
of topics, such as enhancing moral education and civic responsibility, issues of national identity
in Hong Kong for social harmony, and the impact of the Chinese national anthem for na-
tionalisation. This study embarked on a journey in which I have investigated, addressed and
answered some of the abovementioned arguments and issues.
I recommend that the design of a balanced and holistic Putonghua song curricula as part of
music curricula for Hong Kong schools that is considered to be student-oriented and appealing
to Hong Kong students be based on the overall data analysis of preferences towards different
types of Putonghua song. Popular songs from mainland China and Taiwan would be the most
appropriate teaching materials and curriculum content to firstly arouse students’ interests and
support in learning Putonghua songs (Ho 2003b), and hopefully singing those songs would
encourage students to learn the language in a leisurely and creative manner (Leung 2003b).
Moreover, Chinese traditional folk songs would also be an asset to include as part of the
curriculum in Hong Kong music classrooms to support the richness of Chinese heritage
and culture. As recommended by Leung (2003b, 2007) who advocates the importance of
cultural citizenship, the concept of cultural-oriented curriculum would be one of the ideal
approaches for educators in Hong Kong during the post-colonisation process, and I believe
the same reference could be used in the context of music education as Hong Kong continues
her journey in the 21st century. Abril (2007, p. 82) sums this up perfectly by expressing the
importance of social inclusiveness in addressing and communicating with a wide range of
cultural groups and stakeholders in regard to any significant song in the society (i.e. the Chinese
national anthem and Putonghua songs at large in this case). He says,
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Ti-Wei Chen
presenting or performing only one version of the song potentially conceals the song’s
history and limits opportunities to think critically and discover what it means to live in
a democratic society … represent it, resituate it, reinvent it, and/or reconstitute it to
reflect contemporary times, or personal realities.
1. Given ongoing challenges and opportunities presented by growing multicultural diversity,
how do you engage in music teaching and learning that is non-biased, inclusive, and
student-oriented while being educational at the same time?
2. In light of the reality of a changing music curriculum, how can you facilitate open-minded,
practical approaches for meaningful and robust discussion among stakeholders such as
governmental authorities, school administration, music teachers and parents?
Note
1 The Chinese national anthem, namely March of the Volunteer, was composed by Nieh Erh in 1932 one
year after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. This song was then dedicated to the volunteers who rose
to defend the nation long before Japan formally declared war on China. In 1934, Nieh Erh went to
continue his musical studies in Japan where he was murdered at the age of 24. His song was officially
announced by the Chinese Communist Party to be adopted as the national anthem of the People’s
Republic of China in 1949. However, the lyricist, Tian Han was jailed during the Cultural
Revolution, and the song was consequently banned for 10 years until he was released in 1982.
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4
HABITUAL PLAY
Body, cultural sacredness, and professional
dilemmas in classical musician education
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to use Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to examine the practices of
classical music instruction pedagogy in the work of conservatory music teachers in Israel. An
ethnographic study conducted by Sagiv1 shows that the conservatory’s primary educational
function is focused on providing individual classical music instrumental lessons for children and
teens. The teachers themselves are usually a product of traditional Western and classical music
education and tend to utilise strict and conservative teaching methods not only in instilling
technical skills but also in fostering a canonical range of behavioural and cultural codes expected
of a classical musician.
This chapter joins a larger wave of critical studies conducted in recent decades within music
education that look at classical traditions and teaching practices and their influence on pedagogy.
Issues of teachers’ professional identity, their social status, and position in the field as well as their
pedagogical agency are discussed extensively providing new perspectives (Bouij 2004;
Elliott 2007; Green 2002, 2008, 2011; Holgersen 2010; Perkins 2010, 2015; Regelski 2009). For
example, Roberts (2010) criticises the ethos of the classical elitistic music education and the
notion that music educator status is considered less than a performer, and Bowman (2007) claims
that traditional pedagogical approaches cause a reduction of expressive and emotional abilities. In
addition, this chapter joins the scholarly discourse that uses the body of work of the French
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to examine these questions (Burnard et al. 2015).
Focusing on the concept of habitus, we will argue that in instrumental instruction, the body
serves as one of the main tools for acquiring the player’s habitus and style. According to Mauss
(1936/1973) and, later on, Bourdieu (1990), the body is a social site immersed physically in
social and cultural contexts. Bourdieu (1998, p. 81) says:
[the body] is a socialised body. A structured body, a body which has incorporated the
immanent structures of a world or a particular sector of that world – a field – and
which structures the perception of that world as well as action in that world.
Bourdieu explains that habitus reflects people’s relationships to the dominant culture (Reay 2004)
and embodies their acquired lifestyle practices, cultural tastes, and dispositions. Nonetheless,
67
Bourdieu (1986) positions the body not just in a social world but specifically in a social field, that
has its own ‘rules of the game’. Bourdieu claims that the rules of the game are individually and
collectively internalised in an unconscious way, so people operating in a field have a thorough
built-in of the nuances of the ‘correct’ cultural behaviour, expressions of lifestyles, and accepted
norms. The habitus, then, will be seen in adopted behavioural tendencies that fit the social status
and group to which they belong. To this end, classical musicians internalise a specific habitus,
which is explained by Bourdieu as a highly valued cultural capital (Bourdieu 1978). Such a capital
is composed of nuances and notions that are common in the field as well as various skills that are
required in order to operate successfully in this arena. Leading a classical music lifestyle and being
included in the company of classical musicians is generally a product of a long process of
acquisition that often starts in early childhood and continues throughout adolescence and
adulthood (Bourdieu 1984, 1993a).
Since the teachers themselves were educated to embody the habitus they seek to pass on to
their students, they essentially transmit according to the habitus scheme, their knowledge,
aesthetic preferences, worldviews, and personal tastes as well, serving as gatekeeper of what they
perceive as a ‘sacred’ culture of classical music. These, of course, are based on the cultural capital
they have acquired throughout their own life as young apprentices in the classical music field.
Thus, instrumental music teachers operate as cultural agents, passing distinctive practices, dis-
positions, and worldviews that place classical music as an elite and even sanctified realm.
Based on an ethnographic study of instrumental lessons in classical music, we will show how
music teachers become instillers of a specific embodied habitus, demonstrating how, along with
teaching various playing techniques, they provide their students with insights into the coded
subtleties of the field. This creates an optimal and prestigious presence of a specific style in the
study room emphasising traditional virtues such as punctuality, self-discipline, and devotion.
These come along with a wide breadth of valued knowledge that is culturally distinctive and
labelled higher’. As Bourdieu says: ‘Nothing gives more opportunities than music for exhibiting
one’s “class”, and there’s nothing by which one is more inevitably classified’ (Bourdieu
1993, p. 103).
Although this article’s scope lies within the realm of classical music education in Israel, its focus
is on an analysis of habitus by Bourdieu from three perspectives: body and embodiment, lifestyle,
and professional status. In this respect, the article does make a thorough reference to the hegemonic
power structure between Western cultural capital and high social status. However, the article does
not touch upon the colonial/post-colonial question that might arise from this relationship. We
would like to acknowledge that indeed there are hegemonic cultural relationships within the very
ethnically complex Israeli society, as well as that the Israeli situation is different from traditional
colonialism, yet these issues are not included in our analysis.
Habitus, cultural capital, and field placement in instrumental teaching

In order to provide a theoretical framework, we will discuss three principle Bourdieusian con-
cepts that construct the mechanism by which musical habitus works in the instrumental teaching
setting. The first is the role of the body as a site for transmission of cultural knowledge; the second
is the concept of lifestyle and taste and the distinction between high and low culture; the third
looks at the issue of status and professional position of music teachers in the field, as a foundational
factor in the construction of their pedagogical dispositions and norms.
In instrumental teaching, the body becomes one of the primary tools for acquiring a larger
scheme of cultural habitus. Perkins (2010) emphasises the importance of understanding the social,
cultural, and institutional settings in which one-on-one music lessons operate in order to
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Habitual play
comprehend the ways learning and teaching are constructed. Every bodily action learned and
acquired is directly related to the musician’s cultural field through physical appearance and action.
The body of both teachers and students therefore presents specific cultural knowledge, and
highlight insights and sensitivities in the field of action. These are also signified to a certain social
group and strata. Bourdieu (1984) shows that a high cultural capital operates as a distinctive force
allowing those who hold ownership over fine cultural and artistic taste to be separated from those
who hold limited cultural capital. In this sense, the body’s adaptation and acquisition of new
habits of fine musicianship will on the one hand confine it to a system of restrictions, but on the
other hand will enable a potential social mobility.
Cognitive pedagogical research demonstrates this phenomenon of acquisition of habitus
using terms such as ‘intuitive theories’ and ‘mental models’ (Mevorach and Strauss 2012;
Troff 2001). These terms describe from a different angle the professional authenticity of tea-
chers in terms of pedagogy and cultural dispositions, and illustrate in different words how
students’ habitus becomes a part of the body, habits, and personal inclinations.
The acquisition of habitus, which eventually becomes ‘second nature’ – a social practical sense
embedded in the body which is described by Bourdieu as a ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu 1990,
p. 30), places classical musicians in a field that carries prestige and highly valued cultural capital.
During this process, musicians learn the full scheme of behaviours, historical knowledge, and
techniques characteristic to the field. These will include knowledge of composers, styles, famous
players, and repertoire consisting mostly of music written in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries in Western Europe. Furthermore, some of the composers and compositions in the field
have achieved over time a position of iconic and eternal status as a result of what Bourdieu calls
‘Ritual Acts of Sacrilege’ (Bourdieu 1993a, p. 80), whereby a canonic body of knowledge that
becomes ingrained in the habitus is created:
It is all too obvious that these ritual acts of sacrilege, profanations which only ever
scandalize the believers, are bound to become sacred in their turn and provide the
basis for a new belief … Paradoxically, nothing more clearly reveals the logic of the
functioning of the artistic field than the fate of these apparently radical attempts at
subversion.
(Bourdieu 1980, p. 266)
Such a canonic body of knowledge becomes essential in the articulation of the practices of
pedagogy, from instrumental lessons for beginner students, to professional orchestral concerts.
In relation to instrumental music lessons, the ‘feel of the game’ is an expression of the habitus
scheme, through which students learn to understand and experience the specific cultural
environment of classical music education. They are trained from an early age to act according to
them and to adapt to the required cultural codes. In dance education for example, Nativ
(Nativ 2010) shows in her research on high school female dancers, how during 3 years of
rigorous studying of classical ballet, the students, who had very little background in this genre,
acquired gradually a distinctive coded ‘balletic’-embodied habitus. They moved around school
differently, holding their backs up straight and their feet turned out and reported that their
cultural choices and preferences changed dramatically toward a canonical and traditional dance
body of knowledge. The instrumental teachers thus, become the primary mediator of such a
habitus scheme, passing it through pedagogical practices to their students in order for them to be
integrated into the field in the best possible manner.
The habitus of classical musicians, however, is acquired by gaining and cultivating valuable
symbolic capital. This is usually apparent in the realm of public performance through concerts
69
and events where conservatory students need to show, first and foremost, their performance
skills. In this regard, Perkins shows how learning the culture of what is considered ‘privileged’ is
constructed:
Observation reveals that the conservatoire’s spaces are occupied predominantly by

rooms designed for instrumental lessons, individual practice and performance …
capturing the tensions between performing and “other stuff” these data illuminate
strong dispositions towards performance as a central and dominant facet of con-
servatoire life.
(Perkins 2013, pp. 203–204)
Therefore, cultural music knowledge is not passed on only through the pedagogical aspects of
the instrumental lesson itself, as students need to negotiate their position in the school’s power
structure, engaging in the performing arena. Yet, it is not only students who are busy nego-
tiating their way through the cultural field. Teachers are also committed to the same performing
endeavour, evaluating and comparing the professional conduct of their peers and their positions
in the field.
According to Bourdieu (1993a, p. 30), cultural products and producers are located within ‘a
space of positions and position-takings’. Therefore, ‘the literary or artistic field is a field of
forces, but it is also a field of struggles tending to transform or conserve this field of forces’.
Hence, the question of achieving higher status and performance competence has an important
role in teachers’ pedagogical decisions, priorities, and professional inclinations. Many writers
have claimed that pedagogical considerations and practices are directly influenced by the way
teachers perceive themselves and their professional status (Bowman 2007; Mills 2004;
Purser 2005; Roberts 2004; Ward 2004). As a result, many instrumental teachers try to max-
imise their status and point out their strengths, performing the habitus as a form of capital, in a
way that fits the field’s values, but also distinguishes them from others.
Methodology
This chapter is based on ethnographic research (interviews and observations) Sagiv (2014)
conducted in the years 2009–2011 in three music conservatories in Israel. The aim was to
examine the pedagogical practices of instrumental music teachers, and to understand how such
practices articulate students’ cultural socialisation and preferences into the paradigm of classical
music.
In Israel, as in other parts of the Western world, music conservatories serve as preparatory
schools for young musicians offering individual lessons and emphasising the preservation of the
old tradition of the classical genre. They are usually non-formal2 institutions that employ a large
number of music teachers from different backgrounds, operating in after-school hours and
educating students from the age of 9 to 18. Students who choose to study in music con-
servatories are characterised by a wide range of musical aspirations. They range from those
interested at a certain stage in pursuing a professional career to those who are motivated pri-
marily by reasons such as engaging in a cultural leisure activity or the simple reason of spending
time with peers.
The 18 teachers who participated in the study provide a diverse and rich research field,
varied in musical instruments, teaching approaches, and cultural dispositions. Out of the overall
material gathered through more than one hundred observations and 18 interviews, we present
here just a small sample of data and analysis.
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Habitual play
The bodily realm as a basis for instilling a musician’s habitus in an

apprenticeship setting
In this section we articulate how the embodied practices of teaching and learning in an in-
strumental music lesson can instil in students a specific habitus. Our point of departure is to
contextualise the setting of an instrumental lesson in a discussion of apprenticeship pedagogy
and then look at the question of the body.
A major part of the process of learning to play an instrument is accomplished through
apprenticeship; one-on-one or master and apprentice. In apprenticeship pedagogy, learners
come in contact with a world of knowledge that is produced based not on abstract information,
but through concrete embodied practical actions (Barab and Hay 2001). The learning process
occurs through endless bodily actions of cumulative knowledge that are obtained slowly,
gradually, and holistically through experience over many years. Jean Lave and Wenger (1991),
one of the most important researchers on the subject of apprenticeship practice, writes that
apprenticeship is not only a good way of learning practical knowledge, but an efficient manner
of obtaining social knowledge in general. Therefore, learning in such a setting where bodily
practices are essential, may serve as a fertile ground for the construction of a common sense of
identity and culture.
As numerous studies have demonstrated (Barab and Hay 2001; Hansman 2001), the ap-
prenticeship model claims many advantages as an educational pedagogy, including that the
strengths of the system lie in the fact that students come in regular contact with a world of
knowledge that has practical implementations. In an apprenticeship pedagogy, students obtain
the knowledge through sensory experience where teachers operate as models for imitation;
demonstrating an example of a successful habitus manifestation of the discipline being studied.
Such a relationship of apprenticeship between teacher and student can be seen in instrumental
music lessons. In our study, Masha’s cello lessons show a constant use of bodily touch where, as
a teacher, she arranges and rearranges Dekel’s (her 9-year-old student) posture and shows her
with her own body how to play:
Masha is holding Dekel’s hand firmly showing her the correct position while the latter is playing
the instrument. She is moving her legs to the right position and pushing her elbow to adjust its
height. If this does not work she will take the cello from her student and demonstrate with her
body the correct musical manoeuvres and positions (from field notes).
Through this embodied mechanism where knowledge is exchanged repeatedly in every lesson,
Dekel’s habitus as a musician is formulated and learned/embodied. Most teachers and students
spend the majority of their time in endless drilling ways of working with the body. They
literally work on connecting the body to the instrument in various ways. Naama, a French horn
teacher, provides an insightful perspective. When asked what is the best pedagogical process for
learning an instrument, she replied:
First of all, there must be a good technical basis. But at the same time, I always remind them
(the students) that they are playing, that they are not operating a piece of equipment, but rather
making music. As far as I am concerned, the instrument is an extension of the student’s body.
Instead of singing, he plays. It’s as if the expression comes from the body organs that connect
directly to the horn.
71
According to Naama, the teacher’s role is to enable the fusing of the student’s body with the
instrument, as if they were one and the same. She aims to turn the instrument, which is
operated mostly with the hands and the breath, into an integral part of the student’s body, like
the vocal cords of a singer. Naama’s words emphasise the important role of the body in an
instrumental music lesson and its ability to be moulded within the frame of an experience that is
emotional, cognitive, and physical.
Other teachers look for ways to connect the instrument to the body as well, and to turn
what is perceived usually as an unnatural and strenuous bodily experience into a more com-
fortable and natural one. For example, Calanit, a viola teacher, referred to this issue:
How can it be natural? That you stand and do things like this (Calanit demonstrates viola
playing in mimicry) … What is natural about this? And at the same time to do this as well
(Calanit shows the position of the head holding the instrument between the neck and shoulder)
… This is not a motion you encounter anywhere else … You see 3-year-old children do this!!!
(Calanit demonstrates the motion of steering a wheel) but not this (demonstrates the viola playing
motion again). There is something very nice and very easy in it, because it is a very simple
motion (driving). This is a technical skill that really does not exist in the hands (viola playing),
and it’s not that we need to be circus performers, but we need to control it at a high enough level
in order to really transmit what we have, because it’s like speaking another language.
Calanit emphasises the motions of the hands over and over again – whether by moving them
during the interview, or in the fact that she constantly refers to their important role in the
process of imbedding the viola into the student’s body. She distinguishes between a ‘natural’
and an ‘unnatural’ motion, stressing what she calls ‘hand arrangement’ as the primary task of her
teaching. To her, the hands and specifically the fingers come to symbolise the bodily knowl-
edge of playing the violin in its entirety.
Linor, a clarinet teacher, also talks about how she imbeds the instrument in the student’s
body, taking it a step further, discussing the nature of totality that exists between a musician and
her instrument. For her, the body is the main site on which her educational work is done, and
therefore, she places significant effort on giving attention to the body and create interest in it,
A lot of body, the body is the centre, the main thing, so that every phrase that is played starts
from the body, if I see something incorrect in the body, I address that first. I try not to make it
technical. So that the music will flow through when I work with the student, and so I also add
everything related to the music – texture, time period, style, articulation, what’s left, what’s
right, balance, everything necessary. Everything goes through the body first.
Hence, Linor is attempting to do more than to fuse the body to the instrument, as Naama
suggested, or fix the ‘arrangement of the hands’ as Calanit conveyed. To her, when the body is
at the centre of the learning process, it becomes an essential part of the music production of the
piece being played including its style, history, and knowledge. This way, the embodied in-
strument connects the student to a larger sense of the culture of classical music in the best
possible manner.
These examples show how slowly, with the guidance of the teachers, relationships form
between students and their instruments, inanimate objects, simulating, in a way, human to
human interactions. According to Bruno Latour (2005), who conceptualises inanimate objects
with a dimension of autonomy and agency, the object is a part of a network of field players with
a life of its own, and its use is determined by its cultural role. He argues that ‘to have a body is to
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Habitual play
learn to be affected: meaning “effectuated”, moved, put into motion by other entities, humans
or non-humans’ (Latour 2004). In this sense, the musical instrument gradually becomes an
extension of the student’s body and an entity that enables her to transform and re-transform its
habitual motions to the point where she re-defines herself and her body according to her
instrument.
These examples demonstrate the mechanism of embodied apprenticeship where students are
able to materialize knowledge into actual habitual bodily practices and teachers become a lived-
embodied example of experienced mastery. Another example can be found in James’ words (a
bassoon teacher):
I’m not just a teacher. I don’t just teach how to press buttons, how to breathe or how to hold the
bassoon, I teach what I am, what I have done my whole life, and so teaching it is just an
extension of playing it. I take my students on a joint journey, at its end we arrive together at the
same place.
James shows how, through the model of apprenticeship, bodily practices of teaching and learning
produce a common experience. For him, teaching how to play the instrument is in fact about
teaching a larger cultural holistic experience that is transferred to the student, rather than a sequence
of instructions.
In such a process, the relationships between novice learners and veteran teachers create a unique
platform for a dynamic cultural social network from which a new knowledge is produced and a
sustainable professional community grows, produces, and reproduces its specific and defined
scheme of habitus. In this gradual process, students become an integral part of their teachers’ cultural
world for the simple reason that they are necessarily incorporated into it and affected by it.
Pragmatic philosopher Richard Shusterman (2010) claims in this matter that teaching embodied
musical knowledge does not happen in a vacuum. In most cases, the body has to be adapted to
artistic, historical, and cultural styles. Therefore, body transformations draw on musicians’ desire and
motivation to become a part of a selected group and culture.
‘Ritual acts of sacrilege’3 and the construction of an elitist mindset in

instrumental lessons
As we have seen, in instrumental instruction the body serves as one of the main tools for acquiring
the player’s habitus. However, the Bourdieusian definition of habitus is also integrated with ex-
pressions of lifestyle, taste and accepted behavioural norms that are constructed through bodily
practices. Habitus is, therefore, expressed in musicians’ ability to adapt and acquire behavioural
tendencies in the field that fit the cultural status to which they are being trained to belong.
Bourdieu argues for a close connection between high cultural capital and engagement in
classical music (1978). He shows that engaging in the world of classical music, whether as an
audience member or as a musician in itself serves as a preconditioned factor for inclusion in an
elite social class. Nevertheless, he points to a mechanism of what he calls ‘ritual acts of sacrilege’
(1993a), which constructs and preserves the sacred status of a musical elite cultural style and to
which newcomers are demanded with significant knowledge of the field. Such a knowledge is
achieved in the conservatory through repetitive teaching and learning practices, where students
gain over time the ‘correct’ knowledge of what is considered canonical oeuvres, composers,
styles, techniques, behavioural patterns, and so on. Therefore, when the full scheme of habitus is
inscribed within the body, it places musicians legitimately in the field, allowing them prestige
and high cultural signification.
73
Music teachers, through their pedagogical practices, transfer similar principles of cultural
sacredness through instrumental lessons with their students. As we will see, they create and
re-create a separate space of embodied work in which classical music is produced in an allegedly
autonomous and independent territory, detached from the outside social world. By creating such
detached work spaces in which teachers perpetually select traditional repertoire and employ
conventional methods of instruction, the instrumental lesson becomes a carrier of the ‘nature of
classical music’ as supernatural, cosmic, and spiritual. Therefore, students learn in their bodies that
practicing and studying music is not an ordinary thing, but involves engaging within an exalted
artistic system which is highly valued in its symbolic cultural capital. Galit for example, a cello
teacher, talks about creating such a separated space:
I want all the noise to stop when they enter. We set everything aside and get to work. The
importance of this in my view is primarily one of learning to delve into things … to constantly be
occupied by the questions and challenges that arise while playing, so that there will never be a
moment of playing without concentrating and listening or of doing something else simultaneously
… I want them to know how to do this process when they are at home, alone, to always be busy
with questions.
Galit’s aim is to divide between the daily routine and the unique practice of ‘musicking’, where
students are entirely engaged in the task of playing an instrument with their bodies and mind.
Her goal is in fact to train them to operate in a state of total intentionality, which functions as
part of constructing a musicianship habitus wherever they go. Aviva, a piano teacher, describes
in more details a set of behavioural practices she demands from her students in order to establish
distinction between what’s in the room and what is outside of it:
Before the lesson, there’s how I want it to be framed. I want them to know that the room where the
lesson takes place in is not a place they can just freely enter. They need to stand on the other side of
the door and knock, and only if no one is playing then they may enter, and if they don’t, they get a
“killer stare” from me. I reproach them in a tough manner which leads them to understand that I
am not just their friend, but I am also an authority that is very strict about setting boundaries, and
eventually they understand that I treat the music they are playing with great respect. And there is
also what’s outside the lesson – they have to come to concerts, they have to know how to dress
properly, they have to know how to go on stage, they have to know how to speak to me – not in the
language they use talking to their teachers at school, their friends or their families.
Aviva clearly emphasises the separation between daily life and what happens in the lesson. She
establishes clear disciplinary actions through which a package of values and learned behaviours
are transmitted regularly to fit the appropriate cultural field she works within. Everything that
seems ‘natural’ and ordinary has to be re-learned and practiced: the manner of entering the
room, talking and acting during the lesson and after, how to behave in public classical music
events, and how to dress. Music lessons and learning to play an instrument, thus, exist in a
constructed and separated territory that demands a specific cultural mindset.
In both Aviva and Galit’s words, there are distinctions between notions of external and
internal worlds, the daily routine and the unique act of making music and between what is
forbidden and what is allowed. These are manifested through ceremonial practices which
contribute to the formation of a clear ethical and cultural consciousness of the classical music
tradition. This can be connected to how Durkheim (1915), Douglas (1966), and later on
Turner (1969) look at social activities and ritual practices demonstrating how effectively
74
Habitual play
classifications and separations work to sacralise things, people and events. For Durkheim, an
elementary form of sacralization is a classification between the profane and the sacred by
identifying specific preferable characteristics and prohibitions. He argues that such beliefs and
rites are produced by social forces and create specific ceremonial performances, states of mind,
and ways of behaviours. Douglas shows how ritualisation operates through physical interaction
of the personal body with classified, symbolic, and structured social schemes as a way of re-
producing and manipulating the basic cultural order of a society; and Turner sees sacred spaces
as formed by embodied ritual practices that are distinct from daily activity and routine.
In light of these concepts, instrumental instruction in music lessons may be seen as a sphere
where social actions operate as ritualistic ceremonial performances producing divisions and
classifications. The distinctions and internal boundaries of various social activities applied, serve
as foundation for creating a sacred dimension. From paying attention to the tiniest details of
how to enter the room, to celebrating moments of success in a concert – all are enveloped in
the same meticulous sacred experience. One can see, therefore, how schemes of repetitive
habits and behaviours ingrained in students’ minds and bodies become more than just acts of
accumulation of instrumental knowledge, and exist as part of a learning process that carries a
magical and sacred dimension. It is possible to say then, that the distinction between the sacred
and the profane is often based on the desire to define ranges of actions that are considered
appropriate, lofty, and permitted, in order to apply solid boundaries and to put in place a certain
social order.
To conclude, instrumental teachers set out to separate the student from everyday life and the
music’s sacredness may arise out of the different practices described. The students may be captured
by the magic of playing, but they are also captivated by the messages that sanctify the playing and
elevate it against every other activity in their lives. Students slowly come to realise that they belong
to the prestigious club of classical music artists, not only for their ability to play the music, but also
for internalising its cultural order.
Tensions and dilemmas: teachers’ status and positions in the field

In most cases, teachers as well as their current students followed – usually since childhood – the
traditional trajectory suggested by the conservatory, preparing them to become a performing
artist. Yet, when they do become teachers, the question of professional prestige grows into an
issue that is directly related to their life story and identity; where they feel that their status is
usually undermined by that of professional musicians. Bourdieu (1993a) suggests that people
tend to constantly seek better positions in the field in order to gain more power, prestige and
recognition. In relation to this concept, we will discuss in this section the teachers’ problematic
sense of professional identity and status. We will refer to the ways the habitus of classical music
education causes teachers to reluctantly (or not) grapple and negotiate such tensions in the field
(Mills 2004); and we will show, in at least one case, how these negotiations construct and design
their pedagogical decisions.
According to research, academic and teacher training institutions educate future music
teachers into a frustrating and traditional mindset, where to become a performing professional
musician is of much greater value than to become a teacher (Bowman 2007; Mills 2004;
Purser 2005; Roberts 2004; Ward 2004). Brian Roberts (2004) for example, argues that such
institutions perpetuate such a paradigm by educating future teachers to extend this conceptual
division into their own teaching environments.
In his research, Sagiv (2014) found that it is possible to identify three types of professional
social statuses among instrumental music teachers: the first are teachers who are not currently,
75
and were not in the past, professional performers; the second relates to teachers who had a
performance career and now primarily serve as music teachers; and the third are the ones who
maintain active professional careers in addition to teaching. In the most general sense, the
research points to a correlation between the amount of pressure placed on students in terms of
pedagogical discipline and the social status of teachers. In most cases, Sagiv found, teachers who
are not engaged in a performing career tend to be stricter and more conservative in their
teaching practices comparatively to teachers who continue to perform – and tend to act more
freely and be less meticulous. We argue that this happens because non-performing teachers put
extensive power on traditional disciplinary practices to compensate for their sense of status
inferiority derived from the field of instrumental teaching. In other words, in their view, the
more they are strict, the more prestigious their peers and the professional community will
perceive their teaching to be. This dialectic dilemma between the value of teaching and per-
forming was evident in the interviews, emphasising evermore that prestige in the instrumental
teaching field is tightly bound with the field of performance.
An example of such tension comes up in Miriam’s story. Miriam is a cello teacher and a
successful performer in Israel. In her interview, she shared her dilemmas and laid out her
professional considerations and calculations, thusly:
I have an older student, the most advanced of my students, who just finished tenth grade. The
dilemma was my own – I felt that it was time for her to move on to another teacher. My husband
asked me if I want to only teach young students, to be seen as a teacher for beginners. I thought
about it, and I had a dilemma. Yes – in terms of my status, I am perceived as such a teacher, and
I decided that I am okay with that. It’s not that I can’t teach advanced students, but I decided
that I want to teach a child only up to the point where he can advance more with another teacher,
a teacher who also teaches on the college level. I grappled with this for a couple of days, and then
moved on. I felt for a moment like I’m not good enough to teach them when they get older, and
that is not true. It’s not that I’m not good enough, I just think that at this point there is someone
who is a better fit for her. If that means that others may perceive me as a teacher for young
children, I am willing to make that sacrifice […] The issue of reputation is important, but I know
I am highly regarded in another place – as a professional cellist, and so I want to bring to the
lessons the things that are important to me – fun, interaction, and all the rest. Since professional
achievement is supposedly not the most important thing to me, I felt comfortable giving that
student to another teacher without it being too difficult.
Miriam’s words clearly show the tension that exists in the field between teaching and performing
and how these two positions reflect the use and exchange of prestige and cultural capital. Her
words also reveal how this dynamic of multiple professional identities influences her pedagogical
decisions. It is obvious that being perceived as a teacher of children is considered less important.
Yet, Miriam is not bothered by this fact, because she is well known and appreciated in the domain
of professional performance; in this way, the cultural value of her performer identity defends her
reputation and status. Therefore, she can choose to give up on teaching older students that usually
are expected to be driven towards a professional performance direction. Yet, although she does
not want to be seen as a lesser teacher because of her lack of ability (or desire) to train players
professionally over a long period of time, she decides to put aside considerations of status and
prestige that would demand of her a more traditional and disciplined teaching approach. Instead,
she prefers to create her teaching environment as providing a favourable and fun experience both
for her and her young students. Miriam can afford not to be bothered by issues of ambitiousness
76
Habitual play
and professional achievement that characterize the music pedagogy of older students. The solution
for her dilemmas comes with the understanding that she does not have to ‘play the game’.
It is rare for instrumental teachers to voluntarily give up older students after working with
them continuously for several years. Sometimes they feel deeply hurt and as if their world
collapses when a student decides to move on to a new teacher who holds a performance career
and is therefore acknowledged as a better professional. Moreover, in such a situation the teacher
may feel that their status might be damaged not only because of their already inferior position in
the field, but also because of the background of their own life story. Therefore, teachers who do
not enjoy a performative high status and prestige have usually fewer opportunities to calculate
gains versus losses in the same manner as Miriam does. Alternatively, they tend to use tradi-
tional, rigorous, rigid, and demanding approach towards their students.
Closing comments
Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts enable music education research to analyse, decode, and re-
interpret the ways in which the traditional culture of Western classical music passes on habitual
practices and how music teachers operate as central agents in this mechanism. In this chapter, we
sought to decipher the methods of instrumental classical music pedagogy and to show how its
mechanism perpetuates the continuity and sacredness of classical music culture. Our insights were
formulated out of analysing and understanding the unique embodied relationships that are formed
in music lessons between teachers and students and between students and their instruments.
We showed how the pedagogy of music teaching is based on a long tradition of disciplined
apprenticeship where the body serves as a site not only for physical adjustments of body-instrument
relations but also for a larger cultural transformation and adaptation to a distinctive and elevated
field. Teachers, who are themselves the product of this pedagogical mechanism, pass on this tra-
dition in different manners as we have seen. Yet, it seems that in principle, they operate similarly.
Some argue that the process of learning is perceived often as monotonous and sisyphean,
where students experience a unified and intense process of acculturation into a specific habitus
which does not allow personal growth or creative expression (Bouij 2004; Bowman 2007;
Elliott 2007; Green 2002, 2008, 2011; Holgersen 2010; Perkins 2015; Regelski 2009;
Roberts 2010). However, although classical music education involves reproduction and per-
petuation of strict rules and practices, it seems that it does have some advantages. The power of
the classical culture, we argue, is embedded within the educational mechanism described here
above, which succeeds to connect teachers and students in a meaningful and profound manner.
In this sense it is through this specific habitus of intimate precision and punctuality that students
are being educated into the essential characteristics of the culture of classical music.
As we have seen, through Bourdieu’s ideas we were able to analytically understand the
traditional mechanisms of music education pedagogy. Yet, we propose to end this article with a
few questions that extend beyond his theory. For example, can we look at a student’s body not
only as a site of social reproduction but as an autonomous, subjective, and experiential site,
where they may constantly discover and rediscover its musical qualities? Can we suggest un-
derstanding the cultural inscription of traditional high cultural capital not only as a hegemonic
force but as a process in which students’ subjective identity grows and becomes part of a
meaningful, inclusive, and empowering professional community? We suggest that extending
the scope going beyond Bourdieu, may provide music education research and specifically the
analysis of classical music instrumental pedagogy with additional options, points of views, and
potentialities. These will enable us to comprehend classical music cultural power and longevity
in the field of music education.
77
1. How do Bourdieu’s ideas and concepts reflect the ways by which cultural mechanisms operate
and articulate young students’ perceptions of the field, and how might these impact music
education practice?
2. In your experience with instrumental music lessons, in what ways can the concept of habitus
be connected to the reproduction of traditional and canonical embodied knowledge?
Notes
1 This chapter is based on Sagiv’s PhD dissertation (2014), Discipline and pleasure – ‘dual pedagogy’
conserving an elitist tradition in the instruction of classical music in Israeli conservatories.
2 Non-formal educational institutions in Israel operate usually in the after (formal) school hours.
3 Bourdieu, 1993a. The field of cultural production: essay on art and literature. Policy Press, Cambridge.
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5
TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF
MUSIC EDUCATION INFORMED
BY INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES
Introduction
Cultural sociologists focus on ‘the ways that meaning shapes social life’ (Alexander et al. 2017,
p. 7, italics added); it is their contention that the ‘meaningfulness of social life creates the
foundation for that which is the material, the practical, the structural, the social, even perhaps,
the biological sides of social life’ (Mohr and Rawlings 2012, p. 76). According to Spillman
(Ritzer and Ryan 2011, p. 113), cultural sociologists ‘currently identify and analyze three
different types of influence on meaning making: ‘institutional production, interactional process,
and textual structure’. Their work has revealed the many ways in which both discursive and
iconic renderings of values and beliefs shape economic and other material forms of social life.
For example, with regard to the international art market, cultural sociologists have determined
that the accepted microeconomic premise that supply and demand determine an object’s price
is insufficient; along with supply and demand, ‘the price of artifacts and artworks is influenced
by the attribution of authenticity or the qualities of the social interactions between buyers and
artisans’ (Alexander et al. 2017, p. 8).
From a cultural sociological perspective, then, understanding the meanings ascribed to music
by any given culture and how those meanings, in turn, help to shape the music of that culture is
central to a comprehensive understanding of that music. Using the conceptual terminology of
C. S. Peirce’s semiotic, Goble (2010, pp. 45–110) demonstrated how the music and/or musical
practices experienced as meaningfully efficacious and culturally validating by the members of a
cultural community can be recognized as iconic of (i.e. qualitatively isomorphic with), indexical
of (i.e. in contiguous physical relationship with), and symbolic of (i.e. habitually associated with)
the worldview they collectively share and embody. Further, their musics and musical practices
are experienced as meaningful owing to the pragmatic efficacy they have within the life of that
community, yet they (as Signs) may be conceptualized differently (as Objects) by persons of
different backgrounds (as embodied Interpretants). Correspondingly, Wright (2014, pp. 13–14),
informed by the history of sociology as a field, argued for a ‘fourth sociology’, one that attends
not merely to ‘society as an organism with overarching properties not reducible to the level of
its components-individuals’ (as with the ‘first sociology’), nor only to individuals and their
actions conceptualised as the ‘ultimate components of society’ (as the ‘second sociology’), nor to
‘inter-human space … comprised of actions and interactions between and among individuals’
80
Toward a sociology of music education
(as the ‘third sociology’). Wright’s ‘fourth sociology’ for music education takes multiple con-
ceptual frames into account:
… [It] combines and integrates theoretical perspectives from within sociology itself,
but also importantly from other disciplines, perhaps particularly anthropology/cultural
studies/studies in popular culture and the media, musicology, philosophy, psychology
and education, while remaining grounded in the basic sphere of sociology and its
focus on the development of robust theoretical descriptions and empirical investiga-
tions of the nature and issues of human existence in societies.
(Wright 2014, p. 15)
In this paper, we bring the perspectives of cultural sociologists and Indigenous scholars to the
field of sociology of music education. As non-Indigenous music education researchers who
have undertaken research to examine, from a sociological perspective, the embedding of
Indigenous musics in music education settings in British Columbia public schools, we argue
that we and others who do this work must do so informed by the cultural lenses/meanings of
those who have created the music in order to 1) avoid miscommunication between non-
Indigenous researchers and Indigenous research participants who are steeped in their culture(s),
2) accurately reflect and highlight Indigenous sociological conceptions of musical and peda-
gogical practices that we have encountered in our research that, to our knowledge, have
heretofore not been considered in the field of music education, and 3) demonstrate the ways in
which these conceptions might enrich music education research and practice.1
To support our assertions that understanding cultural meanings is central to a comprehensive
and ethical sociological investigation of the embedding of local Indigenous musics in educa-
tional settings, and that investigating them might yield insights that will contribute to music
education practices and research, we turn to the writings of scholars from several First Nations
and use data from a recent federally funded study – in which we examined the embedding of
local Indigenous cultural practices in music classes in seven British Columbian communities –
to show how terms commonly used in social theories (e.g. society, relationships, reciprocity,
identity, agency) are understood differently by Indigenous peoples, including those in whose
territories the study took place (McAllan 2012; Watts 2013). Although we recognise that similar
conceptions are found in other cultural communities, we will maintain a focus on the
Indigenous communities we are describing in this chapter.
We demonstrate the ways in which definitions are ‘fraught with potential for misunderstanding
because of radically different worldviews that imply distinct meanings for the same words’
(Atleo 2004, p. 86). Following Turner (2006, p. 95), we identify and then ‘unpack the colonial
framework’ or the underlying normative givens of these sociological terms and their intentions
(Kovach 2010, p. 48). Moreover, aware that ‘oral historians … have alerted us to the importance of
understanding the social practices and cultural meanings underlying discursive practices’ (Ignace and
Ignace 2018, p. 477), we show how those social practices and cultural meanings inform Indigenous
definitions of these terms. Like Kovach (2010), our purpose in doing this work is to rescue con-
ceptual frameworks rather than eliminate them, so that they might be put to use in culturally
informed ways that broaden our understanding of social phenomena in music education.
Changes in sociology’s approach to Indigenous peoples

As with efforts to understand music on the terms of different individuals and communities who
use the word, it makes sense that coming to an understanding of the meanings ascribed to
81
sociology (including its terms and theories) by any given culture might also yield insights to
sociologists who investigate social topics of/in/with that cultural group. Unfortunately, in
countries with a history of settler colonialism, the field of sociology has until recently either
largely ignored colonised cultures (thereby rendering them invisible) or viewed the people of
those cultures only through a deficit lens.
For example, as recently as 2004, Australian sociologists noted that Aboriginal & Torres Strait
Islander Peoples’ perspectives were not represented in the field of sociology (Butler-McIlwraith 2006).
Calling attention to the potential benefits of syncretic understanding resulting from cross-cultural
dialogue, some called for ‘a new sociological tradition in Australia … that encourages dialogue with
Indigenous people’ using face-to-face protocols (Butler-McIlwraith 2006, p. 377). Some years later,
Walter and Butler (2013) utilized Whiteness and Critical Race theories to explain why, in 2009, across
all Australian university sociology departments, only 5 of 600 units of sociology courses included the
topic of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and those few units were simply descriptive in
nature. Lecturers taught Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in three ways: by outsourcing
lectures (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars giving pro bono lectures), engaging in voyeurism
(Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members sharing life stories), or showing a
documentary without providing a corresponding opportunity for students to reflect critically on the
film’s themes.
McAllan (2012, p. 29) has argued specifically that sociologists must include study of both
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander2 content and ontologies in their courses, qualifying ‘so-
ciological terms and related theories … in specific relation to Indigenous experience/ontolo-
gical perspective – thus also taking care that the terms are socio-politically and historically
located’ in order for the terms to be useful.
In Canada, a country characterised by diverse geographies and peoples, Matthews (2014,
p. 110) has called for a sociology that is informed by time (historical) and space (geography):
… [M]y position on Canadian Sociology takes as a starting point and assumption that all
societies are inherently different and that this difference stems from a unique geo-
graphy, unique history, unique ethnic and social composition, and unique cultural
experiences, and from the relationships that develop among these.
Some sociologists in Canada have begun to interrogate contemporary sociological practices

even more critically, especially ‘the current state of sociological methods, teaching, and writing
on Indigenous-Settler relations and knowledge creation’ (Matsunaga et al. 2016, p. 458). They
have recently challenged each other to consider ‘how they understand and seek to engage
reconciliation3 in their sociological research, writing, and/or teaching’ (p. 458), decolonise
their practice, and create space ‘for Indigenous cosmologies, ontologies, and epistemologies
around land, youth, gender, education, research methods, and knowledge production’ (p. 460).
Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous sociologists have taken up this challenge in their research
and writing (Denis 2016; Powell 2017; Tomiak 2017; Watts 2013; Wilkes et al. 2017).
With regard to research methodologies, Nêhiýaw scholar Margaret Kovach (2010) has
highlighted ways in which seemingly invisible ontological and epistemic assumptions undergird
Western social theories. She asserts that ‘applying the language of conceptual frameworks to
Indigenous inquiries can be problematic’ (Margaret Kovach 2010, p. 40) because conceptual
frameworks prioritise abstract thinking over ‘feelings, spirit, and experiences’ (Margaret Kovach
2010, p. 41). In fact, Haudenosaunee and Anishinabek sociologist Vanessa Watts (2013) argues
emphatically against viewing Indigenous cosmologies through ontological and epistemological
lenses because, from an Indigenous perspective, the two lenses are indivisible; separating them
82
severs specific Indigenous cosmologies from the places in which they originated and exist.
Other Indigenous researchers propose unpacking and re-defining terms like ontology, episte-
mology, and conceptual frameworks as a strategic concession that can lead to bridge building
(Kovach 2010; Smith 2012).
Our research has led us to concur with and act on this proposal.
In the next section, we turn to Nuu-chah-nulth, Tla’amin, Stó:lō, Syilx, Secwépemc,
Gitxsan, Métis, Nêhiýaw, Anishinabek, and Kanien’kehá:ka scholars and others in the fields of
education, law, history, anthropology, philosophy, Indigenous studies, and Indigenous gov-
ernance for their understandings of terms commonly used in sociology (e.g. society, relation-
ships, reciprocity, identity, and agency) and contrast their meanings with conventional (e.g.
Western European) definitions. We also draw on the comments of those who participated in
our recent research on the embedding of local Indigenous content, pedagogy, and worldview(s)
in music classes in the province of British Columbia – specifically in Hul’qumi’num, Nuu-
chah-nulth, Nisga’a, Gitxsan, Songhees, and Esquimalt territories – that further elucidate the
meanings of these terms from the perspectives of those whose cultural practices we observed in
music classes. It is our hope that in drawing distinctions between specific Indigenous and
conventional (i.e. Western European) understandings of sociological terminology, it may be-
come possible to develop new, syncretic understandings (Atleo 2011; Butler-McIlwraith 2006)
and bi-directional (Akiwowo 1999) terms for use in the fields of both sociology and music
education.
Terminological distinctions
For each of the following terms, we first outline the conventional sociological definition and
then show how scholars from specific First Nations have expressed what the term is understood
to mean in their respective communities. In considering two contrasting conceptions of each
term in succession, we aim to demonstrate how each knowledge system determines its cultural
meaning. Next, we suggest how the two distinct knowledge systems might coexist and inform
one another so that we might build ‘bridges of understanding’ (Styres 2017, p. 164). Our
intention is to illuminate the worldviews of those whose musics we research in order that music
educators might include them in the classroom appropriately and respectfully.
Society
The 4th edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (2014, p. 95) defines society in this way:
Generally, a group of people who share a common culture, occupy a particular ter-
ritorial area, and feel themselves to constitute a unified and distinct entity—but there
are many different sociological conceptions ... . More loosely, it refers to human
association or interaction generally, as in the phrase ‘the society of his friends’.
According to this standard reference, people constitute a society. The Concise Encyclopedia of
Sociology (2011, p. 593) – another Oxford publication – defines society more broadly, perhaps
influenced by the new materialist turn in the field. Here, ‘society refers to all forms of mutual
and intersubjective communication in which the perceptions and behavior of actors are
oriented to those of others’. The term actor is not defined.
However, in Stó:lō, Syilx, Nuu-chah-nulth, Anishinabek, Métis, Secwépemc, Nêhiýaw,
Dane-Zaa, Gitxsan, and Kanien’kehá:ka worldviews, all matter (e.g. humans, animals, plants,
83
soil, rock) is sentient and interconnected, and all entities are animate because they have a spirit
(Archibald 2008; Armstrong 2007; Atleo 2004, 2011; Borrows 2010; Elsey 2013; Ignace and
Ignace 2018; Kovach 2010; Ridington and Ridington 2006; Simpson, 2011; Smith 2004;
Styres 2017). Extending from this notion, in many Indigenous worldviews all visible (e.g.
humans, animals, plants, soil, rock) and invisible (e.g. the ancestors, spirit world) entities to-
gether constitute a complex and highly interconnected society.
These disparate conceptions of society signify that ‘Indigenous Knowledge cannot be un-
derstood primarily (or even exclusively) in its relation to Western science’ (Ludwig 2016,
p. 24); each perspective must be understood on its own terms. Moreover, it is our contention
that the distinctive understandings of society are the basis for differing conceptions of the terms
relationship, reciprocity, identity, and agency. Tuck and McKenzie (2015, pp. 151–152), whose
scholarship on place in social science research emphasizes Indigenous and environmental con-
cerns, elaborate:
Descartes’ (1637) cleaving of the mind from the body, and of the individual from
society and nature … separated human consciousness from the material world; it
initiated a preponderance of binaries; it amplified man’s dominion over the earth and
its animals; it made the Western tradition … anthropocentric and removed humans
from their own understanding of ecosystems.
Thus, the respective anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric conceptions of society derive

from two radically different ontological positions concerning the role of humans: dominion
over nature versus living in and with nature.
Relationship
Most sociologists concern themselves with the study of human society; symbolic interactionists
and relational sociologists have generally focused on relationships among humans. Cerulo
(2009, p. 532) tracks the field of sociology’s historical focus on human-only interactions, noting
that influential social theorists excluded nonhumans from their frameworks because, according
to them, ‘Social interaction requires certain capabilities—capabilities that only humans possess’.
According to Cerulo (2009), these capabilities included consciousness (Weber), intention
(Parsons), reflection (Goffmann), anticipation (Schutz), and language (Habermas).
However, in recent years, interactionist sociologists have put forward various theories (e.g.
Actor Network Theory, Time Perspective Theory) that challenge traditional perspectives on
relationships between humans and non-humans. Latour (2005) for example, uses Actor
Network Theory to highlight the significance of non-human action over intention (see p. 89
regarding Latour and agency), whereas Owens (2007, p. 581) argues that, in certain situations, a
‘human actor may perceive the [non-biological] object as an actor … the decision will involve
two factors: the urgency of human goals and the primacy of this specific object for the com-
pletions of the human task’. Although these interactionist scholars acknowledge and theorize
human-non-human interactions, their frameworks generally consider non-humans only in the
ways in which they might ‘mediate inter-human interactions and relations’ (Crossley 2018,
p. 482). In other words, humans remain at the centre of the relational world.
In the emergent, ecology-oriented subfield of relational sociology, McFarlane (2013, p. 60)
argues that ‘there are no human social relations that do not in some way either involve or
depend upon nonhumans, including plants, animals, and things. To ignore this brute fact is to
ignore not only what sociology is, but what sociology can be’. Such an ecological orientation
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enables sociologists to consider a less human-centred framework of relationships, but despite

McFarlane’s illumination of the importance of human-nonhuman interactions, especially the
complexity of human-animal relationships, he and most relational sociologists acknowledge that
‘things like rocks are not at all conscious, and that although higher animals like cats certainly are
conscious, they are not fully self-conscious in the way we humans are’ (Porpora 2018, p. 422).
This perspective – that objects in nature are non-sentient – foregrounds an important difference
between most current sociological and Indigenous understandings of relationships.
Like relational sociologists, many Indigenous societies prioritize relationships. ‘We are rela-
tions’ states Nêhiýaw education scholar Dwayne Donald succinctly (2011, p. 77). Atleo (2004), a
Nuu-chah-nulth philosopher, explains this notion in greater detail. He affirms that ‘a primary
purpose of life is to create, maintain, and uphold relationships’ (p. 30). But, unlike relational
sociologists, in his view, ‘we are all brothers and sisters not only to each other, but also to every
life form’ (2004, p. 88). According to this viewpoint, all entities share a sacred common origin;
therefore, all should be treated equally, with isaak or respect. Kanien’kehá:ka and Cherokee
scholars Alfred and Corntassel (2005, p. 609) concur:
Clearly, it is the need to maintain respectful relationships that guides all interactions
and experiences with community, clan, families, individuals, homelands, plants, ani-
mals, stones, trees, mountains, river, lakes and a host of other living entities – em-
bodied relationships that must be honoured.
In this view, relationships must be honoured because we are all interdependent.

Ignace and Ignace (2018, p. 207) offer one example of human to non-human relationships.
They explain that ‘in the Secwépemc belief system, the concept central to relationship between
an animal and the fisher or hunter who “bags” the animal is that the animal kecmentsút (gives
itself) to the fisher or hunter’. Secwépemc fishermen and hunters honour ‘norms of respect’ by
‘not wasting any part of an animal’ (p. 203) and by giving thanks to the Creator and the
resource (i.e. the animal or fish). Likewise, Gitxsan stories and teachings remind community
members to honour their relationship with the Salmon People by returning the bones of the
first salmon caught every year to the river in which it was caught, sharing the cooked salmon
among all community members, and following other protocols of respect (Smith 2004). Paul
(2014, p. 163) explains that Tla’amin teachings also encourage successful hunters to exercise
humility.
You have to be humble, because … the salmon or deer or mountain goat … had life.
They’re giving up their life for you. So that’s nothing to brag about. You just need to
be thankful for all of that.
According to Anishnabek and Kanien’kehá:ka scholars Simpson (2011) and Styres (2017), the
recognition that all beings are mutually interdependent requires that we develop a disposition of
self-in-relation by acting responsibly towards others and working to maintain and promote
balance in our relationships. Archibald (2008, p. 110) affirms that ‘maintaining a respectful and
trusting relationship requires patience, open communication, the will to respond, and the ability
to negotiate satisfactory solutions’.
With regard to the connection between relationships and music, several Indigenous scholars
(Atleo 2004; Elsey 2013; Ignace and Ignace 2018; Simpson 2011) explain that their cultural
practices are an embodied means of expressing contextual knowledge and strengthening the
relationships that ‘stitch our communities together … the relationship between those present
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becomes dynamic … The ‘performance,’ whether a song, a dance, or a spoken word story,
becomes then an individual and collective experience’ (Simpson 2011, p. 34). Non-Indigenous
anthropologists Robin Ridington and Ridington (2006, p. 183), who worked with and for the
Dane-Zaa for over 40 years, write this:
When people dance and sing together, they become united to one another and to the
animal people … when people dance and listen to the songs together, they know what
it is like to be with the people who lived before them.
All these cultural practices – stories, songs, drumming, and dances – also connect people to the
land that nourishes them (Elsey 2013; Ignace and Ignace 2018). From this perspective, music
making is not just a social experience among individuals, both human and nonhuman; the very
instruments used to create music are symbolic of relationality and interconnectedness with the
land, non-humans, and ancestors. Simpson (2011, p. 118) explains:
The circularity of the drum for many Indigenous peoples represents the earth, and the
sounding of the drum is the pulse, the heartbeat of Mother Earth connecting all of
creation in complex sacred and interdependent relationships.
Stuart, a Hul’qumi’num school cultural worker who chose to be one of our research partici-
pants, voiced a similar outlook:
The drum is the circle of life, there’s no end and no beginning. We have the deerskin
to remind us of all the animals and the bird that are around us. Then I flip over the
drum and I have red cedar frame, and the cedar is also the tree of life … We use the
drum to sing to our children … song is also … a doorway for our spirituality. We
believe that we’re not here by ourselves, and through song and dance, we are mindful
of our ancestors. We are respectful that we walk on the earth as well as our
ancestors—there’s another door, there’s another world.
Anna4, a school district Indigenous cultural coordinator, concurred:
I don’t think people understand the depth of the connection and spirituality and
healing and all those things that comes with it [drumming]. We do wake up the drum,
and that is a ceremony, but really the ceremony begins the second that animal gives
its life.
It is important to note that these contemporary cultural practitioners, who articulate the
complex relationship and interconnectedness among all entities – visible and invisible – re-
flected in drumming, have upheld their frames of reference despite being fully immersed in
modern educational environments that have, until recently, only rarely given credence to or
provided a space for their perspectives.
Reciprocity
Relationships are closely connected to the notion of reciprocity. The Sage Glossary of the Social and
Behavioral Sciences (Sullivan 2009, pp. 438–439) summarizes the sociological definition of
the term:
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An exchange, between two or more parties, rooted in mutuality. Reciprocity is a

cooperative trade of services, favors, goods, or aid. The terms of a reciprocal re-
lationship rely on the principles of give-and-take: Each participant in the deal provides
something, and each receives something. The gains and concessions should be
comparable in value.
Molm et al. (2007) explain that this utilitarian conception of reciprocity limits reciprocity’s
possibilities. Rather, they highlight its ‘symbolic or communicative value … conveyed by the
act of reciprocity itself, over and above the instrumental value of the benefits provided’ (Molm
et al., 2007, p. 200). Through the act of reciprocity, people not only give and receive benefits,
they also express regard for each other by showing appreciation, caring, and trust. Thus, ‘the act
of reciprocity itself can carry symbolic value that contributes to the formation of affective bonds
and the development of social capital in relationships’ (p. 202). Dostilio et al. (2012, p. 25)
agree, stating that ‘reciprocity is best understood … in terms of the transformative power of
relationality and the co-construction of emergent systems of collaboration’.
A focus on the symbolic aspects of reciprocity is more in keeping with the conception of
reciprocity found in many Indigenous cultures. Here, mutual interdependence also exists be-
tween humans and non-humans, and reciprocity is understood as a conscious and dynamic give
and take over time that is not only beneficial to the two parties involved in the transaction, but
to sustainability writ large. According to Ignace and Ignace (2018, p. 207), ‘the Secwépemc
ontology of the interrelationship of living beings on the land is … informed by a concept we
can call reciprocal accountability between humans, animals, plants, and place … [I]t is … the
underpinning of practical resource managements and stewardship regimes’. Reciprocity be-
tween humans and non-humans is evident when fish and deer give up their existence to
provide sustenance to humans and, in kind, humans acknowledge their gift by paying tribute,
thanking them, or making them an offering (Ignace and Ignace 2018, p. 206). Elsey (2013,
p. 74) suggests that such exchanges demonstrate ‘being-in-the-world … as a shared process
between the human and natural world, in a mutual spirit of honouring and in an economy of
reciprocity and sharing’.
The natural law or value of reciprocity (Atleo, 2004, p. 129) is crucial for humans who live
in a shared environment for an extensive length of time; it influences the quality of interactions
that constitute their ongoing relationships with each other. For Atleo (2004, p. 129), reciprocity
entails:
both giving and receiving, [which] are equivalent and interactive values. Consequently,
generosity can be viewed as a natural law of reciprocity. The ancient Nuu-chah-nulth
felt so strongly about the importance of the relationship between generosity and the
quality of life that the opposite of generosity was equated with death.
Syilx philosopher Jeanette Armstrong (2007) explains that the motivation that underpins
the generous act is so important that it is reflected in Nsyilxcən, the language of her people.
She states,
In our language, giving to someone in order to get something back, is called some-
thing else … this word means … “swallower or destroyer of giving” … because it
means to stop the giving. (pp. 48–49)
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Reciprocity is built into traditions, such as funerals. Ignace and Ignace (2018, p. 402) explain
that following funeral feasts, which community members organise on behalf of the bereaved
family,
the possessions of the deceased, like a horse, a saddle, and guns, are put up in a
sllekméwes (bone game), thus enacting a social insurance policy where the individual’s
wealth is redistributed among members of the community, rooted in the law of
reciprocity.
The notion of reciprocity between humans and the non-human world surfaced in the pedagogy
that the music teachers and culture bearers in our study employed. Denise, a Hul’qumi’num
music teacher working on her traditional territory, explained the learning involved when
elementary students in her music class created hand drums:
Even with the drums, the kids could all talk about what people did to get the skins,
about the reciprocity before you kill the deer, and how do you use all the pieces. I
wanted the smell of the skins to be everywhere, that’s part of that cultural learning.
How do you treat the bits that you don’t use? Do we just throw them in the garbage
or do we bury them, and have protocol around that?
Identity
We often come to know ourselves, in part, through the ongoing exchanges that constitute our
relationships. Contemporary sociologists consider the many categories that constitute a person’s
identity and how they intersect.
Identity is often thought of as a permanent feature of a person, connected to their

bodily integrity, consciousness of time through memory, and sense of themselves as an
individual with particular characteristics … Social identities identify persons as
members of groups or categories of persons, whether through statuses such as race,
gender, sexuality, ability or disability, age, family, and kinship, which are commonly
thought of as based in biology, as well as statuses such as nationality, ethnic group,
religion, occupation, and other group memberships which are thought of as cultural.
(Ritzer and Ryan 2011, p. 300)
From the perspective of many Indigenous writers, the notion of identity is linked not only to
biology and culture; identity is also shaped by land (Alfred 1998; Archibald 2008; Styres 2017).
For Elsey (2013, p. 9), ‘the land is inseparably connected to personhood’ (p. 9). She explains
that ‘First Nations identity … is enfolded within the territory and integrated within a com-
munity and passed on through the stories and local customs of the tribe’ (p. 24). Irene, one of
our research participants and a Nisga’a culture bearer, echoed the integral role that land has in
the Nisga’a conception of identity. She stated, ‘To me, being Nisga’a is land, language, culture,
spirit. All those make me Nisga’a’.
Songs and dances are both the poetic representations of the connection between land and
identity and the means by which that connection is enacted. Ridington and Ridington (2006,
p. 173) explain:
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Music has always been essential to Dane-zaa identity and experience. They sing and
drum to mark passages in their lives and the natural cycles of transformation that
surround them … [S]ongs are like trails, to be followed with intelligence and
understanding.
On the coast of British Columbia, songs are ‘owned’ by individuals and families. Ownership, in
this context, is understood as stewardship – responsibility for ensuring appropriate use of the
song (and the stories and dances associated to it) and the eventual passing on of the responsibility
for that song to another via a specific ceremony (Darnell 2018, p. 232). Marsden (2008, p. 114)
describes the difference between Western notions of ownership and Gitxsan thought:
The term property implies separation: this thing that I own is outside of me, is con-
trolled by me, and can be taken from me. There is no equivalent concept in Gitxsan
and Tsimshian thought … it is not so much “I own this” as “I am this” and “this is me”,
or perhaps more accurately, “we are this” and “this is us”.
In Gitxsan society, each house maintains its lineage and history through verbal accounts (adawx),
songs (limx’oy), and other forms of cultural heritage that are interwoven (Marsden 2008). An
individual’s identity in Gitxsan society is defined by that lineage. Thus, because songs are a poetic
expression of an individual’s place in the world, it is essential to obtain permission to sing a song
from those who safeguard it and then to acknowledge the person(s) who gave you that
permission.
Agency
Knowing who we are often enables us to act consciously and deliberately. In the Concise
Encyclopedia of Sociology, Fuchs defines agency as ‘the faculty for action’, which ‘may be uniquely
human’ (Ritzer and Ryan 2011, p. 8).
Action differs from the (mere) behavior of non-human organisms, which is driven by
innate or conditioned reflexes and instincts. Non-human organisms have no or little
control over how they behave. They do not have a sense of self or, if they do, it is not
reflexive. Their behavior is caused by forces they cannot comprehend or influence.
Human actors are different because they are conscious and aware of the world,
themselves, and other actors.
Latour (2005) disagrees. Although his interest is to investigate the relationship between artificial
intelligence (non-human) and agency, Latour’s deliberations have enabled Western scientists to
consider the notion of agency differently. He states, ‘any thing that does modify a state of affairs
by making a difference is an actor’ (p. 71). For Latour (2005, p. 72), consciousness and intention
are not a necessary component of agency; therefore, even though, for him, non-humans do not
have consciousness or intention, they have agency:
There might exist many metaphysical shades between full causality and sheer in-
existence. In addition to “determining” and serving as a “backdrop for human ac-
tion”, things might authorize, allow, afford, encourage, permit, suggest, influence,
block, render possible, forbid, and so on.
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But from many Indigenous perspectives, animals, plants, soil, and rocks do exercise agency as
conscious actors who have intent. Legal scholar John Borrows (2010) shares an example of how
Anishnabek people view rocks as sentient beings that engage in intentional, conscious action.
He describes a scenario in which a non-Indigenous excavator, hired by a First Nation to prepare
a site for a building project, unintentionally almost disturbed an ancient burial site as he sought
to obtain gravel at another location on the reserve for the project. A member of the community
explained to the excavator why he should look for gravel elsewhere:
The rocks were not to be disturbed because they were fulfilling a promise to protect
the people’s ancestors. They had their own agency in the matter, and they remained
solid and firm in their duty. It was up to the Anishinabek to exercise their agency in a
reciprocal manner and protect the rocks while they fulfilled their duty.
(John Borrows 2010, p. 106)
Likewise, for the Secwépemc people,
Interactions of humans, animals, plants, and landforms must be understood within a[n]
… ontology that views all beings on the land as having agency (acting upon one
another) and as having feeling (being sentient).
(Ignace and Ignace 2018, p. 381)
Moreover, Ignace and Ignace (2018, p. 383) extend the notion of agency to the spirit world,
stating ‘past ancestors … can act on us and influence the course of events’.
In several accounts, music – specifically song – figures prominently in non-human agency.
Ignace and Ignace (2018, p. 382) describe how land, forces of nature, and animals all exercise
their agency by communicating with humans through the medium of song. The Secwépemc
tradition of étsxem – or spirit guardian quest – is one example:
[Young people] went through rigorous fasting or physical training that allowed them
to communicate with the spirits of animals. Songs would come to them, given by an
animal or a force of nature, like fire or water, that thus showed itself to the person
questing and transferred its spirit power.
(Ignace and Ignace 2018, p. 383)
Historian Wendy Wickwire (2001, p. 447) calls attention to James Teit’s late nineteenth
century accounts of the many ways in which female grizzly bears communicated with
Nlaka’pamux people through song:
[The female grizzly] gave the Nlaka’pamux women cradle songs that they could use to
calm their babies. She gave parents of twins a song and ceremony that had to be
performed at intervals throughout the day for up to 4 years to ensure that the twins
would live … She established close relationships with adolescents of both sexes during
their puberty training, giving them songs and instructions that would carry them
through difficult or dangerous situations.
Would any parents of Western European heritage find such value for their children in the songs
of an animal today? The striking dissimilarity in the ways in which members of Indigenous and
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Western cultures conceptualize their musics makes manifest the radical difference in their
worldviews.
Syncretic understandings of sociological terms and their implications

for music education practice and sociology
of music education research
‘Different perspectives’, states Atleo (2011, p. 2) ‘are not a source of disagreement, confusion, or
conflict: rather, they are a source of enrichment’. Denise, one of our research participants,
agreed. She said, ‘There’s always more than one right answer – and that’s a good thing’. Our
exploration of specific Indigenous understandings of the terms society, relationship, reciprocity,
identity, and agency in this chapter has revealed the many ways in which differing worldviews
significantly influence the meanings we derive from our experiences. Indigenous scholars and
research participants have shown that their poetic representations (e.g. song, story, drumming,
dancing) symbolize and convey these meanings, and that meanings are a necessary component
of those expressions. What contributions to music education practice might these insights
provide? We offer the following suggestions.
Implications for music education practice

Music teachers who introduce Indigenous or other non-Western musics to their classes with
the assistance of knowledge keepers must keep in mind that whereas an analysis of internal
properties (e.g. form, harmony) may be appropriate for and integral to education of Western
European musics, music education that is inclusive of non-Western musics might require an-
other approach. Anna explains:
In Indigenous culture, it’s not music making. It’s a way of passing on culture from
generation to generation … It’s a part of who we are; it’s not something that’s separate
… True understanding only comes when there is an emotional response … It’s ac-
tually very difficult to approach something with your mind, body, spirit … It’s really
hard to sit in a circle and be vulnerable.
Although most music educators would probably agree that music making at its best is a cog-
nitive, physical, and emotional experience, they might also acknowledge that their students are
not always emotionally engaged. Indigenous musical and cultural practices call for emotional
self-awareness and engagement because, as we have seen, these practices are an expression of
relationship to the land, spirits, and animals of a specific place (Elsey 2013). Thus, when we
introduce local Indigenous musics to students, it is our responsibility to incorporate a place-
conscious or land-centred approach in order to introduce the values of sustainability and re-
ciprocal accountability to one another that are at the core of the Indigenous musical expressions
we encountered in our research.
In these endeavors, the values of respect, gratitude, generosity, and responsibility become an
explicit and necessary focus in music education;5 in fact, excellence in music performance, in an
Indigenous view, is determined largely by the degree to which students embody these values
and the sincerity of their efforts. Therefore, core competencies that span all subjects, music
curricular learning outcomes, and assessment practices must shift to reflect the importance of
these values. Formative types of assessment, including journaling and anecdotal descriptions,
provide a mechanism to highlight the embodiment of these values.
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How might such an approach influence non-Indigenous students’ music making, re-
lationships, and identity? Mara, a middle-school student we interviewed, explains how her new,
syncretic understanding bridged not only different forms of music making, but also reached into
her everyday life:
Respecting the drum, treating it as if it’s one of your own family members, that’s
something that I’ve definitely learned and passed on to different, not even musical
instruments, just everything in my day-to-day life. Like, almost treating something
that’s very close to me with more respect, as if it is a living family member …. My
trombone and my guitar … It’s almost [as] if the way that you’re playing is different.
It’s more like you’re playing with a friend or something …. it feels more like you have
a connection with it.
Seth, a senior secondary student, explains how a local Indigenous pedagogical practice im-
plemented by his teacher has affected his relationships with others:
When we start our drumming circle, … she [our teacher] asks us on a scale of one to
ten how we’re feeling. So, if someone’s feeling a ten, they’re great, we can involve
them more in the music … If they’re lower on the scale, you can gauge, well, they
might not be feeling the best today, so maybe stay back and let them not have the
lead of songs, just have them in the background … Especially outside of music, if
I recognize somebody’s not feeling the best, it’s more in my mind to let them be,
and let them deal with how they’re feeling, instead of just making fun of them or
something.
Peter, a junior secondary student, reflects on the development of his own cultural identity as a
result of his learning local Indigenous cultural practices:
I’m part Greek, and I’ve … never really thought anything of it. When we started
doing drumming … our teachers kept telling us about … First Nations culture, history
…. It shined a light on – my family has its own kind of culture too. I started asking
more questions and learning a lot … I’ve kind of put more perspective on that [my
cultural heritage] from learning First Nations culture.
Implications for sociology of music education research

An exploration of the cultural meanings of sociological terms might also be a source of en-
richment for further research in the field of sociology of music education, in that it brings to the
fore differences in the worldviews of the cultures whose musics and pedagogy we seek to study
in educational settings. But, as we engaged in this work, both of us were reminded that our
well-intentioned desire to investigate the ways in which music teachers and culture bearers had
joined forces to introduce local Indigenous music in the classroom was not sufficient in itself to
realize the process of decolonizing ourselves or our research practice. We now understand more
about the importance of cultural meanings in the field of sociology of music education, but this
is only a first step toward developing a sociology of music education informed by Indigenous
perspectives. McAllan (2012, p. 29, italics added) suggests that ‘[I]ndigenous-specific experi-
ence, knowledge, and perspectives must remain central and be used to shape the type of sociological
questions being asked’. Thus, we are developing our next sociological inquiry in music education,
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from the ground up, with Indigenous research partners. Anna’s advice, below, underscores both
the hazards and the way forward for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who choose to
engage in Indigenizing music education practice and research:
There’s always going to be a clash of worldviews [as] we’re trying to paddle beside
each other and make it work. So, how do you [make it work]? I think it comes with
patience … it’s inevitable that you’re going to do something wrong. You just have to
be courageous.
Funding
The study mentioned in this chapter was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council (SSHRC) of Canada Insight Development Grant (File No: 430-2016-00034).
1. In your experience, what musical terms having origins in your own cultural heritage have
been misinterpreted by persons of other cultural backgrounds? In what ways do the
conceptual differences manifested in those misinterpretations reflect differences in
worldviews?
2. In what ways might the worldviews and concepts of musical practices of the Indigenous
peoples discussed in this chapter, if adopted by others, have broader benefits for world
ecology (i.e. for the healthy relation of living organisms to one another and to their
physical surroundings)? In what ways might they be detrimental?
Notes
1 We recognise that in this work, there is a danger of our misrepresenting Indigenous ideas and speaking
for Indigenous colleagues, partners, and research participants. Thus, we acknowledge that our learning
in this area has required ongoing self-reflection and checking-in with Indigenous colleagues and
partners about the ideas we discuss in this paper. Our past research in Indigenising music education
research and practice was supported by 13 First Nations on whose territories we conducted the study
and our current research is guided by Indigenous partners who are co-investigators, fully immersed in
all aspects of the investigation.
2 Whereas Walter and Butler (2013) offer that, in Australia, the term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
People is preferred over the word Indigenous, in the context of the land that is now called Canada, the
opposite is true. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis organizations favour the umbrella term Indigenous over
the term Aboriginal, which is used by government and therefore carries colonialist overtones (Manuel
and Derrickson 2015).
3 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada defines reconciliation as ‘establishing
and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples’
(TRC, p. 6) in order ‘to transform Canadian society so that our children and grandchildren can live
together in dignity, peace, and prosperity on these lands we now share’ (p. 7). The TRC was created in
2008, not by federal government edict as in other countries with Truth & Reconciliation frameworks,
but ‘as part of an out-of-court settlement agreement negotiated to resolve lawsuits filed against the
federal government and churches by residential school survivors for the abuses they suffered in the
schools. Thus, the TRC was accountable not only to government and the churches but to residential
school survivors, the Assembly of First Nations, and Inuit organizations who were also parties to the
settlement agreement’ (Regan 2018, p. 211). In 2015, the TRC issued 94 Calls to Action (11 concern
education). Various levels of government have begun to implement the TRC recommendations. More
information can be found at https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1524494530110/1524494579700.
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4 Anna is an alias. The school district in which ‘Anna’ worked and from which we obtained consent to
conduct our research requires anonymity for all school district personnel and students engaged in any
research conducted within its boundaries in order to protect them from harm that might be incurred from
their sharing their experiences and thoughts. However, Indigenous research methodologies recommend
that researchers follow protocols developed by oral story tellers, including identifying participants and
acknowledging their locations with their consent (Kovach, 2010; Wilson, 2008). This protocol is based on
the notion that people take responsibility for the validity of their statements when they state both their
names and the person from whom they obtained the teaching, thereby, also establishing the lineage of that
teaching. These contradictory research procedures, informed by divergent perspectives and values, indicate
the need for ongoing discussions to reconcile the needs of both knowledge systems.
5 See First Peoples Principles of Learning at http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/
PUB-LFP-POSTER-Principles-of-Learning-First-Peoples-poster-11x17.pdf.
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6
NATION, MEMORY, AND MUSIC
EDUCATION IN THE REPUBLIC
OF TURKEY
A hegemonic analysis
Introduction
The Republic of Turkey was established on October 29, 1923 by Mustafa Kemal, who had led
the Turkish National Movement armies (Kuvâ-yi Milliye) during the Turkish War of
Independence (İstiklâl Harbi) following the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire. Later conferred the title of ‘Atatürk’ (‘Father of Turkey’), Kemal became the
Republic’s founding head of state, and until his death in 1938 oversaw the transition from a
multicultural Ottoman society governed under Islamic caliphate to a secular nation-state of the
European model. To achieve this, he adopted a comprehensive vision for Turkish national
culture influenced by the work of the poet and sociologist Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), a follower
of Durkheim and the preeminent figure in Turkish sociology. Considered in Gramscian terms,
this vision was rolled out across society through a synchronised combination of state coercion
on one hand, and civil society reforms designed to garner consent from the populace on the
other.
In the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, Gökalp advanced the notion of Turkism
(Türkçülük) as an alternative unifying identity to Ottomanism. In doing so, he not only
introduced a system of thought but also evoked ‘a utopia that heavily influenced Turkish
intellectuals’ (Yilmaz 2010, p. 29). Turkism relied on the existence of a supposedly ancient
Turkish culture that predated the arrival of Islam and the Ottoman epoch, and which Gökalp
argued was the authentic inheritance of all who considered themselves to be Turks. Gökalp
(1923/1968, p. 15) proposed that Turkishness depended not on common ethnicity, but on ‘a
sharing of education and culture’:
At our present stage of social development … social solidarity rests on cultural unity,
which is transmitted by means of education and therefore has no relationship with
consanguinity …. There are fellow citizens in our country whose ancestors came from
Albania or Arabia sometime in the past … If they have been educated as Turks and
have become used to working for the Turkish ideal, we must not set them apart from
other citizens. (pp. 13–15)
97
Gökalp published his definitive work Principles of Turkism (T ürkçülügŭ ̈n Esaslari ) in 1923, the
same year that the Republic was established, and died the following year. The theories outlined
in Principles concerning cultural and social reform influenced Atatürk and the new Kemalist
ruling class heavily and underpinned an astonishing overhaul of music education extending
from the highest levels of the state to the interface between teacher and student.
In the following section, we examine Gökalp’s notion of Turkishness in order to understand
the Kemalist rationale for cultural and educational reform, and music education reform spe-
cifically. We then offer a Gramscian analysis of music education reforms implemented during
the first three decades of the Republic, and then in the latter half of the twentieth century
during which Kemalist hegemony waned and an ascendant Islamically oriented political class
sought to reassert Turkey’s Eastern heritage. We go on to consider the pedagogic legacy of
these reforms, particularly in relation to the bifurcation of ‘Western’ and ‘Turkish’ music and
the preference for written notation over oral transmission, and their implications for cultural
memory and tradition. Finally, we provide a discourse analysis of reports and speeches from the
Third National Culture Summit (Millî Kültür Şûrası) held in March 2017, at which Turkey’s
cultural future, and music education specifically, were discussed, and speculate on the future
direction of Turkish music education.
Culture, civilisation, and Turkishness

Despite holding a professorship at Istanbul University, Ziya Gökalp had not himself received a
formal education and had developed his sociological understanding autodidactically, largely
through reading Durkheim (Nefes 2013). In his university teaching and contributions to the
national high school curriculum he had sought to explain the Ottoman, Islamic, and Turkish
civilisations from a Durkheimian perspective (Nefes 2013). The influence of Durkheim (and to a
lesser extent Tönnies) looms large in Gökalp’s own theoretical work, particularly in terms of his
focus on collective consciousness and use of dualistic frameworks, but in developing the original
concept of Turkishness Gökalp moved beyond simply applying Durkheim’s theories to Turkey
and advanced his own sociological dualism of culture (hars) and civilisation (medeniyet). All so-
cieties, Gökalp declared, possessed both a culture and a civilisation, the former representing a
society’s unifying character and the latter its ordering structures. Similar to Durkheim’s under-
standing of religion (Nefes 2013), according to Gökalp (1918/1959, p. 98) culture was the
aesthetic and moral manifestation of ‘social conscience’ and conveyed a society’s ‘cherished ideals
and norms of conduct’. Culture was therefore essential for achieving social unity and solidarity.
Civilisation on the other hand, like magic for Durkheim, was a utilitarian means of managing
interactions between individuals, and was not unique to particular culture groups.
Gökalp believed that authentic Turkish culture could be found in the practices and lore of the
folk (halk), among whom he saw the spontaneous expressions of the nation’s soul, whereas the
Ottoman civilisation had been superimposed onto the Turkish nation by the Byzantines and
Arabs, suppressing its authentic culture. It therefore followed that if the Turkish nation was to sit
among the world’s great nations, it needed to shed what Gökalp saw as the moribund Ottoman
civilisation and synthesise its authentic culture with the modern, progressive civilisation of the
Europeans.
Though Gökalp had no musical background, music is afforded significant attention and
importance in Principles. Gökalp’s interest in music lay in its sociological utility as a means to
bind culture to civilisation. In common with earlier European nationalist thinkers (see
Benjamin 2008; Bohlman 2004; and Steinberg 2004 for nuanced analyses of European
98
Nation, memory, and music education
nationalist music in the long nineteenth century), Gökalp (1923/1968, p. 24) believed that
Turkey’s volksgeist could be heard in its folk songs, which were authentically Turkish, whereas
‘Ottoman’ music (the term by which Gökalp referred collectively to the many diverse forms of
Turkish classical music) was contrived and foreign:
There are two forms of music in our country. The first is Turkish music which
evolved naturally among the people. The other is Ottoman music, which was adapted
from Byzantium by Al-Farabi …. Whereas Ottoman music is a technique based on
specific rules, Turkish music consists of melodies unfettered by rules, systems and
technique, of sincere songs which express the heart of the Turk.
This understanding of Turkish (folk) music upheld the idea of the Turkish nation as a culture
group with a common essence, and thus supported Gökalp’s nationalist aspirations by evoking
an imagined community of Turks. Building on these foundational conceits, Gökalp’s proposals
for musical reform followed the examples of earlier European nationalist composers. He be-
lieved that the synthesis of Turkish culture and modern civilisation would be exemplified in the
setting of bucolic folk melodies in Western polyphony:
I submit, therefore, that our national music will be born of a marriage between
Western and folk music. Our folk music has given us many melodies. If we collect
these and harmonise them in the Western manner, we shall have both a national and a
European music.
(Gökalp (1923/1968, p. 99))
These proposals were taken up enthusiastically by the Kemalists. The following quotations by
Atatürk, the first from his assessment of a 1928 concert and the second from a 1930 interview
with the German journal Vossicce Zeitung, display the extent to which his understanding of
music aligned with Gökalp’s:
This unsophisticated [Eastern] music … cannot feed the needs of the creative Turkish
soul. We have just heard music of the civilized world and the people, who gave a
rather anemic reaction to the murmurings known as Eastern music, immediately came
to life.
(quoted in Oransay, 1985, cited in Erol (2012, p. 45))
These [Eastern musics] are inherited from the Byzantines. Our genuine music can be
heard among the Anatolian people.
(quoted in Saygun, 1987, cited in Demirenci (2006, p. 56))
As is discussed below, the cultural and education policies implemented during the early days
of the Republic followed a mutually constituting logic that placed polyphonic, nationalistic
repertoire at the top of the aesthetic hierarchy and Ottoman music at the bottom.
Musical reform through coercion and consent: institutions,

repertoire, and pedagogy
During the first two decades of the Republic, the government attempted to shape the nation’s
values, tastes, and activities in line with Gökalp’s vision, and effect a ‘social revolution from
99
above’ (Oncu 2003, p. 315) using the powers of the state. This could not be achieved through
coercion alone however, and the government understood that it would need to reform the
nation’s cultural and educational institutions in order to win the active consent of the populace.
The application of state power that followed therefore exemplified what Gramsci (1971, p. 271)
termed the ‘integral state’, extending beyond ‘governmental-coercive apparatus’ (p. 265) to
include the ideological apparatus of civil society institutions, and thus representing ‘the entire
complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and
maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it
rules’ (p. 244).
In relation to music education, coercion and consent were synthesised within a systematic
programme of reform in which ‘Ottoman’ (Turkish classical) music and its institutions were
coercively suppressed and Western art and Turkish folk music were actively promoted through
new institutions. The Sufi Derviş lodges, which had been the primary hubs of sacred music
education during the Ottoman period, were closed and outlawed in 1926. In 1924, school
music education in Western music was made compulsory under the new national curriculum
(Tevhid-i Tedrisat), and a Music Teacher Training institute (Musiki Muallim Mektebi) was es-
tablished to train music teachers in Western instruments.
The Darü'l-Elhan (‘House of Melodies’), an Ottoman music conservatory in Istanbul es-
tablished in 1917, was transmuted into the İstanbul Belediye Konservatuarı (Istanbul Municipal
Conservatory) in 1927, and its staff were made to undertake compulsory fieldwork in Anatolia
to learn and collect folk songs (Küpana 2015). The İstanbul Belediye Konservatuarı was modelled
on Western European conservatoires, and instruction in Turkish classical music and instruments
was banned. During the latter half of the 1920s, promising young musicians were sent to
conservatories in Western and Central Europe to learn the requisite skills for composing and
teaching the new polyphonic national music, and returned to take up faculty positions. Though
many musicians undoubtedly embraced this opportunity, the following anecdote from the
composer Cemal Reşit Rey reveals the coercive climate surrounding music reform during this
period:
[The] Minister of Education Abidin Özmen invited eight of us to a congress in Ankara …

‘Come on then! [he cajoled] We are supposed to do music reform, how are we going to
do this? … [Atatürk] has called me on the phone a few times recently’ … We were
completely stumped. We could not figure out what decision to take.
(quoted in Yazici, 2014, p. 1266)
Atatürk bemoaned the slow pace of reform in his 10-year speech to parliament (Atatürk 1933)
and redoubled the State’s efforts in the 1930s. Between 1934 and 1936, Turkish classical music
was banned entirely from State radio. Eminent musicians, educators, and composers from
countries such as Germany, Austria, and Hungary, including Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók, and
Eduard Zuckmayer, were invited to Turkey to act as consultants and institutional managers to
advance the music education reform project. The European-style Ankara State Conservatory
(Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı) was established in 1936 under Hindemith’s recommendations,
and would become the Republic’s bastion of Western art music. In 1938, the Musiki Muallim
Mektebi was co-opted into the Gazi Education Institute (Gazi Eğitim Enstitüsü) with Eduard
Zuckmayer as its director. Zuckmayer implemented Western pedagogical techniques and
oversaw the training of the country’s music teachers until 1970, embedding Western art music
and its accompanying pedagogies in all schools across the country.
100
A counter-hegemonic discourse soon emerged within the conservatories that argued for the
sophistication and Turkishness of traditional Turkish classical music (Gedik and Bozkurt 2009).
This led to intense debate between the Gökalpists, who claimed that traditional Ottoman music
was Hellenic, Byzantine, and Arab (and thus un-Turkish), and those who argued that Ottoman
music was in fact an authentic aspect of Turkic culture that shared the same origins as Turkish folk
music (Karakayali 2010) and which had in fact predated and even influenced the Greeks, Byzantines,
and Arabs. Music theorists such as Hüseyin Arel and Rauf Yetka sought to rationalise Turkish
classical music using techniques of Western music theory, and had some success in raising its
esteem and stemming its erasure from the cultural landscape. Nonetheless, it is significant that
under the hegemonic conditions of the conservatoires established by the Gökalpists, Turkish
classical music achieved legitimacy only by way of Western notation and theory, and by being
‘cut off from its historical properties such as oral transmission, memorisation, and its broader
Islamic connotations’ (Poulos 2011, p. 166). Paradoxically therefore, while these legitimising
efforts challenged the Kemalist’s westernising hegemony to an extent, they also consented to the
Western-centric value hierarchy imposed by the Gökalpists in privileging notation.
This standardisation of Turkish classical music through Western notation occurred in
tandem with that of folk music, beginning with the state-sponsored collection of folk songs
from all regions of Anatolia. The paradoxical aim was to evidence a rich mosaic of regional folk
traditions while at the same time downplay difference and emphasise common Turkish culture
(Demirenci 2006). Musical and lyrical elements in folk songs that did not conform to stipulated
regional and national characteristics, such as microtones and other melodic and rhythmic ele-
ments, and lyrical references to ethnic and religious diversity, were ironed out (Balkılıç 2009).
At the same time, new performance styles ‘not present in the tradition’ (Karahasanoğlu,
2014, p. 170), such as mixed-gender choral singing, were introduced. The newly collected and
standardised repertoire of folk music was disseminated from 1948 onwards via the Yurttan Sesler
(‘Voices from the Homeland’), a mixed-voice choir whose performances were broadcast over
the State-controlled TRT radio, and later TRT television. Although TRT was not an edu-
cational institution per se, its house musicians were required to undertake formal training within
a ‘“modern” educational structure’ to ensure the integrity of the station’s outward ‘educational
profile’ (Poulos 2011, p. 177). Yurttan Sesler founding director Muzaffer Sarisozen was clear
about the didactic function of its broadcasts:
[The aim of Yurttan Sesler is] neither ‘solely entertainment’, nor to reflect the diversity
of our folk music genres. The main aim of [Yurttan Sesler] is to unify the hearts of our
community to guide our people in their movement towards a single feeling (Çeren,
1944, as cited in in Güray (2015, p. 109))
By the 1980s, the state conservatoires and TRT together ‘controlled the collection, public dis-
semination and teaching of an “official” national folk music’ (Stokes 2012, p. 98). The resulting
repertoire and pedagogies can be understood as a particular form of invented tradition identified by
Hobsbawn (1983, p.6) in which existing practices are ‘modified, ritualised and institutionalised’ and
rendered invariant. The resulting loss of musical knowledge and cultural memory has been widely
acknowledged (e.g. Balkılıç 2009; Demirenci 2006; Güray 2015; Karahasanoğlu, 2014).
1950–2000: the decline of Kemalist hegemony

While the early Kemalist musical reforms have been well documented in research, subsequent
periods have been afforded far less attention. Yet the period from 1950 onwards has seen some
101
significant changes in both cultural climate and higher education in Turkey, which have more
or less accompanied political oscillations between Kemalism and Islamism. The election of
Adnan Menderes as prime minister in the 1950s heralded a period of comparative pluralism
during which the state relaxed restrictions on Islam in public life and became more accom-
modating of Turkish classical music in broadcasting (Stokes 2012), though not yet within
formal education. Göktürk-Cary (2014) notes that the National Salvation Party (Millî Selâmet
Partisi) exerted a strong influence on the Ministry of Education in the 1970s, and curricula were
suffused with religious content. In the 1980s, traditional instruments began to feature more in
music teacher training schools, having been excluded until the late 1970s (Göktürk-Cary,
2014). Turkish classical music was taught in higher education for the first time since the dis-
solution of the Darul’Elhan in 1923. The founding of the first State Conservatory of Turkish
Music (Türk Musikisi Devlet Konservatuarı) at Istanbul Technical University in 1976 marked the
declining hegemony of Kemalist aesthetics in the spheres of culture and education, and a re-
newed identification with the Ottoman past. The Türk Musikisi Devlet Konservatuarı would soon
compete with the Ankara Devlet Konservatuarı as ‘perhaps the most central educational in-
stitution through which musical discourses continue to be bifurcated and disseminated’ (Gill-
Gürtan 2010, p. 624).
The 1980 coup d’etat ushered in an era of depoliticisation and cultural amnesia during which
teachers were banned from involvement in politics or expressing political views (Göktürk-
Cary 2014). This was followed by increasingly centralised music curricula in the 1980s and
1990s overseen by the Council for Higher Education (YÖK), and a curtailing of teacher au-
tonomy. In 1998, YÖK declared there to be ‘a standardisation problem’ in music education,
noting ‘goal conflict, … and irresponsible and individual use of sources’ (Kalyrici, 2005, as cited
in Eğilmez (2010, p. 3120)). Reforms did not address the issue of repertoire however, and
higher music education continued to operate in discrete, parallel structures (Aksoy 1999) se-
parating Western music from Turkish music.
Today, the teaching of Western music in conservatoires in Turkey continues broadly in line
with Hindemith’s European model prescribed in 1936 (Erdal 2012). As we discuss in the next
section, however, the gradual subordination of orality to literacy that occurred over the course
of the 20th century has become a major flashpoint in the teaching of Turkish music, leading to
debates concerning the authenticity of not only repertoire, but also pedagogy.
Literacy and orality in Turkish music education: tradition,

process, and duty memory
The Ottomans’ reliance on living memory and oral transmission as the principal resource for
musical instruction, which had ensured a balance of stability and dynamism in the Turkish
classical traditions for centuries, rendered that knowledge particularly vulnerable in the context
of the Kemalist’s hegemonic campaign whose modus operandi was to erase the Ottoman past and
its aesthetics from social memory and standardise repertoire. Western stave notation provided a
means to systematically gather musical knowledge and authority from individuals and place it in
the hands of institutions. This highlights the bureaucratic function of notation in disembodying
and archiving musical knowledge and can be seen in the context of ‘the longstanding project of
cultural correction and unification through the help of written texts’ (Karakayali 2010, p. 362)
with precedents including the standardisation of Catholic liturgy in medieval Europe, where
notation was used in music education to promote cultural coherence and, in turn, social
cohesion.
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As discussed earlier, the standardisation of Turkish classical and folk music entailed the
application of the Western-derived notational system to musical traditions based in the mi-
crotonal makam system, and which had been transmitted orally over centuries. Karahasanoğlu
(2014, p. 165) argues that notation can be
a useful educational tool, [but] is not a sufficient medium for transmitting the nuances
of the Turkish makam, which requires face-to-face education in the form of meşk for a
complete understanding.
The term meşk refers to the Ottoman system of music education in which the student (çırak)
learned the makam system by observing and imitating their master (usta) in everything from
phrasing to body posture and breathing. The master embodied a lineage (meşk silsilesi) along which
not only musical knowledge, but also pedagogical technique and lifestyle ethics had been trans-
mitted between generations. Being centred on a long-term relationship between student and
master, meşk mediated the interface between tradition and innovation to allow the ‘gradual as-
similation’ (Karakayali 2010, p. 351) of new ideas into a tradition – that is, into a cognitive-cultural
entity comprising a society’s ‘customs, methods and working standards’ (Dewey 1974, p. 151).
Dewey (1980, pp. 356–357) distinguished, however, between tradition as thing and as process,
the former designating ‘a doctrine … currently accepted in a community [and] added on from
generation to generation’, and the latter designating ‘the entire operation of transmission by
which a society maintains the continuity of its intellectual and moral life’. Applying Dewey’s
distinction to the orality-literacy dualism in Turkish music education helps to reveal the so-
ciocultural implications of disrupting the pedagogical foundations of music education. Earlier
attempts to historicise Ottoman classical music had entailed recording lyrics, compositional
form, makam and usul (rhythm) and the composer’s name, rather than precise transcriptions of
musical notes in the manner of Western notation. This approach acknowledged historicity
without creating a ‘frozen monolithic repertoire’, and the process of oral instruction ‘tended to
erase the particularities of the individual compositions’ (Feldman 1991, p. 85). In the case of
Turkish folk music, Karahasanoğlu (2014) notes that it was created and taught outside of any
literate context by people with no formal education of any kind. In both cases a degree of
dynamism was permitted that allowed for the tradition and musical culture to develop as process
through teaching, performing, and learning.
When fixed in notation, however, musical knowledge can be considered tradition as thing – a
static textual referent for any subsequent rendering in sound. Once such a thing is conceived, the
possibility of knowledge developing as process is inhibited and constitutes deviation from, rather
than permitted assimilation into, the tradition (as thing). The notated folk repertoire curated by the
State conservatoires and TRT thus rendered folk music ‘a static form that cannot be changed,
rather than as a dynamic oral tradition’ (Karahasanoğlu, 2014 p. 169). In Karahasanoğlu’s (p. 170)
assessment, notation-based pedagogy has caused ‘serious damage to our music’.
What is most notable in Karahasanoğlu’s (2014) understanding of meşk is its oneness –
pedagogy is considered inextricable from performance and repertoire. Similarly, Karakayali (2011,
p. 350) notes that not only the music itself but also the process of teaching and learning in meşk
was sacrosanct in the Ottoman period; ‘time and toil’ on the part of the student were not un-
derstood in transactional terms but rather as integral and valuable aspects of the meşk tradition (as
process). Of particular importance here is that meşk, as a pedagogical system that depended on
patience and memory, mediated not only the nature but also the pace of cultural change.
Comparable to Hobsbawm’s (1983, p. 2) understanding of custom in traditional societies, it had
‘the double function of motor and fly wheel’, permitting innovation only if it was ‘compatible,
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or even identical, with precedent’. This contrasts starkly with pedagogies that employ notation as
a time-saving technology, and highlights a divergence in the ‘underlying value orientations
regarding how music education should be carried out’ (Karakayali 2010, p. 350).
The term meşk has become unstable in contemporary usage (Gill-Gürtan 2010; Poulos 2011)
and might refer to a number of different pedagogical approaches. In particular, it has become
shorthand for one-to-one instrumental tuition, which overlooks the extra-musical aspects of
discipleship (Poulos 2011) and emphasises individual practice and repetition (Gill-Gürtan 2010).
More than this, however, meşk has become a performative ideograph used by musicians and
educators in Turkey to signal their orientations towards Turkey’s musical, and social, history. In
this respect, Karahasanoğlu’s (2014) interpretation of (and advocacy for) meşk can arguably be
read as an example of what Gill-Gürtan (2010) calls duty memory in the discourses of Turkish
musicians: Karahasanoğlu asserts that only meşk, which confers ‘both the training method and
repertoire’ (2014, p. 166) onto subsequent generations, can adequately preserve the “authentic”
characteristics of Turkish music and protect them from ‘being forgotten’ (p. 167).
To summarise at this point, the cooption of music education into the ideological apparatus
of the state (Gramsci, 1971) throughout the Republican period, across both founding and
subsequent governments, ultimately failed to achieve hegemony. Far from the unified national
culture that the Kemalist reformists had envisaged, the legacy of the early Republican cultural
and educational reforms is a contested cultural milieu (Aksoy 1999) in which ideological de-
bates surrounding the notions of authenticity and Turkishness have yet to be reconciled. In the
following, final section of this chapter we turn our attention to the contemporary context.
Pluralism or protectionism: where next for Turkish music education?

Turkey’s contemporary cultural landscape is highly dynamic at the levels of policy and practice,
making it difficult to identify or predict clear trends. At the present time, there are signs that
suggest a number of possible directions for music education, and musical life more generally, yet
these can be ambiguous or contradictory. Nonetheless, they offer some insight into the so-
ciocultural context surrounding music education in Turkey, and into how the legacy of the
historical developments documented in this paper manifest in the present moment.
Between March 3 and 5, 2017, representatives from the arts, culture, education, and tourism
sectors were invited to participate in the 3rd National Culture Summit (Millî Kültür Şûrası) in
Istanbul, hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The stated aim of the Summit was to
take stock of the current state of culture in Turkey, and to chart a new course for the centennial
of the Republic in 2023. It invited engagement with the question of how a nation with long
cultural traditions was to respond to the challenges of cultural impoverishment, alienation, and
globalisation in the twenty-first century (Kalın 2017). In his opening address, President Erdoğan
declared that:
We should rediscover and rebuild our national and cultural values, which reflect the
native Turkish culture and arts, against cultural alienation and imperialism through a
universal perspective. That a cultural product is in a native and national form never
hinders it from bearing a universal meaning and message. (Ministry of Culture and
Tourism TC Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı 2017a, our translation)
This frames the notion of national culture in terms of recovery from damage, memory loss and
corruption by outside forces, and thus reiterates a familiar, meta-level refrain used recurrently
throughout the Republic’s existence from Gökalp onwards, notwithstanding obvious
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differences in understandings of what constitute authentic ‘national and cultural values’ and
‘native Turkish culture and arts’. Erdoğan’s advocacy for localism before globalism can be
interpreted as resistance to Western cultural hegemony, particularly in light of comments made
a few days later by his official spokesperson – and nationally renowned bağlama player –
Ibrahim Kalın, who asserted that ‘culture’s etymological and historical connection [is] to the soil
on which humans live’ and that ‘much of what goes around as ‘universal culture’ is in fact
Western cultural products portrayed as global currency’, echoing President Erdoğan’s call for
‘an awareness of one's own cultural values, as well as a need to protect and nourish them’
(Kalın 2017). Although Kalın acknowledged that cultural interaction can support the ‘growing
and flourishing’ of cultural traditions, he expresses a much more cautious position regarding
Western cultural products specifically, and their influence on Turkish culture.
Messages of resistance to Western cultural hegemony can thus be heard from the highest
echelons of the state. As yet, however, music appears to be lower on the policy reform agenda
than other domains of culture such as theatre, which have seen radical changes to their funding
and governance structures (see Aksoy and Şeyben 2015). The recommendations for music
education by the music commission of the Cultural Summit were somewhat ambiguous; on
one level, they explicitly called for both Turkish and Western music to be included in curricula
from primary to tertiary level, suggesting a pluralistic, reconciliatory position. Yet the phrasing
and emphases of the recommendations implicitly delimit what is considered ‘Turkish’ and what
is not:
A ‘Youth Culture House’ should be opened in every city of Turkey. Conservatory

graduates and those qualified by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and who have
teaching skills, should be assigned to these houses where our own traditional instruments
and music and Western arts should be taught.
[and]
A musical education based on traditional music should be devised, and the national
musical instruments such as the saz/bağlama or lute should be brought to the centre.
Training should not exclude any musical type. (Ministry of Culture and Tourism TC
Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı 2017a, pp. 3–5, our translation)
In the first example, despite the recommendation that Turkish music and Western instruments
be included side by side in music education, ‘Western’ music is placed syntactically outside of
what is ‘our own’ and ‘traditional’. The second example, which again calls for all musical ‘types’
to be reflected in curricula, carries a corollary subtext – that some music types have (hitherto) been
excluded from curricula, and that national musical instruments have hitherto not been placed at
the centre of music education – and thus evokes a memory of cultural exclusion.
A further recommendation of the music commission at the Culture Summit was for state
conservatories to be ‘restructured as universities of music and performing arts … which in-
corporate traditional and polyphonic musical cultures’ (Ministry of Culture and Tourism TC
Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı 2017a, p. 4). Prima facie this is a pluralist and reconciliatory proposal,
explicitly acknowledging value across the Western-Turkish distinction, but it has bureaucratic and
hegemonic implications. As discussed earlier, Turkey’s state conservatories have proliferated in the
main according to two, bifurcated types: ‘Turkish’ and ‘Western’ (Çelenk 2016). Notwithstanding
the shifts over time in relation to cultural climate, and associated dynamics of power and influence,
these institutions have, since the founding of the Türk Musikisi Devlet Konservatuarı in 1976, been
105
afforded authority and autonomy in terms of repertoire and pedagogy on either side of the
‘Turkish’ ‘Western’ bifurcation, which has allowed for the parallel development of both musical
cultures. However, the recommendation that these cultures be drawn together within the same
institutions, while explicitly pluralist, could jeopardise this autonomy and pit these musical cultures
against each other in terms of institutional emphasis and resourcing.
We have sought in this short chapter to demonstrate the role of music education in the
construction of Turkish national identity and official culture. Although we cannot predict the
future of Turkish music education based on cultural policy and discourse alone, it is clear from
the examples presented here that it remains a key locus of struggle for cultural memory and
hegemony, and that distinctions in relation to repertoire, pedagogy, and tradition reflect
ideological fault lines that stem from the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and have
characterised cultural life in Turkey for almost a hundred years.
The music education reforms detailed here occurred as part of a post-war nation-building
project following the collapse of a centuries-old social paradigm, and as such, they were more
overt and dramatic than those seen elsewhere. Yet for this reason they over a vivid point of
reference for those considering the sociological implications of music education reforms or
norms in different contexts which, although more subtle and insidious, may nonetheless
function as part of the state’s ideological apparatus (Gramsci, 1971). We hope that the example
of Turkish music education might bring international readers to examine the relationship
between music education and national identity in their own contexts, and to consider the roles
and experiences of various actors and stakeholders within and beyond the music classroom in
sustaining and challenging hegemony.
1. Do music education curricula in your country reflect a particular cultural hegemony
within society at large?
2. Are certain musical genres and/or traditions implicitly devalued by the pedagogies used in
music education institutions in your country?
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7
IN SEARCH OF A POTENTIALLY
HUMANISING MUSIC
EDUCATION
Reflections on practices at two Brazilian
universities
Introduction: universities in dehumanising neoliberal times

Freire’s humanising education recognises ‘the nature of human beings beyond simply cognitive or
mental beings’ (Darder 2002/2017, p. 103). Such an integral being is constructed in interaction
with others as we realise we are both in and with the world, combining spiritual, physical,
emotional, and cognitive faculties. Posing problems through dialogue was a means that Freire
advocated we teachers and students could critically know ourselves and the world in which we
engage. This could lead us to achieve a deeper level of (self) awareness, including awareness of
power relations in learning and teaching processes that could prevent the realisation of our full
humanness. In this chapter, we discuss issues of power in knowledge construction and explain how
informal learning and non-formal teaching in two Brazilian Higher Music Education Courses can
possibly challenge reproduction of unbalanced power relations and present alternative pedagogies to
revive the humanist approach to which we subscribe. Revisiting some Freirean concepts to analyse
our actions has helped us to both ‘denounce’ dehumanising realities we witness in neoliberal times
and ‘announce’ hopeful transformation in our practices towards our own humanisation.
Education in a globalised twenty-first century within a neoliberal agenda ‘has been pre-
dicated on the dominance of the market over the state and particularly through deregulatory
models of governance’ (Torres 2013, p. 85). As a result, knowledge acquisition ‘is presented
primarily as commercial transaction, driven only by the benefit to an individual in terms of their
position in the labour market’ (Cowden and Singh 2013, p. 2). With that dominance of the
market, ‘Universities are increasingly defined through a corporate demand to provide the skills,
knowledge, and credentials to build a work force’ (Giroux 2010, para. 3). Cowden and Singh
(2013, p. 4) see that deformation of universities into businesses that nurture skills (instead of
knowledge) acquisition as a crisis of thinking. Those authors also understand neoliberalism as a
crisis of feeling, in which individuals are too selfish and ‘the alienated marketised conception of
human relations prevent people from finding ways to meaningfully connect with other people
and to articulate this connectedness’ (Cowden and Singh 2013, pp. 6–7).
108
Potentially humanising music education
As a crisis of doing, neoliberalism tends to reinforce immobility and the belief that this reality
cannot be changed (Cowden and Singh 2013, p. 7). In fact, if ‘at every level, education has been
undermined as a human right and a process of humanisation and has been largely converted to a
sorting device and initial training mechanism for corporations’ (Torres 2013, p. 93), teachers
understandably tend to feel disempowered and impotent. In addition, the educational system
still works within a set of values and behaviours that usually do not nurture critical and
autonomous thinking and acting.
However, despite these crises of feeling, thinking and doing that Cowden and Singh (2013)
attribute to neoliberalism, we still find alternative pedagogies that foster empathy and colla-
boration amongst learners, critical thinking and actions that may empower marginalised groups.
Revisiting Young’s (1971) criticisms on curricula reflecting ‘high-status’ knowledge, or
‘knowledge of the powerful’, and using the Freirean concepts of ‘banking’ and ‘dialogical’
education, we address issues of unbalanced power relations in classrooms in our search for a
humanising music education. The continuous process of ‘becoming’ is also considered in re-
lation to the (trans)formation both teacher and students should experience in education. In
addition, we suggest that a humanising (music) education can enable students to access what
Young (2014b) has more recently been calling ‘powerful knowledge’.
Paulo Freire’s humanising education enabling ‘powerful knowledge’

Paulo Freire advocated in favour of oppressed people in Latin America raising important issues
for education based on human values. This humanist view of education is holistic and takes into
account the affective realm, not only cognitive aspects. According to Pretto and Zitkoski (2016)
the option for the development of students’ cognitive skills, rather than their emotions, turns
education into a mere tool for material progress. Freire’s pedagogy sees in humanising edu-
cation possibilities to break this notion of education for materialism, emphasised in our neo-
liberal world, for an education that links heart and mind.
For Freire, in a humanising education, it is crucial to develop the student’s awareness about
him/herself and the world. Such awareness could never be achieved in what he termed
‘banking’ education, since as ‘an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories
and the teacher is the depositor’ (Freire 1970/2005, p. 72), that concept of education reinforced
a passive role for students. In that kind of education, students are not subjects of their edu-
cational process and experience what can be understood as dehumanising oppression. In order
to overcome such oppression and engage in humanising education, Freire advocated for a
dialogical and problem-posing approach. Through dialogue, in a problem-posing education,
the teacher is not the depositor,
the-one-who-teaches, but one who is [herself or] himself taught in dialogue with the
students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible
for a process in which all grow.
(Freire 1970/2005, p. 80)
Hence, dialogical problem-posing education presupposes an active role for both teacher and
taught, valuing both learners’ and teacher’s previous knowledge and their quests for going beyond
what they already know. According to Young (2014a, p. 13) ‘access to knowledge beyond our
experience is the only true source of freedom and as such is the “entitlement of all”’.
It is worth pointing that, in our view, Young (2014a, p. 13) mistakenly relates Freire’s
respect to learners’ previous experiences ‘to a one-sided emphasis on “practice” and experience;
109
the result … was that the link between knowledge and practice got lost,’ in Young’s opinion.
We argue, however, that Freire’s consideration for learners’ experiences was an initial approach
to his dialogical problem-posing education, which required reflection and further transfor-
mative action as an enactment of new gained knowledge.
By stimulating “perception of the previous perception” and “knowledge of the previous

knowledge”, decoding stimulates the appearance of a new perception and the devel-
opment of new knowledge. The new perception and knowledge are systematically
continued with the inauguration of the educational plan, which transforms the untested
feasibility into testing action, as potential consciousness supersedes real consciousness.
(Freire 1970/2005, p. 115)
In this sense, both Freire and Young agree that ‘we can never allow [pupils] to depend on their
experience alone’ (Young 2014a, p. 13). Through dialogue, power relations between teacher
and students are not the imposition of the former’s views. Moreover, dialogue allows students’
views and experiences to emerge in a kind of education that implies ‘praxis: the action and
reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it’ (Freire 1970/2005,
p. 79). As they transform the world they humanise it and humanise themselves, engaging ‘in
action to transform the structures in which they [were] reified’ (Freire 1974, p. 144).
Therefore, we understand our humanisation as the process in which we engage in the world,
with the world and with each other transforming our world, our relations and ourselves.
The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or in-
dividualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore, it cannot unfold in the
antagonistic relations between oppressors and oppressed.
(Freire 1970/2005, p. 85)
Promoting actions of solidarity and collaborative attitudes, thus, can nurture our humanisation
and may contribute to combat what Cowden and Singh (2013, p. 6) had identified as a crisis of
feeling in the neoliberal world.
We embrace Freire’s (1970/2005) hopeful belief that humanisation is people’s vocation.
However, we are aware of criticisms in relation to understanding humanisation as ‘universal’, at
times failing to consider ‘the various definitions this may bring forth from people of different
groups’ (Weiler 1994, p. 16). Hence, we deliberate on the multiplicity of subject positions both
we and our students take and, consequently, of interests at stake in our interactions and power
relations with each other and with the world.
Other Freirean concepts we relate to our humanisation are the process of ‘becoming’, ‘hope’,
and ‘freedom.’ The former is a reminder of our incompleteness, which is also hopeful because it
allows us to improve ourselves and our actions. ‘The unfinished character of human beings and
the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity’
(Freire 1970/2005, p. 84). This kind of education that promotes one’s transformation, in order to
transform our realities, could never be a type of education that domesticates our thoughts, making
us believe ‘that [we] can only be what [we] already are’ (Peters and Lankshear 1994, p. 180).
Rather, it is a dialogical and problem-posing education which enables us to realise our in-
completeness and our potential for amelioration as human beings, for changes and even to
‘subvert’ the commodification of education we currently witness in our neoliberal society.
Hope, in Freire’s (1970a, p. 221) view, ‘is engagement full of risk.’ Aware of the growing
influence of neoliberalism in education, Freire (2005, p. 100, original emphasis) advocated for
110
‘educational practice with a sense of hope’ and ‘the knowledge that changing is difficult, but it is
possible’. Therefore, if it is important to ‘denounce’ unjust or oppressive (educational) situations, it
is also fundamental to ‘announce’ possible ways to overcome those situations. This annunciation is
the hopeful aspect of education we should never lose.
Last, but not least, since Freire’s (1970/2005, p. 80) humanising education ‘breaks with the
vertical patterns characteristic of banking education, [it] can fulfil its function as the practice of
freedom.’ To achieve such freedom, the process of education requires love, humility, faith (and
hope) in humankind through a dialogical and problem-posing process. As such, ‘Freedom is
acquired by conquest, not by gift’ (Freire 1970/2005, p. 47). Moreover, it implies autonomy
and responsibility, since it should not be misunderstood as ‘license’ or, in classroom power
relations, as an exaggerated ‘freedom’ of students that results in students’ authoritarianism
(Freire 2016, p. 22).
In synergy with those Freirean concepts, Young (2014a, p. 18) affirms that freedom is
achieved through knowledge and that ‘[k]nowledge, like anything worthwhile, is not only
shared but has to be struggled for’. In addition, ‘real knowledge challenges not only what we
know but sometimes our sense of who we are’ (Freire 1970/2005, p. 19). Similarly to the
concept of ‘becoming’, this allows possibilities for self-transformation which, we argue, is what
makes knowledge powerful.
Powerful knowledge, according to Young (2014b, pp. 74–75) is ‘distinct from the
“common-sense” knowledge we acquire through our everyday experience’, ‘is systematic’ and
‘is specialized’. The specialist quality of powerful knowledge takes this kind of knowledge
beyond our experiences of everyday and requires knowledge to be systematically revisable so
that it ‘can be the basis for generalizations and thinking beyond particular contexts or cases’
(Young 2014b, p. 75).
We subscribe to the idea that knowledge and education, in order to be ‘powerful’ or ef-
ficient should take us beyond what we already know. However, like Catlin and Martin (2011,
p. 10, original emphasis),
We contest Powerful Knowledge (capital letters), which privileges the academic, and
suggest a view of knowledge that is powerful (lowercase) in which both academic and
everyday knowledges are viewed as equally powerful, albeit for different reasons.
These knowledges then come into dialogue with each other with the result that both
are changed by the encounter in some way – new knowledge is created that has
elements of both in it.
Next, we present alternative music pedagogies that make that dialogue between academic and
everyday knowledges, as well as balance the power relation in the music learning and teaching
processes.
Alternative music pedagogies: empowering teacher and student

Informal learning practices and non-formal teaching have been alternatives to traditional music
education (Green 2008; D’Amore et al. 2009). Nevertheless, those practices raise many chal-
lenges that demand a paradigm shift in teachers’ role since they are not the only owners of
knowledge and the choosers of content (Wright and Kanellopoulos 2010). They have to de-
velop partnerships creating a community of learners in dialogue with every participant. Such
efforts demand a flexible presence, able to notice heterogeneous people with different abilities,
being a facilitator who allows the students to develop their knowledge (Feichas 2010, p. 55).
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Green’s (2008, p. 10) pedagogy, based on the informal learning of popular musicians, allows
learners to be more independent: they choose the music they are going to play; they choose
their peers to work with; they are instigated to learn with and from their peers imitating,
copying and playing by ear; they assimilate knowledge in haphazard and holistic ways; and they
often experience a more integrated musical practice in which they listen, perform, and im-
provise or compose. Such independence is attuned to Freire’s view of autonomy and of the
construction of consciousness in individuals. For him, autonomy and responsibility are built in a
dialogical and problem-posing education in which students become agent of their own learning
process developing criticism and reflections for acting and transforming their consciousness and
the relations with each other. Freire (2011, p. 117, our translation) emphasises the importance
of listening to the other: ‘listening means permanent availability to be open to other’s talk,
other’s gesture, other’s difference. Legitimate listening demands many qualities that will be built
in the democratic listening practice’.
Green’s model also counterbalances the controlled curricula criticised by Young (1971). In
the classical book Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, Young
discussed how knowledge is selected, organised and assessed in educational institutions and
made available in curricula. At that time, Young and other theorists claimed that curricula were
a mechanism for reproducing social and economic inequalities reflecting the interest and
ideology of the powerful. Stratification of knowledge with concepts such as high-status
knowledge were discussed showing clear distinction between what was taken as knowledge
(Young 1971, p. 87). Young (1971, pp. 37–38) points out some criteria that define which
curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation are to form a basis for the organization and stratification
of knowledge. This is defined in four dimensions which are: literacy, individualism, abstract-
ness, and unrelatedness. These dimensions are easily found in the traditional music education,
which tends to focus on musical notation, one-to-one instrumental lessons, and knowledge that
is often unrelated to learners’ musical experiences.
Green’s (2008) pedagogy, however, allows learners to copy and play by ear, not requiring
musical literacy from participants to make music; it promotes group work instead of in-
dividualism; knowledge is practical and constructed during music making rather than abstract
and compartmentalised; and musical activities are related to students’ lives and experiences since
they can choose the repertoire and make their own versions of music. In addition, Green’s
model requires teachers’ roles similar to those advocated by Freire in a dialogical and problem-
posing education: Teachers value and validate learners’ previous (musical) knowledge and di-
agnose what learners need to learn. Such diagnosis is done when teachers firstly stand back and
observe pupils engaging in music-making activities.
In this model, learners are not passively receiving teacher’s knowledge. Learners are actively
engaged in making music and are free to decide their own learning goals. Teachers ‘facilitate the
skills and understanding that learners identify they need to move forward, rather than impose a
“one-size-fits-all” set of skills for everyone’ (Gower 2012, p. 14). This dialogical relation in
Green’s pedagogy allows both teacher and taught to learn in the process. As Green and
D’Amore (2010, p. 134) state, ‘[i]t is also common for teachers to learn alongside their students,
especially when working on music with which teachers are not necessarily familiar’. Power
relations between teacher and students are more balanced and theoretical knowledge
is more readily assimilated and more meaningful, because as it is acquired, it can be

put to immediate use within music-making or music listening activities, rather than
remaining an abstraction.
(Green 2008, p. 182)
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Knowledge of music theory and of technical terms, which is specialised and distinct from
common-sense knowledge, was gained through musical practices and could be mobilised in
everyday experiences with music. This, in our view, is a kind of powerful (musical) knowledge.
Non-formal teaching relationships between students and teachers tend to be based on
community values with a focus on collaborative and creative learning as well as musical lea-
dership development. Freire’s socio-cultural perspective points out the dialogical education
which sheds light on this approach. For Gregory and Renshaw (2013, p. 7) there is a close link
between creative learning and collaboration, assuming that between the creative process and
making connections there are different forms of ‘conversation’, but the ‘dialogical conversation’
is the best for collaboration. They explain that dialogical conversation is not about sharing the
same views or agreeing with each other in all points but the process of exchange allows par-
ticipants in becoming more aware of their own views, values and preconceptions, together with
expanding their understanding of one another (Sennett, 2012, cited in Gregory and Renshaw,
2013, p. 8). Collaborative practices imply in redefining the roles within the group developing
shared forms of learning and shared approaches to foster creativity. For a successful process, all
involved are provoked to develop trust, empathy, vulnerability, responsibility, and leadership
(Gregory and Renshaw 2013 p. 12). As an example of humanising education, collaborative
practices also develop sense of respect, tolerance, compassion and love, which are values dis-
cussed by Freire in his work. Darder (2002/2017, p. 97) explains that in Freire’s pedagogy of
love, faith and dignity should be in our relationships with others, social responsibility for our
world, participation in the construction of knowledge, and solidarity across our differences.
Next, we present two narratives as attempts to illustrate how teacher and students can be
empowered in a humanising educational process. The first narrative is a reflection about a music
project in the Music School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (EMUFMG). The
second narrative briefly presents how Green’s informal music pedagogy was adopted at the
Universidade de Brasília (UnB) and discusses how a dialogical model that emerged from analysis
of teaching practices using Green’s pedagogy can be used to ‘tune’ our actions towards a more
balanced relation between teacher and learners.
Music workshops within Programa Escola Integrada (PEI)

In this narrative I aim to show some aspects of Music Workshops within Programa Escola Integrada
(PEI - Integrated School Programme), which was a project developed by the Municipal government
in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in partnership with local universities. I will present and discuss some
results from this project where music students (workshop leaders) from Federal University of
Minas Gerais (UFMG) had some teaching practices, providing music workshops for children and
adolescents from public schools. Music students received training at the Faculty of Music of
UFMG based on a non-formal teaching approach in a kind of creative laboratory with practical
activities for musical leadership, followed by theoretical reflections on their experiences and about
the acquired knowledge (Feichas and Wells 2010; Renshaw 2010). All data were collected
through the analysis of reports by workshop leaders according to sociological concepts from
Freire’s pedagogy of autonomy and Young’s concepts on curricula and powerful knowledge.
The first category that came out from data analysis was ‘unrelatedness of academic
knowledge to school context’. Workshop leaders talked about the limitations of academic
knowledge acquired at university, especially theoretical issues that were not connected with real
life. Many things learned at university do not help in dealing with the reality with young people
in public schools (Hentschke and Souza 2004; Oliveira 2001). This is a result of emphases in
113
certain types of knowledge excluding others in the education of undergraduate students, exactly
like Young (1971, pp. 37–38) formulated: Unrelatedness of academic curricula to daily life and
common experience refers to the extent to which knowledge school is ‘at odds’ with everyday
experiences. As Music School curricula tend to focus on certain types of music, students do not
deal with many music styles predominant in other contexts of society (Hentschke and
Souza 2004; Oliveira 2001). The difficulty of dealing with different musical tastes within the
school community was strongly emphasised in the reports. For some leaders, it represented a
cultural shock, which is related to limited listening at university which focuses on music that is
far away from the daily life of school communities. Workshop leaders had to learn music
repertoire listened to by the school community. They also had to create teaching strategies to
gradually introduce the students to other musical styles and keep the students motivated at the
same time. One workshop leader reported that at the beginning of the study the students
listened only to funk and were totally refractory to any other musical style or activity outside
funk’s realm. After 3 months of work he noticed that children in general were already more
open, even requesting new and different kinds of music. At the end of a semester his group
managed to present to the school community their performance which included singing songs
from different music styles, playing recorder, percussion, and body percussion. The intention
was to build a dialogue where both sides could learn and broaden their music experiences,
never imposing any particular genre or style. They had to practice a dialogical conversation and
work collaboratively (Freire 2011; Gaunt and Westerlund 2013; Renshaw 2010; Gregory and
Renshaw 2013).
Another topic discussed was about understanding music’s role in school. It was reported by
most of the workshop leaders that ‘music’ as a subject, especially in primary school, is seen as
only entertainment and used for certain festivities over the school calendar. It was quite
common to hear head teachers and coordinators considering music as only a background for
other activities or viewed as entertainment and leisure. Workshop leaders faced a challenge in
dealing with the community school’s view of music and its impact for young people’s edu-
cation. The functions of music in society as well as the understanding of music as essential for
education were broadly discussed in the coordination meetings. This led us to approach key
concepts of sociology of music and sociology of music education in an attempt to create our
own policy for acting in these contexts. Wright (2012) explored the ways in which policy
impacts upon practice in music education. She explains that
Policy is a framework that links ideologies, political affiliations, social groups and social
institutions to agendas for change. Along with policy comes allocation of material
resources to enable policy to change society in the desired ways. This has a substantial
impact upon the lives of teachers and their students. (p. 20)
Emotional challenges were reported by many workshop leaders. They mentioned the complex
relationships with children from troubled family lives who come to school, such as families with
problems connected to drugs, alcohol, violence, so that children come with a ‘troubled
background’, which generally includes aggressive behaviour, bad habits, impoliteness, and so
on. In this way, our workshop leaders had to deal with situations that were quite challenging
emotionally and distinct from their routines and lifestyles. Consequently, it was necessary to
develop certain qualities and values in order to face this scenery. Freire’s ideas were crucial for
understanding our actions. For him there are indispensable qualities for teaching: courage, joy,
passion, curiosity, tolerance, and love (Freire 2011).
114
Despite all the challenges reported, workshop leaders talked about the positive side of their
experiences. One workshop leader who participated in the program for 2 years, acknowledged
that the PEI was a great ‘laboratory’ for learning. He recognised a different state of maturity
after the first months of struggling with the local problems. He said,
I know I could seek another job where I could make more money, but I realise the
biggest payment in the Integrated School which is better than any salary; it is not
about money but it is for life. I have achieved so many things with the kids, victories
actually and more precisely with the undisciplined kids who were considered more
difficult in terms of bad behaviour. This is priceless. No money is worth this success.
(Workshop leader 3)
Another workshop leader faced a similar situation with pessimism at the beginning, but gra-
dually grew more confident along the development of the music workshops. Even with all hard
times regarding lack of discipline and bad behaviour from students, he focused on body per-
cussion activities and recorders built from plastic material. One of his statements was very
touching and provides great reflections on teaching music in the public school context.
Not everything is negative. As I commented before there are students who, even in the
middle of a mess, connect with the music activities and show great interest, so it makes
me very happy! I have a list of 4 or 5 kids who amazed me by how quickly they learned
to make sounds from our plastic recorder, really making the right positions with their
fingers. It is amazing that those very kids were considered the worst in other areas. This
made me stay in the program and I decided to build lots of recorders from plastic. I have
made about 100 so far! Many kids are playing many tunes on their plastic recorders now!
(Workshop leader 6)
I must say that working with this project made me reflect deeply upon the need for humanising
education in Brazilian contexts. Through critical pedagogy proposed by Freire, we all are
invited to develop
political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills, and social relations that
enable students to explore the possibilities of what it means to be critical citizens while
expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy.
(Giroux 2011, p. 155)
Searching for my own humanisation

I first tried Green’s informal learning music pedagogy on a mixed-mode course offered as part
of a distance education programme. Framed as a self-study-action-research-curriculum-
development project, at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB), I designed an 8-week module
adapting Green’s pedagogy and investigated my own praxis as a supervisor of that module. The
study focused on my interactions with student teachers (undergraduates) and two types of
tutors: associate tutors, who interacted online with students; and local tutors, who supervised
face-to-face activities of students spread through different places.
The module was planned to give undergraduates the experience of listening to prepared
audio materials broken into different musical lines or riffs, playing them by ear, making music in
group improvising, and making their own versions of that music. After that, they were asked to
115
prepare similar pedagogical materials and try them out in schools, adopting Green’s informal
learning approach. Besides these materials, I analysed reflective reports and videos of their
lessons. I also interviewed some of the participants and administered an anonymous online
questionnaire to evaluate the module.
After three iterations of the module, carried out in 2011 and 2012 during the analysis of my
student teachers’ teaching practices, I realised I could use Freire’s ideas to discuss their actions.
One of the outcomes of that part of the investigation was the conceptualisation of a dialogical
model to understand music teaching practices (Narita 2014, 2016, 2017). This dialogical model
was built on my analysis of 61 sets of videos and reflective reports of student teachers’ teaching
practices. When using such a dialogical model, I considered three domains of teachers’ actions
mobilised during music teaching: teachers’ practical musicianship, their authority and theore-
tical knowledge, and their relationship with learners’ musical worlds. As I unfolded those
domains, I identified nine pedagogic modes in student teachers’ teaching practices.
In that model, a balanced use of the three domains of teaching actions would lead to what I
called ‘liberating music education’. In that situation, power relations between teacher and
students are also balanced since the teacher would make connections with learners’ (everyday)
musical experiences and learners would voice their tastes and previous knowledge, as we would
see in a dialogical education defended by Freire. In addition, in a ‘liberating music education’,
the teacher would also balance her/his use of authority and theoretical knowledge and of
practical musicianship according to students’ needs. Since those domains are mobilised ac-
cording to the teacher’s own judgment, if the teacher tends to be authoritarian, we will witness
overemphasis on the domain of teacher’s authority and theoretical knowledge. This may result
in a kind of ‘banking music education’ in which students could feel powerless, having to accept
unrelated knowledge disconnected from their musical worlds.
The distinct pedagogic modes that emerged from teachers’ practices indicate student tea-
chers’ understanding and implementation of Green’s informal music pedagogy were varied,
sometimes misinterpreting the purpose of the module. In the anonymous online questionnaire,
for instance, one respondent suggested we should ‘never think we’re teaching’, and another
respondent concluded that ‘the teacher has many roles, including only observing the pupils’.
These are examples of a practice I classified as ‘laissez-faire’. Although teachers in Green’s
pedagogy are indeed asked to stand back and observe firstly, after that initial moment of ob-
servation (in order to try to empathise with learners’ learning goals), teachers start intervening,
offering help as musical models. An example of a broader view of teacher’s role is given by a
third anonymous respondent:
I learned that the pedagogical practice is based on the musical practice experienced by
the pupils in the society they live in, and that we have to use this knowledge to teach
music to the pupils. With the texts, I could learn to see how to be a teacher reflecting
on my own practice in the classroom and searching ways to learn to be a teacher who
values teaching in an honest way, without discrimination, nurturing the respect
amongst each other in a way that the lesson satisfactorily contributes to pupils’
learning, in which we deal with the social [aspect], respecting pupils’ tastes but looking
for ways to improve the learning in the classroom. I learned that the reflection on
musical teaching and learning will happen throughout [my] life as a future music
teacher and that we’ll be always learning from more experienced people in devel-
opment courses, masters etc, that is, in each lesson I’ll be developing and learning
musical practices and pedagogical practices.
(Anonymous online course evaluation questionnaire: Third Iteration – Oct 2012)
116
In the above response, the student teacher demonstrated a ‘dialogue’ with her/his learners ac-
knowledging their previous experiences, mobilising the domain of learners’ musical worlds. The
direct involvement with music-making required when pedagogical practices are based on musical
practices mobilises the student teacher’s domain of practical musicianship. In addition, the the-
oretical knowledge demonstrated when this respondent mentioned what s/he had been learning
through the texts mobilises his/her domain of authority, putting her/him in charge of the
learning process. This does not occur in an authoritarian way, as Freire would remind us, but
nevertheless assumes the authority invested in the teaching role. The mobilisation of those three
domains illustrates what I understood to be a ‘liberating music education’, which enables music
teachers to assist in pupils’ processes of music-making and learning. Moreover, this student teacher
acknowledges her/his ‘incompleteness’ that nurtures his/her process of ‘becoming’, aiming to
improve teaching practices as s/he transforms him/herself into a better music teacher.
The dialogical model and its pedagogic modes have also been used to analyse my own
teaching, not necessarily related to Green’s informal music pedagogy. In the first term of a face-
to-face on-campus initial Music Teacher Education university programme, I teach an in-
troductory course in which undergraduates plan and teach their peers some music lessons. They
also read selected literature on music education and observe more experienced practitioners
conducting musical activities in different contexts.
STUDENT 2: The teaching laboratory was also interesting. We read some literature and we had
to work with that. It wasn't just to teach the way we thought without relating [to
the literature].
STUDENT 3: There was space [for students] to bring our own conceptions and experiences.
STUDENT 2: And we really acted as music teachers. It’s the time, the objective, the procedure.
[We had to control] everything.
STUDENT 1: You (looking at the researcher) were the actual teacher, but you were not always
‘holding our hands’ [as if we were children who needed to cross a street]. I
thought this was very cool because you let us free. Everyone could do in his or her
own way, but at the end you would give us some help.
RESEARCHER: But we had discussed the planning before, right? I had already given some ideas
before.
STUDENTS 4 AND 1: Yes!
STUDENT 4: I think it’s very important not to be afraid of criticisms or corrections. Sometimes
we get upset when we are corrected, but it’s important for our profession to be
corrected. And it happened [in our lessons].
(Focus group interview – Dec 2017)
In the excerpt above, I managed to relate to learners’ musical worlds when they brought their
own experiences, concepts, and musics to the lesson. I mobilised my domains of practical and
theoretical knowledge before the lesson, when we analysed the planning and, if necessary, in
some interventions during the lesson. Most importantly, awareness of the different pedagogic
modes that could emerge in my practice helped me ‘tune’ my actions to promote a ‘safe’ en-
vironment where students could take risks, try their ideas, and construct new views as they
develop their knowledge as music teachers and as musicians. In that teaching laboratory, students
develop what we understand to be ‘powerful knowledge’ for teaching. It is specialised knowledge
which is also formed by the reconceptualisation of common-sense knowledge of what teaching
117
music would imply. The transformation of the classroom environment together with our own
development as music teachers might indicate that a potential humanising practice was in action.
Final thoughts
Positioning ourselves as music teacher-educators immersed in a neoliberal context in which we
witness and sometimes experience the crises of thinking, feeling, and doing (Cowden and
Singh 2013, pp. 3–7), we found in Paulo Freire’s critical and dialogical pedagogy a hopeful way
towards a humanising (music) education. Following Freire’s (1970b p. 472) view, we ‘de-
nounce’ a reality we consider dehumanising but we also ‘announce’ alternatives to change that
reality. Dehumanising situations were portrayed as unbalanced power relations in classrooms
reinforced through ‘banking’ education, emphasis on individualism, disregard for different ways
of learning, fear of making mistakes, and of dialogical situations.
The process of humanization, as proposed by Freire requires hope, human agency,

dialogue, and communion. For him, to be human is to be able to both understand the
world and take action to change that world. It is in taking that action, in the transit
from objects to subjects, where we become full human beings.
(Schugurensky 2014, p. 205)
The actions and reflections presented in our narratives are an account of our understanding of
our ‘worlds’ and our attempts to take actions to change our contexts, creating opportunities to
debate our roles as musicians and music educators. Sociology of music education, especially
issues of power relations in knowledge construction, has been contributing to raise our
awareness of the need to develop critical thinking to enable citizens to make a difference in the
world we live. In a world with an excess of fragmentation and segregation, powerful knowledge
can be knowledge of oneself and of others in order to connect people in communion whilst
awakening inherent humane values of respect, humbleness, tolerance, and, above all, love.
Music is a powerful way to touch people on those themes. A humanising music education can
nurture the consciousness of individuals towards our sense of community, taking actions to
improve both the community and ourselves and, thus, becoming full human beings.
1. Which values underpin our actions as music educators attuned to a humanistic view?
2. Subscribing to Freire’s concepts of praxis as ‘the action and reflection of men and women
upon their world in order to transform it’ (Freire 1970/2005, p. 79), how do you see the
potential of music education in a currently neoliberal society?
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8
QUESTIONING CONVERGENCES
BETWEEN NEOLIBERAL
POLICIES, POLITICS, AND
INFORMAL MUSIC PEDAGOGY
IN AUSTRALIA
Clare Hall, Renée Crawford, and Louise Jenkins
Introduction
This chapter discusses the interplay between neoliberalism and music education through an
analysis of the convergence of informal music pedagogy, policy, and politics in Australia. The
aim is to trace effects of neoliberalism on school music education to challenge assumptions
about who music education serves and how. We do this by examining the development of the
Musical Futures programme, using its unprecedented growth in Australia as a case example of
the neoliberalisation of music in school. Our review is concerned with global trends towards
neoliberal policies and practices that complicate Musical Futures’ claims of inclusiveness, as
reported so far in the programme’s evaluations. By examining the organisation’s growth of the
programme through a sociological lens, we argue that the underlying discourses concerning
student autonomy (learning) and curriculum relevancy (teaching) are based in neoliberal
rationalities and are in tension with social justice imperatives.
Musical Futures’ impact on music education has not yet been substantially analysed in re-
lation to issues such as differences in participation according to gender, ethnicity and ability.
Green (2008) highlighted these issues in the original implementation of her multifaceted study,
in which informal learning was one strand. We ask whether the programme’s expansion, in the
absence of local, research-led structural changes to music education has led to the substitution of
one form of cultural hegemony for another. This highlights the politics of music education that,
as Benedict et al. (2015) illustrate, has been grappled with through a number of vantage points.
The dominant political perspective has been of the northern hemisphere and its concomitant
theoretical genealogy. In this chapter we draw on the sociological work from the global-South
to produce a fresh discussion about how the migration of Musical Futures has reshaped informal
music pedagogy in this context.
We acknowledge the existence of multiple ‘neoliberalisms’ (Tikly 2004). Its changing nature
across time and space makes defining the term complex (for an excellent historical summary
of neoliberalism in the global-South, see Connell and Dados 2014). For the purpose of the
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following discussion, our reference means an institutionalised framework founded in economic

liberalisation that most commonly manifests in privatisation, deregulation, rationalism, and free-
marketisation. We agree, however, with Connell (n.d., n.p.):
Neoliberalism is not just an ideology. More importantly it is a powerful agenda

of social transformation, driven by the interests of re-shaped ruling classes, and
often supported by far-from-rich social groups who are now dependent on
privatisations and the corporate economy. The pursuit of this agenda is gen-
erating a more unequal, more competitive and more hostile society, as well as
dangerous environmental effects.
There is a concern, although not often discussed, regarding Australian music education:
Music education’s purpose, too, has become primarily economic. This is unfortunate
because it distorts the nature and purpose of music education, turning what should be an
exercise in the development of critical awareness, human potentiality, and spirit into a
competitive race to maintain world economic, military, and cultural dominance.
(Woodford 2008, p. 115)
Our investigation echoes these concerns and reflects on how the ‘neoliberal cascade’ (Connell
2013) is changing the shape of music education in Australia. We begin our discussion of these
changes below with an explanation of the Musical Futures programme. We then outline our
methodology for this study before discussing the policy develops surrounding Musical Future’s
migration to Australia.
Background to the study

Musical Futures is a school-based music programme run by a not-for-profit organisation. Its
inception was in the UK in 2003, informed by the informal music pedagogy principles of
sociologist, Professor Lucy Green. It was initially an action research project that trialled a
number of approaches to music teaching and learning, but the informal learning aspect of the
original Musical Futures project earned the greatest interest from teachers, an explanation of
why informal learning has become a cornerstone of the programme to date alongside non-
formal teaching.
Musical Futures has achieved ‘worldwide implementation on a scale rarely seen previously
in classroom music education’ (Jeanneret and Wilson 2017, p. 213) and continues to grow in
its international reach, particularly in former British colonies. Like the UK organisation, its
sister group, Musical Futures Australia (MFA), provides professional development for school
and community educators, having received great support from local education, government,
and industry sectors. Musical Futures offers general musical engagement for students ex-
periencing difficulties in secondary school music education (Downey 2009; Green 2008;
Jeanneret et al. 2011; Wright 2011) and similar benefits in the upper primary years in
Australia (McLennan 2012). MFA promotes its approach as suitable for primary and sec-
ondary students from 8–16 years old in both classroom and instrumental teaching contexts,
and outside of school contexts.
The inclusive pedagogical foundations of Green’s philosophies have been taken up by
the Musical Futures programme, which has been widely influential in regions beyond the UK
(e.g., Ho et al. 2013; Narita and Green 2015; O’Neill and Bespflug 2011). The impact of the
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Questioning convergences
original Musical Futures pilot in secondary schools across England indicated an overall positive
response with an increased engagement from students who were previously disinterested in
music learning (Hallam et al. 2011). Such findings are echoed by reports in other countries
(Dandolo Partners 2017; Wright 2013). After more than a decade since its inception in the UK,
it is appropriate to take a fresh look at Musical Futures’ migration around the globe.
Methodological framework
Our motivations for criticality stem from our feminist sociological perspective on education, at
the core of which is our commitment to examine and dismantle the conditions that create
unequal relations of power in order to move towards distributive equality and justice. We apply
Green’s (2008, p. 14) original intentions to ‘invoke a notion of “critical musicality” as an
educational aim’. We regard such criticality as a primary function of music education sociology
that we apply to our thinking about how policies and governments’ responses influence the
support for and delivery of music education. To debate some of the pedagogical conundrums
presented by MFA, our analysis pursues the political and policy terrain that music education in
Australia inhabits and shapes. This is in line with Schmidt’s (2017, p. 34) arguments about
the advancement of popular music education in the US, which ‘will require more than advocacy
and curricular campaigning. Learning about policy and developing policy thinking capacity
are also necessary’. We agree the same is true in the Australian context for popular music
education and, indeed, any deep structural change of music education anywhere in the world.
We go about our investigation of the geopolitics influencing policy developments and music
education in this locale by creating a dialogue between a number of policy documents, in-
cluding curriculum and educational ‘frameworks’ as policy in action. Document sources
include key educational policies that contextualise MFA’s development, website information,
and public domain publications. Our tentative critiques are not intended to diminish the
importance of promoting informal learning and diversifying music education pedagogies,
particularly through the inclusion of popular music. We are, however, purposefully sceptical
about ‘any way’ in music education – whether programme-based or curriculum-based ap-
proaches – being viewed as a universal good. Green (2008, p. 24) herself makes it clear that the
original informal learning project ‘was designed to complement, not act as a substitute for more
formal approaches’. Neither is our analysis intended to detract from its undeniable ‘potential to
enhance pupil motivation in relation to music’ (Hallam et al. 2008, p. 59). The goal is, rather,
to critique the systems of power that have produced the conditions for the particular kind of
expansion of the current Music Futures programme in Australia.
Before discussing the interaction between music education, neoliberalism, and MFA, we
provide a brief account of the policy context at the time of Musical Futures’ migration to Australia.
Musical Futures migrates South

Musical Futures was introduced into Australia as part of a pilot project in 2010 and has been
described as a ‘100% practical approach’ (Musical Futures Australia 2016). This period of Musical
Futures’ arrival in Australia was at a historical moment of much sector change with May 2009,
marking the establishment of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority
(ACARA). Since 2015, more than 800 schools in Victoria and 2,600 schools nationwide have
received MFA professional development to date (approximately 27% of schools in Australia) (ABS
Australian Bureau of Statistics 2019). Key political drivers have played a large part in the rapidity
of Musical Futures’ growth in Australia, leading to the substantial funding received for its roll-out.
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Ofsted (2006, p. 7) explains that the genesis of MFA began with financial backing from
the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), which is ‘the trade association of the
international music products industry’ based in the US. This industry support is in contrast to
the UK programme, which began its life as a 3-year action research project of the philanthropic
Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which was ‘run in association with Youth Music and the
Department for Education and Skills’ Innovation Unit’ of the UK with the aim, ‘to devise new
and imaginative ways of engaging young people, aged 11–19, in music activities’. While
NAMM’s financial support for music in the community is commendable, the organisation’s
investment in MFA is likely to be based on different expectations to the educational research
goals of the original UK project funding. The collaboration between NAMM and not-for-
profit providers, such as MFA, represents a corporate reach into schools that blurs the
boundaries between public and private sectors.
The global vision of Musical Futures has taken on a local mission in partnership with the
state government of Victoria. In the wake of the National review of music education (see Pascoe
et al. 2005), which illustrated the dire need for school support and teacher education, the
Parliament of Victoria’s (2013) report on their Inquiry into the extent, benefits and potential of music
education in Victorian schools reiterated the state’s particular needs in primary school and instru-
mental music education. A number of the recommendations were taken up by the Labor Party
as a state election promise and, after winning the election in 2014, the Department of Education
and Training (DET) pledged to support 7 of the 17 Inquiry recommendations (Parliament of
Victoria 2014). In return for AU$2 million funding between 2015 and 2019 (DET Department
of Education and Training 2018b), MFA were:
[E]ngaged to deliver professional learning to 1,620 teachers (across 810 schools) and
1,200 preservice teachers. While MFA is not required to demonstrate specific out-
comes beyond this, there is an implicit understanding that it will build teachers
‘confidence and capability to engage students in music-making’.
(Dandolo Partners 2017, p. 6)
The ministry also pledged an additional AU$1 million funding of up to 2019 in support of its
Quality Music Education Framework, which we will elaborate on later. This is important in the
Australian music education context because MFA is now endorsed by the DET (2018d) in
Victoria alongside other established and critiqued approaches to music methods and curriculum.
As a consequence, the approach may increase in usage in Australia. The parliamentary sub-
mission of Musical Futures Australia (2013, p. 11) clearly articulates their aim of providing
government with ‘practical, scalable solutions (to) repair music education provision’. Since the
Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry, MFA and its recent global auspice, Musical Futures
International, have swiftly become a far-reaching organisation embraced in the Asia-Pacific
region, producing an ‘explosive growth’ (Music Teacher Magazine 2015, p. 23) and add the
‘future of music education’ (Musical Futures Australia 2018). We discuss some of the tensions
surrounding these kinds of assertions and delve more deeply into why MFA has resonated with
government to achieve this level of support.
Questioning the elephant in the (band)room

On the one hand, the government support of MFA appears to be an act of political will to,
finally, support school-based music education by allocating substantial state funding to ensure at
least some of the Victorian Parliament’s inquiry’s recommendations are actioned. On the other
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hand, research about MFA’s development fails to critically question the conceptual tropes of the
MFA programme; that is, its autonomy, relevancy, and real-world learning, all of which present
troubling, and yet-to-be-discussed issues about music education in neoliberal circumstances.
These issues represent the ‘elephant in the (band)room’. The first of these, autonomy, relates
to whether the transformations in music education are focused on student learning or the nature
of teachers’ work. The second cluster of issues, relevancy, and real-world learning, relates to
whose ‘real world’ are we referring to in the context of twenty-first-century learning dis-
courses. The next section takes up the first issue to explore how the emphasis on ‘quality’ in
music education influences the pressures on music teachers’ work.
Transforming student learning or impacting teachers’ work?

The MFA website (2018) appeals to teachers’ aspirations for quality. It states: ‘While students
are the ultimate beneficiaries of the approach the focus of Musical Futures activities is teacher
directed because great music programmes have great music teachers at their heart.’ This focus
on developing the teacher is somewhat contradictory to Green’s original intent to enable
student agency by teachers changing the relations of power in the classroom through more
student-led as opposed to teacher-led learning. The shift in language around teacher quality
echoes the state government’s Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO) (DET
Department of Education and Training, 2018a) that situates the educator as the main avenue for
problem-solving schooling. This recent school accountability measure states,
Effective teaching is the single biggest determinant of student improvement in the

school. Teachers not only a have a direct impact on student achievement but also
student engagement and motivation for learning.
(DET Department of Education and Training 2018a, p. 8)
A mirror image of this sweeping unification of teaching, engagement, and learning is MFA’s
strategic alignment of its operations and aims with such correlations. Before unpacking this
tactic further, it is useful to examine the policyscape. Debates ring loud internationally about
the impact of teaching on student outcomes (Hattie 2009; Marzano 2007), which is the crux of
the Victorian government’s drive to improve teacher quality (DET Department of Education
and Training 2019a). Of course, the actions of teachers and schools matter; however, other
factors also impact learning, such as unequal distributions of social, cultural, and economic
forms of capital (Snook et al. 2009). By deflecting attention from persistent socio-cultural in-
equalities in Australian educational attainments (see the Australian Government’s Longitudinal
Surveys of Australian Youth and Closing the Gap Report 2019), pressure is diverted from gov-
ernments – and, thereby, society – to mitigate unequal distribution and places that responsibility
on to the teacher. Lingard and Sellar (2013) and Reid (2010) regard this ‘fix’ to schooling by
controlling teachers through the politics of accountability as a destructive neoliberal shift in
public education. In other words, at the heart of the accountability discourse is a neoliberal
ideology that constructs education as a service and teachers as service providers within a ca-
pitalistic regime (Connell 2009).
Previously, it was educators in the fields of literacy and numeracy who bore the brunt of
performative pressure. Now, the ‘terrors of performativity’ (Ball 2003b) have crept into music
education in Australia through the Victorian Quality Music Education Framework for Victorian
Schools (DET Department of Education and Training 2018d). This framework functions as an
arm of the FISO policy and is linked to the wave of federal developments and culminated in the
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National School Reform Agreement (DET Department of Education and Training 2018c). In the
absence of a specific federal music education policy in Australia (notwithstanding some state-
based commitments, such as the Government of South Australia’s Music Education Strategy,
2019–2029), the agreement ‘confirms that school reform must focus on driving individual
student achievement and equipping teachers with the right tools and support’ (Minister for
Education 2018). The crux of the tools will be evidence-based measures that demonstrate value
for spending. It is, perhaps, no surprise that music education consultancy is, therefore, growing
in a climate of great anxiety among teachers about performance. It is also unsurprising that
recommendations for improving school music in Australia turn to research originating in
northern ‘centres.’ For instance, of the 24 quality frameworks analysed to inform the Victorian
framework mentioned above, 16 originate in the UK, six in Australia, and two in the US
(DET Department of Education and Training 2019b).
As argued above, ΜFA has capitalised on policy shifts by promising to build teachers’ ca-
pacities through professional development, which their contract with the government makes
clear:
While MFA is not required to demonstrate specific outcomes beyond this (target
number of schools), there is an implicit understanding that it will build teachers
‘confidence and capability to engage students in music-making’.
Inherent in this assumption is the correlation between teacher development leading to engaged
students and, therefore, improved learning outcomes. Here, we see an incongruity with the
essence of Green’s legacy, which was a focus on young people’s interests, ownership, and
autonomy. While the importance of the teacher does not vanish in Green’s philosophy, the
emphasis for change is placed on the empowerment of the teacher. The shift in focus to
managing teachers’ work is a symptom of the government tightening controls on the profession
under claims of support for educational innovation. MFA plays into this shift with a sympathetic
neoliberal development strategy of its own and has been successful in attracting funding because
of their appeal to government budgetary drivers, which are inherently geared to expanding
markets; but ‘development’ is not necessarily synonymous with growth (Connell and Dados
2014) and may even be detrimental (Tikly 2004).
One aspect that has enabled MFA to grow more fluidly and rise above debates around
teaching and learning is the organisation’s insistence that ‘it is a set of values, principles and
practical teaching and learning strategies, rather than a fixed curriculum’, and, therefore ‘it is
proven to be transferable to a range of international contexts’ (Musical Futures UK 2018). The
notion that Musical Futures can merely overlay ‘with any existing or future Australian music
curricula’ (Musical Futures Australia 2016, p. 2) has assisted the international transference of this
programme across state and national boundaries (Crawford 2018). Aside from the overt links to
the creative industry via the contemporary music business, MFA has been able to capture a wide
market as a stand-alone programme not attached to an institution as such. It is scalable in a way
that can achieve much more rapid access than a curriculum intervention, with the latter needing
to negotiate many other layers of policy and practice.
The Australian government support of music education not-for-profit organisations, such as
Musical Futures, Music Count Us In, and Songroom, is consistent with the neoliberal de-
centralisation of education, leading us to question how private music education providers offer
a more cost-effective means for government to show support for the area than increasing the
numbers of specialised music educators. MFA’s submission to the state parliament explicitly
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addresses value for money, advertising that MFA offers the government ‘practical, scalable
solutions that could be applied to the issues surrounding music education’ (Musical Futures
Australia 2013, p. 11). From a staffing point of view, MFA offers school principals a relatively
low investment means of improving their school music provision by upskilling existing staff,
targeting generalist primary teachers, who make up 27% of those receiving MFA professional
learning (Dandolo Partners 2017). MFA appeals to the inexperienced musician and, in their
parliamentary submission, suggests integration of the separate classroom and instrumental music
provision, repurposing instrumental music teachers as Musical Futures facilitators:
Instrumental teachers involved in the Musical Futures approach would have all or
some of their time directed to whole of class learning resulting in significantly im-
proved participation rates and teaching loads and efficiency.
There is no substantive evidence to suggest collapsing instrumental teaching with classroom

music learning, which have their own respective pedagogies, will improve attrition rates in the
study of music in Australian schools. What is more certain is that MFA’s success will change the
range of instruments students play with the concentration on rock band instrumentation
(namely electric guitar/bass, drum kit, and keyboard). While cost efficiencies are an undoubted
imperative for any area of schooling, a rock band take-over of the curriculum leads to larger
concerns about how market forces can potentially homogenise rather than diversify music if
change is led by short-sighted economics rather than deep-rooted pedagogy.
Marketised thinking sees competition as healthy and necessary. In Australia, however, higher
education and government schools struggle to provide equitable education (Reid 2010) while
private education providers are flourishing, using the knowledge work of academics in the
process of attracting funding from government to support their growth. Has the capitalist ‘new
world order’ that has enabled this flourishing helped revolutionise the system that provides
music education, or has it merely ushered additional players onto the field? And who are the
new players playing for? To reflect on the capability of MFA to address issues of social justice in
Australian music education, the next section problematises inclusion in music education and
how this policy space is inhabited by MFA.
Which ‘real’-world learning?

A key premise of Green’s informal learning approach is that student disengagement in school
music is the result of two main issues: the lack of student autonomy and relevance to life outside
of school. This lacking manifests in the hegemony of teacher-directed learning and Western art
music as the primary pedagogical tools of school music and the concomitant symbolic violence
towards students. Green’s pedagogical provocations were a welcome overdue and ongoing
effort to provide a learning environment more inclusive of students’ interests, needs, and
abilities by disrupting the traditional hierarchical relationship between teacher and student. In
this way, student autonomy is at the centre of Green’s version of inclusion. Her argument is that
by allowing students to start with music that they know and like, students’ individual musical
identities can be discovered and demonstrated. Students are then more likely to be motivated to
pursue other musical forms. Green (2008, p. 13) states: ‘it seems appropriate to give pupils some
autonomy to select curriculum content for themselves’ and asserts that, ‘without pandering or
dumbing down, it is possible to provide challenging curriculum content that authentically
reflects the world outside the school’ (p. 185).
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[O]nce informal learning has been engaged in, once the doors it opens have been
opened, there is no reason why subsequently, many of the activities we normally
associate with formal education – teacher direction, progressive steps, and so on, as
well as theory and notation – should not take place; and indeed I believe they must
take place as time goes by.
(Green in Wright et al. 2017, p. 3)
However, Green is cautious about the issue of autonomy, conscious of objections that it
will diminish the quality of music education. Green’s (in Green 2008, p. 185) concern is
‘the extent to which pupils can and should, or cannot and should not, be given more
autonomy to decide on curriculum content and to direct their own learning strategies’.
A number of limitations with autonomy do become apparent when we look closely at
practice. At the micro level, the most significant issue appears to be teachers’ self-
reflexivity. Given that the well-researched benefits of peer-directed and student-centred
learning are widely adopted pedagogical features in learning areas beyond music, it hardly
seems innovative by today’s standards. But teacher-directed learning in music is a highly
durable dimension of educators’ musical habitus, particularly in instrumental pedagogy
(Sagiv and Hall 2015). The music educator’s resistance to change was also found by Karlsen
and Westerlund (2015, p. 372) whose work to promote pedagogical pluralism in pre-service
music teacher education advocate that changes ‘may have been more noticeable in the
published academic output than in the actual practices of music education'. It would seem
that the range of pedagogical strategies and depth of teacher self-reflexivity that needs to
accompany successful informal learning are not so easy to put into practice. While some
suggest popular music learning through informal pedagogy has ushered in a music education
‘(r)evolution’ (Smith et al. 2017, p. 5), others argue there is merely an acknowledgement by
the music education field of long-called-for culturally responsive practices (Jeanneret and
Wilson 2017). Schmidt (2017) alternatively describes this as an ‘expansionist’ period.
While it is hard to deny the current growth in the number of school districts using
informal learning approaches, it is as easy to notice how it is often used as a proxy,
attending to traditional needs and skills of music education.
(Schmidt 2017, p. 45, original emphasis)
At a broad level, the extent to which musical autonomy is permitted has firm boundaries while
students and their teachers inhabit a standardised education system. For instance, it is unclear
what youth consultation was involved in the reforms to the Australian Curriculum. It is clear,
however, that space for autonomy within the Australian Curriculum allows students some
control of what repertoire they perform and how, but it does not allow students to demonstrate
their musical capital through whatever form of musicking they choose, which would be one
indicator of a truly inclusive and democratic music education.
In Australia, it appears that enabling student agency within the knowledge economy often
happens by making transparent the rules of the game. This involves explicating achievement
standards and inculcating students from a young age with a strong desire to meet those standards
as the primary goal of learning. This is a kind of neoliberalisation of the student rather than a
liberating autonomy. As music educators, we have observed a familiar classroom power game
that older students, in particular, are quick to detect; a complex interaction called the game of ‘I
know what you are trying to make me do, but I don’t really want to do it, so I will make it look
like I’m doing what you want, while I try to do what I want at the same time’. We suspect this
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game continues to be a feature of informal learning as much as traditional pedagogy. When

playing this complex game fails in the music classroom, we suggest it may not be about an
inherent dislike of the music, lack of choice about repertoire, and learning mode but a dis-
interest in playing this power game with teacher/state. We have yet to see research about
students for whom informal learning fails and why. Therefore, a focus on Western ‘classical’
music as music education’s vice without reimagining the structures within which content is
experienced will do only so much for the pedagogue and their students.
A number of other issues appear when examining relevancy in the context of MFA’s in-
teractions with curriculum as policy in action. What appears to be the case, at least in Australia,
is that informal learning has become closely aligned with commercial music industry training as
opposed to popular music education. Green’s definition of popular music is one that focusses on
the music students listen to and perform outside of school as the essence of inclusive pedagogy.
Diverse definitions of popular music open up the term to competing interpretation, from any
music that is the preference of the individual to generational mass culture. Real-world learning
in the context of MFA, however, has a tendency to conflate the popular music of youths’
outside-of-school worlds with the world of work. The mobilisation of the twenty-first-century
skills discourse demonstrates an instrumentalist view through the push towards vocationalism
and dismissal of conventional teaching models as irrelevant merely because they originate from
the previous century. Musical Futures Australia (2013, p. 14) promotes:
The contemporary approach employed through Musical Futures is a natural fit for the
participation in popular forms of music, which accounts for around 97% of all musical
activity … There are significant employment opportunities in music business and
management careers and in production. In fact roles in these areas out-number those
of performers. Again Musical Futures provides some developmental opportunities
here, especially in the area of production and is capable of providing students with the
beginning of musical production skills that can then lead directly onto [vocational
qualifications].
These underpinnings are, however, not overt on the MFA website. Instead, the semiotic power
of images of students playing pop music instruments, alongside references to relevant con-
temporary approaches, is enough to communicate popular music education as a synonym for
twenty-first-century learning. A major finding of the UK phase 2 evaluation is the statistically
significant take-up of vocational qualifications in Key Stage 4, which is double the rate for
Musical Futures programmes compared to ‘regular’ schools (York Consulting 2014). The 40
years of strong advocacy for culturally diverse music education since Vulliamy and Lee (1976)
has provided a smooth entre for the twenty-first-century skills discourse to wed instrumentalist
notions of real-life learning to past cultural-relativist conceptions. The previous social re-
productive goal of music education to indoctrinate students’ tastes for Western elite culture
through developmental learning, appears to have been supplanted with socialising students into
the workings of the music business. In some instances, in Australia, this process begins with class
ukulele programmes for 5–8-year-old children, as the developmental skills-based feeder for
MFA middle primary years' programme and onwards.
As much as we may wish to bury the debates about the legitimacy of popular music, it seems
we continue to be drawn to the debate because of the issues associated with industry part-
nerships in music education that equates children with the popular music workforce of the
future. While concert music may not contribute as much revenue as popular music, it would be
exclusionary to argue that concert music is culturally ‘uncontemporary’ in Australia given the
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important role orchestras (Nicholls 2019) and choirs (Barrett and Langston 2008) play in
communities, including working-class ones. It would be equally misguided to argue that
concert music is only reproducing culturally irrelevant music of the past that young people do
not and cannot find meaningful. Numerous examples exist of orchestral music in Australia
disrupting hegemony, redressing injustices of colonisation and innovating the digital space (e.g.,
Ngarra-Burria: First Peoples Composers Initiative, Attar and Westlake’s (2013) ‘Compassion’
Arabic/Hebrew songcycle, and The Deep Blue Orchestra). To ignore the significant societal
impacts of orchestras and choirs is a disavowal of the contemporary relevance of concert music,
yet this is a habit of popular music advocates and MFA who state the approach uses ‘popular
forms of music’ (Musical Futures Australia 2013, p. 14). Such arguments are out of step with
Green’s (2008) expansive view of musical styles:
[V]arious forms of popular music find their way into the school – because that is the
music that students almost always choose … once students have discovered that they
can ‘get inside’ their own choice of music through informal learning … they become
more open to other music beyond their immediate favourite choices.
(Green in Wright et al. 2017, p. 2)
The advocacy of ‘contemporary’ music is not just a class war about cultural legitimacy, but a
debate that leads us down the path of music business profitability. At the end of that path, we
find ‘classical’ music cast aside as a revenue sinkhole. There is nothing at all wrong with people
making money from music, and the popular music education movement is receiving great
support from profit-making businesses to help the industry achieve just that. The problem is the
‘creative tactics of promiscuous corporations’ (Ball 2003a, p. 267), vigorously critiqued by
Kenway and Bullen (2001) nearly 20 years ago, that have a habit of collapsing the boundaries
between education and entertainment as a means to consume our children. The discourses of
inclusion provide an attractive shroud for such tactics. When we question whose real world are
we trying to include, issues of musical style become infantile in the face of the epistemic
diversity that Australian society presents to school education. An example of this is the cultural
interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous experience and ways of being that few
educators in Australia feel equipped to negotiate (Nakata 2007). It remains unclear how a
Musical Futures programme can help negotiate the complicated differences between Australian
students’ actual worlds outside of school, as opposed to the worlds of White, middle-class, males
that students are expected to aspire to inhabit.
Looking to future actions

We see sociological investigations into the social axes of difference as the important next phase
of informal music pedagogies research and practice. Green (2008, p. 42) also asserts that there
are indeed various research projects that could investigate the differences between gender,
ethnicity, and class, as well as age, nationality, religion, and many other social distinctions in
relation to both formal and informal learning.
In the Australian context, three persistent ‘problem’ areas of music education intersect with
those presented so far and some of the unresolved issues identified in Green’s work. These issues
also intersect with current international concerns about inclusion and diversity, with which
informal music pedagogy must dialogue. First, there is a need for music education to play a role
in decolonisation, in both material and metaphorical terms. Upholding the rights of First
Nations to have input in what and how their children learn in school music is as important, and
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urgent, as policy and practices that embed Indigenous perspectives in music education
(Victorian Aboriginal Education Association VAEA 2013). Second, gender inequalities in the
music classroom, particularly with regard to music technology (Armstrong, 2011) and the
contemporary music industry (Cooper et al. 2017) is a persistent area of discrimination against
female-identifying musicians and an under-researched issue (Synnøve Blix et al. forthcoming).
The current conflation of popular music with informal music learning intensifies the urgency to
respond to issues of gender diversity in the music classroom. Third, the persistent difficulties
educators have in creating culturally responsive spaces where students feel safe to express
nonconformist musical tastes and identities relates to issues of ethnicity and race (Cain 2015).
These are predicted to become increasingly important in promoting anti-racism, using music as
the means to build critical self-reflexivity and ‘multicentricity’ in learning communities
(Hess 2015).
To accomplish such criticality, music educators and scholars will be required to scrutinise
both the political underpinnings of music programmes and their own positionality to ascertain
whether they have merely substituted one form of domination for another. As MFA expands
into Asia and the Middle East, music educators should question who gains the most from
such growth.
Educationalists also have a key role to play in questioning the hegemonic role of
economics in determining educational programs and practices. This means exposing
the Eurocentric assumptions and values of development economics as it is currently
constituted … a key area that development economics, with its narrow focus on
targets and quantifiable indicators of quality, ignores the processes at the heart of
education in low-income countries, namely those of the curriculum and pedagogy.
(Tikly 2004, p. 194)
Concluding remarks
The purpose of this chapter has been to examine the way the Musical Futures organisation has
leveraged policy discourse to construct a neat fit between aspects of the pedagogy and neoliberal
agendas in Australia. These reflections, while they do not go so far as to offer solutions, pose
questions that are important first steps to thinking through the tensions that arise when trying
to provide inclusive and democratic music education in neoliberal circumstances. Reflecting
sociologically on the development of MFA and its evolution of informal pedagogy leads us to
highlight unresolved issues that call into question the inclusiveness and the social justice
foundations on which the programme stands. By analysing local government policies, political
actions, and MFA’s public face, we reveal the shared ‘trace elements’ of neoliberal ideology.
We argue that, in Australia, Musical Futures has responded to neoliberal imperatives by
aligning their version of informal learning and non-formal teaching with the knowledge
economy. This synergy is evident in the organisation’s intentions to improve music education
provision through: raising education standards by improving teacher quality; providing gov-
ernment value for money through scalable deliverables, including products that can be com-
mercialised; rationalising the music education workforce by focusing on in-servicing current
employees; providing a cost-efficient curriculum value-add rather than costly restructure;
ensuring higher participation in instrumental music with relatively low per-student capital
expenditure; producing a strong cross-sectorial pathway between schools and music trade and
industry; increasing in music industry skills development; and providing a responsive solution to
policy with a ‘tried-and-tested’ model. This has meant the educational affordances of informal
131
Clare Hall et al.
music pedagogy have benefited from MFA making very good business sense. But what happens
to music in young people’s school experience when educational reforms are led foremost by
short-term, party-based economic imperatives rather than pedagogy? What happens to inclu-
sion in school music when education is focused on driving up students’ accomplishments for
industry? These are questions for further research.
Our study indicates that, despite the informal pedagogy of Musical Futures, there remain
issues in Australia to do with hegemony and exclusion, albeit in a different tonality.
Investigations into how the practical elaborations of Lucy Green’s suggested pedagogy has
evolved from the original conception or how it takes on local inflections around the globe is
worthwhile and necessary to do through policy thinking. Musical Futures, other education
providers, and developers of music pedagogy share the ‘problems’ of the field. Therefore, the
onus is on all musical educators to find solutions in solidarity because there are serious issues
with music education that are much greater than pedagogy. We believe that further critical
work interrogating democracy and social justice in music education will be the means to bridge
the many good intentions of music educators and policy-makers. We hope it will also be the
means to make faster progress in closing the gaps of disadvantage by holding governments
accountable to the failures of policy commitments and current economic systems.
1. What examples exist of the convergence between neoliberalism and music education in
your context?
2. Which policies in your region interact with the provision of music education and how do
these relate to the global knowledge economy?
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9
SOCIO-CULTURAL
BACKGROUND AND TEACHER
EDUCATION IN CHILE
Understanding the musical repertoires of music
teachers of Chile
Introduction
This chapter explores the relationships between musical repertoires, socio-cultural background,
and the university education of music teachers trained in Chile between 1969 and 2010. There
are three central goals for this chapter. First, I aim to categorize the musical repertoires per
formed in their social background and in their university education context respectively by
teachers using a taxonomy based on the distinction of musical genres through musical and
sociological descriptors. Second, I seek to identify patterns of musical genres in both contexts
and then deepen the types of discourse that underlie those patterns. Third, I propose the es
tablishment of relationships between musical repertoires and historical periods, with emphasis
on the socio-cultural dimension.
We will understand the social-cultural background as the primary source in which the
musical experiences carried out during childhood and adolescence are nurtured. From this
point of view, Social Cultural Background has been objectified in three specific contexts: fa
mily, school, and peer group. This is because study of the sociology of education concerning
relations between the individual’s social cultural background and development in childhood
and adolescence have indicated that this social cultural background constitutes the space from
where the primary habitus is built (Dumais 2006; Stuij 2015; Knight 2015; Leonard, 2005;
Perez-Felkner 2013; Montgomery 2018).
In the case of the current study, these contexts are recognised as spaces of social relationship
that actively participate in the constitution of the pre-university musical experience, the
conformation of musical taste and the dispositions towards music (Atkinson 2011; Ter Bogt
et al. 2011; Wright 2015; Soley and Spelke 2016). They also allow the emergence of formal and
non-formal informal learning instances (Green 2008; Wright and Kanellopoulos 2010; Wright
2016; Poblete et al. 2019).
The research problem has been built on three propositions. The first defines musical re
pertoires as a set of works, objectified from the musical genres that compose them, with par
ticular attention paid to the underlying cultural principles. The second argues that musical
136
Teacher education in Chile
repertoires (a) are formed from multiple sources; (b) that these sources come from instances of
formal, non-formal, and informal learning; and (c) that both repertoires and their sources are
affected by socio-cultural characteristics and historical contexts from which they come. The
third proposition indicates that learning musical repertoires is intrinsically a historical con
struction, capable of constituting sedimented knowledge (Berger and Luckman 1966).
The characteristics of the problem necessitated a multiple-source approach. The primary
focus considered the identification of teachers’ musical repertoires. This was carried out by
distributing a questionnaire about genres of musical repertoire, and their authors, to a purpo
seful sample of music teachers (n = 109). These teachers attended Chilean universities between
1969 and 2010. Additionally, documentary sources were used to contextualize the periods of
university training of the participants.
This chapter is organized in four sections. The first offers a general look at the literature on
musical repertoires, both from musicology and music education. This section also describes the
theoretical and conceptual bases on which the chapter is built. From there, an integrated
taxonomy is presented to categorise musical repertoires based on references from sociology and
musicology. The second section proposes a historical overview of the Chilean music teacher
education programs (MTEP), looking to contextualise the evolution of university education in
music education during the period 1969–2010. The third section deals with the identification,
characterisation, and analysis of the musical repertoires of music teachers, trained in Chile
between 1969 and 2010. In this section I identify the authors and musical genres and identify
repertoire patterns. The fourth section proposes a comprehensive vision of the problem, es
tablishing relationships between musical repertoires, socio-cultural contexts, and training per
iods of Chilean music teachers.
Theoretical basis
As a subject of inquiry, musical repertoires have been explored by research from differing
perspectives in musicology and music education. In the literature, there are three major groups.
First, those focused on how musical repertoires are selected, transmitted, and performed in
different contexts of practice. Second, those who critically reflect on the Western canon and its
influence on the categorisation of musical repertoires. Third, those who establish relationships
between musical preferences, identity, and social relationships.
Within the first group, we find literature related to the analysis of the practices, processes,
and criteria for selection of repertoires (Apfelstadt 2000; Carney 2005; Crochet 2006; Grant
1993; Prentice 1986; Suk 2003); compilations and studies that propose forms of classification of
repertoires for diverse groups (Fiese 1991; Gaines 1996; Jones 2005); and the study of the
relationships between repertoires and musical genres (Walker 2005). Also included are studies
on curricular construction for school and university education from the selection of musical
repertoires for bands and orchestras (Gelpi 1984; Hayward 2004; Menghini 1999; Reynolds
2000; Woike 1990).
In the second group, we find studies that address the research of constitutive processes,
construction/deconstruction, and innovation and selection of the musical canon (Allsup and
Benedict 2008; Dowd et al. 2002; Kremp 2010; Merino 2006; Shreffler, 2013), as well as the
categorization of repertoires and musical genres (Fabbri 1980; Frith 1987; Harris 1995; Holt
2003; Lena and Peterson 2008; Moore 2001; Peterson 2005; Schmutz 2009; Tagg 1982).
The third group brings together research focused on the classification and implementation of
repertoires and musical preferences in school education (Herrera et al. 2010; Pascual 2011; Vilar
2000); the relationships between taste, musical preferences, and social contexts (Coulangeon
137
and Lemel 2007; Glevarec and Pinet 2009; Peterson 1992; Peterson and Kern 1996; Peterson
and Simkus 1992; Van Eijck 2001); and the relationships between musical preferences, musical
styles and identity (Gardikiotis and Baltzis 2011; Ramírez 2006; Stålhammar 2006; Tekman and
Hortaçsu 2002).
Despite the large number of works reviewed, studies that connect repertoires, socio-cultural
background, and the university training of music teachers, deepening the classification of their
musical repertoires, were not found. This chapter seeks to contribute to the development of
both dimensions, proposing a reading about the relationships between training contexts, mu
sical repertoires, and historical periods of training of music teachers from Chile.
Musical repertoires: a sociological gaze

When refering to musical repertoires, I mean, in general terms, a set of pieces selected from a larger
universe based on functional criteria to the purposes and uses of said repertoire. This condition of
being selected correlates with the concepts of repertoire and reservoir formulated by British so
ciologist Basil Bernstein. In his work Vertical and Horizontal Discourses, an Essay (1999), he defines
repertoire as ‘the total set of strategies and their analogic potential possessed by any one individual’
(p. 159). In association with repertoire, Bernstein defines the concept of reservoir as a total set and
its potential of the community as a whole. Thus, the repertoire of each member of the community
will have a common nucleous but there will be differences between repertoires (p. 159).
This distinction is relevant to differentiate sets of individual musical knowledge, compared to
others of a community type.
A second point, located at the base of the acquisition of musical repertoires, refers to
how they are constituted from musical experience. On this, the research literature deepens
the relationships between musical experience, learning, and culture. It does so from per
spectives focused on the relationship between subjects and communities, culture and social
learning (Campbell 2010; Green 2008; O’Neill 2010, 2014), as well as those that link the
individual conformation of experience with learning and the contexts in which it operates,
particularly those of an informal nature (Johansen 2010; O’Neill 2012, 2014; Poblete et al.
2019; Wright and Kanellopoulos 2010). In this way, the link between musical repertoires
and the musical experience of individuals implies the development of knowledge con
struction that expands over time, based on the learning of musical works in different
moments and contexts. This construction assumes a cumulative character and that is in
trinsically linked to social and individual experience.
From sociology, the concept of habitus (Bourdieu 1979), draws our attention to the
structures that organise the core of the experience. In that sense, the concept of habitus
allows us to observe the effect of social relations on the conformation of experience, as well
as its cumulative character. According to Bourdieu (2001, p. 131), ‘the social world is
accumulated history, and therefore it cannot be reduced to a concatenation of instantaneous
and mechanical equilibria in which men play the role of interchangeable particles’. A
history that turns out to be analogous to the constitution of musical experience, as a settled
history, is capable of accounting for the characteristics and modes of relationship between
subjects and institutions, and experience and contexts.
It is not the aim of this chapter to deepen the scope of the concept of habitus for music
education. However, several scholars deepen the relationships between social contexts, cultural
principles, and music education (Bona 2006; Fernández 2006; Ho 2012; Sousa 2007; Stakelum
2008; Wright 2008; Wright and Froehlich 2012). For the present work, the concept of habitus
allows us to articulate empirical research with the characterization of contexts and their
138
relationship with musical repertoires. Likewise, the concept of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1979),
allows us to account for the objective conditions that frame the musical practices through which
musical repertoires are performed and learned. A third point considers musical repertoires as sets
of possible knowledge objectified in the three basic categories of musical genres described by
Tagg (1982), regardless of the purposes for which they were compiled.
The objectification of musical repertoires in musical genres implies recognising in each genre
ways to organize musical knowledge from codes and/or specialised languages, which establish
the forms of operation and legitimation principles that regulate relations with the socio-cultural
contexts in which they register. To understand this meaning of repertoires as musical genres, I
use Bernstein’s (1999) concepts of vertical and horizontal discourse. These concepts describe
how knowledge is structured concerning the context in which it originates and performs.
According to the author, the concepts of vertical and horizontal discourse refer directly to ‘the
internal principles of their construction and their social base’ (Bernstein, 1999, p. 157).
According to Bernstein (1999, p. 159), vertical discourses
take the form of a coherent, explicit and systematically principle structure, hier
archically organized, as in the sciences, or it takes the form of a series of specialised
languages with specialised modes of interrogation and specialised criteria for the
production and circulation of texts, as in the social sciences and the humanities.
In the opposite sense, horizontal discourse refers to
a form of knowledge … [with] well-known features: it is likely to be oral, local,

context dependent and specific, tacit, multilayered and contradictory across but not
within contexts... [and where] the crucial feature is that is it segmentally organised.
(Bernstein, 1999, p. 159)
According to Bernstein, one of the main characteristics of this form of discourse lies in its
condition of approach in a segmented way to knowledge: segmented around the origin of the
knowledge acquired, segmented around the idea of acquiring such knowledge, and finally
segmented in the type of knowledge to which it originates. In this sense, to analyse the musical
repertoires based on the genres that identify it imply a recognition of specific characteristics and
conditions related to the expressions of vertical and horizontal discourse.
In the case of the Western Classical genre, I propose that its characteristics fit those of vertical
discourse. This genre organizes knowledge using specific languages, is built on hierarchical and
explicit principles, and can be performed independently of the context in which it originates. It
predominantly uses systems of conceptual organization and notation that are explicit, highly
elaborated, and universalist, both for the organization and the realization of musical speeches,
and regardless of the aesthetic canon to which they refer.
On the other hand, the characteristics of organisation and realisation of the popular genre
account for a hybridisation between the use of a conceptual and notational basis. This basis
establishes a generalisable framework to guide practices and dynamics of realisation in which the
use of meanings predominates particularities that respond to the contexts in which the practices
are developed. In other words, popular music involves the coexistence of specialised languages
with highly context-dependent forms of realisation.
In the case of folklore, the predominance of orality as a means of transmitting principles and
forms of musical discourse, its link with community structures, and respect for traditional forms
of musical performance,1 make it comparable to the attributes of horizontal discourse.
139
Towards a taxonomy of classification of musical repertoires

The creation of this taxonomy to analyse the repertoires of music teachers integrates theoretical
elaborations from musicology and the sociology of education. In the case of musicology, re
ferences from Tagg (1982/2015), Lena and Peterson (2008), and Harris (1995), complemented
by Fabbri (1980), Frith (1986, 1987), and Holt (2003) were incorporated respectively. In this
taxonomy, I use the categories of three musical genres described by Tagg (1982), considering
the internal characteristics of the organisation, transmission, and aesthetic representation that
these three primary genres possess. These features give them an identity, possibilities of dis
tinction, and attributes of social legitimisation. From the work of Lena and Peterson (2008),
approximations made around the concept of the musical genre were considered, specifically in
the proposition of a comprehensive definition, and the specification criteria and attributes for
the classification of musical genres. This decision was taken to cancel preconceived ideas and
the cultural bias inherent in the taxonomies elaborated from the matrix of written Western
music. The work of Trudel Harris (1995) allowed me to define limits about folklore across
three attributes: orality in transmission, anonymity in production, and community as a circu
lation context. In the case of sociological sources, the concepts of vertical and horizontal dis
course described above (Bernstein 1999) were fully considered. Table 9.1 presents the results of
the proposed taxonomy.
Music teacher education in Chile

The training of music teachers in Chile began at the end of the nineteenth century, as part of the
educational policies implemented during the first decades of the creation of the Republic
(Sepúlveda 1996). In 1935, the training of music teachers reached universities and sustained de
velopment until today. In this process, we recognize three periods: The first is marked by teacher
training’s national presence through the University of Chile and its regional headquarters; the
second ends with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1980 (in full military dictatorship), which
modifies the university structure and opens education to the market; the third entails the im
plementation of policies that seek to improve the quality of teacher training (1998 onwards) in the
context of democratic elections, but with a predominance of the free market.
Currently, the training of music teachers is carried out within universities in two modalities.
In the first, concurrent training, students enter directly after finishing secondary school without the
need to accredit previous musical studies. The study program integrates both musical and
pedagogical training and is carried out for four years. At the end of that time, students obtain a
bachelor’s degree in music education. In the fifth year, they receive the professional qualifi
cation that enables them to teach classes in schools. The second option, consecutive training,
requires that students have already obtained a bachelor of music. They then go on to receive
training in pedagogy. This training takes two years and culminates in obtaining the degree in
which they qualify as music teachers. Between them, the concurrent modality is the one with
the highest amount of MTEP with a total of 15 programs distributed among five regions in the
country. Of the total number of programs, the Metropolitan region accounts for 59% of them.
The conditions of wide access provided by concurrent training implies that the majority of
those who enter the teacher education programs must acquire basic knowledge about musical
language, while at the same time developing capacities for teaching. This reality is common to
other Latin American countries where the university is a space for vocational training, re
socialisation, and access to formal knowledge about music (Aróstegui and Cisneros 2010;
Mateiro 2010; Poblete et al. 2019).
140
Table 9.1 Taxonomy of classification of musical repertoires
Attributes Classical genre Pop genre Folk genre
Transmission and Prescriptive use of Functional use of notation. Prevalence of orality.

circulation notation. Transmission happens Transmission happens
Transmission happens mainly across informal or across informal or non-
mainly across formal non-formal contexts. formal contexts.
contexts.
Performers Professional training, Professional or amateur Mainly amateur training or
qualified training. Qualified or self-educated. Mainly
performance. skill-based performance. skill-based performance.
Type of discourse Predominance of Use of both vertical and Predominance of
vertical discourse. horizontal discourses. horizontal discourse.
Systematised Functional use of Segmented knowledge
knowledge based on specialised language, base, not systematised.
specialised languages. segmented knowledge
depending on the context.
Learning context Formal. Single, and/or Formal/informal/non Informal/non formal. Self-
collective training. formal. Individual and educated or collective/
Individual and collective musical individual training.
collective musical practice. Learning happens across
practice. musical practice.
Principles of Fidelity to written Expressive, Fidelity to origin and
legitimation records, sources are communicational, and/or traditions, and expressive
valued, and aesthetics commercial impact capability in
principles. capacity is valued, on performance are valued.
dependent context Adherence to socio-
principles. cultural principles
subject to tradition.
The responsibility for music literacy that the university must assume in the training of music
teachers (Poblete Lagos 2010b) has its origin in a systemic problem. This problem is related to
the training provided by the music class inside the school and the possibilities of access related to
specialised music training in teachers’ contexts. Although music education exists as a subject in
the national curriculum, its teaching is mostly optional. It is the prerogative of schools to
include it among school subjects. On the other hand, although the majority of teachers engage
in pre-university musical practice, it occurs mostly in informal and non-formal environments.
Given these circumstances, it is expected that the university must assume a function of literacy
preparation prior to the professional training of students entering the initial teacher training
programs in music.
Historical evolution of music teacher education programs (MTEP), 1969–2010

The period between 1969 and 2010 was marked by various changes in the Chilean socio-
political context, with effects on institutional and individual life in the country. Among these,
the institutional breakdown and the subsequent installation of the dictatorial government be
tween 1973 and 1989 brought about changes in the country’s economic model and legislative
structure, which in turn impacted the entire education system (Brunner 2009; Cox 1984,
2003). The return to democratic elections in 1990 started a period of reconstitution of
141
democratic institutions, although without modifying the economic and productive structure
that sustained the country (Poblete 2010a). Likewise, a new arc of policies implemented in the
educational field since the 1990s introduced modifications to the school curriculum and teacher
training (Poblete Lagos 2016).
All of the above had effects on music teacher education programs. These effects included the
transition from a centralized system, based on the model of the University of Chile and re
plicated by its regional headquarters and the new private universities (1969–1980), to a model of
independent institutions, with strong local presence, and with less fiscal contribution to the
institutions (1981–1989). Subsequently, a sub-period formed in which policies were designed
to improve the quality of education at the primary and secondary levels, while universities were
institutionally rebuilt, now under the principles of democratic organisation (1990–2001).
Finally, from 2002 onwards, a set of policies were instituted that sought to ensure quality in
teacher training and excellence in the implementation of teaching; along with curtailing the
private training offered to music teachers.
Table 9.2 summarizes the evolution of the MTEP over the period 1969–2010.
Repertoires of music teachers of Chile

In the socio-musical characterisation questionnaire used in the study informing this chapter,
responses about musical repertoires generated from participants’ socio-cultural background and
university education were collected. Of the total responses, two groups emerged based on the
categories established for the analysis: the first, in which authors, works, genres, and musical
styles were definable; the second, which included a large number of responses that could not be
easily classified. Table 9.3 illustrates the above information.
The heterogeneity in the answers considered valid was organised into four types: (a)
composers or works; (b) musical genres; (c) musical styles and/or sub-genres; (d) formal forms,
procedures, and/or structures used in music. These appear both as pure categories (only authors,
genres, styles, or musical forms) and mixed (any combination of the four types of response).
Table 9.4 gives an account of this.
Table 9.5 presents responses to the question about repertoires derived from participants’
social background, university education, and teaching practices. The values express percentages
of the total (n = 109).
It is interesting to note the combined presence of the classical and folk genres in the musical
repertoires of participants’ socio-cultural background. This is in contrast to the predominance of the
Classical genre in university education, and its decrease in the context of teaching practices (except
for Vivaldi and Beethoven, whose decrease is more gradual). Likewise, it should be noted that in the
socio-cultural background there are composers belonging to the pop and folk genres, excluded
during university education, but who reappear in teaching practices.
Patterns of musical genres

According to the classification principles explained in the first part of this chapter, the answers,
based on the response types indicated in Table 9.4, were coded based on three categories of
musical genres (Classical, Pop, Folk). In agreement with this, responses were organised into
seven patterns: three pure categories (Classical, Pop, Folk), and four derived from the com
binatorial possibilities of these. In this way, the results presented in Table 9.6 are confirmed by
the percentage weight of the musical genre patterns attributed to each of the contexts.
142
Table 9.2 Evolution of MTEP 1969–2010 questions
1969–1980 1981–1989 1990–2001 2002–2010
MTEP 11 7 8 17
143
Dependence Government Private Government Private Government Private Government Private
7 4 3 4 3 5 5 12
Location Capital region Other regions Capital region Other regions Capital region Other regions Capital region Other regions
2 9 1 6 3 5 10 7
Table 9.3 Examples of general responses on musical repertoires
Questions Example of responses
What music did you listen to regularly in your ‘Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, The Beatles’ (Case 109)
childhood? ‘What dad heard on a small radio’ (Case 54)
In the following columns, write the repertoires ‘Folk songs by Violeta Parra, Inti Illimani and
executed regularly by the groupings in which Quilapayun’ (Case 22)
you participated. ‘Songs of the school repertoire’ (case 13)
Write the repertoires executed regularly on ‘Silvio Rodríguez, Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Ella
instrument or instruments played before Fitzgerald, Tom Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Elis
university education. Regina’ (Case 86)
‘Simple methods and songs only’ (Case 4)
Table 9.4 Examples of response types according to category
Types of answers Pure categories Mixed categories
Composers/ Bach, Handel, The Beatles, Famous opera choirs, Mozart Requiem Mozart,
works Illapu. (Case 1) Rossini Stabat Mater Rossini, Madrigals and
Motets, etc. (Case 95)
Genres Dancing pop music, folk. Popular (Beatles), Boleros, Chilean New Wave,
(Case 52) Classical (Saint Saens, Tchaikovsky). Folk:
Violeta Parra, Inti Illimani, Quilapayun.
(Case 33)
Styles Nueva Trova Cubana, Canto Progressive Rock: King Crimson, Magma, Yes,
Nuevo, Urban Folk. etc. Jazz: Miles Davis, Coltrane, Mingus, etc.
(Case 47) Classical: Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, etc.
(Case 88)
Musical form Marches for standard Band – Piano sonatinas from Mozart, Schubert, Chopin,
Hymns – Canon. (Case 14) etc. Ancient arias, opera arias, oratories. Lucía
Pop, Lily Pons, Roberta Peters, María Callas,
Joan Sutherland, Verónica Villarroel, Cristina
Gallardo Damas, etc. (Case 95)
Table 9.5 Percentage of composers named in the socio-cultural background, university education, and
teaching practices contexts
Composers Socio-cultural background University education Teaching practices
Violeta Parra (*) 41.3 7.3 32.1

J. S. Bach 23.9 28.4 6.4
W. A. Mozart 14.7 18.3 11
Antonio Vivaldi 9.2 6.4 5.5
G. Handel 4.6 9.2 0
L. Van Beethoven 0 13.8 12.8
Inti Illimani (*) 17.4 0 13.8
Illapu (*) 7.3 0 7.3
Víctor Jara (*) 14.7 0 33
The Beatles (*) 18.3 0 13.8
Note
* Relevant authors for folk and popular music in Chile.
144
Table 9.6 Patterns of musical genres according contexts of realization
Socio-cultural background University education Teaching practices
NA 0.9 6.4 14.7

Classical 0.9 16.5 4.6
Pop 0 0 2.8
Folk 0.9 0 10.1
Classical and Pop 14.7 11.9 5.5
Classical and Folk 10.1 32.1 3.7
Pop and Folk 12.8 0.9 27.5
Classical, Folk and Pop 59.6 32.1 31.2
The above table presents patterns that are predominant within each context, as well as the
variation of their trajectories throughout the three contexts. Within socio-cultural background
there are almost no pure categories, with the concentration of responses in the mixed classical,
pop and folk category being substantive, followed by groups composed of pairs of musical
genres. The presence of the classical genre in university education is natural, given the char
acteristics of those who enter the MTEP, and the need to establish a minimum basis for musical
language in their curricula. The presence of folk in combination with the classical genre is
interesting, as both are representative of principles of realisation of loyalty to tradition and
origin. The emergence of popular music in the context of teaching practices, both in association
with folk, as in the pattern of three genders is also interesting. This provides evidence of musical
omnivorism (Dyndahl et al. 2014; Fernández Rodríguez and Heikkilä 2011; Leguina et al.
2016; Peterson 1992, 2005; Peterson and Kern 1996; Peterson and Simkus 1992), related to the
socializing function that teachers exercise within the classroom, in terms of using and applying
repertoires from different backgrounds.2
Repertoires of university education

The responses related to repertoires performed within university education programs were
unexpected, particularly in terms of categorisation. A high proportion of ‘methods’ (56%) and/
or composers or musical works (44%) were observed. One possible explanation refers to the
prevalent use of methods or compilations of pieces as part of the music literacy training of music
teacher education programs in the first years of the program. Figure 9.1 shows the composers
and methods that were named.
The elementary nature of the named texts, as well as the use of such texts to answer re
pertoire questions, opens inquiry about the strength of the professional knowledge that teachers
possess, in particular regarding the criteria used to distinguish and name musical repertoires.
Repertoires in university education and training periods

The musical repertoires performed in university education were analysed using the division of
four historical periods described in the second part of the chapter. I sought to identify the
dynamics of the evolution of musical repertoires, applying principles of continuity, variation,
and change between periods. Figure 9.2 presents the evolution of the main patterns of musical
repertoires made in university education between 1969 and 2010.
145
Figure 9.1 Repertoires from university context
The data show different trajectories for each of the musical genres and their combinations,
some with marked changes between periods. The discrete presence of the classical genre during
the first two periods, and its progressive decline in the last two decades, is striking. Equally
interesting, the initial behaviour of the classical – pop combination stands out. Unlike
the classical genre, it does not decrease, but rises during the last period. Similar behaviour
emerges – albeit in the opposite direction – in the classical/folk, and classical/pop/ folk
combinations. Both patterns have trajectories with marked changes between periods, although
those changes are inverse of one another. It is also interesting to observe the force with which
Figure 9.2 Historical evolution of musical genres of university education
146
the classical/pop/folk pattern emerges between the 1980s and 1990s, and its decline at the
beginning of the last period, the latter coinciding with the rise of the classical/folk pattern.
Conclusions
The results of the study show relevant findings regarding musical repertoires as part of the
professional knowledge of music teachers. Throughout the data, it is possible to observe that the
musical repertoires of music teachers constitute a corpus of knowledge formed from a broad set
of works, authors, and genres, that come from both participants’ socio-cultural background and
university education. This delineation of choices and use is formed by the individual and social
development of the musical experience, representing, in a Bourdiesian paraphrase, a matter of
habitus (Bourdieu 1979). In that sense, we can understand this corpus of knowledge as a se
dimented history, which is incorporated through practices carried out over time, and highly
sensitive to the objective conditions offered by the contexts where such practices have been
developed.
Applying the concepts of Bernstein (1999), the musical repertoires of music teachers are
constructed from two reservoirs (socio-cultural background and university training), where the
nature of each of these reservoirs will determine the general form that individual musical re
pertoires will take upon each teacher. This nature depends on the objective conditions of the
reservoir of the social background to provide access to knowledge, and on the conditions that
university training subsequently establishes to equalize the differences in knowledge that come
from varying social backgrounds.
Analysis of the internal structure of the musical genres that make up the repertoires suggests
the combined presence of different types of discourse, with a predominance of horizontal
discourse. This is especially visible in the repertoires used in teaching practice, with a majority
presence of folk and pop, and a higher weight given to musical genres from teachers’ socio-
cultural background compared to those from university education. In both cases, the pre
dominance of horizontal discourse is inferred from the characteristics with which each musical
genre organizes knowledge (in this case of a segmented type), and the conditions under which
they were acquired in teachers’ socio-cultural background (mostly in informal and non-formal
learning contexts). Along with this, the heterogeneity of the answers, in terms of logical levels
and ways of naming repertoires, casts doubt on the capabilities of university education in the
formation of specialized languages typical of professional teaching knowledge.
On the other hand, the trajectories of musical genres in university education are changing,
opening different perspectives regarding the relationship between historical periods and uni
versity formation. Variations in trajectories can be linked to the historical evolution of socio-
cultural contexts, changes in university training policies, and the effects of these on the con
ditions of operation of MTEPs within each historical period.
Regardless of their sources, the general configuration of the music repertoires of music
teachers matches the characteristics of omnivorous behaviour. We consider, however, that this
behaviour is due to the objective conditions in which the musical repertoires were acquired,
and not to a principle of free choice of musical preferences. This also affects the presence of the
socio-cultural background closely linked to historical periods, which give meaning and social
legitimacy to these acquisitions. These elements account for the effect of the spirit of the times
within each period, influencing the culture, people, and their social relationships.
Following the above, I consider it relevant to modify beliefs and ways of acting regarding the
musical repertoires of music teachers. I suggest looking beyond the nature or functionality of
repertoires, instead focusing on the ability of repertoires to connect policies, practices, and
147
cultural principles. In other words, looking at repertoires as cultural devices, which, acting on
previous and current musical experiences, constitute mechanisms of connection between the
primary habitus and the training of music teachers. Such devices also allow us to establish links
between societal parameters outside and institutional elements inside, crossed by the Zeitgeist
effect, which dynamically shapes relations between history, society, and culture.
To consider the relevance of musical repertoires from a cultural perspective constitutes a
significant challenge for MTEPs in Chile since it implies assuming that the cultural dimension
of musical education (Mateiro and Westvall 2013) constitutes an essential element in the de
finition of what counts as knowledge teaching professional (Burnard 2013).
In that sense, university education constitutes the space for equalisation of differences in
access to knowledge, even beyond the individual configuration of students’ musical preferences,
cultural differences, and the potential impact of socio-cultural and historical contexts. It is
moreover a space that must substantially modify the complete educational trajectory of its
students, enriching and resignifying the musical experience lived towards the construction of a
solid base of professional teaching knowledge, capable of responding to the challenges of
learning and teaching in contexts of social and multicultural change.
1. What are the principles that guide the choice and performance of musical repertoires
within the MTEP?
2. How do MTEPs transfer the recognition and recontextualisation capabilities of musical
repertoires from informal and non-formal contexts to those applied at school by music
teachers?
Notes
1 Bernstein’s concept of restricted code (previous to the horizontal and vertical discourse) can help to
clear more yet the characteristics of folklore as a form of knowledge. According to Bernstein, ‘re
stricted code are more tied to a local social structure and have a reduced potential for change in
principles’ (Bernstein, 1971, p. 136). Characteristics that, precisely, to represent the internal structure
of folklore as knowledge form.
2 Currently, the needs of an international and multicultural music education, capable of working with
the repertoires of its students to achieve an inclusive music education (Karlsen 2012; Karlsen and
Westerlund 2010; Kertz-Welzel 2018; Southcott and Joseph 2010), require a teacher with critical
judgment and broad criteria to listen, analyze and apply repertoires from different backgrounds. In that
sense, the omnivorous condition is part of the primary conditions that the teacher must possess to help
the music education class promote an attitude of open listening towards the unknown repertoires or
culturally different (O’Flynn 2005; Graham, 2009).
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10
JUMP UP, WINE, AND WAVE
Soca music, social identity, and symbolic
boundaries in Grenada, West Indies
Danielle Sirek
Introduction
Connection with a particular social group is often made manifest through engagement with
specific cultural practices associated with the group. The transmission of such cultural practices is
also means by which symbolic boundaries – the lines that include some people and exclude others in
different social groups – are defined and operationalised (Lamont 1992). In this chapter, I explore
the relationship between music education, social group identity, and symbolic boundaries
(Lamont 1992). Through a case study of Grenadian soca music, I analyse the ways in which
certain understandings of inter-sonic and delineated meanings (Green 1988/2008) in music can
contribute to the formation of social groups. I examine how music education may generate and
reinscribe symbolic boundaries within and between groups; and how symbolic boundaries de-
fined by acts of musicking can impact on access to resources (Lamont 1992).
To explore social group identity, symbolic boundaries, and their relationship to music
education, it is helpful to draw from social identity theory. Social identity theory is an inter-
actionist social psychological theory of the relationship between self-concept, group processes,
and intergroup relations (Tajfel and Turner 1979). Social identity is linked to sense of self, well-
being, and behaviour, since individuals’ social identity defines how one will be perceived and
treated by others. Intergroup relations and comparisons are central to social identity theory:
group activities and actions fundamentally affect other groups, and individuals are concerned
with the status in and of their own group memberships. The lines that divide in-group/out-
group differentiations may be understood as symbolic boundaries (Lamont 1992).
Scholarship on symbolic boundaries is long established in sociology (see, for example,
writings by Karl Marx (1963), Émile Durkheim (1965), Mary Douglas (2003), and Max Weber
(1978)). Newer scholarship explores boundary-as-process: boundary crossing, boundary work,
shifting boundaries, and other active conceptualisations of boundary (Lamont and
Fournier 1992). For the purposes of this chapter, I will draw from Michèle Lamont’s (1992,
2000; Lamont and Fournier 1992; Lamont and Molnár 2002) work on symbolic boundaries,
which are defined as
conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorise objects, people, practices,

and even time and space … Symbolic boundaries also separate people into groups and
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Danielle Sirek
generate feelings of similarity and group membership (Epstein 1992, p. 232) …

They are an essential medium through which people acquire status and monopolize
resources.
(Lamont and Molnár 2002, p. 168)
Lamont and Molnár (2002) see symbolic boundaries as distinct from social boundaries: symbolic
boundaries exist at the intersubjective level, while social boundaries are groupings of in-
dividuals. They expand on social boundaries thus:
Social boundaries are objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal

access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social
opportunities. They are also revealed in stable behavioral patterns of association, as
manifested in connubiality and commensality. (p. 168)
Drawing from previous work (Lamont, 1992), Lamont and Molnár (2002) further note that
symbolic boundaries are ‘necessary but insufficient’ for the presence of social boundaries
(for problematisations of this conceptualisation, see Jarness (2013); (2017)).
Lamont (1992) identifies three types of symbolic boundaries: moral boundaries (moral
character; integrity); socioeconomic boundaries (wealth; professional success; power); and
cultural boundaries (tastes; manners; attitudes; education). When symbolic boundaries are
widely agreed upon and acknowledged, they shape social interactions and can result in social
exclusion and segregation. Examining the symbolic boundaries created by and maintained
through the teaching and learning of music may allow us to further understand the ways
in which music education contributes to social groups becoming more exclusive, acquiring
status, and dominating resources.
Soca music in Grenada

The air at Soca Monarch is ripe with excitement and sweat: a sense of corporeal
abandonment and visceral enjoyment as people jammed against one another jump up,
fete, and wine to the music, waving their flags and their rags, and responding with
cheers and shouts every time the artistes rev up the crowd by singing, ‘Anybody from
Trinidad? Anybody from St Vincent? Anybody from … GRENADA?’ The energy is
infectious and I find myself totally caught up in the ‘jump and wave’ of it all, singing
along to choruses I don’t know, pumping my rag to the beat, and cheering loudly
when the artistes call out to people from my city of St George’s. Here, I am a body,
with other bodies, moving to the beat, thinking of nothing except the music.
Fieldnotes Reflection on Soca Monarch
7 August 2010
Soca is the most popular musical style in Grenada. The genre grew out of a fusion of calypso
and East Indian rhythms by Ras Shorty I (Lord Shorty) in Trinidad and Tobago. While there
are several subgenres of soca music, including power soca, groovy soca, chutney soca, ragga
soca, and parang soca, Grenadian socas are usually power socas or groovy socas. The songs are in
verse-chorus form, and can be characterised by up-tempo melodies in 4/4 time on top of
sparsely textured, pre-recorded digital ‘riddims’ created by a producer. Riddims are fast,
driving, highly repetitive, and assembled using drum machines, synthesisers, sequencers, sam-
plers, digital multitracking, and autotune. Several soca ‘artistes’ may create different songs to the
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Jump up, wine, and wave
same riddim, using melodies that are usually fairly narrow in range, highly repetitive, and
rhythmically driving. Since soca artistes tend to put out new releases every year, the music often
seems disposable to less sympathetic listeners; it can also seem homogeneous, due to the highly
repetitive nature and multiple usages of a single riddim by different artistes. Soca music is party
music, and lyrics usually include themes of feting (partying), sexual arousal, and alcohol –
although lyrics are de-emphasised and also often difficult to discern because of soca’s digital,
amplified nature.
Soca songs are usually first released digitally on online platforms (e.g., YouTube,
SoundCloud). Most artistes time the release of new songs to take place before the start of the
Carnival season, so that they may be considered for participation in Soca Monarch, the music
competition described in the fieldnotes reflection above. Soca Monarch, which was first
launched nationally in 1994, is the highest attended and most profitable event during Carnival
in Grenada (Mitchell 2014). Those selected to perform in Soca Monarch will have their digital
riddim arranged for live band and backup singers. Bands usually consist of a horn section,
electric guitar and bass, percussion, and backup singers. The winner is ‘crowned’ publicly in
front of thousands of people, and also receives a significant sum of prize money, ranging be-
tween $30,000 XCD–$50,000 XCD ($11,000 USD–$18,000 USD).
Performance style of both the soca artiste, who is usually male, and the audience can be
characterised as hypersexualised and male-centric, and it is therefore important to consider the
body and the body’s movements as text (Harewood 2006). Heteronormative gender roles are
amplified through outward displays of machismo in soca performance. Soca singers often
perform in a physical stance that is slightly forward and bent at the waist toward the audience, or
upright and slightly leaning back. The artiste will bounce, jump, or run energetically on the
spot or across the stage, often with the knees high in the air. One hand will grip a handheld
mic while the other hand motions to the audience, waves back and forth, or motions to self. In
performance, male and female backup dancers will join the soca artistes onstage not only to
dance, but also to demonstrate what kind of moves the spectators should be doing. To facilitate
this, the artiste will sometimes stop singing completely during the performance, addressing the
audience directly and instructing them to move a certain way (e.g., jump, wine, wave) while
the band and backup singers vamp, and backup dancers will demonstrate as instructed or take a
break to listen. Movement both on- and offstage includes ‘jumping up,’ waving flags and rags,
and wining. To jump up is simultaneously to jump up and down and to party; this move is
frequently accompanied by waving a piece of material (e.g., cloth or flag) in the air in time to
the music, often at the instruction of the soca artiste to show support and loyalty
(Guilbault 2010).
Wining, inseparable from soca music, is a type of dance in which the waist is moved in a
circular motion, alone or between a man and a woman. In partner wining, the woman is
positioned in front of and facing away from the male partner, who may hold her around the
middle while she wines. These movements emphasise gendered displays of power, privileging
masculinity and simultaneously representing female identity as sexual object, which is some-
times seen as submissive and sometimes seen as powerful depending on the song, the style of
wining, and the spectator (for an extensive discussion on female identity and the female body in
soca music, see Harewood (2006)). Performances also frequently include what Jocelyn
Guilbault (2010) identifies as ‘public intimacies’ as a source of pleasure: the movement and
dance referred to above, but also call-and-response that invokes place and belongingness
(‘Anybody from Trinidad? Anybody from St Vincent? Anybody from Grenada?’). Such in-
timacies create, maintain, and strengthen the social group of Grenadians who engage in soca;
and make apparent in-group and out-group status and relationships through co-performance.
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Traditionally, soca music has been taught and learned informally by and amongst young
men. Burgeoning soca artistes will observe soca performances by listening to new releases
online, by attending competitions and concerts, or by watching music videos. Recently,
however, the Grenadian government and organisations such as the Spicemas Corporation have
facilitated soca music education initiatives to assist both new and seasoned artistes. This is often
done under the auspices of improving the ‘product’ of soca music in the hopes of generating
increased sponsorships and tourist spending. Some examples of soca teaching and learning
initiatives have included the Schools Soca Monarch competition (2010–2016); training sessions
for current and prospective soca judges; music education workshops for soca and other artistes
including the Cultural Exchange Workshop (2016), Ready for the Stage Initiative (2017), a
sound engineering workshop (2017), a mentorship program with Swiss producer Adrian Stern
(2018), and a vocal workshop with vocal coach Vanessa Briggs (2018), all under the auspices of
Music & Beyond and the Pure Grenada Music Festival; and soca performance opportunities
specifically designed to nurture and showcase both emerging and established talent, such as
Village Soca Monarch, Artiste Lounge, 10 to 10 Soca Fete, and Preeday.
Inter-sonic and delineated meaning in music

In her seminal text Music on deaf ears: musical meaning, ideology and education, Lucy Green (2008)
explores the nature of musical meaning and its relationship to social processes. Green proposes a
dialectical relationship of meanings in music, identifying two ideal1 types of meaning: ‘inter-
sonic’ (previously referred to as ‘inherent’) and ‘delineated’. Inter-sonic meanings are those that
exist in the sonic components of music – musical configurations such as pitch and rhythm
relationships, repetition, similarity and difference, and opening and closing – as experienced and
comprehended by the individual. In essence, inter-sonic meanings are the musical materials
and their functionality. They are, according to Green (2010, p. 24–25, emphasis in original),
not natural, essential, or ahistorical: on the contrary, they are artificial, historical, and
learnt … inherent [inter-sonic] meanings of music arise from the conventional inter-
relationships of musical materials, in so far as these interrelationships are perceived as
such in the mind of the listener.
Our understanding of inter-sonic meanings is therefore built on prior knowledge, experience,

and competence; and understood in context of each person’s history, culture, positionality, and
lens. Green further expands that the more familiarity one has with a certain musical style, the
more ‘affirmative’ one’s experiences will be. Contrastingly, the less familiar we are, the more
‘aggravated’ one will be.
Delineated meanings arise from the cultural associations the musicker ascribes to a type of
music. Delineated meanings may include, for example, related clothing and mannerisms,
personal memories, or attributed values of those who consume or create the music. Delineated
meanings are distinct but inseparable from inter-sonic meanings:
Delineation cannot exist on its own, for without inherent [inter-sonic] musical
meaning there would be no vessel through which to convey a delineation of any sort.
(Green 2008, p. 51)
Like inter-sonic meanings, delineated meanings are constructed and understood according to
the positionality and lens of the listener. If the listener feels the music positively expresses aspects
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of their identity or social values, they will have a positive response. However, if the listener
perceives the music as being representative of a social group with which they do not identify,
or of values antithetical to their personal ethos, the listener will have a negative response.
Both inter-sonic and delineated meanings are therefore socially mediated and understood
by the situated individual. Our affirming or aggravating responses to the inter-sonic
meanings in music are joined in multiplex ways to our positive or negative responses to
the delineated meanings in music, as we individually perceive them. Green suggests that
when the individual experiences affirmation in inter-sonic meaning along with positive
delineated meaning, ‘celebration’ occurs. However, when the individual experiences ag-
gravation to inter-sonic meaning and negative delineated meaning, they experience ‘alie-
nation’. When there is a contradiction of experience in inter-sonic and delineated meanings
(e.g., an affirming experience of inter-sonic meaning combined with a negative experience
of delineated meaning; or an aggravating experience of inter-sonic meaning combined with
a positive experience of delineated meaning), the individual experiences ‘ambiguity’.
Inter-sonic and delineated meanings in Grenadian soca music

Generally speaking, the group that creates and consumes soca music is the younger gen-
eration of Grenadians (i.e., under age 40). As I have suggested elsewhere, this group is
primarily comprised of Grenadians who were very young or born after the Grenada re-
volution of 1979 and subsequent American invasion of 1983 (Sirek 2018). While a gen-
erational divide in soca musicking practices is apparent, the older and younger generational
groups are neither homogenous nor fixed: many older Grenadians participate in soca mu-
sicking, while many younger Grenadians reject it. The moral, cultural, and socioeconomic
factors that override these age-based social groups articulate the symbolic boundaries be-
tween soca lovers and those who dislike soca. An analysis of inter-sonic and delineated
meaning in soca music provides insights into the social group of soca lovers; and the ways in
which soca music education initiatives might contribute to the formation of symbolic
boundaries between social groups.
To illustrate inter-sonic and delineated meanings in soca music, and their relationship to
people in Grenada, I offer a brief case study (Stake 1995). This case study builds upon earlier
ethnographic research on the relationship between music and identity in Grenada (Sirek 2013).
The data includes field notes and interview transcriptions previously collected during fieldwork
in 2010–2011; soca songs produced between 2011 and 2018; videos of soca music performances
released online on public Grenadian YouTube channels including 1socaholic, Greenzking
Promoz, NOW Grenada, and the Grenada Broadcasting Network; press releases featuring soca
music or soca music education on NOW Grenada, Grenada Broadcasting Network, Pure
Grenada Music Festival, Spicemas Corporation, Grenada Information Service, and Government
of Grenada websites; and posts about soca music on public social media.
Data were examined for themes including ‘soca’, ‘music education’, ‘workshop’, ‘clinic’,
‘school’, ‘fete’, and ‘initiative’, and analysed using a constructivist approach. In constructivist
approaches to data analysis, social phenomena are seen as being in a constant state of production
and revision; and guided by social interactions. Coupled with this is a subjective and transac-
tional epistemology (Guba and Lincoln 1998). While a full exploration of my positionality as a
researcher who identifies as white, middle class, heterosexual, and female is outside the scope of
this chapter, this was constantly considered during data collection, analysis, and writing. A
detailed examination of my positionality in the context of my research on Grenada can be
found in previous writing (Sirek 2013, 2016).
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Danielle Sirek
Inter-sonic meanings in soca music, as perceived by people in Grenada, may include the
expectable verse-chorus form; the driving, repetitive rhythms similar to those found in calypso
and East Indian-influenced Caribbean music; specific sounds like the digitised conch shell;
specific rhythmic patterns or riddims; and the nuances of the timbral and vocal quality of the
artistes. The delineated meanings in soca music may include corporeal pleasure; freedom in
(hetero)sexuality; power in masculine experience; cultural associations of Grenadian identity;
conceptualisations of fetes (parties/concerts); and representation of Grenada and Grenadian
culture to the world.
Inter-sonic and delineated meanings can be illustrated through an analysis of two soca
songs, ‘More Fete’ by Soca Ray and ‘Burst de Wood’ by Kennedy, which were both set to the
‘Problem Wine’ riddim by producer Doggy in 2013. Although the songs are set to the same
riddim, they differ both in style and in lyrical content:
Is more drinks, is more fete What a problem!
Is more drinks, is more fete Havin’ ah wood burst, ah, eh!
I met some women in Grenville
We talkin’ ‘bout fete They havin’ problem
And we can’t say how to get They say that they want to light they
Plenty food an’ plenty drinks, wood
Soca music jammin’ still People, nobody helpin’ them
Sexy girl winin’ down low, They say they are wood to burst
Man no easin’ up at all. And they need some help …
Mr Bacchanal
Keep the liquor flowin’ The woman want me to burn de wood.
We don’t have behaviour So I burn de wood!
Inside, that is fete tonight! Oh, oh, oh, I burst de wood.
I burst de wood!
Soca Ray
‘More Fete’ Kennedy
‘Burst de Wood’
Soca music emphasises masculine experience, and this can be seen clearly in the two songs
above. The first song, ‘More Fete’ by Soca Ray, is relatively overt in its lyrical meaning, which
assures the listener that no one has to worry about anything, for there is ‘plenty food and plenty
drinks’, and evidently, plenty of ‘sexy girls’ willing to wine. The second song, ‘Burst de Wood’
by Kennedy, makes use of more enigmatic language in its message of sexual freedom. ‘Burst de
Wood’, which employs double entendre (a common compositional device in calypso, and
also – though less so – in soca), tells the story of a man who travels to Grenville, the second-
largest city in Grenada. Upon arrival, the man finds that all the women are left wanting, since
no man will help them ‘light they wood’ (sexual arousal). The singer follows when each of
the women in turn beckons him ‘up to de hills,’ and obliges when they beseech him to ‘burn de
wood’ (to have sexual intercourse). The singer finishes each verse by proclaiming that he ‘burst
de wood’ (ejaculation). Like ‘More Fete,’ ‘Burst de Wood’ underscores male power, freedom,
and pleasure in male heterosexual experience.
While there is not space in this chapter for a full musical analysis, I will briefly outline
the musical interrelationships of both songs that can contribute to understandings of inter-
sonic meaning in soca. The Problem Wine riddim features synthesised keyboard, drum
machine, and digital effects. The continuously repeating musical phrase sets up expectation
158
and satisfaction; and similarity of rhythmic devices to other soca and calypso songs
(backbeat and syncopation) provides familiarity. In both socas, the melody line is simple,
static, and also extremely repetitive: not only do individual musical lines repeat, but also
several consecutive words are often sung on the same pitch within musical phrases. Each of
the soca artistes’ voices has been highly digitally altered with autotune and other effects.
The voice is also sometimes overlaid on top of itself, simultaneously providing the melody
as well as vocal interjections such as ‘yeah’ or ‘ay ya ya’. This overlaying can contribute to a
certain perception of presence or distance of the voice. Repetition, syncopation, over-
laying, and digitisation are idiomatic in soca music and can elicit an entrancing effect for
the listener.
Delineated meaning in these two soca songs might include associations of freedom and
pleasure; male identity; Caribbean identity; and globalisation. Some of these delineated
meanings are readily seen in the lyrical content above: for example, in the first song
Soca Ray sings about feting (‘He talkin’ ‘bout fete!’); desirable inebriation (‘Mr
Bacchanal/Keep the liquor flowin’’); sensual dance moves, and female promiscuity (‘Sexy
girl winin’ down low/Man no easin’ up at all’); and disregard for ‘acceptable’ or ‘moral’
behaviour (‘We don’t have behaviour’). Lyrical content in the second song by Kennedy
includes themes of male-centric sexual pleasure, prowess, and power. Such delineations
illustrate moral and cultural symbolic boundaries between soca lovers and those who
dislike soca.
Symbolic boundaries enacted by soca music

While most young people respond to soca music with what Green (2008) would identify as
celebration, many in the older generation of Grenadians experience aggravation. Raina,2 an older
informant, dismissed soca, saying:
No substantial lyrics, you must have your flag and your rag, wave … To me, it’s
eroding the real calypso.
For Raina and others who experience aggravation to soca, inter-sonic meanings in soca music
may broadly be heard and understood as ‘noise’, as unbearably repetitive, as rhythmically
frenzied, hyper-digitised, and ‘fake’. Raina’s observation also provides commentary on the
perceived replacement of traditional Grenadian cultural practices with soca music. This cultural
symbolic boundary results in a rejection of soca as ‘not traditional’ or ‘not authentic Grenadian
culture’ (for more on this, see Sirek 2018).
Delineated meaning may include associations of soca lovers with promiscuity, irresponsi-
bility; immorality; and misogyny, as articulated in this report on engaging Caribbean youth at
risk, prepared by scholars at the University of the West Indies:
[Soca] is fast paced and driven by a frenetic energy that is at the same time mindless,
yet controlling of the emotions and energy of the crowd. [Themes] tend to be rather
repetitive, associated with sexual prowess and pushing sexual boundaries on stage or
off, with issues of tabanca [heartbreak] and complaints about the lack of control over
one’s woman … We need to examine the relationship between the current musical
culture of youth and its relationship to violence and criminality and its potential for
cooptation by the seedier elements of society that draw young impressionable minds.
(Ryan et al. 2013, pp. 47–48)
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Danielle Sirek
This quote makes explicit moral (‘violence and criminality’) and cultural (identification of
specific youth musical culture and attitudes) symbolic boundaries between out-group and
in-group membership of soca lovers. According to the authors of this document, youth
who engage with soca music are consumed by it, mindless and unable to control them-
selves. Such rhetoric infantilises soca lovers, and implies a link between soca and immoral
decision-making, while simultaneously suggesting that it is a problem to be ‘fixed’ by the
older generation.
Divisions between younger and older generations, and like or dislike of soca music, are not
always clear-cut, however. Tamara and Jadyn, both younger generation Seventh Day
Adventists, questioned where their personal identities fit in the Grenadian context, and whether
soca music and culture is incongruent with their religious beliefs. They reference the lyrical
content, the musical materials, and the movement that is integral to soca music:
Tamara: In our culture—at least when I say ‘our culture’, it’s like a double culture, the
‘Grenadian’ culture plus the ‘[Seventh Day] Adventists in Grenada’ culture—calypso
and soca and those rhythms associated with it, are not seen in a positive way, based on
my experiences. It’s kind of like, frowned upon … It’s never just about the
lyrics—music is never just about the lyrics! Because I can be saying something, and
you know have no beat to it, no music, then it doesn’t make a difference, it doesn’t
reach you.
Jadyn: I believe that [music] should be about praise. And if when you’re praising, your
hips are moving in ways that will distract from the message, it can’t be praise.
Tamara and Jadyn may experience enjoyment from the inter-sonic meanings in soca music, but
soca’s delineated meanings are in conflict with their religious identity and beliefs, resulting in
cultural and moral symbolic boundaries.
Older generation informant Gerald felt that any moral or cultural symbolic boundary that
may exist between soca lovers and those who dislike soca can (and perhaps should) be over-
ridden or expanded by other cultural factors:
[Soca provides] an opportunity to dance, to jump, to wine—because we’re not

shy to wine! That’s a part of our culture. And that, too, is a challenge, because you
have persons who, and I wouldn’t call them ‘conservatives,’ really, I would even
say they are hypocrites, because they would object to the wining of a child,
wining of persons at Carnival Monday and Tuesday, but if you look at the Big
Drum [traditional] dance, it’s about the hips. It’s about the hips. So our tradition
about utilizing that part of our bodies to respond to music is there, it’s who we
are, as a people.
Gerald, who was affiliated with the Spicemas Corporation (formerly Grenada Carnival
Committee), has a vested interest in the success of soca music and of events like Soca Monarch.
Here, he recontextualises wining as using the body as a means of heralding a sense of self and a
sense of collectivity in African-based movement (the Big Drum, a ritual on Carriacou which is
comprised of ‘nation dances’ that display different moves based on and associated with one’s real
or assumed African ancestry). In this way, he ostensibly attempts to place soca and its values in a
context that is more palatable for those who find it objectionable – the cultural and the
160
socioeconomic aspects supersede the perceived moral symbolic boundary. Gerald’s views on
soca open questions about the ways in which symbolic boundaries might shift, become un-
stable, or disappear completely.
Boundaries, boundary crossing, and music education

Soca music is positively associated with globalisation and the global market; and considerable
financial profit is possible for successful soca artists. Germaine, a younger informant, said:
We believe in globalisation and integration and this and that … [soca] shows us that
we are one step closer to becoming in a sense, one market. One step closer to be-
coming further developed, because if we weren’t developed, then we wouldn’t have
heard this music, because there was no way to get this music. So, in a sense hearing
this music tells us that we are becoming more and more developed.
There has recently been a significant increase in soca teaching, learning, and performance in-
itiatives in Grenada in spite of the moral and cultural symbolic boundaries between soca lovers
and those who dislike soca.. An examination of such initiatives may illuminate why and how
moral and cultural symbolic boundaries are shifted or temporarily dismantled. To illustrate this,
I offer a brief analysis of Schools Soca Monarch. Schools Soca Monarch (2010–2016), originally
created for secondary school students through the Ministry of Education, began as part of a
UNESCO-sponsored Carnival Arts Program in 2010, and transitioned to a local initiative in
2011. It later expanded to include elementary students (since 2014) and college students (for the
2016 competition). To promote and prepare for the Schools Soca Monarch competition, fa-
cilitators went into secondary schools to run clinics on writing and performing soca music.
Prizes were offered for the winners and their representative schools, ranging from $3000 XCD
to $10,000 XCD ($1100 USD–$3700 USD).
As described, the moral and cultural symbolic boundaries between those who participate in
soca musicking and those who do not are often inflected by age and religious background.
Many older, more conservative Grenadians articulated to me that soca represents a rejection of
morality, faith, and responsibility, and is an inappropriate and inaccurate representation of
Grenadian culture – and that it has no place in schools or with children. However, soca music
performance has the potential for significant financial gain; and soca music education has the
capacity to increase that gain. This economic potential causes the moral and cultural symbolic
boundaries to shift, or temporarily become dismantled.
The Grenada Information Service – a department of the Office of the Prime Minister – has
described such educational initiatives as ‘fall[ing] in line with the Ministry’s thrust to groom the
young ones in participating in cultural events’ (GIS News Hour, 2011), indicating the role of
soca music education in Grenada’s economic prosperity. Specifically referencing the Schools
Soca Monarch initiative, Senator Arley Gill said in a press release: ‘We see this as an extremely
important part of the season, of the festival [Carnival] … Soca is a new trend in music, and we
believe we need to do something to facilitate that.’ (GIS News Hour, 2011). Every year, there
are dozens of advertised soca concerts and fetes across Grenada), in spite of Grenada’s small
population. Soca almost always takes precedence on radio airplay, in headlining acts, and in
concert spaces (for an explicit example of this, see Sylvester (2017)). The capacity for financial
gain and fame means that while moral and cultural symbolic boundaries exist between soca
lovers and those who dislike soca, soca lovers control assets and dominate cultural resources –
and this can result in a shifting or disintegrating of boundaries.
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Danielle Sirek
Conclusion
Music education, the formal or informal learning and cultivation of expertise in a musical
cultural practice, is a means by which social groups can be produced and reproduced
(Green 2012). Examining the symbolic boundaries that are created, reinscribed, or shifted by
the teaching and learning of music may allow us to further understand the ways in which music
education contributes to social groups distinguishing themselves, acquiring status, and dom-
inating resources. Symbolic boundaries can map how musical knowledge is transmitted to
distinct social groups; and make perceptible who has control over access and transmission in
formal and informal music education.
1. In what ways might symbolic boundaries intersect with inequity? Does music education
play a role in creating and maintaining inequity amongst different social groups?
2. What are some potential symbolic boundaries to participating in classroom music in your
own context?
Notes
1. Though Green sets these up as ‘ideals’, she notes that the individual experiences responses to inherent
and delineated meaning in various degrees.
2. All names have been changed to pseudonyms.
References
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Epstein, C., 1992. Tinker-bells and pinups: the construction and reconstruction of gender boundaries at
work. In: Lamont, M., Fournier, M. (eds.), Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of
Inequality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 232–256.
GIS News Hour, 2011. News report, Grenada Information Service, St George’s, 12 May, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=eufvkpLLkxM&feature= uploademail.
Green, L., 2008. Music on Deaf Ears: Musical Meaning, Ideology, and Education. Manchester University Press,
Manchester.
Green, L., 2010. Research in the sociology of music education: some introductory concepts. In: Wright,
R. (Ed.), Sociology and Music Education. Ashgate, Surrey, pp. 21–34.
Green, L., 2012. Music education, cultural capital, and social group identity. In: Clayton, M., Herbert, T.,
Middleton, R. (Eds.), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. second ed.), Routledge, New
York, pp. 206–216.
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Y.S. (Eds.), The Landscape of Qualitative Research. Sage, Thousand Oaks, pp. 105–117.
Guilbault, J., 2010. Music, politics, and pleasure: live soca in Trinidad. Small Axe vol. 31, 16–29.
Harewood, S., 2006. Transnational soca performances, gendered re-narrations of Caribbean nationalism.
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Jarness, V., 2013. Class, Status, Closure: The Petropolis and Cultural Life. University of Bergen, Bergen.
Jarness, V., 2017. Cultural vs economic capital: symbolic boundaries within the middle class. Sociology vol.
51 (no. 2), 357–373.
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Ryan, S., Rampersad, I., Bernard, L., Mohammed, P., Thorpe, M., 2013. The influence of popular music
culture on crime. No Time to Quit: Engaging Youth at Risk – Executive Report of the Committee on
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Sirek, D., 2013. Musicking and identity in Grenada: stories of transmission, remembering, and loss.
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Sirek, D., 2016. Providing contexts for understanding musical narratives of power in the classroom: music,
politics, and power in Grenada, West Indies. Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education vol. 15 (no.
3), 151–179.
Sirek, D., 2018. ‘Until I die, I will sing my calypso song’: calypso, soca, and music education across a
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163
PART II
Capital, Class, Status and Social

Reproduction
INTRODUCTION
Geir Johansen
Studying the role and function of music in society in all its comprehensiveness, invites a wide
definition of music education. This is because no relationship between music and human
beings, as, for example, described within the sociology of music, is conceivable without re-
cognising that it, by nature and necessity, presupposes a kind of learning. For example, de-
veloping a habit of not listening to background music in shopping malls represents a kind of
learning about how to relate to music in a social context. Moreover, acquiring knowledge
about the cultural codes required for achieving full membership (Wenger 1998) within the
music audience community of western, classical music, jazz, or world music also represents a
kind of musical learning. Processes of learning in, of, and about music lay at the base of how
music can function negatively as well as positively (Hesmondhalgh 2008; Philpott 2012), fosters
patriotism and nationalism (Hebert and Kretz-Welzel 2012), enables or hampers diversity
(Westerlund and Karlsen, 2020), maintains or counters coloniality (Bradley 2012), and inter-
culturality (Westerlund et al. 2020) as well as proves a lot of other social functions. It follows that
music education can be seen to include not only classroom music or informal music learning
among adolescents in a garage band, but also the learning of music and ways in which to relate to
it, across various social contexts. This takes place at all levels from before kindergarten to after
higher music education, inside and outside formal institutions, and throughout the whole human
life. Such a comprehensive scope of music education enables us to see how society in all its
nuances and levels is reciprocally related to music education in a plethora of fashions.
Setting out to systematically observe the social and societal conditions and consequences
of music education makes it necessary to analytically distinguish between three different ap-
proaches, in order to see how they fit in with each other at the end of the day. The first
concerns the relationship between music education and society, by which the social con-
sequences of music education can be studied without further references to sociology. Still, it can
provide significant empirical information for further elaborations within the second and third
approach. The second constitutes the relationship between music education and sociology,
enabling systematical, theoretically reflected studies of the first (Wright 2010). Thirdly, studying
this subject area may also awake an interest in the potential for arriving at fruitful insights
embedded in the scholarship on the sociology of education (Sadovnik 2007).
The ways in which music education and society relate to each other also substantiates a
notion that music education contributes in the continuous, dynamic processes of shaping and
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reshaping society. This is one, among several possible angles, that readers can adopt when
approaching the chapters in section II of this volume. Being pointed out early by seminal
educational philosophers such as John Dewey (1897), sociologists such as Emile Durkheim
(1956/2007) and later on within the sociology of education (Apple 2007, 2011), it is hardly
fruitful to think that the idea that education contributes to shaping society includes all kinds of
education except music education. On the contrary, the chapters of section II can be seen to
describe a wide variety of ways in which to address the social and societal responsibility of music
education and its educators in this respect. The authors attend to this social responsibility by
taking an array of theoretical perspectives as their points of departure. These vary from basic
theories on the ways people live together in societies and cultures along with the dynamic
relationships included, such as for example the theoretical worlds of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel
Foucault, or Basil Bernstein, to theory and research addressing particular issues such as for
example socialisation and subjectification, social imaginaries and marketisation, as well as
technical and ritual rationality. Offering critical descriptions of the societal and cultural con-
ditions of their local environments as well as connecting them with social macro perspectives,
the authors discuss the ways in which this happens by social reproduction and symbolic violence
(Bourdieu and Passeron 1990) as well as human agency (Barnes 2000). Running through it all
is an explicit as well as implicit description of hegemonic discourses and relationships revealing
not only the supremacy of western art music but also pointing out how new hierarchies emerge
between other kinds of music when accepted within institutions of music education. It also
enlightens how the rhetoric of the prevailing, hegemonic discourses reflects the symbolic
violence they impose on the field of education in general as well as in music. Thereby they
reveal a need for struggling about and capturing the definition power, in most cases from the
hegemonic marketisation discourse of education and its connected educational philosophy.
References
Apple, M.W., 2007. Whose markets, whose knowledge? In: Sadovnik, A.R. (Ed.), Sociology of Education.
A Critical Reader. Routledge, New York, pp. 177–193.
Apple, M.W., 2011. Can Education Change Society? Routledge, New York.
Barnes, B., 2000. Understanding Agency. Social Theory and Responsible Action. Sage, London.
Bradley, D., 2012. Good for what, good for whom? Decolonizing music education philosophies. In:
Bowman, W., Frega, A.L. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education. Oxford
Dewey, J., 1897. My pedagogic creed. School Journal vol. 54 ( January), 77–80.
Durkheim, E., 1956/2007. On education and society. In: Sadovnik, A. (Ed.), Sociology of Education.
A Critical Reader. Routledge, New York, pp. 23–35.
Hebert, D.G., Kretz-Welzel, A., 2012. Patriotism and Nationalism in Music Education. Ashgate, Farnham.
Hesmondhalgh, D., 2008. Towards a critical understanding of music, emotion and self-identity.
Consumption, Markets and Culture vol. 11 (no. 4), 329–343.
Philpott, C., 2012. The justification for music in the curriculum. Music can be bad for you. In: Philpott, C.,
Spruce, G. (Eds.), Debates in Music Teaching. Routledge, London, pp. 48–63.
Sadovnik, A. (Ed.), 2007. Sociology of Education. A Critical Reader. Routledge, New York.
Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Westerlund, H., Karlsen, S., 2020. Epilogue: music teacher education engaging with the politics of
diversity. In: Westerlund, H., Karlsen, S., Partti, H. (Eds.), Visions for Intercultural Music Teacher
Education. Springer, Doordrecht, pp. 215–219.
Westerlund, H., Karlsen, S., Partti, H. (Eds.), 2020. Visions for Intercultural Music Teacher Education.
Springer, Doordrecht.
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11
MUSIC EDUCATION AS
QUALIFICATION,
SOCIALISATION, AND
SUBJECTIFICATION?
Petter Dyndahl
Introduction
The Dutch educational philosopher Gert Biesta has been exceedingly influential in relation to
educational thinking in the last decade. In this chapter, I will first outline his multi-
dimensional concept of education. I will then consider the consequences this may have for
music education, among other things, by looking into some examples of Biesta-inspired
application. This will be followed by a critical discussion of the philosophical foundations of
Biesta’s thinking, with particular emphasis on Rancière’s contribution. In the conclusion,
I will attempt to discuss in greater depth the conditions and/or modifications that may serve
as points of departure for the multidimensional concept in relation to the sociology of music
education. I will also involve various contrasting theories and research, such as the research
conducted on musical gentrification in recent years, in the discussion.
Biesta’s multidimensional concept of education

In Good Education in an Age of Measurement, Biesta outlines the parameters he views as crucial to
ongoing debates about the purposes of education (2010, p. 19). Biesta suggests that education
should fulfil three different but interrelated functions, which he refers to as qualification,
socialisation, and subjectification.
As a point of departure, Biesta points out that qualification is one of the major functions of
organised education. According to the role education plays in providing students with
knowledge and skills that prepare them for working life, the qualification function ‘constitutes
an important rationale for having state-funded education in the first place’ (Biesta 2010, p. 20).
Biesta, however, underlines that the importance of qualification is not limited to the student’s
future workplace or to the economic development and growth of society. Qualification also
provides students with knowledge, skills, and dispositions that might be important for other
aspects of life. In this context, social and cultural features, such as the knowledge and skills
needed for citizenship and political and cultural literacy, may be highlighted.
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Petter Dyndahl
With the latter aspects of qualification, Biesta creates a transition to another important
function of education – namely, socialisation. In a general sociological sense, socialisation refers
to processes of internalisation in relation to the norms and values of society. When he describes
socialisation as a function of education, Biesta draws attention to ‘the many ways in which,
through education, we become part of particular social, cultural and political “orders”’ (Biesta
2010). The concept of order is significant for Biesta’s further reasoning about the importance of
education – I will return to it several times throughout the chapter. Currently, the importance
of socialisation can be linked to the processes through which individuals become integrated into
existing ways of doing and being at different levels of society. One aspect of the socialisation
function constitutes the explicit goals and aims of educational programmes and practices,
whether these are introducing apprentices into specific professional communities or passing on
certain norms, values, cultural beliefs, and traditions. But regardless of such aims, Biesta claims
that any type of education will always have a socialising function and thus play a crucial role in
the continuation of culture and tradition – whether intentional or not and regardless of whether
it concerns desirable or undesirable aspects of the tradition and culture in question.
Moreover, in addition to the predominantly societal and sociocultural functions presented
above, Biesta strongly believes that education can – and should – play a decisive role in an
individual’s process of becoming a subject. He refers to this as subjectification. In order to
understand what subjectification is concerned with, Biesta contrasts it with certain aspects of
socialisation:
[Subjectification] is precisely not about the insertion of “newcomers” into existing

orders, but about ways of being that hint at independence from such orders,
ways of being in which the individual is not simply a “specimen” of a more
encompassing order.
(Biesta 2010, p. 21, emphasis in original)
In this, we can sense a strong orientation towards freedom from the prevailing orders that are
externally imposed on the individual. However, Biesta’s concept of freedom is more com-
plicated than merely doing what one wants to do:
I have rather made the case for a “difficult” notion of freedom, one where my
freedom to act, that is, to bring my beginnings into the world, is always connected
with the freedom of others to take the initiative, to bring their beginnings into the
world as well, so that the impossibility to remain “unique masters” of what we do
(Arendt 1958, 244) is the very condition under which our beginnings can come into
the world.
(Biesta 2010, p. 129)
Arendt’s (1958) concept of uniqueness is important for how we understand ourselves in relation
to others by creating networks of actions and relationships, where we as individuals can relate
directly without the intermediary of things or matter. In addition to this concept, Biesta em-
ploys Levinas’s (1985) philosophical ethics in a deeper reflection on uniqueness. The central
viewpoint Biesta derives from this is that qualification and socialisation can provide us with a
voice that allows us ‘to speak as representatives of particular communities, traditions, discourses,
practices and so on’ (Biesta 2010, p. 87). It is important to note, however, that this is not the
same as to speak with one’s own voice or ‘to speak outside of the confines of rational com-
munities’ (Biesta 2010). According to Biesta, the former way of speaking can never reach our
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Qualification, socialisation, and subjectification?
uniqueness. In this capacity, he is more interested in the situations where the main concern is
not so much about what one says, but rather that one says something and especially who says
something. These are situations in which the subject is ‘singled out’ (Biesta 2010, p. 88) in the
sense that it cannot be replaced by anyone else; it has to respond in its own unique way (Biesta
2010, p. 89). Biesta argues that this
uniqueness is constituted by a responsibility we cannot evade – or only at the price

of being irresponsible – which is precisely what Levinas had in mind when he wrote
that responsibility is “the essential, primary and fundamental structure of sub-
jectivity” (Levinas 1985, 95). It is in those situations that our uniqueness matters
and it is therefore in those situations – neither before nor after – that we can be said
to be constituted as unique, singular subjects rather than as specimens of a more
encompassing order.
(Biesta 2010, p. 89)
By recontextualising and implementing these philosophical ideas in educational thinking, Biesta

affirms that ‘any education worthy of its name should always contribute to processes of sub-
jectification that allow those educated to become more autonomous and independent in their
thinking and acting’ (Biesta 2010, p. 21, emphasis in original). It is quite clear from this that the
‘matters’ he believes students should become autonomous and independent from are the social,
cultural, and political orders enacted by socialisation and qualification. Within today’s educa-
tional realities, however, Biesta claims that subjectification is overshadowed by the dominant
qualification and socialisation dimensions, which implies that he wants to highlight the domain
of subjectification in particular. Thus, within his authorship, he presents the consistent
argument for postulating subjectification as the key function of education, since
we live in an age in which discussions about education seem to be dominated by the

measurement of educational outcomes and that these measurements play an influential
role in educational policy and, through this, also in educational practice. The danger
of this situation is that we end up valuing what is measured, rather than that we engage
in measurements of what we value. It is the latter, however, that should ultimately
inform our decisions about the direction of education. This is why I have argued for
the need to engage with the question as to what constitutes good education, rather
than, for example, effective education.
In addition, Biesta recognises the complexity of the situation when he argues that the different
dimensions of education require different rationales, in the same way that he argues that
while synergy is possible, there is also potential for conflict between the three di-
mensions, particularly, so I wish to suggest, between the qualification and socialization
dimensions on the one hand and the subjectification dimension on the other.
(Biesta 2010, p. 22)
Furthermore, he is fully aware of his adoption of a normative standpoint when stating that
education becomes ‘uneducational’ when it only focuses on socialisation ‘and has no interest
in human freedom, and this is what lies behind my insistence on the importance of the
subjectification dimension of education’ (Biesta 2010, p. 75).
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Petter Dyndahl
By persisting with the contradiction between qualification and socialisation on one hand and
subjectification on the other, Biesta installs – deliberately or not – a variant of the fundamental
sociological dichotomy between structure and agency in his education concept. But still,
notwithstanding this conflictual division, Biesta maintains that in order to determine the dif-
ferent functions and purposes of education in a comprehensive context, one must acknowledge
that the contradiction constitutes a composite issue, according to which the three dimensions
should not be seen as entirely separate. He argues for the opposite:
The three functions of education can therefore best be represented in the form of a
Venn diagram, i.e. as three partly overlapping areas, and the more interesting and
important questions are actually about the intersections between the areas rather than
the individual areas per se.
(Biesta 2010, p. 22)
This seems to be a promising strategy, not just for education itself, but also for the sociological
approach to educational research and theory. In the next section, I will take a closer look at
whether and, if so, how, Biesta’s concept of education has found its way into the thinking
surrounding music education. Of particular interest is how the relationships and potential
conflicts between the threefold functions are addressed.
Biesta’s impact on (and potential for) music education

To some extent, Biesta’s thinking is reflected in the contemporary scholarship of music edu-
cation, in which one can find an increasing amount of references to his publications. However,
it is my impression that often rather short and occasionally arbitrary excerpts from Biesta’s
writing are set to act as affirmations and incantations or aphorisms and maxims in academic texts
relating to music education. What can be said in general is that these statements often mark a
heartfelt scepticism against instrumentalist music education, prevailing regimes of measurement,
etc. Thus, these statements express an idealistic wish to (re-)turn music education in a more
humanistic and perhaps existential direction.
Narita and Azevedo (2016) are among just some music education researchers who actually
refer to and discuss in some depth all three aspects of Biesta’s education concept. They present
and discuss informal and non-formal musical practices found at the Universidade de Brasília in
Brazil. An important objective for the authors is a critical exploration of how informal and non-
formal musical activities, seen as collaborative learning practices, can counteract neoliberal
values in today’s music education. In this effort, they share Biesta’s (2015a, 2015b) fear that the
domain of qualification can be over-emphasised in a neoliberal context, thus leading to the
neglect of other functions of education, giving teachers who tend to mainly teach to the test as
examples of this. In what appears to be based on Biesta’s (2015b) polemic against Hattie (2008),
wherein Biesta claims that Hattie is ‘reinforcing a one-dimensional view of education in which
only qualification seems to count’ (Biesta 2015b, p. 80), Narita and Azavedo draw a decisive
line between qualification on one hand and socialisation and subjectification on the other. This
is slightly surprising given that Biesta (2010, p. 22, as quoted above) makes it clear that the
conflict comprises qualification and socialisation against subjectification.
Interestingly, however, Narita and Azevedo (2016) identify the three functions (qualifica-
tion, socialisation, and subjectification) in the learning and teaching activities related to music at
the institution they investigate. Building on the informal learning approach developed by Green
(2002, 2008), as well as its adaption to a Canadian context by Wright (2014), they argue that
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this pedagogy addresses all the aforementioned domains in a way that highlights their inter-
dependence. Qualification is achieved through the acquisition of musical skills, as students
manage to play by ear, make their own versions of songs, and comprehend the sonic properties
of music. Socialisation is, among other things, a function of musicking in groups. Narita and
Azevedo are careful, however, to emphasise that working with one’s classmates does not mean
that student groupings are free from power relations that need to be negotiated as part of the
socialisation process. They also highlight that subjectification becomes mobilised when students
become aware of their potential as musicians, when they define their learning goals and when
they direct their skills and knowledge towards achieving them. This is a much-needed, down-
to-earth, and tangible description of what subjectification may be about in music education.
Of course, there are other researchers who take Biesta’s educational philosophy extremely
seriously when engaging in music education issues. In her seminal article ‘The Fourth
Sociology and Music Education: Towards a Sociology of Integration,’ Wright (2014) reflects
on Biesta’s (2010) concept of an alternative pedagogy – a pedagogy of interruption – when
launching the idea of a new stage in the sociology of music education. She describes this new
stage as an integrated sociological approach to situations and moments of music education that
permit examinations of ways in which presumptions of equality as well as of democracy and
inclusion may be enacted. As with Narita and Azevedo, Wright focuses on informal music
education. From this perspective, she promotes the importance of
pedagogies that allow interruption of the rational community, bringing students

into proximity, permitting students and teachers moments where order and
content are open, such as informal learning, foreground opportunities for agency
of individual students.
(Wright 2014, p. 26)
Clearly inspired by Biesta, Wright elaborates on this by holding up informal music education as
a pedagogy that might enable teachers and students to enter into new relationships, through
which they should be able to ‘speak with new unique voices; voices generated under the prime
condition of proximity, engendering or allowing equality, attentiveness, responsiveness, re-
sponsibility, uniqueness, and action’ (Wright 2014, p. 33).
In addition to Biesta and his sources of inspiration – especially Rancière, as well as Arendt and
Levinas – Wright introduces Bernstein (1990) and his concept of pedagogic discourse. According
to Bernstein (2000), discursive gaps are pedagogical moments that might occur when knowledge is
temporarily in transition from one level of society to another, and thus may allow ‘new discourse
to emerge and to offer opportunities for embedded patterns of inequality to be disrupted’
(Wright 2014, p. 18). In this way, students, under specific educational circumstances –
in Wright’s case, informal music learning, which provides moments of disruption or discursive
gaps – might construct their own pedagogic discourses in opposition to the regulative discourses
formed by particular educational and political orders. In Bernstein’s terminology, the latter
discourses belong to the macro level of society, from which they seep through processes of
filtration and recontextualisation into the meso and micro levels – corresponding to the school
and classroom, respectively – of education.
Although Wright does not directly refer to subjectification as an educational function in her
article – neither does she use the terms qualification and socialisation – it is obvious that she
places a similar emphasis on the students’ possibilities of breaking with predetermined orders, as
advocated by Biesta. In Wright’s context, however, this is envisaged as new conditions of
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Petter Dyndahl
music education, in which students should have the opportunity ‘to speak with their own voice,
to respond to others in nonpredefined ways’ (Wright 2014, p. 35).
Compared to Narita and Azevedo (2016), Wright’s method of employing Biesta’s theory is
more typical for music educators who make use of his concept of education; in this sense,
Wright follows the tendency to emphasise certain aspects of the concept. Thus, although the
multidimensional concept of education may seem promising for music education, its potential
has not yet been fulfilled. Instead, scholars of music education appear to concentrate on selected
functions of Biesta’s concept of education at the expense of other ones. A question that remains
to be addressed is in relation to the causes of this imbalance. Do music educators not fully
understand such a composite mindset, or is the problem located elsewhere? The next section
will address some issues that might shed light on these questions.
Biesta and Rancière: anti-sociology and its limitations

Biesta argues effectively in relation to the need to consider education as a multidimensional
field. So far I also find his division of the three domains – namely, qualification, socialisation,
and subjectification, adequate. However, if we are to seriously consider Biesta’s proclamations
that these functions should not be considered as separate but should instead complement and
partially overlap in such crucial ways that it is not primarily the individual domains but rather
the intersections between the functions that are the most interesting, then there is a lot to be
criticised in his own treatment of these concepts.
For a start, he argues situationally that subjectification must be particularly highlighted,
especially in relation to current educational conditions. Although his criticism of neoliberal
tendencies and unequivocal beliefs in evidence-based education research is both striking and
justified, it seems that he, in many respects, reflects those tendencies in an inverted manner by
reinforcing a corresponding one-dimensional view of education in which only subjectification
seems to count (cf. Biesta 2015b, p. 80). According to my interpretation of Biesta’s pedagogy of
interruption, it deals first and foremost with facilitating the limitation of the external order and
control conveyed by socialisation and qualification in order to ‘hint at independence from such
orders’ (Biesta 2015b, p. 21). According to this view, socialisation and qualification can only
provide students with a voice that allows them ‘to speak as representatives of particular com-
munities’ (Biesta 2015b, p. 87), which is not the same as speaking with one’s own unique voice
or speaking ‘outside of the confines of rational communities’ (Biesta 2015b, p. 87). Although he
does not reject order or control in any context (e.g. he draws attention to the importance of
legal control), Biesta seems to find external intervention and regulation fundamentally pro-
blematic in educational settings:
the problem with the idea of teaching as control is that in such a relationship the
student can never appear as a subject, but remains an object. In a world that is not
interested in the subject-ness of the human being, this is, of course, not a problem.
The question is whether this is a world we should desire.
(2017, p. 55)
This statement is closely linked with his Rancière-inspired assumption of equality, which I will
return to below. Sociologically speaking, however, the relationship between social structure
and human agency appears to be quite static, if not locked. In terms of education, this may lead
to a fundamental set of issues that makes one see the domains that deal with structure and order
(i.e. qualification and socialisation) as threatening to what seems to be the essential concern of
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education – namely, the individual agency that enables students to become subjects. Thus, the
pedagogy of interruption seems to do little to meet the originator’s otherwise-stated ambition
to balance and approach the different dimensions in complementary, overlapping ways.
Accordingly, while Biesta presents significant relevant and noteworthy criticism of the
one-sided focus on socialisation and qualification in today’s education, he appears to per-
sistently underestimate the social and cultural significance of education (e.g. being part of a
society or cultural or professional community). A focus on the importance of education for
the creation, recreation and continuation of institutions, cultures and societies in terms of
processes, practices, and relationships, as well as the connections between them, is virtually
absent. For Biesta, education is about the individual student, a category in which the unique
is emphasised and the student – although he or she is part of the human community, as both
Arendt and Levinas remind us – is still perceived in relative isolation from the collective
dimension. Social and cultural differences and various distinctions, such as generation,
gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and social class, remain invisible or diffuse in Biesta’s
educational philosophy. What is interesting in this respect is that when Narita and Azevedo
(2016) criticise certain neoliberal discourses, such as the meritocratic notion that the in-
dividual’s abilities and efforts are crucial to educational success, they emphasise – in the
particular context of Brazil – the importance of accounting for how issues of socio-economic
differences, in terms of poverty, illiteracy, ethnicity, gender, and representation, are inter-
twined and cannot be disregarded when it comes to the development of personal abilities.
Here, one could ask whether the same should also apply when philosophical issues of
subjectification are addressed. One could also ask the question of whose interests, in terms of
one’s social class, are first and foremost taken into account when individualistic perspectives
on and purposes of education are highlighted (see Bates 2019; Reay 2017). Thus, the
question of which students would best be able to detect and exploit the benefits of a music
education that appears to be informal and based on the student’s prerequisites while actually
concealing what knowledge and skills are really appreciated and rewarded in an educational
situation that is nonetheless institutionalised and formalised also needs to be asked. Is it the
students who come from homes with bookshelves and a piano or those who do not? The
latter group may, at worst, risk losing out on the basic knowledge provided by musical
qualification. They may also be deprived of socialisation into the specific educational culture
that music in school as well as in schools of music and performing arts and private music
tuition represent. I must stress here that this is not a general criticism of the concept of
informal music education or of the two cited examples of research that take this approach as
their point of departure. It is merely a reflection of where such forms of emphasis on
subjectification may lead sociologically, depending on how they are practiced. However,
one might think that the concentration on popular music, typical of what is perceived as ‘the
informal method’, would curb the social bias of traditional music education. As will be
discussed in the next section of the chapter, this is not necessarily that simple (see also
Dyndahl 2019).
Biesta (2016) adopts a completely different approach to these issues. He rejects all types of
critical education that try to analyse and make visible repressive structures hidden from the
immediate view. He ignores them, regardless of whether they build on emancipatory practices
such as Marx’s meticulous efforts to expose the fetishised consciousness produced by the logic
of capitalism or Bourdieu’s endeavour to detect unrecognised and misrecognised forms of
power and domination in society – approaches that presuppose that we develop theoretical
concepts that surpass experience-based knowledge. On the contrary, he supports Rancière
(2004), who, according to Biesta’s interpretation, has
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Petter Dyndahl
argued that instead of bringing about emancipation, this logic introduces a funda-
mental dependency into the “logic” of emancipation. This is because the ones to be
emancipated remain dependent upon the “truth” or “knowledge” revealed to them
by the emancipator.
For Rancière, a central question of education is whether it should emerge from the as-
sumption of equality or inequality. In The Ignorant Schoolmaster (Rancière 1991), he recalls
the story of Joseph Jacotot, a teacher who developed a pedagogy called ‘universal teaching’.
The experiment began when he had to teach students whose native language he did not
master. Thus, he could not explicate the text for them, something he had, prior to this,
considered crucial to teaching. However, according to Rancière, Jacotot gradually under-
stood that to explain something to someone in reality ‘is first of all to show him he cannot
understand it by himself ’ (Biesta 2015b, p. 6). This is why Rancière characterises ex-
planation as the ‘myth of pedagogy, the parable of a world divided into knowing and ig-
norant ones’ (Biesta 2015b). Instead, the students whom Jacotot taught learned through their
own involvement with the learning material. Thus, his way of teaching consisted of in-
voking their intelligence, which he in no way considered to be subordinate to his own.
Hence, Jacotot’s universal teaching was ‘based on the assumption of the fundamental
equality of intelligence of all human beings’ (Biesta 2016, p. 93). This is why a situation
becomes problematic if someone else, who presumably knows better, has to teach us about
the conditions of our emancipation. The problem is that ‘where one searches for the hidden
beneath the apparent, a position of mastery is established’ (Rancière 2004, p. 49).
Emancipation must instead take place ‘as a process of subjectification’, Biesta says (2016, p. 84)
(emphasis in original), with reference to Rancière, thus revealing the origin of his core
concept. Accordingly, as far as qualification and socialisation – understood as functions that
take care of the social and cultural dimensions of and responsibilities for education – are
concerned, they have no apparent function in relation to emancipation within Biesta’s
educational universe. On the contrary, in Rancière’s terms, they would stultify it. The
preliminary conclusion must therefore be that it is largely Biesta himself – obviously strongly
influenced by Rancière – who leads his followers into the imbalance between the various
domains of education that he simultaneously warns against.
To return to the critical social theories that both Biesta and Rancière reject, Biesta
acknowledges that
This is not to suggest that there are no lessons to be learned from history and social
analysis. But such lessons are no longer seen as the “motor” for emancipation, in that
if one draws the “right” conclusion, emancipation will simply follow. […] The
difference here – and this is important in order to appreciate the difference Rancière
aims to articulate in our understanding of the practice of emancipatory education – is
not that between learning with a master and learning without a master. The dif-
ference is between learning with a “master explicator” and learning without a
“master explicator”.
(Biesta 2016, p. 98)
These are truly subtle shades of meaning. Nor does it become significantly easier to understand
when Biesta elaborates that
176
Rancière’s argument is not an argument against the role of explanation in education

per se; after all, one might say that there is a lot of explanation going on in Rancière’s
own writings. The only point with regard to explanation is that it is not the avenue
toward emancipation.
(Biesta 2015b, note 6)
I will not try to score a cheap point by implying that when it comes to the extent of explanation,
it also applies to Biesta in this context. Rather, I ask how this should be understood in relation to
the importance of various social analyses, such as sociological ones, for education. It remains
unclear whether Biesta criticises the social theories as such or the pedagogies he attributes to
them, cf. the above assertion that ‘if one draws the “right” conclusion, emancipation will simply
follow’ (Biesta 2016, p. 98). In relation to cheap points, what sociological theory could rightly be
accused of such a simplification? Biesta makes no independent assessments of Marx’s and
Bourdieu’s social theories but relies wholly on Rancière (2004). However, concerning his
assumption of constructivism’s poor influence on teaching, the same ambiguity arises:
I am therefore neither analyzing nor criticizing constructivist ideas themselves but

am interested in the way in which certain conceptions of constructivism – which,
obviously also include misconceptions – have contributed to what we may call
the demise, the disappearance, or, in a more post-modern mode, the end or even the
death of the teacher.
(Biesta 2016, p. 46, note 1, emphasis in original)
Rancière, on his part, has developed a multifaceted and tangled conceptual apparatus for
understanding social life and politics. In this context, I do not have the space to delve
deeply into all of the definitions and interpretations relating to la police, la politique, le
politique, etc. in his philosophy. Instead, I choose to go directly to the criticism of the
foremost influential sociology in France. In that respect, it is quite obvious what the aims
of Rancière are. He has devoted a whole chapter, titled ‘The Sociologist King,’ in his
book, The Philosopher and His Poor (Rancière 2003), to a crusade against Bourdieu’s social
theory. This chapter reminds one of the ritual and generational parricides that regularly
take place in French intellectual life.
Toscano (2011) characterises Rancière’s attitude to the social sciences and sociology as a
form of anti-sociologism. Rancière is, among other things, suspicious of the homonymy of the
term ‘social’. In his view, homonymy means that the social is both an object of knowledge
(i.e. social phenomena in the world) and a modality of knowledge (e.g. different from aes-
thetic or educational knowledge). The first meaning calls for analytical activity, but this is
always superseded by the second meaning – namely, the social as a form of background. Thus,
homonyms, such as ‘social,’ ‘history’, and ‘class’, are seen as the distance between words/
events and their truth. The philosophical problem, according to Rancière, is that the
homonyms denote contingency and nonrelation, or ‘the excess of meaning over meaning’
(Whitener 2013), to the extent that they may end up highlighting an institutionalised
principle (e.g. in the academic discipline of sociology). However, Toscano argues that
Rancière’s suspicion of institutionalisation and organisation weakens his insistence on the
emancipatory presupposition of equality:
In such practices, we can glimpse that sociology too can be turned into a
“homonym”; though it may “begin” from inequality (and how could it not…) it can
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Petter Dyndahl
also function as a sociology of equality, for instance in combining a meticulous,

“scientific” knowledge of cycles of production with the strategic capacity to interfere
with them, and with the political will to make radically egalitarian wage demands.
(Toscano 2011, p. 231)
And how could it not? An alternative would have to involve, in the epistemological sense,
waiting for an extremely inductive form of grounded theory to appear, which I would reject as
theoretically naïve. In a sense, the problem is that Rancière and Biesta seem to have authorised
themselves as masters following Jacotot’s model, while the majority of other theorists – with
some significant exceptions – are disavowed as master explicators (cf. Biesta 2016, p. 98). In my
opinion, they draw a caricature of what Freire (1970) termed the ‘banking’ concept of edu-
cation as an instrument of oppression in order to make it easier for them to attack the simplified
version depicted. In the face of this, Toscano’s criticism of the limitations of anti-sociology
demonstrates precisely how the account of emancipatory politics remains in need of supple-
mentation by the very discipline it rejects:
To think that explanation, strategy and knowledge, and indeed sociology itself, are not
intrinsic components of politics is not only debilitating, it dispossesses – potentially in a
more severe way than Bourdieu’s sociology – those forced into positions of “min-
ority” of the very tools of emancipation. If it is not simply to turn into a spectacle for
the melancholy enjoyment of the theorist or the historian, emancipation is a process
that cannot simply be reduced to the affirmation of equality but of necessity drives one
towards investigating the conditions for the institution and durability of equality.
(Toscano 2011, p. 232)
It might be tempting here to introduce Bourdieu’s (2000) notion of ‘the scholastic fallacy’,
according to which subjectively oriented academics tend to project their own contemplative
and intellectualistic ways of life onto most people’s everyday lives and chores. I find reason to
recall Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1992) demand for epistemic reflexivity, according to which
the researcher’s social position, his or her professional authority and whether he or she is
inclined to stage the field of research so that it fits the purpose in question must be reflected
thoroughly. In this context, I also feel the need to declare that I – as a long-time academic,
albeit without an academic class and family background (see Dyndahl 2015a, 2017) – have
found Bourdieu’s sociology far more conducive to my reflexivity of the social, cultural and
historical processes of becoming a subject than Rancière’s philosophy and Biesta’s educational
thinking. Thus, I have severe problems accepting the premise that explanation feeds the ‘myth
of pedagogy’ (Rancière 1991) and that authority in education ‘is not based on a difference of
knowledge or insight or understanding’ (Biesta 2016, pp. 98–99). It is this recognition – along
with the above critical discussion in general – that I bring to the next section, in which I will
explore under what conditions or with what modifications Biesta’s multidimensional concept
may serve as the basis of thinking within the sociology of music education.
A multidimensional approach to the sociology of music education

It may be obvious that the sociology of music education should cover the significance of the
individual and their accomplishment in society, culture, and education; society’s productive and
reproductive purposes and systems; as well as the interrelations between individual, society,
culture, and education. In this regard, the proposal to operate analytically within the domains of
178
qualification, socialisation, and subjectification also seems comprehensive. Thus, I stand by the
statement that Biesta’s multidimensional concept is a promising starting point for a sociological
discussion of music education, despite the many critical objections I have raised so far.
However, I will return to a more nuanced and clarified take on its design at the end of this
chapter.
Let me first take the bull by the horns by attempting to follow Toscano’s (2011) advice to
actively use – in this case (post-)Bourdieusian – sociology to avoid the limitations associated
with anti-sociology. In addition, investigating and contributing to the development of the
theory in new historical, social, and cultural contexts and combining it with other theoretical
approaches might work as a strategy to avoid dependencies on time-honoured truths, a subject
of criticism by Rancière.
There have been some recent cultural sociological studies that have replicated Bourdieu’s
research design from Distinction (Bourdieu 1984). These studies include Bennett et al. (2009)
and Faber et al. (2012). The research results tell us that there still exists structural domination
and certain hierarchies based on cultural tastes and consumption. They also evidence that
music is the most clearly separated of all our cultural fields [...]. It is the most divided,
contentious, cultural field of any that we examine and is central to our concern with
probing contemporary cultural dynamics and tensions.
(Bennett et al. 2009, p. 75)
The image of music as an area of conflict is in stark contrast to the dominant opinion among
many music educators, who believe that music is crucial for individual and social development
while also remaining totally unaffected by disadvantageous factors (see Hesmondhalgh 2008;
Philpott 2012).
However, while Bourdieu found that taste hierarchies were divided into traditional high and
low culture (i.e. classical music and popular music), more recent studies have shown that the
field of popular culture contains struggles for cultural capital within itself; see Frith (1996),
Peterson (1992, 2005), Regev (2013), and Thornton (1995). Building on these contributions
and Bourdieu’s sociology, I have for several years worked with the concept of musical gentri-
fication, which has been defined as
complex processes with both inclusionary and exclusionary outcomes, by which

musics, musical practices, and musical cultures of relatively lower status are made to be
objects of acquisition by subjects who inhabit higher or more powerful positions.
(Dyndahl et al. 2014, p. 54)
The notion of musical gentrification was primarily developed in order to examine when, how,
why and what kind of popular music has been included in Norwegian higher education and
research (see Dyndahl 2015b; Dyndahl et al. 2017, and Nielsen and Dyndahl’s chapter in this
volume). In order to exemplify how musical gentrification operates in the three domains of
qualification, socialisation, and subjectification, which also interact and overlap, let me focus on
how knowledge, skills, and attitudes concerning social distinctions – often disguised as differ-
ences in aesthetic quality and/or cultural authenticity (see Dyndahl and Nielsen 2014; Moore
2002) – are included in higher music education. As part of their qualification, which in this
context must also be documented and certified in terms of academic degrees, music students
must learn to distinguish between the great masters and the Kleinmeister, regardless of the genre,
style, and sub-style of music. These aesthetic and cultural hierarchies are embodied explicitly
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Petter Dyndahl
and implicitly in programme curricula, course syllabi and teaching practices, but can, and will,
however, change over time – I will return to this point shortly. In addition to what is attributed
high and low value and/or cultural capital, research into musical gentrification shows that it is
equally important how one approaches the music in question. In other words, an important
aspect of the students’ qualification, especially at master’s and PhD level, is to gain knowledge
and skills that will allow them to, for example, wrap pop music up in sophisticated theoretical
packaging, thus rendering it a legitimate object of study. Such capabilities are generally for-
mulated as ‘the ability to utilise knowledge and skills in an independent manner in different
situations’ (The Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education 2014, p. 19).
In numerous cases, both the what and how aspects may represent very different ways of
relating to music in comparison to what students are accustomed to (e.g. family background and
musical community of origin). This clearly highlights that while qualification may overlap with
socialisation, it also accentuates other aspects, such as the sociocultural attitudes and values that
music students gradually internalise. Ellefsen’s (2014) research shows the painstaking work these
students – in her case upper secondary level – perform, often in informal and non-formal arenas,
to become part of a music education community and experience themselves as ‘music students’.
She thus also shows how socialisation in many ways overlaps with subjectification, as she de-
scribes these processes as constituting student subjectivities in and through discursive practices
of musicianship.
Ellefsen’s use of Foucault and his theoretical perspective on becoming as a subject broadens
the perspective compared to Biesta’s concept of subjectification. For Foucault (1972), discourse
and subjectivity, and thus also structure and agency, are closely linked. Briefly, his discourse
theory establishes that discourses open up spaces or functions, which Foucault refers to as subject
positions, from which the subject itself and its situatedness in the world become intelligible.
Subjectivity is thus constituted within existing subject positions provided by discourse (Biesta
2015b). Moreover, power is always present in Foucault’s theoretical universe, and power and
knowledge are considered mutually constitutive. It is also worth remembering that power is not
only repressive but also productive and that it constantly permeates all relationships in and levels
of society. According to Foucault, this is a form of power that
makes individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the word “subject”: subject to
someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience
or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power that subjugates and makes
subject to.
(Foucault 2001, p. 331)
I will argue that the dual character of the subject described by Foucault in processes he denotes
as subjectivation can be seen as analogous to Bourdieu’s habitus concept, meaning that the body
not only exists in society, but society also exists in the body.1 In this way, I believe that
subjectivity may obtain the sociological anchorage it lacks in Biesta’s thinking.
The link to power can also help us understand subjectivation in a way that is more complex
than subjectification’s tendency to emerge as an undivided beneficial aim for all education.
Wright (2014) suggested, with reference to Bernstein (2000), that discursive gaps might allow
new discourses to emerge in opposition to the regulative discourses formed by existing orders.
This corresponds with Bourdieu’s (1977) way of describing the agentic capacity of habitus,
opening the way for a practical sense of how power relations within an interaction are symbo-
lically configured, in the sense that participants can act strategically in order to position
themselves – and their ideas, arguments, aesthetic preferences, etc. – favourably within the
180
discourse. In this regard, Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) attributed a certain relative autonomy
to social fields such as art and education.
Musical gentrification is particularly associated with changes in the systems – or orders – of
classification. To achieve these changes, someone must assume the role of musical gentrifier and
exert symbolic power while simultaneously conducting processes of subjectivation. The point is
that in many cases, these are two sides of the same coin. As I have tried to highlight elsewhere
(Dyndahl 2015), even where music educators and researchers with the best intentions attempt
to install alternative discourses in order to counteract established power structures, they may
contribute to the fact that they (we) consolidate their (our) subjectivity as good guys while they
(we) also favour themselves (ourselves) as heterodox challengers to a power bastion that they
(we) are ready to take over in the next round. There is no moralisation in this, but rather a
reminder of epistemic reflexivity towards the social fields – and all that this entails – of academia
and music education, as seen from a sociological perspective that attempts to be multi-
dimensional and inclusive of several forms of power.
Thus, in order to acknowledge Biesta’s efforts to establish a multidimensional concept of
education while also refraining from the most anti-sociological and essentialist impacts of it, I
choose to replace his Rancière-inspired terminology with a Foucauldian one by advocating that
music education should be seen as the totality of qualification, socialisation, and subjectivation.
1. What are the main challenges and difficulties in balancing the three functions of qualifi-
cation, socialisation, and subjectivation in music educational thinking and practice?
2. In what ways might different groups of students experience inequality in music education if
the various domains receive different emphases?
Note
1 Both in Foucault’s own writing and in the reception of it, subjectification and subjectivation are used
interchangeably, possibly with the predominance of the latter. In this context, however, the terms are
used rhetorically to position the specific antagonism between Biesta’s and Foucault’s conceptions of
the subject.
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12
FISH OUT OF WATER? MUSICAL
BACKGROUNDS, CULTURAL
CAPITAL, AND SOCIAL CLASS IN
HIGHER MUSIC EDUCATION
Gwen Moore
Introduction
Drawing from a national mixed methods study of higher music education in Ireland, this
chapter investigates the ways in which Bourdieu’s theoretical tools of habitus, capital, and field
can further our understanding of the ways in which students’ musical backgrounds shape their
experiences of higher music education. This study joins a growing body of music education
research inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu (Burnard 2015; Green 2005; Hall 2015;
Hofvander Trulsson 2015; Perkins 2013, 2015; Wright 2008, 2010, 2015). Much of this
research utilises case study methodology and ethnographic approaches to specific music prac-
tices or contexts. Apart from Perkins’ (2013, 2015) study on learning cultures in conservatoires,
little research has been conducted using Bourdieu across higher music education contexts or
indeed across national studies in higher music education. While Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of
habitus, capital, and field have been applied to higher education literature in general (see Ball
et al. 2002; Reay 2005), this chapter presents an original perspective on the ways in which
Bourdieu’s tools apply to musical backgrounds, prior music education, and issues of access and
opportunity within a national higher music education milieu.
Examining musical enculturation through the lens of Bourdieu

Graduating with an accredited undergraduate music degree represents to many the epitome
of sanctioned musical knowledge and skills. Yet achieving success in undergraduate music
studies often demands knowledge and skills that are dependent on prior access to formal music
education at school, in a conservatoire, or in private instrumental music lessons. In any con-
sideration of higher music education then, it is reasonable to assume that students from diverse
musical backgrounds may have varying degrees of prior experience and familiarity with the
dominant musical values in higher education.
Since the establishment of the Irish nation state in 1922, the manner in which different
ideologies of musical value compete with each other for domination of learning spaces reveals
an Irish traditional – Western classical dualism (McCarthy 1999; O’ Flynn 2009). In aspiring to
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Fish out of water?
the idea of equal and distinct value in both genres, the ideological and historical contexts appear
to construct ideas of otherness. Consequently, ideological assumptions of Western classical
music and Irish traditional music tend to be contested at institutional and state levels (O’Flynn,
2009). This contestation is revealed in discourse of musical value, the curriculum, and practice
in Irish higher education (Moore 2015).
For Bourdieu (1977a, p. 494), ‘the education system demands of everyone alike that they
have what it does not give’. If the dominant and valued forms of knowledge do not align with
the musical backgrounds and prior music education of students, it is necessary to acknowledge
the possibility of major gaps between the knowledge and skills students bring vis-a-vis their
musical backgrounds and cultural capital, and the curriculum demands and expectations in the
field of higher music education. Although Bourdieu referred to the ways in which the edu-
cation system rewards the possession of linguistic and cultural competence (or capital) acquired
in the home, it is argued here that this assertion also resonates with musical enculturation and
access to formal music education in schools and institutions.
From early childhood onwards, we make sense of the musical structures and nuanced sounds
which underpin the music by which we are surrounded, and internalize the many ways that music
is constructed. Studies in early childhood have shown the multifarious ways in which musical
enculturation occurs in the family and home environment (Barrett 2009; Campbell 1998). Studies
in the psychology of music education (Davidson et al. 1996; Sloboda and Howe 1991) point
to a strong association between parental encouragement and musical ability, as well as success in
instrumental learning. Thus, we can begin to understand the influence that early childhood and
parental encouragement has on one’s musical development.
Having cultural experiences, however, is just one step in our formative music education and not
everyone who has early musical experiences will go on to study music formally. Opportunities are
moreover, often dependent on having the financial means to pay for instruments and lessons. It is
necessary to assume, therefore, that the past experiences which undergraduate students have will
vary, such that they are not coming to higher education from the same cultural and musical
foundations. Higher education as a particular site or field of historical privilege (Ball et al. 2002;
Reay 2005), the ‘hidden curriculum’ within music departments (Pitts 2003), and the social
reproduction of musical values and practices (Green 2003b, 2005) require closer examination. I turn
now to the work of Bourdieu by examining how his theoretical tools of field, habitus and cultural
capital can assist in this regard.
Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus, and cultural capital

Bourdieu (1977a) describes fields as social environments inhabited by a number of groups in
which spheres of play can be dynamic but can also be areas of struggle for domination and power.
The concept of ‘field’ can be applied to the micro-context of a music department within which
different knowledge fields compete for space on the curriculum, and to the macro-context of
higher education policy. The field embodies the socio-historical institutional context, settings,
dispositions, and values that students and lecturers must negotiate. However, the ways in which
the field is negotiated and experienced can depend on the student’s musical background or
habitus, and prior music education or cultural capital. According to Bourdieu, the dynamics of the
field provide undeniable advantage to some rather than others. In describing how this manifests,
Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, p. 98) use the analogy of a game where some are equipped with
‘trump cards’ and a natural ‘feel for the game’.
Habitus can be interpreted as the ‘tastes, habits, norms, values, and traditions of a particular
society or community of likeminded agents’ (Bourdieu 1990, p. 52–65). It can also be considered
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as dispositions to thought, action, understanding or perception that the individual acquires as a

member of a particular social group or class. Bourdieu (1990) maintains that such dispositions
operate at an unconscious level yet they have a profound effect on the way an individual or group
experiences and responds to the world or social environment. Habitus is the ‘subjective’ that
becomes noticeable in the ‘objective’ field (Grenfell 2008). In relation to higher education, we
can posit that when a student encounters the field, their habitus can generate a wide range of
possible actions depending on how it fits within the field.
Bourdieu maintained that in order to navigate social spaces and the competitive game in the
field, actors require various forms of ‘capital’. He identified different but interdependent forms
of capital as follows; economic, cultural, social, and symbolic. For the purpose of this chapter,
I focus on cultural (musical knowledge and skills) and economic capital (financial means to pay
for musical instruments/lessons).
While cultural capital can be acquired, it naturally stems from habitus (Bourdieu and
Passeron 1990). One attribution of cultural capital by Bourdieu (1977a) was that of the added power
associated with participation in the beaux arts, but as Lareau and Weininger (2003) point out, this
initial use of the concept has been overused in educational research. Indeed, Bourdieu’s concepts
have been widely criticised as being too structural and deterministic (Sullivan 2001; Noble and
Davies 2009). While Sullivan (2001) operationalises cultural capital as objective cultural goods only,
Bourdieu (1984) points out that cultural capital exhibits in a number of ways. First, it can be em-
bodied in early childhood from enculturation; second, institutionalised in the form of educational
qualifications; and third, objectified as cultural goods, for example, a musical work. Therefore, in the
analysis for this chapter, cultural capital is multifaceted (embodied, institutionalised, and objectified)
and interdependent on economic capital such as the purchase and upgrade of musical instruments,
extracurricular music tuition, achieving success in graded instrumental examinations, and ideologies
of musical value associated with Western classical music practices.
Of particular significance is how cultural capital refers to the ways in which ideologies come to
be legitimised and reproduced in education and society (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990). Ideologies
of musical value tend ‘to perpetuate the values of particular, interested social groups at the expense
of others’ (Green 2003a, 264). For example, skills associated with the Western classical tradition
such as music theory, history, and analysis tend to be unequally distributed by virtue of unequal
access to and opportunity in music education (Green 2003b; Moore 2012, 2014). As the data will
show, competence in the skills associated with the Western classical tradition, functioning as
cultural capital in higher music education, tends to engender ‘exclusive advantages’ (Lareau and
Weininger 2003, 579) to students from Western classical music backgrounds.
The structural principles and practices of habitus

Thus far, it is acknowledged that habitus and cultural capital develop in the home environment.
The shape and nature of both habitus and cultural capital depend on economic capital thus,
social class inevitably plays a pivotal role in opportunities and pathways in music education. For
Bourdieu (1977b), the real nature of culture (as collective habitus) is characterised by the
structuring of principles in which agents produce regulated practices:
The system of dispositions – a past which survives in the present and tends to per-
petuate itself into the future by making itself present in practices structured according
to its principles …
(Bourdieu 1977b, 82)
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Fish out of water?
Consider for a moment how habitus (whether embodied or institutional) as a manifestation of

culture, generates principles and practices. Applied to Western classical music, the principles of
the canon would have the score and the composer at the core, thereby the learning practices
would revolve around reading music notation. In a different way, the aural tradition of sharing
music represents the principles of Irish traditional music, while the practice then revolves
around learning by ear. Within the Irish context, some music learners and teachers comfortably
traverse Irish music and classical genres and practices. Drawing from the work of Mantle Hood
(1960), scholars point to the uniqueness of bimusicality within the Irish context (see McCarthy
1999; O’Flynn 2009). While acknowledging that musical practices are not mutually exclusive,
i.e. Irish traditional music can encompass notational practices and Western classical music
playing by ear; it is the dominant principles and practices of a musical culture that endow its
distinctiveness. Moreover, learning practices tend to be inextricably linked with the pedagogical
practices or action pertaining to the principles of the musical culture.
Although potentially dynamic and fluid, musical habituses are influenced by structures of
principles and practices that can be embodied in curriculum and pedagogy. Thus, habitus is,
‘durably inculcated by the possibilities and impossibilities (…) opportunities and prohibitions
inscribed in the objective conditions’ (Bourdieu 1990, p. 54). How then does musical habitus
and by association musicality, or bimusicality within the field, impact on the ways in which
students describe their experiences of higher music education?
Research design
Data are drawn from a mixed methods national study of undergraduate students and lecturers in
the Republic of Ireland. Because the study included the perspectives of students and lecturers as
well as public document discourse, a ‘practical’ approach (Creswell 2003) to the research design
meant that both numbers and words would be utilised in the analysis to best capture the
complex myriad of issues surrounding the research problem. Data gathering tools included:
documentary analysis, a questionnaire survey (N = 406) and semi-structured interviews with
students (n = 18) across 11 out of 13 higher education institutions offering music to degree level
in the Republic of Ireland. For the purpose of this paper, data are drawn from the student
perspectives only.
Habitus, cultural capital and musical pathways

Across the student surveys and interviews, parents and close relatives were strongly reported as
having a significant influence on the students’ interest in musical activities. Similar to findings by
Davidson et al. (1996) and Pitts (2012) on the impact of parental influences on musical partici-
pation, recurring responses in this study included: listening to music in the home, having financial
and practical support for instrumental lessons, and being brought to concerts and competitions.
In many cases, parents were the students’ first instrumental teachers, and in 22 student cases, at
least one parent was a professional musician or music teacher.
Students’ formal music education

Most of the students (93%) had taken individual private lessons on their main instrument. The
minority who had not (7%) included students who were studying voice and dance and had
not taken formal lessons in voice. Two-thirds of the sample had taken graded examinations on
their main instrument. Of this sub-sample of 263 who had acquired instrumental grades, 29 had
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Gwen Moore
Table 12.1 Rank ordering of parental influence/support factors (number of mentions)
Parental influence/support Number of mentions
Musical family/parents’ own interest in music 147

Financial support/economic capital 96
Encouragement 64
Self-motivated 57
Parent-motivated 45
None 20
Source: Moore (2013).
achieved Diplomas, 189 had achieved Grade 6 and above, 23 had Grades 3–5 inclusive, and
8 had achieved gold medals in performance. Cultural capital as institutionalised and objectified
knowledge was therefore evident across the student sample.
Parental influence and encouragement

Through an analysis of qualitative responses to the open survey question, ‘To what extent have
your parents/guardians supported your music education?’ five categories emerged from the
overall theme of parental influence/support (see Table 12.1) including (a) Musical family/
parents’ own interest in music; (b) Economic capital; (c) Encouragement; (d) Self-motivated
music education, and (e) Parent-motivated music education. Whilst I explored each of these
codes separately to begin with, it was also essential to revisit the data and cross-examine how
parents’ educational achievements as well as any mentions of musical interests, might have
influenced the musical pathways of the students. More importantly, I sought to examine
whether such influential aspects also related to the students’ experiences of music in higher
education. I will address these in more detail shortly, but first let us examine the influential
factors as illustrated in Table 12.1 in more detail.
In presenting a selection of comments from the 147 mentions of this category in the
student survey, I wish to highlight iterations of both informal and formal recollections of
musical habitus and cultural capital. Twenty-two students had a parent who was either a
professional musician or a music teacher or lecturer. Other students referred to the strong
influence that their parents’ musical tastes or musical listening habits had on their own
interest in music. In these examples, students ascribe the parental influence as having
stemmed from listening and participating in impromptu music sing-alongs at family
gatherings in a process one student called ‘osmosis’:
S33:
My mother is a wedding singer professionally. I grew up to her learning new songs and
constantly singing at home. She also taught herself piano, keyboard and guitar and
encouraged me to do so. My Aunt is a recording artist and now teaches a children’s choir.
Parents’ listening habits and tastes (including ‘good taste’) were also mentioned as well as being
brought to concerts and what the following comments have in common is their specific
reference to Western classical music. This illustrates the advantages social and cultural capital
engenders for students when Western classical music predominates:
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Fish out of water?
S243:
Dad plays piano and I listened to his music collection from a young age. They took
me to concerts, operas, and other performances. They got me hooked.
There were 96 mentions of students who reported financial support from parents. Given that an
overwhelming majority of students (93%) had taken private lessons on their instrument, and the
question asked the extent to which their parents supported their music education, one might think
that financial support or economic capital would be more widely acknowledged. For example, one
student survey response stated ‘None but support and paying for my lessons’ (S378). It was as if
an implicit assumption that the word ‘support’ meant approval. By contrast, some of those who
acknowledged financial support in their comments also mentioned that it would not have been
possible without their parents’ financial input. In the following case, the combination of musical
enculturation, cultural and economic capital enabled this student to participate in a variety of courses:
S142:
My family played a major role in music ed. Aunt runs the local choir at home (my first
musical experience) also owns music school (first formal lessons in instruments) did
Grade 6 with her then travelled from Clare to Dublin every week for private lessons in
trumpet. Mum brought me every week. Paid for National Youth Orchestra of Ireland
courses and Irish Youth Wind Ensemble courses, c. €500 per course.
The perceived association between formal music learning in childhood and future success in
higher music education emerged as a recurring theme. Formal music education was initiated
and propelled by some parents who were anxious for their children to start lessons. This finding
resonates with that of Pitts (2012) who found that parents’ own musical ambitions influenced
their ideals for their children’s music learning. In this study, students expressed this in language
such as being ‘sent’ to lessons, ‘put into a school of music’ as well as the parents’ passion or
eagerness for their child to begin at an early age. Thus, certain ambitions came initially from the
parents suggesting a desire to enable their children to accrue cultural capital:
S350:
My Mam got me up every morning before school and made me practise. She also sat
in on all my lessons.
Significant memories of parents’ music-making emerged in 13 out of 18 interviews and

such parental influence seemed to generate motivation for learning within the family culture.
In general, student interview responses suggested much parental support and encouragement
for musical activities. In many cases, it was parents who set the musical atmosphere in the home,
through their own behaviour, cultural capital and musical tastes, the presence or absence of
instruments, recordings, and sheet music, and the extent to which they encouraged, or even
pushed, their children to take lessons and then to persevere with practice. There was a sense of
music as a pre-ordained activity for students whose parents had also learnt music and in many
cases had taught their children the basics.
Access and opportunity

Many of the students in this study mentioned feeling ‘lucky’ to have been given opportunities
to participate in state music education, yet 12% of the students surveyed and four of those
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interviewed did not have access to formal music education in their secondary school. John, a
second-year student who returned to college as a mature learner emphasised that the desire to
learn music was of his own volition and was entirely self-financed. This contrasted starkly in the
case of Robyn, an 18-year-old undergraduate student of violin and piano.
Robyn associated her musical opportunities with inherited and innate talent whereby just
like her mother and her three sisters, she had always wanted to go to a school of music and
eventually study performance in a conservatoire. She described how she had considered
studying music performance at The Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester (as many
of her friends had auditioned there) but that in the end she wanted to stay in Ireland. When
I asked her about the issue of fees since their reintroduction in the UK and how much it would
have cost, she was unaware of the cost implications. It appeared that her decision was solely
based on her preference. As illustrated in the following quotation, Robyn’s cultural, social, and
economic capital has not only enabled her musical pathway but has given her choice in terms of
access and opportunity. In particular, her awareness of what many others would see as
socio-economic advantage could be best described as tacit, or what Dibben (2004, p. 8)
describes as an ‘invisible norm’:
Robyn (1st Year, Classical Music Background)
(…) like some of my friends have violins worth thousands like €20,000 and it’s ri-
diculous, … Now mine wouldn’t be that much but still, … but my youngest sister like
hers would be worth more than mine I’d say, … I suppose like people would kind of
realise you’ve to kind of make the decision, do you really want to go for that? Like my
mom doesn’t mind spending money on instruments and things because she knows that
they’ll be used of course and that that we’re serious about it (…)
This example highlights the central role that economic and cultural capital play in pathways and
opportunities in formal music education and in higher education. Students like Robyn with
economic and cultural capital have choice and opportunity in education (see Lynch and
Moran 2006). Furthermore, access to private music education and understanding of the forms,
styles, and notation associated with the dominant classical tradition and the expected norms and
discourse, endows students like Robyn with particular ‘trump’ cards in the field of higher music
education.
The social reproduction of musical habitus and capital

A prevalent theme among many students was the belief that particular pathways were critical for
future success and opportunities. In other cases, an influential figure (teacher, parent, family
friend) had persuaded them to focus their energies away from the initial genre or musical system
in favour of a formal Western classical habitus. In the cases of some of the interviewed students,
interest in Western classical music developed at the expense of Irish traditional music. In the
context of Ireland’s bimusical history then, it is possible to interpret some experiences of
musical engagement in a different light.
In the following student interview excerpt, Fionn’s bimusical background was illustrated in
terms of his mother’s classical and his father’s Irish traditional music background. However, a
family friend who became his violin teacher persuaded him to change his musical pathway:
Fionn (4th Year, Bimusical Background, now Classical)
190
Fish out of water?
Anyway, I took up the uilleann pipes...then my mum, you know she kind of thought
we had become musical enough, until a friend of hers who was a violin teacher came
over for tea one day and heard me play and she said … ‘I want to teach him the
violin’, and here I am 16 years later still playing the violin.
What is of particular interest is how he expresses his teacher’s musical values and beliefs with
particular deference to ‘this lady’ and his belief about his ability to mix musical styles on the violin:
G: Ok. And was that classical violin or traditional?

F: Oh, classical. This lady doesn’t believe in mixing styles on one instrument. I’m sure there are
people who can pull it off but I’m not one of them so always did classical with her (…)
What we can see from this encounter is that although Fionn’s habitus and cultural capital was a
product of his childhood experience, it was also reshaped by the structured principles of Western
classical music and the practice of his influential violin teacher. Thus, while habitus reflects the social
and cultural context in which it was generated, it can also be reshaped through schooling and social
encounters (Reay et al. 2005). He later expressed how the encounter with this teacher reaped
rewards for him in being able to access a university course where the focus is predominantly
Western classical. Had he not begun classical violin, his higher education route may have been
rather different. Musical habitus as fluid and dynamic can be conceived, therefore, as shaped not
only by parents or siblings, but sometimes in more profound and significant ways by influential
teachers whose ideological assumptions of musical value, knowledge, and skills are brought to bear
on students’ musical trajectories.
Like a fish in water?

In the student survey, I posed two closed questions on whether students thought that
their musical background and music education had had an effect on their experience in higher
music education. The vast majority (92% and 90%, respectively) answered yes to this question.
A follow-up comment box asking for reasons why, elicited 366 completed answers. Of this
sample, 266 (72%) described their experience as affirming and that they enjoyed being chal-
lenged; 100 (28%) described their experience as alienating, and a minority felt that they were
not being challenged enough. Of the 72% who gave positive/affirming answers, almost half of
the respondents stated their musical backgrounds and/or prior music education as a reason for
this. Similarly, of the 28% who mentioned having negative experiences, half of this sub-sample
referred specifically to their non-classical musical backgrounds and prior music education.
Table 12.2 shows a sample of comments from both types of experiences which illustrate the
ways in which the students identify a relationship between their experiences in higher music
education, their musical backgrounds and/or prior music education. Three cases highlight
student experiences that can be described as ‘affirming’ their musical habituses and cultural
capital. These students felt a natural extension of their previous music education experiences.
As Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) posit:
(…) when habitus encounters a social world of which it is the product, it is like a ‘fish
in water’: it does not feel the weight of the water and it takes the world about itself for
granted.
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 127)
191
Table 12.2 Six survey cases that illustrate the affirmation and alienation in students’ experiences of higher education
Total 366 Affirming n:266 Experience Musical background and Alienating n:100 Experience Musical background and
(72%)S 72:S prior music education (28%) S67:S prior music education
149:S 200: My musical skills have My prior education in 174:S 217: I am not going to be I believe that my
improved vastly. I music has given me the keeping on music as traditional
have learned in depth opportunities to learn an art subject next background was not
different types of faster while in my year as I feel it is too adequate for the
musical traditions course.I have knowledge difficult.My standard of music
and used these in my of all kinds of music so I experience is quite being taught here.I
own practice.It’s know what area I want negative one so far as think having prior
been fun it doesn’t to focus on. Thanks to I find the course very experience is a must
seem like work at my education I don’t intense at the for this college, it is
all.Very good struggle in harmony or moment.I have had almost impossible to
192
experience. The counterpoint.A private some difficultly with compete with students
course allows those musical education highly the narrow who have taken
Gwen Moore
who are motivated to prepares you for a music constraints of the lessons and theory
improve rapidly and course. Unfortunately I course. It’s very classes here in this
those new to the can’t say the same for the much classical only in college since they
field to learn at a music course at second terms of how theory were young
good pace. level. and harmony is children.Yes I think
taught. my lack of formal
education in this
subject has caused
difficulties. Support is
practically non-
existent.
Source: Moore (2013, 2015).

Fish out of water?
In contrast, the three student cases whose experiences could be best described ‘alienating’
because of their habituses and the ‘wrong’ kind of cultural capital seemed like ‘fish out of
water’, so to speak. Encountering an unfamiliar field with unexpected demands, resulted in
expressions of insecurity and anxiety. Out of the six student cases, only one student referred
specifically to his Irish traditional music background. This particular case is rather striking
because the student perceives his Irish traditional music background as ‘not adequate for the
standard being taught here’. Thus, unlike Fionn’s experience mentioned earlier, there would
appear to be limited agency for the student whose musical habitus and cultural capital or re-
levant knowledge and skills are not sufficient for negotiating the structural principles and
practices of Western classical music.
Discussion and conclusion

As illustrated in the student surveys and interviews, students enter higher education with
particular musical values, knowledge, and skills as influenced by their musical backgrounds and
prior music education. Their experiences and musical values are thus constructed and construed
within the fields of higher education and the music department. However, learning experiences
are influenced by the musical values associated with the dominant musical habitus and cultural
capital in the field. Students’ prior assumptions of musical value and knowledge are reappraised
in the context of an unequal playing field and point to experiences in an affirming-alienating
dialectic. In other words, a sense of affirmation emerges in the accounts of students who
possessed valued musical knowledge and skills. Conversely, students with less valued knowledge
and skills expressed a sense of alienation, throwing into sharp focus the ways in which unequal
musical opportunities continue to impact on students’ experiences.
In this chapter, I examined the ways in which Bourdieu’s theoretical tools of habitus,
cultural capital and field can further our understanding of how different musical pathways
shape students’ experiences in higher education. What students bring to the table vis-à-vis
their musical backgrounds and music education in conjunction with institutional expectations
and curriculum demands, reveal tensions inherent in ideological assumptions of musical value
and equal opportunity. The data illustrate that students’ ability to ‘fit into’ the socio-cultural
context of the field or music department is strongly influenced by the interplay of musical
habitus and cultural capital and their ability to negotiate the field. While the focus of the
research has been situated in higher education, the data bring into sharp focus the cyclical
nature of the social reproduction of musical values and dominant ideologies from higher
education to and from all levels of music education. It could be argued that teachers in school
and conservatoires are inculcated by the dominant tradition they have experienced in higher
education. Thus, I conclude with the following reflective questions on foot of the findings
and discussion.
1. How can we enhance students’ deliberate reflections about the connections between
economic and cultural capital and the belief that particular pathways are critical for future
success and opportunities?
2. How can we attend to ideologies and values of the dominant musical habitus and cultural
capital in the field of higher education in music, in order to break the social reproduction
cycle?
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Gwen Moore
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13
A FIELD DIVIDED
How Legitimation Code Theory reveals problems
impacting the growth of school music education
Christine Carroll
Introduction
Despite decades of curricular reform and moves to incorporate more authentic and inclusive
popular music pedagogies in classrooms, the hegemony of Western art music remains un
challenged in many school education systems worldwide. As a result, teachers frequently bear
the weight of choice: between meeting overriding curricular objectives designed to foster and
preserve Western art music, or alternatively, providing more palatable educational experiences
increasingly aligned to the ‘popular’. Despite broadening access to school music, this situation
has created a gap between the types of instruction offered in different classroom contexts over
time. This division often manifests according to a perceived informal – formal, or popular –
classical oppositional binary, potentially compounding issues of class and social-reproduction in
schools. Yet at the same time, the mechanisms perpetuating such division remain masked in
current curriculum documents, and as a result can cause confusion in classrooms such as my
own, where a spectrum of skills, musical interests, and academic abilities rarely fit these di
chotomous categories.
In order to investigate this complex and long-standing situation, research was undertaken
using Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) from the sociology of education (Maton 2014). LCT is
a multi-dimensional toolkit being used in an increasingly diverse array of fields from ballet to
linguistics, which makes knowledge practices and their organising effects and principles more
transparent (Maton 2014, p. 3). Using one dimension of the framework known as Specialisation,
research was undertaken on two levels based empirically in Australian school music education.
The first level exposed the emergence and orientation of a ‘code division’ in curriculum
documents, historic accounts of pedagogic practice, and matriculation statistics spanning a
60-year period through to the present day (Carroll 2019). The second, examined the dynamics
of this ‘code division’ from the ground up, via the implementation of a 10-week classroom
study. Acting in the role of teacher/researcher and without prior knowledge of results from the
first level of research, I designed and implemented a unit of teaching and learning for a group of
newly enrolled students (aged around 16 years of age) at a senior secondary school of music.
With ethical consent, three teachers (including myself), and 30 students representing a range of
established musicianship skills, interests, and aspirations for tertiary study agreed to participate in
the study.
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A field divided
The unit included three phases which moved the students from informal to progressively
more formal tasks indicative of the two music curriculum courses offered at the senior sec
ondary level in the state of New South Wales. The first course is a general course of study
inclusive of popular musicianship (in LCT terms, this later aligned with a knower code). The
second offers specialised study in Western art music (in LCT terms, this later revealed an élite
code). The courses were integrated for the first two phases, with the third and final phase
offering the students a choice of activities more typical of the separate curricular pathways.
A subsequent analysis of both historic and classroom levels of data using LCT revealed
interesting findings. Despite the students displaying a range of knowledge and skills spanning
the underlying code distinctions; the over-arching curricular objectives, pedagogies, and as
sessment practices employed perpetuated the code divide, disadvantaging students with in
formal learning backgrounds seeking further academic challenge currently on offer only to
students with established music literacy skills acquired through prior classical study. Although
small in scope, the study highlights some of the mechanisms by which classroom music edu
cation in Australia and elsewhere is at odds with scholarly rhetoric valorising musical diversity
and inclusion. The system has indeed expanded particularly at the preceding junior secondary
level (12–15 years), but change is yet to affect the ‘end game’ – where senior students with skills
and knowledge aligned to Western art music are still deemed the more legitimate ‘players’.
Legitimation Code Theory (LCT)

LCT is a sociological framework used for research and for challenging and changing practice
(Maton 2014). A practical, multi-dimensional toolkit, LCT develops and integrates the rela
tional thinking of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, and the conceptual tools of Basil Bernstein’s
code theory (Maton 2014, pp. 19–20). It recognises that each field (of which school music
education is one) is a relatively distinct social arena, yet is connected to others through an
underlying set of principles. The game that unfolds within any field is one of ‘competing claims
to legitimacy’ and its practices are known as ‘languages of legitimation’ (Maton 2014, p. 17).
Actors, including curriculum writers, teachers, and students, their dispositions, and their po
sitions within fields are conceptualised according to what Maton describes as legitimation codes.
Acknowledgement of the codes underlying educational practice, therefore, provides insights
into the internal dynamics of a field, particularly when tensions emerge due to competing
claims to both status and resources. Equally, recognition of the codes determining play may
provide clues as to how to change the dynamics of a field, by challenging existing definitions of
what determines both value and status within.
Currently, there are five dimensions to LCT, each conceptualising a different form of le
gitimation code. These include Autonomy, Density, Specialisation, Semantics, and
Temporality, but only one will be employed here, apposite to the research at hand:
Specialisation. Specialisation works on the premise that every educational practice or belief is
oriented both towards ‘something’ and by ‘someone’ (Figure 13.1). Practices and beliefs can be
conceptualised on a continuum of strengths (+) and weaknesses (–), both in terms of epistemic
relations (ER +, –) and social relations (SR+, –). Epistemic relations tie practices or beliefs to objects
of study (i.e. ‘what’ constitutes legitimate knowledge). Social relations tie practices or beliefs to
actors of various kinds (i.e. ‘who’ classifies as a legitimate knower) (Maton 2014, p. 29).
Together, epistemic relations and social relations generate a series of specialisation codes as
follows: a knowledge code (ER+, SR–) when claims to legitimacy depend more or less upon an
actor’s position in relation to an object of study; a knower code (ER–, SR+) when individual and
collective claims to legitimacy are based instead upon possessing a particular disposition or
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Christine Carroll
Figure 13.1 Specialisation codes (Maton, 2014, p. 30)
quality necessary for inclusion in a social group or in this case classroom practice; an élite code
(ER+, SR+) where the terms for legitimacy are based not only on possessing specialised
knowledge but also on being the right kind of knower; and a relativist code (ER–, SR–), where
legitimacy is based neither upon possessing specialised knowledge nor acquiring a particular
disposition or set of knower attributes (Maton 2014, pp. 30–31).
Represented using a Cartesian plane, the four codes are depicted as in Figure 13.1
Within the field of music education, the four code modalities may be conceived accordingly to
‘what you know’ (knowledge codes), the ‘kind of (musician) knower’ you are (knower codes), both
(élite codes), or neither (relativist codes). A particular code may determine the basis of achievement,
but may not be universally recognised. When more than one code is present, actors may clash over
which code should dominate. These code clashes can manifest in curriculum documents, education
policies and assessment practices, and, in teaching and learning interactions in classrooms.
Methodology
As international and often national variations in curriculum and practice can be substantial, a
multi-layered case study was undertaken, with LCT constituting an overarching explanatory
tool capable of tying together findings derived inductively from both historic-curricular and
present-day classroom levels of the research (Maton 2014). Stake (1995) describes case study as
“a specific, complex, functioning thing” (p. 2) of which there are two basic forms: the first
‘intrinsic’ which is self-bound, and the other ‘instrumental’, addressing context-specific phe
nomena but with broader explanatory potential (p. 3).
According to an instrumental case study design, school music education in New South Wales
was examined on two levels. Here, and in the majority of Australian states and territories, music
education in schools is founded upon British precedents, where classroom instruction integrates
activities in performing, listening, and composing. Learning in large ensembles (choirs, orchestras,
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A field divided
and concert bands) also occurs in many schools, but operates under co- or extra-curricular (fee-
paying) provision. In secondary classrooms, mandatory instruction is provided to all students in
Stage 4 (roughly 12–13 years), before becoming an optional or elective unit of study for Stage 5
(roughly 14–15 years), and Stage 6 (roughly 16–18 years), when students complete formal assess
ments and final examinations before matriculating from high school.
This study was concerned primarily with Stage 6 level senior secondary classroom in
struction. Part 1 provided a broad scale appraisal of curriculum reform, historic accounts of
practice, and, matriculation statistics spanning a 60-year period relevant to the case. Part 2
provided ethnographic account from a range of qualitative classroom data. These data included
a student survey, work samples, and transcribed interview and video footage concerning the 10-
week research project conducted at my school. Inductive analysis generated a body of emergent
themes with LCT then serving as an overarching analytical tool, exposing connections between
the discussion of historic state-wide trends and the classroom data. A series of code matches and
clashes emerged with implications for the present case and potentially beyond. Although the
classroom study was conducted earlier in the research timeline, the historic discussion is
presented next for coherence.
Part 1: Historic review of New South Wales’ curriculum and practice

Analysis of the NSW school curriculum of the 1950s reveals a clear sequence of explicit knowledge
and skills associated with the study of Western art music. The curriculum constituted graded ex
ercises in class singing, solfege, aural transcription, harmony and counterpoint, coupled with im
mersive listening and score analysis of canonical works. Vocal performance was the norm, with
instrumental skills and private tuition not stipulated as requirements for study (Secondary Schools
Board 1956). The design of this early curriculum upon which later iterations would be modelled
sought to strengthen the relatively weak position of school music, by drawing upon the discrete
knowledge and skills valued at the tertiary level. The syllabus stated: ‘music has been regarded as a
language of sounds, the vocabulary of which may be learned through a step by step study of its use
in musical literature, hand in hand with creative and re-creative self-expression’ (Secondary Schools
Board 1956, p. 2). In LCT terms, this constituted a knowledge code, or strong epistemic relations, with
weaker social relations (ER+, SR–).
However, matriculation trends and relevant literature reveal that this course competed with
an external pathway to matriculation, provided by the Australian Music Examinations Board
(AMEB), a nationally accredited examining body (Comte 1988). In contrast to the course
offered in schools, the AMEB syllabus focused on the progressive development of solo classical
performance of Western art music accompanied by music theory. The graded examinations also
imitated vertical progression with sequenced technical work and progressive repertoire lists
(strong epistemic relations); however, the focus was upon the student’s demonstration of sty
listic awareness, technical mastery, and personal expression only achievable with the assistance
of individual private tuition (strong social relations) (Australian Music Examinations
Board 1956). The emphasis was on the cultivation of a musician knower and one who had
internalised the correct sound or disposition towards performance over a considerable time.
During the 1960s and 1970s, revisions were made to the school syllabus to include more
options for the study and examination of instrumental music (Secondary School
Board 1962, 1986). The corresponding senior syllabus was also revised to allow students to
specialise in performance, composition or musicology. By 1983, students matriculating with 3
Units of Music in performance (the most rigorous level with the highest number of candidates)
were required to display many of the skills outlined by the AMEB system, including a final solo
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Christine Carroll
recital of up to eight contrasting works (Board of Senior School Studies 1983). Supporting these
observations, Comte (1988) notes that ‘the final year of secondary schooling is, in many areas of
Australia, tied somewhat immutably to an external examination system’ (p. 109).
School curriculum writers had attempted a dual purpose: to acknowledge two distinct but
interrelated forms of power and status. The first maintained the core knowledge content
outlined by the earlier 1950s school curriculum (ER+, SR–), and the second, classical per
formance skills acquired through private instrumental tuition (ER+, SR+). Thus, a subtle
combination of both knowledge and knower attributes (ER+ and SR+), were needed to qualify
for entry into tertiary conservatoire or university music study. Carruthers (2005) articulates:
Entrance to university music programs is especially selective. Incoming geography

students are not expected to be geographers, nor are first-year botany students ex
pected to be botanists, but entering music students are expected to be musicians. They
must have received extensive musical training, especially (for whatever reason) in
performance, and have achieved high standards. At universities with open admission
policies in other areas, admission to music is by audition only. Students are accepted or
rejected on the basis of prior learning, which puts tremendous responsibility on pre-
university private and public music programs. (p. 50)
In summary, a code shift had occurred, away from the acquisition of specific knowledge, to
cultivating student musicians who could demonstrate this knowledge both practically and
academically (ER+, SR+): in other words, an élite code.
Over the same time period, a series of constructivist reforms took hold impacting school
curriculum, particularly at the junior secondary levels. Student-centred, Creativity and
Comprehensive Musicianship approaches were employed (Comte 1988), with similar move
ments noted abroad (Jeanneret et al. 2003). The aim was for students to become performers,
composers, conductors, listeners, and critics in their own right, rather than the passive receptors
of traditional knowledge and skills. A range of potential topics for study were introduced,
placing the study of Western art music alongside Jazz, Music Theatre, Non-Western, and
Popular music and a range of others, with no mandatory topics or set works prescribed for study
(Secondary Schools Board 1981, 1986).
New knowledge frameworks known as music ‘elements’ or ‘concepts’ were brought in,
reflecting an international trend to systematically organise music terminology according to the
categories of pitch, duration, texture, timbre, structure, and so on (Mark 1986; Rose and
Countryman 2013). These categories were believed capable of transcending the need to revert to
the teaching of specific formal structures and theoretical concepts developed for the study of
Western art music. It was intended that teachers use music notation to teach the elements – which
by implication meant that traditional knowledge was not displaced by newer alternatives – but,
exposure to notation remained conditional upon teachers’ choices in topics, repertoire, and the
personal needs of students (Secondary Schools Board 1986).
A weakening of relations to traditional epistemic content had occurred (ER–), creating a
marked shift in practice that worked against the systematic construction of knowledge – the
very thing the constructivist reforms were intended to facilitate. Maton describes this as gen
erating ‘segmented’ knowledge (Maton 2009). In opposition to ‘cumulative knowledge’ where
‘new knowledge builds and integrates past knowledge’ (Maton 2009, p. 43), learning in topics
or modules tends towards fragmentation and segmentation, with new knowledge acquired
alongside old knowledge, without necessarily drawing connections between what is learned
along the way. In opposition to the traditional canon of hierarchical knowledge (ER+),
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A field divided
Figure 13.2 Candidature statistics for music1
knowledge and skills for Jazz, Popular, and Non-Western music each involved discrete and
interchangeable repertoire, and a more diverse range of skills.
This created a problem. As dependent upon a teacher’s programming at the junior secondary
level, schools could no longer guarantee that students were adequately prepared for the challenges
and rigour of the (still Western art music based) senior music curriculum. This had created a new
path of learning in parallel with the first aligned to a more inclusive knower code: addressing
students’ immediate needs and tastes (SR+) but downplaying relations to hierarchic knowledge
(ER–) associated with Western art music. The other path was the much narrower and specialised
élite code (SR+, ER+), providing access to the senior curriculum and to tertiary study beyond.
Therefore, due to the highly specialised nature of senior study, a second senior syllabus,
Music 2 Unit A (an early form Music 1) was introduced in 1978 (Wemyss 2004, p. 147). In
order to accommodate diversity, this course contained options for the study of many new topic
areas including popular music. The new senior syllabus stated ‘the present structure of Music
courses in the senior school pre-supposes a firm foundation of musical literacy and does not
allow for a later development of interest in or aptitude for music’. (Board of Senior School
Studies 1977, p. 1 italics added). Clearly, on grounds of inclusion, the emergence of a new kind
of student knower had prompted the addition. However, the kind of knowledge relevant to the
‘non-literate’ musician is ambiguously framed by music ‘elements’ or ‘concepts’, and continues
to be the subject of academic debate (Carroll 2020; Rose and Countryman 2013). With
candidature numbers recorded on the vertical axis, Figure 13.2 plots the numerical growth in
student uptake for these courses through to the present day.
This bifurcated system has remained in schools, with the Music 2 Unit A stream (now
revised as Music 1) running parallel to Music 2, which is a revised version of the original senior
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Christine Carroll
music course. At first glance, the rationales for each course appear similar, stating that students
will study ‘the concepts of music [construct knowledge], through the learning experiences of
performing, composing, musicology and aural [through knowers’ experiences], within the
context of a range of styles, periods and genres [in segments]’ (Board of Studies 2009a; 2009b,
p. 8). These ‘segments’ or topic areas are not equivalent, however, framed variously under
‘style’, ‘period’, ‘genre’, and other categories that differ considerably between the courses,
creating something of a code disjunction – or rather, code chasm – between the two. For
example, students studying Music 2 must study Western art music and contemporary Australian
art music through the use of scores, while Music 1 students select repertoire from a broad range
of more loosely framed topic areas, accommodating an aural approach to learning with only
minimal music literacy and theory requirements stipulated.
The newer course, although improving the number of music candidates (as indicated in
Figure 13.2) has perpetuated a division at the senior level along with a formal versus informal,
classical versus popular, theory versus practice, or knowledge versus knowing mentality
amongst teacher colleagues including those working at my school. Seeking to understand this
binary at a grassroots level – and, without prior knowledge of LCT nor the results from the
historic analysis of curriculum and practice outlined – I designed a research project with a
teaching program which would integrate both sets of course outcomes concurrently. The re
sults are outlined hence.
PART 2: The ‘Barock’ music project classroom case study

This part of the project was developed to tease out a spectrum of ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ learning
and pedagogy at Stage 6 curricular level, in order to examine if current provision at the school
served the needs and learning orientations of the students. I use these terms akin to Green (2008), in
distinguishing between the facilitation of aural-based music transmission strategies of popular mu
sicians, and notation-based, teacher-directed study of Western art music. With an investigation of
baroque music as the content framework, the unit was designed to progress students through three
distinct phases that would together involve them in different kinds of learning opportunities. The
topic was chosen as it was listed in both syllabus documents (Board of Studies 2009a, 2009b), but
here served to initiate a range of learning representative of an informal – formal spectrum, en
compassing ear-playing and ensemble work featuring versioning and improvisation, through to
notation-centred learning and teaching as described hence.
The unit of learning was structured in three phases. The first phase was performance-based, and
designed after Green’s (2008) informal learning with classical music (as outlined hence). The second
phase involved two written tasks – a scored transcription and an analysis report. The third phase
offered activities designed to transition the students back into the separate courses: an improvisation
task for those intending Music 1; and instruction in the basics of baroque counterpoint and fugue
writing for those interested in Music 2. By momentarily dissolving the boundaries between the two
typically divided cohorts, the relationship between different forms of musical knowledge and the
aspirations of different musician knowers could be examined and explored.
The participants
The 30 (mixed gender) students represented a range of musical skills and interests, with some
having received many years of classical tuition, and others ‘self-taught’. The majority, however,
had experienced some combination of the two (i.e. classical training on one instrument, self-
taught on another, and so on). Prior learning did not always correspond with their current
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A field divided
music interests, as the vast majority reported skills and existing expertise to varying degrees in
popular music-making. The teachers also represented a range of pedagogic backgrounds and
professional expertise. Teacher 1, had two sets of undergraduate qualifications in classical and
jazz performance; Teacher 2, had a background solely in jazz performance and arranging;
and Teacher 3 (myself), a background in classical performance. All three teachers held either
undergraduate or post-graduate qualifications in music education.
The majority of students – 27 in total – had undertaken Stage 5 elective music at the junior
secondary level (ages 14–16) in a range of different schools prior to enrolment. Yet via the
survey, most stated ‘lack of confidence’ with ‘music reading’ or ‘music theory’ as their reason
for intending to study Music 1. Those wishing to study Music 2 numbered eight on grounds of
its ‘formal content’, its suitability as a ‘tertiary prerequisite’ and also for the ‘academic challenge’.
Five students were unsure as to which course to choose, so were glad of some extra time to
consider their options. Interestingly, student perceptions of course suitability changed over the
first 2 phases, with the cohort dividing evenly (15 students each) for Phase 3. As data for the
Phase 3 improvisation task generated very similar results to those generated for Phase 1, it has
been omitted from discussion here.
Phase 1: weeks 1–5

The first phase was modelled after Green’s pilot study on informal learning with classical music
(2008, pp. 149–180). This involved the students working in five different friendship groups to
create an original performance arrangement of a baroque work chosen from a compilation CD
and scores that I had provided.2 Each of the groups demonstrated idiosyncratic music-making
during Phase 1, which bore reference both to their chosen baroque work, and also, to their
prior learning and genre preferences in heavy metal, pop, blues, rock, folk and sometimes, an
eclectic combination. All performances showed high levels of repetition, even phrase structures,
and rhythmic, harmonic, textural, and improvisational features common to these genres of
popular music (Carroll 2017). The students displayed high levels of motivation and ownership
of their work in Phase 1 (in LCT terms strong social relations, or SR+), but only tacit awareness
of the learning processes and explicit knowledge acquired (weaker epistemic relations, or ER–).
Working mostly by ear, both the students (and the teachers) were largely unable to articulate
direct connections between the passages selected and adapted for performance, and their origins
in the baroque works, with these connections becoming clear to me only later through the
transcription and analysis process of classroom video data (again, ER–) (Carroll 2017). In LCT
terms, this phase generated for most students, a knower code (ER–, SR+).
However, tensions soon arose when the informal learning approach appeared at odds with
the teachers’ élite code experiences of baroque music. Struggling to find points of connection
with a group of guitarists who could not read music, Teacher 1 chose to demonstrate passages of
a Bach fugue on his bass guitar, intending these be learned and memorised. The footage re
vealed the students fatigued, soon returning to their heavy metal adaptation of the fugue in his
absence. In a later interview, Teacher 1 provided this feedback:
Well, I would have liked them to have … well you know, when you learn a language
… not only do you learn some grammar and syntax and vocabulary, you learn the
accent, and I think that I would have liked them to get a bit of all of those things …
And look, I guess this is how it just had to be because they have such limited ex
perience with this type of music, but it was like listening to someone speak French
with a very heavy Australian accent. There was a very heavy accent of their own
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Christine Carroll
musical vernacular imposed upon the music. And I think that I would have liked them
to get more into some of the details.
Using the metaphor of ‘language’, Teacher 1’s pedagogy served to expose the students to some
of the original content or ‘vocabulary’ of the fugue. However, unable to memorise lengthy
polyphonic material nor perform it with the correct sound or ‘accent’, the students could not
fulfil his intentions. Returning to their existing heavy metal adaptation of the fugue which they
already enjoyed performing, a code clash had emerged between Teacher 1’s élite code pedagogy,
and the students’ knower code disposition to the task.

Working in the same five groups, the students were then asked to transcribe their performance
arrangements, and compare these with the original baroque work upon which they had been
loosely based. Although the task instructions validated a variety of notation responses such as
graphic symbols, chord charts, and guitar tablature, as well as digital and handwritten scores, all
groups attempted to use staff notation. Surprisingly, the task was enjoyed most by the groups
who had limited experience with staff notation, with pedagogy aligned to a knowledge code
introducing a range of graphic and traditional notation types, connecting different knowledge
forms across aural – notated, and informal – formal boundaries (Carroll 2020). However, for the
groups representing a more diverse range of music literacy skills, the task proved divisive, as
those with existing competence felt they needed to control the scoring outcome.
The written analyses were undertaken individually, requiring each student to discuss one
‘element’ or ‘concept’ area (i.e. ‘pitch’, ‘duration’, etc.) common to both course syllabi. Using
bullet points and references to both performed, and original versions of the chosen works, the
students were asked to articulate similarities and contrasts between the two. Problematically,
many of the students misunderstood the point of the exercise or found it too challenging, and
based discussion almost solely on the performed versions which were more familiar to them.
When assessed, written terminology proved a sticking point, as student terms used and de
veloped during ‘informal’ learning in Phase 1, were deemed inappropriate in the written re
ports. For example, rather than encouraging a terminology exchange between formal and
informal musical language, classroom dialogue showed Teacher 2 superimposing terms such as
‘interlude’ and ‘melodic theme’, over the students’ working descriptions of the ‘solos’ and
‘break-downs’ used in their performance (Carroll 2020). Here, and in the previous transcription
exercise, it appeared that not all knowledge forms were viewed equally by all concerned.
Teacher 2 later elaborated during a follow-up interview:
My understanding was that after all it is still baroque right? So, no matter what it boils
down to, it is still that right? So you need to use some terminology that shows the
relationship to baroque music right? … That was my understanding.
The interview transcript highlights another set of code tensions. During Phase 1, Teacher 2 had
provided the students freedom in the stylistic adaptation of Baroque material, according to a
knower code (ER–, SR+). Later, in Phase 2, a pedagogic shift resulted in knowledge code pedagogy
(ER+, SR–). However, tensions emerged as both teacher and student knowledge (ER) did not
operate on an equal footing, with that aligned to Western art music deemed by Teacher 2 the
more appropriate choice.
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A field divided

In Phase 3, the 15 students interested in studying the Music 2 course undertook a 3-week
‘trial’ where they were instructed to compose the opening of a baroque fugue using music
notation software. The task began with teacher-directed listening and score analysis of a
Bach fugue followed by basic instruction in some of the rules of baroque counterpoint
(Carroll 2017). As successful completion of the task required an understanding of both
fugue form and style traits, further tensions arose when students misunderstood the detailed
instructions, or objected to the number of rules imposed, and hence, lack of compositional
freedom. Equally, many of the students continued to work by ear rather than from the
notation-based instructions and examples provided. Teacher 3 (myself) deemed many of the
compositions unsuccessful, yet despite this, some of the students expressed pride and sa
tisfaction in their work, as it had exposed them to new skills and musical ideas, as the
following classroom video transcript relays:
STUDENT: I don’t know if this bit fits but I thought that it sounded kind of cool. Can I
show you?
TEACHER 3: (Listening to student work) … I actually like that … but, … you know what’s
been really interesting, is that all of your ears are still attuned to popular music
because that’s what you mainly listen to.
STUDENT: Yeah.
TEACHER 3: So getting you to write in a baroque style is really difficult, because the sound of it
is not in your head. I actually really like that ending you’ve written there but it’s
not a traditional one you know …
STUDENT: Thanks heaps.
TEACHER 3: Difficult yes?
STUDENT: It’s fun though. I do like the challenge.
Clearly, the students were happy to be presented with academic challenges (or ER+) – but with
only limited time to cultivate knowledge of style and musical syntax, and, working largely by ear,
their compositions had reflected a different kind of ‘sound’ to the one I as teacher had intended. My
pedagogy was framed according to an underlying élite code (ER+, SR+), but in completing the task,
many (if not all) of the students maintained their alignment to a knower code (ER–, SR+).
Discussion and conclusions: Code shifts and legitimacy in the classroom

In summary, trends in the classroom data can be attributed to shifts and clashes in codes of
legitimation. In Phase 1, the collaborative informal learning task encouraged multiple inter
pretations and negotiable, more ‘relativist’ knowledge was the result (SR+, ER–). This framed
the knower as central to the exercise. In Phase 2, the creation of scores and analyses required
students to codify and critically compare their performances in Phase 1 with the original
baroque works upon which they had been based. This required that students translate their
‘knowing’ into ‘knowledge’ (SR–, ER+). However, friction then occurred between a range of
scoring and terminology outcomes aligned to different kinds of music. Also, the approach
revealed that learning did not necessarily generate knowledge which the students were capable
of transferring between learning contexts, as demonstrated by very limited comparison and
critical engagement with the original baroque works.
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Christine Carroll
In Phase 3, despite students making further gains in music literacy and enjoying the chal
lenge of fugue writing, students displayed confusion as to why a task such as composition was so
prescriptive in requiring knowledge of form and style. This indicated a code ‘clash’ between the
knower code dispositions of students and the élite code expectations of myself the teacher.
Nevertheless, many students indicated that they had enjoyed the challenges the task presented.
Yet, due to further code clashes of this kind the majority of these students chose eventually to
move to the Music 1 class, not due to lack of musical or academic ability, but because they
perceived they were simply the wrong kind of musician, or possessed a different, or, an in
complete knowledge set to the one required. During the follow-up interviews, some of these
students expressed the desire for more academically rigorous study which the Music 1 course
did not provide. This is a significant finding, as it highlighted a missed opportunity for a portion
of the student cohort (11 of the original 30), with implications beyond the present case study.
Later, when findings from the classroom study were placed alongside the findings from the
analysis of state-wide matriculation statistics outlined in Part 1, the proportion of students re
maining in Music 2 (numbering only 4 from the original 30 in the research project) mirrored a
similar proportional split at the state level. Notwithstanding significant variation in course
delivery across the state, there appears a deficit in provision for student popular musicians
seeking further academic challenge, as Music 1 provides no clear path for extension, nor
preparation for tertiary music study (Board of Studies 2009a). This highlights a need for cur
riculum reform in New South Wales Australia and potentially beyond, to provide students
representing a range of musical skills and interests access to appropriately designed, yet aca
demically rigorous educational opportunities should they seek them. In the meantime, it would
appear that pedagogy is the key to addressing this problem. Without an awareness of the un
derlying code tensions resulting from the meeting of formal and informal knowledge in
classrooms, teachers remain ignorant of ways to bridge the élite code – knower code divide, by
encouraging meaningful dialogue between different knowledge forms.
This case study which helps frame various shifts in codes of legitimation in school music
education, reveals that a curriculum centred solely around the knower may obscure or even
impede access to valuable knowledge, resulting in what Maton (2014) describes as ‘knowledge
blindness’ in the classroom. By making knowledge practices more visible, the underlying codes
maintaining division can be both acknowledged and new possibilities considered. Rather than
perpetuate a dichotomy, perhaps it is time to address prior assumptions and turn our attention to
the kind of classroom practice that will prepare 21st-century musicians of various orientations
for life-long learning in a music industry which no longer holds tightly to conceptions of low
and high art. As to what kind of curriculum and classroom practice might enable such learning
is beyond the scope of this research, however dialogue between various musical discourses
including those associated with traditional study would be a useful point at which to begin the
conversation.
1. To what extent does the code divide described in this case study manifest within the school
educational system most immediate to you?
2. What kinds of curricular structures and assessment strategies might be actualised by the idea
of bridging the élite code – knower code divide, in order to provide more equitable educa
tional experiences for students including those with informal learning backgrounds?
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A field divided
Notes
1 Graph generated from candidature statistics for Music tabled by gender. Statistics viewed 1 May 2020,
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/bos_stats/.
2 These works included the Organ Toccata in D minor by J.S. Bach, Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3 by
J.S. Bach, Little Fugue in G minor by J.S. Bach, Canon by J. Pachelbel, Dido’s Lament from Opera Dido
and Aeneasby H. Purcell, and the Hallelujah Chorus from Oratorio The Messiah by G.F. Handel. These
works were selected due to their relative familiarity and/or musical accessibility in terms of repetitive
or formulaic structural design.
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Speech. The Board, Melbourne, Australia.
Board of Senior School Studies, 1977. Music Syllabus Year 11 and 12: New 2 Unit A Course. Draft Document.
NSW Department of Education, Sydney, Australia.
Board of Senior School Studies, 1983. Music Syllabus: 2 Unit (Related) and 3 Unit Course for Years 11 and 12.
NSW Department of Education, Sydney, Australia.
Board of Studies, 2009a. Music 1 Stage 6 Syllabus. NSW Department of Education and Training, Sydney,
Australia. Viewed 12 January 2019, http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/music-
1.html.
Board of Studies, 2009b. Music 2 and Extension Syllabus, NSW Department of Education and Training Sydney,
Australia. Viewed 12 January 2019, http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/music-2.html.
Carroll, C., 2017. Playing the field: an Australian case study of student popular musicians’ informal
learning in senior secondary classroom music education. PhD Thesis, The University of Sydney.
Viewed 23 November 2018, https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/17232.
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musicians in Australian senior secondary classrooms. British Journal of Music Education vol. 36 (no. 2),
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Folkestad, G., 2006. Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of
learning. British Journal of Music Education vol. 23 (no. 2), 135–145. doi: 10.1017/S0265051706006887.
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14
MUSIC AND THE SOCIAL
IMAGINARIES OF YOUNG
PEOPLE
Athena Lill
Social imaginaries
The term ‘social imaginary’ has been used with increasing regularity by sociologists and an-
thropologists since the mid-twentieth century.1 It is both active and structural, drawing to-
gether the sociological concepts of agency and structure: it encompasses both the imagining and
the imagined. It includes the juxtaposition of the individual imagination with real-world actions
as people make social decisions based on their own private imaginings, imaginings that have
been affirmed through a complex web of cultural symbols and artefacts curated by an ac-
knowledged community. As a tool for examining social groups the imaginary has the potential
to analyse individual actions situated within a macrocosmic set of beliefs and ideologies, and to
therefore help us to understand the ways that others construct the world.
In the mid-twentieth century, the psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan discussed the importance of
the image and the human fascination with the intersection between the body and the ego
through three structures: the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real. For Lacan, the imaginary is a
mediator between our internal and external experience: it helps us to understand that while
some aspects of reality are real, other equally valid aspects are imagined (Lacan 1988). The
imagination, with its ability to mimic or even create physical sensation, ultimately renegotiates
the classic dichotomy of the body and mind. As a psychoanalyst, Lacan was particularly con-
cerned with the imaginary of the individual however he did note the way that individuals draw
on social symbols in order to construct their personal identity (Strauss 2006).
More recently, the idea of the imaginary has been developed through political science,
sociology and anthropology, particularly in the work of Charles Castoriadis (1987), Benedict
Anderson (2016), Arjun Appadurai (1996), and Charles Taylor (2004). In Castoriadis’s work the
(singular) social imaginary is a large-scale cultural schema which unites people from disparate
communities into one imagined collective, a ‘central world view associated with a particular
group, setting off one group from another’ (Strauss 2006, p. 328). This particular interest in the
collective means that for Castoriadis the social imaginary is the imagination of a reified society,
which at times seems to discount the agency of individuals.
In his seminal text ‘Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism’ Anderson (2016) used ‘nationalism’ as a concept to illustrate how a collection of
individuals may strongly identify with each other through the imagined symbols of the nation
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Athena Lill
state. He defined the nation as ‘an imagined political community’ (Anderson 2016, p. 6),
explaining:
it is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of
their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives
the image of their communion.
(p. 6, original emphasis)
Anderson emphasises the role that capitalism and media have in shaping and creating such a
community (Anderson 2016, p. 37), and, like Castoriadis, reiterates the importance of using an
imagined Other to provide a boundary for the community. Like Anderson, Appadurai (1996,
p. 53) highlights the role of mass media in increasing the importance of individual imagination
in social life: ‘more persons in more parts of the world consider a wider set of possible lives than
they ever did before’. Moreover, because of the presence of the imagined lives of others in our
life, many more people ‘see their lives through the prisms of the possible lives offered by mass
media’ (Appadurai 1996, p. 54), for better or worse. Perhaps more so than Anderson, Appadurai
underlines the importance of the movement of peoples in spreading cultural values, once again
making the link between the imagined and the real more concrete. The power of the media-
presented imaginary life is only made powerful by ‘contacts with, news of, and rumours about
others in one’s social neighbourhood who have become inhabitants of these faraway worlds’
(Appadurai 1996, p. 53). Thus, for Appadurai the social imaginary takes shape through a ne-
gotiation between the individual and a range of global possibilities, enacted through learnt social
practices and fantasies.
Charles Taylor, in his text ‘Modern Social Imaginaries’ (2004), conceives of social ima-
ginaries as both plural and dynamic. Like Appadurai, Taylor emphasises the importance of
contact with both global media and with local people, arguing that a social imaginary is
constituted by:
the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how
things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met,
and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.
(Appadurai 1996, p. 23)
For Taylor, imaginaries are enacted and exist in the ways that people carry out social practices that are
informed by our understanding of imaginary values: ‘if the understanding makes the practice
possible, it is also true that the practice largely carries the understanding’ (Appadurai 1996, p. 25).
Thus imaginaries have the power to transform reality whilst simultaneously being transformed by
the practices of individuals. Crucially, Taylor recognises the vital role played by products (including
artworks, stories, etc.) in producing and sustaining a social imaginary.
Throughout the 20th century, an increasing number of social imaginaries have been re-
searched and discussed, however few studies have examined the role of music in the imaginary
life of particular social groups (Lill and Dieckmann 2013). The ability for music to transmit
important cultural symbols makes it a powerful vehicle for constructing and disseminating a
social imaginary. Hence, I suggest that the creation of musical artefacts and practices both
transforms individuals and their lived reality. Building on the work of the above theorists, in this
chapter I shall explore the ways in which young people create, curate, and sustain a social
imaginary through music, how such an imaginary is disseminated and shared and the impact
that a social imaginary can have on the lived experience of individuals.
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Music and social imaginaries of the young
Tweenagers
While the liminal state between childhood and adolescence has been acknowledged for some
time, more recently the recognition of ‘tweenagers’ as a discrete social category has been ac-
cepted in academia (Boden 2006). Described as a ‘media-constructed age category’
(Boden 2006, p. 291), this group of children are commonly defined by adults as being
Westernised young people approximately aged between 8 and 15 who have increasing con-
sumer power. Although tweenhood was initially propagated by mass-media (particularly
through advertising), tweens themselves are now beginning to actively construct what it means
to be a tween, effectively emancipating themselves from the construction of this group by
adults. One effect of this has been to call into question the extent to which age can be used to
categorise tweens (Lill 2015); certainly many of the tweens in this study identified themselves
more readily through the things that they liked and the things they did, rather than what age
they were, suggesting that Taylor’s (2004) emphasis on social practices is fundamental. This has
important implications in understanding a tweenage imaginary, given how quickly objects and
practices fall in and out of fashion. This would suggest that, as a transient state that individuals
occupy for only a few years at a time, a tweenage imaginary is perhaps more fluid and dynamic
than other imaginaries (national or religious, for example). Although there will always be
tweens, tweenhood itself is constantly remade as new individuals ‘join’ and others leave.
Tween spaces: online and offline

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century the concept of space has been irreversibly
altered by the ubiquity of the Internet in our day-to-day lives. The ability for tweenagers to
access a shared global space through personal hand-held devices at any time of day or night has
resulted in a whole new dimension of peer-to-peer interaction, and vastly expanded oppor-
tunities for young people to connect with an increasingly global imaginary (Marsh 2014).
However, open access brings with it increasing concern for adults who are tasked with the
safeguarding of children and teens. The attempts of adults to police mobile devices is often
loaded with tension as many young people see mobile use as a typically youth-oriented practice.
The online life of tweenagers is, for many of them, a vitally important facet of their identity. It
offers an immediacy of contact with otherwise strangers hundreds of miles away, as well as peer
affirmation of cultural practices and artefacts that they consider to be important (Lill 2015).
Furthermore, it is both intensely private and intensely social at once: a paradox that can result in
young people feeling both overwhelmed by others and deeply lonely at the same time. Until
Internet access became so easy, most media were created by adults for tweens and therefore
struggled to express an authentic tween voice. With the ability to create and disseminate media
that excludes the adult voice, tweens in the twenty-first century have an unprecedented op-
portunity to create their own world. It is a space in which tweenagers can be culturally
powerful.
Of course, as well as an online space, most tweens in the Western world spend a considerable
amount of their time in an ostensibly adult-mediated space: the school. Schools are one of the
few spaces in which young people are grouped broadly by age, and certainly by geographical
proximity, leading to the development of localised age-defined peer communities. As an in-
stitution, school is unique; a place for children with a primary aim of learning centred on a
curriculum with often limited reference to those things that young people find vitally im-
portant. However, within every school is a distinct ‘underlife’ (Corsaro 2015), a shared project
of resistance that seeks to undermine and reclaim adult power. Corsaro identifies ‘secondary
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Athena Lill
adjustments’ as one of the ways in which children appropriate control in adult-mediated si-
tuations. Secondary adjustments can be described as any means by which an individual (or
group) subverts a more powerful social structure and through the collective creation and
performance of secondary adjustments, children create a culture which exists and responds to
the dominant, adult-sanctioned culture of the school.
Without both the Internet and the physical space of the school it is difficult to see how a
truly global social imaginary could come to exist for tweenagers. Unlike long-held imaginaries
that unite diasporic communities (see Anderson 2016) as the new social category of tweenagers
emerged, so did their globally negotiated social imaginary: co-created by thousands of young
people ascribing meaning to those symbols, artefacts, and practices that they consider to be
important. The discussion of this imaginary will be illustrated by data drawn from a doctoral
study completed between 2012 and 2015 (Lill 2015). This project included collecting quali-
tative data from tweenagers living in both rural and urban areas of New South Wales, Australia,
and England, UK.
Creating the imaginary

During the time I spent collecting data in both the UK and Australia it was clear that popular
music was incredibly important to tweenagers. Tweens in both countries spent a considerable
amount of time on- and offline watching pop videos, singing and dancing to pop music, and
creating their own cover versions. Interestingly, the majority of popular music that they en-
joyed was performed by artists who were in their 20s (and often written by adults who were
significantly older) and while this music was generally produced with a tweenage market in
mind, tweens rarely appreciated it at face value. In order to ascribe personal meaning to these
songs the tweens appropriated and transformed the music, effectively claiming ownership
through the performance of musical secondary adjustments. Appropriating and transforming
music is nothing new, indeed Kathy Marsh (1999) identifies cycles of appropriation as a key
feature of children’s musical play. Interestingly, a significant proportion of the appropriated
music that I saw was itself transformed through recontextualization and/or juxtaposition
alongside seemingly unrelated texts, leading to a complex web of meaning and understanding
that was difficult to follow without the help of a tweenage guide. The prevalence of ‘in-jokes’
(Lill 2014) and musical parodies of favourite songs gave the impression of a cynicism and
knowingness that is not always associated with young adolescence but was clearly a significant
facet of their social imaginary. Moreover, in-jokes created through parody allow groups to
define themselves against the excluded Other, in line with Anderson’s (2016) argument. The
importance of parodic interactions to tweenagers was particularly evident when I visited a very
small school in rural New South Wales.
At the time of the research, the school had 18 students on role. A group of five girls tended to
spend their time dancing together at break and lunch times, using the classroom computer to
access songs on YouTube. This musical practice fostered a strong social bond and simultaneously
connected them to a wider tweenage social imaginary through the dance moves which were
stored in the collective memory of the group. When I asked where they got the moves from, the
girls explained they gathered them from various sources, including media and other tweens:
JESS (12): TVs [sic], YouTube, and like, dancing competitions … like music camp.
One girl, Laura (10), was a relatively new addition to the friendship group, despite having
attended the school since kindergarten. She was described by her friends as a ‘good little
212
cowgirl’, implying that she was more interested in riding horses and farming than in popular
music, fashion, and boys (seen by the girls as more sophisticated, tweenage interests). Although
she rarely danced seriously for any long period of time, Laura did tend to engage in the social
activity through parody, carefully choosing parodic dance moves that made fun of popular
music or her own lack of prowess rather than the other dancers. One such example occurred
during a spontaneous dance to the song ‘Wings’ by UK girl band Little Mix. Prior to the song
being played, the girls had an involved discussion about the choice of song for dancing:
JESS: What song do you want on?

LAURA: Wings. Do Wings.
SUNITA (9): Ohhh, Natural!
LAURA: No!
LEXI (7): No, that’s not …
JESS: How about Beauty and the Beat?
LAURA AND LEXI: [in chorus, drawn out] No!
SUNITA: [sings] Beauty and the Beat! Beauty and the …
LAURA: [authoritatively] Taylor [Swift] or Wings.
2
JESS: We’ll try Wings. (Observation, Blue Hills, 5 February 2013)
This exchange clearly demonstrates the extent to which Laura was involved and invested in the
choice of music for the dance. Although as the group’s leader Jess remained in control of the
situation, it is Laura’s voice that was ultimately heard, over and above the others. However,
when the song began to play, Laura remained standing to one side whilst the other girls re-
produced dance moves appropriated from popular culture. Gradually, and instead of dancing
seriously, Laura started to bob her head up and down, seemingly like a chicken. This was
quickly imitated by Lexi, and the two girls performed this move intermittently throughout the
song. However, rather than just re-voicing Laura’s move, the other girls were inspired to
attempt parodic moves of their own, including a ‘Walk like an Egyptian’ move. At the chorus,
Laura introduced a new idea, jumping up and down and flapping her hands at shoulder level
each time the word ‘wings’ occurred in the song. This move was met with a great deal of
sociable laughter from the other girls in the group.
The initial affirmation the other girls gave Laura for her ‘chicken bob’ move led Laura to try
the second parodic ‘wings’ move, a move that involved more physical commitment. Interestingly,
at this point Laura was not only parodying the words of the song, but also commenting on her
own status as a dancer, as well as her position as an integral member of the friendship group, who
was able to mock their primary leisure pursuit without offending the others. Moreover, she was
physically referencing a dance move performed by one of the members of Little Mix, albeit sped
up for comic effect, and also, perhaps, the popular advertisement for Red Bull energy drinks that
features a cartoon man flying in a similar style, adding layers of intertextuality to her performance.
Towards the end of this performance, the parodic framework established by Laura was
exploited by Jess and Sunita, who started to perform parodies of more highly sexualised dance
moves, including an imaginary ‘grinding’ move where the hips are moved from side to side, and
an arm is waved as if slapping somebody else’s imaginary buttocks. This move was repeated
several times, accompanied by lots of giggling, and dramatic faces. By doing this, Jess and Sunita
inhabited an interesting position within Laura’s parodic world. Clearly, they were making fun
of the dance move itself, but also of themselves as serious dancers compared to Laura.
Moreover, in this instance the girls used parody to explore the tension that they felt as
tweenager with a complex interest in boys and sexuality. Subsequently they both affirmed their
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own ‘official’ position of taking dance-time seriously, and of being ‘grown up’, whilst si-
multaneously confirming their alignment with Laura and her desire to use dance humorously.
This improvised moment of dance moreover made an important statement about the social
imaginary which these girls both create and inhabit. The embodied parody juxtaposed and
combined online texts, in-jokes taken from other dances that the girls had performed, and the
tension present from performing overtly sexual moves in the adult-controlled space of the
school. Through the transformation of these appropriated movements the girls created a richly
intertextual web of cultural artefacts to which they had ascribed meaning. Moreover, by par-
ticipating through parody, Laura was both changing and being changed in the moment of the
shared imaginary (Taylor, 2004).
Sharing the imaginary

In the above example, the girls’ dance was a spontaneous moment shared with each other (and
with me) without intentions that anyone else would be watching. However, many hundreds of
thousands of tweens do share content with a global audience, primarily through social media.
Indeed, most of the tweens that I talked to watched and interacted with content made by other
tweenagers through platforms like YouTube. In her study of the online and offline transmission
of children’s clapping games, Bishop (2014) notes that children as young as six were accessing
online sources to learn playground games, and this method of learning games (particularly the
use of YouTube as a teacher) was something that I also found in secondary schools:
KIA (13): I have a really embarrassing story … so like one night, after I was like so bored, I was
on YouTube and I was learning it [the cup game] for like, ages, and then, I kept on doing
it till like 12 o clock at night, like OMG.
This suggests that online sources are an important space for the transmission of cultural artefacts
and practices. The importance of social media to tweenagers was also demonstrated by the
significant number who considered social media to be a viable career, demonstrating a further
extension of Appadurai’s (1996) media-inspired possible lives. Interestingly, when describing
one tweenage YouTube star, Tara (13) said, ‘people make money from this. He makes money,
that’s like what his family like, lives off ’. However, unlike the celebrity lives that Appadurai
implies in his work, it is exceptionally easy for tweens to live something of the YouTube star
experience. Although for most of the participants in this study YouTube was used as a tool to
view music videos or watch TV or movies, a small number of tweens were also active creators
of YouTube videos, and had their own page to distribute their work. The incentive for them
was not financial, rather they wanted to contribute to a community that they valued. Tamsin, a
14-year-old aspiring comedian explained her motivation:
I’ve always liked making other people laugh, and I thought it would be a really cool thing to
do because I watch so much YouTube and I always thought it would be a cool thing to do.
Tamsin’s YouTube channel was created by Tamsin and her friend Arabella, and featured a
variety of musical and comedy sections, edited together in a fast-paced format that cut con-
tinuously from one activity to another.
“OUR FIRST VID!!!!!!!!:):):):):):):)” is the first YouTube video by Tamsin and

Arabella, published on the 1st June, 2013. After introducing themselves, the two girls
214
wonder what they will do. First, they decide to dance – cut to the two girls per-
forming parodic moves in their bedroom to the hit song Gentleman performed by
Korean singer Psy. The dance moves the girls perform are a mixture of those included
by Psy in his music videos (for both Gentleman and Gangnam Style), interpolated with
more traditionally amusing moves such as the “walk like an Egyptian”. Following a
dance section, the girls decide to do “blind makeovers”, where they apply make up to
each other with their eyes closed. At the end of the 2-minute video the girls conclude
“that was a little bit weird”, before asking their viewers to “subscribe” to their
channel; on YouTube, more subscribers generally means more views, which can lead
to profit.
(Fieldnotes, Sydney, 23 October 2013)
The video demonstrates an interesting dialogue between intimate, local, and global spaces.
Filming in one of the girls’ bedrooms, a space that Baker (2004, p. 76) describes as one of the
most ‘significant, private, and immediate life space[s]’ in the lives of young girls, Tamsin and
Arabella are projecting their intimate friendship, conducted in an intimate space, onto the
global stage. This sharing is crucial to the formation and consolidation of a tweenage imaginary.
By engaging in, and recording, important cultural practices (such as a blind make-over, and
dancing to a funny song) the girls are explicitly adding to a corpus of material that reinforces
tween values, actively helping to create a tween imaginary.
The prevalence of social media in the lives of the tweenagers in this study was massive. Many
tweens were regular users of YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram and while not all tweens had their
own YouTube channel, many produced videos that they then uploaded to Facebook. While in a
UK secondary school, I was shown several versions of Facebook videos of ‘the knife game’, a game
where a pencil, knife, or other sharp implement is stabbed between the spread fingers of a hand
while a song is performed (Lill 2014). One knife-game performer was particularly proud of her 163
‘likes’, demonstrating the key role that social media can play in providing affirmation to tweens. It is
important to note, at this stage, the impact of those ‘influencers’ who help to shape the trends
prevalent on social media platforms. Often older, and increasingly professional (Zoella, who has
over 12 million subscribers at the time of writing, is in her early 30s and spends a significant amount
on production values) these influencers often have a clearly recognisable format to their videos.
However, the ostensible commitment to amateurism means that tweens can generally replicate
these markers: filming in a bedroom, using a handheld device in ‘selfie’ mode, or applying face-
filters for example. In the same way that the dancers in New South Wales interacted with adult-
created media in a parodic way there were certainly some suggestions that the aspiring YouTube
stars were also making secondary adjustments, as in describing blind makeovers as ‘a bit weird’. The
sheer volume of young people contributing to the online world of tweenagers reinforces the
musical practices and values that are meaningful to tweens; moreover, the importance of being
online is itself an important marker of tweenhood.
Living the imaginary

While not every tweenager I met in the course of this study would describe themselves as a member
of any given fandom, the majority certainly did. Indeed, for some tweens being a member of a
particular musical fandom was fundamental to their experience of a tweenage imaginary. The
importance of fandom has been variously documented, and although the fandom of young girls in
particular is often somewhat belittled most authors can agree that being a fan is a formative ex-
perience (Saunders 2010). Certainly, some of the superfans that I met demonstrated the concrete
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relationship between their tweenage imaginary and their real-world actions, perhaps none so much
as Daisy (13), a true Belieber. Beliebers are super fans of the Canadian artist Justin Bieber, a musician
associated with the growing ability for online media to create superstars; at the age of just 13, Bieber
was ‘discovered’ by a talent manager, who was browsing YouTube and happened to see a video of
Bieber in a talent show. Bieber’s most ardent fans are mostly girls, and their youth, gender, and often
semi-obsessive behaviour leaves them open to significant amounts of criticism (Saunders 2010).
Certainly, the way that Daisy described her fandom highlighted some of the obsessive tendencies for
which many Beliebers are critiqued:
I don’t know … I think there are different levels, um, I guess some people just like call
themselves Beliebers but they’re not. Like there are fans of Justin and they always just
want to see him with his shirt off and always just don’t care if he’s smiling, just that
he’s there. And Beliebers, we care that he’s happy and like some Beliebers are like
over crazy, like they can just be weirdly stalker-ish, but I don’t think that’s even the
top layer. I guess the top layer are just the ones who have been there from
the beginning, all the way and the bottom are the ones that just think they are but
they’re not, they’re secretly just fans. Like everyone wants to be called a Belieber, but
like one of my friends, I’m not saying their name, they think they are a true Belieber
but I don’t know. They keep saying things, like fault him. They’re like “oh, he was
caught smoking, or I don’t like what he’s wearing there…”. True Beliebers don’t care
what he is wearing, he looks good in everything.
Online, Daisy had a strong presence, active on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. However, being
a Belieber allowed Daisy’s online and offline lives to intersect. For example, over the course of the
second half of 2013, Bieber launched ‘Music Mondays’, where he released one new song online
(there were no physical copies produced) on 10 consecutive Mondays, which together formed
the album Journals. To celebrate and promote this, Daisy and a friend downloaded and printed out
posters which they distributed throughout public places in Sydney. Although it is quite easy to see
this as a brilliant, cost-effective, and exploitative form of marketing on the part of Bieber’s managing
team, for Daisy this allowed her to publicly express her devotion to her idol and was in fact an
empowering act. Although Daisy may have felt as though she was behaving autonomously, her
actions were often constrained by the adults around her: for example, the day that she distributed
posters, she was chaperoned by her mother, and she was unable to meet many of her online friends
as they lived in other parts of the country. However, what Daisy was able to do was act within these
constraints to creatively produce her fandom. Using online sources allowed her to make a
meaningful contribution to the online peer community by learning and repeating their cultural
routines (for example, buying purple commodities because purple is Bieber’s favourite colour).
Although it is possible to see Daisy’s love of Bieber as completely uncritical, this lack of criticism is
in fact a framework of collective interpretation and fundamental to her self-concept as a Belieber.
Collectively, the cultural routines of Bieber fandom stipulate that the ‘highest’ form of fandom is
one that is caring, non-judgemental, and loving in an almost platonic way. Thus, by reproducing
these behaviours, Daisy was able to contribute to a global tweenage imaginary which revolved
around the fandom of one celebrity, mediated through online actions.
Conclusion
Beginning to understand the social imaginaries of tweenagers could have significant implica-
tions for those of us who research and work with young people, particularly in the field of
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music education. Better understanding the primacy of parody as a way of feeling powerful, the
creative transformation of musical products to claim ownership of them, along with a culture
predicated upon online interaction and social media can help us to take more seriously the lived
experience of young people. Of course, in this chapter I have explored the social imaginary of
just one small group of tweens. It is inevitable that this imaginary no longer exists: the tweens
whose voices populate these pages are already late adolescents and young adults; it is likely that
the tweens of today have different important artefacts and practices. It would therefore be of
great interest to look at current tweens, and indeed those into the future to see if there are any
universal markers of a tweenage social imaginary. Furthermore, exploring the imaginaries of
tweens of cultures other than the Westernised Anglo-Australians in this chapter could be very
fruitful. By its nature, tweenhood is transitory and fleeting: no one is a tween for very long.
However, the ways that tweens negotiate themselves, others, and the world around them
through the intersection between imagination and reality is fundamental to their identities both
immediately, and in the future. To that end, understanding the social imaginaries of tweens is
vital to the understanding of the lived experience of society as a whole.
1. How can we create a shared social imaginary that supports the values of both tweens and
adults?
2. How do other social imaginaries interact with tween social imaginaries?
Notes
1 For a more comprehensive examination of the way the term has been used and developed since the
1940s, see ‘The social imaginary in theory and practice’ ( James 2009).
2 The songs referred to in this dialogue are Wings (Barnes et al., 2012); Naturally (Armato, James, and
Karaoglu, 2010); Beauty and a Beat (Martin, Zaslavski, Kotecha, and Maraj, 2012).
References
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Appadurai, A., 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota
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Baker, S., 2004. Pop in(to) the bedroom: popular music in pre-teen girls’ bedroom culture. European
Journal of Cultural Studies vol. 7 (no. 1), 75–93.
Bishop, J.C., 2014. “That’s how the whole hand-clap thing passes on”: online/offline transmission and
multimodal variation in a children’s clapping game. In: Burn, A., Richards, C. (Eds.), Children’s Games
in the New Media Age. Ashgate Publishing LTD, Farnham, pp. 53–84.
Boden, S., 2006. Dedicated followers of fashion? The influence of popular culture on children’s social
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Corsaro, W.A., 2015. The Sociology of Childhood. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks.
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pp. 109–132.
Marsh, K., 1999. Mediated orality: the role of popular music in the changing tradition of children’s musical
play. Research Studies in Music Education vol. 13 (no. 1), 2–12.
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15
DOUBLESPEAK IN HIGHER
MUSIC EDUCATION IN
ENGLAND
Culture, marketisation, and democracy
Gareth Dylan Smith
Introduction
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
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Gareth Dylan Smith
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, em-
phasis 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 po-
litical 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 gov-
ernments’ 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 de-
scribes 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
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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.
Culture as high culture

Western European classical music is frequently mythologised as timeless and inherently superior
to other forms of music, its reification the basis of the dangerously fallacious notion of music as a
universal language (no music is universal, and music is not a language). While this view has been
challenged in postmodernist and postcolonial literature (Elliott and Silverman 2014;
Green 1988; McClary 1991; Small 1977), it persists as a powerful ideology in England, per-
petuated by policy makers and other influential figures (Bull 2019; Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills 2016; Scruton 2016). Borje Stålhammar (2006, p. 123) asserts that, ‘often
the evaluation of art is treated as a purely aesthetic matter, no attention being given to social
context and conventions. This in spite of the fact that art cannot be brought into being without
prior familiarity and understanding’. Basil Bernstein (1990, p. 16) refers to this process as one of
privileging certain views and practices over others. Privileged practices appear as natural or
superior, endowed with inherent merits or superior qualities, since their coding as such is tacit,
implicit, thus invisible even though embedded in educational and pedagogical structures
(Bernstein 1990, p. 14). However, rather than these being natural, we know that ‘our com-
munities are not passive receptacles into which ‘expert’ knowledge might be poured; rather,
they are made up of active, living human subjects, possessed of ways of seeing, listening,
thinking, acting, and imagining’ (Coté et al. 2007, p. 336), which should be valued in a system
of education (Froehlich and Smith 2017; Wright 2010). Government policy in England would
have us teach about culture rather than create it.
The English situation is not unusual. We know, for instance, that:
In any society, schooling never has been an organic outgrowth of the entire com-
munity. Rather, except in small-scale preindustrial societies devoid of social stratifi-
cation, schooling has grown out of the interests of one of several parts of the society …
they have been connected to dominant modes in that society, serving the needs of a
class within the society, and tied ultimately to social and economic places, which
underclasses could aspire to if not achieve.
(Kelly and Altbach 1978, p. 3)
Providing further historical context, Willinsky (1998, p. 91) observes, ‘the problem [in the
British Empire’s colonies] was to teach one group what hadn’t needed to be formally taught.
This was intended, at best, to raise up a people in a studied, and thereby inadequate, ap-
proximation of their betters’. This, indeed, remains precisely one of the main functions of state-
funded public education in England today (Reay 2017). It is safe to assert that the English
government knows full well the power of an enabled, confident, creative populace, and intends
as fully as possible to suppress the people, lest a more socially just society should emerge in
which capital of various kinds is more evenly distributed and educational opportunities are
available more fairly and equitably. This chapter is not the place to speculate regarding the
motives of those whose power is almost beyond reproach despite the machinery and spectacle
of democracy that still perform a theatrical function in society. It is worth, however, recalling
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Gareth Dylan Smith
the observation of Ivan Illich, that educational ‘equal opportunity is, indeed, both a desirable
and a feasible goal’, but, by design, ‘school has become the worldwide religion of a modernized
proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age’ (Illich,
1970, p. 10). That this understanding is inscribed into the very fibres that long ago wove the
fabric of vigilantly classist, supremacist Britain is well documented. As Anna Bull plainly states,
‘class is being re-inscribed in the UK in the 21st century’ (Bull 2016, p. 124). Success and failure
in this paradigm are attributed to inborn genetic, biological qualities in individuals and families,
despite being overtly nurtured through a fundamentally unequal education system. This cruel
myth of biological responsibility is compounded by and conflated with individual account-
ability in the fierce late capitalist neoliberal age, where an individual’s efforts are squarely held to
blame for the deliberately reproduced inequities and injustices of a corrupt and brutally hier-
archised system (Giroux 2014b; Reay 2017).
Higher education for low culture

The UK’s higher education system is a £175 billion export industry with a global
reach and impact … This valuation reflects the measure of its transformational power
… The very fact that home and international students alike are prepared to make such
a significant investment reflects a hard truth: that the education they seek is part of a
wider ‘customer journey’ (Brown 2009) towards improved employment prospects.
(Harniess 2017, p. 62)
Hunter (2019, p. 46) observes this ‘explicit instrumentalism (political rather than musical) that is
at play in UK HE and beyond’, following the observation of Coté, Day, and de Peuter more
than a decade ago, that ‘increasingly the university is being restructured to conform to an
instrumentalist model’ (2007, p. 334). This instrumentalism has most explicitly extended be-
yond utility into commodification during the relatively recent introduction of, and rapid
subsequent increases in, undergraduate university tuition fees in England. Hannah Arendt
(1998) positions the valuations of all things in exchange value, instead of use value, as an
attribute intrinsic to humanity’s development since the enlightenment through modern and
science and modern philosophy – so perhaps the present was always inevitable. She sees this as
part of ‘the process of secularization, the modern loss of faith inevitably arising from Cartesian
doubt, [that] deprived individual life of its immortality …. Individual life again became mortal
… and the world was less stable, less permanent, and less to be relied upon than it had been
during the Christian era …. Modern man … was thrown back upon himself’ (1998, p. 320).
Discourse about the quality and value of higher education in the UK is frequently phrased in
terms of market competitiveness, both locally (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills,
2016) and globally (Universities UK 2017). UK higher music education as a fundamentally
competitive marketplace was enshrined in government policy in 2016, after being galvanized in
spirit in 2010 (Parkinson and Smith 2015). The language in the 2016 documentation is overtly
and conspicuously businesslike, oriented to ‘creating a competitive market’, ‘choice for stu-
dents’, ‘a new risk-based approach to regulation’, a ‘risk-based quality system’, ‘levelling the
playing field through deregulation’, and ‘competence, not incumbency’ (Department for
Business, Innovation and Skills, 2016). As then-Minister of State for Universities and Science,
Jo Johnson, summarised, ‘we will make it quicker and easier for new high quality challenger
institutions to enter the market and award their own degrees’ (Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills, 2016, p. 5). ‘Challenger’ institutions usually offer vocational training,
albeit in a sector where there may be diminishing or uncertain opportunities for employment.
222
I recall a conversation with a former owner of a private popular music school in England (a
‘challenger provider’), who noted that, having ‘flooded the UK market with music graduates’,
it was time to move to another country and repeat the process there. This person’s concern was
clearly for making a profit, rather than for enabling musicians, creating community or ex-
panding the musicality and betterment of society. Such callous disregard for the consequences
of one’s behaviour (beyond the increasing numbers in a limited company checking account) is
inevitable in an era in which the defining ideology is one of unfettered and unhinged com-
mercialisation oriented towards making a profit at any cost.
UK higher education policy firmly positions higher education as a personal investment
worthy of earning a return for customers, as the government seeks increasingly to divest itself of
the responsibility to its people of funding education. Learning is conceived of as ‘commodity’
and discussed in terms of economic utility as part of the ‘knowledge economy’ (Naidoo 2005,
pp. 27–28), White Papers (Department for Education and Skills 2003; DBIS 2009, 2011) and
other government-commissioned documents (e.g. Browne 2010) have displayed distinctly
techno-rational, economy-focussed conceptions of higher educational purpose, grounded in
notions of ‘knowledge to wealth creation’ (Department for Education and Skills 2003) and
‘skilling’ the population to compete in a global marketplace (Parkinson and Smith 2015).
Doublespeak leads ‘consumers’ of higher education to perceive this as only natural in present
circumstances, since ‘it [is] now no more than common sense that the only way to increase the
common good [is] by maximizing individual freedom in the market’ (Hewison 2014, p. 3). In
2018, Sam Gyimah, Minister for Higher Education, said in a speech that ‘universities need to
focus relentlessly on value for money’. He reinforced the message about managerialist customer
accountability, reinforcing the student-as-customer view that drives so much activity in the
sector, saying, ‘we are now living in … the Age of the Student. This means that universities and
the value that you provide to your students and to society at large, is coming under greater
scrutiny than ever before’ (Gyimah 2018, n.p.). He went on to state that ‘the challenge [facing
the university sector] takes two forms: questioning the value for money that students get during
their course; and the benefit they derive from a university education post-graduation’. Citing
Neves and Gillman’s (2018) report for the Higher Education Policy Institute, Gyimah told
attendees, ‘we should not overlook the serious implications of the fact that 32% of students
report poor value for money’. The ‘value for money’ discussed by Gyimah focused largely
around graduates’ earnings and the ‘value’ of their graduates’ degrees in monetary terms for UK
taxpayers (the government ends up shouldering the burden of unpaid student loans) as well as
the financial compensation that students could expect in the short term (up to 5 years) after
completing an undergraduate degree. Thus we can see that, in the words of Henry Giroux,
education at policy level at least is characterized principally by ‘an obsession with … market
values, and an unreflective immersion in the crude empiricism of a data-obsessed market-driven
society’ (Giroux 2019, p. 16). This socially and economically Darwinist ideology (Giroux 2014)
based in a purely financial understanding of ‘value’ is potentially deleterious through its op-
position to the nobler aspirations of (many people working in) the institutions of music learning
and higher education (Parkinson and Smith 2015; Smith and Silverman 2020).
Consumerism and commodification

Robert Hewison (2014, p. 3) explains how, since the late 1970s, the ideology of neoliberalism in
England, among other places, has become so ‘all-pervasive’ that (as noted above) ‘it was now no
more than common sense that the only way to increase the common good was by maximizing
individual freedom in the market’. In these circumstances, ‘citizenship is narrowed to the
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demands of consumerism’ (Giroux 2014a, p. 25). This consumerism is clearly at play in the higher
education ‘marketplace’, as described above, and has fast become the central tenet framing the
work of individuals in the arts, where musicians are positioned as autonomous, creative en-
trepreneurs, creating and cornering niche markets for their unique outputs and products (Olssen
and Peters 2005). Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1998, p. 1) explained such an
approach as designed to achieve ‘a dynamic knowledge-based economy founded on individual
empowerment and opportunity, where governments enable, not command, and the power of the
market is harnessed to serve the public interest’. Arendt saw the advent of such a situation as early
as 1958, describing how ‘in a society where exchange of products has become the chief public
activity, even the laborers, because they are confronted with “money or commodity owners”,
become proprietors, “owners of their own labor power”’ (1998, p. 162). She also saw how this
served primarily not the ‘empowered’ individuals with so much autonomy and ‘freedom’ to
counter the system, but best served the builders and owner-operators of the system, this [valuing
of human labor] ‘foreshadows something even more “valuable”, namely, the “smoother func-
tioning” of the machine whose tremendous power of processing first standardizes and then de-
valuates all things into consumer goods’ (Arendt 1998, p. 163). Bourdieu (2003, p. 30) calls this
the ‘myth of the transformation of all wage earners into dynamic small entrepreneurs’. The
mainstream media perpetuate this ideal as the hegemonic new normal (Smith 2016), ‘reciting the
neoliberal gospel’ (Giroux 2014, p. 11), with wealth so concentrated in the increasingly in-
accessible top tier of society that we find ourselves in the midst of a descent into a soulless chasm
of increasing de-facto feudalism. The notion that most musician-entrepreneurs possess anything
like freedom to succeed materially and artistically in such an oppressive, rigged system is a prime
example of the doublespeak that allows policy makers to believe everything and nothing at the
same time (Chomsky 1999; Lutz 1996).
Alas, as Giroux vividly portrays, all of our activities and experiences as humans are:
deformed by a market logic that narrows their meaning to either a commercial re-
lationship or to a reductive notion of getting ahead. We don’t love each other, we
love our commodities. Instead of loving with courage, compassion, and desiring a
more just society, we embrace a society saturated in commercial relations. Confined
to the principles of a market fundamentalism, freedom now means removing one’s self
from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-
indulgence and unbridled self-interest.
(Giroux 2019, p. 13)
While the self-indulgence and self-interest to which Giroux alludes are common tropes among
celebrities in popular music culture, far more of this music is made more democratically – by
the people, for the people (Hoskins 2012; Kirchner 1998), and made by musicians who have no
choice in the matter – they simply live to make music. Music-making that is unmoored from
commercial interests and instead located in a deeply personal sense of purpose and flourishing –
or ‘eudaimonia’ – is often far more meaningful to those who make and partake in it (Boyce-
Tillman, 2020; Smith 2016; Smith and Silverman 2020).
John Dewey discusses meaningful human activity and is careful to ‘avoid the impression that
an education which centers about [vocations] is narrowly practical, if not merely pecuniary’
(1916, p. 307). He goes on to say that a vocation comprises life activities that are ‘significant to a
person because of the consequences they accomplish’ (Dewey 1916, p. 307). Purposefully
pursuing meaningful action in one’s daily life is often felt to be essential to human flourishing
(Dewey 1916; Waterman 1992). Wrestling with similar issues, Sennett (2009, p. 9) asserts,
224
‘craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own
sake’. He continues: ‘Social and economic conditions, however, often stand in the way of the
craftsman’s discipline and commitment …. The craftsman often faces conflicting objective
standards of excellence; the desire to do something well for its own sake can be impaired by
competitive pressure, by frustration, or by obsession’, or, as we have seen, by commercial
pressures or a need to produce, in the neoliberal, commodified mode of entrepreneurship.
Musicians are among the ‘craftsmen’ (whom I would rather construe as ‘craftspersons’) to
whom Sennett alludes, following his teacher, Arendt.
Arendt explains market-driven instrumentalism in rather depressing terms, observing that,
‘whatever we do, we are supposed to do for the sake of “making a living”; such is the verdict of
society … the only exception society is willing to grant is the artist’ (1998, p. 126). However,
she asserts:
Not even the ‘work’ of the artist is left; it is dissolved into play and has lost its worldly
meaning. The playfulness of the artist is felt to fulfil the same function in the laboring
life process of society as the playing of tennis or the pursuit of a hobby fulfils in the life
of an individual … From the standpoint of ‘making a living’, every activity un-
connected with labor becomes a hobby.
(Arendt 1998, p. 128)
Eudaimonism – that is, an orientation toward eudaimonia, or ‘liv[ing] in accordance with the
daimon or “true self”’ (Waterman 1992, p. 58, emphasis in original) – provides a lens for helping
to understand meaningful work undertaken for its own sake or because of its intrinsic value to the
maker/doer of the work. Through eudaimonia, Arendt’s hobbies are elevated to the level of what
Stebbins terms ‘devotee work’, in which ‘the sense of achievement is high and the core activity
endowed with such intense appeal that the line between this work and leisure is virtually erased’
(Stebbins 2014, p. 4). Erasure of the boundaries between work and play is especially prominent
among musicians, whose activity is thus characterized as autotelic and eudaimonic (Smith 2016,
2019). One could argue, however, that a eudaimonic orientation is aggressively libertarian and
even oppressive in its implicit assumptions; I have suggested elsewhere that a eudaimonic or-
ientation to music making and learning can be viewed ‘as a double-sided coin, promising si-
multaneously acceptance into an exclusive ideological system and freedom from that
dehumanizing structure’ (Smith 2016, p. 164). This again captures the cognitive dissonance of the
doublespeak embedded in the notion of the artist-entrepreneur, premised on the fallacious notion
that marketization = democracy (Chomsky 1999; Hewison 2014; Lutz 1996).
Drawing on Anne McClintock’s incisive and powerful work (1995), one might conclude
that eudaimonia ‘embodies and promotes an overtly masculine stance, with its overtones of
privilege, and thus imperial, colonial, and postcolonial violence and power in its assumption of
the possibility of a fulfilling career, remunerated or unpaid’ (Smith 2016, p. 164). These
concerns are perhaps only heightened when music is bought and sold in a commercial mar-
ketplace. As such, Arendt remains ardent in her warning that the progressive, post-
enlightenment project in the West inherently ‘harbors the grave danger that eventually no
object of the world will be safe from consumption and annihilation through consumption’
(1998, p. 133) – including, presumably, education, learning and music. I take solace in the
assertion of Elliott, Silverman and Bowman, that music can be practised as a form of ‘ethically
guided citizenship’ (p. 6, emphasis in original), based on the premise that ‘artistry involves civic-
social-humanistic-emancipatory responsibilities, obligations to engage in art making that ad-
vances social “goods”’ (2016, p. 7). As an artist and scholar, I am aware of at least some of my
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own doublespeak (Smith 2015, 2020). I aspire to be the type of artistic citizen described by
Elliott et al. (2016), and I enjoy dedicating time to teaching and research. I am at the same time,
however, fully cognizant of the eye-wateringly high cost of an education at the institutions
where I work, and I acknowledge the inaccessibility of my publications – this book is prohi-
bitively expensive as well as being invisible to most members of the public, and I am under
contract not to share my writing for free, at least not in the format in which my ideas are
presented here. I like to challenge the rules. As such, I recognise myself as a punk scholar.
Reconciliation and the possible affordances of punk

A growing body of scholarship points to the potential of punk to engage conflicting, oppositional
stances in a discursive approach to navigating complex webs woven in the lives of (music) educators
(Smith 2020; Smith Kallio 2020). Sofianos, Ryde, and Waterhouse note that ‘punk seeks to avoid
the limiting qualities of, and subsequent laziness associated with ideology’ (2015, p. 26). Punks exist
along the entire ideological spectrum, from liberal and neoliberal positionalities derived from British/
American Libertarian movements, to socialist and anarchist leanings steeped in collectivity and
compassion (Smith, Dines, and Parkinson 2017; Smith and Silverman, 2020). Punks embrace
contradictions, acknowledge conflict and, above all, think for themselves, often acting on what feels
like instinct and only theorising actions after the fact (Coles 2014; Dines 2015; Smith, Dines, and
Parkinson 2017). A central component of punk scholarship is the reflexive honesty that perhaps does
not always characterize the modus operandum of other double-speakers. As I have noted elsewhere
punk embraces the contradictions that characterize human interactions: the more we
know, the more we know we don’t know, and the more we know we don’t want to
know, but would somehow also nonetheless love to know.
(Smith 2020)
Punk scholars grudgingly accept our flaws, share them, and do all we can to learn to over-
come them.
Alexis Kallio (2017, p. 164) notes that one goal of punk pedagogy is ‘tak[ing] action through
music-making, towards social justice, empowerment and social change’. Estrella Torrez (2012,
136) describes punk pedagogy as ‘a manifestation of equity, rebellion, critique, self-
examination, solidarity, community, love, anger and collaboration’. These are characteristics
shared with anarchist pedagogy and critical pedagogy (Froehlich and Smith 2017). Critical
pedagogue, Henry Giroux (2019, p. 19), views education as:
a space that should disturb, a space of difficulty – a space that challenges complacent
thinking. Such pedagogical practices should enable students to interrogate common-sense
understandings of the world, take risks in their thinking, however troubling, and be
willing to take a stand for free inquiry in the pursuit of truth, multiple ways of knowing,
mutual respect, and civic values in the pursuit of social justice. Students need to learn how
to think dangerously … in order to push at the frontiers of knowledge while recognizing
that the search for justice is never finished and that no society is ever just enough.
While Giroux is part of a lineage of scholars who hold such a position about education generally
(Postman and Weingartner 1971; Coles 2014; Freire 2007), these words were initially spoken as
a keynote address to attendees at a music education event in London, Ontario in June 2018 – a
joint meeting of the 33rd May Day Group Colloquium and a symposium on Progressive
226
Methods in Popular Music Education. It is not an orientation endorsed by the current con-
fusing mess of policy and ideology at play in the UK; nor is it entirely ruled out. It becomes
difficult, though, to enact pedagogy in the emancipatory ways that music educators are ex-
horted to do by Giroux, when
[t]he implicit message is that participation in HPME comes with the responsibility to
accrue industrial skills and commercial nous. HPME’s roles as a champion of widening
participation, and as a driver of economic growth, can thus appear woven together.
(Parkinson 2017, p. 14)
Commensurately opening up the UK higher education to more easily enable outside ‘challenger’
providers to trade with increasing numbers of student ‘customers’, means that the government
perhaps in some ways recognises the value of subject areas more meaningful to more people. In
another view (and another act of doublespeak), it may simply mean that the government recognises
the business opportunities that such enterprises present for education entrepreneurs out to make
money. A sound business proposition does not necessarily equal a sound moral or academic pro-
position, nor does it necessarily serve the public good or recognize the value of, e.g. popular music.
As one senior music education colleague wryly commented to me once in conversation, ‘it’s easy to
sell pop music to teenagers’, so of course students flock to do what they most want to do and are
then often unable to work in the creative sector in the ways they might wish and in which
successive post–Cold War governments have tried to convince them they should.
Seen in this way, the government’s consistently inconsistent doublespeak, in its energetic pursuit
of such apparently conflicting positions on absorbing and taking part in culture, presents a vital
opportunity to reconcile a pair of polarized positions. With such high a burden being placed now on
individuals to fund their own tuition and then to succeed as entrepreneurial standalone artist brands,
it is arguably no less than imperative for those in power to curate a culture in which graduate
musicians’ work is valued by a community of like-minded souls. Without such direct, intentional
action from those in power, the government runs the risk of making a total mockery of its own
systems and risking socio-cultural catastrophe. Of course, a heavily indebted and furtively en-
trepreneurial populace is perfectly distracted from and therefore oblivious to the total power-grab
being staged by those in government. Recalling the repeated, extreme pressure for higher education
providers to focus relentlessly on value for money (Gyimah 2018, above), the UK is home to a
mixture of tuition fee charges for students, aimed at levelling the playing field; the transparently
nonsensical explanation of this line of thinking is that if everyone has to pay for their higher edu-
cation, and if universities and colleges can set their own fees (up to a stated maximum), then it must
be fair (Hubble et al. 2016). However, people frequently attend university or college in order to
learn and to pursue an interest or passion, not simply to earn higher wages. The notion of a graduate
premium in terms of financial return on investment simply does not ring true for the graduates of
many programmes (as well as other lower-paid, public-sector job areas such as teaching and social
work). There needs to be a wholesale, joined-up re-think of how government ideology and policies
in education and culture impact the lives of people in the sectors they are designed to affect.
Warrick Harniess (a neoliberal punk scholar) sees that such a re-imagining has already begun,
whereby institutions of higher education ‘are deployed in service of a more pragmatic purpose –
generating economic activity to create wealth’ (Harniess 2017, p. 63). He goes on, asserting that
‘education has “gone punk”; young people have instilled in them at school that they should be
pragmatically proactive in terms of how they approach their education as a stepping stone to
employment’ (2017, p. 63). Harniess sees this as wholly positive, but views current initiatives as
failing the system because it is only quazi-marketised; more marketisation is, for Harniess, the
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solution. It is at this point that Harniess and I depart in our punk beliefs. While I concur with
the notion that there is potential in a ‘punk’ outlook for higher music education, I view punk as
a means by which individuals and communities are empowered, but through their resistance to
the monetised, commercialised apparatus of the state rather than in wholesale adoption and
even more zealous perpetuation of it. Della Fave et al. (2011, p. 204) offer another useful tool
for thinking about this, referring to ‘Aristotle’s definition of eudaimonia as the fulfillment of
one’s deepest nature in harmony with the collective welfare’ (emphasis added). This perhaps
requires an idealistic, unrealistic, and unachievably utopian view of the functions of music
education in society. Roger Mantie (2016) sagely warns against such ungrounded idealism.
Toby Bennett, however, suggests a lens for viewing the cultural-education landscape that offers
a way towards realising a music and education worldview. Viewing all intersecting elements of
cultural industries, including music (in all its diversity) and higher education, as a symbiotic
ecosystem, Bennett (2015) hints at a meta-systemic view wherein co-existent elements are not
dependent on one another only for financial returns, but wherein activity is valued for its
meaningfulness in the lives of musicians and music-learners of all types and skill levels.
At present there is a direct and fundamental contradiction between UK government policies
on higher education and culture, pointing to a lack of consensus on what ‘higher education’,
‘culture’, or higher music education mean or should be and do in twenty-first-century Britain.
Government policies celebrate and undermine expression through popular music, enabling
student-consumers to study it in ever greater numbers while eliminating possibilities for per-
formance and instead funneling arts funding to Western art music. While contradictory, this
political doublespeak is also entirely consistent with a neoliberal ideology that espouses the
benefits of free market consumerism for everyone including artist entrepreneurs, while doling
out infinite cash to causes celebrated by ideologues who tell the public they should really
appreciate more high culture (Bourdieu 2003; Chomsky 1999).
David Elliott and Marissa Silverman (2014, pp. 58–59) indeed remind us that ‘music does
not have one value; music has numerous values, depending on the ways in which it is con-
ceived, used, and taught by people who engage in specific musical styles’ and communities.
Taking into such account plural musical perspectives and preferences is essential to any con-
ception of the institution of higher music education – as well as to conceptions of higher music
education institutions – in a democratic society. Indeed, this is necessary if education is to be
transformative, democratizing, and liberating for all, as Dewey (1938) believed it should be and
as I have to believe it should and can be. Music and education are always political, and punk
scholars have the opportunity and the responsibility to embrace the complexity and contra-
dictions in our field. Punk challenges musicians, educators, and scholars never to stop con-
fronting bullshit and doublespeak where we see them, and always to remain critical of ourselves
and others where we fall short in our efforts to be equitable and democratic. There is a richer,
better future for us all together, if we acknowledge everyone’s cultural expressions as legitimate
and of value – as culturally sustaining (Paris 2012) for more individuals and communities and
thereby the whole of an integrated, compassionate society and wider, deeper, richer, plural
collective culture.
1. To what extent might it be possible in higher education policy and practice to avoid
double-speak with regard to culture and values?
2. How might a punk or punk-pedagogical approach help to invigorate your teaching, re-
search, or musicking?
228
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16
MULTIPLE HIERARCHIES AS
CHANGE-INNOVATION
STRATEGY
Ambivalence as policy framing at the
New World Symphony
Patrick Schmidt
Introduction
We live in an era of ontological gerrymandering. The term was suggested by Woolgar and
Pawluch (1985) 30 years ago to highlight the ways in which social problems or ideas can achieve
distinct or modified meaning, even in the face of significantly unchanged realities. At a time
where social interaction and social spaces suffer daily intervention through highly pervasive social
media, sociological work, and social theory are essential in combating the distortion and coop-
tation of critical ways of knowing and thinking and the consequent entrenchment and ossification
of personal and institutional positions.
The sociological concept used above can help frame analyses of multiple arts and educational
environments, as such social spaces – defined, as Bourdieu would, as environs with their own
values and codes – have been deeply impacted by and at the same time have made use of forms of
Ontological Gerrymandering (OG). Within educational environments, OG can be seen as both
precursor to and outcome of the neoliberal changes enacted discursively and through policy. In
fact, one could argue that the effectiveness of how social problems such as intensification of teacher
labour (Dow et al. 2000; Hall 2004) or teacher accountability (Golden 2017; Taubman 2010)
were constructed, stems from techniques of an apparatus aimed first at establishing a new
ontological reasoning for the shortcomings of schooling – for instance, a worldview based on the
uninvestigated assumption that teachers/parents/students are incapable, ill prepared, lazy, or
unstructured – and then establishing the ‘boundary work’ to generate new credible parameters for
action in the form of language and policy practice. The new ontology provides not just a new
rationale but makes the re-traced/re-configured rationale necessary, obviating subsequent prac-
tices; increased scrutiny, punitive evaluative measures, suppression of decision-making capacity
(see Ball 2018). The list goes on.
Arts education and arts environments have also been at the receiving end of an ontological
gerrymandering that aims to place social ills, not as the result of institutional or governmental
economic policy or educational and cultural disinvestment, but rather as consequence of
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Hierarchies as change-innovation strategy
misguided ontological priorities such as community empowerment and welfare, cultural plurality,
and arts mediated identity politics. The proposed correction has come in the form of eco-
nomically driven agendas, and the redrafting of cultural environs as just another space for
specialisation and efficiency (Horsley 2009). Arts organizations and communities, in turn, have
gerrymandered their own discursive resources to claim an ontological space at the neoliberal
table, maintaining that they too contribute to economic aims, to human capital production, as
well as to cultural capital development (Strother 2019); after all the arts are the primordial
entrepreneurial space, are they not? At their core are competition, specialisation, human capital
development, and hierarchical relations.
Whatever the situation or the case, the overall and concerning outcome is the strengthening
of polarities and the ossification of positions. This hardening of borderlines makes social spaces
appear, at the same time unitary and hazy. Unitary in the sense that hardened images of a
conjured core are presented to constituencies/audiences as their whole; the this is our mission
articulation. And hazy in the sense that likely complexities, internal diversities, and multiple
positions that may exist within the community, institution, or overall social space are veiled
to the outside and softened to/by those within. Arts communities, the institutions and the
individuals who embody them, are highly susceptible to such effects. Thus, they necessitate,
perhaps more than ever, thoughtful and innovative sociological analysis that may offer ways of
seeing their complexities and communicating their potentialities.
This chapter focuses on the internal complexity of one orchestra in the United States. It
draws from data collected on innovative, technology-mediated community practice within the
New World Symphony; a uniquely structured orchestra in the US, with a charge to re-imagine
structural, educational, and programmatic aspects of the field. The analysis uses the sociological
concept of ambivalence (Bhabha 1994) to underscore the complexity and potential for change
that lays within a space that is often construed in rather narrow terms; highlighting the
co-dependence and tension between hybridity and authority, as discussed below. In what
follows, then, I explore the productive qualities of co-existing and contending hierarchies
within this social space, while investigating the impact of technological and community-
oriented enterprises to the overall construction of this orchestra; its identity, structural for-
mation, and priorities. The chapter also addresses the professional identity formation of
individuals working within this social space (the musicians, known as NWS Fellows) and the
implication such identity structures may have to the field of music education writ large.
The context and data sources

The data here presented focusses on an initiative named Connect, developed by the Community
Engagement Office of the New World Symphony in Miami, USA. The main participants were
19 fellows and approximately 40 high school students who participated in two programs under
the Connect initiative, namely NWS Virtual Hangouts – a series of digital meetings and inter-
actions between fellows and high school students across the country, and NWS Side-by-Side
events – a 10-day event focused on intense rehearsals and performances, featuring students from
South Florida, as well as Oregon and Medellin, Colombia. The researcher collected and
analysed more than 30 hours of videos, over 16 hours of audio recorded interviews and focus
groups, several survey materials, and online documentation and data. Only data from fellows
and administrative staff is used in this chapter.
The New World Symphony prides itself on creating innovative opportunities, structures,
and formats to engage and impact Western classical music. Since its inception, nearly 30 years
ago, NWS was imagined as an orchestral academy with a commitment to developing the
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human and cultural capital of its members – the orchestra is constituted by approximately
90 young musicians, called fellows,1 who are sponsored for 3 years. According to its website,
NWS’s mission is ‘to prepare highly-gifted graduates of music programs for leadership roles in
orchestras and ensembles around the world’. Over time, NWS seems to have also developed an
identity attached to entrepreneurial development, seeing or presenting itself as a ‘laboratory for
musical education and expression’. An intersection of human and cultural capital aims is de-
lineated in the institutional purpose, which states that ‘the New World Symphony, through a
wide range of performance and instructional activities, seeks to develop in its participants the
full complement of skills and qualifications required of 21st-century first-class musicians’. This
has been recently amplified by a commitment to technology, articulated thusly: ‘The re-
lationships with these artists are extended through NWS's pioneering experimentation with
distance learning and performance’.2
The analysis here presented is based on data collected between November 2014 and May 2016.
The central aim was on the Virtual Hangout (VH) initiative NWS was rolling out – part of its Connect
initiative.3 The project largely involved better understanding how VHs intersected with (1) the
nature and future of community engagement at the institution, and (2) what could be learned about
fellow leadership engagement and development in/through new projects. In other words, how the
young musicians saw and engaged with that orchestral institution as a social space, and what could be
learned in terms of institutional policy practice and process through such initiatives.
It is important to outline the overt objectives of the program, as stated by the New World
Symphony, as to situate the analysis of institutional policy as a form of field delineation. The
programs were organised around three large objectives:
Objective 1: New World Symphony is creating and growing a virtual community for aspiring
young instrumentalists;
Objective 2: Facilitate a cadre of NWS Fellows who are engaged in and can lead online artistic
community;
Objective 3: Extend NWS’s experimentation with the newest distance learning and new media
technologies.
It is also significant to articulate, upfront, that I witnessed and reported back to NWS on a host
of viable, innovative, educational, and artistic events, linking digital and real-world community
experiences, for example:
• 24 Virtual Hangouts (VH) with near 40 fellows and a variety of guests from institutions such
as Julliard, Dallas Orchestra, as well as those graduates of NWS working online such as the
auditionhacker.com and bulletproofmusician.com;
• One LOLA interaction with 75 members of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra;
• Three masterclass events (brass, string, woodwinds) and Brass Festival;
• One virtual project with 30 students at Duke Ellington School in Washington D.C.;
• A virtual ‘Town Hall’ event linking multiple players, master class leaders, and audiences,
digitally connected from four different locations (San Francisco, Miami, New Orleans and
Atlanta);
• Multiple video audition tutorials for the Side-by-Side event;
• Various community engagement activities in Miami
A complete analysis, much beyond the scope of what is feasible here, was delivered to NWS in
the form of two reports. Findings were varied and three large categories are pertinent here:
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(1) community projects and the role of institutions in building leadership confidence among
professional musicians and establishing what I call below a geographical consciousness; (2) in-
stitutional challenges balancing multiple voices as well as stability and innovation, what
I call below productive hierarchy; and finally (3) the role of community projects in enhancing
participatory dispositions and establishing a vision of the musician/educator/cultural worker.
In this chapter, while using selective data, my aim is to use social theory as a way to pro-
blematise and explore themes emergent from the work. This analysis comes almost 3 years after
the second and final report was produced and delivered, and the distance provides a helpful
bracketing from my previous involvement. This detachment allowed me to re-enter the
experience anew, a process that has been rather productive as the NWS case appears to be
highly relevant to a series of educational and cultural tensions that remain at the center of social
life in academia, arts organisations, and in the field of music education.
Ambivalence and fixity: framing the orchestral social space

It is not possible to talk critically, meaning in a thoughtful and sociologically responsive way,
about Western classical music today without conceiving and conceding to its colonialist history
and influence. While such critiques have become almost de rigueur in music education, my aim
is not to once again obviate the limitations of the genre – for instance, classism – and all the
sociological entanglement it has generated. Rather, given that the setting upon which this
chapter draws is a well-established orchestra, and thus emmeshed in and by such sociological
trappings, my goal is to use this particular social space to highlight how social theory can
provide multiple and helpful ways to look at/examine a facet of social reality. I do so here in
necessarily limited ways, aided by a couple of sociological concepts.
Critical to this analysis is the notion that the social space of the orchestra, particularly if
framed around a complex and forward-looking structure such as NWS’s, exists in a space of
ambivalence. As used here, ambivalence has its meaning defined through the work of social-
theorist Homi Bhabha (1994), whose interest was to provide a less horizontal or dualistic
understanding of stereotypes and the role they play in colonised/ing relations and social spaces.
Central is a tension between social actors, and how they see and represent themselves and their
relations to the Other as immersed in tensions between authoritative voices (based on hier-
archical relations) and hybridising ones (represented by contention, and relations marked by
multiple positions and fluidity).
Colonial relations, such as those around Western classical music, are traditionally seen as
fixed. As a sociological term, ‘fixity’ connotes rigidity and an unchanging order, and is central,
say, in the ideological definition of otherness. In the socially broad macro analysis developed by
Edward Said’s (1978) vision of Orientalism, for example, fixity is a clear and present element
explaining the metonymic construction of the Oriental Other. Bourdieu’s (1984) vision of
cultural status and capital, in Distinction, establishes similar fixed relations of status, clearly visible
in music – he famously stated that ‘nothing more clearly affirms one’s ‘class’, nothing more
infallibly classifies, than tastes in music’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 18). Both Said and Bourdieu
showed us the impact of discursive and symbolic constructions in normalizing power relations
and establishing Status and the Other. And while understanding these delineated boarders is
instructive, they can also feel rather restrictive, and can lead to over categorization and ossi-
fication, rather than serve as tools for deconstruction and re-engagement.
For 30 years or so, the social space of music and music education has benefited from forms of
argumentative fixity that have drawn apart, for example, highly aestheticized visions of music
from those established in and through praxis; those ensconced in formalistic and hierarchical
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practices versus those committed to horizontal relations based on informality; or those estab-
lished within class-based distinctions versus conjured images of omnivorousness. I am not saying
that oppositional discourses are not needed or productive. They clearly are. And I am also not
arguing that practical, political, and policy spaces where music education exists have not
benefited from certain fixities, particularly those constructed to displace other historical or
hegemonic ones. They have. What I am trying to articulate is that what the orchestral social
space exemplified by the NWS points to is that itself and its members/participants/interlocuters
function less and less through fixity, and more and more within ambivalence; where authority
and hybridity vie for space.
The NWS example may also indicate that actors in the music education field, having
benefited from such fixities, might have become perhaps too comfortable with them. More
than any one thing, the 18 months I spent interacting with the New World Symphony
community has led me to consider ambivalence in the construction of stereotypes around the
orchestral social space as a learning space and its potential lessons for other music education
environs.
From ready recognition to process

Borrowing from larger sociological scholarly endeavors is not free of challenges. A clear
example is the limited equivalence of using a colonial lens developed to make sense of
resistance, domination, and dependence within and among ethnic groups or nation-states –
such as the one developed by Bhabha – in a less visceral or life-threatening context, such as
culture, the arts, or music education. However, if we take the stance that more often than not,
actors experience manifestations of resistance, domination, and dependence in the realm of the
cultural and educational, we may convincingly argue that the borrowing is in fact appropriate.
Further, if we accept that these day-to-day (but not mundane) experiences are both impactful
and more accessible to individuals as an environment for intervention – thus not equally
meaningful but also meaningful – this kind of sociological borrowing becomes, in my opinion,
both reasonable and worthwhile.
It is with this in mind that I read the post-colonial sociology of Bhabha and link it to a Western
classical music environment. Not to further exoticise the orchestral space, on the contrary, to
underscore its complexity and its emerging ambivalent qualities; at least in spaces such as NWS.
Bhabha (1994, p. 66) argues that ‘to recognize the stereotype as an ambivalent mode of knowledge
and power demands a theoretical and political response that challenges deterministic or func-
tionalist modes of conceiving of the relationship between discourse and politics’. What he offers
through the concept of ambivalence, is an analytical tool/way to push past moralistic and dogmatic
positions; perhaps reaching a more fluid and productive representation of the social space. In doing
so his interest is to shift potential points of intervention from the ‘ready recognition of images as
positive or negative, to an understanding of the processes of subjectification made possible (and
plausible) through stereotypical discourse’ (Bhabha 1994, p. 67).
I hope that the connections to discourses that both elevate or demonize Western classical
music engagements is clear. My aim is to trouble how moralising or dogmatic engagements (often
delivered through dualisms) function today mostly descriptively, as critiques downplay the hy-
bridity of such social spaces by creating iconic representations that only partially reflect reality.
The NWS, for example, shows some evidence of an organization moving away from its own
stereotypes, struggling between the valence of established authority and an interest – and per-
ceived need – for hybridity. Critiques that taking only a slice of such social space and calling it its
defining social fact, end up ‘subjecting [their own] representations to a normalizing judgement’
236
(Bhabha 1994, p. 66), which misses the point. Surely, some of these images are apt and at times
truthful, and thus potentially helpful (when aimed to qualify what is still the norm), but they may
be preventing a larger (and perhaps more interesting today) conversation to take place – and they
are certainly less exacting when the aim is intervention. In the words of Bhabha (1994, p. 67),
they offer much in terms of understanding ‘prior political normativity’ but less in terms of dis-
placing its ‘effectivity’. I am more interested in the ‘repertoire of positions of power and re-
sistance, domination and dependence’ that such social spaces make apparent today and what tools
are necessary to better consider the tensions and productive potential within them.
I believe data from New World Symphony may show how ambivalence, as a representation
‘of a range of differences … informing discursive and political practices of cultural hierarchization’
places institutional and individual actions as a process of subjectification in constant dispute, rather
than a harmonious manifestation of self-reinforcement and/or reification. This orchestral field
does carry with it ‘relational configuration(s) endowed with a specific gravity which it imposes on all
the objects and agents which enter in it’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant (1992), p. 89, italics added). This
fact or presence does not imply fixity, however – the gravity is not determining, at least not fully,
nor always in the same way. Rather, NWS seems to encompass a hybrid, contested, changing,
and unevenly structured social space. If this is so, we may actually find that a state of flux or
movement is a more apt description of this environ – not just transitioning, but carrying within it
an apt representation of a Bourdieusian field as a site of objective relations between players in a
struggle for the similar objects. For researchers and education critics, this may mean (perhaps) less
of a focus on why hierarchy remains, and a greater emphasis on exploring: how multiple and
contending hierarchical values can and do operate within such communities; how hierarchy is
functioning, differently, as a process of subjectification; and if, by producing multiple ‘repertoires
of positions of power and resistance’ multiple, coexisting hierarchies can play a role in demo-
cratising the social space. This has precedent in educational policy and in the work of Ball and
Junemann (2012, p. 138) who call it a ‘heterarchy’ and emergent form of governance naming it
‘an organizational form somewhere between hierarchy and network that draws upon diverse
horizontal and vertical links that permit different elements to cooperate and/or compete’ within
an institution, government, or other such spaces.
Community work as an institutional change indicator

The focus in this chapter, the virtual space created by the New World Symphony, is one
aspect of the change/adaptation this institution presents to its field of action. NWS is perhaps
the first of the larger orchestral institutions to function as other, smaller non-for-profits have.
When one analyses the discursive structure of virtual spaces such as that of the International
Contemporary Ensemble (https://www.iceorg.org) one is drawn to the complexity, the
contending and co-existing hierarchies of aims, and how they are represented by divergent
representations of work that is always centered on music but rhizomatically expands into
cultural politics, education, public intellectualism, and creative production. Their website, for
example, is not a neutral space introducing the group to external bodies. We see here the
creation of a discursive community in process; the virtual social space serves not (simply) as a
form of representation, identification, but a narration of points of intervention (see my own
analyses in Schmidt 2014, 2015, 2017), as argued above.
I take a similar sociological read to NWS. Here it is worth noting the manner in which
community engagement is conceived in multiple ways, varying from the more traditionalist – with
outreach activities based on deliverables – to the innovative, organic, or perhaps simply
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Patrick Schmidt
de-centered – with programs such as Musaic, Virtual Hangouts, or Transmuse.4 By establishing the
notion of co-existing hierarchies as ‘a repertoire of positions of power and resistance’, I am clearly
nodding to a Foucaultian understanding of the productive quality of power. What my interactions
with NWS suggest is not a less vertical manifestation of status, but the opening of space for
multiple status construction. In such environments there is space for an agentic processes – a
captured capital that one can wield – as a contenting consideration living side-by-side with a more
structural representation of status; aligned with established qualities or positions.
Again, my aim is not to present a rosy picture of a fully and unequivocally transformational
space; sociological work shows us they don’t exist. In fact, from the multiple spaces for what
one might characterise as community engagement, it would not be controversial to define several
engagements such as Wallchats,5 rehearsal observations,6 NWS in schools,7 or side-by-side
competitions8 as formational to traditional conceptions of the field of community music
engagement. These provide deliverables that can be clearly and easily quantified – in line with
human capital production – and establish norms of cultural identity and formation that preserve
the dichotomy between musician/artist and public/audience – in line with traditionalist visions
of cultural capital as the formation of taste.
I would like to press through these lower fruit, however, moving to engage with the ambivalent
qualities of this space, asking: Are the distinct ‘community’ discourses here represented a mani-
festation of contradiction? Of competing organizational status structures? May they (also) be a
manifestation of strategic multiplicity? Of an outward projection of the ‘repertoire of power and
resistance’ made manifest by the inhabitants of this institutional social space? I find the latter much
more interesting, and as importantly, closer to my observations of the space. If we accept this
notion, then we might further explore another question: In what ways are these multiple
representations of community work a representation of both agentic and repressive processes of
subjectification taking place at the same time? Addressing these questions seems to be critical to
break down a caricatural ‘fixity’ of the/this orchestral environment and the work developed by
actors in this field of action.
Mapping out contending spaces for action

There is a palpable geographical quality to the work of NWS. Elsewhere I used the work of
David Delaney (2005) to argue that a nuanced view of geography and territory can
allow us to see them as ‘more than static, inner things’ and focus on the ‘dynamic
social processes and practices through and in relation to which territorial forms emerge
or are transformed’.
(Schmidt 2015, p. 178)
Thinking of the New World Symphony as a geographical space with multiple territories might
provide another image and help explain the central aim of this analysis, namely, to articulate the
productive qualities of co-existing/contending hierarchies of this social space.
I start bringing in the data here, speaking first and unsurprisingly, of how participants talked
about the difficult internal dynamics where projects compete for attention and time.
There are a lot of programs competing for attention within the larger NWS brand that
weren’t getting attention.
These views were co-existent with others, where NWS fellows also articulated their own
surprise at how procedural power and resistance had an impact in the work and the responses
from the institution,
238
I couldn’t have anticipated how much it [their project] would have changed. I mean,
it was ok when we first talked about it, but then when I actually got on board it was
like I was seen this place differently. And things go done you know? And now we
have our committee, and everyone is noticing … it just feels very differently. From ok
you have to do some of this work, to this is really part of my work.
Reflection on the process over the 18 months of data collection showed the settling of
legitimacy regarding community-oriented work through Connect and the Virtual Hangouts,
and led to discussions about recognition of need for distinct ways to frame different work and
the potential impact and perception of that engagement,
What makes Connect different is that it has such a different audience/community so it

requires a different approach than these other things that we are promoting constantly
to the broader NWS audience.
I don’t know that we have exactly mobilized them in the way that we want to see them
engaged with us … but it keeps on changing too. So that has been a major learning
issue … it has been a lot of work communicating within NW and to the people we are
trying to bring in.
Following the geographical analogy above, I call this kind of work a mapping of previously
untouched/uncovered territory. The comment below follows an understanding that these
mappings are both organisational and personal,
… but there are many spaces here, right? through the fellows, through community
engagement initiatives, attending the events, virtual hangouts. And each asks me to be
a teacher, a musician, a community worker that understands a certain culture … but
that is something I am asking myself to be too …
Having to design a space for action led many fellows to explore what makes for meaningful
cultural and educational interaction. The capacity – or attention – to ‘a need to do otherwise’
emerged from resistance in this case,
It seems the level of participation has reached a plateau, I think it’s at the lower end of
where everyone would like to see it. Just stirring up enough interest in those, I don’t know
why people don’t join, if it’s a conception thing, if they don’t have time, if they aren’t
interested in that particular idea, music, practice … they don’t have anything to say … [it
seems it comes from] that they don’t feel like they can contribute in a meaningful way.
There were many indicators of the tenuous and at times haphazard manner in which partici-
pation took shape and the sustainability of how actors and spaces could exist. Interesting that
this process started by mapping these concerns onto others, as in this discussion about how to
amplify the engagement from partners,
In a dream world the students from Atlanta would watch the webcast of the students
from side by side or talk to students from south Florida outside of virtual hangout.
And maybe they interacted in those situations, but I haven’t seen any evidence that
they are taking those relationships beyond.
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Patrick Schmidt
Over time, challenges to internal strategic priorities also emerged, and with them under-
standings of functioning hierarchies within the institution and the limitations they generated,
They felt entirely separate from one another [Town Halls and Virtual Hangouts]. It’s a
shame really because we put a ton of effort and emphasis on things like the town hall
and it’s a once a year activity. We are wasting a lot of time and work only doing it
once. At times it feels like it’s driven from some requirement … maybe because of the
grant. Why not do that six times a year and track progress and develop rapport
between the groups? They meet Teddy once and he’s gone. There is no grounding …
even from the artistic side to connect one thing to the next.
Similar themes showed fellows critiquing continuity and synergy and a critical area to be
addressed for the future of the program, not just as a ‘we shouldn’t be doing this, we should
be doing that’, but a more productive ‘these things are not the same, so when we do this, we
should emphasize that’. Many interviewed provided a sense of coming to understand the
multiplicity of the space as rather difficult to negotiate, but also, as a non-zero-sum space. They
articulated what I am calling multiple hierarchies – each fostering aims and parameters of
functioning that were contextually different – and that they could coexist. For some this
depended on institutional acknowledgment,
One of the other barriers is fear of the unknown. It’s difficult for people to commit if they
don’t fully understand what we are doing or if what we are doing is not clearly present as
part of the institution. Our work needs to be on these two areas and they are both about
communication and being viable … I guess it is about, this got to matter to someone.
They seem to articulate that institutional buy-in could come not simply from leadership
priorities, but that legitimacy could be constructed, in the process of subjectification, that is,
mattering to someone. This exchange during a focus group exemplifies this nuanced under-
standing of their own constructs and the role of institutional ‘baggage’ and opportunity,
A: I mean, maybe they just don’t care, but maybe it is NW giving us the space.
B: But I just have not done this … there was nothing like it in college …
C: Or grad school …
B: … and other people were leading whatever then … you just kind of showed up.
A: We are kind of floundering … I mean there is a lot working well … but it’s like we can’t get
away from all that same stuff we have been doing for a number of years.
Mapping out multiple ways of being: musician/teacher/cultural worker

The data above shows some evidence of fellows struggling with a geographical consciousness
(Schmidt 2015) that was not facilitated, or in some cases even permissible, within their college
experiences. The point of geographical consciousness is that we become more apt at mapping
our social environments in terms of creative production and their discursive implications,
policy and political awareness and their impact on creation of windows of opportunities,
managerial capacity and community communication, to cite a few. The premise here is that
‘inhabiting a landscape does not guarantee voice, and voice alone is no guarantee for agency,
that is, for actual enactment’ (Schmidt 2015, p. 189), and consequently having a ‘feel for the
game’ and impacting our environ requires a balance between ‘a critical and at times forceful
240
articulation of our own mappings’ (Schmidt 2015, p. 188) and the moving territories in our
field of action.
The limited and narrow ‘feel for the game’ with which young professionals begin their
careers is, arguably, as challenging a fact as potential institutional traditionalism within arts,
cultural, or educational organisations – this applies to music educators and musicians alike. One
may name this lack as a representation of failures in program design or in leadership devel-
opment, or as an outcome of the gap between higher music education priorities and the
complex realities of cultural and educational spaces. If the aim is indeed to change our modus
operandi, however, lessons from spaces such as NWS can be helpful.
In 2011, I suggested that professional development of teachers in twenty-first-century
realities (Schmidt and Robbins 2011) required a focus that went beyond the narrow provision
of content expertise (human capital) and more broadly focussed on enhancing participatory
dispositions and establishing a vision of the musician/educator/cultural worker. We suggested
that planning be guided by a kind of subject-formation goals, focusing on processes that would
expand educators’ identities from teacher or musician only, to the teacher/musician/cultural
worker aggregate. The idea was that by seeing themselves as multiple, teachers could map out
their work as being connected by and responsive to multiple territories. We advocated for the
following categories:
• Teacher/Musician/Cultural Worker as content providers

• T/M/CW as reflective constructors of curriculum
• T/M/CW as innovative collaborators
• T/M/CW as community builders
• T/M/CW as continuous learners
• T/M/CW as political communicators
Six years later, my work with NWS presented a partial realisation of these ideas, as the program
was designed (see aims above) to help fellows develop similar characteristics. Even if aspira-
tional, I argue that there is something productive in the notion of such a tri-partite identity
shaped by these six categories or territories for action.
To exemplify it in terms of this research project, below I focus on the intersection between
technologies and their impact on the formation of community-oriented work (Schmidt 2017).
Starting from the most normative, for some of the fellows and some in administration this
complex configuration of identity and framing translated as becoming more effective content
provider and the accompanying sense of status it provides; the kind that comes from legitimacy
felt from participation in an space experiencing growing recognition – determined by terms of
viewership, content quality, and exchange value.
Oh, absolutely, the virtual hangouts have gone from awkward and not useful to pretty
serious sit downs with great information, they are recruiting their own guests, they are
much more self-motivated. Compared to last season it’s a whole different product. I think
we are making a really great product for this age audience. I haven’t paid a single one of
them (guests), they just volunteer. They get to nerd out about musician stuff, they love it.
For others the virtual hangout community manifested as an opportunity for them to exercise
their reflexivity as curriculum builders, attending to the notion that distinct geographies within
this social space needed distinct priorities and processes,
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Patrick Schmidt
I think the challenge is [that] every community has its own needs, and I disagree with
the fact that we didn’t say to the student population of south Florida: what do you
need from us? we said here we are giving you this, use it. I don’t know if we can every
figure out form them what they want or need. We said here’s our product, you need
it. They didn’t say we need this can you help us. And that is a huge problem, I think.
Others reflected that innovation alone can have limited impact and that community-oriented
work is not, in and of itself, participatory,
… people stay on, but they don’t really engage, they are lurking, they are absorbing
information and since they are not communicating back to us it’s difficult to know
what their takeaways are.
While these are not meant to be taken as representative, they are a critical and recurrent expression
of the tensions emergent from the data, in the form of a virtual incongruity that simultaneously
affords and represses connectivity, voice, and engagement. These experiences provided space for
correlations with other work developed within NWS and their (somewhat) movable hierarchies.
NWS Fellows clearly understood their role as orchestral musicians and the primacy it played
in the social relations established within this performance space. They also knew and noticed
the complexity of contending work they were called to engage with in the larger social space of
NWS. They recognised the impact of engaging in digital productions, virtual hangouts and
townhalls, community engagement and educational outreach, project leadership, as well as
masterclass, audition preparation, or collaborative creative work, as a representation of the
cultural space in which they lived and worked. This, they realised, was a function of need, ‘we
know that even for those of us here, which is already pretty darn difficult, less than half will get
a permanent gig in an orchestra’ as well as a manner of choice, as this graduate explains:
I know it is a bit crazy, but I am now playing at the MET orchestra, and while that is
great, the work that I am doing online, with the ‘audition hacker’ is equally satisfying
… maybe more, when we are playing Wagner (laughs)!
Again, borrowing from the field of policy, this indicates what could be called the formation of a
network. In network events and meetings, ‘programs are ‘pitched’, stories told, commitments
are made, and new arrangements and relationships established’ (MacFarlane 2009, p. 566).
As significant to this analysis is the fact that participants saw the alignment between chal-
lenges in programs such as the VHs and the work of the institution as a whole, as well as their
role in the reconstitution of the internal networks of the organization. This discussion during a
focus groups exemplifies it this way,
A: We were just talking that one of the things with the VHs is that the high value on production
tends to lead to lessened opportunity for innovative content or alternative formats.
B: Yeah … and this is a debate we have in general too. What is the responsibility of NW in
pushing innovation … I mean the glossy nature of what we do, in general, what it is that we
end up not doing, not talking, even thinking about.
A: Some of it is happening elsewhere … smaller groups, right?! But even here, is like ‘stage b’
things … but these are becoming the cool thing, the hip thing … and that is getting lots of
attention too.
242
Locating historical positions today

In a historical analysis of the arts within the political category of the ‘nonprofit’, sociologist
Paul DiMaggio (1986) traces the changes of nonprofits in the United States during the
twentieth century. His aim is to show the discursive, political, and managerial changes
organizations undertook, particularly since state arts foundations were established (such as
the National Endowment for the Arts, which began in 1965) and the increase of corporate
arts philanthropy took shape in the mid-to-late 60s. DiMaggio argues that up until this
point
arts organizations were casually administered and usually content, in practice, to serve
a limited and exclusive public (the former because their trustees preferred it, the latter
because their artistic directors had little time to devote to expanding audiences).
(1986, p. 5)
His point is that the advent of institutional funding changed these institutions bringing with it
closer scrutiny and accountability. I am interested in this as a possible beginning for multiple and
contending hierarchies as an acceptable condition within arts institutions of this kind.
DiMaggio’s (1986, p. 6) sociological work shows us the deeply ironic influence of social class
in the formation of arts institutions in North America, explaining that,
The creation of our first museums and symphony orchestras represented an antimarket
social movement by wealthy entrepreneurs attempting to seal off their own adoptive
culture (and with it their own status group) from the ravages of the national market
economy that they themselves were instrumental in constructing.
He also explores the movement in that social space, highlighting how adaptive it has always
been, saying:
When financial crisis struck, as it did with special force during the 1930s [and again in
the 1970s and in the mid-aughts] and the patrons could no longer meet deficits, our
museums and symphonies frequently lurched toward government funding with
outreach or education programs. But their hopeful advances towards the public purse
were usually repelled and the shift in mission short-lived.
(DiMaggio 1986, pp. 4–5)
Offshoots and expansions of initial institutional aims, such as those directed at educational
outreach, initially functioned, ironically, as managerial pragmatism or self-interest. Over time,
however, their inception provided for changes and further adaptations in the social space, as
well as the gerrymandering of their original raison d’etre. There is evidence here and elsewhere
(see Schmidt 2019) that these are more than PR or survival strategies. Orchestras such as NWS
are establishing internal structures that allow for other forms of capital and status to emerge – for
instance those linked to community work, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Orchestras such as
Houston Symphony are making hiring choices that institutionalize these new forms of capital
and status.9 Arts organisations are hiring ex-orchestral musicians to develop cultural programing
with clear and primary focus on social aims.
It is normative to say that the arts, particularly Western classical music, are resistant to change,
enforcing socio-cultural norms that support a constellation of parameters from status formation,
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Patrick Schmidt
to colonial and paternalistic assumptions, to enforcement of taste. And many organisational and
institutional scholars have researched how struggles over legitimacy, authority, status, and prestige
shape how ideas gain ground or ideologies are established, as well as how social actors establish
positions and identities (Abbott 1988; Deephouse and Suchman 2008; Dimaggio and Powell 1991;
Johnson et al. 2006). It is less normative to speak of a variable and perhaps multiple plane field of
action that explores greater sociological tensions between human and cultural capital asymmetries
in how, say, classical musicians and orchestras function today. The usage of social spaces such as the
orchestra – or higher music education – as a form of assuring distinction is undisputable. But does it
always also follow that these social spaces remain uniformly ‘fixed’ by this social history?
What can music education learn from the orchestral

social space: a conclusion
My analysis of the data collected from NWS suggests that distinct cultural capital discourses
often said to be competing, can enjoy stronger institutional cohabitation and co-dependence
than previously or often acknowledged. Viewed from the standpoint or framework of
ambivalence, I argued that, in the case of NWS, these intersecting discourses (can) produce an
ontological position open not simply to the re-drafting of borders (changing positions relative
to need and environmental pressure) but also to establishing contenting hierarchies where
aesthetic, educational, intersubjective, and communal aims are vying for but also sharing space.
All this to say that orchestral environs such as NWS are perhaps more dynamically complex
than is often assumed and better positioned for strategic change than critiques suggest.
This is significant to the potential shape and future of orchestral institutions, although it offers
no guarantees. For instance, regardless of the institutional and personal investment, making
community work a vying and viable form of cultural capital within the organization, the external
communication of this form of capital is less apparent and segmented, as community engagement
is not stated on its website as a central element of NWS’ mission, vision, or purpose. This
incongruence, however, might have as much to do with the influence of the historic cynicism
articulated by DiMaggio above, and how such institutions feel they must allow the general public
to read them, as with internal disinterest. To assume institutional dismissal as a manifestation of
status is precisely to continue to reduce this social space. Readers would do well to remember that
‘music functions bidirectionally, including those who are introduced and accepted by the field,
and at the same time excluding others by alienating bystanders’ (Hofvader 2015, p. 29). But that
does not mean that within fields work cannot be done to change and expand their geographies
(Schmidt 2015). The extent to which this was observable within the NWS social space leads me
to place greater confidence in the notion that fields change in a space of ambivalence, that is, one
where the institutional habitus might be partially or overtly maintained, while internal disruptive
and contending spaces are created and developed.
The work of individuals inhabiting NWS and other analogous spaces are a reminder that
‘cultural capital gains within musical fields require collaboration and certain forms of working
solidarity’ (Burnard 2015, p. 195). One might do well, then, to more fully acknowledge the
complexity of pathways they are tracing. Western classical musicians (and their managerial
counterparts) today, regularly, have to gerrymander values that reach across strict boundaries of
human capital notions of skill development, performativity, or employability, and those cultural
capital notions of cultivation, distinction, or critical artistic commentary and innovation.
Simplistic visions where the first has a corrupting effect upon the latter can do little in terms
of addressing the future of real people with real needs. As music educators in schools and
community settings, these musicians/cultural workers, who are also educators, find themselves
244
in a different but equally charged political environment. They suffer similar categorical ossi-
fication. And their work is more dynamically adaptable than often acknowledged.
Analytical detachments and ideological critique provide important tools to describe the complex
political, social, economic and cultural realities of the arts. But alone or when overprivileged, they
fall short in providing guidance, facilitating strategy, and offering reasonable pathways into and
through the complexity of socio-cultural spaces. This chapter, as several others in this volume, suggest
that an expansion on environmental analyses based on sociological theory and method might
provide greater nuance to how we view music education within cultural spaces today. They may
provide thoughtful feedback for those professionals making their lives within the arts, and hopefully
better guidance for action in light of the challenges facing arts education and arts policy.
The questions raised here and articulated above remain: What answers may we find if we
spend less energy on why hierarchy remains, and place greater emphasis on exploring how
multiple and contending hierarchical values can and do operate within musical communities;
how hierarchy may be functioning, differently, as a process of subjectification; and if, by
producing multiple ‘repertoires of positions of power and resistance’, varying and coexisting
hierarchies can, actually and even if paradoxically, play a role in democratising the social space.
Sociological work has a history of finding unusual answers in familiar spaces. Music education
can certainly continue to benefit from this tradition.
1. What steps could you take, in your own music institution, to facilitate how multiple and
contending hierarchical values could be more openly talked about and productively addressed?
2. How innovative musical and social practices could be used to further democratize cultural
institutions? What examples are you aware of that could serve as models, and why?
Notes
1 See https://www.nws.edu/about/about-nws/.
2 See https://www.nws.edu/about/about-nws.
3 See https://www.nws.edu/community-engagement/for-students/nws-connect/.
4 See https://vimeo.com/nwsymphony and https://www.nws.edu/news/transmuse/.
5 See https://www.nws.edu/news/welcome-to-wallchats/.
6 See https://www.nws.edu/community-engagement/for-teachers/rehearsal-observations/.
7 See https://www.nws.edu/community-engagement/for-teachers/nws-in-the-schools/.
8 See https://www.nws.edu/community-engagement/for-students/side-by-side-concerto-competition/.
9 See their community-embedded musicians, https://www.houstonsymphony.org/about-us/community-
musicians/.
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developing career creativities. In: Burnard, P., Hofvander Trulsson, Y., Soderman, J. (Eds.), Bourdieu
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17
NEOLIBERALISM AS POLITICAL
RATIONALITY
A call for heretics
Øivind Varkøy
What is neoliberalism?
Among music educators and in music education research, it is quite common to find harsh
criticism of political ideas labelled as neoliberalism focussing on everything from rigid assess-
ment standards to ideas about ‘knowledge as a commodity, students as customers and the school
authorities as stakeholders questioning the educational institutions’ accountability’
(Johansen 2012, p. 223). Within the fields of sociology and philosophy of music education, it is
discussed how neoliberal economic policy influences education by exerting pressure to re-
structure schooling to produce knowledge workers in response to the global knowledge
economy, and how for example problematic assessment standards play a vital role in this process
(Benedict 2013; Benedict and Schmidt 2012; Elliott 2010; Horsley 2014, 2015; Smith 2015;
Woodford 2005; Woodford 2015). Sometimes the concept of neoliberalism among music
educators, however, seems to be used about every educational policy we don’t like; from
liberalistic political economy to right-wing populist ideas. It appears as if neoliberalism has
become an all-purpose denunciatory category (Flew 2014).
To take part in a reflexive and nuanced discussion of what is politically going on in our
societies and educational systems, however, we need a more profound understanding of
neoliberalism; as a political rationality.1 Neoliberalism and its consequences can of course be
identified on both macro- and micro-levels. In order to reflect systematically on micro level
examples such as rigid assessment standards and educational goals expressed in terms of com-
petencies2 as well as how justifying music education by instrumentalist arguments has been
brought to the extreme, we need a focus on macro-level issues, discussing neoliberalism as
political rationality.3 Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to contribute to such a profound
knowledge and understanding of neoliberalism – as a foundation for further discussions in the
field of music education when it comes to ‘neoliberalism’.
The metanarrative of neoliberalism is connected to competition and competitiveness, and to the
view that the ideals and principles of business life are guiding devices for how educational
quality should be maintained and improved.
When it comes to general discussions on the concept of neoliberalism, there exist a number
of different definitions. According to researchers related to Marxist traditions, neoliberalism is
considered an attack on the class compromise after the Second World War, a kind of
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Øivind Varkøy
counterrevolution from right-wing politics and the upper class against democratisation and high
levels of taxes for the rich (Duménil and Lévy 2014).
In other traditions borrowing from and in dialogue with a Marxist perspective, however, we
find scholars who consider neoliberalism a political philosophy or ideology that has influenced
practical politics since the 1970s. This understanding is common among people in mainstream
history and political science who acknowledge neoliberalism as a useful concept (Jones 2012;
Burgin 2015).
A third understanding of neoliberalism, which is a basis for the discussions going on in this
chapter, is found within the Foucaultian tradition, considering neoliberalism to be a kind of
political rationality.4 In this way, neoliberalism can be seen as something transcending right-wing
politics. It is for example a historical fact that the centre-left governments led by Jimmy Carter
in the US from 1976 to 1981 and James Callaghan in Great Britain from 1976 to 1979 in-
troduced neoliberalism before the installations of Ronald Reagan in 1981 and Margaret
Thatcher in 1979. Today, social democrat governments left in Europe have taken over the
dogmas of neoliberalism, for example about the importance of competition (Innset 2016).
Michel Foucault’s lectures The Birth of Biopolitics (Foucault 2008) have heavily influenced the
study of neoliberalism. In his recommendation of Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval’s book The
New Way of the World. On neoliberal society, Philip Mirowski for example writes:
The New Way of the World is the best modern realization of Foucault’s pioneering
approach to the history of neoliberalism. It wonderfully explores the European roots
and branches of the neoliberal thought collective over the 20th century […]. (Dardot
and Laval 2013, back page)
The political rationality of neoliberalism

Following a Foucaultian tradition, I argue that neoliberalism is a kind of political rationality, a
certain way to think about politics and society. A political rationality is related to what Foucault
once called ‘le conduire des conduites’ (‘the conduct of conduct’) (Foucault 2000, p. 336).
Political rationality is a kind of governmental reason (Hindness 2006).
Foucault originally used the term ‘governmentality’ to describe a particular way of ad-
ministering populations in modern European history within the context of the rise of the idea
of the State. He later expanded his definition to encompass the techniques and procedures
which are designed to govern the conduct of both individuals and populations at every level,
not just the administrative or political level.
As a notion it provides a way of focusing on certain widely accepted nostrums and theo-
retical assumptions that currently inform policymaking, and provides a useful way of under-
standing how a number of contemporary governments approach the management of economic
security … The concept of political rationalities provides an important conceptual tool with
which to understand contemporary public policy (Beeson and Firth 1998, p. 1).
In the following, neoliberalism will be discussed in the light of hegemonic ways of instru-
mental thinking in our modern Western culture. Central concepts in this context are technical
rationality and ritual rationality, and disenchantment and re-enchantment, related to theories of the
sociologists Max Weber and Colin Campbell, respectively. What is going on in this chapter is a
kind of reflection on modernity – a philosophical sociological discussion inspired by Weber’s insight
that ‘sociology can make a contribution to public debates by unpacking the various practical and
indeed normative implications of different policy options’ (Chernilo 2015). In this case, ‘public
debates’ are discussions going on within and about music education.
248
Neoliberalism as political rationality
I argue that a prerequisite for adequate and productive criticism of neoliberalism is

knowledge and understanding of the philosophical and cultural context of such a political
rationality. Liberation can only come about by attacking the very roots of neoliberalism as
political rationality (Foucault 1979, p. 254).
I further argue that important cultural and philosophical roots of neoliberalism are to be
found in the hegemonic discourse of instrumentalism or instrumental rationality, expressed in
Western societies since the time of the Reformation in Europe, as discussed by Max Weber in
his theories of the processes of rationalisation and disenchantment.
When music in general education, in the current world of education, politics, and public
opinion, is increasingly threatened and designated ever more as an expendable luxury gradually
being pushed into the role of unnecessary cream on top of the educational cake, we have to
understand this in the context of a culture wrapped in a way of thinking where everything is
expected to be useful – to be good for something more than itself – as something obvious and
‘natural’ (Pio and Varkøy 2012). In this culture of instrumentalism, where everything is a tool or
a means to a goal or end other than itself, musicality easily ends up as a measurable object, music
teaching focuses on the outer, technical layers of the music, and instrumental thinking flourishes
even within music education (Bowman 2005; Ehrenforth 1982; Nielsen 2006; Pio and Varkøy
2015; Varkøy 2007).
Neoliberalism and education

In neoliberal educational politics, instrumentalism arrives in terms of buzzwords such as
‘evidence-based’, ‘control’, ‘relevance’, and ‘measurable ends’. Education in general is becoming
an instrument for economic growth, and the people within education are at risk of ending up as a
means for achieving ends for economic growth (Pio 2012; Pio and Varkøy 2012; Pio 2018).
Thus, there certainly are a large number of good reasons to discuss neoliberalism as such and
its influence on educational policy and music education. The neoliberal focus on assessment is
closely related to instrumentalistic trends in educational political thinking. These ideas are in its
turn connected to an end-means thinking picked up from business life’s guidance model, and a
market philosophy of educational thinking, focusing control on ‘the results of the production’ (i.e.
teaching; Varkøy 2007), a situation which certainly can be discussed in light of Max Weber’s
thesis about how the rationality from the areas of technology and economy has become an
important component of Western society’s ideals of life as a whole, influencing even educa-
tional systems (Weber 2014).
Konrad Paul Liessmann (2008) discusses the situation in higher education and educational
policy while he is deconstructing terms such as ‘knowledge society’, ‘lifelong learning’, etc.,
claiming that this kind of ‘newspeak’ is an expression of a process where universities have
turned into businesses in a neoliberal world, forgetting any idea about Bildung (Varkøy 2015a).5
According to Liessmann, the universities are threatened by a tsunami of criteria and methods of
evaluation connected to the concept of impact brought in from the economic sphere. With the
term Unbildung, Liessmann wants to focus on today’s intensive interaction with knowledge
without any idea about Bildung. According to Liessmann, that which is defined as knowledge in
the knowledge society is the intentional lack of Bildung. If one uses the term Bildung at all, this
does not mean focusing on the knowledge and understanding of one’s cultural heritage, and the
development of one’s personal abilities, for example related to empathy and compassion. It is
more or less totally oriented towards factors such as the market and skills, efficiency and impact,
relevance and employability – like everything else in a society run by neoliberal political
rationality.
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Øivind Varkøy
The demand for results and relevance applies in all areas, and we ask for innovation and impact.
The term impact is all over the discussions on research, related to other terms like ‘influence’,
‘effect’, and ‘transfer outcomes’. While scientific impact is about how the research project in-
fluences the research field in question and societal impact is about how the results of the project
will influence society as a whole, innovation impact is very often linked to research results with a
potential for commercial use and benefit – even when it is underlined that the meanings of the
terms impact and innovation vary between different academic fields and subjects, topics, and
research programmes (see for example, European Commission and Soler-Gallart 2018).
This is an important point as long as innovation is a term closely connected to and associated
with business life, generally referring to changing processes or creating more effective processes,
products, and ideas; implementing new ideas; creating dynamic products or improving your
existing services; being a catalyst for the growth and success of your business; and helping to
adapt and grow in the market place (see for example, Department of Industry, Innovation and
Science, Australia 2018).
Music educators and researchers in music education need to take control of the stream of
buzzwords pouring into academia and higher music education and research. An important
aspect of taking control is discussing broader understanding of terms like impact and innovation,
not letting areas of economy and technology define the discourses even within humanistic and
artistic sciences. In other words; capturing the definition power, and recontexualise such
concepts by giving them a relevant [sic] meaning in our own context, and to reintroduce the
idea of speaking about education with an ‘educational language’ drawing on educational
concepts. A prerequisite for this kind of taking control is, as stated in the introduction,
knowledge and understanding of fundamental discussions of relations between power, policy,
and economy on the one hand and cultural hegemonic ways of thinking – or rationalities – on
the other. Thus, we have to discuss the political rationality of neoliberalism related to the
hegemony of instrumentalism or instrumental reason in our culture, occurring in both technical
and ritual rationalities.
Technical rationality and processes of disenchantment

There are fundamental philosophical differences between Michel Foucault and Max Weber.
However, Foucault (1979) claims that he will not discuss the works of Weber (as well as works
of thinkers related to the Frankfurt School), though he finds them most important and valuable.
Foucault’s project is however not to ‘take as a whole the rationalisation of society or of culture,
but … analyse this process in several fields, each of them grounded in fundamental experience;
madness, illness, death, crime, sexuality, etc.’ (p. 226).
When it comes to political rationality, Foucault says:
Political rationality has grown and imposed itself all through the history of Western
societies. It first took its stand on the idea of pastoral power, then that of reason of
state. Its inevitable effects are both individualisation and totalization. Liberation can
only come from attacking, not just one of these two effects, but political rationality’s
very roots. (p. 254)
This statement is one important fundament for my argument in the introduction about how
neoliberalism has to be discussed philosophically, sociologically as well as politically. Knowing
and understanding Weber’s discussions of instrumental reason and technical rationality, as well as
250
the processes of disenchantment, is one prerequisite to a more profound understanding of

neoliberalism.
According to Weber (2014), the rationality from the areas of technology and economy –
which represents the character of modern Western technical rationality – has become an im-
portant component of modern society’s ideals of life as a whole, influencing even educational
systems.6 The mathematically founded, rationalised empiricism in Protestant asceticism, Weber
held, is an important aspect of the Puritan spirit of capitalism:
This worldly Protestant asceticism … acted powerfully against the spontaneous en-
joyment of possessions; it restricted consumption, especially of luxuries. On the other
hand, it had the psychological effect of freeing the acquisition of goods from the
inhibitions of traditionalistic ethics. It broke the bonds of the impulse of acquisition in
that it not only legalized it, but … looked upon it as directly willed by God. (p. 98)
Thus, the spirit of capitalism is prefigured in Protestant asceticism. This goes for both
Lutheranism and Calvinism, the latter being the religious movement that in the analysis of
Weber played the most central role in triggering the rationalisation process:
In Luther, work as a vocation is associated with God’s calling upon men. In

Calvinism, work is given meaning in the context of economy of salvation.… The
seeker of salvation is brought closer to his goal not by a vita contemplativa, but by a vita
activa.
(Han 2017a, p. 89)
In his discussions, Weber develops his theses about the general processes of disenchantment of
the world and existence since the time of the Reformation in Europe (Varkøy 2015b). In his
theory on rationalisation, Weber argues that the structures of consciousness which made
modern bureaucratic forms of administration possible are gradually set free from the Protestant
ethic which fostered them and gave them transcendent meaning. This process of secularisation
did, however, ‘not lead to the disappearance of the economy of salvation’, which ‘still is alive in
modern capitalism’ (Han 2017a, p. 90). Regularity, asceticism, and calculation are transformed
into an ‘iron cage’, a system of actions to which the subjects have to adjust themselves to survive
(Dews 1984). This ‘iron cage of instrumental rationality’ doesn’t really have room for art and
music if they don’t serve a rational purpose outside the learning and experiencing of them
(Varkøy 2007).
The result of this manipulative and controlling kind of technical instrumental rationality, the
kind of rationality we use when we calculate the most economical application of means to reach
a given goal (Taylor 1998), is that other forms of human spirituality – be they artistic, moral, or
religious – are deported to the field of irrational beliefs or the world of uncontrolled emotions
(von Wright 1994). Adorno and Horkheimer (2004) argue that the dominance of technical
rationality leads to an objectification of the subject, that is to reduce human beings, including
oneself, to objects rather than subjects. Objectification is spreading to all areas of society, da-
maging true and genuine human relationships and products.
The hegemony of technical rationality is in many ways linked to a dream of the thoroughly
rationalised society and closely associated with modernity, the modern project itself. A critical
discussion of technical rationality is criticism of modernity; this is extremely evident in
Zygmunt Bauman’s discussions of the Holocaust as an expression of a perverted modernity and
technical rationality (Bauman 1989).
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Øivind Varkøy
In education, the hegemony of technical rationality includes a growing interest in the

technical aspects of education, teaching methodological issues, to ‘technical’ questions about
how to teach. The interest in the pedagogical question of how is increasing at the expense of the
questions of what and why to the extent that the answers to the what and why are not only
relativised, the questions themselves are marginalised or excluded. In light of Habermas’ (1968)
discussions of how the technical problem today may seem to replace the interaction problem
(communication and interaction) and how this leads to a development from a political society
into a technocratic society, we are facing an instrumentalistic mistake of educational thinking,
where technical actions are taken as basic models for actions of education and Bildung in
general.
Ritual rationality and processes of re-enchantment

The hegemony of instrumental reason is certainly interesting to discuss related to Weber’s
analysis of the development of modern society as a rationalisation and disenchantment of the
world, processes that made the world more prosaic and predictable and less poetic and mys-
terious. Life is put into a calculation.
However, when politicians introduce music education as a way to create co-operation, well-
being, and togetherness etc., they seldom base their schemes and thinking on solid knowledge
that confirms the causality between the experiences of or activities within music and the wanted
outcome – as is an ideal when it comes to technical rationality. On the contrary, what we very
often are dealing with is not knowledge-based policymaking but political beliefs. Music edu-
cation policy, like cultural policy, is built on beliefs in the positive effects of artistic and cultural
experiences in general and music education in particular. This logic can be called ritual
(Røyseng and Varkøy 2014). Knowing and understanding the development of ritual rationality,
and ideas of instrumentalism as they exist in ritual thinking, is another prerequisite (besides
knowing and understanding the cultural development of technical rationality) to a more
profound understanding of neoliberalism.
In ritual thinking, the idea is that music possesses magical powers that transform and heal
(van Gennep 1960). Rather than seeing music as an objectified instrument in a technical way,
music is believed to have the power to bring human beings into a state of transition in a magical
way. The transformative powers of music are working both on the individual and the societal
level. It is believed that the experiences of art and culture are transformative in a way that makes
us better people and a better society. Art and culture are introduced in regional policy, in-
tegration policy, health policy, and innovation policy. If you have a problem, as a person or as a
society, the problem solver is music (and other art forms). You are bringing your problem
before the altar of a god (here the god is music), praying, and hoping for a miracle.
This ritual logic can be seen in light of how the sociologist Colin Campbell (1987) adds
nuances to Weber’s theses of rationalisation and disenchantment. Campbell does not contest the
basic argument of Weber. He does, however, maintain that Calvinism was more emotional
than Weber assumed. In addition, emotion became even more prominent in late Calvinism.
The central point here, following Campbell, is that this later Protestant ethic led to the spirits of
modern consumerism contrasting the asceticism of the early Protestants. As stated by Byung-
Chul Han, this sort of consumerist capitalism ‘operates through the selling and consumption of
meanings and emotions’; it is a capitalism ‘which derives its profits from emotions’ (Han 2017b,
p. 44). Emotionality has taken the place of rationality.
With his discussions on consumerism, Colin Campbell extends on the rationalisation theory
of Weber by claiming that processes of re-enchantment exist side by side with processes of
252
disenchantment. In this way, it is possible to see disenchantment and re-enchantment as parallel

and dialectical processes.
When it comes to music and art, processes of re-enchantment can be discussed in light of
reflections concerning what in theological circles is labelled prosperity theology or glorification
theology (Røyseng and Varkøy 2014). In this kind of understanding of the Christian faith, God
seems to be valued primarily as some sort of butler, a mega-handyman and a party fixer of
existence (Eagleton 2009). Thus neoliberalist traits can be found in some fundamentalist
evangelical preachers, acting ‘like managers and motivational trainers, proclaiming the new
Gospel of limitless achievement and optimization’ (Han 2017b, p. 30). At the same time,
neoliberal ideology displays religious traits in a new form of subjectification. Instead, as in
Protestantism, ‘of searching out sins, one hunts down negative thoughts’ (Han 2017b).
In ritual logic concerning the positive outcomes of music, music is God the party fixer.
When it comes down to it, both technical and ritual rationalities end up focusing on music as a
useful means – as an instrument – to some other end than experiencing music. It seems like
even ritual thinking concerning values of music is related to the deep and mighty river or
tsunami of instrumentalism of our culture. ‘The process of secularization did not lead to the
disappearance of the economy of salvation’ (Han 2017a, p. 90); thus, the paradox is that the
tsunami of instrumentalism today necessitates a consumerist ideology, even when it comes to
ritual logic, at the same time as this very ideology is undermining the early Protestant ethical
attitude which made our modern Western societies possible (Zizek 2011).
Technical and ritual rationalities: two versions of instrumental reason

Neoliberal educational politics is heavily influenced by consumerism. As I have stressed a
number of times, the main argument in this chapter is the importance and necessity of un-
derstanding neoliberalism as political rationality and its consumerist ideology related to both
technical and ritual rationalities – as these ways of thinking appear today – as different ex-
pressions of the hegemony of instrumental reason.
Thus, firstly, we need to have in mind how our structures of consciousness, even gradually
set free from the Protestant ethic, are transformed into so-called iron cages, systems of actions to
which it seems we have to adjust ourselves to survive working and thinking in a culture
dominated by the hegemonic discourse of instrumental reason in educational and cultural
policy (as in everywhere else in society).
Secondly, we need to reflect upon the fact that a hegemonic instrumentalism necessitates a
consumerist ideology with efficiency, immediate relevance, and impact in focus, even when it
comes to ritual logic, and even when this very ideology undermines the Protestant ethical
attitude, for example postponement of satisfaction of our needs.
Consumer capitalism exists by generating more and more desires and needs (Ritzer 2010).
When it comes to music and arts, consumerism can be seen in light of what Han calls ‘the
aesthetics of the smooth’. The artwork has become an object of immediate and pure pleasure,
we are facing hedonism: ‘consumer culture more and more submits beauty to the schemata of
stimuli and excitement’ (Han 2018, p. 48). I, however argue, that from a philosophical point of
view, aesthetic experiences are not limited to experiences of pleasure, where the subject re-
cognises itself. Aesthetic experiences are also related to the encounters with ‘the other’, in
which the subject is shocked or ‘realizes its own finitude’ (Han 2018, p. 24; see even Pio and
Varkøy 2012). Thus, consumption and art experiences are mutually exclusive. Art experiences
are of a contemplative character, while consumerism certainly favours a vita activa rather than a
vita contemplativa (Arendt 1958; Varkøy 2015b) – even more than early Protestantism.
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Øivind Varkøy
Neoliberalism as political rationality, caught between technical and ritual rationalities, has
grown and imposed itself in a number of societies. As said above, Foucault focusses on how
liberation from a certain political rationality depends on attacking the political rationality’s very
roots. Some roots of neoliberalism are to be found in the hegemony of instrumental reason in
our culture, as it is expressed both in technological and ritual terms. Following Han, I find this
to be about a development of a sort of consciousness industry ‘destroying the human soul,
which is anything but a machine of positivity’ (Han 2017b, p. 32). Thus, we need to critically
discuss – in fact, attack – the technology of power which takes form under neoliberalism, a
technology of power which
does not lay hold on individuals directly. Instead, it ensures that individuals act on
themselves so that power relations are interiorized – and then interpreted as freedom.
Self-optimization and submission, freedom and exploitation, fall into one.
(Han 2017b, p. 28)
In this situation, we need heretics and figures of resistance opposing the culture of neoliberal
consensus and representing a heretical consciousness. We need music educators, researchers, and
scholars who stand opposed to the neoliberal power of domination and the hegemonic dis-
courses of instrumentalism. A starting point to develop such a herecy is to recognise philoso-
phical critique not only as (hopefully) theoretically interesting, but as a fundament, maybe even
a prerequisite, for profound political and social critique and action.7
1. How can the reflections in this chapter – neoliberalism discussed in light of the concepts of
technical rationality, ritual rationality, and instrumental reason, as well as the processes of dis-
enchantment and re-enchantment – have implications for thinking about teaching music?
2. How can such reflections have an impact on thinking about education as a phenomenon?
Notes
1 In this text, a focus on the micro-level is limited to examples such as rigid assessment standards.
Educational goals expressed in terms of competencies (as for example in the Norwegian curricula of
general education) is another example of neoliberalism on the micro-level. Further: Justifying music
education by instrumentalist arguments can be seen related to the hegemony of instrumental reason in
our culture, a cultural situation which has been brought to the extreme in neoliberalism (see my
discussion about this in the following text).
2 As for example in the Norwegian curricula of general education.
3 See Schmidt 2012; Wright 2012, Wright and Froehlich 2012, Johansen 2014, Fautley 2016, Ferm
Almqvist et al. 2017, and Karlsen and Johansen 2019 for profound discussions concerning varying
micro- and macro-level perspectives, including assessment standards. See even Fautley’s text in this
book concerning this.
4 The term ‘political rationality’ refers to the ways of thinking that comprise our present, the ways they have
been caught up, and the consequences for our understanding of our present, and of ourselves in the present.
5 The German concept of Bildung is sometimes defined as: a) competence in critical, nuanced and
creative thinking, b) understanding of scientific ways of thinking crossing the borders between tra-
ditional subjects, c) respect for norms of objectivity, and d) ethical reflection (Hagtvedt and
Ognjenovic 2011, p. 16). These aspects are related to personal development both through knowledge
and understanding of one’s own historical heritage of culture, philosophy and science, and by processes
of meeting the unknown.
6 In this context, the term ‘modern’ is related to tendencies in Weber’s contemporary society.
254
7 This is important even when the theoretical discussions as such don’t prescribe certain practical and
political actions with immediate impact (!). Prescribing such actions is a sort of political activism (in fact
characterised by instrumentalism…), more than a philosophical-sociological discussion. Questioning
instrumenalist tendencies and the cultural situation shaping these tendencies in a philosophical-
sociological way, will however very soon necessitate a development of alternative ways of thinking and
acting in practical life; personally and existentially, as well as socially and politically. In previous works I
have tried to develop some alternative ways of thinking, discussing a paradox like’the usefulness of
being useless’, and the idea of ’the autonomy of art’ – inspired by the German concept of Bildung,
Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Pierre Bourdieu, respectively. See Varkøy 2015a, 2015b,
2015c, and Røyseng and Varkøy 2014.
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18
MOBILISING CAPITALS IN THE
CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
An investigation of emotional and professional
capital in women creatives navigating
boundaryless careers
Introduction
Bourdieu remains an influential figure in sociological studies of music, particularly in
investigating how the social context of music mediates, intersects with and reifies power
relations at the core of music consumption as well as in discussions of ‘highbrow’ forms and
cultural ‘structured spaces’ of musical production (Burnard 2012, 2015; Schmidt 2016). For
scholars concerned with the question of what music is and how the collective production of
music is made possible sociologically (Roy and Dowd 2010), extending Pierre Bourdieu’s
contribution – specifically on distinction and judgement and his conceptualization of fields,
habitus, and capitals – has become a vibrant field of study (Grenfell 2008). Within studies of the
sociologies of music, it should be noted there has been extensive critique of Bourdieu’s con
tribution (Bull 2015; Stahl et al. 2018) as well as a call for renewal within the current research in
the sociology of music (Hall 2016; Prior 2011). More recently, a Bourdieusian conceptual
toolkit has allowed scholars to theorise individuals working in creative industries and to
navigate these unequal and contradictory spaces (Burnard et al. 2015; Friedman et al. 2017;
Wright 2010).
Within the ‘creative labour’ industries of music, sound art, film, television, theatre, arts, music,
gaming, ‘creative tech’, and new media sectors sociologists have worked with precision to
document how gendered and classed inequalities operate (Friedman and Laurison 2019;
McKinlay and Smith 2009). Bourdieu’s influence has fostered important insights in gender in
equality, with feminist scholarship emphasizing a greater understanding of the social reproduction
at the interface between gender-biased masculinist traditions and working conditions in the music
industry/ies (Dromey and Haferkorn 2018; Leonard 2007). Our chapter builds on both current
research in area of creative industries as well as a revival in Bourdieusian scholarship, bringing the
two together to investigate the professional lives of two women creatives.
Exploring the relationship between gender and music productions, Clare Hall (2016) uses
the analytic tool of ‘musical habitus’ to identify and understand how the male, middle-class
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body becomes one in which specific musical aptitudes become entrenched through processes of
socialisation. Hall’s research highlights the ways in which individuals construct and negotiate
social identities across diverse settings and practices of music education, and in the highly
gendered collaborative nature of music making. Such collaboration subverts/reaffirms:
gendered norms (Bull 2015; Stahl and Dale 2013); the power of music to enable class
re-mobility in recovering lost social capital (Hofvander Trulsson 2016); the highly territorial
cultural ‘structured spaces’ of music production and music education (Schmidt 2016); and the
highly gendered fields of creative labour (Bennett and Burnard 2015; Hesmondhalgh and
Baker 2011).
Additionally, recent scholarship by Friedman et al. (2017) has documented the gendering
and classing of the creative industries, specifically the UK Cultural and Creative Industries
(CCIs) where there exists a pervasive white, male, middle-class bias in British film, television,
and theatre. Furthermore, the habitus of the classical music performer often belongs to an elite
group bearing distinct and distinguished dispositions which is, in turn, structured by the context
of the conservatoire. Rosie Perkins’ (2015) research demonstrates how the logic of practice is
manifested in the opportunities and constraints embedded within the capital underscoring the
institutional habitus and learning culture of the conservatoire. Through this research we see
how these industries often require the right forms of capitals in order for agents to successfully
navigate hierarchized fields.
Drawing on the application of Bourdieusian approach of capital, as well as recent conceptual
expansion in emotional and professional capitals, the research presented in this chapter
investigates the professional lives of two women currently working in music as sonic artists and
sound scientists. Both navigate what is commonly referred to as boundaryless careers, defined as
careers which involve fluid movement across sectors. These sectors are often sustained by
external networks which break traditional organizational assumptions about hierarchies and
normative notions of career advancement, thus requiring further investigation. The notion of a
boundaryless career is a concept first introduced in 1990s by career theorists Arthur and
Rousseau (1996, p. 4) where it was originally proposed as a career which moves across the
boundaries of separate employers; however, as we will see, what is meant by boundaryless
careers, especially in the creative industries, can be quite complex.
In their study of creative industries, Bennett and Burnard (2015) documented the need for
understanding ‘multiple human capital career creativities’, emphasising work that transcends
fields. In presenting data on how two women creatives negotiate what Bourdieu calls a ‘feel for
the game,’ we ask: Within creative industries, how do women creatives recognise and
operationalise their capitals? Which capitals are valuable and how are they valued? What are the
‘practices’ they use to generate capital? First, we summarise how Bourdieu defined ‘capital’, as
well as some Bourdieusian-inspired conceptual expansions with emotional capital and
professional capital. Then, in the second half of the piece, we use these theories to explore
empirical data.
Clarifying Bourdieu’s approach to capital

Theorising capital through a Bourdieusian approach involves thinking of it as a convertible
resource generated, accumulated and exchanged within schooling systems, home contexts, and
related social fields. Capital is obtained when one is consecrated (embraced and celebrated) by
the actors in the field; this can be done through how the player, artist, or creative receives forms
of recognition from others in the field. Therefore, capital accumulation reflects, and is oriented
by and through, our social positions and through our lives. Capitals manifest and accumulate in
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many different ways. In his oeuvre, Bourdieu (1979/1984, 1986) defines four forms of capital:
economic (money and assets); social (affiliations and networks: familial, religious and cultural);
symbolic (prestige, reputation); cultural (forms of knowledge, taste, language). Bourdieu argues
that, whatever the form, capital provides resources that reflect power and reproduce inequality
(Reay 2002). Bourdieu defines social capital as the aggregate of the actual or potential resources
which are linked to the possession of a durable network of more or less institutional
relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition, providing each of its members the
backing of collectively owned capital. Cultural capital, conceived by Bourdieu, encompasses a
broad array of linguistic competences, manners, preferences, and orientations, which are ‘subtle
modalities in the relationship to culture and language’ that further social mobility beyond the
economic means available to the individual (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, p. 82). Therefore,
the social position of an individual is influenced not simply by their economic capital but also by
their ‘portfolio of economic, cultural, symbolic and other forms of capital’ and also the
individual’s ability to activate these capitals to their advantage within a given field (Hart 2013,
pp. 52–53).
While all individuals possess various capitals that can be operationalised in the field, capitals
cannot always be operationalised with equal ease. The game that occurs in the fields, according
to Bourdieu, is always competitive, where the accumulation of capitals and status is always at
stake. Importantly, each field, whether it is economic, social or educational, contains
‘distinctions’ which are symbolically valued (Bourdieu 1979/1984). Distinction can become a
key focus where agents pursue it in order to attempt to establish superiority. Therefore, field is
always theorised as profoundly hierarchised and characterised by continuous struggle. It is
important to note that even though there are ‘dominant social agents and institutions having
considerable power to determine what happens within it, there is still agency and change’
(Bourdieu 1979/1984, p. 73).
Conceptual expansions of capital: emotional and professional capital

Helga Nowotny (1981) originally introduced the concept of emotional capital centred on
the bounds of affective familial relationships, encompassing the emotional resources that are
collectively drawn upon. Expanding the concept of emotional capital as a heuristic tool, Diane
Reay (2000) furthered Nowotny’s contribution to probe mothers’ emotional engagement with
their children’s education (both positive and negative) as well as its intergenerational nature,
specifically how it was passed from mother to child. Drawing on both Nowotny (1981) and
Allatt (1993) Reay’s concept, emotional capital is understood as emotional resources but not
necessarily something that can be increased or exchanged. Instead, Reay (2000) emphasizes
how emotional capital has a cost in terms of interpersonal relationships and personal well-being
(p. 580). Specifically, for Reay, ‘like all the other capitals, emotional capital is context and
resource constrained’ (p. 581) and, furthermore, it varies across class contexts influencing
mother-child relationships in different ways; therefore, according to Reay, it has ‘a much looser
link with social class than Bourdieu’s other capitals’ (p. 582).
In a subsequent publication, Reay (2004) explored the relationship between emotional
capital and the extent to which it may be gendered. This stems from wider Bourdieusian
feminist work on how cultural and social capital is mediated through gender; how people make
use of their capital and resources is a theorized as a gendered process (Kenway and Kelly 2000;
Skeggs 1997). Gendered differences in capital use are linked to employment opportunity, why
women do more childcare and housework than men, and trends in female labor force
participation rates. In almost every country in the world, men are more likely to participate in
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labor markets than women (Ortiz-Ospina and Tzvetkova 2017). However, drawing particularly
on Nowotny, Reay (2004, p. 60) highlights how women often bear the brunt of emotional
labour and have this capital in ‘greater abundance than men’ acquired through ‘adverse
conditions’. Furthermore, emotional capital, in Reay’s interpretation, which is gained in the
private sphere of the family, lacks direct convertibility and therefore it could be conceived as a
weak capital. More recently, Reay (2015) has expanded her thinking, highlighting the affective
dimension of emotional capital as one of several other dimensions, part of the resultant
dispositions in the habitus, ‘a propensity to fatalism, ambivalence, resilience, resentment,
certainty, entitlement or even rage’ (p. 10), where ‘the impact of these affective and psycho
logical transactions becomes sedimented in certain habitus’ (p. 12). In our chapter, we argue
that there exists important links between the utility of emotional capital, gender and the field of
music; it is a key component which structures how the two women navigate the creative
industries and foster their creativities.
Contrasting Reay’s work, Zembylas’s (2007) scholarship on emotional capital does not
engage with gender but instead emphasises how emotional capital is historically situated and
often tied to unrecognised mechanisms and emotional norms, serving to maintain certain
‘affective economies’ (Ahmed 2004), specifically in relation to teachers’ and students’ emotional
practices. According to this interpretation, emotional capital is generated both in the habitus
and in educational contexts. Differing from Reay, Zembylas writes that emotional capital is
potentially a useful concept to think with but it ‘risks being co-opted into a parenting model for
the emotional profit (or cost) generated in families and its repercussions for children’
(Zembylas 2007, p. 452). He highlights two key dangers: (i) strong associations of the term with
economic theory (increasing/decreasing); and (ii) how it can easily be ’co-opted by manage
ment and functionalist discourses’ (p. 456). Therefore, Zembylas emphasises how emotional
capital, in his interpretation, must be theorised as tied closely to social and political contexts,
where theorists should focus on how individuals can ‘use’ emotional capital in facilitating
certain actions.
Emotional capital, as a conceptual expansion of capital, regardless of its interpretation,
remains an interesting provocation; however, what has received less attention by those inter
ested in revising Bourdieu’s approach to capital are theorizations of professional capital. A strict
Bourdieusian approach to professional capital would consider it a card to be played in a game,
which is always competitive, where individuals use a range of strategies to maintain or improve
their position in the field, where the object of the game is to accumulate various types of capital.
Therefore, for Bourdieu, we can assume that professional capital is focused on advantage, where
accruing capital advantage leads to further advancement.
There have been two significant conceptual expansions in theorising professional capital.
First, according to Hargreaves and Fullan (2013), professional capital in the teaching workforce
is a function of the ‘interactive, multiplicative combination’ of human capital, social capital and
decisional capital (p. 39). In their view, professional capital, which actually bears little resem
blance to a Bourdieusian conception of capital, can be increased and decreased through
professional development. Second, drawing on recent research in the music industry/ies,
Bennett and Burnard (2015) theorise professional capital as an important dimension of social capital
closely aligned with judgement and values found at the interface of culture and commerce.
Bennett and Burnard’s approach to professional capital compels us to investigate the ways in
which capitals are socially recognised in boundaryless careers involving movement across sectors
where there is an accrual of power.
In critically considering these two conceptual expansions of Bourdieu’s theories of capital,
we see a shift away from theorizing professional capital solely focused on accrual. For scholars
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who seek to modify Bourdieu’s tools, we need more research which attends to both the
gendered dimension as well as the collective nature of capital. We see our research on women
creatives as making a theoretical contribution to how emotional and professional capitals work
in tandem, influencing each other. In exploring how these two women navigate careers
involving music with/in the creative industries, we utilize the plurality of approaches to
theorising emotional and professional capital which, we believe, have the capacity to help us
understand the enabling functions and values driving boundaryless careers especially when
considered together. It is here that this chapter makes a significant contribution to Bourdieu,
applied in the analysis and conceptual expansion of capital in relation to women creatives
mobilising capitals as they navigate boundaryless careers with/in music.
Gender, bias, and the creative industries

Within the creative industries, men and women often experience the unique employment
issues affecting workers differently, and come with gendered motivations for participating in
their various sectors. There is substantial evidence that pre-existing gender-based narratives also
influence the division of labour and responsibilities in the ways men and women are recruited,
access power, or are promoted in this relatively new field (Bull 2015; Scharff 2018). Recent
research from the field of social psychology shows, for example, that, in most industries,
perceived gender biases in the evaluation of creativity negatively affect women’s work
experiences and their chances of success (Proudfoot et al. 2015). The prevailing salience of
gender is evidenced by the under-representation of women in the creative industries, as the
association of masculinity with creative workers such as composers, conductors, and record
producers, and related work in film and TV emphasises social capital as ‘jobs for the boys’
(Conor et al. 2015; Grugulis and Stoyanova 2012). This is especially true in contexts that
explicitly reward creative skills, such as the launch and growth of successful start-ups or entry to
typically male domains such as digital audio commerce (Born and Devine 2015).
Yet, while these biases exist, within research in the field of creative industries what remains
obscure and empirically unsubstantiated are the experiences of women, specifically: (i) the role
of one’s capitals in defining project-based creative work that characterises boundaryless careers
in the creative industries; (ii) the ways in which team-based creative industries, such as those of
sound and digital arts creative workers, manage to build a spectrum of collaborative relation
ships (e.g. social capital); as well as (iii) how capitals are accumulated and operationalised as
female creatives navigate boundaryless careers, which, in turn, shape work practices.
The study: the method

The case studies drawn upon in this chapter are part of a larger study that uses social network
theory to explore the role and significance of social networks in identifying opportunity
creation in the creative industries. Drawing on a form of narrative inquiry based upon socio
logical social constructionism, phenomenological qualitative design and feminist ideas and
practices, we employed semi-structured interviews to focus on the experiences and identities
of 47 women creatives in the creative industries and how their actions and experiences are an
expression of the personal and inner self. Narrative inquiry, as an umbrella term, captures
personal and human dimensions of experience over time and takes account of the relationship
between individual experience and cultural context (Clandinin and Connelly 2000).
For these two case studies, we transcribed in-depth interviews involving six 2-hour interviews.
Then we developed an inductive/deductive coding system that included eight categories: field,
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habitus, capital, practice, social reproduction, creativities, choices, and critical events. The case
narratives introduce each artist and then describe the forms of capital that are generated and
recognised as legitimate. The forms of capital that appear to have real purchase are analysed from
data gathered by interviews; secondary data used include interviews with these artists in websites,
blogs, Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) Talks, reports, and live performance
observations. The interview questions were carefully conceived with the aim of building up a
shared understanding of how different forms of capital influence careers.
To expand our understanding of how creative industries are navigated, we draw on Bourdieu
and conceptual expansions to code the data. We worked implicitly with notions of emotional and
professional capital, documenting how such conceptual expansions assist us to understand how
capitals are circulated, reinvested, and reconnected. In the first round of analysis, the data was
mapped into 12 overlapping codes: career (testing the boundaries, positioning, relational,
contributions); bestowed; community; networks/networking (social forms/professional); agency
and mutuality; possibility thinking (‘what if ’/heart/centre of all creativities); inspirational
(models/mentors); workplace preparedness; expert/expertise (as purposeful engagement in
practices); collaboration; practice (professional autonomy, intentionality, engagements); and
professional identity. The forms of capital are summarised in Table 18.1.
Introducing the participants and sampling criteria

The choice of these two participants from the rest of the cohort was made according to how
both participants gravitated towards sound and interdisciplinary arts rather than specifically/
simply musicians; and that the working and non-working lives of both women are conflated.
Table 18.1 Forms of capital and their characteristics summarised
Capital Characteristics
Economic Financial assets, income, money (Bourdieu 1986).

Professional A function of the ‘interactive, multiplicative combination’ of human capital,
social capital and decisional capital’ (Hargreaves and Fullan 2013, p. 39)
which can be increased and decreased through sophisticated interventions.
Emotional Affective dimensions of dispositions involving emotional engagement and
familial influences (Nowotny 1981; Reay 2000, 2004, 2015).
Community-building Opportunity creation for peer learning, networked forms of obtaining work,
and work that is undertaken with others and can be seen as a secondary form
of social capital (Bennett and Burnard 2015).
Career-positioning Developing knowledge, self, and market (Bennett and Burnard 2015). A
secondary form of cultural capital.
Inspiration-forming Involving role models, inspirational figures, and supporters: significant others
who have played a role in creative and business choices (Bennett and
Burnard 2015). A secondary form of social capital.
Bestowed gift-giving Things which are ‘given away’ in forms such as mentorship, pro bono work,
and shared knowledge.
Social Involving networks of human connections.
Cultural Embodied through physical and psychological states; institutionalised through
social and cultural recognition such as degrees or other marks of success; and
objectified by means of external goods such as books or the media.
Symbolic Prestige, reputation (Bourdieu 1979/1984, 1986).
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In terms of creative labour in practice, both women work as sonic artists and sound
scientists across a number of sectors of the creative industries considered to be male
dominated. Both women are white, from privileged/upper-middle-class backgrounds,
where, arguably, they have choosen their own identity markers and are agentic in the
formation of many dispositions in their own habitus. Both are respected and recognized
creatives who are endorsed by other creatives and organisations/institutions in their fields.
Both hold distinctive social positions that shape their given fields. As we present the two case
studies, it is clear that both women engage with diverse creativities (practice principles and
forms of authorship) that were evidenced in their practice and project agendas with inter
national communities and networks. Throughout the chapter, capital and field are employed
in conjunction with habitus to shape decision-making and action in creating sociologically
grounded career trajectories. Furthermore, both exercise considerable discretion as to how
they endeavour to meet work targets and invest a considerable amount of control over the
content and quality as well as the organization of their work (which may easily result in
approximately 60 working hours per week).
Introducing the case studies

In presenting the case studies, we draw on ethnographic field notes and data from semi-
structured interviews to capture the phenomenological accounts, descriptions and reflections on
lived experience (Smith et al. 2009) of each of these creative workers. See Appendix 1 for a
summarised configuration of creative work across sectors for Kate Stone and Mira Calix.
Appendix 1 features their multiple projects and the extent of cross-sectorial networking that
fuels opportunity creation and nurtures the diverse creativities (forms of authoring include
collaborative, intercultural, interdisciplinary, digital, and performance creativity) which can
counter the pressures towards conformity arising from residing in one field; and, so, ‘being
much more than just a musician’. Our focus is on how their capitals are understood, translated,
and accumulated.
Case study 1 – Mira Calix

Mira Calix is a British-based musician, DJ, composer, and sonic artist known for mixing her
intimate vocals with jittering beats and experimental electronic textures and natural sounds
including live insects. She has incorporated orchestration and live classical instruments in
her performances and recorded work. Although her earlier music is almost exclusively
electronic music, Calix is suspicious of the labels of ‘artist’ or ‘musician’ and sees herself as a
‘self-taught’ sound artist and as an ‘environment builder’. She works across mediums
(music, video, paper hanging) where the art ‘lives in space and it moves in time’. Integral to
how the ‘practices’ are used to generate capital – and which capitals – Calix has a clear
conception of her creative inspiration and process as one of Do It Yourself (DIY) and
‘problem-solving’.
So my rule is [professional capital]1 if you come to me with a proposal, and I know

how to do it, that’s … because if I understand how to do it that means it is not just
very interesting, because it means I’ve done it. It was easily solvable. If it is really scary
and I haven’t got a clue how to do it, then it is intriguing. So like those are my basic
rules, it might sound a bit weird, but I think I only feel like that because I like risk and
I like to be scared evidently … [emotional capital] but I always say my work is 49%
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problem solving and 51% the thing that has no possible wording. Like there’s no
words to describe the 51%, but 49% of what I do is problem solving. I just like
problems ... I like problem solving and that’s what being an artist is to me [cultural
capital].
According to Calix, in terms of professional capital, she began as a solo artist though she was
always aligned closely with networks which allowed her to see the wider music ecology. She
discusses about how, even when she toured, she was ‘making all the work on my own’ and it
was only when she was commissioned to do things that she began to alter her perspective on
collaboration as a site of capital accumulation. Over time, though, she came to see the
importance of social/professional capital in relation to her music creation.
So you will see the same people over and over and vice versa so ... it is highly
collaborative what they do and also...[social capital] if I trust someone and they are
brilliant, two key factors, they have to be brilliant, on time and trustworthy
[inspiration forming capital]. Trustworthy in the sense of being committed to the
work. Then, of course, those things go on forever and my whole ... there is no
distinction between my personal life and my work life it is all one thing … And the
people I work with become my friends and vice versa ... [emotional capital] So the
network is imperative …
Furthermore, working in her networks, Calix sees these networks as extending her as a sound
artist. Where she was accomplished as an individual, she now sees what she can accomplish in
terms of collective competences and collaboration. This is reminiscent of Reay’s (2000) work on
emotional capital, where Calix views her work as not necessarily something that can be increased
or exchanged; instead she emphasizes how it is interwoven with interpersonal relationships and
personal wellbeing (p. 580) and is ‘context and resource constrained’ (p. 581), tied closely to human
connections made within the field. In reference to an individual she met through her networks, Calix
describes how she is attuned to the possible professional capital (the skill set) which she sees as
potentially useful.
So people come into the circle [community building capital] and at some point maybe
I will end up working with her, because she has a very specific skill set and I may need
that skill set [bestowed-giftgiving capital]. And then we now know each other ... as I
said actually not that well on the job, on that job, but we’ve ... developed some ... So
the circle grows and grows because good people bring in good people who bring in
good people [career-positioning capital], and you just try and get rid of the chaff so to
speak.
At this point Calix demonstrates her ‘feel for the game’ or ‘strategic orientation to the game’
where she sees the value of the other players in relation to her own value (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992, p. 99). We assume she would, therefore, play the game depending on both her
own sense of capital and the changing field or, in this case, what particular project she is
working on. While she has had both positive and negative experiences working in the creative
industries, the negative experiences do not seem to have become ‘sedimented’ in her habitus
(Reay 2015, p. 12).
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Case study 2 – Kate Stone

Kate Stone came to the University of Cambridge to do a PhD in physics and micro-electronics
and has established an award-winning start-up company called ‘Novalia’ which makes anything
printed interactive, giving printed materials a twenty-first-century user experience. She is now a
visiting scholar at NYU’s music education group and continuing to shake up the world of
digital music making with her own successful start-up company. While her background is in the
sciences, she continues to innovate creating immersive tactile and playable experiences with
interactive paper using a Bluetooth platform which captures sound data through touch,
connectivity and data to surfaces.2 While Stone does not describe herself as an artist, her work is
artistic; she says: ‘What I’m trying to achieve is creative experience … [and] … to create
experiences for people’.
Integral to understanding the ‘practices’ used to generate capital and which capitals are
valued in accordance with the logic of the field, Stone has a clear conception of her creative
inspiration and process, describing herself as ‘curious’ and interested in the ‘what if sort of
possibilities’ – where ‘You don’t necessarily need a goal, I mean you just need to feel the flow,
which is just taking you’. Stone speaks openly about her penchant for working against the
system and, in her view, the system has the potential to stifle creativity, ‘Like I can’t be creative,
you’ve got this silly system in my way’. Stone gives expression to an awareness of an existing
hierarchy, one in which her capitals accumulate accordingly.
It was probably like 9 years ago, or so, when the business [Novalia] was just me. And I
was much more in science mode. I was developing technology to print transistors. I
was still stuck in this sort of printed electronics; engineering; science-y mode, where
developing technology was about the engineering ... there’s a huge amount of science
required in engineering to make this happen [professional capital]. And that was what
Novalia was about. It was about how to print these transistors. And how to print
display effects, and how to print batteries, and how to bring all that together... I took
that vision along to a company that makes children’s trading cards. And I showed
them the beginnings of what I was trying to make, saying, ‘Oh, this is a technology
that’s going to totally transform electronics, and we’ll be able to have these transistors
and circuits just printed within card, and displays will change, and touch this and this
will happen’. And it was funded by a government grant, and stuff like that. And the
requirements of a government grant [economic capital] are that you’re developing
stuff that’s going to come to fruition in 5–7 years … that was like me in my lab coat in
my garage, that I’d turned into a clean room, it was like my moment as a scientist
[social capital] … [which] is a big kick back from where I’d got to, of being a
Cambridge PhD, all these resources, all this cleverness [symbolic capital], to being
back on the sheep farm [cultural capital]. Got a problem to solve, you’ve got stuff
around you, you either solve it from the stuff around you or you die. [emotional
capital]
Stone’s perception of social capital and social networks is tied to her strong drive favouring
inclusivity of practices. In a perfect demonstration of Bourdieu’s theory of practice, her social
position as an individual is influenced not simply by accumulating economic capital but also by
other forms of capital and the association between practices/dispositions as well as volume/
composition of capital.
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Mobilising capitals
[...] I kind of have a vision, a few visions, of things that I could help create that would
make a difference or generally be useful for people [inspiration forming]. And I’m
very aware that I can’t do that alone, and I need to attract a team of people around me
to achieve these things [social capital]. And that means that everything we do, as well
as fulfilling and exploring the goals to create something that makes a difference for
people [career positioning], as well as doing that we have to be very aware that we also
hunt and gather to collect resources [economic capital], to sustain us on our journey
[community building].
Here we see Stone’s attention to the value of collective competences and collaborative practice.
So, where Bourdieu defines ‘social capital’ as the aggregate of the actual or potential resources
which are linked to the possession of a durable network, this is the type of capital integral to
the networking in the creative industries and why social networks are important to industry
recognition of creative individuals’ work in creative production. Similarly to Calix, for Stone,
the process of creation is less about the accrual of social capital to protect a sense of status and
more tied to the ultimate goal of creating experience through collectively realised skills. She
values her professional autonomy, and her intentionality, but is clear that her engagements with
the professional community are essential to her work as an artist and creator.
Working implicitly with emotional capital, we see how – for Stone – her words are
reminiscent of deep feelings, tied to her creativity, which she feels powerfully and describes as
‘forces’. These forces, according to her, are what guide her and attract her to work. With her
many prominent public engagements3 there is a calculative balance between investment and
return which means organizing private life in a way that enables flexibility in terms of time and
mobility. According to Stone, navigating boundaryless careers is less about explicit self-
marketing of her company ‘Novalia’ and more about professional capital and strategic invest
ment in her stock of social capital (Bourdieu 1979/1984) which fosters new commissions. The
value Stone places on public engagement as part of her work practice (as a professional capital
resource generator) sheds some light on the economic logic that links work creation
opportunities, human, social, and decisional resource management practices and the importance
of translating and accumulating professional capital:
I think the reason why I don’t spend the whole time when I’m on stage speaking at
public engagements, saying the name of my company [Novalia], and promoting what
we do, is I’m just thinking beyond that moment. So I have a lot of sayings, and one of
them is: Thinking big is thinking bigger picture. And thinking great is thinking greater good.
And we need to go beyond thinking big, and we need to go beyond thinking great
(professional capital). Just think way beyond that [career positioning]. And yeah, I
could have promoted, and pushed the name of my company in a YouTube video of
me talking to a bunch of teenage girls that came together by NASA … But if I’ve
inspired this room of kids to do something amazing with their lives [bestowed-gift
giving], there’s a chance that that could come back for me big style, like people at
NASA remember me [inspiration forming capital]. I mean they emailed yesterday
asking if we’d help them write one of their space apps challenges based around our
tech … Same day I got another email saying, ‘We have this event in New York City
about powerful women’, or something, ‘And we want you to be on the panel’
[community building capital]. It’s like that ... it’s just not what ... it’s not why I did it.
But those are the little things that happen. And those little things may and more often
turn into other things [interactive, multiplicative professional capital].
267
In her narrative, we see the hallmarks of Reay’s (2015) later theorizations of emotional capital
which highlight the affective dimension and resilience. Stone sees her work as a site of human
and social justice, especially as it manifests itself as the wellspring of inventiveness and originality
fuelling her creative work.
I kind of have a vision, a few visions, of things that I could help create that would
make a difference or generally be useful for and valued by people [symbolic capital].
And I’m very aware that I can’t do that alone, and I need to attract a team of people
around me to achieve these things. And that means that everything we do, as well as
fulfilling and exploring the goals to create something that makes a difference for
people, as well as doing that, we have to be very aware that we also hunt and gather to
collect resources, to sustain us on our journey. And that kind of defines everything
that I do [emotional capital]. There’s those two things, which is a challenge for me,
is that I have to keep gas in the tank, and I also have to keep reading the map, and be
mindful of where we’re going. And often those two are at odds. But that defines what
I do [emotional capital]. And yeah, if an entrepreneur is someone who has a vision of a
journey they want to go on, and reads the map, and keeps finding ways to put gas in
the tank, then I guess that’s what I am.
Discussion
We know that a Bourdieusian approach to capital involves the superior knowledge, skills,
dispositions, and qualifications which compose cultural capital, all of which are believed to have
exchange value where they can be converted to economic and symbolic capitals. For Bourdieu,
the conceptual tool of habitus, which is useful to explain the actions and decisions of people,
understands, uses, and accumulates capital(s) – inherent in and across fields. Furthermore,
depending on how the habitus understands the capitals it has been dealt, it can often exert influence
and foster improved access to better jobs, income, and status.
This chapter broadens a Bourdieusian approach to capital to explore two creative workers
who have navigated boundaryless careers. In drawing upon Bourdieu’s theory of capital, and
two conceptual expansions, we see the diversity of capitals these women operationalise in
forging their career paths. Drawing on the words of Stone and Calix, we see how mobilising
emotional and professional capital allows them to circulate, reinvest, and connect across sectors.
In investigating these two creative workers, we focus on: (i) how and why investment in one’s
capitals becomes a key attribute for these women; (ii) the ways in which the development of
emotional and professional capitals are tied to the field of team-based creative industries; and
(iii) how they accumulate and operationalise emotional and professional capitals in the
navigation of boundaryless careers.
To understand how emotional and professional capital exist relationally to other forms of
capital, we now introduce Figure 18.1. (see next page)
In terms of how we understand investment in their capitals, it would appear Calix and
Stone’s conceptions of capital, closely aligned with their intersecting and generative creativities,
were, instead, tied to a complex negotiation of both ‘bucking the system’ while very much
‘playing the game’ while also keeping some distance from institutional creative entrenchment.
So, while the types of capital are important, either in or across fields and/or possessed by them,
we argue it is emotional and professional capital working in tandem which allow Calix and
Stone, to build sustainable, boundaryless careers in music. Such career paths involve a coming
together of emotional and professional capitals which enable a fertile arena for stimulating
268
Mobilising capitals
FIELDS
BOUNDARYLESS
HABITUS PRACTICES
CAREERS
ECONOMIC SYMBOLIC
CAPITALS
PROFESSIONAL CULTURAL
EMOTIONAL SOCIAL
COMMUNITY BESTOWED
BUILDING GIFT-GIVING
CAREER INSPIRATION-
POSITIONING FORMING
Figure 18.1 A framework for theorising an accumulated array of capitals at work in boundaryless careers
productive interdisciplinary collaborations that play a role in accumulating capitals in the (re-)
combination of existing and innovative ideas, materials and practices in new ways (see
Figure 18.1).
Within the creative industries professional relationships can be tenuous, flexible and short-
term and are often facilitated by strategic contact with key individuals – a process which in
volves mobilizing capitals an imperative. Capital works to facilitate opportunity creation, and
encourages breaking away from the field’s normative constraints by moving out into and
linking across sectors of the creative industries. Individuals in the creative industries not only
share ideas but collaborate on specific projects; furthermore, their interaction on such projects
work to both generate and accumulate capitals which, in turn, becomes a critical condition for
opportunity creation in boundaryless careers across the creative industries (as illustrated in
Figure 18.1).
In terms of gender and labour, Reay (2004) highlights how women often bear the brunt of
the emotional labour and, therefore, have emotional capital due to ‘adverse conditions’ (p. 60).
In focussing on how women operationalise capitals in the creative industries, we draw attention
to the importance of the gendered experience and its relationship to both emotional capital and
professional capital. While Calix and Stone appeared to be adept at accruing and negotiating
professional and social capital and, therefore, making the field work for them, there is
something deeper going on here in terms of the costs associated with emotional capital.
For Bourdieu, a field is a particular social space that involves a network or configuration of
push and pull relations, of struggles and tensions. On one level, the notion of the boundary
lessness careers these women navigate challenges rigid notions of the field; however, the data
would suggest this is not always the case. This raises interesting questions when one considers
how field structures the habitus, while as the same time the habitus, in turn, structures the field.
In terms of making a contribution to the production of creative work in music (and several
other sectors in the creative industries), the notion of boundarylessness foregrounds the
importance of being able to adeptly mobilise emotional and professional capitals, which
becomes an integral part of navigating the creative industries. Furthermore, emotional (trust,
269
creative inspiration) and professional (collective, strategic) capital, always working in tandem,
clearly plays a role in the tension between conformity to working in one sector (e.g. the music
industry) and deviation across sectors (e.g. diverse configurations across sectors that include art,
design, creative technologies, film, theatre, and start-up businesses) (as illustrated in
Figure 18.1).
Outlining how power, perspectives, and relationships are interconnected, we glimpse the
conditions of possibility for capital accumulation and exchange. The conceptual expansions
allow us to see how emotional and professional capitals work in tandem, influencing each other
where there is less attention to a high stakes game and a less ego-driven approach to their work
as sound artists or IT (creative tech) professionals. These two female creatives do not appear to
want to dominate these creative industries where men already dominate; instead they take great
care to work largely outside these industries where they believe they can maintain power over
the creative process. Professional capital, theorized here as social capital, for both women,
appears for the most part flexible, navigated with a focus on strategic marshalling of resources
for a particular creative output. This is in contrast to what Friedman et al. (2017) document,
where success for actors in UK cultural and creative industries (CCIs) was ‘heavily contingent
on the economic, cultural and social capital at their disposal’ (p. 1006).
In reference to different approaches to emotional capital (Nowotny 1981; Reay 2004, 2015;
Zembylas 2007), our theorising centres on the relationship between emotional capital and trust
as a source of inspiration for these women. These two case studies suggest that emotional capital
is not necessarily tied to historically situated mechanisms in certain ‘affective economies’
(Ahmed 2004; Zembylas 2007) and more tied to these women creative’s ability to feel inspired,
to explore diverse configurations of interdisciplinary collaborations as the habitus adapts to the
challenges of the project – operationalising the capitals accordingly – to bring the project to
fruition. Furthermore, this adaptation – and their independence – almost appears to have
nourishing elements, bolstering their sense of themselves as sonic artists and sound scientists
who generatively accumulate and graft multiple forms and configurations of capital that signify
the focal point of opportunity creation in the amplification of global musical identities in a
contemporary society.
Conclusion
This research explores the dynamic structure of the creative industries, the role of capitals, and
in turn, the ways in which two sonic artists both develop and undertake a boundaryless career
which are creatively sustainable. Based on the experiences of Calix and Stone, it seems like
possessing emotional capital and professional capital allow them to traverse many fields rela
tively fluidly. However, drawing on Reay, we question the cost of the emotional capital being
operationalised: Is there not a calculative balance made between investment and return, time
and mobility as a means to raising professional capital and the accumulation of emotional
capital?
Therefore, it is vital to gain a deeper understanding of how all of the capitals outlined above,
but particularly emotional and professional capital can be further developed/accumulated/
generated in order to support artists through the ongoing challenge of careers in the creative
industries. For example, we know very little about the capitals valued by the men who still
largely control these industries. In considering how emotional and professional capital may
work in tandem, we suggest that, for these two creatives, the prominence of public engage
ments, commissions and inspirational talk appearances gives them a ‘celeb’ status. In achieving
and maintaining their career success, arguably, it involves what Bennett and Burnard (2015)
270
Mobilising capitals
have documented as the need for ‘multiple human capital career creativities’. Theorising capitals
(resources) inscribed in and acting as a mode of incorporated knowledge (usually tacit) and
reflecting ‘primary experience of the social world’ (Bourdieu 2004, p. 3), such a mobilisation of
capitals works as a way of circulating, reinvesting, and connecting one’s practice/s. Equally
important, we believe further research in this area, and research into the under-representation
of women creatives and musicians from working-class and/or black and minority ethnic
backgrounds, and vertical segregation (referring to the over or under-representation of
particular groups in positions of power), as well as horizontal segregation (relation to the
concentration of particular groups in specific sectors of the creative industries), will enrich the
theoretical foundations of capital theory and open up new career opportunities for graduates,
especially in music, to enter many and varied careers.
1. How do we begin to change gender-biased masculinist traditions and working conditions
in the music industry/ies?
2. How can considerations of the reciprocal relationship between emotional and professional
capital contribute in such change processes?
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Mira Calix and Kate Stone whose informed consent was received,
allowing us to present their real names, as is in line with the ethics protocols. We also wish to
thank the handbook’s reviewers/co-editors who provided thoughtful critiques and feedback
which developed the quality of this chapter.
Notes
1 We use square brackets here to show the process of coding in which data from the interview transcripts
were categorized to facilitate analysis. These codes link to Table 18.1.
2 See a set of DJ decks and paper drumkits demonstrated onstage https://youtu.be/y9wzax_Ptio.
3 See TED Talks, Vimeo, and YouTube inspirational talk appearances giving her a ‘celeb’ status.
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Appendix 1 Summarised configuration of creative work across sectors

for Kate Stone and Mira Calix
Creative Fields/Activity Collaborations/Communities

Industries
Sector
Kate Music Sound/sonic Education; Visiting scholar New York Universities

Stone (making/ production music education group
creating)
‘Start-up’ Public engagements NASA invited talks TED Talks The Trigger
Inventor (SXSW) https://youtu.be/FC4zXgALaW4
Performing arts, DJ decks made of Individual users and user communities which
music, paper transcend industry boundaries
Film & Video Public engagement TED Talks https://youtu.be/y9wzax_PtIo
Start-up Enterprise and Novalia brings technological innovation
entrepreneurship underscored by the accessibility of user-friendly
and affordable printed surfaces https://youtu.be/
qqpa7lKmsXo
Print/ Music From postcard to bus shelter size, Novalia prints
Publishing/ techperformance interactive sound technology using beautiful
Visual art tactile printed touch sensors to connect people,
places and objectsIdeas Series 2016 https://youtu.
be/Dw3XaOZO-yU
Design Business Novalia, her own start-up company which blends
science with design to create experiences
indistinguishable from magic
Science Digitisation Novalia blends science with design to create novel
sound experiences
(Continued)
273
Creative Fields/Activity Collaborations/Communities

Industries
Sector
Mira Music Recording contracts Signed to record label Warp Involving

Calix (Electronic collaborations with many ‘interesting and
and Classical) knowledgeable people’ Boiler Room London DJ
Set https://youtu.be/lWvAdVkBIzA
Performing and Sonic artsperformance Working with visual artists, dancers, and musicians
media arts DJing and many others from many other disciplines to
create the production of creative artefacts/music
for dance, theatre, film, opera, and installations by
means of technological and new ways that make
them marketable to a global audience Songs
DJing: Boiler Room London https://youtu.be/
lWvAdVkBIzA
Museums and Cultural enterprise and The making of ‘Moving Museum 35’ on a public
art galleries Community bus which offered a participatory space where
arts work sonic canvases were exhibited in motion; a
collaboration with Nanjing University of the Arts,
China and the AMNUA Museum– seen as an
important determinant of new knowledge
formation, alongside the technological production
and innovation of the region’s cultural heritage
https://vimeo.com/152918647https://vimeo.
com/160632815
Creative Digitisation Enterprise Collaborations with technology-centric people
technology working in highly specialised areas http://www.
miracalix.com/https://miracalixportal.
bleepstores.com/
274
19
CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT
IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL
IN ENGLAND
The sociology of musical status
Martin Fautley
Introduction
This chapter looks at the ways in which hegemony, especially valorisation of musical types, has
had a significant impact upon classroom music curriculum and assessment in England. Although
this chapter is rooted in the specificity of the English experience, there are lessons for an
international audience in these discussions.
Knowledge and its value

One of the key issues affecting classroom music education in England, as well as many other
jurisdictions, is that of what knowledge can and should be taught and learned. This is because
‘the production and transmission of knowledge is always entangled with a complex set of
contending social interests and power relations’ (Young 2008, p. 31).
It is this entanglement which this chapter will describe and discuss. Specific to music
education, we need to bear in mind that
Music education takes place in socio-political systems that institutionalise cultural

hegemony and social stratification through perpetuating symbolically violent practices
and unconscious assumptions regarding the purpose of music and music education in
society.
(Powell et al. 2017, p. 734)
What is important to investigate in the English context are the impacts that Powell et al’s
‘unconscious assumptions’ have when they find their outworking in curriculum and assessment.
This raises questions as to whose knowledge is considered valuable, whether consciously or
unconsciously, the effect this has on curriculum, assessment, and associated pedagogies, and
what the effects of Powell et al’s invoking Bourdieu’s notion of ‘symbolically violent practices’
are on musical schooling.
275
Martin Fautley
In England, government education ministers have been highly influenced by the works of
the American E.D. Hirsch, with Hirsch’s (1987) work Cultural literacy: What every literate
American needs to know being a significant example. A former minister of education, Michael
Gove (2009), observed:
The American thinker E.D. Hirsch has highlighted this crucial aspect of educational
policy in his work on Cultural Literacy. A society in which there is a widespread
understanding of the nation’s past, a shared appreciation of cultural reference points, a
common stock of knowledge on which all can draw, and trade, is a society in which
we all understand each other better […].
(Gove 2009, p. 4)
In the same speech Gove went on to say of his forthcoming governmental reforms: ‘We will
completely overhaul the curriculum – to ensure that the acquisition of knowledge within
rigorous subject disciplines is properly valued and cherished’ (Gove 2009, p. 17).
A long-serving minister for schools under Gove, as well as subsequent Tory ministers, Nick
Gibb, has also expressed his admiration for Hirsch:
No single writer has influenced my thinking on education more than E. D. Hirsch.

[…] The new National Curriculum published in 2013 […] is a programme of study in
the spirit of Hirsch.
(Gibb 2015)
All this Hirschian influence on music education, which, to be fair, was not the primary focus of
ministerial pronouncements, shows how hegemony is exerted by those with power over the
curriculum. What we can observe in these utterances, however, is what Young (2008) sees as a
fallacious argument:
The internalist fallacy is typical of the ‘conservative neo-traditionalist’ approach … It

involves an a-social view that knowledge is given, and something that has to be ac-
quired by anyone who wants to see themselves as ‘educated’. For those identifying
with this position, knowledge changes only occur as internal features of the knowl-
edge itself. This enables them to defend existing orderings of knowledge and the social
structures they serve.
(Young 2008, p. 95)
And it is this which makes discussions of valorisation of musical types within a curriculum
problematic, as Young’s internalist fallacy makes it seem a reasonable position to adopt. Indeed,
it is this which enabled Michael Gove to observe:
[…] I am unapologetic in arguing that all children have a right to the best. And there is
such a thing as the best. Richard Wagner is an artist of sublime genius and his work is
incomparably more rewarding – intellectually, sensually and emotionally – than, say,
the Arctic Monkeys.
(Gove 2011)
276
Curriculum and assessment
The complexity of different valorisation of musical types which statements like Gove’s espouse,
present music teachers with a problem as they become embroiled in wider social and cultural
issues. These are not new issues in music education. Back in the 1970s, Shepherd et al. (1977)
were asking ‘whose music’ mattered to young people in schools. Many years later these
questions still reverberate, and questions of what count as knowledge are again current, for
example, Alperson (2010, p. 173) asked:
To what extent should music education focus on the formal side of music, its ex-
pressive or symbolic meanings, or the instrumental purposes that music might serve
such as entertainment, the facilitation of religious or other states of mind, the trans-
mission of culture, virtue, or the education of the soul? What is—or should be—the
connection between music education and the education of taste or sensibility (as-
suming there is such a thing)? To whom should education be addressed?
To begin to address the questions that Alperson has asked we need to consider both the
knowledge involved, and the values which are placed upon it. In order to do that from the
English situation, it is first necessary to describe the national policy and practice context.
Music education in England

In England, there is a statutory National Curriculum for music. Although a number of neo-
liberal reforms to policy in the UK have effectively downgraded the compulsory nature of this,
nonetheless it continues to be the benchmark by which Ofsted (the Office for Standards in
Education, England’s arms-length from central government inspection regime) report on and
evaluate school performance. The first 3 years of secondary schooling, for pupils from the age of
11, are called Key Stage 3 (KS3). During KS3, music is supposed to be a compulsory subject,
taught to all pupils. This requirement is, however, sometimes diluted in practice. After KS3,
music becomes an optional subject, taken only by those young people who choose it for further
study, and the examination that most pupils take at the end of this stage is a General Certificate
of Secondary Education (GCSE) in music. Music does not have to be offered as a subject in this
way, although many schools continue so to do.
The KS3 National Curriculum version of music education can be considered very much as a
generalist education in music. It is predicated upon three main musical structures, performing,
composing, and listening. The GCSE examination also follows this pattern, with the three areas
figuring as assessed components. For an international audience it is important to understand the
nature of what is being undertaken under these three headings. At KS3, performing is viewed as
a non-instrument specific competence, involving a range of musical instruments, for example,
both tuned and untuned classroom percussion, guitars, electronic keyboards, and, increasingly,
items of music technology. The children and young people undertake classroom performing
activities using these instruments, and in doing so develop their facility on them. Composing is
similarly generalist in nature. It does not necessarily involve staff notation and the creation of
melodic phrases (although it might), it entails music composed directly into sound, often using
the instrumental resources of the performing component described above. Listening is normally
considered as an active process, and can involve recorded or live music, as well as focussed
listening to the music produced by the children and young people themselves.
The National Curriculum (NC) for music itself does not specify content. Indeed, the whole
NC for these 3 years of secondary schooling is encompassed in less than 150 words, with the
teaching component containing six bullet points:
277
Martin Fautley
Pupils should be taught to:
• Play and perform confidently in a range of solo and ensemble contexts using their
voice, playing instruments musically, fluently and with accuracy and expression
• Improvise and compose; and extend and develop musical ideas by drawing on a
range of musical structures, styles, genres and traditions
• Use staff and other relevant notations appropriately and accurately in a range of
musical styles, genres and traditions
• Identify and use the inter-related dimensions of music expressively and with
increasing sophistication, including use of tonalities, different types of scales and
other musical devices
• Listen with increasing discrimination to a wide range of music from great
composers and musicians
• Develop a deepening understanding of the music that they perform and to which
they listen, and its history. (Department for Education 2013)
An interesting shift in official language has taken place in regard to these statements. In the 2007
iteration of the NC, the component statements were preceded by the phrase ‘Pupils should be
able to’ (QCA 2007). The alteration marks a move from pupil-centred learning to teacher-
focussed delivery, an intentionality that marks a neoliberal shift from pupil as agentive in
learning, to teacher being agentive in instruction, as the teacher is under the control of per-
formativity measures, in ways in which the pupil is not.
Music education in the lower secondary school

The way the music curriculum for lower secondary schools is normally organised can be
considered as being a thematic or topic-based curriculum; for example in a study conducted in
London it was found that 94.1% of teachers operationalise their curriculum in this fashion
(Fautley 2016). Drilling down into what is actually taught in the topic-based curricula reveals a
Table 19.1 Top ten KS3 topics reported by teachers in London and Birmingham
London London Birmingham Birmingham

Teachers Position Teachers Position
Blues 63 1 16 =1
Film Music 60 2 12 =5
Songwriting 57 3 16 =1
Singing 54 4 15 3
Pop and Rock 50 5 13 4
African Drumming 49 6 12 =5
Musical Futures 44 =7 7 10
Samba 44 =7 11 =7
Form and Structure 29 9 11 =7
Minimalism 24 10 6 11
Gamelan 23 11 9 9
Sources: Adapted from Fautley et al. (2018); Fautley (2016).
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degree of commonality. Comparing results from London and Birmingham (England’s capital
and second city) it was found that nine out of ten of the most commonly taught topics are
identical (data from Fautley et al. 2018; Fautley 2016). Table 19.1 shows the results of this
analysis.
The figures shown in Table 19.1 represent the responses from teachers (London n = 84,
Birmingham n = 16) expressed in the form of ordering based on London teachers, of the
numbers of respondents saying they taught that particular topic. Amongst the many interesting
things this data shows is that there are qualitative differences between the topics, e.g. musical
futures being notably different in both form and content from the others. What is also revealing
about this data is that there is no official mandate that music should be taught according to a
topic basis, nor that there should be commonality of topics between schools. What seems to
have happened is that a sort of ‘folk curriculum’ has emerged, similar in many ways to Bruner’s
(1996) notion of a ‘folk pedagogy’, in other words where teachers’ implicit understandings are
privileged over policy requirements. Indeed, it is important to note that these curricula are
written and operationalised by teachers, often with little or no external validation. What this
means is that teachers are the architects of their own curriculum, a structure which they then
inhabit.
A ramification of this is that teachers’ values of what should be taught and learned become
apparent in their curricula constructions, especially in the use of topics chosen.
Curriculum values
There are two ways of thinking about curriculum values arising from the data discussed. The
first involves assessment backwash, where what is to be taught is derived from what is to be
examined; and the second is teachers’ own values of the sorts of things that they believe ought
to be taught and learned.
In England, only about 7% of young people go on to further study in music aged 14+.
Teachers therefore need to construct KS3 courses that act both as a preparation for the 7% who
will do music and are also complete in themselves for the remaining 93%. As Rata observes, ‘the
absence of specified content knowledge [means] that what is actually taught is left to the
vagaries of school choice, or to a teacher’s arbitrary knowledge […]’ (Rata 2012, p. 131).
This certainly seems to be the case in the English music education context. In the research
from two English cities cited above, moving beyond the ‘top ten’ already reported upon, there
were in total 76 different topics listed by London teachers and 38 in Birmingham. This re-
presents a broad range of content for curriculum construction. What makes such approaches
even more fragmentary is where there are topics only taught by one or two schools in each area,
of which there were 51 cases in London, and 27 in Birmingham. Anecdotal evidence would
tend to suggest that the findings from these two cities are not unusual for those of the nation as a
whole.
Drilling down a little more into what is taught provides some interesting data concerning
what these teachers value in their curriculum. Using a very rough-and-ready categorisation of
the topics taught, it becomes possible to place them into one of six discrete categories:
1. Classical – where the topic is broadly in the Western Classical tradition, e.g. Viennese
Waltz, minimalism
2. Pop and Rock – e.g. Axis of awesome, Hip Hop
3. Jazz – there was only one of these in each category, just called “Jazz”
4. World – e.g. Gamelan, Samba
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Martin Fautley
Table 19.2 Thematic analysis of KS3 topics taught
London Birmingham
Classical 25.0% 34.2%

World 18.4% 18.4%
Pop and Rock 15.8% 7.9%
Tech 10.5% 7.9%
Jazz 1.3% 2.6%
Other 28.9% 28.9%
Sources: Compiled from Fautley et al. (2018); Fautley (2016).
5. Tech – where the topic involves the use of some form of music technology as its central
feature, e.g. Using Cubase, podcasting
6. Other – where the topic could fall into a number of the above, e.g. Singing, Elements of
music
These codings are obtained from the topic titles alone, with the caveat that a title may not
adequately convey the content of the programme of study. Using this rough-and-ready coding,
Table 19.2 shows the percentage of teachers from London and Birmingham who responded
saying they taught those topics.
Whilst the ‘other’ category is clearly significant, what is interesting to note here is the
weighted preponderance of topics labelled ‘Classical’. This itself requires some further un-
picking. We know from Kokotsaki’s (2010) work on the degree backgrounds of students
undertaking a pre-service teacher preparation course, that many come from a Western Classical
background, in her case, some 80%. It is highly likely that for a number of classroom music
teachers, the most obvious thing for them to do is revert back to the sorts of music education
which worked for them during their formative years, as Benedict observes:
What kinds of questions … to ask when most, if not all of us, are certain of the
curricular and pedagogical path we wish to take. If it worked for us in the past, why
not replicate what we know to have been successful? Why not, indeed. Because, for
one reason, this world does not stand still and to desire stability is to desire a stasis that
cannot exist.
(Benedict 2010, p. 144)
Washback
The issue of washback has already been raised in this chapter, and is another key factor in
thinking about how teachers valorise curriculum activities. In England, a relentless performa-
tivity agenda over many years has generated, in Ball’s (2003, p. 215) words, a battle for ‘the
teacher’s soul’, when the need for measurement and data wrestles with subject pedagogy.
Washback from GCSE affects music teachers significantly, even if they do not always give voice
to this as a direct influence. We have known for many years that the GCSE music examination
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is not necessarily suitable for all children and young people. An earlier iteration of it was
described by Wright:
Despite the attempts of the education establishment to devise a syllabus which presents
music as a subject for all, it is in fact serving few. It is perceived by many pupils as
being elitist and by others as being insufficiently academically challenging. This leads
to the question of whether GCSE serves pupils from all musical backgrounds. The
answer would appear to be that it does not. A large number of pupils considered that
the course was too classically based and did not include sufficient study of popular
music. Pupils also perceived themselves to be at a disadvantage if they did not read
notation fluently, as many instrumentalists from a rock, pop or jazz background do
not.
(Wright 2002, p. 240)
This has remained the case for many years. A few years later Wright observed that,
[…] many aspects of the programmes of study … could only be taught through ex-
amples drawn from it [Western Classical Music]. The terminology of the official
curriculum, therefore, e.g. the musical elements, immediately marks out music as
pedagogic discourse [different] from music as we relate to it outside school.
(Wright 2008, p. 398)
This was a problem for teachers who wanted to develop classroom courses involving popular
music in their school. This links to Spruce and Matthews (2012, p. 119) argument that,
[…] despite the introduction into the music curriculum of music from a much broader
range of musical traditions and cultures than hitherto (including musical traditions and
cultures from within our own society) the musical values inherent in western art music
continue to be promoted as self-evidently defining ‘good’ music and consequently
‘high status’ musical knowledge, resulting in the alienation of many pupils from the
formal curriculum … despite the introduction into the curriculum of music from
other traditions and cultures to try to address such alienation – the way in which these
musics are typically presented sustains and reinforces rather than counters the western
art music rooted conception of high status music knowledge.
This gets to the very heart of the matter, it is ‘high status musical knowledge’ which is at the
centre of the music curriculum. This has been a long-running issue in English music education,
and shows no signs of abating. Examples relating to earlier incarnations of the National
Curriculum in music can be found, with one instance among many being this:
Who would have guessed that, more than 30 years after the Beatles took the world by
storm, our opinion-formers would still be trapped in a stultifying debate about high
and low culture? Yet this week, Britain’ s unelected cultural commissar Dr Nicholas
Tate, chief executive of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority, called for
“educators” to impress on children that “high” culture is good, profound and moral,
whereas “low” culture is base and worthless.
Dr Tate is convinced that the threat posed by Blur to Schubert is so serious that unless
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we return to basics (in culture as well as morals) the core values on which Western
civilisation was based will crumble away for good.
(Wilkinson 1996)
This can be seen to lie squarely with the Hirsch and Gove views outlined above. In order to see
what the implications of this are for classroom music teachers, it is to this which we now turn
our attention.
What is there to learn in classroom music?

KS3 music teachers in England consider themselves fortunate if their classes are allotted an hour
a week. Despite there being a National Curriculum in operation, there is no concomitant
recommendation for the amount of time that should be given for its delivery. This means that
individual schools can choose the available time-slot, resulting in a variety of complex ar-
rangements, include fortnightly lessons, and complex rotations, where music, art, and drama
swap round at intervals, meaning that children and young people have fragmentary experiences.
It stands to reason that there is far more music which can be experienced than there is time
available in the curriculum in which to experience it.
An average English school works 39 weeks a year, and so given an hour a week, there are
about 39 hours of teaching and learning time available annually. This goes some way towards
explaining the thematic curriculum approach outlined earlier in this chapter, as teachers try and
squeeze as much breadth into the learning time as they can. But the nature of what there is to
learn in classroom music at KS3 is problematic. This is because the knowledge of what is required
itself is not straightforward, as we have been seeing. Indeed, it could be argued that it is
knowledge itself that lies at the root of many of the problems and issues that exist in music
education. Philpott (2016), drawing on the work of Reid (1986), described three types of
knowledge for music in education:
• Knowledge about music: This might be referred to as factual knowledge, that is, factual
knowledge about composers, about style, about theory, about musical concepts.
• Knowledge how: This involves, say, knowing how to play an instrument, how to dis-
tinguish between sounds, perceptual know-how (e.g. to recognize a drone), knowing how
to present a piece to an audience, knowing how to read and write music, knowing how to
make music sound in a particular way.
• Knowledge of music: This is knowing pieces of music by direct acquaintance. (after
Philpott 2016)
These three types of knowledge may seem logical, and possibly innocuous enough, but they are
central to many contemporary problems in how music education is viewed from outside the
classroom. We have seen how the work of Hirsch has been highly influential in English political
circles, it mostly involves knowledge about, whereas in music education many music teachers are
keen to develop an active modality, where children and young people play musical instruments,
teachers want to develop knowing how. This is an important distinction, and one that can cause
problems as some schools, keen to jump on a passing bandwagon, identify themselves as having
a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum. In some of the poorly thought-through versions, what this
means is that factual knowledge is privileged, with a downplaying of ‘skills’, which come, in this
worldview, a poor second to knowledge. Indeed, despite politicians’ speeches to the contrary, it
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can be argued that it is a reductive and impoverished notion of knowledge which figures in the
English music NC:
[…] the resulting definition of ‘knowledge’ featuring in the National Curriculum has
become remarkably narrow. Knowledge is referred to as abstract knowledge: as if it
were an entity in itself, defined objectively and independently of the knower … It is
presented as socially decontextualized and abstracted from real life, to be passed from
teacher to pupil in an action of preservation rather than in a dialectical negotiation
which recognises the active role of both parties in its construction.
(Bate 2018, p. 3-4)
Music lessons have long been viewed in England as involving activity, with young people
participating in music-making, creating, composing, performing, playing instruments, and
singing together. This tradition dates back to at least the work of Paynter and Aston (1970), and
continues through the NC. Reducing music solely to knowing about music could mark a return
to the ‘musical appreciation’ lessons that were abandoned as being untenable during the last
century.
The place of assessment

The place and role of assessment in music education follows from the ways in which curriculum
has been constructed. One of the purposes of assessment should be to get at ways of finding out
about the learning of the young people. However, in a performativity-focussed culture, as is the
case in England, a circularity of teaching and assessment exists where the purpose of teaching
seems to have become concerned mainly with the data production; the ‘datafication’ of
teaching,
[…] whereby the educational process is increasingly transformed into numbers that
allow measurement, comparison, and the functioning of high-stakes accountability
systems linked to rewards and sanctions. Although there is no question that being able
to use student assessment data to support learning has an important place in teachers’
repertoire of skills, “datafication” refers to the use of data in a way that has become
increasingly detached from supporting learning and is much more concerned with the
management of teacher performance as an end in itself.
(Stevenson 2017, p. 537)
Music classes in England are no strangers to this. Production of data has reached such a level in
some schools that it interferes with teaching, learning, and music-making. Whilst we have
known for some time that ‘what is assessed becomes what is valued, which becomes what is
taught’ (McEwen 1995, p. 42), this creates problems for classroom music, namely what is being
valued, and by whom? In the case of datafication, teachers are receiving conflicting messages.
One teacher reported that their principal asked them to spend less time on music making,
especially in extra-curricular activities, these being the ways in which bands, orchestras, and
choirs operate in the English context, and to use that time for filling in assessment data
spreadsheets.
Assessment in music is also problematic in valuing what should be taught. Assessment jus-
tifications for what can be considered to be applicable for teaching and learning in music need
to do two disparate and dissociative activities:
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1. Prepare children and young people for an assessment regime which will both certificate
achievement, and provide routes into further study and/or jobs.
2. Take account of the interests and enthusiasms of these young people, as they exist in the
here-and-now, and to develop them as rounded human beings.
One reason these can be in contradiction is that popular music is not always welcomed in the
academy. Problems associated with the notion of high culture run through this chapter like an
idée fixe, but it is not necessarily clear what this is. High culture contains within itself aspects
which can make some feel uncomfortable, for example, this from Swanwick:
The idea of the arts as a cultural heritage in which children have to be initiated is not
necessarily pernicious but it does need watching. The Third Reich in Germany was in
many ways rooted in European high culture and its leaders were certainly very
conscious of the importance of the concept of heritage.
(Swanwick 1994, p. 169)
Whereas for other it is straightforward:
It is only by making discriminations within the realm of popular music that we can
encourage young people to recognize the difference between genuine musical sen-
timent and kitsch, between beauty and ugliness, between the life-affirming and the
life-denying, the inspired and the routine – in short between The Beatles and U2.
And once judgement begins it will amplify its bounds until those who have known
nothing but current pop music will be led by critical inquiry to the bright uplands of
classical music, from where they will be able to look down on their earlier tastes […].
(Scruton 2016, p. 221)
This seeming simplicity is anything but in practice! Not least of the problems associated with it
is the inherent difficulty of presenting to teenagers what appear to be value judgements con-
cerning the music with which they may strongly identify. Back in 1988, Lucy Green noted that
[…] music delineates, along with its other meanings, diverse and often mutually
exclusive social groups of listeners, their social class or their status. These listeners
become associated with types of music so integrally as to make it almost impossible to
hear certain music without being aware of them. Every member of society, fur-
thermore, is given plenty of good reasons for believing in music’s class delineations.
(Green 1988, p. 30)
To lead children and young people who self-identify with very different types of music to
Scruton’s ‘bright uplands of classical music’, is to hold the belief, as Hirsch and Gove would,
that classical music is a good thing in and of itself. But, as Wayne Bowman reminds us, this is
not necessarily the case:
The value of music and of music study and of musical experience (and on and on) are
not simply ‘given’ or inherent, the inevitable outcomes of having engaged in things
musical. They are good only to the extent they contribute to human, or, in music
education’s case, educational ends. No value (no, not even musical value) is ultimate,
unconditional, good without regard for situational particulars or ends served. If and
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when music is good, that goodness is always a function of its contribution to ends
beyond itself. The same is true of music education.
(Bowman 2013, p. 4)
There is no intrinsic ‘good’ about music, or, to take Bowman’s argument a stage further, there
is nothing intrinsically good about specific styles and genres.
It could be argued that ‘good’ and ‘valued’ are being confused here, but it is more complex
than that. Music education does not happen in a hegemonic vacuum. As we have seen, the
values of assessment have significant backwash on curriculum. But, not only that, the values of
western classical music continue to dominate teaching, learning, and assessment in classroom
music in England:
[…] the main problem with contemporary musical assessment is that it continues to
articulate the musical values and beliefs of Western art music. In doing so, it creates a
potentially unresolvable tension between a curriculum that is philosophically multi-
stylistic and a way of assessing which is monotheistic. This frequently results in as-
sessment predicated upon inappropriate criteria and consequently unfair to those
whose musical skills are not rooted in Western art music.
(Spruce 2001, pp. 126–127)
All of which leads us to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions. One of the tenets of music
education has always been to introduce children and young people to new experiences in
music. In today’s fast-paced on-line world, virtually every piece of music ever recorded is
available at the touch of a few cellphone keys. But does this mean that we should create for
ourselves a system in which the children and young people continue to live solely inside their
current habitus? Might music education also mean taking them beyond it somehow? It is here
that discomfort creeps in. We might want to take them to Scruton’s ‘bright uplands of classical
music’, or we might wish them to develop their understanding of songwriting, or their skills at
dubstep. But, whatever it is, we want them to develop. Sometimes the English National
Curriculum has been accused of mistaking breadth for depth; indeed, Ofsted themselves have
observed that it is a good thing for teachers to “do more of less” (Ofsted 2009). This means that
getting better at something is not simply about covering more ‘stuff’, but really thinking
through what quality involves in teaching and learning musically. This can mean taking the
young person to somewhere they have not visited yet, as well as exploring the music that they
already know. What makes this singularly difficult for music educators is that tacit knowledge is
so varied between the young people in our schools. They may come from similar backgrounds,
but their musical experiences will vary hugely. A challenge for the music teacher lies in taking
all of this into account, and, at the same time, planning and delivering a coherent programme of
study that develops all the youngsters in each class, and take them on musical journeys which
are both worthwhile and meaningful, whilst dealing with political strictures and requirements.
Conclusion
This chapter has argued that hegemony is important in considering the ways in which different
types, forms, and instantiations of musical knowledge find their outworking in the day-to-day
curricula of secondary schools in England. For an international audience, the ways in which the
sociology of musical knowledge has been argued over in very public spheres is informative for
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the ways in which political influence on curriculum can have significant ramifications for how
music is both taught and learned in schools.
1. In what ways does political influence on curriculum have ramifications for how music is
taught, learned, and assessed in your context?
2. What kinds of conflicts, if any, have you experienced between taking youngsters on
musical learning journeys that are both worthwhile and meaningful, and dealing with
assessment requirements in your context?
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20
STRUCTURE AND AGENCY IN
MUSIC EDUCATION
Introduction
To what extent is it possible for music teachers to exercise agency as part of their practice?
In presenting a sociological analysis of school music in the English classroom, Philpott (2010,
p. 90) suggests that ‘radical curriculum change has had a tendency to be appropriated by a variety of
social and cultural forces’ favouring the status quo. Here, the ‘forces’ at play in mitigating the impact
of what were seen as progressive curriculum initiatives in music education are both explicit, in terms
of education policy, and implicit, in terms of the hidden messages and meanings wrapped up in the
practices of education and music. Indeed, Philpott bleakly concludes that ‘overarching structural
influences have outweighed the power of radical human agency’ (2010, p. 90).
This chapter aims to revisit the dialectical relationship between structure and agency in order
to specifically evaluate the possibility of the agentic music teacher. In doing this, we will begin
by examining Gidden’s (1984) concept of ‘structuration’ as an important theoretical model for
understanding how societies and social structures both perpetuate themselves, and also how
they can change. We then turn to the ‘ecological’ model of Priestley et al. (2015) to provide a
framework for understanding music teacher agency, particularly at the ‘micro’ level of in
dividual teachers’ own settings. Noting the resonances between the ecological model and
Gidden’s notion of the ‘duality of structure’, we examine the ‘dimensions’ which they identify
as impacting on the structure-agency dialectic, particularly in terms of the epistemological,
ontological, and pedagogical discourses (and the communities of discourse within which these
are constructed) which underpin music education. Finally, we seek to identify the character
istics and dispositions of the agentic music teacher and the nature of the structure-agency
dialectic which allows such characteristics and dispositions to flourish.
We shall argue that in order to be agentic, music teachers need to be critical pedagogues and
that this critical pedagogy should encompass critical engagement with the discourses of edu
cation, music education and musicology if they are to raise the possibility of ‘good agency’.
Structure and agency: the concept of structuration

Craib (1992, p. 31) writes that ‘any society which exists beyond face to face must have a means
of extending itself over time and space’ and in Giddens’ (1984) terms, structuring properties
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Structure and agency in music education
enable this. For Giddens (1984, p. 17), structuring properties constitute the rules and resources
which allow ‘the ‘binding’ of time-space in social systems’ and thus ‘make it possible for dis
cernibly similar social practices to exist across varying times and space and lend them systematic
form’. Fundamental to Giddens theory of structuration is his belief that structures do not exist
separately and in an a priori relationship to actors and their actions. Rather, he argues for a
‘duality of structure’ (Giddens 1984) where there is a dynamic dialectic between human agency
and structure which makes generative creative action by individuals possible, and consequently
affords the possibility for human agency to have the power to both reproduce and transform
society. Structure, he argues, ‘is not … equated with constraint but is always both constraining
and enabling’ (Giddens 1984, p. 25) and that to ‘enquire into the structuration of social practices
is to seek how to explain how it comes about that structure is constituted through action, and
reciprocally how action is constituted structurally’ (Giddens 1993, p. 169).
For Giddens, the individual agent plays a critically important role in the duality of structure.
He asserts that we always have the power to do, or not to do – we are never powerless.
Consequently, because music teachers have the power to choose to act or not, they inevitably
have the potential to be agentic when engaging with the duality of structure. However, whilst
acknowledging that what Giddens calls ‘reflexive monitoring’ (1984) can and does occur in
tuitively and at a subconscious level, allowing practice to be revised in light of new information,
he also accepts that, as Hardcastle says, ‘the more knowledgeable agents are about their social
context and the social structures available to them, the more capacity they are assumed to have in
exercising their agency’ (Hardcastle et al. 2005, p. 226). The capacity and potential for music
teachers to exercise agency and to influence structures is considerably enhanced where they are
‘knowledgeable actors’. That is to say, where they have developed the discursive resources and
knowledgeability of the social ‘rules’ that govern the settings within which they work. Such
teachers are more likely to be able to recognise and critique the rules and the powerful and often
hidden discourses which sustain and reproduce these ‘rules’ and, are thus well positioned to
exploit ‘critical situations’ and expose and critique the habitual and taken for granted. These rules
and hegemonic discourses are particularly powerful within music education as they are formed, as
we shall suggest later, from a powerful alignment between high-status (hegemonic) knowledge
and high-status (hegemonic) musical values. Therefore, an agentic teacher is required to be
cognisant of both these aspects, the relationship between them, and how they exercise power
through the epistemological and ontological paradigms that they construct and project.
The subtle and nuanced dialectical relationship between structure and agency, as expressed
through the concept of structuration, is key to understanding teacher agency in music edu
cation, and particularly the opportunities for the exercise of agency at the micro level of in
dividual classrooms and teachers.
The primary focus of the remainder of this chapter will be then on this micro level. We
begin with Priestley et al. (2015) ecological model, examining what it has to offer to an un
derstanding of the micro-settings of music teachers’ practice, and the potential of these settings
to constrain or enable the exercise of agency.
A framework for understanding teacher agency

The possibility for teacher agency, especially at the micro level, is surrounded by a complex,
subtle, and nuanced penumbra of considerations. In order to capture and analyse this en
vironment Priestley et al. (2015) have developed an ‘ecological’ framework for understanding
agency, after the work of Emirbayer and Mische (1998). This has been summarised in
Figure 20.1 to support our understanding of the detail behind the duality of structure.
289
Iterational Projective
Practical Evaluative Dimension
Dimension Dimension
Personal and The social, structural and material ‘here The intention and
professional life and now’ of possible agency capacity to reveal
histories informing possibilities for action
agency
AGENCY
Figure 20.1 A framework for understanding agency in the context of music education (adapted from
Priestley et al. 2015)
Common to both Giddens’ concept of the ‘duality of structure’ and the ecological model is the
notion of structure and agency as being in a dialectical and dynamic relationship. What the ecological
model brings additionally, however, is an understanding of the dimensions that impact upon a
teacher’s capacity for the exercise of agency, particularly at the micro-level. Drawing on Emirbayer
and Mische (1998), Priestly et al. argue ‘that the achievement of agency should be understood as a
configuration of influences from the past, orientations towards the future and engagement with the
present’ (2015, p. 23): the iterational, the projective, and the practical–evaluative dimensions.
We now briefly turn to each of these dimensions, noting some of their implications for
music teacher agency.
Iterational
… the selective reactivation by actors of past patterns of thought and action, routinely
incorporated in practical activity, thereby giving stability and order to social universes
and helping to sustain identities, interactions, and institutions over time.
(Emirbayer and Mische 1998, p. 971)
At a fundamental level, the iterational dimension underpins a teacher’s ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 1984,
p. 170) characterised by Layder (1997) as ‘the durable motivations, perceptions and forms of
knowledge that people carry around in their heads as a result of living in particular social en
vironments and that predispose them to act in certain ways’ (p. 236). Consequently, wrapped up
in the iterational dimension is a set of identity-forming, explicit, and implicit personal beliefs and
values that have arisen as a result of a teacher’s experience of music (often within different musical
traditions and communities) and music education (as both teacher and pupil). What Priestley et al.
(2015) call ‘life histories’ and ‘professional histories’ influence the ‘making’ of personal beliefs and
values concerning, for example, what counts as being a successful musician and music teacher
(ontological beliefs), what counts as musical knowledge (epistemological beliefs) and what are the
most efficacious ways of bringing about musical learning (pedagogical beliefs).
290
These beliefs and values are powerful forces which influence not only teachers’ everyday
practice but also structure both their engagement with and the nature of their agency. Priestley
et al. (2015) suggest that more experience, what Giddens (1984) calls knowledgeability, could
add up to increased capacity for agency, but it could also be that long-term embedded habi
tuations also hamper the potential for agency.
The projective dimension

… the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in
which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in
relation to actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future’.
This dimension of agency is concerned with the extent to which there is an ‘intention to bring
about a future that is different from the present and the past’ (Priestley et al. 2015, p. 24).
Clearly the projective dimension is influenced by the iterational dimension as the potential for
creative (projective) thought is founded on personal life histories. Crucial for teacher agency is
that teachers possess the social capital to think ‘otherwise’. That they have the capacity to
recognise, critique and draw on perspectives that are different from, or additional to, those
embedded in their life histories or the dominant discourses of music and music education, and
so reveal alternative possibilities for action.
Pre-service and ongoing teacher education has an important role to play in disrupting em
bedded habitus and frameworks of thinking. For, unless creative and possibly disruptive projective
thinking is embedded into the habitual and iterational experience of teachers, then it is unlikely to
become a deliberate and purposeful projective activity. Furthermore, powerful cultural and
structural considerations and discourses can subvert the power of projective thought and indeed it
might be in the interests of the status quo for this to happen. Consequently, as Priestly et al. say,
the development of the dispositions and characteristics that support the capacity for agency re
quires attention not only to ‘teacher education and professional development … but also … to
cultures and structures’ (Priestley et al. 2015, p. 35). For, without attention being paid to cultures,
through close interrogation, it is unlikely that teachers will ‘become agents of change’ who can
‘effect a real transformation of educational processes and practices’ (Priestley et al. 2015).
Practical-evaluative
… the capacity of actors to make practical and normative judgements among alter
native possible trajectories of action, in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas,
and ambiguities of presently evolving situations’.
The practical-evaluative is the dimension of the ‘here-and-now’ where music teacher agency
might be constrained or tempered by a range of factors including the context, e.g. national and
school policy, the availability of resources, physical and time constraints, and an evaluation of
the risks involved. As Priestley et al. (2015) suggest, agentic-change could be just too risky or
difficult to undertake, particularly if such changes run counter to dominant discourses or
statutory or quasi-statutory requirements.
Earlier, we described how ‘structuring properties’ serve to bind time-space allowing for
similar social practices to exist in different contexts and at different times. These contexts
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include schools and the teaching of music in schools as social practices. For music teachers, as
for any teacher, there are layers of structural and cultural ‘binds’ and expectations that impact on
the power of the music teacher to be agentic and impinge on the practical-evaluative dimension
across cultural, structural and material domains. These include, at the macro level, the re
quirements and expectations inherent in national curricular and examination specifications and
syllabi and, at the micro level, a culture of accountability and performativity in schools where,
for example, music teachers may be expected to pursue models of assessment which impel
pedagogies that are inappropriate for the discipline of music (e.g. Fautley 2017).
The framework and structural binds

However, the power to be agentic is also influenced by a wide range of implicit, hidden and
tacit ‘binds’ that are threaded through complex webs of interrelated educational and musical
discourses constructing and sustaining particular practices of music teaching. There is evidence
that the ‘hidden’ is a crucial confounding factor where agency seeks to break out from or
disrupt these practices, especially where these reflect hegemonic values and norms
(Philpott 2010). The ‘hidden’ binds on agency for the music teacher include, amongst other
things, the:
• Professional habitus of teachers and musicians

• Social construction of music as a discipline
• Cultural and social nature of music as a discipline (knowledge, meaning, and understanding)
All of these ‘hidden’ binds are underpinned by powerful and pervasive discourses which impact
on the structure-agency dialectic across all three ecological dimensions and particularly in re
lation to:
• Ontology (what it is to be a learner/teacher/musician and the purpose of music/music

education)
• Epistemology (the nature of musical knowledge)
• Pedagogy (the means and relationships through which musical learning takes place)
It is important that we understand the nature of structural binds before the agentic potential of
the music teacher can be fully considered. By way of example, we turn now to analysing one
of these discourses – that which promotes the hegemonic values of Western art music – as one
of the most significant underpinning structural binds having the potential to constrain music
teachers’ agency.
Discourses as structural binds: the case of Western art music

Discourses are fundamental to the structure-agency dialectic. In other words, discourses both
structure actors’ actions and are in turn reproduced or changed by them. However, our primary
focus here is on how discourses within music and music education (often articulated through
powerful discourse communities) act as threads within structural ‘binds’ in order to reproduce
structures, sustain the status quo and consequently constrain music teachers’ capacity for agency.
Therefore, whilst discourses of music and music education can act as a potential force for
liberation, restoration and social justice (agency), it is only through a deep interrogation of how
discourses impact on the iterational, projective and practical-evaluative dimensions of agency
292
that the ‘hidden’ can be revealed and truly agentic possibilities identified. The implications of
this for music teacher agency are – as we shall explore later – for a critical pedagogy that
encompasses a critical engagement with the discourses of education, music education, and
musicology. This is a considerable challenge and yet one that offers the possibility for their
understanding of the potential of individual agency within the context of structure.
In examining the impact of the hegemonic discourses of Western art music on music
education we follow a well-trodden path. Small (1987), Green (2003), Philpott with Kubilius,
(2015), and Spruce with Matthews (2012), amongst others, have all pointed to how the on
tological, epistemological, and pedagogical underpinnings of particular Western art music
discourses have exerted and continue to exert a significant and powerful influence on music
education. However, what has not been fully explored is the relationship of these discourses to
music teachers’ opportunities and capacity for the exercise of agency.
The discourses of Western art music – as they present in music education – are founded on a
reified understanding of music, where ‘good’ music is thought of as akin to an object or thing
rather than as a socially situated practice. Underpinning a reified conception of music is a belief
that musical meaning is contained and communicated primarily through the interrelationship
and structuring of music’s sonic materials. Consequently, ‘good’ music has an autonomous ex
istence in that it requires no justification for its existence beyond itself (the doctrine of ‘art for
art’s sake’). If musical meaning is contained exclusively within its sonic materials and has an
autonomous existence, it is, ipso fact, transcendent, i.e. its meaning is unaffected by time and
space. A reified conception of music, and its associated attributes of autonomy and transcen
dence (along with complexity), underpin many of the ideological discourses of Western art
music and the claims it makes for its innate superiority over other kinds of music.
Spruce (2002) and Spruce with Matthews (2012) describe how a reified conception of music
has its roots in the Enlightenment, and particularly in the emerging middle classes’ desire to use
music as a form of cultural capital and cultural identification. Musical reification allows for the
commodification of music and its ‘possession’ as a form of cultural capital and acts as a tool of
class identification and social stratification. A key element in the commodification of music is a
perception of the ‘score’ as not just a framework to guide performances but as a textual em
bodiment of musical meaning and thus as being virtually synonymous with the music itself.
Commodification – and particularly commodification through a score – enables music to be
conceived of as existing independently of time and place (to be autonomous and transcendent)
and thus open to being ‘recreated’ within spaces specifically designed for this recreation, e.g.
concert halls, with its ‘meaning’ unaffected.
Such a reified conception of music delineates and hierarchically orders musical roles and
functions: the composer at the apex (as the creator of musical meaning enshrined within the
score), the performer charged with communicating musical meaning through faithful and ac
curate realisation of the score, and the listener (the majority) as the receiver of meaning.
Inasmuch as their role is not to bestow personal meaning on music but rather simply to ‘ap
preciate’ how the formal properties of the music are structured to achieve an aesthetically
satisfying whole, listeners are an important part of the ideology of musical reification. For, at the
heart of the Western music discourse, and particularly the role of the listener, is what Taruskin
(in Williams 2001, p. 5) describes as a ‘downgrading of human subjectivity … in which music is
always suspended’.
This brief (and inevitably over-simplified) historical overview of the emergence of these
particular discourses of Western art music is important to our understanding of how this
conception of music has become so deeply entrenched in all dimensions of so many music
teachers’ ecology. It demonstrates the long-term historical embeddedness of this conception of
293
music and thus how resistant it is likely to be to disruption. Given, then, that many Western
music teachers’ background is in Western classical music (Dwyer 2016) it is likely to affirm their
epistemological and ontological perspectives and the pedagogical choices that they make based
upon these. Hence, they may come to see little need for the exercise of agency. For those
teachers whose backgrounds are not in Western art music, the discourse can act normatively
resulting in them perceiving the musical values that they bring to the classroom as deficient.
Alternatively, they may experience the discourses as so powerful and so legitimised that, as we
noted earlier, exercising disruptive agency is just too risky.
Most significantly, however, this historical perspective draws attention to the parallels
between a reified, autonomous and transcendent conception of ‘good’ music and ‘high status’
knowledge with its valorisation of scripted and abstracted forms of knowledge, and thus why
when these are brought together, they form such a powerful and hegemonic discourse within
music education.
Spruce (2002) and Philpott (2010) both draw on the early work of the English sociologist
Michael Young (1971) to describe how the reified, autonomous, transcendent, and commo
dified characteristics attributed to Western art music are similar to those attributed to high status
knowledge. They describe how high-status knowledge and the discourses of Western art music
both place greater value on the literary and scripted (reified forms of knowledge such as the
book and score) than on the aural/oral and improvised. They also point to how both high status
knowledge and reified conceptions of music are decontextualized from specific social
instantiations and also how reification enables a process of commodification whereby both high
status knowledge and ‘good’ music take on an ‘existence independent of any knower’
becoming a form of cultural capital, possession of which acts as a ‘measure of wealth’
(Philpott 2010, p. 82).
There are some significant and closely interrelated implications for teacher agency in this
alignment of the discourses of high-status knowledge and Western art music in music educa
tion, including:
1. Teachers’ role as curriculum deliverers. Reified conceptions of knowledge are often realised in
education settings through reified curricula. These are created by powerful discourse com
munities (e.g. governments) away from the settings in which they are to be enacted and have
embedded within them hegemonic musical values and forms of knowledge which sustain the
status quo. They are then handed down to teachers to be taught to pupils. As Spruce (2017)
suggests, this casts teachers as just curriculum deliverers and, consequently, pupils as curri
culum consumers with the consequent lack of opportunity for agency for both. In such cases
young people then experience a music education in which they have no sense of ownership
and forms of music making in which there is Taruskin’s ‘downgrading of subjectivity’ (in
Williams 2001, p. 5). This results in an alienated disjuncture between ‘how the development
of [musical] knowledge naturally takes place, and how it is experienced as part of the socially
mediated school curriculum’ (Philpott 2010, p. 83).
2. Limited opportunity for reflexivity and discursive thinking. Where the role of the teacher is
restricted to that of a deliverer of a commodified and alienated curriculum. This tends to
occur within strong frameworks of accountability and performativity requiring compliance
with dominant discourses; thus leaving little space for the teacher to engage in ontological
reflections and to consider such questions as ‘just where we are in our culture today and
what personal role one wants to play in teaching music to others. Just what kind of teacher
do I wish to be?’ (Webster 2017, p. x). Teachers thus live in a constant present focusing on
external demands and, without time or space to reflect on the iterative dimensions of the
294
ecology ‘how did I get here?’ and the projective: ‘where might I want to go?’ Questions
which lie at the heart of discursive consciousness and which underpin agentic action.
3. Ideological structuring of knowledge and pedagogy. The alignment of high-status knowledge
with Western art music values projects onto the curriculum ontological and epistemolo
gical structurings. As we have noted, Western art music discourses sharply delineate
musical roles into those of ‘composer’, ‘performer’, and ‘listener’ which are then mapped
onto the pedagogical and assessment systems of music education. Most examinations re
inforce this delineation through providing distinct processes and criteria for assessing these.
This then ‘washes back’ into how the curriculum is structured and music taught, further
reinforcing such delineations. From an epistemological perspective, the locus of pedago
gical attention on a reified conception of music and particularly the score/notation as the
embodiment of musical meaning can result in fetishizing ‘the musical elements’ and,
especially, ‘notation’. This delimits epistemological and ontological perspectives thus
narrowing the choice of alternative possibilities for pedagogical action.
4. Valorising of certain forms of musical knowledge. Finally, these discourses shape the way in
which music is valued and more significantly what count as the characteristics of good
music. The values of Western classical music are perpetuated as ‘high status’ musical
knowledge and inform the construction of music syllabi and the assessment criteria which
underpin them. Such values then impinge on the ontological, epistemological, and ped
agogical validity of ‘other’ musics and their value in music education. As Green (2003,
p. 266) suggests: ‘when teachers, curricula, or books theoretically supported the value of
popular music, they tended to do so by appealing to the very same qualities of universality,
complexity, originality, or autonomy upon which the values of classical music rested’. This
valorisation of Western classical music works at the expense of knowledge and pedagogy
that might arise from the engagement with other musics.
In concluding this section, it can be seen that there are ontological, epistemological, and
pedagogical structural binds on the agentic music teacher. We have argued that these ‘hidden’,
and yet powerful binds are underpinned by powerful discourses which can work against the
capacity for music teachers to act agentically. These binds are picked up and amplified by policy
and threaded through the iterative and practical–evaluative dimensions of teacher agency, thus
impacting on the projective and creative dimension as teachers work in the discursive gaps of
re-contextualisation. In short, these binds are powerful tools for maintaining the status quo. The
implications are not only for music teachers to engage with a critical pedagogy but also, as we
shall argue, to engage critically with musicological discourses when interrogating the structural
binds that emanate from the discourse communities associated with Western art music and
high-status knowledge.
So how then is it possible for music teachers to exercise agency as part of their practice? It is
to this that we now turn.
The agentic music teacher

It is clear from the above that within the projective, iterative, and practical evaluative di
mensions there are numerous aspects that have the power to impinge on the potential for music
teachers to be agentic, from national policy to the life history of the musician/teacher to the
culturally defined nature of music as a discipline. How then is it possible for music teachers to
effect individual agency over their work?
295
We argue here that the agentic music teacher will have need of certain knowledge, skills and
dispositions when operating a critical pedagogy. A critical pedagogy that also encompasses a
critical engagement with the discourses of education, music education, and musicology. If
Giddens’ (1984) and Priestley et al.’s (2015) theoretical models have any power, where actors
both reproduce and have a part to play in reinventing systems and structures, then teachers will
need to engage explicitly, intentionally, and critically with their context. In spite of some strong
and possibly bleak forces, the creative optimism bound in the duality of structure is, or should
be, part of a teacher’s professional identity.
Priestley et al. (2015, p. 146) suggest that whereas agency is manifest in the projective
dimension – in teachers’ ability and capacity to imagine different futures and different possi
bilities for action – these ‘have their roots in past cultures and structures which have played a
role in the socialisation of teachers which shape the agency of teachers as they engage with
present day [practical evaluative] contexts’. The greater and richer their awareness of their past,
the greater their capacity for envisioning future choices and courses for action and consequently
the greater their agency.
In respect of agency, overarching all of these is the capacity of teachers to make explicit and
then examine their experiences and consider the impact of these on their actions and aspirations,
(what Giddens (1984) described as ‘discursive consciousness’) in a spirit of a critical pedagogy. For
Giddens, agency can be intuitive and unintentional and yet has more potential power when it is a
motivated, intentional, deliberative, and purposeful process. It is all the more powerful when the
complex layers of the different dimensions are peeled back and excavated through critical scru
tiny, and where the habitual and taken for granted are exposed to the same.
Teachers’ ability to engage with such excavation is arguably dependent on two interrelated
factors which both hinge on their awareness of the ways in which discourses can ‘constrain their
scope’ to imagine alternative means and approaches. The first of these is the quality of teachers’
thinking and reasoning which are reliant upon the ‘vocabularies and discourses’ (Priestley
et al. 2015, p. 59) they have at their disposal. The second, related factor is the extent to which
teachers are cognisant of the way in which vocabularies and discourses come about and how
these constrain or facilitate the achieving of agency. As Mantie (2009, p. 16) says: ‘Without
knowledge of how discourse constructs subjectivities, the music education profession risks
perpetuating the belief that current practices are inevitable or the logical result of universal
truths about human beings and/or about music, rather than the historical outcome of many
chance contingencies’. Without an understanding of how subjectivities are constructed it is
difficult for music teachers to understand how their present subjectivities are formed by past
(iterative) experiences and thus to exercise ‘projective’ agency over them.
A critical issue in achieving agency then, is the capacity that teachers have for dialogical
engagement with social structures. Such engagement is dependent on what Giddens calls the
‘knowledgeability’ and ‘discursive consciousness’ of these structures and of their social situa
tions. From a pedagogical perspective, discursive consciousness has resonances with aspects of
critical pedagogy and particularly Freire’s (1974) notion of ‘conscientisation’ where actors’
growing understanding of the power-relationships that impact upon their situation allow them
to act agentically.
Critical pedagogy and musicology

In a critical pedagogy at the micro level, and given the powerful structural binds associated with
Western art music in music education, there is an important role for the agentic music teacher
in engaging knowledgeably and critically with the recent developments in contemporary
296
musicological discourses and particularly in how these offer alternative epistemologies and
ontologies from those that have traditionally dominated Western music education.
Until the late 1980s, traditional musicology typically focused on music of the Western art
tradition and promoted the reified, autonomous, and transcendent conceptions of ‘good’ music
fundamental to Western art music discourses, and this is entirely consistent with our analysis of
structural binds outlined above. Over the last 30 years however, and influenced by sociology,
anthropology, and ethnomusicology the discourses of musicology now pay greater attention to
music as a social practice, and the dynamic nature of musical meaning as formed through how
music is engaged with by individuals and social groupings in specific times, contexts, and places.
This broader – and arguably richer – conception of music has also increasingly been drawn on as
an alternative way of understanding Western art music (see Cook and Everist 1999).
However, the policy and practice of Western music education has for the most part re
mained wedded to the kind of traditional and arguably outdated musicological discourses
discussed above with the limited ontological and epistemological perspectives they offer.
Consequently, epistemological questions around what music is, ontological questions of what it
is to be a composer/performer/listener/teacher all of which possess agentic possibilities, and are
problematised within recent musicological discourses, are often unaddressed in the policy and
pedagogical practice of music education resulting in dominant discourses remaining
undisrupted.
Behaving as a critical pedagogue and engaging critically with musicology is a subtle and
nuanced process but it is here that the possibility of the agentic teacher lies (Figure 20.2).
Through interrogating and understanding discourses and their function within discourse
communities, music teachers can contribute to these discourses and communities of discourse.
Iterational Projective
Practical Evaluative Dimension
Dimension Dimension
Personal and The social, structural and material ‘here The intention and
professional life and now’ of agency. capacity to reveal
histories informing possibilities for action
agency
Structural binds
Critical pedagogy and critical musicology
AGENCY
Figure 20.2 A framework for critical agency in music education (adapted from Priestley et al. 2015)
297
Thereby they can ‘live’ the dialectic of the duality of structure (structuration) by both re
producing and creatively transforming discourse through being ‘knowledgeable actors’. Whilst
individual orientation and disposition is vital to effective agency, it is also important for wider
communities of practice, such as national subject associations or local teachers’ groups, to
engage critically with educational and musicological discourses. The structure-agency dialectic
is always an interplay within a social context, a dialogic and communicative process where
collaborative professional enquiry can underpin the possibility of contributing to the trans
formation of discourse communities.
Finally, while here we have emphasised the knowledgeable, intentional, reflexive actor as a
model for the agentic music teacher, there is much further work yet to be done on the ways in
which agency can manifest itself both intentionally and intuitively. For example, the agentic music
teacher can act as critical pedagogue and musicologist for discourses about music and also dis
courses in music. This opens the possibility for music teachers to be agentic through both their
intentional and intuitive musical practice and pedagogy, when challenging ‘structural binds’.
Conclusion
In the context of powerful structural binds, teacher agency is not easily achieved. But we must
believe in our power to be agentic or why else would we bother to be teachers who want to
make a difference? By way of conclusion and summary we reiterate that in order to lay bare the
implicit meanings of music and education, as outlined above, and creatively engage with dis
course communities as part of the structure-agency dialectic, the music teacher needs to be,
amongst many other things, nothing less than a critical pedagogue and, at least in respect of their
engagement with alternative musical epistemologies and ontologies, a critical musicologist.
What is more they will be motivated towards good agency. But what is ‘good’ agency?
We argue that good agency is characterised by teachers taking morally responsible action.
Priestley et al. (2015) suggest that such action is targeted at rendering systems more ‘intelligent’
through interrogating the very purpose of education from the bottom up, from micro to meso
to macro. In this sense, music teachers have a moral responsibility to understand their iterative
context and to projectively think otherwise as the root of a critical pedagogy and of agentic
action.
But to what end morally responsible agency? This is, of course, always ideological and given
our analysis above we would suggest that morally responsible agency, through a critical
pedagogy, should target the following:
• Promoting social justice in music education where a plurality of conceptions of musical

knowledge and achievement are recognised in a music education for all
• Healing the alienated experiences that musical learners may have, as a result of hegemonic
discourses, as a crucial part of moving to an inclusive music education
• Recognising that teacher agency is heavily bound up with learner agency and that the latter
underpins the former
Such ‘good’ agency derives from a deep understanding of the ontological epistemological, and
pedagogical discourses underpinning the projective, iterative, and practical-evaluative dimen
sions in the structure-agency dialectic. It derives from a deep understanding and contribution to
discourse communities in the spirit of same. In this context the teacher with the best chance of
being truly agentic, notwithstanding just how problematic this is, is the one who is committed
to becoming a knowledgeable and morally responsible agent.
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1. To what extent do music teachers feel that they have agency and how does their re
lationship with agency manifest itself ?
2. What opportunities for agency are afforded to the music teacher as a result of critically
engaging with hegemonic discourses?
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(no. 6), 720–733.
Spruce, G., Matthews, F., 2012. Musical ideologies, practices and pedagogies. In: Philpott, C., Spruce, G.
(Eds.), Debates in Music Teaching. RoutledgeFalmer, London, pp. 118–134.
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21
THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM IN
HIGHER MUSIC EDUCATION
Geir Johansen
Introduction
When attending to the relationship between sociology and music education (Froehlich and
Smith 2017; Wright 2010), an interesting connection emerges between the sociology of music
education and the sociology of education (e.g. Sadovnik 2007). Among the issues of the latter is
the hidden curriculum in higher education (e.g. Margolis 2001), entailing its unwanted out-
comes and thereby carrying a potential of revealing unnoticed sides of the reciprocal re-
lationship between higher education and society. In this chapter, I will address the hidden
curricula in higher music education. I will do this by drawing on the scholarship of the hidden
curriculum in higher education together with studies attending to higher music education as
well as music education generally, since similar issues pertain to curricula in schools and other
places as well. In addition, I will draw on studies revealing hidden dimensions of music curricula
even if not addressing them explicitly.
Since Philip Jackson (1968) coined the term ‘hidden curriculum’, Robert Dreeben (1968)
suggested that schooling indirectly conveys to students’ values, and Benson Snyder (1970)
addressed the hidden curriculum in higher education, scholars of the sociology of education
have attended to the hidden dimensions of various kinds of curricula. Chronologically, Apple
and King (1977), Jane Martin (1994), Margolis and Romero (1998), Gair and Mullins (2001),
Michelle Jay (2003), Moyse and Porter (2015) and Mary Romero (2017) are among the
contributors. Parallel to this, studies not addressing hidden curricula explicitly still have con-
tributed to enlighten the hidden perspective in various subject fields. For example, in social
economics, Kate Raworth (2017) found that after 3 years of studying social economy, students
ranged altruistic values lower than their freshmen peers.
William Pinar et al. (1995, p. 27) summarise the hidden curriculum to include ‘unwanted
outcomes of schooling’ and ‘the ideological and subliminal message presented within the overt
curriculum, as well as a by-product of the null curriculum’, the latter referring to what is not
offered. Accordingly, scholarly studies of the hidden curriculum frequently point to the con-
nections between these two layers, the unwanted outcomes and the ideological positions they
reflect, thereby mirroring the micro-macro levels in society. Hence, in order to enhance the
development of higher music education on all levels from students’ everyday learning
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The hidden ccurriculum
experiences to the function of schooling as shaping the society of tomorrow, we need to closely
study and carefully reveal the function of hidden curricula.
It is therefore rather surprising that studies explicitly addressing hidden curricula are scarce
within the scholarship of music education in general, not to mention higher music education.
Among the few within the first category, Deborah Bradley (2015) sought ‘to tease out some of
the challenges related to issues of race and racism that lurk below the surface within music
education’ (p. 191). In the second, Stephanie Pitts’ (2003) contribution about the hidden
curriculum in a university music department still stands alone, raising the intriguing question
‘what do the students learn when we teach music?’ Similar with scholars in other fields, Pitts
(2003) also draws on studies not explicitly addressing hidden curricula in order to establish the
theoretical foundation of her study. Thereby she demonstrates how such studies may also
contribute significantly in our field. This is very much the case with, for example, Rosie
Perkins (2011, p. 140) who found ‘sub practices of hidden decision-making’ within the learning
cultures of a conservatoire. Similarly, Geoffrey Baker (2014) uncovered educational and
ideological contradictions in El Sistema, Lucy Green (2002) described the music classroom as
ideologically defining music and dividing students accordingly, and Izabella Wagner (2015)
addressed the ideological shift from nurturing talents to producing excellence.
In the following, I will try to create a comprehensive view of hiddenness in varied contexts
as a backdrop for looking closer to higher music education. I start by addressing the meaning of
‘hidden’ followed by two examples of scholarly attention to hidden curricula. Included in this, I
will discuss some ways in which sociological perspectives of Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu and
Passeron 1977), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2014) and Basil Bernstein (2000) can
contribute to enlighten hidden curricular dimensions. Then I turn to ‘curriculum’, before
discussing how hidden curricula operate and can be identified in higher music education ac-
cording to various notions of hiddenness. Finally, I will discuss some implications based on
Martin’s (1994) question ‘what should we do with a hidden curriculum when we find one?’
The meaning of ‘hidden’

Works on the hidden curriculum are based on conceptualisations of ‘hidden’ as well as ‘cur-
riculum’. Martin (1994) suggests that hidden can, at least, mean three things. First, some sides of
the curriculum are yet to be discovered, second, that they have been hidden by someone; and
thirdly, that sides of a curriculum can be revealed to some but remain hidden for others.
Moreover, Gair and Mullins (2001) indicate a fourth notion of hidden by suggesting that sides
of an educational program can be put in such an obvious place that nobody looks there. In
other words, and interestingly paralleling Bradley’s (2015) expression, it is ‘hidden in plain sight’
(Gair and Mullins 2001, p. 21).
In order to study such hidden dimensions in higher music education, it appears worthwhile
to direct one’s research interest towards the cultural dynamics of the formal as well as informal
groups wherein students participate, and the relationship between those groups, the teachers,
and the institution. These dynamics may influence what students learn parallel, simultaneously,
or in addition to the subject content of their courses. Apple and King (1977) exemplify how
hidden sides ‘yet to be discovered’ can be revealed by scholarly studies attending to the re-
lationship between education and society. They found that the unequal distribution of cultural
capital in society mirrors a corresponding distribution of knowledge among its students in
school. Drawing on Bourdieu (1996) we might reveal such hidden dimensions as connected
with doxa and illusio dimensions of the habitus-capital-field interplay. This is an interplay
wherein habitus entails the ‘blend’ of cultural, social, and economic capital students bring with
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them when entering the field, wherein the habitus is challenged to de-learn and re-learn when
meeting and being confronted by the other participants’ habitus as well as the unspoken rules
about what is doable, thinkable and sayable within that field. Whilst doxa entails those unspoken
rules, rooted in unquestioned truths defining what is discursively appropriate, illusio points to
what makes particular social fields attractive to particular social groups. In higher music edu-
cation, it points to what it is about that education that make participants willing to invest in the
‘game’ and believe in its significance. What are the benefits students envisage and what makes
them regard those benefits as being desirable, we might ask. In addition, how do the reciprocal
relationship between student and teacher doxa and illusio work as powers within those
dynamics?
Another example of a hidden dimension worthy of scholarly attention concerns the foun-
dations of teaching in higher education. When university and academy or conservatoire tea-
chers plan, carry out, and evaluate their teaching, it always includes considering what parts of
their knowledge base should be selected and arranged in order to enhance student learning.
This involves a change of focus. For example, when a musician moves from the context of
performing into a new context, the context of teaching, this move includes a kind of frameshift
(Shulman 1987) or recontextualisation (Bernstein 2000). If studied as such, it might reveal sides
of the foundations for that teaching which otherwise might have remained unseen or hidden.
This can be addressed by focusing on the discursive priorities the teacher brought with her or
him across the frameshifts or recontextualisations, along with how those discourses are ap-
propriated, relocated, refocused, and related to other discourses, in order to constitute the order
of the relevant educational discourse (Bernstein 2000, p. 33). A premise for this analysis is
conceiving teachers as knowledge agents through whom particular knowledge discourses are
operating. Hence, the order of the educational discourse is a dynamic, not a static entity. In line
with this, administrators, teachers and students use, and implicitly as well as sometimes explicitly
claim the definition power of concepts such as ‘effective teaching’, ‘deep learning’, and ‘re-
levant assessment’. Thereby they also position themselves as agents in a structure and agency
perspective (Barnes 2000). Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe (2014), we can conceive such
concepts as constituting ‘floating signifiers’ (p. 99) that different discourses struggle about filling
with meaning and thereby obtain discursive hegemony.
Curriculum
Curriculum, then, comes in many fashions, a fact pointed out by several scholars since the
1970s. Martin (1994) distinguishes between the hidden curriculum and ‘curriculum proper’
(p. 136), whilst Pinar et al. (1995, p. 27) separate between the hidden and the ‘overt curri-
culum’. Goodlad et al. (1979, p. 58 ff) point to the possible distinctions between ideological,
formal, perceived, operational, and experiential curricula.1 In their perspective, the underlying,
ideological priorities of a formal curriculum, along with its perceived, operational and ex-
perienced sides, inevitably induce various kinds and degrees of hiddenness. This includes that
different readers, depending on their history and relevant social and discursive context, will
construct even a written, formal curriculum differently.
Notions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘learning’ are vital parts of such construction processes. Hence,
they may be among the core concepts of study when looking for hidden curricula on the micro
level as well as the macro level patterns with which those curricula are connected. One example
concerns the neo-positivist2 constructions of knowledge and learning as something that can be
predefined, ‘produced’ and then measured according to those predefined criteria. In addition to
strongly influencing micro-level matters such as classroom music curriculum and assessment
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(see for example Fautley 2019) they are closely connected with macro level, political priorities
of Neoliberalism and a new, managerial class in society (Apple 2007) dominating the political
philosophical currents worldwide. They differ significantly from the notions of knowledge and
learning within the traditions of Progressive Education (Dewey 1921), European Bildung
(Klafki 2000), and the Humanist psychology of the 1970s (Bühler and Allen 1973;
Rogers 1979; see also Karlsen and Johansen 2019). In the context of these traditions, significant
dimensions of knowledge and learning cannot be predicted, measurability is valid on restricted
areas only, and connections with macro-level priorities opposing Neoliberalism and
Managerialism are clear. Hence, in the perspectives of this debate studies of hidden curricula
may reveal, ‘knowledge’ and ‘learning’ as being turned into floating signifiers (Laclau and
Mouffe 2014) that Neopositivist, Progressive education, Bildung, and Humanist discourses
compete about filling with meaning in order to obtain hegemony.
Returning to the micro level, ‘knowledge’ and ‘learning’ constitute key factors of the
shaping of everyday schooling, with the teacher as a core mediator. Apple and King (1977,
p. 347) suggested that ‘knowledge is filtered through teachers’, thereby presaging the frameshift
(Shulman 1987) and recontextualisation (Bernstein 2000) view. For example, it is perfectly
possible for teachers to use a textbook that is rooted in a particular, yet hidden view on
knowledge and learning that radically contradicts the formal curriculum they are supposed to
follow. The way ‘knowledge’ and ‘learning’ operate will be heavily influenced by the gap
between the teacher as a knowledge agent through which the discourses of the textbook op-
erate, and, on the other hand, a responsible representative of the formal curriculum.
Consequently, hidden curricula can be identified by attending to how doxa and illusio di-
mensions of the interplay between habitus, capital, and field (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977)
connect with teachers’ frameshift (Shulman 1987) or recontextualisation (Bernstein 2000)
processes.
A final connection between ‘hidden’ and ‘curriculum’ concerns curriculum implementation
and curriculum change (Johansen 2002). Studying multicultural education, Jay (2003, p. 3)
noticed that ‘multicultural initiatives get ‘sucked back into the system,’ preventing them from
offering any substantial changes to the current order’. Earlier studies of curriculum change
support this observation. Larry Cuban (1993) described how fundamental changes were turned
into incremental ones, a recurring pattern observed over a long, historical period. Moyse and
Porter (2015), who studied the classroom situation of students on the autistic spectrum, sug-
gested that if teachers are not aware of how students respond to the hidden curriculum, those
students might be at risk of ending up having limited access to the ‘overt’ curriculum (Pinar
et al. 1995). This inevitably hampers the full implementation of the overt curriculum.
Higher music education

With a few exceptions, such as Bradley (2015, p. 14) discussing ‘color-blind teaching practices
and discourses that obscure racism from our sight’ in music education generally, and Pitts (2003,
p. 286) who found that ‘learning that might have been considered peripheral turns out to
occupy a more prominent place than the ‘official’ teaching of the degree course’ within a
university music department, most information about hidden curricula and how they operate,
generally as well as in higher music institutions, can be found within studies not explicitly
addressing the ‘hidden’ dimension. We find such analytical interests among scholars attending
to music education generally as well as higher music education explicitly. Green (2002, p. i)
addressed ‘how music education reproduces social class patterns of musical consumption, value
and educational success’. Green suggests that ‘common-sense assumptions about music, musical
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Geir Johansen
value and musical ability’ can be revealed as ‘ideological positions […] reproduced through
schooling, regardless of, or even in spite of teachers’ or pupils’ conscious knowledge and in-
tentions’. Thereby she demonstrates a parallel to, for example, Apple and King’s (1977), sug-
gestion about unequal distribution of cultural capital in society mirroring a corresponding
distribution of knowledge among students in school. In addition, by discussing theories of social
constructionism, structural reproduction, and structure and agency, Green (2002, pp. 73–79)
demonstrates the potential of reflecting studies of hidden music curricula in general, sociological
perspectives.
With a side glance to some of the above studies and perspectives I will now suggest and
describe some hidden curricula in higher music education by drawing on Gair and Mullins’
(2001) and Martin’s (1994) categories ‘hidden in plain sight’,3 ‘hidden, yet to be discovered’,
and ‘revealed to some but remaining hidden for others’.
Hidden in plain sight

Among the most obvious ‘hidden in plain sight’ curricula of higher music education is a
curriculum of hegemony ( Jay 2003) propagating the supremacy of Western, classical music
(e.g. Bradley 2015, p. 2), evident in student statements such as ‘Classical music is different from
other kinds of music, because it has a message. […] Very few of us only read cartoons, but quite
many listen to pop music only’.4
The knowledge tradition and discourse of Western classical music and the connected
master-apprenticeship based teaching tradition have obtained hegemony by unquestioned being
allowed to fill ‘music’ and ‘music teaching’ with meaning. Correspondingly, hidden student
learning outcomes include confirming or adopting this view as a doxa component of their
habitus in the interplay with capital and field. Recent developments in many institutions to-
wards a more open and inclusive view of other musics such as jazz, popular, and folk music can
be interpreted as increasing the awareness of that hidden supremacy. Thereby ‘music’ is turned
into a floating signifier (Laclau and Mouffe 2014), and the scene is opened up to ‘debunking
[classical music’s] normalization and naturalization’ (Hess 2013, p. 86), challenging the students
of Western classical music to contextualize their own genre culture, in order to reveal its
hegemonic invisibility (Gravem Johansen 2017, p. 137). ‘Music teaching’, however, has not
been opened up likewise (see for example Karlsen 2010) or made an object of critical reflection,
until Baker (2014) presented his ‘thoroughgoing critique of classical orchestral music as social
action’ (Fink 2014). Baker (2014) describes the classical music teaching tradition as an old
fashioned, top-down educational model where questionable teacher behaviours as well as
teacher-student relationships are accepted. This is in line with Wagner’s (2015) description of
the intense, and frequent authoritarian pressure under which students must mobilise a will to
continue their violin studies whilst simultaneously handling the knowledge that most of them
will fail.
However, it is not given that every formal curriculum of higher music education is, or was
initially, based on the supremacy of Western classical music. In addition to those opening up for
a wider range of musics, others, as for example The Danish Rhythmic Music Conservatory
‘embraces widely diverse forms of expression in such genres as rock, pop, jazz, hip hop, heavy
metal, and electronic music’ (RMC 2018). In Sweden, the BoomTown university music
program (Gullberg 2016; Karlsen 2010) is focused likewise. In all these cases, however, still
hidden curricula about musical supremacy are likely to develop, because ‘there will still be
regulating [societal] forces making some choices of repertoire or styles more legitimate than
others’ (Dyndahl et al. 2016, p. 439). These forces frame and influence teachers’ decisions to
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include or exclude certain kinds of popular music. In higher music education in Norway, ‘the
broader and more established versions of jazz, rock and pop’ (Dyndahl et al. 2016) have been
included, whilst musics such as country music, blues, rock and roll, punk rock, contemporary
R&B, and Scandinavian dance band music are nearly or completely excluded (p. 450). Hence,
even with great freedom of curricular choice, a hidden curriculum of what is not accepted as
legitimate music emerges.
Connecting to macro level issues, Petter Dyndahl et al. (2016, p. 450) also suggest that
[i]t is possible to interpret the rather well-included broader versions of jazz, rock and
pop as […] perceived as ‘high’ popular culture, [… whilst the] less successfully gen-
trified styles can similarly be viewed as perhaps either too closely associated with
working class culture […] or as offering insufficient opportunities for contemplating
the music in a disinterested academic mode. What we are looking at here may well be
[… the] staging of educated elite taste than of actual working class culture being
allowed to enter academia.
Yet to be discovered
Looking at higher music education through the ‘hidden, yet to be discovered’ lens, enables the
discovery of issues such as those of entrepreneurship and the reproduction of ideology.
Growing out of the graduates’ need of adapting to the contemporary labour market in relevant
ways, classes and courses of entrepreneurship have come to proliferate across higher music
education. Reframing Pitts’ (2003) question, we might ask what students learn when we teach
entrepreneurship. Overt entrepreneurship curricula teach students to adopt a business way of
thinking about oneself as capable of finding new niches, establishing one’s own business and
creating a coherent, vocational situation for oneself in a competitive labour market. As long as
no critical voices are raised, a hidden curriculum about entrepreneurship ideology as a foun-
dation for ways of thinking and operating in other contexts and levels of music engagement as
well is allowed to evolve. We run the risk of indirectly training our future musicians in thinking
about their profession as a whole in business terms, making it a component of their habitus. To
this picture also belong the support and confirmation of crossing the ideological line between
nurturing talent and producing excellence (Wagner 2015), losing sight of those who do not
succeed in the international soloist contests, with consequences for their musical self-images as
well as human dignity. The way is short from learning that business terms constitute a fruitful
discourse for thinking and acting, to giving it supremacy with respect to filling floating signifiers
such as musicality, artistic interpretation and effective music teaching, with meaning. Thereby
the entrepreneurship trend in higher music education reflects traits of societal macro-level
ideologies such as Neoliberalism and Neoconservativism, entailing new forms of managerialism
and causing education to change society in the direction of Conservative modernisation
(Apple 2006, 2007, 2011).
Thus, the entrepreneurship discussion naturally leads to a further discussion of whether
higher music education reproduces ideology on a more general basis, ‘regardless of, or even in
spite of teachers’ or pupils’ conscious knowledge and intentions’ (Green 2002). Looking more
closely at the context in terms of hegemonic political discourses, it reflects the right-wing,
managerialist hegemony (Giroux 1981; Laclau and Mouffe 2014) with respect to the discourse
of education. This hegemony can be seen in both of Antonio Gramsci’s (Giroux 1981, p. 17)
meanings. The first includes Mouffe’s (1979, p. 182) ‘ability of one class to articulate the interest
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of other social groups to its own’. The other designates a more dynamic aspect in that one class
is ‘utilizing its control over the resources of state and civil society, particularly the mass media
and the educational system, to establish its view of the world as all-inclusive and universal’.
Revealed to some, hidden for others

Demonstrating how hidden curricula can prove hidden for some whilst revealed for others,
Pitts (2003) describes how a curriculum previously ‘hidden’ to lecturers became visible by
directing the research interest towards the perspectives of a different group, namely the stu-
dents. Such differences are particularly in need of deliberate attention in cases where one part
feels mobbed or harassed because there is a hidden curriculum accepting it or allowing another
part to disregard it. Margolis and Romero (1998, p. 1) uncovered ‘how [a] graduate school
curriculum […] reproduced gender, race, class and other forms of inequality’ (see also
Romero 2017). Another prominent issue in this respect is connected with Gair and Mullins’
(2001) manifestations of hidden curricula in the physical environment and the body, entailing
enabling and giving room for sexism, sexual discrimination, and harassment. These curricula
emerge within social dynamics wherein some participants face negative experiences and
sanctions, whilst others, and frequently the ones in power, do not notice until being told
explicitly. Here, again doxa as well as illusio sides of the relationship between habitus, capital
,and field may be at play. In a Norwegian Master’s thesis (Eick 2017, p. 68), one female
instrumental student coming from abroad, commented on the dress code in the student
symphony orchestra by stating that ‘[…] here in Norway it is so wonderful because I do not
have to dress so sexy when playing concerts. Where I come from, it is expected’.5
The extent to which such bodily experiences are connected with larger patterns of har-
assment and discrimination seems documented to an increasing degree. For example, Gair and
Mullins’ (2001) both categories were actualised by the tragic events noticed by The Independent,
Sunday, April 26, 2015: ‘Top UK music teacher […] jailed for 11 years over sex attacks in
sound-proof Guildhall practice rooms’.
Furthermore, the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC 2018) recognises explicitly
that sexual harassment has occurred within their member institutions and also within Higher
music Education generally. The events ‘were very seldom punished and made those who were
affected feel completely powerless’.
A subsequent question concerns what kind of role these hidden curricula might have played
and perhaps still play in educating future musicians. In other words, can they be observed on the
labour market for professional musicians today? This was enlightened in Great Britain by the
Incorporated Society of Musicians, ISM (2017, p. 5), reporting that among approximately 8506
survey respondents, almost 60% stated that ‘they had experienced discrimination, including
sexual harassment or inappropriate behaviour, in the course of their work as a professional
musician’. Moreover, those who reported it were outnumbered by those who chose not to do
so. Within the latter group, about 27% said it was because they considered the unwanted
behaviour to be part of the culture, feared the alleged perpetrator, had fear of being blamed,
judged, or causing more trouble. This is clearly in line with ‘blaming the victim’ (Margolis and
Romero 1998, p. 13), an element found in general studies of hidden curricula in higher
education. It entails ‘social interactions that socialize students to define themselves as the
problem, rather than exploring the structural causes for their experiences within the institution’.
Moreover, the ISM report reveals that only a small number of approximately 3% connected
the experienced discrimination with their sexual orientation, including ‘homophobic attacks’
(Incorporated Society of Musicians, ISM 2017, p. 13). This raises a question if respondents felt
306
it culturally legitimate to reveal their sexual orientation at all, if it happened to be other than
heterosexual. Pointing back to higher music education curricula, it actualises a question about
how LGBTQ students look at what is hidden for someone, yet revealed to others in higher
music education, entailing ‘patterns of interaction with intended and unintended consequences
that make it particularly difficult [… for them] to survive and thrive in graduate school’
(Margolis and Romero 1998, p. 2). Reported challenges include hetero-normative attitudes in
education (Robinson and Ferfolja 2001; Carpenter and Lee 2010) and a lack of spaces for
identity to evolve as well as being solidified and embraced (Bergonzi 2009; Palkki and
Caldwell 2018; Younker 2011). Another side of the issue concerns how musicians and student
music teachers are trained within higher music education with regard to lifting earlier ‘hidden’
parts of the curricula to the fore, and include them in the professional basis for their future
vocational practices. Fred Spano (2011) studied sexual orientation topics and their barriers in
the music education curriculum for student music teachers. Among the barriers found were
opinions that topics of sexual orientation were irrelevant. These statements reflected a lack of
awareness, Spano suggests, including a ‘lack of understanding about LGBTQ students and the
issues such as marginalization and bullying […], or a reflection of the hetero-normative attitudes
in education […]’.
Final considerations
Martin (1994) raises the question, ‘what should we do with a hidden curriculum when we find
one?’ This is perhaps the most relevant query to raise at this point. In addition to addressing the
highly legitimate ‘so what’ issue, it also points to our responsibility as hidden curriculum
scholars with regard to how we disseminate our findings and what kinds of actions we, and
others, such as music educators, take.
There will always be hidden curricula, since we can hardly control student learning in full,
and there is reasonable, philosophical doubt as to whether we should execute such control even
if we could. Hence, setting out to get rid of our hidden curricula is hardly a fruitful idea. Thus,
the various strategies we might consider, would all build on the idea of bringing our hidden
curricula out into the daylight in order to inspect, describe, and analyse them systematically.
Treating them this way, we can enable ourselves to counter unwanted, negative outcomes of
our classes and courses as well as altering the function of the curricula we found, from operating
unnoticed to becoming an explicit issue within the debate about of the ‘curriculum proper’
(Martin 1994). There is a potential here for enriching the curriculum proper with new per-
spectives, offering deeper and more comprehensive knowledge about the social and cultural
consequences of teaching and studying music.
Investigating the ways in which teachers influence how music, when recontextualised into
an educational or teaching subject, becomes profiled according to the relationship between the
different components of their knowledge agent profile, also possibly points back to the hidden,
structural curricular frames connected with societal macro-level priorities. By studying them
and lifting them to the fore, we may enable ourselves to depict alternatives for action, which are
otherwise unseen.
Martin (1994) points to four alternatives for handling a hidden curriculum when we find
one. We can do nothing, we can change our practices, procedures, environments, rules, and so
on, we can simply abolish it, or we can more or less embrace it. By suggesting the opposites of
doing nothing versus embracing hidden curricula, she points out that a hidden curriculum may
contain parts that may be judged as negative by some whilst positive by others. In addition to
negative sides, we should be prepared to come across ‘overt socialization practices that are not
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Geir Johansen
really hidden because the outcomes are intentional’ (Gair and Mullins 2001, p. 33). For ex-
ample, the above discussion about the hidden curriculum of the entrepreneurship trend in
higher music education describes a hidden curriculum with the potential of being judged both
ways. Those who assess it as being positive may be liable to embrace it or do nothing at all,
since, for them, all is well. For those who think it is negative, one alternative might be simply to
abolish the whole course. However, in general, the potential of making such a hidden curri-
culum explicit lies in increasing students’ awareness of the ideological backdrops of their studies,
hence affording opportunities for music educators to discussing those perspectives with students
as part of their teaching. Such a discussion would have the potential of reflecting the ongoing
debate on society’s macro level between the educational ideologies and discourses of the po-
litical Right and Left, competing about hegemony by filling floating signifiers such as good
teaching, high quality and effective learning with meaning. In such a perspective, abolishing it is
not necessarily a good solution.
Even if we face learning outcomes that in one perspective may appear as positive, such as the
ability to operate within an ordinary symphony orchestra, students aspiring to become or-
chestral musicians need, during their course of study, to reflect on other sides and entailments of
that organisation. In order to see themselves in a wider perspective various issues need to be
brought up, from the pressure to ‘dress sexy’ (Eick 2017) to Baker’s (2014) critique of classical
orchestral music as social action. This may even increase the graduates’ employability including
‘relevant achievements outside the boundaries of the discipline’ (Yorke 2004, p. 2, see also
Johansen 2016).
The actions we consider taking will depend on how harmful a hidden curriculum is. As
Martin (1994) suggests, taking action becomes more urgent the more undesirable the learning
states or outcomes are. Issues of race and racism (Bradley 2015) and sexual harassment and
blurring the difficulties of our LGBTQ students are examples of urgent matters to deal with.
Here, changing our practices, procedures, environments, and rules seems like the only de-
fensible direction in which to move forward.
No doubt, bringing these hidden curricular aspects to the fore and open them up for dis-
cussion has the potential of increasing students’ awareness of power relations within the
communities they participate, at present as well as in the future. However, there are more
severe urgencies at stake here, no matter if the harassment has heterosexual overtones or entails
the marginalisation and bullying of LBGTQ students. We must root them out, which is easier
said than done. Again, we can see the reflections of attitudes well alive in the surrounding
society, reciprocally relating to factors promoting and hampering the implementation of new
politics as well as policies on society’s macro level, about interculturality as well as sexuality.
Finally, as Pitts (2003) rightfully suggests, there is clearly a potential for future research on
hidden curricula in higher music education. For example, issues such as the internal status
hierarchies between branches of study and forms of knowledge within a conservatoire along
with institutional policies of equity and justice need to be addressed. Moreover, we also need
scholarly attention to the power structures embodied in the setup, rehearsals, and concert
practices of wind bands or symphony orchestra, as well as the foundations for music teaching
our graduates are equipped with.
Summing up, looking for hidden curricula is not the same as asking what is wrong in higher
music education. It is necessary to work in two steps, first to find a hidden curriculum and then,
as a next step, discuss whether what we found is good or bad, and what possibilities it reveals for
understanding what we do and possibly changing it to the better. Moreover, still following Pitts
(2003), are some of the factors discussed here generic features of higher education hidden
308
curriculum, rather than peculiar to departments? Might we even find a potential for con-
tributing to higher education in general, let alone the larger society?
1. What is your own experience with hidden curricula and unwanted learning outcomes as a
music student or teacher?
2. What connections do you see between the learning outcomes of students within higher
music education and society, which should have been addressed more clearly in the present
chapter?
Notes
1. Apparently, there is a parallel here to Goodwin’s definition, as cited by Bradley (2015, p. 198) seeing
‘the term curriculum to include not only the textbooks, materials, and instructional procedures […]’ but
also ‘society’s implicit consensus around what is worth knowing and what is worthwhile; it shapes and
defines students’ learning experiences, speaks to or ignores who they are […]’.
2. See https://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/socialresearch/neopositivism.htm
3. Also taken by Bradley (2015) as her point of departure.
4. Explicitly expressed by a postgraduate student on the homepage of a music conservatoire. In order to
protect the anonymity of the student, no further references are given.
5. My own translation.
6. The exact number is not given.
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22
COUNTERING ANOMIE AND
ALIENATION
Music education as remix and life-hack
Ruth Wright
Introduction
In this chapter, I am going to continue a discussion concerning democracy, social exclusion, and
music education that I began in the chapter of that name in Sociology and Music Education
(Wright 2010). I am going to consider some very old sociological concepts of anomie
(Durkheim 1997), a related concept of strain (Merton 1957) and to a lesser extent alienation
(Marx 2000) as they relate to education and music. I will attempt to show how classical sociological
theory can help us understand contemporary social phenomena. I will then turn to the con-
temporary concept of ‘life-hack’ (MacDonald 2016) to think about ways in which there might be
potential for music to either confirm or act counter to these phenomena in and with education.
Writing this chapter at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century from an
avowedly critical sociological perspective, the social canvas against which the considerations
above are set might be seen to be painted rather dark. Advanced capitalism, populism, bigotry,
and hatred appear to be gaining political ground and popular support at an alarming rate. In
many countries, democracy, as a mechanism to exert checks and balances on political action and
to ensure equitable distribution of the goods of society, appears to be almost irretrievably
broken (Wright 2006). The things that many would argue are inextricably tied to our
humanity, such as compassion, justice, and a love of and care for our planet are under siege
within a globalising neoliberal society that subdues all to the tyranny of the economy.
Moreover, the financial gain accrued from this global political-economic system is distributed
increasingly unequally. Advanced capitalism operates, as economist Thomas Piketty (2014) has
demonstrated, so that a few gain vast rewards at the terrible expense of the many, millions of
these children and young people, around the world.
Education is carefully and cleverly subsumed within this agenda, ensuring that economic
instrumental rationality rules the curriculum and the classroom in the guise of serving young
people to prepare them for their future in the labour force. (Bernstein 2000) This is allied to
externally imposed scrutiny and measurement in the form of international educational league
tables. Inevitably, the ranking and shaming mechanisms accompanying league tables invest stu-
dents, schools and educational systems with labels as local, national, and global ‘winners’ and
‘losers’, irrespective of contextualising social factors, thereby enforcing hierarchies within edu-
cation and opening it to a business management and production model increasingly operated by
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Countering anomie and alienation
the private sector (Ball 2007). Within such a model of education, the arts are seen as peripheral at
best and in some cases, it appears, irrelevant and may well disappear. We are currently seeing
this threat at all levels of education in many countries. What is also apparent however is that the
current societal model brings with it the death of hope for many young people – particularly
the disadvantaged. The Canadian Mental Health Association (2020), for example, claims that
‘Suicide accounts for 24% of all deaths among 15–24-year-olds and 16% among 25–44-year-olds’.
Similarly, ‘Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in both men and women from adolescence
to middle age’ (Canadian Mental Health Association 2020). In England, The Guardian newspaper
(Siddique 2018) reported in 2018 that 1 in 8 young people under the age of 17 had a mental
health disorder. The World Health Organization (2018) states that:
Young people face increasingly complex social, cultural and economic environments
with growing challenges, including increases in forced displacement, migration, un-
stable families, rising levels of mental health problems and violence. Inequities, in-
cluding those linked to poverty and gender, shape all aspects of adolescent health and
wellbeing. Disadvantaged minority and migrant youth are affected disproportionally
with poorer mental health outcomes and higher rates of youth unemployment and
early school leaving.
These are alarming indicators of the state of contemporary society for many of our youth. It
appears to be becoming an increasingly difficult and, in some instances, unbearable environment.
If we are to counter bigotry, extremism, injustice, and exclusion in society, to halt the wave
of youth hopelessness, mental illness, and despair, we have to detect and understand the root
causes and societal relays of these issues and to imagine how things might be otherwise. This is
termed by Erik Olin Wright (2006) emancipatory social science. Sociology gives us theoretical
apparatus to gather data and to think with that allows us to do just this. We can, as Zygmunt
Bauman said, make the familiar strange, or in Einstein’s terms see the water in which we swim.
At no previous time in history, perhaps, has this been more important than it is now.
As a focus for the remainder of this chapter, the story of multiplatinum-disc-selling English
rapper, singer, actor, and director, Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew, otherwise known as Ben
Drew, or Plan B, is presented.1 It serves as a real-life example of the sociological theory used to
describe it.
Youth, anomie, alienation, and music: Plan B

Drew first came to my attention when I happened across his 2012 TedXObserver talk ‘Youth,
Music and London’ (Drew 2012) where he launched an impassioned assault on British society’s
failure to nurture its disadvantaged youth, and on the demonization of such young people by
the British media. He referred to terms invented by the media such as ‘chav’ or ‘hoodie’2 which
he said denigrated urban young people and stereotyped their behaviours, and their clothing
choices. Alongside this, he discussed the vital role hip-hop music had played in his own and his
friends’ early lives, guiding and shaping them and their behaviors, and fulfilling a parental role so
often missing from their lives. He went on to consider the role this music also played on his
path to social mobility and inclusion, and in his formation as a social change agent. His story
introduces illustrations of the sociological concepts of anomie and alienation, and how music
education acted to enable him to use his chosen cultural resources to remix his subjectivity, to
form a life hack, and therefore contains important messages for music education as a discipline
and the sociology of music education as a field.
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Ruth Wright
Drew begins his TEdX talk by discussing his current project at the time, a film called ‘iLL
[sic] Manors’ (Drew 2012), depicting what he calls ‘the true, dark reality’ (Bainbridge 2012) of
life as a marginalised, socially alienated youth growing up in inner-city, multi-racial London,
UK. I should explain here that the word ‘manor’ is the British equivalent of the North
American term ‘hood’. Your manor is also your turf or your territory. So, an ill manor is a sick
neighbourhood but also represents a clever play on words concerning one of the accusations
frequently thrown at anomic youth: that they are ill-mannered.
The purpose of the film, Drew says in an interview in The Independent newspaper (Walker 2012)
is ‘trying to get to the bottom of why we have these problems in society with our youth, why we
constantly keep on reading negative things about our youth.’ Drew states that the film is trying to
address ‘Why are there so many kids in this country that don’t feel they have a future, or care about
having a criminal record?’
He then goes on to explain his motivation to make the film, which stems, he says, from
his own experiences as an adolescent. While the film is not autobiographical, it is set in the
area of London where Drew grew up and is centred around things that happened either to
him or to his friends. In this respect, Drew gave some context to his own upbringing and
experiences. From the time Drew was 5 months old, his father was not a regular part of his
life. In an interview with The Independent newspaper, Drew (Montgomery 2010, n.d.) says
‘he grew up feeling like a social outcast: deemed a rich kid by his mates on the local estates,
(housing projects provided by the local council) because his mother owned her own house,
but treated like the “underclass” by the pupils at the suburban Essex school he attended.
And though his childhood wasn’t “tough” in the sense there was no food in the house, it
was fucked up in other ways’. His dad finally left when he was 6, and Drew was regularly
beaten by his stepfather, giving rise to his own violent impulses. ‘You have your confidence
beaten out of you, you’re a little bit shy and then you go to school and someone [picks on
you for] that … and then you’ll flip out and suddenly you’ve become your stepdad’
(Montgomery 2010).
He subsequently moved from Essex to Forest Gate in inner-city London. He became an
angry and disruptive young boy and was expelled and moved from school to school until, at the
age of 15, there were no more schools that would accept him and he was sent to Tunmarsh
Centre, a Pupil Referral Unit in East London. These are the places of last resort for persistently
excluded students. In his TedX talk (Drew 2012), he reflected on this time and his reasons for
making ‘iLL Manors’:
The reason I’ve done this is because I got kicked out of school in year 10 and no other
schools would take me. I had to go to a pupil referral unit called the Tunmarsh Centre
in Plaistow. I was there with other kids from a lot more dysfunctional families than
me. They’d been through a lot more than me. And one thing we shared is we didn’t
have any respect for authority, whether it be teachers or police.
I think the reason why we didn’t have respect for authority was that we felt that we
were ignored by society, that we didn’t belong to it. And so we wouldn’t listen to
anyone apart from our favourite rappers. We would let this music raise us and, though
most of us will never meet those artists in our lives, their words are what guided us.
As Drew further reflected on his story and the role of hip-hop music in his life, he referred to a
murder that had a great impact in Britain, the killing of Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old
Nigerian immigrant boy who was murdered on his way home from an after-school computer
314
club by two other children on a council housing estate in Peckham, London, in 2000. This had
a profound effect on Drew as the following excerpt from the transcript of the TedX talk shows:
Damilola Taylor was 10 years old when he lost his life. He was stabbed by a kid who
was maybe only five or six years older than him. This is a child killing another child.
I didn’t agree with that. I didn’t agree with the mentality that a lot of these kids were
going round with, but I understood why they were going round with it. I understood
that they were from broken families. They had parents who were probably alcoholics,
drug addicts, dysfunctional, who raised them up to believe they could never make
anything of themselves because they as parents never made anything of themselves.
The time at Tunmarsh proved to be a transformative period for Drew, and he credits his
experiences there with turning his life around. Particularly important was the encouragement
he received to be creative and to work with hip-hop music. This opportunity, offered by an
inspirational music teacher, along with the counselling that he received to address the sources of
his anger, helped him to realise that there were other ways to be, and launched him on the path
to becoming a successful recording artist.
The great thing about Tunmarsh was it was a place where these kids could go and, for the
first time in their life, be shown encouragement and motivation and be told that they can
make something of their lives. They can come from a negative family environment [but]
they only have to bump into one person that can plant one positive seed in their head and
in their heart and it can change their life. Tunmarsh was full of these positive teachers.
One of the things that happened during his engagement with hip-hop at this centre was a
remixing of Drew’s subjectivity. His developing relationship with hip-hop music led him to
develop a desire to be an agent of social change:
Unfortunately, some of those words [of their favourite rappers] are negative. Within
hip-hop there’s some that romanticises street life and being a gangster and selling
drugs. But there’s also conscious hip-hop. I was a fan of conscious hip-hop. I was a fan
of the hip-hop that was like poetry. It was like reading a book and it changed your life.
Just one sentence could change your life. I realised that this was a powerful tool and
I wanted to change things; I wanted to change the stuff that I read in the paper or the
stuff that I came in direct contact with which I didn’t agree with.
Moreover, this remixing became part of a continuing journey
When I left there I went on this journey through hip-hop music and I decided to
write an album that tried to reach out to these kids and I tried in some ways, I guess, to
be a father figure to these kids because they were parentless.
The process Drew contemplates above describes a common process of adopting and remixing
cultural resources to build one’s own subjectivity, MacDonald (2016) describes such a process
in twenty-first-century language as a ‘life-hack’.
I am one of many people that I have known for whom music is not just something
one listens to but is a social technology for building, shaping, and changing oneself in
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Ruth Wright
concert with others. We use music and other aesthetic resources, like clothes,
behaviors, and locations to resonate together.
(MacDonald 2016, p. xiv)
Anomie, alienation, remix, and life-hack

In the section that follows, I am going to consider a sociological explanation of the conditions
of exclusion, normlessness, and societal distancing Drew describes, using the primary concept of
anomie with a secondary discussion of alienation, and then proceed to reflect on how music
education might function to help or hinder young people in making sense of themselves and
their lives (to life-hack their subjectivities) in ways that might result in positive social outcomes.
Anomie
Classical sociologists such as Emile Durkheim (1997) were concerned with understanding the
social roots of phenomena such as suicide. In attempting to theorise this, Durkheim developed
the concept of anomie. The following quotation by Plan B (AKA Ben Drew) is perhaps a good
expression of this concept: ‘I think the reason why we didn’t have respect for authority was that
we felt that we were ignored by society, that we didn’t belong to it’ (Drew 2012).
Against a background of the rising demonization of alienated young people in the British
press, Drew’s music has provided narratives in which he tried to represent the mindset of his
peers and the circumstances of their lives, causing them to disengage from societal norms and
values, and ultimately to commit crime. It is angry music that represents the dark reality of life
in his neighbourhood. He attempts to show the hopelessness of these youth. In graphic terms,
he illustrates the anomic thought process.
In a track entitled Kidz (Plan 2006), inspired by the murder of Damilola Taylor, he tells the
story of a 14-year-old youth who rapes, kills, and mugs people (Youngs 2006). In gritty lan-
guage he depicts the social pressure to be violent, the inward turning reflection that is about
keeping ahead, being stronger than those following behind, to whom you could be the next
victim. What Drew captures and relays very clearly to society is the sort of explosion that
happens when we deny anomic, socially excluded young people expression. He was doc-
umenting what he terms a youth underclass ready to explode.
Sociologically, the condition of the young people with whom Drew identifies himself is termed
by Karl Marx (2000) alienation and by Durkheim (1997) anomie. The two concepts have much in
common but also have important differences. Alienation was a concept central to the sociology of
Marx (2000), although it has since been widely adopted and its usage developed by scholars in many
other disciplines. In the simplest terms it, ‘picks out a range of social and psychological ills involving
a self and other. More precisely, it understands alienation as consisting in the problematic separation
of a subject and object that properly belong together’ (David 2018, n.p.).
Sociologically rooted in Marx’s structuralist ideas concerning the division of labour, the
private ownership of property, and the emergence of conflicting classes, Marx’s initial usage of
the term involved the problematising of the separation of the labourer from the object of his
labour-the product. Later usage of the concept has tended to leave its structuralist origins
behind. Seeman (1959), in On the Meaning of Alienation, explains that alienation has been op-
erationalized more frequently in terms of denoting a range of cognitive and psychological
characteristics including ‘powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, normlessness and self-
estrangement’ (Marshall 1998, p. 14). Latterly, sociological work has attempted to bridge both
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the structuralist and subjective, affective dimensions of the concept in considering, for example,
the juxtaposition of alienation and freedom in relation to work.
Anomie
According to Bjarnasson (2009, p. 135), ‘Anomie is a complex, dynamic concept that refers
simultaneously to a social state and an individual state of mind’. Most widely associated in so-
ciology with Durkheim, anomie is, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (Marshall 1998,
p. 20), ‘An absence, breakdown, confusion or conflict in the norms of a society’. Durkheim
developed this term in The Division of Labour (1893/1997), where, from his structuralist socio-
logical position, he associated the condition with a too rapid shift in forms of social cohesion or
solidarity, from mechanical (that found in pre-industrial societal models where society was
bonded by individuals who shared many of the same experiences as they performed much of the
same work) to organic solidarity (industrial societies where labour became increasingly specialized
and individuals shared less in common, society being bound by mutual dependence). Durkheim
considered that when the rate of change was moderate, social integration was achieved through
organic solidarity. When, however, the rate of change was too fast for society’s regulatory systems
to keep pace, the growth of individualism developed at the expense of commonly held societal
values, beliefs, and rules. This caused a state of anomie, the ‘absence, breakdown, confusion or
conflict in the norms of a society’ referred to above. He developed this concept further in Suicide
(1897), where he posited that anomie was one of the four causes of suicide. According to
Durkheim, in times of economic depression or rapid growth, people may experience a lessening
of regulation-primarily economic though also in terms of societal norms. This may lead to a
lessening of societal and social bonds, so that individual desires become unregulated and out of
control. Sociologists such as Bauman’s (2000) analysis of contemporary society as being in a
process of continual flux and change, as liquid, would also appear to provide the required
conditions of uncertainty and lack of regulation necessary for the dissolution of social bonds and
norms symptomatic of anomie. We may therefore be living in a society which, unless
remediation occurs, is predisposed to form anomic youth.
According to Bjarnasson (2009), anomie can be considered in terms of concepts of ex-
teriority and constraint. Exteriority refers to experiencing the social world as an objective,
predictable reality, while constraint refers to the extent to which one experiences a personal
commitment to the demands and expectations of society. Modern macro theorists agree with
Durkheim: ‘All argue that loss of community, alienation, or anomie are rooted in such factors as
the increasing division of labour, specialization, urbanization, bureaucracy (corporate, gov-
ernment, and other), centralization, secularization, and a decline in primary groups [such as the
family or friendship groups]’ (Elwell 2013, p. 31).
Drew clearly describes such an anomic situation: the young people he describes felt alienated
and estranged from society, that it ignored them, and for the lack of ‘commonly held societal
values, beliefs and rules’, (anomie) they looked elsewhere for guidance. In the case of Drew and
his friends, they looked to music – to hip-hop artists who spoke to them of worlds they could
recognize and understand, in language familiar to them. As Drew said (2012), ‘[T]hey let these
artists raise them.’
Sometimes, however, as Drew observed, artists are themselves anomic individuals, and are
not always positive influences. Elwell diagnoses this situation in the following way:
if an individual lacks any sense of social restraint her self-interest will be unleashed; she
will seek to satisfy her own appetites with little thought on the possible effect her action
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will have on others. Instead of asking “is this moral?” or “does my family approve?” the
individual is more likely to ask “does this action meet my needs?” The individual is left
to find her own way in the world—a world in which personal options for behavior have
multiplied as strong and insistent norms and moral guidelines have weakened.
(Elwell 2013)
This theoretical stance may be criticised as appearing overly structurally deterministic and does
not offer a totally satisfactory account of the role of agency in personal regulation. It is perhaps
of value however to consider it to explain the manner in which young people such as Drew
who feel society has no use for them, and offers no future, may tend to feel that its codes and
values do not apply to them, and instead choose to be guided by sub-cultural figures, such as
hip-hop artists in the case of Drew and his friends. It is hardly necessary to say perhaps that other
demographics may well be drawn to other sub-cultures.
In Drew’s case, he gravitated to forms of hip-hop that spoke to his social conscience and
enabled him to form a subjectivity that led him into an art world where he could exercise his
desire to work for social justice. Perhaps the role of a culturally sensitive teacher was influential
in steering him towards a more socially positive remix. While involvement in music education
is not always so positive, it is interesting that music education at Tunmarsh led Drew onto a
more socially coherent path. This has undoubtedly made his life easier at least in some respects.
It could be termed a life-hack.
Anomie strain
American sociologist Robert Merton (1957) developed the anomie concept further in his desire
to understand deviance – how society’s structures and cultural values both create cohesion and
opportunities for deviance or crime. Foreshadowing the work of scholars such as Pierre
Bourdieu (1984), Basil Bernstein (2000), and Robert Putnam (2000), Merton inspected the
American Dream with its rhetoric of unlimited social mobility dependent upon hard work and
self-discipline, in the context of structural societal conditions that mean that access to the
educational requisites for this mobility are in reality distributed differentially across society. He
termed instances where the images and expectations of society are unattainable due to class-
based disadvantage ‘strain’ – when societal norms conflict with reality. He suggested that most
disadvantaged people receive relatively few opportunities for advancement, if any, yet find
themselves judged for their inability to achieve. This places them under pressure to get ahead in
any way possible, legal or illegal. For Merton, therefore, so-called deviance is a by-product of
inequality and unequal opportunities (Giddens 2006). Drew highlights the reality of the con-
sequences of anomie and strain for young people, when the aspirations held out as normal and
desirable are out of reach due to societal inequalities.
The tragic consequences of youth alienation and anomie and particularly anomie and strain
can be observed globally in increasing youth unrest, rising rates of mental illness and suicide levels.
Anomie does not, according to Durkheim, remain tenable in the long term. ‘When social
conditions fail to provide people with the necessary social goals and/or rules at the appropriate
levels of intensity their socio-psychological health is impaired, and the most vulnerable among
them commit suicide’ ( Jones 1986, p. 114). As we know from studies of alienated youth, many
other self-destructive and unhealthy behaviours ensue along this road, often leading to early death
or incarceration (World Health Organisation 2018). Bjarnasson (2009, p. 139), referring to the
argument of Messner and Rosenfeld (1994), states ‘that the dominance of the market economy
over other social institutions has created an anomic social structure where traditional mechanisms
318
of social control are unable to counteract a rising tide of crime and deviance’. From a possibly
more empathic perspective, Bjarnasson (2009, p. 141) suggests that ‘human beings do not only
need society for instrumental reasons of physical survival but also for existential reasons of
intellectual survival’. By intellectual survival, we can hazard here that the author also embraces the
affective domain. He suggests humans need ‘the exteriority and constraint of a social environment
that must continuously be constructed and maintained’ (p. 141). When efforts to construct
an external and internal social environment coherent with the realities of life fail, we see the
consequences in increasingly dystopian environments and youth suicides.
From this perspective, the root of alienation and anomie is societal inequality. For macro
sociologists, and others, inequality is a major consideration. A fundamental principle is that
inequalities exist, affecting life chances of individuals within and between societies. ‘The degree
of inequality depends highly on material conditions. … The more complex a society becomes,
the greater the inequalities that ensue, becoming institutionalized in social groups such as class,
race, sex and ethnicity’ (Elwell 2017, pp. 33–34). As contemporary society becomes ever more
diverse, super diverse as Steven Vertovec (2007) describes, or hyper diverse as some social and
cultural geographers are now terming it (Peterson 2017), economic inequality is growing at an
ever-increasing rate and shows no signs of ceasing to do so as long as current economic policies
and approaches prevail (Piketty 2014).
As Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) demonstrated, such inequality originates in and is re-
produced however not only by economic capital but also by cultural capital. Education, as
Merton observed, plays a key role here in performing an act Bourdieu (2000) described as
symbolic violence whereby the marginalised and excluded accept their right to be so, through
misrecognition of the basis of their inequality –believing the myth of meritocracy over the reality
of class and cultural-based advantage and discrimination. The effects of this symbolic violence will
inevitably lead to a fragmented and disunified society, characterised by the breakdown of shared
societal norms and values – or in other words anomie. This theory helps us to understand the
mechanism of Merton’s anomie strain as a complex process in which culture is inextricably
involved. Anomie and strain result for many young people when the norms and values they
receive from institutions such as education in terms of futures to which they might or should
aspire encounter disjunction on multiple levels when meeting the reality of their impoverished
opportunities for advancement, both economic and cultural. This no doubt causes intense internal
conflict. I would suggest that nowhere is this more so than in music classrooms.
Inequality as it relates to music education is something that has occupied a central place in my
own work for the past 19 or more years. I have referred to George Orwell’s (1945, p. 133) novel
Animal Farm and its corrupted final commandment ‘All animals are equal but some are more equal
than others’ as being in my opinion an accurate analogy for the field of music education
(Wright 2015). When curricula and policy espouse egalitarian ideals but are underpinned by
misrecognition of their classed and cultured basis, they enact corresponding class and culture-
based discriminatory exclusion and result in alienation and anomie. For example, when societal
institutions appear to take for granted and privilege a reading of music education as inevitably
based in tonal, western languages and literatures, insidiously characterised by some scholars as the
‘powerful knowledge’ requisite to access the discipline, they enact symbolic violence.
Is it any wonder then, that for anomic young people like Drew, there is little in traditional
school curricula, increasingly specialised, bureaucratised, and centralised (Elwell 2013, p. 31) to
counter their growing feelings of social isolation and marginalisation? They are, in Gayatri
Spivak’s (1985/1993) post-colonial cultural sociological terms, subaltern, an: ‘“Other” ruled,
but without consent or participation in the social and political mainstream’ (Ray and
Radhakrishnan 2010, p. 42). They exist, in other words, outside democracy.
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As these authors suggest, where scholarly attention has often focussed quite understandably
on the plight of subaltern groups in the Southern Hemisphere, there is a growing problem in
terms of economic and social marginalization of subaltern groups in the West:
Although the expansive scholarship on cultures of globalization has focused ex-

tensively on the global South, little of it has examined how the dynamics of the global
political economy have rendered marginalized communities in the United States and
Europe invisible.
(Ray and Radhakrishnan 2010, p. 42)
Such invisible marginalisation means that an increasing number of young people in developed
countries are growing up in conditions such as those Drew describes, where they feel ignored
and excluded by society. They exist in conditions of anomie, outside any shared conception of
society or its rules and beyond the bounds of democracy. Education is far from innocent in
these processes of marginalisation and alienation, as Bernstein (2000, p. xix) asserts:
Biases in the form, content, access and opportunities of education have consequences
not only for the economy; these biases can reach down to drain the very springs of
affirmation, motivation and imagination. In this way such biases can become, and
often are, an economic and cultural threat to democracy.
The continued neo-liberal swing to the political right exhibited in national education policies
such as those in the UK and the USA and increasingly around the world, with a focus on
imposing a shared ‘national consciousness’ (Bernstein 2000, p. xxiii) through a re-valuing and
reifying of particular elite forms of western cultural capital, and re-imposition of traditional
pedagogic strategies, have inevitable effects in terms of those included and excluded by and in
education. Moreover, they may lie at the root of rising intolerance and hatred:
It is inevitable under these conditions that education becomes a crucial means and an
arena for struggle to produce and reproduce a specific national consciousness. In turn
the horizontal solidarity produced by such national consciousness creates fundamental
and culturally specific identities. There are ranges of school practices, rituals, cele-
brations and emblems which work to this effect and of course there are the crucial
discourses of language, literature and history. (p. xxiii)
In schools, music is centrally involved in such ‘practices rituals, celebrations and emblems’ and
serves a fundamental hegemonic role in allocating students to specific cultural identities – most
fundamentally those whose culture is recognised by the school and those whose culture is ex-
cluded. This violates one of the three fundamental rights Bernstein identified as representing the
conditions of an effective democracy when translated to the school: inclusion,3 the right to be
included but to remain autonomous and bars the way to achievement of the other two rights of
enhancement and participation. This is a recipe for alienation and anomie. This is also however
one area in which music education as remix and life-hack could act to counter these effects.
Music education as remix and life-hack

For Drew, his experiences with a gifted music educator who let him explore and develop his
interest and talent in hip-hop at the Tunmarsh unit allowed him to use music as a life-hack.
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According to the Urban Dictionary ‘Life Hacking is the act of making small tweaks to everyday
activities in an effort to make them easier and more efficient‘. At face value this sounds quite
like the means to an end thinking characterising instrumental rationality, but MacDonald (2016,
p. xiii), in his book on HipHop Kulture [sic] Remix and Life Hack, interprets the life-hack dif-
ferently. He relates life-hacking to the contemporary process of taking and remixing one’s
available cultural resources to build one’s own subjectivity:
Remix and Life Hack explores the idea that people are affected by art, and further,
that we remix aesthetic resources to self-produce. … for instance, a life hack is using
your car’s seat warmer to keep the pizza warm on the drive home. I’m using it a little
differently. I’m suggesting that we life hack our subjectivities by using the aesthetic
resources available in our society’.
To my mind, this conceptualisation of life-hack bears a powerful relationship to the conditions

Bjarnasson (2009) suggests are necessary for intellectual survival in contemporary society: ‘the
exteriority and constraint of a social environment that must continuously be constructed and
maintained’ (p. 141). I’m suggesting that life-hacking might be the internal corollary to ex-
teriority and constraint. It is possible I suggest that through educative work accompanying the
life-hacking process, one might form a bridge to the other. A coherent internal subjectivity
developed through and with music by a young person/young people in tandem with a sym-
pathetic educator might lead to a co-constructed, shared, sense of exteriority, and constraint.
Drew, in his TedX talk underlines the essential role that sub-cultural musics such as hip-hop
play in the lives of anomic, alienated youth. They are the lingua franca of many such students.
He shows that critical engagement with sub-cultural musics, in tandem with consideration of
their societal implications, had a profound effect on him. The ability to discern relationships
between this music and aspects of the world he did not like led him to remix his subjectivity, to
‘hack’ his life and for him led to engagement with music to develop an agenda for social change:
I was a fan of the hip-hop that was like poetry. It was like reading a book and it
changed your life. Just one sentence could change your life. I realised that this was a
powerful tool and I wanted to change things; I wanted to change the stuff that I read
in the paper or the stuff that I came in direct contact with which I didn’t agree with
[…] I didn’t agree with the mentality that a lot of these kids were going round with,
but I understood why they were going round with it.
MacDonald (2016) similarly discusses the role of hip-hop in his life and those of his friends in a
similar process of self-construction. Drawing attention away from the mega-stars of the com-
mercial music industry to:
the generations of youth who have used Hiphop Kulture to innovate upon them-
selves, to become something more, and to belong to something that was not there a
moment ago. This is the core of Remix and Life Hack.
MacDonald therefore also hints at the effects of music as life hack in creating positive conditions
of exteriority and constraint:
I am one of many people that I have known for whom music is not just something
one listens to but is a social technology for building, shaping, and changing oneself.
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What I am suggesting is that students might, through the channel of music education, part of
the societal institution of education, be afforded space to remix and reflect upon their particular
musical cultural resources in order to life-hack an individual subjectivity that has both an
internal coherence and a shared external societal resonance and constraint.
While this process happened through hip-hop music for MacDonald and Drew, for others in
other demographics it might occur through a variety of other sub-cultures of music. What I feel
certain of however is that this will not happen in schools with no music education or in music
rooms where narrowly defined, symbolically violent, exclusionary, hegemonic music curricula
are enacted upon subaltern students who have no classed or cultured access to these musics. It
will only drive them further into anomie.
If we wish to address the state of anomie and alienation in which many young people now
live, we must allow the previously unthinkable to become thinkable in our music classes, in our
case sub-cultural musics. This does not of course mean that we appropriate youth music and
‘teach’ it to them, but that we listen to, discuss, and work alongside the young as they explore
the music they value. There is nothing new in this idea but I do not think it can be stated often
enough or forcefully enough, particularly in the context of the resurgence of and advocacy for
traditionalist curriculum models based on pre-ordained, canonical, supposedly powerful, musical
knowledge. And I feel that a sociological understanding of the causes and effects of not doing so
is an important plank in this argument. I would suggest that ‘knowledge’ holds no power at all if
it holds no cultural resonance with the majority of the intended recipients or that they know
very well that they lack the classed and cultured advantages requisite to achieving success, or
educational mobility, within this sphere. It causes anomie and strain. No wonder many of our
music rooms gradually empty, or if they do not the occupants look remarkably similar.
There seems to me to be no doubt that we are poised atop a societal powder keg at the
current moment in time. At the lower strata of society (low only in terms of economic and
social class hierarchies) a ground swell of unrest is brewing and sporadically erupting among
alienated and marginalised peoples, and significantly among youth as numerous recent youth
protests, riots, and violent acts show. If society does not take action to reduce anomie and
alienation, for many young people the directions in which they turn, when uninterrogated,
may lead as we are currently seeing on a global scale to fascism, xenophobia, homophobia, and
crime – to deepening anomie and alienation. This will not end well.
Conclusion
I have argued in this chapter that we have to confront in education the rising levels of anomie
and strain, of alienation, of social fragmentation, and instability that many young people ex-
perience. With testimony such as Drew’s as to the importance of his sub-cultural music to his
peer group’s lives and values, music educators assume a central place in the battle against anomie
and strain among the alienated youth of today.
As Henry Giroux (1994, n.p.) stated, ‘[E]ducators whose work is shaped by cultural studies do
not simply view teachers and students either as chroniclers of history and social change or
recipients of culture, but as active participants in its construction’. I would make exactly the same
claim for music educators whose work is shaped by sociology. If we wish to counter the rising
tide of anomie, strain, and alienation among the young in our societies, we might embrace a
view of music education that conceptualises it as musical remixing and life-hacking by and with
young people. Such a view positions students alongside teachers and artists (or as teachers and
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artists) as co-constructers of both their own subjectivities and contemporary culture, and hence
of contemporary society, not its hereditary recipients or excluded by-standers.
This might be one way to bridge to an experience of exteriority in which the social world is
seen to bear coherence with internal subjectivity, as an objective, predictable reality, and to
enable experiences of constraint where the student does experience a personal commitment to
the demands and expectations of society because they have been involved in creating them. One of
the most important outcomes of such an education might be that some previously anomic
young people might see congruence between their own cultural affiliations, their identity, and
society. Some of the consequences of anomie that derail the futures of so many young people
and have such negative societal consequences might be rerouted in more positive channels. In
other words, for some life might become easier in some respects and therefore more bearable. I
would term that a worthy outcome for music education and a pretty successful life-hack.
1. Does the concept of life-hack have resonance with you? Can you think of examples of
ways in which you have used music to remix and hack your own subjectivity? What were
the results?
2. Have you experienced anomie and/or strain or seen peers or others experiencing it? What
were the results?
Notes
1 I attempted to contact Ben Drew through his artist representation to verify the material from his Ted
Talk and newspaper interviews and to seek any further insights but I was unable to obtain a reply.
2 A chav is ‘a young person in Britain of a type stereotypically known for engaging in aggressively loutish
behavior especially when in groups and for wearing flashy jewelry and athletic casual clothing (such as
tracksuits and baseball caps’ (Merriam-Webster, n.d.).
3 For a thorough exposition of these three rights and their relationship to music education, see
Wright 2010.
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PART III
Crossing borders – problematising

assumptions
INTRODUCTION
Sociologically framed critical scholarly discourse does not enjoy huge popularity nowadays.
For it creates obstacles to flat and merry thinking that has dominated public discourse re-
garding education, a form of discourse that increasingly deprives words of socio-historical
depth and distrusts our right to envision potentialities, to understand, and to create dissent.
Contemporary versions of reactionary, authoritarian, and populist neoliberalism seem to lead
the way (on the issue and the appropriateness of using such ‘oxymoronic formulations’ re-
garding characterisations of neoliberalism, see Peck and Theodore 2019, p. 256). For ex-
ample, one of the first moves of the newly appointed Greek Minister of Education was to
declare that history in education should ‘no longer be social’, but should focus ‘on the de-
velopment of a national consciousness instead’.1 Sociologically framed critical thinking
questions certainties, is not easy to digest, and might at times sound a bit melancholic. It is
under siege for it problematises easy solutions, naturalisation of domination and control, a-
social and a-political views of education and knowledge as mere instruments for ‘growth’. It
exposes and frames critically the thorny market-based invasion of ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’
to both formal and informal learning settings, a trend that purports ‘to give prominence to the
talented young individuals’2 ‘ready to conquer the 21st century skills’.3 Such formulations
conceal the economic, racial, and gender injustices that lie underneath them; they conceal,
‘the politics of stranger making; how some and not others become strangers; how emotions of
fear and hatred stick to certain bodies; how some bodies become understood as the rightful
occupants of certain spaces’ (Ahmed 2012, p. 2). Karen Ahmed’s words bring to mind a little
phrase from Richard Powers’ The Time Of Our Singing (2003, p. 344), where Joseph, a young
musician and black American Jew talks of the beginning of his relationship with Malalai, ‘the
darkest child in school’: ‘The whole school wanted us paired: two troubling ethnics, safely
canceling each other out’.
On a surface level, scholarly approaches look somewhat more detached than such
powerful literally formulations. Hugo de Jager has defined sociology of music as ‘a specific
branch of sociology, which studies the inter-individual behavior of people in producing,
reproducing and listening to those sounds which they regard to be worthy of the name of
“music”’ (1972, p. 253). One may note that what can ‘be worthy of the name of “music”’
and how this is achieved should also be a subject of sociological analysis. Based on eth-
nomusicologist Phillip Bohlman (1999), Roy and Dowd (2010) have suggested that music
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may be seen both as an object and an activity. Both musical objects and musical activities are
consummately social in nature and are also intertwined through complex webs of socially
mediated meanings and actions. In this sense, sociology of music studies musical activities,
how these activities shape forms and meanings related to musical objects, and also how
those very objects shape particular musical activities. ‘Music’s object-ness … make it an
accessible exemplar of the process of social construction’ (Roy and Dowd 2010, p. 186),
while a view of music as an activity shows us ‘that the facticity of musical scores and
performances rests on intersubjective meanings that are invented in and sustained by in-
teraction’ (p. 187).
How musical practices become entangled to specific approaches to education, how and
in what sense music is used and understood as educative, how and in what sense particular
forms of musical practices are designated as learning-oriented, which are the kinds of
musical experience that are considered educative (and which are not), how music education
becomes entangled to larger socio-musical and discursive practices, how music education
(re)produces domination, patriarchy, heteronomy, or when and in what ways it
has been able to act subversively, all these are broad questions that underpin the chapters
included in this section. Each chapter develops a variety of perspectives regarding these
issues with the aim of provoking ‘the excitement of finding the familiar becoming trans-
formed in its meaning’ (Berger 1966 p. 32).
It is important to note that work which can be seen as sociologically framed critical
scholarly discourse on music and education has generally been critical of value-free ap-
proaches to research and analysis, producing ‘a sense of understanding that we may call the
interpretive-relational’ (Bauman and May 2001, p. 180). Much work in the field of sociology
of music education has sought to uncover the episteme (Foucault) of music education
practices, that is, the ‘intellectual, economic, and political practices that are tied together by
common behind-the-scenes methods, logics, and values’ ( James 2019, p. 19), aiming to
uncover and critique oppressive practices and modes of thinking, with the explicit or implicit
aim to sketch alternatives. No better example of this stance exists than that of Christopher
Small, whose intellectual project not only provided a set of conceptual tools that enable us to
critically frame restrictive and ultimately oppressive and unjust musical practices, but has also
acted as an exercise in open-mindedness and respect for ‘otherness’. His analysis leads to
critique, which in turn demands that we forge more open music and music education
practices that lead to change.
Indeed, there is no Archimedean point for sociologically framed music education dis-
course. Scholarly work that forms the base for the chapters that comprise section III of this
volume is the outcome of careful thinking about issues and problems that are of deep
concern to the authors, who take up the challenge to as sometimes difficult questions that
problematise core assumptions of music educators. In this journey, ‘no one has the epis-
temological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating, and interpreting the world free from
the encumbering interests and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves. We
are, so to speak, of the connections, not outside and beyond them’ (Said 1994, p. 55). Which
means that what is offered here cannot in any sense be seen as offering any sort of definitive
answers. The chapters you are about to delve into perform acts of problematisation, re-
thinking, re-conceptualising, and re-turning through unexpected pathways. Haynes and
Murris have invoked feminist theorist Karen Barad’s (2014) urge to treat ‘all the “re’s,’’
as questions, not answers’ (Haynes and Murris 2016, p. 976). The 14 chapters in this
section of The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education seem to share this premise.
Off we go then.
328
Introduction
Notes
1 https://www.avgi.gr/arheio/323158_piso-olotahos-i-kerameos-thelei-istoria-me-ethniki-syneidisi.
2 https://eduact.org/en/about-us/?cn-reloaded=1.
3 http://www.tch.gr/default.aspx?lang=el-GR&page=3&tcheid=2469.
References
Ahmed, S., 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press,
Durham.
Barad, K., 2014. Diffracting diffraction: cutting together-apart. Parallax vol. 20 (no. 3), 168–187.
Bauman, Z., May, T., 2001. Thinking Sociologically. Blackwell, Malden MA.
Berger, P., 1966. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Penguin, New York.
Bohlman, P.V., 1999. Ontologies of music. In: Cook, N., Everist, M. (Eds.), Rethinking Music. Chicago
University Press, Chicago, pp. 17–34.
Haynes, J., Murris, K., 2016. Intra-generational education: Imagining a post-age pedagogy. Educational
Philosophy and Theory vol. 49 (no. 10), 971–983.
Jager, H., 1972. Some sociological remarks on innovation in music. International Review of the Aesthetics and
Sociology of Music vol. 3 (no. 2), 252–258.
James, R., 2019. The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism, and Biopolitics. Duke University Press,
Durham.
Peck, J., Theodore, N., 2019. Still neoliberalism? The South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 118 (no. 2), 245–265.
Powers, R., 2003. The Time of Our Singing. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.
Roy, W.G., Dowd, T.G., 2010. What is sociological about music? Annual Review of Sociology
vol. 36 (no.1), 183–203.
Said, E.D., 1994. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage Books, New York.
329
23
ART-MUSIC-PEDAGOGY
A view from a geopolitical cauldron
Marion Haak-Schulenburg and Felicity Laurence
By the time that bane of the music educational establishment Christopher Small died in 2011,
he had concluded that school music was generally so exclusive of so many young people as to
render most of them less musically able than they had started, and that it should be banned
forthwith as a curriculum topic, leaving children and music to find each other in the green and
free spaces beyond the school gate (Small 2010).
Thirty-six years earlier, Small had burst into the music educational arena with three min-
iature reflections, collectively entitled ‘Towards a Philosophy of Music Education’
(Small 1975a, 1975b, 1975c). With glittering precision, these skewered the basic tenets of
prevailing music educational thought, and were the precursor to his ground-rupturing, and for
many, profoundly upsetting book, Music, Society, Education, which appeared soon afterwards in
1977 (republished 1996, to which later edition we refer in the following). Critiquing the
positioning of children in school as ‘consumers’ of knowledge – ‘young minds … as so much
passive material to be worked on’ (Small 1975b, p. 163), Small proclaimed instead that the
‘young mind is about the most active exploring agent one can imagine – and it’s doing its own
research all the time’. He was deeply concerned, however, that Western educational systems
tended not only to limit but even destroy children’s urge to explore; and through the ensuing
four decades, such views have ricocheted across educational literature wherever people question
the tenacious politically woven straitjacket of official policy that ever more tightly constrains
practice in the educational field. Small’s insights and strident challenges to established thought
remain nevertheless acutely relevant to any discussion of children, their musical agency,1 and
the spaces permitted to them in their musicking.
Back in the mid-70s, Small heretically declared:
Music, like all art, is not just a collection of beautiful objects (including sound-objects
such as symphonies and concertos) which we learn about and admire. It is a mode of
exploration by which we explore ourselves, our experience and our environment and come to
terms with them. (Small 1975b, p. 163, italics added)
In a further assault on established consensus, he castigated the ‘terrible ubiquity’ of those ‘great’
works defining the Western canon:
330
Art-music-pedagogy
[those] masterpieces, those products of the creative process that we value more than
the process itself, and which we keep in existence often at the cost of so much time
and effort that might be better spent on creation.
(Small 1996, p. 200)
He argued that children should be enabled to focus upon their own creative musical ex-
perience as the best way of developing their musical capacity. Rather than being subjected to
some predetermined view of value and ‘greatness’ (or its lack) in music objects, children
should be enabled to roam freely ‘this marvellous terrain of music’ (1975b, p. 163) with the
teacher in a new and happier role as guide, even inspiration, but essentially what we might
now call ‘co-musicker’ (Small 1996, p. 225).2 This profoundly disturbed then, and disturbs
still, the ground most music education sits on. For what he was ‘really doing’ (as he would
likely have put it himself) was confronting head-on the holiest of grails, the Western classical
music canon – so widely revered as a conduit to civility – challenging its predominance in
music education and ultimately the entire socio-political edifice it represents and buttresses.
He perceived music education as, at heart, a project aimed at locating talent, nurturing future
classical musicians, and shaping enough of the other children up as future audience, thus
inherently exclusive of ‘ordinary’ children and other musics, and impoverishing of children’s
innate musicality.
His words reverberate still. In recent discussions of social justice and music education, the
refrain recurs time and again of the latter’s enduring and inherently divisive adherence to
Western classical music, to the hierarchies integral to it, and to its embedded aesthetic, as
acknowledged repeatedly throughout The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education
(Benedict et al. 2015). Introducing this volume, the editors call out the ‘overly narrow defi-
nition of what counts as legitimate music knowledge, which intimidates children who lack the
appropriate cultural capital while allowing teachers to ignore much of the wealth of music that
exists in the world’ (Benedict et al. 2015, p. xii), in what can be understood as a direct echo
down the years of Small’s thesis in that first volume, Music, Society, Education.
The fact is that despite decades of attempts in many countries to turn music curricula to-
wards a more creatively based and inclusive pedagogy, and its broadening at all levels to include
jazz, vernacular, folk, and ‘world’ musics throughout Western-based music educational models,
this discourse of the musical superiority and virtuous moral purpose of Western classical music is
absolutely alive and well today, explicit, and growing across the globe. The intrinsically political
nature of this discourse is caught nicely in Wilfrid Mellers’ acerbic and still relevant analysis
from his review of Small’s Music of the Common Tongue (1987):
the aesthetic traditions which Europe built up over many centuries … end[ed] up,
musically speaking, with a consumer society wherein concert hall and symphony,
masterminded by producer, composer and conductor, on principles exactly analogous
to a factory, offered … little or no creative participation in the event. Our culture has
become … a self-regarding hermeticism that may be interpreted, in narrowly political
terms, as an ossification contrived by a threatened if not wilfully malign Establishment.
(Mellers 1988, p. 19)
This music retains its place as the heritage of society and the repository of its values, and its
preservation trumps decisively the creative, untidy, unpredictable and difficult-to-assess musical
experimenting – the ‘messing about’ with raw musical materials – that is, music education as the
making and doing of music espoused so ardently by Small.
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M. Haak-Schulenburg and Felicity Laurence
Small devoted his final two chapters in Music, Society, Education to two intricate discussions:
‘Children as Consumers’ (Small 1996, pp. 182–205), and ‘Children as Artists’ (pp. 206–229).
His launching point here was this:
The point at which the twin concepts, the producer-consumer relationship and
knowledge as essentially outside of and independent of the knower, come together
most significantly is in the field of education, or rather […] in schooling … [with]
packaged knowledge which the pupil is expected to consume but which it is not
expected he can create for himself. (p. 182)
He argued that this model of knowledge restricts artistic experience and exploration, privileging
over these an often-irrelevant quest for virtuosity, and in the end doing ‘violence to the facts of
both art and learning’ (Small 1996, p. 201).
Small points out the attendant language of ‘production’, the products here being the talented
young musician and the music itself, reified, and reproduced with as much technical proficiency
as possible. Where the ‘good enough’ enter the echelons of those who will preserve these
masterpieces of the Western canon, we may argue that they are, albeit inadvertently, serving the
ends of certain socially dominant groups in maintaining their own hegemony in that society. The
frequent accompanying effect of the apportioning of the resources thus required is that far fewer
are given for nurturing the musicality of all (the other) children – this now a pivotal critique
within the quest for socially just music education, whose bottom line is ‘a more equitable and just
distribution of educational resources according to students’ needs’ (Benedict et al. 2015, p. xii).
At this point, we would note the myriad examples of the quest to find ways to include the
Western canon that might disrupt its structural inequity. The now-global El Sistema project and
derivative or similar programmes seek to bring some of those children normally out of reach of
Western classical music into it – generally building upon the ‘(this) music makes you a better
person’ narrative and framing such work as individually transformative and socially just. But it is
a mammoth task indeed to reimagine and transform both the role and inherently hierarchical
structures of Western classical music: see Baker’s intricate unpicking of El Sistema (Baker 2014),
lauded and savaged in turn (for a sense of what seems to be at stake here, see Baker 2015).
Small’s differentiation between children-as-artists and children-as-consumers points in turn
to the questions of what in fact counts as an artist, and therefore, as ‘art’, and here, we invoke
Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández’s agreeably provocative essay in which he tackles not only re-
ceived notions of art’s assumed intrinsic value for individuals’ own inner lives and for society at
large (the ‘art makes you a better person’ mantra mentioned above), but also the equally fer-
vently proclaimed instrumental function of art (and the arts) to facilitate achievement beyond
the artistic learning itself (Gaztambide-Fernández 2013). Both of these assumed functions of
‘the arts’ are, as he points out, continually invoked in the ongoing process of justification for
their inclusion in educational curriculum. As he comments:
This ability to demonstrate what the arts do – whether it is to improve achievement or

to make us better human beings – has become the holy grail of arts advocacy.
(Gaztambide-Fernández 2013, p. 213)
He continues with the following reflection:
Yet, as advocates continue to narrowly tailor arguments in terms of effects, we have

woven a straitjacket that has impaired our ability to mobilize alternative ways of
332
Art-music-pedagogy
conceptualizing what we might mean by “the arts” and what role that the practices
associated with the term might play in education.
Gaztambide-Fernández is thus holding up to scrutiny the ubiquitous and prevalent narrative that the
arts actually do something – the view he designates as ‘the rhetoric of effects’ (2013, p. 213), which
holds that whether they ‘refine, cultivate, transform, enhance, impact or even teach, it is what the arts do that
matters’ (original italics). This he rejects, with a critique of the tendency in this discourse to construe
the arts as ‘things in themselves’ (p. 214, original italics), positing instead that we need to distinguish
between ‘on the one hand, particular conceptions or discourses of the arts and, on the other hand,
those practices, processes, and products involving symbolic creativity, some of which are sometimes
associated – often in ways which are contested – with the concept of the arts’. He suggests that:
rather than a thing or substance, the concept of the arts operates as a discursive construct
through which particular kinds of cultural practices are defined in ways that reflect and
reproduce the larger social and cultural context.
(Gaztambide-Fernández 2013, p. 215, original italics)
In such a discursive approach, he argues, the question of which cultural practices count as art
becomes subject to ‘notions of culture and cultural change’ (Gaztambide-Fernández 2013) in
complex processes which are often sites of debate and complication: and, crucially, who actually
takes part in this discourse is ultimately an issue of who holds power:
While it is true that anyone can make claims about what (or when or how or for
whom) the arts are, not everyone is socially or institutionally positioned to make such
claims, and certainly not everyone can mobilize institutional resources (e.g., money,
legitimacy, authority) on behalf of some activity or set of practices someone may or
may not call ‘the arts’. To be in such a position always implies power - not always
economic but most certainly always cultural and in what Bourdieu (1993) calls a
“homology,” or a corresponding position to the field of power.
With a gauntlet thrown down that ‘the rhetoric of effects is irrelevant at best and oppressive at
worst’, Gaztambide-Fernández suggests instead a view of the arts ‘as forms of cultural practice
involving symbolic creativity’ and an accompanying ‘rhetoric of cultural production’
(Gaztambide-Fernández 2013, p. 216), which dismantles the reification of art and the notion
that it is ‘doing something to people’ (Gaztambide-Fernández 2013, p. 226) and focusses instead
upon what people do themselves in the creative symbolic work he construes as artistic process.
Gaztambide-Fernández’s critique can be read as taking into new pastures many of Small’s
own insights, and as echoing Small’s concern of the ultimately exclusive nature of a music
education based around the idea of music as a thing, and his insistence on doing, rather than
being done to. The issues of power in prevailing views of what art is and does, illuminated in
Gaztambide-Fernández’s analysis, and his suggestion that ‘mainstream discourses of the arts …
are used by particular people and for particular purposes in ways that often sustain a particular
social hierarchy’ (Gaztambide-Fernández 2013, p. 222), join Small’s weave of ideas in un-
derpinning and also making sense of the following accounts from the titular ‘cauldron’.
With this composite theoretical framework in mind, we turn now to look within an area of
political conflict where cultural hegemony is being contested and redefined as one group seeks
333
to assert superiority over the other. This is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and within that
context, there is one particularly visible site of music educational activity that is commonly
perceived to have a certain political aim, but which may well be serving quite another –
namely, the Barenboim-Said Music Centre.
In 2001, the now-iconic West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (W-EDO), founded in 1999 by
Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim, was rehearsing in a summer programme in Chicago. The
two founders became aware of the extent of the disparity between the opportunities for the
young Arab musicians in this work and the reality of the lack of professional music training
available to them once they returned home to their countries of origin, including the West
Bank. This realisation became the impetus for the establishing in 2006 of a music school in
Ramallah (in the occupied Palestinian Territories), designated ‘The Barenboim-Said Music
Centre’.3 Children and young people are offered Western instrumental lessons, music theory,
choir, and orchestral projects. The Centre also runs several ‘outreach’ projects in Ramallah
schools and in the village Beit Reema. The Centre is ambitious in its self-description, proposing
as its vision ‘to offer classical music education of the highest standard through a program taught
by professional teachers, well-designed curriculum and a variety of well-organized activities.’
(Barenboim-Said Foundation 2018a)
The Barenboim-Said Foundation was originally set up, and remains located, in Spain, de-
signated there as ‘Fundación Barenboim-Said’. This was the initial locus of the W-EDO, which
was funded by the Andalucía regional government. The Palestinian Music Centre project was
first developed by this Foundation; in 2012, it was additionally registered in Palestine as a local
Barenboim-Said Foundation, but continues to act in close collaboration with its mother in-
stitution in Andalucía. In 2008, the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung established itself in Berlin as the
umbrella organisation for the W-EDO, the Music Centre in Ramallah and the Barenboim
Academy in Berlin (opened 2015). There is also an American branch of the Barenboim-Said
Foundation (https://barenboimsaidusa.org/).
The use of the term ‘music’ appears differently on the website of the Spanish Barenboim-
Said Foundation (2017) from that of the Palestinian Foundation. On the latter, reflecting the
entire narrative of the raison d’etre of the Centre and how this appears throughout the website,
‘Western classical music’ and ‘music’ are used interchangeably:
Our mission is to teach music and expose the community to Western classical music.
Musical knowledge is crucial to education in general and culture in particular. Music
appreciation broadens people’s perspective and strengthens the community.
(Barenboim-Said Foundation 2018b)
The Spanish website, as with the other Western-based Foundation websites, generally does not
specify which kind of music is meant; however, in all allusions to the Music Centre project, it is
straightforward enough to infer the term ‘music’ as designating ‘Western classical music’. This
setting as norm of one particular genre of music as ‘music’ has implications. Just as the ‘male-as-
norm’ (Saul and Diaz-Leon 2017) posits that the regular, normal case is one involving maleness,
so ‘classical-music-as-norm’ makes ‘normal’ not only the style but also its embedded values and
behavioural codes; it follows then that all other styles and genres, and their values and codes, are
non-normative, and by implication, inferior. Harnessing the male-as-norm discourse to this
argument can reveal how far-reaching and deep-seated this kind of designation is in establishing
hierarchies while disappearing from view.
This poses questions of hegemony, as Matthews (2015, p. 243) argues:
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Art-music-pedagogy
In privileging Eurocentric music, educators and scholars either assimilate other musical
traditions as subordinate forms of the dominant tradition or denigrate them outright.
When this happens, music education becomes a vehicle for Anglo-European cultural
hegemony and musical dominance.
It is through this hidden synonymity – of ‘music’ and ‘Western classical music’ – that the claim
of (Western) music as ‘universal language’ becomes possible without a bigger hiccup, as ex-
emplified in the stated ‘principles and aims’ of the Daniel Barenboim Foundation:
The Daniel Barenboim Foundation supports transcultural dialogue through musical

education and concerts. The foundation strives to overcome frontiers and to con-
tribute to important reforms and renewals. In this effort, music plays a key role: both
as a universal language that can help to encourage mutual acceptance between people
of profoundly different backgrounds and as an intuitive means of communication that
has a major role to play in the prevention and reconciliation of conflicts.
(Daniel Barenboim Stiftung 2018)
If we take for ‘music’, ‘Western classical music’ – which is how it is meant – then we see how
normative and hegemonic this claim of its role is. As ethnomusicology has argued, music might
be a universal phenomenon but certainly is not a universal language. Its reception and un-
derstanding relies on such factors as cultural context, tastes, and listening habits. As Deborah
Bradley (2015, p. 196) states:
[I]n order for music to communicate (as language), both performers and listeners need
at least a basic understanding of cultural context. … Those who accept the myth of
music’s universality often fail to acknowledge that the choice of what music cannot be
separated from the issue of whose music to include in the curriculum.
Implicated in this claim of universality is the necessity of keeping Western classical music at the
front of the watering hole when it comes to the allocation of resources and retaining its societal
position and status. Daniel Barenboim (2006) again:
[M]usic, classical music as we know it, European Classical music that we have today,
will not survive unless we make a radical effort to change our attitude to it and unless
we take it away from a specialised niche that it has become, unrelated to the rest of the
world, and make it something that is essential to our lives.
Ironically or paradoxically it’s easier to start something like this in a society like
Ramallah, rather than in Berlin, or London or New York. Classical music is now in in
Ramallah. … It has become very attractive. I hope it will give the children an interest
in music, and that they will use this later in the rest of the world to make people, and
governments, aware of the necessity to have a music education.
(Barenboim 2004)
It is informative to compare the rhetoric of the Palestinian website with that appearing on the
other websites. The Spanish Barenboim-Said Foundation and the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung
websites delineate an explicit agenda that foregrounds the political arena and proposes music as a
335
positive force in resolving conflict and processes of reconciliation. The Palestinian website
(see the mission statement above) eschews any such suggestion, focussing firmly instead on the
value of (this kind) of music to education and to culture. Here, the emphasis is on excellence,
achievement, high standards and competition within and through classical music.
We may elucidate at this point that the original affiliation of the W-EDO with the Music Centre
has led to grave political tensions in Ramallah. For many people in Palestine, the Centre’s affiliation
with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conflicts with the boycott campaigns, now strongly backed
in Palestine, against Israel’s perceived oppression (the Palestinian Boycott movement (PACBI) and
the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS)). It has become impossible to have or
state goals such as dialogue and reconciliation, when peace is so evidently not on the table. Indeed,
within Ramallah there has been sustained criticism of the Centre, and of Daniel Barenboim himself.
As Amira Hass has reported, the ‘very existence of the Barenboim-Said Foundation’ is contested,
and its ‘attempt to give a normal image to a very abnormal, colonial situation’ (Hass 2009).
Interviews conducted with teachers at the Centre in 2014 by this author (MH-S), and her ongoing
research into this area, confirm the enduring presence of these tensions, and provide some context
for the carefully ‘apolitical’ Palestinian presentation of the Foundation’s aims. Music’s positive effects
on individuals and communities is seen to be achieved through the key notion of ‘excellence’.
The Barenboim-Said Foundation Ramallah promotes a comprehensive music edu-

cation program and encourages performances all over Palestine. We offer innovative
teaching techniques and master classes that accommodate different learning needs,
ages, and backgrounds. Excellence is achieved through repetition, commitment, and
hard work. Dedicated trained teachers involve parents, staff, and the community at
large to help achieve excellence. This method of teaching encourages self-expression,
improves communication and leadership skills, and teaches discipline and active lis-
tening as well.
(Barenboim-Said Foundation 2018c)
Concepts such as ‘talent’ and ‘artistic skills’ play a major role in the Centre. There is an elaborate
annual music competition for all of the young musicians, as well as the concert series ‘Young
Talents’, to which the designated ‘talented’ students are invited. From 2015, there has also been
a defined proficiency profile, with an annual examination of specific repertoire, which qualifies
students for the next level. Those judged to be most able are encouraged to apply for pro-
fessional European music training, at institutions such as the Barenboim Academy in Berlin or
the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.4
So far, so more-or-less the same as any other Western music conservatory or specialist
school, where this narrative of ‘talent’ will always prevail and frame practice therein. Its in-
herent exclusiveness, so abhorred by Small, is made explicit in Gaztambide-Fernández’s (2013,
p. 223) noting of:
how the concept of the arts is mobilized to justify exclusion through notions of talent
and artistic ability that typically ignore or downplay the role of social context in
determining who is included and, by extension, excluded.
In a further comment on the reality of social context, Gaztambide-Fernández (2013) continues:
The social and economic context has a direct impact on how both students and
336
Art-music-pedagogy
teachers imagine certain kinds of artistic futures and the opportunities available for
students for pursuing such work.
In 2014, demographic data were collected which supported this starkly enough: of the 61
instrumental students then at the Centre, 60 attended a private school.5 This was no coin-
cidence: interviews with the Centre’s administration revealed that the information about its
programme was (at least at that time, and for complex socio-political reasons) disseminated only
in private schools. In most families, both parents were working as doctors, lawyers, businessmen
and women, teachers, engineers, bank employees. Most were fluent in English. Preceding
talent, then, the students’ socioeconomic background is critical to their participation in the
Centre. The interest in music lessons is high with these families: they regard it as an asset to the
general education of their children.
The Barenboim-Said Foundation calls on humanistic tradition in a central stated objective to
‘promote formative activity in the field of music, always pursuing the objective of an integral
humanistic education’ (Barenboim-Said Foundation 2017). The underlying assumption that
‘music’ (Western classical music in our case) is inherently ‘good’ is implicitly disputed in
Gaztambide-Fernandez’s (2013, p. 221) claim that in fact this discourse:
hides far more than it reveals by concealing its function as an argument that reanimates
a particular conception of what it means to be a ‘good’ and ‘moral’ human being.
Indeed, it is precisely the aim of civilizing Others into the likeness of European
conceptions of the human that is implied in the idea that the ‘greatest of human
creations’ includes something called the arts.
Daniel Barenboim, in an unwitting illustration of Gaztambide-Fernández’s contention above,

puts it thus:
Classical music is not something that one associates with the Palestinians, with the
Arabs in general. You give it to them with the understanding it can enrich their lives
and get creativity out of it.
(Barenboim 2004)
thus, from his position as one of the high priests of Western classical music, extolling both this
music itself, and its assumed effect in improving Palestinian lives via this Eurocentric self-
elevation. An accompanying image is constructed for external consumption – this, of the
project’s contribution to peace and international understanding. Barenboim again:
An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in
music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an
hour away from fundamentalism. It suddenly has another dimension.
(Barenboim 2004)
A foray into the Palestinian website (Barenboim-Said Foundation 2020) rewards the viewer
with a collection of compelling photographs of children playing their musical instruments. The
message is implicit: this (humanising) musicking provides an alternative for these children to
participating in the conflict ‘on the street’. Having personally experienced the situation in the
West Bank for more than 3 years, this author (MH-S) can attest to the truth of frequent violent
337
clashes at checkpoints, often involving children and adolescents who throw stones and in turn
are often injured. But those children mostly come from refugee camps, have poor education
and live in poverty – it is not they who are likely to be found in the instrumental lessons of the
Barenboim-Said Foundation. They can be found instead in our second snapshot of another
kind of musicking with children – just a stone’s throw away.
Musicians without Borders (MwB) was founded in 1999 in the Netherlands following the
violent events of the Balkan war, in which the Dutch army unit present at the massacre of
Srebrenica had been deeply implicated. MwB began its intended reconciliatory musical work
with music projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, expanding later
into other areas of recent or ongoing conflict including Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and
Palestine.6
MwB’s work in Palestine offers an example of how Western ‘outsiders’ have set out to
develop a project ‘rooted’ in the local community, taking its every initiative from the needs and
stated wishes of that community. There is no musical curriculum, but instead a commitment to
sharing musical skills and practice, drawing always from the existing musical experience of those
whose communities they are entering, thus eschewing any ‘deficit’ model of cultural agency.
While the initial phase involves the input of music educators – designated as ‘trainers’ – the
intention is explicitly, and quickly, to help people from within each community to become
themselves music trainers, who will then be the ‘engine’ of the project, and instrumental in
sustaining it.
Three MwB trainers arrived from Holland in 2006 to investigate the existing music edu-
cational scene, and what might be needed and helpful, and to find a person based locally to
manage the project. Their idea was to give a week of workshop-leader training and see what
happened from there. The genesis of this music educational work, and its underpinning ra-
tionale, stated agenda, procedures, and practice, were thus radically different to those pertaining
to the work of the Ramallah Centre.
Fabienne van Eck, a musician already living and working in Jerusalem, became the project
manager who would oversee and develop this work. Here is Fabienne’s own retrospective
description (from an interview with Marion Haak-Schulenburg, January 11, 2014) of how
things proceeded in the initial quest to invite people already working with children in the
refugee camps to learn basic, accessible and inclusive musical activities, using clapping, body
percussion or sticks for rhythmic action, voice, and movement in songs, dances, or games:
I didn’t know anyone yet in this area. We went to the three refugee camps in
Bethlehem to the biggest centres. We asked them, can you send us some kids, some
trainees?
But – already a disruption to plans, such as these were – the centres chose not to send what
might have been considered to be their most ‘suitable’ applicants for a workshop-leader training
(social workers, teachers, musicians …), but instead selected a number of young people in their
teens regarded by their community as most able to profit from the musical activities themselves,
and the help these might offer them in facing the ongoing challenges in lives so grievously
constrained. Fabienne again:
Anyhow, we gave them the training for one week and then on the last day, we didn’t
know how to continue, it was like a pilot program, we just did the training, and then
the group … from the three different refugee camps, they said OK … they would do
something with the kids – and they said: ‘yes, we make a group of kids and we’re going
338
Art-music-pedagogy
to teach them every week’. So suddenly there was this idea of giving workshops in
three different camps by the trainees, supervised by me.
The project developed from there, Fabienne sharing the leading of the workshops with the
children in the camps.
Several months later, the original trainers returned, seeking again an adult group whose
work involved children already, with the hope that these new trainees would be able im-
mediately to put their new skills to work with those children. But the first group, those young
people who received the first training, were now deeply engaged in the project. It transpired
that they had for a long time been practising Rap for themselves, and now they asked if it might
work to use Rap in the workshops with the children: ‘Of course, why not?’. This was the
beginning of what gradually expanded into a successful rap program that, over time, widely
extended its reach, gave workshops to children from all over the region and in due course, was
able to build its own recording studio.
We can see here a narrative of community-instigated musicking, to which the trainers and
leaders of MwB offered their help in relevant ways, but which they did not dictate. Later
training included a special education teacher who was deaf. As a result of her participation, an
entire programme was developed in the area of special education, developing tools for deaf
trainees to use musical activities in their classrooms or other environments. The communities
involved asked for samba workshops, so that they might use samba in nonviolent direct actions,
demonstrations, sit-ins; and so MwB responded once more, organising a training in this musical
form. Throughout, there has been the explicit understanding that the program is accessible for
all participants and that participation is voluntary. Fabienne:
The whole project in Palestine evolved very naturally. … all projects were requested
by the community.
Other organizations began to notice the project, and requested training for themselves. Among
these were the Palestinian Union for Social Workers and Psychologists, various cultural and
music centres, organizations working with drug addicts, and a hospital for psychiatric patients.
The Palestinian Ministry of Education approached MwB requesting training for kindergarten
and school teachers, itself a significant achievement: cultural and political institutions in
Palestine tend to take a cautious line towards Western-based cultural projects, as we have seen.
The willingness to start off without any predetermined path might appear to a potential
donor as a ‘lack of concept’; but it was this very openness that allowed for the adaptation to the
real circumstances on what was for the first MwB team profoundly unfamiliar ground, and for
the pivotally important inclusion of the ideas of the local participants. It is they who now ‘own’
the project and who continue its development.
It is a highly pragmatic approach, unconcerned with virtuosity on a musical instrument, but,
rather, committed to communal musical action which might serve to empower the participants,
and to further their individual musicality. There is an unusual allowing of uncertainty, a ‘finding
the path while it is walked’ – that unpredictability we must embrace in rejecting the ‘tele-
ological view of education’ (Gaztambide-Fernández 2013, p. 215) so explicit in the Centre’s
agenda as described above.
This approach recalls, too, Small’s privileging of children’s exploration of musical experi-
ence; in this musicking, children get to explore and play – doing music, as Small puts it, ‘in the
present tense’ (Small 1996, p. 216). Most of the adults who have learned to music with the
children are not ‘musicians’ in any professional sense; now they have been given a means of
339
bringing music into their daily work with children. This represents a democratising of musical
experience – what Small (1996, p. 214) pinpoints thus:
Music is too important to be left to the musicians, and in recognizing this fact we strike a
blow at the experts' domination, not only of our music but also of our very lives.
But it is here that we come hard up against the other side of the coin. Fabienne and her Palestinian
colleagues have worked with thousands of children in a place of constant political violence. They
enrich those children’s lives, make them bearable for a time, restore moments of childhood and
develop that human right of musicking in a context of nonviolence. And yet, most funders spurn a
project with no stipulated outcome; no precise plans other than contributing to the community
through accessible musicking; and that does not match up with predominant mores of the pursuit
of virtuosity and, in this specific context, the re-instigating of the Western musical model now
being used to define notions of Palestinian civility, even Palestinian identity (albeit tied here to a
narrative of resistance, as suggested in a recent study of musicking in a ‘Palestinian Music
Academy’ (Frierson-Campbell and Park 2016).7 The MwB project, and also the many other often
small music educational projects taking place across the West Bank, are significantly disadvantaged
in terms of attracting resources – doubly so in fact, as they cannot interest donors looking for
tangible ‘artistic’ results, but miss out again, as Fabienne explains, when:
the human right’s foundations, they say, yeah, but you’re doing culture [and so we
don’t lie within their funding criteria either]
Our focus here has been the complex politicising of music educational work in a specific and
troubling geopolitical context. The Barenboim project claims in one place to serve both in-
trinsic and instrumental functions of musical art, in another, the loftier goals of peace and
reconciliation. Both sets of goals serve a political agenda, inasmuch as they maintain, through
the Centre’s activities, the hegemony of that way of musicking that constitutes Western classical
music. Music educational and social practices are embraced that, while bringing undoubted
pleasure and enrichment to those children accepted into the programmes, are at core exclusive,
and also tend to conserve the values that permit such exclusion, just as wherever else the
Western canon is predominant. What throws this instance into such sharp relief is its location
and its function within the current intractable conflict occurring there, and the attendant and
site-specific complexities. These, however, are mitigated for those involved by this project’s
unique allure, which guarantees it a constant and generous source of donations. Hegemonic
musicking will tend to draw to itself resources, and prestige, which engenders more of both.
Institutions which further the practice of Western art music may and frequently do seek to share
those resources. But the entire discourse as outlined here militates against any fundamental
paradigm shift, and children across the West Bank must be content with the intermittent
musical moments Fabienne and her colleagues are able to bring.
1. Christopher Small explicitly claims the causal link implied in the title of his first book Music
Society Education – that is, that any change in one of these three both requires, and will
cause, change in the other two. What resonances with this can you find in your own
experiences of music education – as student or as teacher?
340
Art-music-pedagogy
2. How might Gaztambide-Fernández’s alternative view of artistic process be brought into

school curricula to effect a change in approach to students’ musical education that honours
their own cultural agency but does not preclude the inclusion of Western art music in
Small’s ‘marvellous terrain of music’ (cited above)?
Notes
1 We take here the notion of agency as ‘the ability to act and make decisions autonomously’ - as
Paul Willis (1978, p. 14) puts it. Acknowledging that this ability is situated within and limited by a
complex framework of societal structures, we call on this term in the following mainly to point up the
extant patterns of musical and cultural knowledge and practice within a culture of which assumptions
may be (and have been) made (as we show) that these are lacking.
2 Christopher Small is, of course, the coiner and exponent of the famous (and infamous) concept of
‘musicking’, which announced an unprecedented sociological perspective in its locating of human
relationship at the heart of the meaning of the activity of musicking, and its shifting of attention from
music-as-object to music-as-action. In this discussion, we are going back to a much earlier Smallian
disruption of received wisdom within music philosophical tradition.
3 The Barenboim-Said Music Centre is not to be conflated with the Edward Said National Conservatory
of Music. There was some collaboration between this conservatory and the Barenboim-Said
Foundation from 2003 until 2005, but they decided to pursue separate paths thereafter.
4 It is impossible for political reasons for the W-EDO to be located in the West Bank, or indeed in Israel
or any of the Arab countries from which the musicians come.
5 These data were collected by MH-S in 2014.
6 MwB’s motto is ‘War divides, music connects’; their goal, to use ‘the power of music to bridge divides,
connect communities, and heal the wounds of war’.
7 Their pseudonym in fact, for the Edward Said Conservatory of Music, from whom the Centre parted
company, see note 3 above.
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24
MUSIC EDUCATION,
GENDERFICATION, AND
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE
Introduction
This chapter explores patterns and ramifications of gendered power within Norwegian music
academia. Unequal or imbalanced distribution of academic resources on the basis of gender,
sexuality, age, ability, ethnicity, or social class is a democratic problem, and should be re-
cognised and treated as structural challenges and not primarily classified as issues that must be
resolved on an individual basis. This also applies for higher music education and research. Our
point of departure is that higher music education is a social field where gender relations and
hierarchies are produced and reproduced in particular ways. In general, there has been an equal
gender distribution between female and male students in higher music education in Norway for
decades, and there are more female staff members now than ever before in music academia
(Borgen et al. 2010). However, the number of female professors in this field does not reflect this
development, and compared to other disciplines within the country’s higher education the
proportion of females to males is still relatively low (Committee for Gender Balance and
Diversity in Research 2016).
The theoretical lenses provided by Pierre Bourdieu’s (2001) work on masculine domination
can form a general basis for our discussions about how these structures are established and
maintained in the specific educational field. According to Bourdieu, this kind of domination is
so embedded in our daily lives and our unreflected, almost unconscious, social practices that we
hardly perceive it. Rather, it only confirms our expectations. We therefore need some kind of
reflection to be able to question it. In his early years as an anthropologist, Bourdieu (1990) used
the Kabyle house as a metaphor for the structural dominance exercised by men over women in
the Algerian Berber society he studied. This served as a tool for understanding the hidden
structures that regulate gender relations, both in the Kabylian village communities of the 1950s
and in the modern world, as he later transferred these analyses to the modern Western society,
now referring to the homology between social, spatial, and mental structures as the inter-
changeable concepts of symbolic power and symbolic violence. We will return to these con-
cepts a little later, but as a first suggestion one can explain symbolic power as the implicit ways
of cultural and social domination that are woven into everyday social habits and practices, while
symbolic violence means that those who are dominated tend to see themselves through the eyes
of those who dominate, thus contributing to their own oppression.
343
In line with this, we will examine what we refer to as the genderfication of popular music in
Norwegian music academia in terms of symbolic power and violence (Nielsen, 2021). Against
the backdrop of the long-lasting, yet still ongoing academisation of popular music in music
education and research, which has been described metaphorically as musical gentrification by
Dyndahl et al. (2014, 2017; see also Dyndahl’s chapter 11 in this volume), the aim is to discuss
how processes where mainly men have seized the opportunity or been encouraged to write
academic theses have limited the possible avenues for academic participation and achievement
for women. We also come back to the concepts of musical gentrification and genderfication
later in the chapter. Currently we anticipate that we will, inspired by the Kabyle house me-
taphor, ask questions about which ‘rooms’ are available for women in the music academia
‘household’, which positions have been kept hidden in the dark interior of the house and which
have been brought out into the light at the front.
Regarding the chapter structure, in the following we will give a brief introduction to
Bourdieu’s gender perspective in the Kabyle house and discuss the applicability of using this
perspective to analyse the positioning of female academics in higher music education. Then,
building on a previous survey of all master’s and PhD theses approved within Norwegian music
academia from 1912 through 2012, we will move on to elaborate on gender relations viewed as
practiced symbolic violence visible in our empirical study of female academics’ positioning in
relation to the above rooms in music education, before we end by summarising our findings
and considerations.
The Kabyle household and its naturalised forms of power

In English, Bourdieu’s essay on the Kabyle house has the additional description ‘or the world
reversed’. This indicates that the house reflects the world; in concrete terms, the village, and in
the symbolic sense, the world order: ‘The house is a world within a world’ (1990, p. 282). The
Kabyle community is permeated by what Bourdieu elsewhere calls ‘a ‘body geography’, a
particular case of geography, or rather of cosmology’ (p. 78), in which activities, properties and
things are divided into differences between the masculine and the feminine through a system of
specific opposites, such as: high/low, hard/soft, passive/active, dry/moist, light/dark, front/
back, outside/inside, etc. Thus, the location of the house in relation to the directions of heaven,
as well as its physical configuration and functionality, has been carefully designed to counteract
the given social order. This means that the Kabyle house has a rigid organisation of its
household according to defined gender roles and structures. On an overall level, it may look
like the place of men and women in society and in the household is symmetrically organised in
two universes that balance each other in a complementary way. However, as Bourdieu (1990,
pp. 282–283) points out:
These two symmetrical and opposite spaces are not interchangeable but hierarchized.
The orientation of the house is primordially defined from outside, from the standpoint
of men and, as it were, by men and for men, as the place men come out of. … The
house is a world within a world, but one that always remains subordinate, because,
even when it displays all the properties and relationships that define the archetypal
world, it remains an inverted reflexion, a world in reverse. ‘Man is the lamp of the
outside, woman the lamp of the inside.’ The apparent symmetry must not mislead us:
the lamp of day is apparently defined in relation to the lamp of night. In fact the
nocturnal light, the female male, remains subordinate to the diurnal light, the lamp of
day, that is, the light of the sun. […] The supremacy given to movement outwards, in
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Music education, genderfication and symbolic violence
which man affirms his manliness by turning his back on the house in order to face
other men, is merely a form of the categorical refusal of nature, the inevitable origin of
man’s movement away from nature.
Nature and biology, however, function as referential grounds for social conditions in a way that
makes them appear as justified in natural, biological conditions and not as social constructions of
dominance. In this way, masculine domination becomes institutionalised through naturalisation
processes that allow arbitrary socially constructed biological differences to appear as the natural basis
for the gender segregation of work and of social activities in general. The domination is justified in
that it is inscribed in the biological nature, which itself is a naturalised social construction.
In the extension of this, the fact that the dominance is inscribed in the bodies is an example
of what Bourdieu (1977) denotes as symbolic power or symbolic violence. As mentioned
above, this is to be understood as power relationships in which those dominated are actively
contributing to their own domination through the unrecognised acceptance of the constraints
imposed by the naturalised exercise of power. In Bourdieu’s understanding of power and not
least in his understanding of gender domination, symbolic violence becomes a central point,
since power is not seen as being practiced in direct institutional forms of discrimination, but as
subtle imprints of the power relations in individuals’ bodies through dispositions. Also in
Masculine Domination, Bourdieu (2001) interprets symbolic violence as an essential part of
masculine domination, but, in addition, he describes how – in the traditional masculine uni-
verse – women are excluded from men’s competitive chores or social ‘games’, and thereby from
essential parts of the social world. Moreover, he provides a theoretical analysis of how we are
‘doing gender’, or, in other words, how society’s gendered domination is inscribed in the
compound dispositions of habitus, at the same time as these dispositions contribute to gendering
both individuals and society in certain ways.
The applicability of Bourdieu’s understanding of gender domination

Although Bourdieu’s description and analysis of the Kabyle community may in many ways
seem distant from today’s Norwegian higher music education, we would argue that it is still
possible to use his understanding to examine our research object. In this connection, a number
of sociologists and feminist theorists have emphasised the applicability of Bourdieu’s gender
perspective in a modern Western society. In this section, we will therefore discuss under which
assumptions some of them find the gender perspective viable and highlight what concepts they
consider to be particularly useful as analytical tools.
Krais (2006, p. 119) points out that ‘one of modern sociology’s most important voices of
social critique and theoretical innovation has been left largely on the margins of the feminist
debate: the voice of Pierre Bourdieu’. She further argues for the necessity of using Bourdieu’s
core concepts ‘practice, habitus and the symbolic order’ as analytical tools to study gender ‘as a
relation of domination’ in order to ‘integrate gender as a central category’ (Krais 2006, pp.
119–120). Especially, she underlines that the concept of habitus ‘overcomes the discipline’s
theoretical barriers to the integration of the category of gender on a central point: the concept
of the social agent’ (Krais 2006, p. 120). Thus, Krais (2006, p. 124) claims that:
The concept of the habitus forms the core of Bourdieu’s analysis of masculine dom-
ination. Through the habitus, the gender classification is integrated into individual ac-
tion, forms of social practice, and worldviews. But it is also above all through the habitus
the gender classification, like every other social institution is kept alive.
345
Bourdieu’s importance is also emphasized by Bloch (1999, p. 14) in her analysis of gender issues in
Danish academia. She argues that his social theory facilitates detecting how the players’ gendered
positionings are played out in a social game characterised by the multiple interactions between
certain positions and dispositions in a particular social practice or field. Bloch (1999, p. 2, our
translation) especially brings to the fore how a Bourdieusian lens provides the opportunity to
explore gender relations in academia as a persistent social and symbolic dominance relationship
that stems ‘from an interplay between structural, organisational, cultural and historical conditions’.
Studying intersections of gender and class in diverse occupations, Huppatz (2012) discusses
how gender fits into Bourdieu’s analysis of class. Starting from Bourdieu’s acknowledgement of
the intimate connection between class and gender where class is always gendered, Huppatz
(2012, pp. 17–18) still finds that:
gender is largely under-theorised in Bourdieu’s work. It seems that although his theorising
of class was comprehensive and groundbreaking, Bourdieu was ‘gender blind’; in most of
his writings class is the primary organising structure in social space. (italics in original)
However, Huppatz argues that in Masculine Domination (2001) Bourdieu replicated his basic
arguments from earlier work, and – as with the class system – focused on domination and the
use of symbolic violence, as noted above, in analysing gender domination and the maintenance
and reproduction of gender order. In studying intersections between class and gender, Huppatz
especially underlines the importance of Bourdieu’s assertions on the possibilities of change and
resistance to the gendered order:
there is always room for a cognitive struggle over the meaning of the things of the world
and in particular of sexual realities. The partial indeterminacy of certain objects au-
thorizes antagonistic interpretations, offering the dominated a possibility of resistance
to the effect of symbolic imposition.
(Bourdieu 2001, pp. 13–14, italics in original)
In line with this, several authors discuss women’s complicity with masculine domination and
the naturalisation of masculine domination in relation to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (see
Fowler 2003; McNay 1999). Taking as a point of departure that this concept ‘serves as a
corrective to sociologically naïve claims about the transformation of social and sexual identities’
(McNay 1999, p. 106), McNay argues that the potential and opportunities for change through
self-reflexivity lies in the shifting nature of the social practice itself. Notably, McNay points out
how the effects of habitus may be diminished when individuals move across distinct fields,
which ‘arises from the increasingly differentiated nature of modern society’ (p. 106). Aarseth
et al. (2016, p. 148), on the other hand, emphasise that this displacement may result in ‘conflicts
in the habitus’ that ‘either impede or motivate desires for change’. As such, they point to the
‘embeddedness of agency’, as Lovell (2000, p. 17) coins it, in different social practices.
From the perspective of feminist theory, Moi (1991) and others (e.g. Lovell 2000) argue for
the applicability of Bourdieu’s gender perspective in analysing gender as socially constructed:
Many feminists claim that gender is socially constructed. It is not difficult to make such
a sweeping statement. The problem is to determine what specific consequences such a
claim may have. It is at this point that I find Bourdieu’s sociological theories parti-
cularly useful.
(Moi 1991, p. 1019)
346
Moi (1991) brings to the fore what she, based on Eagleton (1991), refers to as Bourdieu’s ‘mi-
crotheory of social power’. Based on this term, she argues that Bourdieu includes the most mundane
details of everyday life into sociological theory, and makes it possible for feminists to ‘link the
humdrum details of everyday life to a more general social analysis of power’ (Moi 1991, p. 1019).
Through this analysis of specific practices, Moi highlights that ‘a Bourdieuian perspective also
assumes that gender is always a socially variable entity, one which carries different amounts of
symbolic capital in different contexts’ (Moi 1991, p. 1036, italics in original).
Thus, it is precisely – as demonstrated in Bourdieu’s description of the Kabyle house – the
detailed analytical gaze on the subjective living conditions and their homology with the ob-
jective structures, that also constitutes the lens for analysing the gendered position-taking and
the positioning of the players in a particular field of the modern Western society. In using the
Kabyle house as a metaphor for the gendered classification in music academia, the role of the
‘objective’ musical gentrification (which in our study may refer to what kinds of [popular]
music genres and styles are gentrified into higher music education in the investigated period)
and the role of the gender of the ‘subjective’ gentrifiers (which in our study may refer to the
authors of the academic theses in the investigated period) constitute our analytical categories.
However, it is also important to keep in mind that ‘theoretical narratives … are themselves
embedded in social relations, no matter how relevant and applicable to their empirical referents’
(McCall 1992, p. 837).
Genderfication as symbolic violence in the higher music education household

In what follows, we will look further into gender relations, and especially the genderfication
connected to the academisation of popular music in Norwegian music academia, in terms of
symbolic violence, while also keeping an eye on other musical genres that have been acade-
mised. In doing so, we wish to demonstrate how the metaphor of the Kabyle house can make
visible the structural masculine dominance exercised by men over women in this particular
social field. Our discussion is based on statistical analyses of a corpus study and survey of 1,695
theses in music ranging from 1912 through 2012, i.e. all master’s and doctoral theses approved
within programmes of musicology, ethnomusicology, music education, music therapy, music
technology, music performance, and their respective subdivisions at universities, music aca-
demies/conservatoires and university colleges in Norway; more details on the methodological
approach are given in Dyndahl et al. (2017) and Nielsen (2021).
First, however, we will look into which rooms higher music education holds through explaining
the academic and musical gentrification that has taken place in higher education in the period in
question, by asking: what musical genres have been included as legitimate research objects and what
new academic rooms have thus been opened? Then we will discuss how these processes have
limited possible paths of academic participation and achievement for women by looking at which of
those rooms or positions have been or have gradually become available for women in the music
academia household during the relevant period. Through this we will also be able to discuss what is
structuring academic participation: which rooms have been kept in the academic shade, which
rooms have been relocated from the brightest part of the house to the darkest part (i.e. become
feminised) and which rooms (i.e. research areas) have been brought to light?
As noted above, we will first elucidate the musical gentrification that has taken place in higher
education in the current period. The concept of musical gentrification was developed in order to
examine when, how, why, and what kind of popular music has been included in Norwegian
higher education and research. Based on the abovementioned survey of all master’s theses and
doctoral dissertations approved in any academic discipline of music throughout 100 years, we
347
concluded that the gentrification of popular music in general consists of complex processes with
both inclusionary and exclusionary outcomes, by which musics, musical practices and musical
cultures of relatively lower status are made to be objects of acquisition by players who in the
academic sense hold higher or more powerful positions. Furthermore, successful musical gentrifi-
cation leads to changes in the academic systems of classification, which implies that established
hegemonies are set aside and replaced by new distinctions that are apparently disturbing the tra-
ditional balance between high and low culture. Also, the processes of academisation and in-
stitutionalisation of popular music may contribute to changing the characteristics of the musical
communities as well as the musics, practices and cultures that are subjected to gentrification (see
Dyndahl et al. 2014, 2017; as well as Dyndahl’s chapter 11 in this volume).
As Dyndahl et al. (2017) discovered, 404 theses related to several popular music styles have
been approved in Norwegian higher music education since 1974, the year when the first thesis
in popular music was submitted, and through 2012. The fact is that the academisation that has
taken place in higher music education in Norway since that time has mostly been related to
popular music (although some other genres have also been academised later, but then in smaller
numbers than within popular music). We will return to this later. However, an important
aspect of the study was to catalogue data regarding when any musical genres and research
approaches appeared in the hundred years that were examined. To obtain knowledge about the
academisation of other genres than popular music, we have now analysed the data in order to
detect all the rooms that have opened up since the first dissertation was published in 1912, with
religious music as a research area, and until 1974, when popular music entered the scene. In this
period, a notable amount of new rooms in higher music education in Norway occurred.1
If we look at developments from 1974 onwards, however, it is especially the academisation
of ever more popular music styles that dominates the picture. Notwithstanding this fact, some
other newcomer genres and research topics than popular music were also academised during
this period, a trend that lasted until 2012, when we stopped counting.2
Dyndahl et al. (2017) found that there were written theses related to a total of 21 different
(sub-)styles in popular music from 1974 through 2012. The number of dissertations on each of
these 21 styles, however, varies notably and thus also the degree of academisation (see Dyndahl
et al. 2017). Although the various popular musical styles have thus been received and accepted
differently, our previous study shows nonetheless that from 1974 and until 2012 a major ex-
pansion of what was introduced as legitimate research objects within Norwegian music aca-
demia took place. In the following we will look into whether the same period of development
have also made more spaces available for female academics in the music household, or if these
processes have limited potential paths of academic participation and achievement for women.
These aspects of gendered divisions in the music educational field may be coined as gender-
fication, which is a sociologically oriented notion associated with Bourdieu’s perspective on the
intersection of gender and social class. However, the concept was originally framed within the
field of urban studies in order to accentuate gendered strategies in urban gentrification processes
(van den Berg 2012). In the first author’s work on the gendered uptake of popular music in
academia – the genderfication of musical gentrification – genderfication is tentatively used ‘to
refer to the production of gender norms and gendered divisions within this specific social space,
which also unfolds hierarchies of “high” and “low” culture’ (Nielsen, 2021, p. 111). Hence, the
notion of genderfication may help to shed light on how the use of symbolic violence maintains
and reproduces masculine domination and a gender order within music academia.
As noted above, the role of the gender of the authors of the academic theses in the in-
vestigated period is essential to examine, and it involves several strands of analyses. In the whole
corpus of theses (N = 1,695), there is virtually a fifty-fifty balance between male- and female
348
authored theses (Dyndahl et al. 2017),3 but in 8 of the 12 musical genres and topics, there were
more male-authored theses than female-authored theses. Yet, as the first author has examined
the statistical data for each musical genre and topic, she found somewhat puzzling results re-
garding the development of available rooms for female and male academics. First and foremost,
this analysis shows that in the case of popular music seen as an overall category, male dominance
is statistically significant (X2 = 77.8, df = 44, p < .001) (Nielsen, 2021). This dominance is
reflected in Table 24.1, which shows that there are mostly male-authored theses in 15 of 21
popular music styles. Since there are relatively few theses within some of the styles, however,
there will be no basis for calculating statistically significant differences between styles.
Nielsen (2021) also found that there exists a statistically significant female dominance in the
authorship of theses related to Western classical music (X2 = 6.7, df = 2, p < .05) and theses
categorised with the themes ‘children’s musical culture’ (X2 = 14.7, df = 2, p < .05) as well as
‘pedagogical and therapeutic musical forms and uses’ (X2 = 49.9, df = 12, p < .001). Regarding
male dominance, this applies to theses categorised with the theme ‘music and media’ (X2 =
39.6, df = 12, p < .05).
However, the first author’s empirical work on how some of these academic rooms had
become available to male and female authors showed that accessibility had either ‘manifested
itself as a strong male dominance with a duration that moves throughout the entirety of the
investigated period’ (Nielsen, 2021, p. 117) – as was the case for popular music – or had evolved
through what Nielsen calls gendered shifts in authorship, meaning that she looks into ‘how
the significantly gendered topics are distributed, time-wise, throughout the investigated
period’ (Nielsen, 2021, p. 114). Nielsen tracked down that there had been such shifts in gender
dominance within the musical genre Western classical music, as well as in the research
Table 24.1 Number of female- and male-authored theses in popular music styles (cf. Dyndahl et al. 2017, p. 11)
Popular music style Female-authored Male-authored
Early jazz 0 8
Mainstream jazz 10 29
Modern/Contemporary jazz 22 52
Tin Pan Alley/Musical 5 2
Folk/Singer-songwriter 8 4
Country 2 2
Blues 1 3
Rock and roll 1 4
Rock 6 32
Hard rock/Prog rock 0 5
Punk rock 1 0
Heavy metal/Black metal 3 2
Alternative rock 9 6
Pop 10 15
Contemporary R&B 1 2
Hip-hop 1 6
Electronic dance music 2 4
Funk 3 5
World music 9 12
‘Rhythmic music’ 13 23
Traditional and cabaret songs 10 2
Miscellaneous 32 37
349
topics ‘pedagogical and therapeutic musical forms and uses’ and ‘music and media’. For ex-
ample, there was a shift from male dominance to female dominance in authorship within theses
written on Western classical music from 1984 and onwards, where ‘the number of female-
authored theses increased, while the number of male-authored theses decreased’ (Nielsen, 2021,
p. 116). She also found an equally distinct development in female dominance in authorship
from 1997 onwards, regarding the research topic ‘pedagogical and therapeutic musical forms
and uses’ (Nielsen, 2021). However, the development towards male dominance regarding
authorship in theses written on ‘music and media’ from 2000 onwards, emerges as somewhat
different since there had been a fairly equal number of male and female authored theses related
to this topic until 1999. However, as Nielsen points out, the transition to male dominance
seems to coincide with the introduction of music technology as a research area. Technology is a
traditional masculine area, and in general it seems that it is precisely the traditional given gender
stereotypes that are also reproduced in the music academia, where women take care of the ‘soft’
values while men concentrate on the ‘hard’ ones. One might of course expect this, but with this
analysis we have shown that it is indeed so.
However, it is completely in line with how the symbolic power and violence works. At the
same time it suggests how the changing status and value systems offer opportunities for some
and restricts others. Hence, the development of male dominance within authorship of theses
written on music and media may imply that this particular research topic has been brought to
the fore of music academia and remained there since. This is at least a plausible interpretation
according to Bourdieu’s idea of masculine domination in academia. He reminds that the female
and male spaces do not constitute complementary and symmetrical opposites spaces that are
interchangeable, but instead hierarchised constellations. They are defined ‘from the standpoint
of men and, as it were, by men and for men’ (Bourdieu 1990, p. 282).
However, on the other hand, academic rooms such as Western classical music and the
research topic ‘pedagogical and therapeutic musical forms and uses’ have actually been opened
and thus made available for women during the investigated period, as the gendered shifts from
male to female dominance in terms of authorship reveal. Does this mean that those research
areas have gradually faded into the dark, interior spaces, invisible to the illuminated academic
power center? In other words, does the above genderfication imply that the academic legiti-
macy of the spaces made available for female music researchers have also changed in status?
Without being able to answer this question based solely on our empirical material, we can at
least point out that educational and therapeutic approaches traditionally belong to the softer, not
to say female, sides of life. In addition, classical music has lost the indisputable dominant po-
sition it previously had both in education and research as well as in cultural policy and the
public sphere. In our previous project, we have also documented that, in the music academia
household, popular music has only occasionally and partly provided accessible rooms for female
academics due to the strong male dominance in authorship within most styles and sub-styles.
Moreover, we can refer to research that has shown that popular music has gradually been
incorporated into legitimate culture (Peterson 1992; Peterson and Simkus 1992; Peterson and
Kern 1996), or even been widely academised (Dyndahl et al. 2017). In line with this, Regev
(2013) claims that there has been an aesthetic cosmopolitanism going on, implying that pop-rock
aesthetics has become a dominant global force in contemporary music, including music edu-
cation (see Green 2002, 2008). As mentioned, all this has happened while classical music has lost
terrain as a social marker for high cultural capital. In such a context, it is interesting to note that
Moi (1991, p. 1022) argues that when certain resources are made available for women, these
resources may also have been devalued in such a way that they no longer provide female
350
academics the same legitimacy, or ‘the right to speak’, as recognised players in the field. Moi
(1991, p. 1037) also draws attention to how symbolic violence works in academic institutions:
A feminist analysis of the impact of gender on a woman’s discourse and consciousness

must also bear in mind that to be a member of a disadvantaged minority within a given
institution or field in no way guarantees that one will develop a revolutionary or
oppositional consciousness. On the contrary: ostensibly egalitarian institutions tend to
breed consent rather than opposition, particularly among the miraculés – the miraculous
exceptions. For the paradox is that members of minority groups who do succeed in
such a system are at least as likely to identify with it as the enabling cause of their own
success as to turn against its unjust distribution of symbolic capital. (italics in original)
There are many indications that this is also the case in Norwegian higher music education, at
least on a general level that provides such results as shown above. Thus, one might claim that,
metaphorically speaking, the configuration of the music academia household, has been carefully
designed to counteract the current social order. However, the nature of the data used in this
chapter does not allow us to study how symbolic violence is actually produced and reproduced
at different, individual levels. Therefore, it is important to emphasise that what appears here
must be seen as the consequences and results of symbolic violence.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have attempted to explore patterns and ramifications of gendered power
within Norwegian music academia by discussing, adapting and applying Bourdieu’s theory of
masculine domination. With reference to his Kabyle house metaphor we have asked questions
like: which rooms are available for women in the music academia household, which positions
have been kept hidden in the dark interior of the house and which have been brought out into
the light at the front? We have made use of a large corpus of empirical material we had at our
disposal to show some tendencies that have manifested themselves over a very long period of
time. Analyses of when, how, why, and what kind of musical genres and research topics have
been academised in Norwegian higher education and research, combined with an examination
of how the gender dimension has been part of this historical development, have led to the
detection of several cases of genderfication, which in this context implies that particular musical
genres and styles as well as research topics have been charged with specific forms of gender
domination. This is particularly evident in the upheaval of time-honored cultural status hier-
archies that have occurred with the gentrification of popular music in academia, where men
have obviously been in a better position to reap the rewards, that is, to accumulate cultural or
academic capital, of this situation than women.
Both notions of musical gentrification and genderfication contribute to shed light on how
gendered hierarchies are maintained, reproduced and challenged within music academia.
Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence indicates that power operates as hegemonic structures
embodied in the individual’s habitus. Therefore, those who are dominated may actively con-
tribute to this happening without seeing through the unrecognised or misrecognised structures of
hegemony and power that regulate individuals as well as society. Despite the limitations our data
have when it comes to examining the individual habitus, we believe we can find general traces of
symbolic power and violence. This kind of genderfication have resulted in the fact that far fewer
women than men become professors and hence supervisors for new generations of postgraduate
students, something that is at least as much due to structural conditions as to individual
351
assumptions, as we see it. Obviously, these structures have affected the habitus of the generations
in question in ways that have resulted in relatively traditional dispositions, genderwise. However,
it will be interesting to keep an eye on how the new generations academic players’ dispositions
and actions will be regulated by structural power and violence, that is, whether they will mainly
be experienced and interpreted as natural differences or obvious injustices. As discussed earlier,
Aarseth et al. (2016) underscore that conflicts in the habitus might either impede or motivate
desires for change, and thus either reinforce one’s agency or help to preserve the situation.
Ever since the analysis of the Kabylian house, Bourdieu was aware that symbolic violence
applies in particular to gender relations. However, to find out how both the present and the
future players’ dispositions affect the specific music academic game and how masculine dom-
ination versus feminisation of music academia exert influence on the valuation of the respective
cultural capitals in concrete ways, more in-depth qualitative research is needed – and will come.
1. Can the so-called ‘glass ceiling’ be seen as an example of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic
violence?
2. It seems that there is a certain reluctance to consider gender differences in music as a
structural concern. What could be the reason for this?
Notes
1 From the first thesis in music in 1912 and until 1974, six theses were written on religious music, five
theses on Norwegian folk music, 53 theses on Western classical music, seven theses on contemporary
music and two theses on choral music. In addition, four theses were written on ‘pedagogical and
therapeutic musical forms and uses’ and five theses on ‘music and media’.
2 From 1974 and onwards, 404 theses were written on popular music, 30 theses on wind and brass band
music, 12 theses on non-Western classical music, 39 theses on non-Western folk music, and 33 theses
on children’s musical culture.
3 827 theses (48.8%) are written by female authors and 866 theses (51.1%) are male-authored theses.
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25
READING AUDRE LORDE
Black lesbian feminist disidentifications in
canonical sociology of music education
Elizabeth Gould
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable
women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference—those of us
who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older—know that survival is
not an academic skill.
Audre Lorde (2007/1984, p. 112, emphasis in original)
Introduction
To the extent that ‘ways of living and dying matter,’ (Haraway 2008, p. 88), societies are
known – and judged – by the subjectivities (subject positions/social groups) they allow as well
as those they disallow; for Audre Lorde, the latter are those ‘who stand outside’ societal norms
of acceptability, and for whom their difference is both historical and material in all the ways that
impact exactly all the ways living and dying matter. As a profession, music education creates and
abides by cultural, which is to say musical, and social norms of acceptability that reflect those of
the society in which it is enacted; as a discursive cultural field, music education necessarily
accounts for the historicity of those subjects who are coded outside acceptability within it
(Ferguson 2005, p. 4) – those who have figured excruciatingly little in the profession’s
canonical histories and historiographies, if a bit more in its canonical sociologies. Accounting for
difference in sociological analysis, however, regardless of how it may be (intersectionally)
framed in terms of, for instance, race, gender, sexuality, class is inadequate because it obscures
interactions of difference, in addition to the liberal ideology on which canonical sociology
(Bhambra 2014) is based. Derived from European sociology as ‘an expression of “American”
pragmatic optimism,’ (Bhambra 2014, p. 483) white and Black sociology developed as two
separate traditions. While the former was founded in the 1920s at the University of Chicago,
the latter, subsequently ignored and defunded by the former, was established twenty years
earlier by W.E.B. Du Bois with his 1897 study The Philadelphia Negro (Morris 2015). As
opposed to the approach of white sociologists who, in the tradition of Auguste Comte and
Herbert Spencer, theorized based on some ‘supreme sociological key to understanding a
universal social reality’ (Morris 2015, p. 25), Du Bois’s sociological approach was based on
direct observation of human action and agency.
354
Reading Audre Lorde
In this chapter, I explicate and engage sociologist Roderick Ferguson’s (2004) ‘queer of
color critique’ that ‘disidentifies’ (Muñoz 1999) with historical materialism, ‘the science of the
history of social formations’ (Althusser 2005, p. 13, emphasis added), to examine the social
formations and relations that made Lowell Mason’s work in antebellum Boston the founding
canonical narrative of public school music education in the US, and disqualified, disallowed and
necessarily excluded African American freewoman Susan Paul’s music education work which
she undertook in the same historical moment, city, and society. Ferguson (2004, p. 85) ac-
knowledges ‘women of color feminism has the longest engagement with racialized sexuality’,
and positions queer of color critique as extending the work of (primarily) African American
lesbian feminists of the 1970s and 1980s. Audre Lorde is perhaps the best known of these
activists, cultural workers, and theorists; my analysis proceeds through and with selections of her
writings.
Queer of color analysis

Social theory is a body of knowledge and a set of institutional practices that actively
grapple with the central questions facing a group of people in a specific political,
social, and historic context. Instead of circulating exclusively as a body of
decontextualized ideas among privileged intellectuals, social theory emerges from, is
legitimated by, and reflects the concerns of actual groups of people in particular
institutional settings. This definition creates space for all types of groups to participate
in theorizing about social issues. Moreover, it suggests that differences in perspective
about social issues will reflect differences in the power of those who theorize.
(Patricia Hill Collins 1998, p. xii)
Ferguson (2004) describes queer of color analysis as ‘a heterogeneous enterprise made of

women of color, feminism, materialist analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique [that]
interrogates social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class’ (p. 149,
n1). He invokes in his analysis questions of several academic disciplines, notably sociology, and
queer theory, to underscore the productive heterogeneity of all intellectual inquiry. Taking up
Mikhail Bakhtin’s definition of canonization as ‘a process that attempts to suppress the
heterogeneity of meaning’, Ferguson argues, ‘[s]ociology [specifically, Marxism and historical
materialism], when incarnated canonically, attempts to discursively suppress an actual material
heterogeneity’ (Ferguson 2004, p. 21). This occurs through and is abetted by the hetero-
patriarchy of liberal ideology which deploys mechanisms that first normalise and then
universalise the white heterosexual patriarchal family, obfuscating how race, gender, sexuality,
and class interact in the formation of social relations and practices. Marx’s privileging class over
social formations such as race, gender, and sexuality led to his ‘imagin[ing] social relations and
agency … through heteropatriarchy and racial difference simultaneously’ (Ferguson 2004, p. 7).
Canonical sociology as historical materialism contributes to making heteropatriarchal ideals
associated with the white heterosexual patriarchal family signs of order, functionality, and
civilization, rendering all other familial relationships ‘nonheteronormative’ regardless of how
they are constituted; as such, they are signs of disorder, dysfunction, and degradation.
Ferguson (2005, p. 85) addresses silences, erasures, and aporias within canonical sociology by
‘advanc[ing] a materialist interrogation of racialized gender and sexuality’ toward a queer of
color critique that ‘disidentifies’ with historical materialism. He re-writes historical materialism
through José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of disidentification as a process of ‘decoding mass, high, or
any other cultural field from the perspective of a minority subject who is disempowered in such
355
Elizabeth Gould
a representational hierarchy’ (Muñoz 1999, p. 25) in ways that recycle and rethink ‘encoded
meaning’ (p. 31) and then ‘use this code as raw material for representing a disempowered
politics of positionality that has been rendered unthinkable by the dominant culture’
(Muñoz 1999). Disidentifying with historical materialism is necessary in order to make legible
omissions of canonical sociology, including sociologies of music education that obscure ways in
which race, gender, sexuality, and class intersect and interact, enabling not only the
universalisation of heteropatriarchy, but also ideologies of transparency that conceal those very
intersections and interactions.
In contrast to studies based on queer of color critique, canonical sociology studies take as
their theoretical framing canonical sociology theorists, theories, and/or schools that reflect
liberal ideology in their impulse ‘to mark the injustices of racial [and other] exclusions and to
promote the [profession’s, programme’s, pedagogy’s] ability to assimilate that which it formerly
rejected’ (Ferguson 2004, p. viii, his emphasis). My (Gould 1996) dissertation is an example of a
canonical sociology study in music education inasmuch as I deployed symbolic interactionism as
theorized by George Herbert Mead (1934) of the Chicago school, albeit in a feminist version
that accounts for effects of power in social interaction (Deegan 1987). Examining the profes-
sional identities and role models of women post-secondary band directors, I started from
participants’ everyday lives (Smith 1987) as sites of knowledge (Ferguson 2004). To the extent
that I did not interrogate whiteness, straightness, patriarchy or class, or sufficiently analyze how
race, marital status, gender, and class interact in the lived reality of women college band
directors,1 however, my research normalised and universalised white heteropatriarchy. In the
following section I foreground social formations of race, gender, sexuality, and class in three
historical narratives of the founding of US public school music education.
Narratives of founding US public school music education

and antebellum Boston
Audre Lorde (1978) ‘Power’, first four lines https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
poems/53918/power-56d233adafeb3
The story of Lowell Mason teaching vocal music in one Boston grammar school during the
1837–38 school year is almost universally known to North American music educators as
the culmination of a process that formally began during the 1831–1832 school year when the
Boston Primary School Committee authorised a plan (never carried out) for music instruction
‘in one primary school per district’ (Pemberton 1988, p. 70). Undeterred, Mason continued to
work on ‘the music education issue’ through the Boston Academy of Music (BAM), founded
1832 in large part for that purpose (Broyles 1992). This narrative focusses almost exclusively on
Mason, a well-known, influential and entrepreneurial church musician, music reformer,
composer, choral music pedagogue, author of instructional materials and various music com-
pilations, who was made wealthy enough by various business and music ventures to volunteer
his teaching services for one year at the Hawes School in South Boston.
Estelle Jorgensen (1983) approaches this narrative in terms of a political process that unfolded
over several years, beginning in 1829. For her, William Channing Woodbridge was the ‘catalyst
in the Boston school movement’ ( Jorgensen 1983, p. 69, emphasis in original). Although he
was not a musician, Woodbridge was politically – and socially – well placed to bring together
and motivate all the necessary key players, including musicians, teachers, and most importantly,
influential and interested members of society. Notable among the last group was Samuel A.
Eliot, president of BAM, mayor of Boston, and chair of the Boston School Committee during
356
Reading Audre Lorde
the crucial 1837–1838 academic year. Through a ‘snowball effect’ created over nearly a decade,
the movement gained support and supporters, mobilizing press coverage and other publicity
through demonstration models sponsored by BAM, as well as other smaller initiatives. Indeed,
Jorgensen (Jorgensen 1983, p. 74) argues, ‘the success of the political process does not
necessarily have to do with the efficacy of an idea so much as how effectively it has been sold to
the public’; which is to say, how an idea is presented so that resonates in society.
Musicologist Michael Broyles (1992) inserts the social formation of class to his version of this
narrative. While he mentions Woodbridge, the protagonist of his narrative is politician and
civic leader Samuel Eliot: ‘Mason is usually credited with winning th[e] battle [of securing] the
adoption of music in the public schools’, but Eliot, by virtue of the first two leadership positions
Jorgensen describes, ‘had as much to do with the introduction of music into the public school
curriculum as Mason did’ (Broyles 1992, p. 195). Enormously wealthy, Eliot lived insulated on
the South Slope of Beacon Hill as a member of what Broyles calls ‘the socioeconomic elite’.
Members of this group typically did not hold the ‘republican values’ of the eighteenth-century
colonial gentry which were based on an ‘egalitarian society, at least in terms of opportunity’
(Broyles 1992, p. 93). Instead, this group worked to maintain social hierarchies associated with a
patriarchal family structure (differentiated from a male-led nuclear family) in which the
influence of the highest-ranking adult male (patriarch) extended beyond the nuclear family.
Because ‘music still carried a stigma of impropriety’ (Broyles 1992, p. 28), literature in
antebellum Boston was understood to be the highest form of art, worthy of and appropriate for
Boston’s socioeconomic elite. Eliot nevertheless developed an interest in music and quickly
subscribed to Woodbridge’s and Mason’s conviction that the general public could become
musically literate. Taking up the BAM presidency in 1835, Eliot worked tirelessly to accom-
plish the institution’s stated objectives to teach music and the teaching of music, to offer public
lectures, exhibitions, and concerts, as well as to introduce music instruction in the public
schools.
Mason, of course, built his career by demonstrating that everyone could learn music,
organizing and giving public performances involving large groups of students to popularise both
the concept and his music teaching abilities. As an evangelical (sacred) music reformer very
much interested in upholding the highest (European) standards in music, he was the wealthiest
musician in Boston (Broyles 1992), and a member of Boston’s emerging middle class. Living on
‘bohemian’ Pinckney Street (Li-Marcus 2002), located just outside the Beacon Hill North
Slope West End ‘Negro ghetto’, and in the vicinity of the wealthy South Slope, Mason’s
interest in (vocal) music, sacred primarily, but some secular music, as well, was to assert and
maintain high (moral) standards.2 Together, Mason and Eliot used education as a means to
achieve their goals – initially through BAM, and later in some Boston public schools.
Linked by the deeply racist society of Boston, these narratives – one focused on what
Jorgensen calls a ‘protagonist’ (Mason, Woodbridge, Eliot), and one focussed on what she
designates the political process (white men acting in state and education institutions) – are told
according to the liberal ideology of white heteropatriarchy in which citizenship, property, and
in this case education, are ‘the transparent outcome of class and racial exclusions’
(Ferguson 2004, p. 3). While Broyles (1992, p. 194) attends carefully to class exclusions, the
closest he comes to racial exclusions is in a brief discussion about the ‘class stratification’ caused
in part by Irish immigrants who ‘posed a serious threat to the cultural homogeneity of a region
not noted for cultural pluralism’. Tensions in Boston were so high in 1834 that a mob of white
Protestant workmen, afraid of competition for already scarce jobs, protested against the
immigrants’ religion by burning an Ursuline convent located in the Boston suburb of
Charlestown (Broyles 1992).
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Elizabeth Gould
Ruth Gustafson’s (2009) ground-breaking research makes race (in addition to class, and by
implication gender and sexuality) explicit in her Foucauldian sociological analysis, rethinking
history by ‘unsettl[ing] … foundational narratives’ (p. 66) that underpin histories of music
education in the US. Her narrative builds on, extends, and refines Broyles’s account. Gustafson
argues that oft-repeated stories of reformed singing practices through ‘hymn-singing schools’
which were then purported to be the precursors of public school music programs, ‘covered
over […] that public music instruction became a principal site for the differentiation of bodies
qua citizenship’ (Gustafson 2009, p. 66). This is consistent with the white heteropatriarchy of
canonical sociology. For Gustafson, music education was carried out as socialisation whereby
children were inducted into American citizenship delineated by markers of European whiteness
exclusively, evidenced not only racially in music education curricula, teaching materials,
teachers, and students, but also in refined (‘smooth’) singing technique and discerning, genteel
taste, and listening habits. Disallowed was any mark of degeneracy or disorder, which was
inevitably associated with blackness, and functioned sonically as ‘noise’. Not only did Mason
aspire to founding institutions that would educate American music teachers in European music
traditions by European-trained instructors, but Gustafson (2009, p. 47) insists, ‘as the first public
school music teacher, … his views on race correlated with the aesthetic underlying his singing
methods and song collections’. Exemplified by ‘the ideal white Protestant family united in song’
(Gustafson 2009, p. 69), the effect of this was to eliminate in music education curricula and
programs virtually all music, musical practices, and bodies that were not European and/or
designated ‘classical’ – of the highest class.
Gustafson describes segregated antebellum Boston in meticulous detail; in particular the
neighborhoods outside the Beacon Hill South Slope enclave, which she characterizes as dirty,
over-crowded, decaying, and unhealthy both physically and psychologically. Social unrest there
manifested in ‘disgruntled [white] common men and women as disappointment with the social
and economic hierarchy [that] kept poor farmers poor, new immigrants marginal, and prop-
ertied and elite disproportionately wealthy’ (Gustafson 2009, p. 7). In a cauldron of desperation
and discontent, the lowest white (Protestant) economic classes collided with recent (Catholic)
Irish immigrants and free (Protestant) African American men and women – as well as those who
might become free through Boston’s very active abolitionist movement. As music education
insinuated itself into Boston public schools, social issues of race, class, and religion were
convulsing the city in ways that had to be impossible to ignore by anyone living there. That
they were apparently ignored in most narratives of the founding of US public school music
education points to limitations of music education histories that are sociologically constrained
because they lack ‘an entry point for theorizing changing patterns of abjection and merit’
(Gustafson 2009, p. 226),3 and music education sociologies based on canonical theorists and
theories.
During the very years, Lowell Mason tirelessly lobbied for and introduced vocal music
instruction in the Boston public schools, African American freewoman Susan Paul served as
the primary school teacher in what would become known as Abiel Smith School, located in
Boston’s intensively segregated West End ‘Negro ghetto’. She was the second daughter and
middle child of Rev. Thomas Paul, the most well-known Black pastor in Boston, and his
wife Catherine Paul, respected Boston primary school teacher who taught at Boston’s
‘second African Primary School’ (Earhart 1999, p. 136). In 1832, when Susan Paul orga-
nized her primary class into a choir (Brown 2000, 2002), Smith School (known then as
Boston Primary School No. 6) was housed in the basement of the African Meeting House
(AMH), the Baptist church where her father served as pastor, located next door to where
Smith School would be built in 1835. Comprised of up to 50 students mostly aged four to
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Reading Audre Lorde
seven years old, Paul’s choir performed from 1833 to 1835 and again in 1837, singing at
antislavery meetings and rallies in Boston and surrounding towns, as well as in community-
based concerts that she organised. Because the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator and other
publications of the ‘northeastern abolitionist and religious press’ (Brown 2002, p. 63), as
well as local merchants, advertised her ‘Juvenile Choir’ concerts, Paul’s musical activities
were well-known throughout the West End and beyond. The choir’s repertoire reflected
Paul’s primary education curriculum, including lessons on slavery, and her wider spiritually
based abolitionist political activism.
Extending her activism, Paul wrote a letter to the editor of The Liberator, which directly
critiqued sympathetic white antislavery views that ignored white supremacy (Brown 2002). She
also wrote and published in 1835 a memoir of her young student, James Jackson. The most
extensive description of education for African American students in antebellum America, Paul’s
book is regarded as the first African American biography published in the US (Brown 2000).
Despite her disproportionately low salary, Paul paid for life memberships in the New England
Antislavery Society (NEASS) and the Boston Female Antislavery Society (BFASS), of which
she was one of the first African American women invited to join, and the only unmarried
woman member of both organisations. Paul participated in a meeting sponsored by BFASS that
was disrupted by a violent white mob during the summer of 1835, described by William Lloyd
Garrison, white abolitionist and editor of The Liberator, as a ‘reign of terror’ (Brown 2000, p. 16)
against antislavery activists.
Ceasing her musical activities in 1837, Paul continued teaching, while increasing her
antislavery activities until her death, due to consumption, in 1841 – at the age of 32. The
Boston Primary School Committee paid her salary until July 1 to her widowed mother, with
whom Paul had been living and caring for, and for whom she was financially responsible along
with the four young children of her own deceased older sister, Anne (Brown 2000). Rev.
Thomas Paul’s untimely death due to consumption ten years earlier, compounded by the death
of his elder daughter in 1835, had forced his widow, younger daughter, youngest child,
Thomas, Jr., and four grandchildren out of Boston’s Black middle class and into poverty.
Canonical (music education) sociology, conceiving the meaning of African American history
in terms of ‘liberal capital – “equality, full citizenship, full participation”’ (Ferguson 2004,
p. viii), might theorise Susan Paul’s teaching, publishing, and antislavery activism, including her
choir, in terms of ‘overcoming’ the effects of racial oppression and segregation to work for the
liberation and ‘uplift’ of African Americans in Boston, most notably her students. Indeed, David
Landon and Teresa Bulger (2013) repeatedly interpret archaeological artifacts recovered from a
recent excavation of the AMH, built in 1806, as providing evidence of activities directed
toward ‘racial uplift,’ a term typically associated with African American responses to the
so-called ‘Negro problem’ around the turn of the twentieth century. The antebellum version of
racial uplift’s ‘politics of respectability’ involved ‘a class of ‘elevated’ … frugal, virtuous, well-
educated, and well-mannered – African Americans … serv[ing] as examples proving the worth
of the entire black population, undercutting the racism of the day, and bolstering the campaign
for the abolition of slavery and the acquisition of citizenship rights’ (Ball 2012, p. 1). Instead of
engaging this kind of ‘respectability’ however, Erica Ball (2012, p. 2) argues that antebellum
African American writers, notably Susan Paul, advanced in their writings, and I argue with Paul,
in her music-making activities as well, a subversive ‘deeply personal politics’ of liberation
whereby every aspect of African American family, spiritual, and community life was dedicated
to and engaged in antislavery activism. This describes exactly how Susan Paul lived, and as it
happens, how she died, having never recovered months after collapsing during a BFASS
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Elizabeth Gould
fundraising rally event. In my analysis based on a sociology of music education that disidentifies
with historical materialism, the artifacts recovered at the AMH do not provide evidence of
‘racial uplift’ with its implicit white bias defining respectability in European terms, so much as
they anticipate and enact Audre Lorde’s radical commitment to transform US society in ways
that resist and reject European white heteropatriarchy.
The house of difference

It was a while before we came to realize that our place was the very house of dif-
ference rather than the security of any one particular difference. (And often, we were
cowards in our learning.) It was years before we learned to use the strength that daily
surviving can bring, years before we learned fear does not have to incapacitate, and
that we could appreciate each other on terms not necessarily our own.
(Audre Lorde 1982, p. 226)
The youngest of three sisters, Audre Lorde was born in Harlem in 1932 to West Indian
immigrant parents.
American racism was a new and crushing reality that my parents had to deal with
every day of their lives once they came to this country. They handled it as a private
woe. My mother and father believed that they could best protect their children from
the realities of race in America and the fact of American racism by never giving them a
name, much less discussing their nature. We were told we must never trust white
people, but why was never explained, nor the nature of their ill will.
(Lorde 1982, p. 69, emphasis in original)
Lorde’s mother was light enough to pass for ‘Spanish’, but Audre was dark like her father, while
her two sisters were ‘somewhere in-between’. All the schools she attended in the US were
predominantly white.
I had grown up in such an isolated world that it was hard for me to recognize
difference as anything other than a threat because it usually was. … I had no words for
racism.
(Lorde 1982, p. 81)
During her grade 9 year at Hunter College High School, however, Lorde met her ‘first true
friend’ (Lorde 1982, p. 87), Gennie, who was Black. Within two years, Gennie would die by
suicide.
Poetry became Lorde’s first way of speaking her thoughts and feelings – initially through
poems she read and memorised, then through those she wrote – when she could not find poems
that expressed what she was feeling and thinking; not only lesbian desire in deeply homophobic
cultures, Black as well as white, but also disrupting social and cultural structures that produced
homophobia, racism, and misogyny. Describing herself as a ‘Black, lesbian, feminist, mother,
warrior poet,’ Lorde insists for all women, ‘poetry is not a luxury’ (2007/1984, p. 37).
It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we
predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language,
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Reading Audre Lorde
then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to
the nameless so it can be thought.
(Lorde 2007/1984)
Connected to and written from daily experience, poetry activates processes of becoming as
it provides women language to articulate what is otherwise unspeakable, resisting the
epistemological claim that ‘white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am’, by invoking the
ontological proposal of the ‘Black mother within each of us – the poet – [who] whispers in
our dreams: I feel therefore I can be free’ (Lorde 2007/1984, p. 38) in a combinatory
non-essentialized process where rationality ‘serves the chaos of knowledge … [and]
feeling’ (p. 100).
For Lorde poetry is both necessary and a form of activism; like music, it does things. Written
in a process of writing/speaking/hearing, ‘giv[ing]concrete form to … race, gender, sexual
identity, the erotic, and mortality’ (Morris 2002, p. 177), Lorde’s poetry demands to be per-
formed, to be spoken – heard on its own terms in its own social and sociological contexts.
Political ‘in the sense that art is inevitably political (in that it emerges from and expresses the
social dynamics and tensions of a given age and place)’ (Annas 1982, p. 19), Lorde’s poetry
creates worlds of difference that she envisions, worlds that both challenge and enfold readers/
listeners in her vision. Performative, rather than descriptive, Lorde’s ‘words function to
generate individual and collective change’ (Keating 1996, p. 51). Like Susan Paul’s writing and
music-making, Lorde’s poetry as activism resists and rejects the liberal ideology of white
heteropatriarchy and asserts nonheteronormative subjectivities to incite potentialities of
difference on which Lorde insists.
Addressing white feminist academics, Lorde (2007/1984, p. 110) comments, ‘It is a
particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without ex-
amining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and
Third World women, and lesbians’. Declaring the inseparability of racism, sexism, and
homophobia, she pointedly asks, ‘What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are
used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?’ (Lorde 2007/1984, pp. 110–111). The
question is not rhetorical; it demands that white women acknowledge their inter-
dependency with Black women and creatively mobilize differences as strengths to transform
the ‘first patriarchal lesson’ of divide and conquer into a strategy that would instead ‘define
and empower’ (Lorde 2007/1984, p. 112). Disidentifying with heteropatriarchy, Lorde
stakes out the parameters of a world where all can flourish as a future-oriented ‘world-
making’ project (Nash 2013, p. 17) – one that engages tools of difference, outside the
master’s house and social norms of acceptability. Tools located on the outside are the only
tools that can dismantle the master’s house – requiring white women to educate themselves
about Black women and differences between white and Black women. Lorde acknowledges
the difficulty – of confronting and theorising differences in order to make (a) difference in
the material world, something that in the end can be accomplished only when all women
confront internalized racism and homophobia.
Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I
urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch
that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. (1984/2007,
p. 113, emphasis in original)
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Elizabeth Gould
Making (a) difference in sociologies of music education may be realized by implementing

Lorde’s tool of critical self-reflection related to racism and homophobia, and by accounting for
‘ways in which a discourse of sexuality was inscribed into racial exclusion [whereby] racial
segregation ostensibly worked to ensure the sexual purity of white women and the sexual
mobility of white men’ (Ferguson 2004, p. viii), the effect of which constrained Susan Paul’s
music, education, and antislavery work as a free unmarried Black woman in a pervasively racist,
misogynist society in which women – of every race – were forbidden to speak in public,
particularly on political issues before ‘promiscuous’ audiences comprised of men and women.
Critical self-reflection in current sociology research in music education, for example, inter-
rogates the historicity and interactions of relevant social formations of race, gender, sexuality,
and class. Under what circumstances is nonnormative sexuality accepted in music education
discourses in Europe and North America? What (neoliberal) anti-democratic ends does as-
similation of nonnormative sexuality in music education serve (Ludwig 2016)?
Conclusion
Audre Lorde (1978) ‘A Litany for Survival’, last eight lines https://www.
poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275/a-litany-for-survival
The Paul family connections with the Boston public schools were extensive. While Anne was a
primary schoolteacher until her death (Brown 2000), Susan and her mother each taught in
African American primary schools for nearly 20 years. Thomas Paul Sr. taught briefly in a West
End schoolhouse before taking up his ministry (Hayden 1987). As early as 1819, he was invited
to serve on the Boston School Committee, and in 1821 became a member of the Smith School
subcommittee (Earhart 1999).4 To the extent that Paul was widely known and highly regarded
in Boston, these appointments were made primarily to appease the Black community which
demanded that the Committee respond to their concerns about curriculum and staffing
changes.
The chronically underfunded ‘African School’ was firmly ensconced in the AMH, which
served the African American community educationally, spiritually, and politically – all of which
converged in abolitionism. So much antislavery activism occurred in the building that the
Boston School Committee voted October 16, 1832, to prohibit all activities in the ‘African
school room’ other than those associated with ‘a public day school, without the consent of the
subcommittee of that school’ (quoted in Earhart 1999, pp. 126–127). It is perhaps not a co-
incidence that this was the same year Susan Paul formed her primary juvenile choir, which first
performed in 1833. It is likely not coincidental, as well, that Paul’s choir went on hiatus in mid-
1835, about the time Anne, who in 1824 had married Philadelphia composer and musician
Elijah Smith, died ‘at age twenty-seven of lung fever’ (Brown 2008, p. 563). Paul’s choir sang
three final performances in 1837 – after which she and they never again performed in public.
That vocal music instruction was offered in a handful of Boston grammar (as opposed to
primary) schools, including Smith School in 1838 may or may not be coincidental with the
silencing of Paul’s choir, but the School Committee’s underfunding that instruction5 was so
predictable that it was apparently un-remarkable in canonic music education histories and
sociologies (Pemberton 1985). Ferguson’s queer of color critique provides a tool for music
education sociology to address and interpret these silences. Audre Lorde’s work provides
concepts and language to express them.
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Reading Audre Lorde
Lorde wrote her long narrative poem ‘Outlines’ (1986) to her lover and partner of 17 years,
a white woman with whom she – they – navigate a ‘treacherous sea’ of difference, ‘hidden
anger/histories rallied against us’ pressing upon their choices:
We rise to dogshit dumped on our front porch (quoted with next four lines by
Scheuer 2004, para 9; https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/creator/christina-
scheuer)
as a cross burns, courage shaping their loving ‘outside of symbol’ in search of ‘an emotional
language’. Racism invades the porch of their modest Staten Island home even as then US
President Ronald Reagan spreads homophobia, fanning the AIDS epidemic, while also
invading Granada and Lorde’s beloved isle of Carriacou where her mother was born: ‘How
Carriacou women love each other is legend in Grenada, and so is their strength and their beauty’
(Lorde 1982, p. 14, emphasis in original). Like Susan Paul, Lorde mobilised her deeply felt
spirituality and spiritual connectedness with ‘her people’.
Lorde’s words in the poem’s last stanza evoke imagery singing passion, love, difference, and
respect as they conjure legacies of collective oppressions gesturing toward devastation or infinite
potential.
Audre Lorde (1986) ‘Outlines’, last eight lines https://philinstall.uoregon.edu/

video/1560/.
1. How do racial/class/gender/sexuality exclusions impact music education in your
experience?
2. How might those exclusions be substantively addressed?
Notes
1 I also eschewed the term ‘feminist’ on the grounds that it was highly contentious and variously defined;
which is to say, I strategically declined to use the term as a way to increase the likelihood of completing
my degree.
2 Broyles (1992, p. 271) refers to a letter Mason wrote to his son William, in which the former outlined
his ‘music aesthetic by classifying music according to … its ends and purposes’ which he described in a
hierarchy of increasing value: ‘the sensuous, the intellectual, the artistic, and the moral’. Secular music
could have a moral purpose only when sung or heard by a cultivated man. Instrumental music,
however, could only aspire to the artistic, and would never achieve the moral (p. 273).
3 An example of a limitation of canonical sociology is its conception of the social construction of race
(Ferguson 2005a; Morris 2015).
4 Paul was the ‘only known African-American invited to participate on the Committee’ (Earhart 1999).
5 The School Committee systematically discriminated against Smith School: ‘lower salaries, no
equipment, no books, no ink, or even a desk for the instructor’ (Earhart 1999, p. 167n9).
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Bhambra, G., 2014. A sociological dilemma: race, segregation, and US sociology. Current Sociology
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26
ENGAGING CONTEMPORARY
IDEAS OF COMMUNITY MUSIC
THROUGH HISTORICAL
SOCIOLOGY
Deanna Yerichuk
It’s a matter of shaking this false self-evidence, of demonstrating its precariousness, of

making visible not its arbitrariness but its complex interconnection with a multiplicity
of historical processes, many of them of recent date.
(Foucault 1980, p. 248)
I did not enter into academic research as a historian. I came to historical analysis as a result of urgent
contemporary sociological questions. You see, I worked for decades as a voice teacher and choir
conductor in a community music school in Toronto, and through that work, I placed enormous
faith in the transformative potential of a kind of community-engaged musical practice that – in my
own words – ‘lays the groundwork for social justice and the transformation of our communities’
(Yerichuk 2006, p. 36). In short, I argued that the power of music in community contexts lies not
necessarily in the music itself, but in the social change that music could inspire.
Then I began my doctoral work and found the scholarly field of community music.
Community music is a fast-growing subfield of music education, and while definitions are
contested (Bartleet and Higgins 2018; Higgins 2012; Veblen and Olsson 2002), the field can be
understood broadly as facilitated music learning mostly outside of school contexts. I quickly
found that scholars in this emerging field shared my faith that community music is an inclusive
and positive phenomenon shaped in large part through social goals (Higgins 2012; Higgins and
Willingham 2017). Whether community music is framed as a mechanism for accumulating
social capital ( Jones 2009; Langston and Barrett 2008), creating opportunities for personal or
social development (Higgins and Willingham 2017; Li and Southcott 2012), or a form of social
justice (Higgins and Willingham 2017; Yerichuk 2006), these arguments construct community
music through its social outcomes that are always and only good, and somehow not subject to
the vagaries of power relations coursing through institutionalised music education.
However, instead of feeling validated in my beliefs I began to doubt the glow we have cast
around community music. I began to question our collective claims of community music’s
social purpose and power to do only good, not so much in that I think these claims are untrue
or invalid, but when left as normative statements, they are separated falsely from power relations
and tend to ignore the ways in which community music activities may serve particular interests
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Community music through historical sociology
(Mantie 2018; Yerichuk and Krar 2020). My niggling doubts turned into questions that were
both sociological and historical. Sociologically, I began to wonder how communities actually
get formed through music, but in particular who gets to decide what music is used for whom
and to what purpose? Whose interests are being served? Who is left out? At the same time,
I began to wonder when the term community music began to circulate and what kinds of music
practices the term organised. Certainly communal music-making has been around for perhaps as
long as humans, but this term community music is not as old as humanity. When did the term start
circulating, and in reference to which people and which music, and to what ends? In asking
these kinds of questions, I began to think of community music not merely as a description of a
field of practice, nor a set of values that stood outside of and against social injustice, but as a
discourse that constructed how we think about the field, and how we think about music’s role in
organising social relationships (Yerichuk 2014).
My questions led me to the emergence of Canada’s first community music schools in Toronto
in the early 1900s. These schools were operated through neighbourhood settlement houses, which
were early forerunners to contemporary social service agencies. Settlement houses were estab-
lished in Toronto’s poor and immigrant neighbourhoods with the goal of helping poor and
immigrant residents to fit better into society, which settlement house workers termed ‘socialising’
or ‘civic betterment’. How surprising to me that these settlement houses, which spawned the field
of social work ( James 1998), also established the first community music schools in Canada and in
the United States. A historical moment that simultaneously birthed social work and community
music schools seemed important in investigating community music as a discourse. I began to
research the emergence of these music schools through the goals, rationales, and activities un-
dertaken by the organisers, who argued that music lessons could socialise Toronto’s poor and
immigrant youth to fit better into Canadian society.
My research became a historical sociological project, but specifically a critical history. I used
analytical tools developed by Michel Foucault (1970, 1972) and refined by historical sociologist
Mitchell Dean (1994, 2001, 2010) to examine the conditions of possibility that produced
community music as a particular discourse out of a range of possibilities. Through my analysis, I
identified that the settlement house community music schools used the trope of good music to
connect classical music training to ideas of social betterment, with race and class implications.
While my focus described a fascinating historical moment that has been understudied, my
interest remained intensely located in the present day in that I aimed: (1) to question naturalised
ideas about community music as a tool for social development; and (2) to destabilise the idea
that community music stands separate from, and against, unequal power relations. In line with
the standpoint of Foucault’s philosophical-historical work, this critical history could also be
called a history of the present, which is marked by ‘an interrogative practice rather than a search
for essentials’ (McHoul and Grace 1997, p. viii, italics in original). While I heed Foucault’s
warning that history is not a teleological march to the present, I also heed his insistence that by
seeing the past as strange, I may also begin to see the present as strange, questioning founda-
tional assumptions that I make in my current practice as a community music educator as well as
a scholar within the field of community music.
Historical sociology as critical history

Critical histories certainly fit within the broad definition of sociology as ‘the study of human
societies with particular reference to those developed since industrialization’ (Wright 2011, p. 2),
particularly given Foucault’s overarching focus of the development of the modern state. Critical
histories also relate to the key sociological tensions of individual/society and agency/structure.
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Deanna Yerichuk
However, Foucault’s central concern with disrupting history as a field of knowledge demands a
kind of analytical work that refuses explanations of the relationship between individual and society
over time, and instead focusses on the conditions of possibility that construct fields of knowledge.
Critical history is aligned with problematising theory (Dean, 1994), distinguished from from two
other broad types of ‘intellectual practice’ (Dean 1994, p. 3) employed in historical analysis:
progressivist theory and critical theory.
Progressivist theory posits a historical progression of society over time, and provides causal
explanations to human behaviour that develops in rational and predictable ways. Marx’s theory
of capitalism is a progressivist theory that describes the progression from the feudal system to
capitalism towards what he predicted as the inevitable uprising of the proletariat that would
herald the era of communism. If I were to engage in my topic through progressivist theory, I
might describe the settlement house movement in England and North America to fill a gap in
community music history, to show how this 1900s movement led to the 1960s cultural de-
mocracy movement in the British version of community music history (Higgins 2012, p. 40). In
other words, a progressivist approach assumes a clear line through history where one historical
event causes the next.
The second strand in historical analysis is what Dean calls critical theory, not to be confused
with critical history, which is based in problematising theory discussed below. Also not be
confused with contemporary critical theories, such as critical race theory (Delgado and
Stefancic 2017; Ladson-Billings and Tate 2016), Dean describes critical theory as a specific
historical approach tied to the Frankfurt school, in which thinkers such as Horkheimer and
Adorno challenge the grand narratives of enlightenment in favour of theories that are culturally
specific. However, critical theory still assumes a universality of rationality by focusing on ne-
gating or reconciling dominant historical narratives with the subjugated other. If I were to
adopt a critical theory within my historical analysis, I might examine community music schools
as outside of, and different from, institutionalised music education, using the history to show
how the community music schools did important work often overlooked in the field of music
education, without questioning the systems that made those distinctions possible.
The third strand, problematising theory, undergirds Foucault’s project of critical history.
Problematising theory aims to disrupt the very assumptions of history made in the other two
strands of social theory. Rather than attempting to explain social relations through historical
analysis, problematising approaches aim to question both official accounts and naturalised un-
derstandings of who ‘we’ are and how we got ‘here’. It is this problematising approach that
forms my Foucault-inspired research of community music as a discourse, and I take my cue
from Mitchell Dean in framing this kind of historical work as effective or critical history. By
‘effective history’, Dean suggests that history has the potential to destabilise historical knowl-
edge as either transcendental or predictable. By ‘critical history’, and in sharp distinction to
‘critical theory’ of the Frankfurt school above, Dean emphasises that a Foucauldian history aims
to question how ideas form rather than replace a dominant narrative with a marginalised
perspective.
Critical or effective histories also do a different kind of work than most sociological theories.
Rather than entering into the structure-agency debate through a historical perspective, critical
histories instead aim to question present-day assumptions through examining specific historical
moments in relation to ideas and thought. The purpose of a critical history is neither to create
an inevitable line from past to present, nor to find the truth of what really happened, but instead
is to examine historical conditions that gave rise to particular ways of thinking that may in a
contemporary context simply be taken for granted, such as the idea that music should be used
for social development or that community music overcomes social injustices.
368
Given my epistemological concern of how community music emerged in one particular

form rather than another, my critical history draws specifically from Foucault’s archaeology
(Foucault 1970, 1972), which analyses how discourses are formed and transformed. While
Foucault’s understanding of discourse shifts throughout his writing, I took as my entry point his
early definition as ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’
(Foucault 1972, p. 49). In other words, how things get talked about constructs knowledge
about those things, but also governs individuals’ abilities to think or act in particular ways.
Discourses are not stable or fixed, nor are they unified in any given moment, and new dis-
cursive statements emerge in particular historical moments. Foucault’s approach to discourse
suggests that community music schools were not inevitable, but functioned as a particular
response to particular conditions, such as new forms of immigration and poverty, as well as an
emerging concern with juvenile delinquency.
Deploying archaeological method is not easy in that Foucault eschewed totalising or
explanatory theories, refusing to ‘allow his own heuristics to congeal into a fixed, formal
method’ (Dean 1994, p. 14). I drew from Foucault’s succinct overview of four analytical tasks
of archaeology (Foucault 1972, p. 30) to guide my analytical work with archival material:
1. Determining conditions of existence: focusing not just on the discourse itself, but on the
conditions that made a discourse possible in a given moment.
2. Establishing correlations with other statements: focusing on competing and complementary
discourses that interact with the specific discourse under analysis.
3. Fixing limits of discourse: focusing on the threshold or edge of a discourse, which simulta-
neously points to the possibilities for transforming a discourse but also marks the limits of a
discourse to change.
4. Looking for exclusions: focusing on what kinds of discourses were excluded to make the
discourse intelligible and normalised.
These four tasks of archaeology guided the analysis of my archival research. In the following
section, I detail my use of these four tasks through a short critical history of community music
that focusses on the emergence of Canada’s first community music schools. By no means does
this one example encapsulate the entire discourse of community music – it doesn’t even
encapsulate those music schools – but I touch on some key moments within this one specific
historical example to locate one discursive emergence of community music.
The socialising work of ‘good music’ in settlement music schools

In undertaking the first analytical task of determining the conditions through which ‘com-
munity music’ emerged in early 1900s Toronto, I noticed that settlement houses only started
using the phrase community music school in the late 1930s. Before that, they used the term
settlement music school. This shift in terminology pointed to a strong connection between the
goals of settlement houses and their music training that became normalised over time. To
examine community music as a discourse, then, I needed to understand what the settlement
houses were, and the attendant conditions that made these settlement music schools possible.
I will focus on two specific conditions: industrialisation and the idea of juvenile delinquency.
Settlement houses were a response to problems of industrialisation. The settlement house
movement followed the rise of industrialisation around the English-speaking world, beginning
in England with the establishment of Toynbee Hall in 1884 and spreading through the United
States (Chicago’s Hull House perhaps the most well-known example) before coming to Canada
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Deanna Yerichuk
and other countries. These settlement houses were established by middle-class, Anglo-
Protestant citizens who were deeply concerned with deteriorating social conditions brought on
by industrialisation. Organisers in North American cities, and Toronto in particular, were
equally alarmed at new forms of cultural pluralism sparked by a substantial influx of non-British
immigrants in the early 1900s (Bellamy et al. 1995). In Toronto, six settlement houses opened
in the poorest neighbourhoods between 1902 and 1916. The organisers called themselves
settlement house workers, and they developed programs, clubs, and classes in part to improve
living conditions in what they called neglected neighbourhoods, but also to reform
the individual residents to fit better into society, a project the workers thought of as civic
betterment or social development (Wasteneys 1975, p. 19).
Another condition was the relatively new idea of juvenile delinquency, used by settlement
house organisers to refer to what they understood as morally and socially irresponsible beha-
viours exhibited by the city’s youth, specifically youth from poor and immigrant homes.
E.J. Urwick, a professor of social philosophy at the University of Toronto and a member of the
board of directors of University Settlement House, expressed concern at what he called ‘social
consequences’ brought on by inappropriate uses of leisure time. Poor and immigrant youth
were at a particular disadvantage, argued Urwick, because their families were ‘neither cultured
nor educated nor naturally equipped with interests’ (Urwick 1927, p. 26). In this way, the idea
of juvenile delinquency was not neutral, but correlated to assumptions about class, ethnicity,
and leisure, in which Anglo-protestant middle-class families knew how to raise children and
poor and immigrant families did not.
When I began to see particular concerns about how certain youth were being socialised, I
looked for archives that might describe why settlement organisers focussed their musical efforts
on youth in particular. The answer is that organisers viewed youth as the segment of the
population that they felt held the most potential for change. Children were seen as in for-
mation, and with proper guidance could make choices that would not only stabilise their own
lives, but the lives of their families and their future children, which in turn would stabilise the
city, and perhaps the nation. ‘When you save a man or a woman you save a unit’, claimed child
welfare advocate and settlement organiser John Joseph ( J.J.) Kelso, ‘but when you save a boy or
a girl, you save a whole multiplication table’ (Kelso quoted in Cumbo 1996, p. 261). Kelso,
who organised Central Neighbourhood House, named the imperative – salvation – and set-
tlement workers felt they had an important role to play in saving Toronto’s boys and girls
through music lessons, among other activities such as sports and social clubs.
I want to emphasise that not only were there many non-music activities at the settlement
houses, but there were of course many more conditions beyond industrialisation and juvenile
delinquency. However, the brief discussion of the two conditions above points to specific social
relationships that would contribute to the emerging idea of community music as social devel-
opment: the settlement workers were predominantly middle-class, Anglo-Celtic Protestants, and
the people they aimed to reform were the poor, the working class, and immigrants. The ways in
which the dominant groups aimed to foster civic betterment among more marginalised groups
informed all programming at the settlement houses, and music was inextricably bound in these
social relations.
Lest the above come across as simply a cause-and-effect progression of events, I want to be
clear that all of the conditions together made the community music schools possible, rather than
inevitable. This range of possibilities is best demonstrated in the musical practices of the set-
tlement houses. All of the settlement houses used music in many ways, from folk dancing to
sing-a-longs to music classes and performance. Through this range of musical possibilities, four
houses established settlement music schools, which focussed on conservatory-style music
370
training. Central Neighbourhood House opened its settlement music school in 1915, followed
in the 1920s by Memorial Institute, University Settlement House, and St. Christopher House.
While the conservatory-style music training of settlement music schools was not inevitable,
the fact that four houses set up conservatory-style music schools suggests that ideas about what
musics for whom and why began to be organised in specific ways in the 1930s. These
settlement music schools began to institutionalise specific music practices that would become
normalised as community music schools.
I used the second task of analysis – correlating community music discourse to competing and
complementary discourses – by examining statements about the music schools’ purpose in
relation to other statements about music training. A clear correlation emerged through the fact
that all settlement music schools partnered with the Toronto Conservatory of Music, which was
considered the epicenter of classical music training and performance in Canada (Green and
Vogan 1991; Schabas 2005). The focus on Western Art Music and conservatory training
techniques in piano, violin, and voice was similar between the conservatory and the settlement
music schools; however, the music training of the settlement schools needed to be differentiated
from the training at the conservatory because of the settlement house focus on social devel-
opment. School organisers differentiated their training from the conservatory by focussing on
music as a tool to cultivate social betterment, ‘where the aim is not to teach music as a subject;
but to develop the individual through music’.1 The settlement music schools argued that music
socialised youth through the discipline of weekly lessons and through engaging in the hard
work of learning and mastering progressively difficult music skills. A report from University
Settlement Music School characterised musical training as a mental discipline:
By actively participating in a field of interest as well as submitting to the mental

discipline required in the study of music the individual is better equipped to meet the
obligation and need of society as an active citizen, a responsible adult and a directed
human being.2
According to the author, music lessons were not just a way to train minds and bodies in
Western European musical techniques, but a way to train youth in learning personal respon-
sibility. In this passage it is clear that the settlement house goals of ‘civic betterment’ and ‘social
development’ was at that time not about social justice or addressing unfair social conditions, but
about training individuals to fit better into society.
I have described two analytical tasks: identifying conditions that contribute to the emergence
of a discourse and identifying correlations of community music to other discourses. A third task
is to examine the limits of a discourse to transform. One such limit was clear in the circulation
of the trope of good music. The openness of the term suggests a range of possible music styles
could be considered good, since no particular music was ever explicitly named as good. Yet
training and performance focussed almost exclusively on Western Art Music so that Western
Art Music became normalised as good music. Through that normative association, the music
school taught its students that Western European culture was good: a subtle message for the
music school students, most of whom were poor and predominantly non-Western European
immigrants. The music schools periodically presented non-Western European music in per-
formance, suggesting that the trope of good music had the potential to transform the discourse
of community music to include multiple styles of music. However, the specific music repertoire
and pedagogy took Western Art Music as the norm, with folk music presented as an exception.
Here was a limit of the discourse: by the 1940s, the discourse of community music could
gesture towards diverse music practices but remained centred on Western Art Music.
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Deanna Yerichuk
As I followed the use of the trope ‘good music’ in relation to community music, I realised that
for the trope to have meaning, there had to be something tacitly considered to be bad music. This
analytical turn was led by the fourth and final analytical task of identifying exclusions. By examining
ideas and practices excluded from emerging discourses, I could better trace the boundaries that
constituted that discourse (Coloma 2011). Western Art Music was normalised as good through the
tacit exclusion of other kinds of music, exemplified in what settlement house workers identified as
jazz. Too much jazz would contribute to the denigration of Canada’s moral character ‘if these
diversions in their multifarious degrees of coarseness or refinement become the measure of our
fundamental tastes’.3 The trope of good music organised and repeated statements about the aesthetic
and moral goodness of Western European Art Music based on the exclusion of jazz and popular
musics, two styles of music tied to racial and class distinctions.
Jazz was not merely another kind of music, but music largely produced by, and associated with,
African Americans. Even ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ as references to high culture and low culture
grew out of the racist terms ‘highbrowed’ and ‘lowbrowed’ in phrenology to designate racial types
ordered from civilised down to savage (Levine 1988, p. 222). In this way, music was intimately
bound up in social relations, and good music was an effective, inconspicuous mechanism for
establishing and normalising truths about the rightness of two orders that reinforced each other: a
musical order in which Western Art Music was cast as the highest form of music, and a social
order in which Anglo-Celtic Protestant subjects were cast as the most evolved form of citizen.
Looking at exclusions from a slightly different angle, the trope of good music within the
community music schools negated other kinds of music already circulating within Toronto’s
poor and immigrant communities. Settlement music school organisers noticed some of these
music practices but saw this as a natural talent that needed to be refined and cultivated. As early
as 1917, a Central Neighbourhood House worker posed the question: why bury genius under
environment?4 Her question was predicated on the widespread belief that immigrants – as-
sumed to be non-British European immigrants – had natural talent for and love of music, but
they required training and guidance to cultivate those inclinations, a potential that could not be
fully realised except through training in Western Art Music. The need for music training in
‘good music’ was as much a question of class, although framed less as cultivating talent and more
as providing what workers called ‘cultural reinforcement’. As an annual report for Central
Neighbourhood House claimed, the aim of their music school ‘has been to make music a
possible cultural influence for children in families of low wage earners and in families receiving
city relief’.5 In this way, community music lessons provided a technique to inculcate middle-
class Anglo-Celtic Protestant values and behaviours not only in immigrants but also in
Toronto’s non-immigrant lower classes.
Through my analysis, I began to see that the trope of good music produced regimes of truth
about community music within the Canadian context. I use regime of truth in the Foucauldian
sense to indicate both the production of one specific truth over other truths as well as its
contingent nature. As Mills argues, truth ‘is something which societies have to work to pro-
duce, rather than something which appears in a transcendental way’ (Mills 2004, p. 16). The
community music schools emerged out of and contributed to the production of particular truths
that became normalised and accepted as true, namely that Western Art Music was the best,
most developed, and most civilised form of music. Further, as the settlement music schools
moved towards calling themselves community music schools, their connection to settlement
house work became normalised within the discourse of community music. By the 1940s, the
settlement-cum-community music schools had created a training course to give community
music school teachers the unique skills they would need to teach successfully in this combined
musical and social environment.
372
Foucault’s conception of discourse, shot through with flows of power in the organization of social
relations, compels me to consider how relationships formed various subjectivities, rather than merely
oppressed or freed one group at the expense of, or thanks to, another. From a Foucauldian lens, power
emerges as having a productive function rather than merely a repressive one, meaning that power is
present in all social relations, exercised by all actors and through multiple modes of action (Dean 2001,
p. 325). This is important to account for the fact that not all music school initiatives were successful,
suggesting that participants exerted power by selectively participating in and negotiating their musical
relationships with the schools. Central Neighbourhood House reported cancelling a music appre-
ciation class for adults due to low attendance, and as late as 1953, a report from St. Christopher House
suggested that residents were interested in supporting their children’s musical progress, but would not
attend concerts to listen to ‘good music’ if their children were not playing. In these ways, residents
only selectively took up educative practices promoted by settlement organisers.
From the opening of University Settlement House in 1910 to the onset of World War II,
settlement workers increasingly described music’s purpose as a tool to foster the ‘civic betterment’
of Toronto’s poor, working-class, and immigrant neighbourhoods, constructing a social rationality
that contributed to the discursive formation of community music. I would point out here that
knowledge and power are bound together, although importantly not collapsible into each other.
What Foucault calls the ‘knowledge-power nexus’ produces both regimes of truth (what can be
known) and regimes of practices (what can be done). The myriad musical practices among the
residents living in Toronto’s so-called neglected neighbourhoods collectively constituted a complex
whole of cultural and social knowledges situated and embodied among dispersed relationships.
However, the settlement houses used very specific musical practices as techniques of civic better-
ment, techniques that were organised and consolidated through the music schools, working toward
the connaissance that normalised specific music practices as constitutive of community music.
Conclusion
What I say ought to be taken as ‘propositions,’ ‘game openings’ where those who may
be interested are invited to join in—they are not meant as dogmatic assertions that
have to be taken or left en bloc.
(Foucault 1980, p. 243)
The emergence of community music schools in Toronto offered one particular historical moment
that helped me reconsider present-day values and assumptions circulating in the field of community
music. Some contemporary community music scholars might point out that the scene today has
progressed significantly from this historical moment. Now community music tends to challenge the
elitism of Western Art Music to emphasise multiple cultures and forms of music-making.
Community music today often focuses on social justice, that is, on changing the system rather
than fixing the individual. However, the point of a critical history is not to show progress or change
over time, any more than it is to make the specious argument that community music today looks
exactly the same as it did a century ago. I have grown to believe that the most important questions
to be asking are not just about what kinds of music are being used, but to what purpose, and perhaps
more importantly, who is the object of these interventions and who intervenes. What has until
recently been overlooked in contemporary studies are these flows of power that constitute the
relationships within music-making, particularly the relationship between a music facilitator and
participants (see Bartleet and Higgins 2018, for a critical take on this). Examining community music
historically in North America enables us to question assumptions of music’s social power, and
challenge the idea that community music stands outside of unequal power relationships.
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Deanna Yerichuk
The historical moment of the emergence of settlement music schools may also offer a challenge to
music education in two specific ways. First, the music schools of the early 1900s may call to mind
contemporary projects inspired by El Sistema in the United States, Canada, and around the world,
which promote instrumental music for social development (for critical studies on El Sistema, see
Baker 2014; Bull 2016; Sheih 2015). The idea that Western Art Music improves children’s social
standing or development circulates strongly in these initiatives. A critical history calls attention to that
assumption, not to determine if it is true or not, but to grapple with fundamental questions of social
control through music. A second example is the more recent turn in music education scholarship
towards the relationship between musical and social goals within classroom settings, exemplified in the
term ‘artistic citizenship’ (Elliott 2012; Elliott et al. 2016). With an explicit focus on social justice,
artistic citizenship has a different aim than the music schools of a century ago, and yet to emphasise
that contemporary students should or ought to have social justice education embedded into music
learning demands an examination of the normative assumptions that make such statements possible.
A critical history cannot determine whether a contemporary approach is right or wrong, but
it can provide insight into the kinds of contemporary assumptions made about how things are
or how things ought to be. Critical histories open up questions on how certain ideas arose
historically and came into circulation, became normalised, and taken as true. Sociology is
enriched by critical histories, which refuse to draw a straight line from past to present but
instead operate as game-openers, or propositions, not meant to be authoritative and final but to
shift the ground and open up space to consider our assumptions in a new way.
1. How can historical sociology provide insights into contemporary sociological questions?
2. What contemporary and historical examples purport to use music as a tool for social
development?
Notes
1 The University Settlement Music School Annual Report 1940–41, Fonds 1024, Series 619, Subseries 2,
File 23. City of Toronto Archives.
2 Short History of University Settlement Music School, Fonds 1024, Series 619, Subseries 2, File 23.
City of Toronto Archives.
3 ‘Problems of Music in Canada,’ Canadian Club Toronto Dec. 20, 1937, Canadian Club, Montreal
Apr. 4, 1938 delivered by Sir Ernest MacMillan. MUS 7-3 D, 140. Library and Archives Canada
(Ottawa).
4 ‘Music in the Ward,’ The Ward Graphic [ca. 1917], 10, Fonds 1005, File 4. City of Toronto Archives.
5 Central Neighbourhood House 1938 Annual Report, Fonds 1005, File 16. City of Toronto Archives.
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27
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Creativity and ‘the contemporary’ in music
education – a sociological view
Introduction
The plea for creativity in the music education encounter seems to have acquired the status of a
constant. What is rarely examined is the way in which creative practices ‘enter’ the world of
education, which is never uniform and straightforward but is always mediated by ideological
formations that operate as instruments of legitimation (Green 2003). This chapter turns its
attention to a significant moment in music education’s past. It constitutes a socio-historical
analysis of the particular cultural, aesthetic, and educational underpinnings of the framework of
legitimation that was constructed by ‘Creative Music in Education’ (Thackray 1968) [CMinED] –
a term that, in this chapter, refers to a cluster of music education experiments that in the 1960s
and 1970s, particularly in Europe but also in Canada and the US, sought to redefine the
relationship between music, education, creativity and notions of ‘contemporary’ music.
The backbone to this exploration is a detailed study of select archival material (published music
education material, scores, project reports – published and unpublished – interviews and reflective
accounts) from the European ‘life’ of Creative Music in Education [CMinED]. Relevant sec-
ondary literature and research studies have also been used. The chapter unfolds in two parts: the
first introduces select fragments from the European history of efforts to create inroads into a new
relationship between creativity, young persons, and contemporary music. These fragments aim at
giving a broad picture, going beyond the UK-centred accounts that have dominated the study of
the phenomenon. In the second part, a sociological reading of aspects of the cultural, aesthetic,
and educational underpinnings of CMinED is attempted, with the aim of highlighting the main
features of the language of legitimation that was constructed. Languages of legitimation are
constructed through actors’ expressed views that function as means of positioning their practices,
‘proposing a ruler for participation’ within the field of music education, ‘proclaiming criteria’
through which value judgements regarding the content and the processes of education are made,
and also functioning as ‘strategic stances aimed at maximising actors’ positions within a relationally
structured field of struggles’ (Maton 2000, p. 149, based on Bourdieu 1988).
Our particular focus concerns the language of legitimation employed with respect to the
relationship between visions of the young and music experimentation, to ‘creativity’, and to
notions of the ‘contemporary’ in music. It will be argued that these constructs framed the
language of legitimation employed by CMinED and functioned as controlling mechanisms,
delineating a certain sense of what is educationally possible and worthwhile – hence they are
referred to as ‘invisible authorities’.1
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Fragments of a history
§§§
Zagreb, 1954: Elly Bašić curates a polemic exhibition of ‘the musical expression of the child’ –
first in Zagreb and Ljubljana, and in 1955, under the auspices of UNESCO, in Belgrade and
Geneva (Stumme 1988, p. 152). ‘The creative element can only be the result of freedom’
(Bašić 1988, p. 56) she declared, adding that ‘in improvisation we can precisely discover that
childlike element of expression’ (Bašić 1988, p. 57). On the basis of a close study of children’s
spontaneous musical utterances both during play situations and in the course of her teaching
experiments, she founded Glazbeno učilište Elly Bašić – The Elly Bašić Functional Music School,
that exists to this day. For Bašić, children’s spontaneous improvisations, in a way that has its
counterpart in various forms of improvisation in folk musics, heretically neglect the rules of
written music, yet they are characterised by ‘inviolable logical relationships’ (Bašić 1988, p. 57).
§§§
‘Even 10 years ago the music of those composers who have since been accepted as the dominant
figures in twentieth-century music – Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and Stravinsky – was hardly
known by the majority of musicians in this country. But towards the middle of the 1950s a new
feeling of exploration and discovery became obvious’ writes UK-based critic Robert Henderson
in 1961 (p. 624). Cirencester, 1959: Peter Maxwell Davies, a composer whose work was de-
veloping on the basis of a close study of those 20th century music pioneers, takes up a post as
Director of Music at Cirencester Grammar School; a breath of fresh air overwhelms the making of
music at the school. Davies encourages his students to compose in groups; activities based on
improvisation become a regular treat. Davies recounted: ‘Their lack of inhibition I thought very
very interesting … watching these kids compose, I realised that they were getting wonderful
musical images I was not getting; and that gave me … envy, if you like’ (Dufallo 1989, in
Glover 2000, p. 11). Davies allowed this freshness to impact decisively to his own creative work:
The first major result of his experience at Cirencester was the cycle of motets and in-
strumental sonatas O Magnum Mysterium […] Two of these sonatas provide
opportunities for extensive improvisation, but improvisation within strictly controlled
limits ordered by the composer. […] The line of development begun in O Magnum
Mysterium has been continued in a new school piece, to be performed in the autumn,
which has the title Te Lucis ante Terminum. Here, once again, a group of a cappella settings
is combined with instrumental interludes in which improvisation plays a decisive role.
(Henderson 1961, pp. 625–626)
Even if, as Davies recounted, it was the lack of school orchestra scores ‘that led him to start
arranging and composing music for his students’ (Burke 2014, p. 28), this is a significant
moment: contemporary musical idioms find their way into the music classroom, but at the same
time the creative deeds of the young are allowed to exercise an influence to the development of
a professional composer’s music both in terms of structural and expressive aspects, but also in
terms of a more general aesthetic, forcing the composer to come ‘face to face with the serious
question of communication and immediate perception’ (Henderson 1961, p. 626).
§§§
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Hamburg, 1969: Lilli Friedemann publishes Collective Improvisation as Means of Studying and
Developing New Music (Kollektivimprovisation als Studium und Gestaltung neuer Musik).
From the early 1960s, Friedemann, who studied composition with Hindemith, had emerged
as a fervent supporter of the role of free improvisation in music education. Friedemann
cultivated an ethic of collective improvisation based on an aesthetic derived from New Music,
and believed that such an aesthetic can bring back joy and sensuality in the making of music,
leading, at the same time, to creative self-realisation and social bonding through pre-linguistic
modes of musical communication (Friedemann 1988). In the late 1960s she founded the
journal Ring für Gruppenimprovisation. Her numerous writings (e.g. Friedemann 1969, 1973,
1988) had a significant impact despite the fact that in recent years her work has fallen into
oblivion (Schwabe 2011).
§§§
Budapest, 1973: Piano pedagogue Marianne Teöke invites a number of Hungarian com-
posers to compose pieces for children for a volume she was preparing for Editio Musica
Budapest. György Kurtág responded by composing Elő-Játékok (‘Pre-Games’) a collection
of 19 short pieces that treated the piano and its playing in a most unconventional manner
(Coelho 2014). This marked the end of a 5-year long silence that tormented the composer.
Shortly after that, Kurtág (1979, p. 26) begins composing Játékok, a series of miniature piano
pieces inspired by the uninhibited and playful approach of young children to the piano ‘for
whom the piano still meant a toy’. Kurtág’s approach to writing for the piano was sig-
nificantly influenced by his vision of children’s playfulness. In an act of acknowledgment of
this, in the first volume of Játékok Kurtág includes a piece composed by a six year old child
(The Bunny and the Fox, by Krisztina Takács) (1979, p. 9). In Játékok, Kurtág breaks free
from given compositional systems and invokes a number of seemingly childish visions, used
with an utmost seriousness: ‘Suddenly there was no system; the music had to be invented
anew each time’ (Coelho 2014, p. 15). Use of traditional notation co-exists with more
‘open’ pieces that employ a much freer understanding of rhythmicity, a rich variety of
clusters and unconventional playing techniques, treating the piano as a sound world that has
to be experienced with the totality of the body. These pieces were of great significance for
Kurtág’s compositional trajectory, but at the same time the composer regarded them as
means towards a deeply creative piano pedagogy (Junttu 2008; Shi 2016). He observes: ‘on
no account should the written image be taken seriously,’ and yet ‘the written image must be
taken extremely seriously as regards the musical process, the quality of sound and silence’
(Kurtág 1979, p. 9, in Tang 2016, p. 16).
§§§
London, 1970: Edward Fulton, member of The Scratch Orchestra – a significant music-based activist
collective was founded in 1969 by a group of people associated with composer Cornelius Cardew –
responded to a vitriolic review of the Orchestra’s Nature Study Notes in the following way:
This may be a highly dubious waste of human time to the mortality-orientated adult,
but one need not be mortality-orientated to be adult; the question of happiness and
simple enjoyment arises. Intellectual and ‘Artistic’ satisfaction is something else again;
I happen to believe it essential in the long term, but I certainly would not be so
arrogant as to impose it as a prerequisite for everyone to attain before they should
make music, and concern themselves with what they want the future of music to be,
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or the present of music for that matter’.

(Fulton 1970, p. 601)
Prior to his involvement with the Scratch Orchestra, Cardew ‘began an Experimental Music class
at Morley College’ (Tilbury 2008, p. 353). At the time, art rather than music colleges had become
the home of a number of experimental composers (Gavin Bryars, Michael Parsons, and Cardew
among them). At Morley, Cardew was able to work with the members of his class on pieces
writtein by himself, La Monte Young, Cage, Stockhausen, and others, ‘also encouraging parti-
cipants to bring along their own compositions; on one occasion they were asked to write pieces
for each other’ (Tilbury 2008, p. 356). Cardew had been a vehement critic of the dominant trends
of the avant-garde (see Cardew 1964). And the late 1960s had been a period of re-orientation of
his approach to composing:
Several months before the Morley class began, Cardew had already achieved a crucial
breakthrough through collection of experimental pieces under the name Schooltime
Compositions: received definitions of ‘music’, ‘musicality’, ‘musicalness’, are questioned
and reassessed, thereby challenging and unsettling traditional and hidebound per-
ceptions of what constituted a ‘musical performance’.
(Tilbury 2008, p. 361)
For some, of course, all this amounted to a scandalous ‘abolition of all language’ (Eloy 1970, p. 7); it
was ‘merely a refusal of responsibility, “spiritual suicide” as Luigi Nono has written of Cage’s chance-
operations’ (Parsons 1968, p. 429). For others, such pieces opened up a wealth of possibilities, calling
for the initiation of music and learning spaces that redefine the role of music in education and life.
§§§
London, 1971: Composer and educator Brian Dennis presents Cardew’s The Great Learning in a
short article written for the Musical Times. There, he invokes Cardew saying: ‘Failure exists in
relation to goals. Nature has no goals and therefore it can’t fail – often the wonderful config-
urations produced by failure reveal the pettiness of the goals’ (Dennis 1971, p. 1066). Dennis had
been working with students of different age groups and backgrounds on the basis of creative music
making practices informed by the developments of post war music. In the previous year, Dennis
(1970) had published his Experimental Music in Schools, a book that together with Self’s (1967) New
Sound in Class, Paynter and Aston’s (1970) Sound and Silence, and Schafer’s The Composer in the
Classroom (1965), Ear Cleaning (1967) and The New Soundscape (1969) have had significant impact
on the creative music work of many teachers in the UK but also beyond it (Sound and Silence was
translated in German as early as 1972). Such publications were instrumental for the development of
‘creative music workshop’ tradition in the UK: ‘During the late 1970s and early 1980s creative
music workshops in which teachers and pupils worked with professional performers and composers
were organised regularly in association with programmes of the Arts Council’s Contemporary
Music Network (CMN)’ (Winterson 1998, p. 134).
§§§
‘[T]raining musicians within a university music department must become a process of self-discovery –
a leading out in the basic sense of the word “educere”’ (Mellers 1973, p. 246). Mellers arrived at York
University in 1964 and was granted considerable freedom ‘to initiate the department’ of music
(Mellers 1973, p. 246; also Paynter 1994). He became very interested ‘in the work John [Paynter] had
been doing in schools and there was encouragement for John to establish research schemes in
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Yorkshire schools’ (Finney 2011a, p. 17). In 1969, Paynter joins the faculty of music at York. Mellers
was sensing the need for a redefinition of the music profession, a redefinition that demanded a radical
rethinking of music in and as education, at a time when,
music is a disappearing profession and when, indeed, professionalism is even dis-

credited as an outmoded concept. Perhaps in a sense it is, for much of our work in
music education, instigated by John Paynter, is concerned precisely with the redis-
covery of the fact that every human being is a musician by virtue of being human.
(Mellers 1973, p. 249)
Paynter’s work at York, his writings, and his efforts as director of the Music in the Secondary
School Curriculum 11–18 Project (1973–1980) have had a formidable role to play towards the
acknowledgment of composing as a central activity in many classrooms (Paynter 1982), and had
an equally strong impact on the UK’s National Curriculum for music that was put into action in
1993 (Adams 2013; Cox 2002). Paynter drew significantly on the child-centred art education
tradition and the writings of Herbert Read (1943, 1966). Read (1966) passionately supported
children’s uninhibited creative engagement with the making of art, on the basis of the existence
of a universal human pre-disposition for order-making: ‘The order that the child introduces in
his perceptions is aesthetic in its nature’ (p. 22) and its development is based on ‘laws of organic
growth’ (Read 1966, p. 28). Read asserted that ‘[i]n obeying these laws we find our perfect
freedom’ (Read 1966, p. 22). Paynter also adopted an expressivist theory of musical meaning as
the result of an experiential immersion in the shaping of non-discursive presentational symbols
(Langer 1953). As Finney (2011a, p. 18) argues, such approaches,
supported the proposition that music could be conceptualized as “thought in itself ”

and that “to think music” was of a different order to “thinking about it”. Music had a
distinctive epistemological status.
Creating a framework for legitimation: origins, constructs,

and contradictions
‘Sociological understanding leads to a considerable measure of disenchantment’ (Berger 1963,
p. 134). Thus, as a music education researcher who attempts to develop a sociological understanding
of a much cherished music education practice, I have to hold back, suspend my certainties, and
approach critically the frameworks of intelligibility that were created by CMinED, in full awareness
that ‘consciousness is a condition of freedom’ (Berger 1963, p. 198). In what follows, it will be shown
that music education innovations of the 1960s and early 1970s induced a radical change in how we
think of the relationships between music, creativity, and education, and that this change was
mediated by a complex and at times contradictory set of discourses that functioned as a framework of
legitimation (Martin 2006; Maton 2000). It will be argued that this framework for legitimation was
based on three distinct but interrelated constructs that functioned as invisible authorities.
1. The invisible authority of universalism: compose-ing the young

A core tenet of the different CMinED approaches has been an invocation of freedom as ‘freedom
from’ (see Finney 2011a). For many progressive music educators of the 1960s, liberating the child
(and music education) from imposed academicism, from rote learning practices, from the dom-
inance of learning factual information cut off from experience, was a necessary move that gave
381
back to the young a sense of freedom they’ve always deserved. This freedom-from approach was
developed on the basis of a view of the child and the young person in general as a natural
inhabitant of a condition of freedom – in this sense, CMinED revolutionaries can be seen as
‘utopian progressives’ (see Tisdall 2019, p. 26).
Kurtág’s daring dive into composing Játékok invoked a vision of a child playing, freely,
without inhibitions of the culturally arbitrary. This freedom is literally embodied – with the
child seen as approaching the piano with his whole body, moving from one side to the other,
using fingers, fists, elbows, hammering, or listening to the subtlety of gently touching the piano.
Invoking the child as a natural bearer of freedom, Kurtág performs a breaking away from the
heavy hand of academicism only to return to a dialogue with facets of art music’s past that is
more personal and playful. Invoking the child, Kurtág frees himself.
Claims to a vision of the child as being in a primordial state of innocence have also been arrived
at via a different route. There seems to exist a subtle thread that connects images of childhood as a
natural locus of freedom with claims to childhood as a period of human life that has retained
elements of a primordial, ‘primitive’ human condition. Cox (2006) has drawn attention to Mellers’
(1964) invocation of the relationship between primitivism, modernism, and childhood, with the
latter being the locus of an uncontaminated, almost ‘primitive’ freedom.2 Such views functioned as
means of legitimation for the 1960s efforts of Paynter and others to forge a way forward for music
education: ‘we must not stifle this innocent eye or ear’ Paynter and Aston (1970, p. 4) declared.
Elly Bašić drew on the ease with which children are able to make wild dives into their
musical imagination; she emphasised the child’s holistic approach to music making that formal
music education manages to suppress. As we noted earlier, Bašić was convinced that a deep
affinity exists between the age-old logic of folk music improvisation and the logic of
unconstrained playful musical explorations of children. For Bašić, as for Maxwell Davies, this
playful exploration yielded surprisingly complex results that should be worthy of serious
attention on the part of music teachers and creative musicians alike.
The invocation of a natural state of creative musical freedom within which young persons live
when they have not been distracted by formal music education becomes the backbone for teaching
approaches that favour a starting-from-scratch stance: one should begin from sounds as such, from the
simplest exploration of sounds, clean of all culturally imposed inhibitions. Such views led to the de-
velopment of firm links between progressive music education and radical approaches to contemporary
music composition. A child plays with sounds, freely; a composer too. Intense, free experimentation
with ‘[t]he true “rudiments” of music’ that is, ‘sound and silence’ (Paynter and Aston 1970, p. 8), is
what matters most. However, freeing music from its historical roots rests on a universalistic appre-
hension of musical creation and understanding: ‘“going directly to the sounds and their characteristics”
[Christian Wolff ] is what composers have always done’ Paynter (1972, p. 17) argues.
Paynter’s universalistic approach to music exploration as a core compositional process par-
allels other CMinED advocates’ approach to group free improvisation as a practice that (a)
permits us to discover our ‘true’ selves, and at the same time, (b) allows us to experience a kind
of universal order that can be arrived at through this process, a process that unites children,
improvisers, and ‘primordial’ people. Lilli Friedemann (1988, p. 86) states:
Only when one surrenders to one’s own nature through a sustained immersion in im-
provisation (without allowing linguistic modes of thought to interfere with the music
process) can one truly experience what improvisation really is and how it transforms us. Just
try and see how children with no musical training improvise together; you will see that if
no one interferes, their playing becomes increasingly orderly without the aid of any verbal
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guidance. In children one finds that a primordial sense of collective creation without the
aid of notation is still alive […] in a manner that is akin to that of primitive people.
The debt to Rousseau and his ‘stress on inwardness, self-expression, and a freedom guaranteed
in nature’ (Middleton 2006, p. 214; also Finney 2011a) becomes clear at this point. Progressive
music educators/composers of the 1960s followed a line of thought that gained momentum
with Rousseau and became pivotal for the child art movement. As we will see, the latter
exercised a deep influence on the ways in which children’s creative music endeavours were
understood. Rousseau’s (1979) depiction of the child in Emile was part of a larger politico-
philosophical project that advanced specific views about citizenship, morality and human law.
And his views exercised a decisive view on education as an institution that had ‘the vocation of
forming the citizen with sensibilities’ (Rose 2004, p. 77).
Herbert Read (1966), maybe the most articulate ambassador of progressive art education,
showed how a Rousseau-inspired notion of the free citizen can be grounded on the cultivation of
‘natural’, that is, ‘universal’ artistic sensibilities. For Read, ‘[w]hat is universal is also natural’ (1966,
p. 22). Read argued that ‘the child’s perceptual development is uniformly human’ (1966, p. 23),
and perceived the cultivation of aesthetic curiosity as a means for fulfilling the human predisposition
for natural harmony, and eventually, for peace: ‘Education through art is education for peace’
(1966, p. 35), for ‘[t]he creative will of man is also the will to love one another’ (1966, p. 32).
That children were thought of as able to discover their ‘true’ selves in the process of discovering
music through exploration has been a core CMinED construct. This was coupled with the idea that
radical trends of New Music of the post-war western world, were somehow ‘naturally’, close to the
child’s ways of being with music. Rousseau’s (1979, p. 90) mind-blowing claim that ‘[c]hildhood
has its ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling which are proper to it’, which in a sense marks the
beginning of child-centric education (Peters 2009), was brought together with a view of the
contemporary composer as an explorer who consciously attempts a fresh take at the ‘true rudiments
of music’, resisting the burden of history. Thus, a central construct of modernity’s approach to
education as a caring act of preserving the child’s ‘ancient’ freedom, was brought together with a
view of contemporary music as the natural locus of exploration that retains a child-like openness.
2. The invisible authority of egalitarian creativity

‘[T]he musical creative potential of young people is infinite’, declared Peter Maxwell Davies
(Schools Music Association 1985, p. 6). Brian Dennis (1970, p. 3) argued that ‘[e]xperimentation
with sound satisfies one of the most fundamental drives in a young person – namely curiosity and
the desire to explore’. Music classrooms were more and more frequently transformed into spaces
for exploration of sound and sound production techniques. Emphasis on young persons’ ability to
create original music and use of open compositional forms (i.e. graphic/verbal scores, inclusion of
various levels of indeterminacy) presupposed a move away from divine notions of creativity, to-
wards an ‘egalitarian’ conception of creativity as a mental function of the human brain.
That is the second route via which it became possible to construct a thread between a young
person’s music creative engagement and the work of the New Music and experimental
composers. Young persons’ creativity and the work of contemporary composers could be
brought together on the basis of an approach to creativity that replaced its traditional con-
ception as a largely irrational, unpredictable, and uncontrollable outpouring of inspiration, that
manifests itself through great works made by persons that were considered as geniuses.
Creativity ‘became a mastered aspect of everybody’s intelligence’ (Kutschke 1999, p. 151;
Elliott 1971; Weisberg 1993), and could be available on demand.
383
The creative child comes up with ‘problems’; s/he does so through exploration with materials
and ideas; those ‘problems’ require a response that gradually, through selection, rejection, ela-
boration, lead to a creative product, i.e. a composition that springs from responding to those
‘problems’. The creative composer invents music that requires the creative response of the par-
ticipants. S/he does not invent musical works conceived of as complete entities that are also
manifestations of their author’s creative genius. Rather, s/he shapes the conditions of a musical
situation that is deliberately incomplete, and therefore open to the creative solutions of the
participants. Kutschke (1999) has shown that composers’ experimentation with open forms and
indeterminate scores adopted a view of creativity that derived from the logic that was promoted
by psychological research on creativity during that time. This conception allowed them to ex-
periment with ways to provoke creative responses, demanding from participants of their works to
move beyond habitual responses: ‘The composers prepared the general conditions of the per-
formance because they aimed to provoke new and unique sounds and new social behavior
through spontaneous processes’ (Kutschke 1999, p. 150; also Reynolds 1965).
This radical change in compositional practice created the necessary conditions that enabled
contemporary composers to initiate modes of working with young people that were in perfect
symphony with the ‘creativity imperative’ that overwhelmed education during the 1960s and 70s.
New ways of participation in collective creation were opened up, deriving from radical avant-
garde music of the era. Practical experimentation with group composing on the basis of open
scores led to publication of textbooks, project proposals and reflective accounts (Dennis 1970;
Dwyer 1971; Globokar 1970, 1972, 1979; Meyer-Denkmann 1972; Paynter 1972; Paynter and
Aston 1970; Self 1967, 1976; Schafer 1965, 1967; Tillman 1976). New Music publisher Universal
Edition launched a series of new works composed for schools and young players. In this series,
composers experimented with various forms of open notations that allowed for experimentation,
while at the same time functioned as an introduction to contemporary, New Music idioms. And
Brian Dennis began his Experimental Music in Schools (1970, p. 1) with the following assertion:
‘The health of an art is in danger if those who teach it fall too far behind those who practice it’.
However, it should not escape our attention that the notion of the creative child that de-
veloped from the 1950s onwards, primarily in the US, bears a markedly Cold War signature,
being a response to a politically charged race for scientific and economic hegemony
(Bycroft 2012; Ogata 2013). It emanated as a result of a research program that approached
creativity as an aspect of mental functions that might be manifest in different cultural domains.
As a mental ability (Guilford 1968), creativity could be defined, observed, measured, and
predicted (e.g. Drevdahl 1964; Hyman 1964; Thurstone 1964; Torrance 1964). Kutschke
(1999, p. 151) has argued that, ‘in order to instrumentalize creativity in the Cold War’ Guilford
‘needed to restrict its features of irrationality and randomness’.
Guildford, a most prominent researcher in the area of creativity research at the time, in a
paper written with Hoepfner (Guilford and Hoepfner 1971, p. 361, in Kutschke 1999,
pp. 151–152), argued that ‘the assessment of the intellectual resources of man can now take on
features of a psychoengineering’. Thus, the creativity imperative induced subtle practices of
monitoring and guidance of educational policies that formed part of the apparatus of govern-
mentality of the modern child (Rose 1990; Dahlberg and Moss 2005). An ‘open to all’ approach
to creativity had also its ‘dark’ side.
3. The invisible authority of ‘the contemporary’

Avant-garde and modernist discourses promoted a view of the radical changes in twentieth-
century music as an ‘authentic’ musical response to the contemporary situation, and therefore
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as something that should be included in a truly ‘contemporary’ education. On the basis of ‘the
historical avantgarde’s belief that art can be crucial to a transformation of society’ (Huyssen
1986, p. 7; also Adlington 2009), it was suggested that enabling young persons to ‘relate music
making directly to the sound environment of today’ (Payne 1976, p. vi) was a major task. The
question is, of course, how this ‘sound environment of today’ is defined. Paynter (1972, p. 23)
was more specific:
Already seventy years of the twentieth century have gone by: 70 years in which
composers have been working with new musical techniques which grow out of the
past but which are firmly related to here and now. So perhaps it’s about time we
followed them – if only to see what they’re up to.
The ‘hear and now’ – this is the title of Paynter’s book from where the above words have been
taken – seems to imply a quite specific view of the ‘here and now’, a view that restricts itself to
twentieth-century innovations in the realm of art music.
Searching for a framework of legitimation of this approach, CMinED turned to the ‘child
art’ movement. It is interesting that, in the written sources related to creative music in edu-
cation, one will rarely find references or expression of debt to the early music education
pioneers of the first half of the twentieth century (Orff, Jaques-Dalcroze, Kodaly), who, each in
his own way sought to advance deeply experiential modes of musical knowledge and under-
standing. On the contrary, one will encounter an abundance of references to modern art and its
radical impact on arts education. Creative art education sought to establish an active dialogue
between modern art and education via the construction of the notion of ‘child art’. In sharp
contrast with music, where, traditionally, any reference to the child’s ways in relation to how
music is practiced had always received negative connotations, denoting ‘childish’/ness,
immaturity, and lack of sophistication, modern artists constructed a way of looking at children’s
art making endeavours that was firmly rooted in their own artistic imperatives. Disregard of
formal codes of representation, fearless spontaneity, daring leaps of imagination, expressive
immediacy, and simplicity that verges on the transcendental, had all been important discursive
constructs through which modern artists apprehended children’s art making (Fineberg 1997;
Franciscono 1998; Leeds 1985, 1989; Malvern 1995; Wilson 2004, 2007; Wörwag 1998).
Leading modern artists (Klee, Kandinsky, Miro, Dubuffet, among others) systematically col-
lected and studied children’s artworks, bringing their own creative practice in direct dialogue with
‘the child’. Modern art institutions embraced a number of art education initiatives. And child art
became pivotal in shaping notions of artistic freedom and human emancipation. Most interest-
ingly, the celebration of the child-art aesthetic functioned also as an anti-colonialist ‘weapon’: by
insisting ‘on the childlike quality of his art’ (Mitter 2007 p. 75), Indian painter and Nobel laureate
poet Rabindranath Tagore – who had visited Franz Cizek’s juvenile art classes in Vienna in 1921,
and had published ‘A short essay on automatic drawing […] in The Modern Review in Calcutta
in 1917, some 7 years before Breton’s manifesto’ (Mitter 2007, p. 66) – was able to actively fight
against the colonialist dismissal of the culturally ‘other’ as ‘inferior’ and ‘primitive’.
Therefore, modernist art and art education provided CMinED a framework for contextualisa-
tion that stressed the freedom potential that lies in creating a living and dialogic relationship between
contemporary music and the creative endeavours of the young. What is more, as we’ve seen in the
first part of this chapter, creative composers/educators whose work and practice framed CMinED,
shaped certain aspects of their own compositional aesthetic through the invocation of notions of
children’s and young people’s music creativity. Composers, like modern artists before them, drew
inspiration from constructions of ‘the child’s way’.
385
The proposed egalitarianism that brought young persons and contemporary music into a
dialogical relationship was accompanied by the construction of an ‘invisible’ authority that
resulted from the particular construction of the musically ‘contemporary’. A close look at
textbooks and project-based material related to creative music in education reveals a dom-
ination of New Music modernist approaches that downgraded free improvisation and
experimental musical practices. Emphasis on composing in schools seems to have focused on
notions of exploration that derive from a compositional, New Music, aesthetic, rather than
from experimental music. Even in noise-based experiments as well as in those cases in which
chance is explored, a compositional approach of structuring the material prevails. As Nyman
(1999, p. 9) argues ‘the experimental composer is interested not in the uniqueness of permanence
but in the uniqueness of the moment’, whereas ‘the avant-garde composer wants to freeze the
moment, to make its uniqueness un-natural, a jealously guarded position’ (Nyman 1999, p. 9).
Cagean preference for letting the sounds be themselves is very different from experimenting with
sounds with the aim to fashion them ‘into a unified piece of music’ (Paynter 1972, 14). The
latter is rooted in an avant-garde composing logic according to which ‘[c]reativity resides solely
in the passage from the unforeseeable to the necessary’ (Boulez 1991, p. 133). This stands in
sharp contrast to Cage’s approach to the experimental; as Lydia Goehr (2015, p. 25) notes,
Cage’s ‘experimental works would be occasions for rather than of experience’.
Furthermore, whereas the work of Lilli Friedemann, Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann, and Victor
Globokar shows a deliberate effort to bring together free improvisation and New Music
practices, in more widely known UK-based efforts improvisation was largely seen as a mere
preparatory phase of composing, leading to the marginalisation of free improvisation logics in
music education – see the critiques by Barry (1985), and Prévost (1985), published in the British
Journal of Music Education. The same holds for experimental music initiatives that were sug-
gesting radical collectivist approaches to music creation – it is noteworthy that reference to
Cardew’s contribution is, to my knowledge, missing from all accounts focusing on CMinED
approaches of the late 1960s and 1970s.
This points towards a wider issue: sound experimentation, use of unorthodox performance
techniques, indeterminate composing formats, blurring of musical roles, collective authorship,
and problematisation of what counts as musical knowledge, have been imported to education in
ways that seem to obscure their political dimensions and consequences. A rather politically
correct reading prevailed, a reading that seems to have helped CMinED to find its way into
institutionalised education at the expense of the radical potential of much experimental music.
Adlington (2009, p. 4) has argued that the Cagean legacy had
inspired new generations of musicians, for whom the values of immediacy and spon-
taneity offered a point of connection with youth counterculture, and who viewed
performative freedoms, collaborative creative processes, and audience participation as
consonant with the antiauthoritarian and democratizing movements of the era.
However, as CMinED gained momentum such concerns gradually faded away, and chance
procedures became merely examples of ‘what happens when the ideas control themselves’
(Paynter 1992, p. 157). Similarly, noise was approached primarily as a means for expanding the
sound palette available. As the compositional approach prevailed, establishing ‘order out of
chaos’ (Self 1976, p. 1) was what mattered most.
Furthermore, the Cagean approach was often conflated with R. Murray Schafer’s arguably
very different, even romantic approach to soundscape and soundscape composition that ‘never
takes Cage’s elaborate precautions to ensure randomness’ (Adams 1983, p. 40), and which, in
386
Cage(D)
later years led him towards sound ecology (Schafer 1992, 1994, 1995). As Demers (2008,
p. 123) has noted ‘Schafer urges a return to primitive listening conditions when silence was
attainable. Cage instead regards silence as an unreachable but useful heuristic for dispensing with
the boundaries separating music from noise’.
In addition, the prevalence of a New Music compositional aesthetic was accompanied by a view
of music history as a linear progression towards ever more sophisticated music that breaks new
pathways (Schafer 1969). ‘Today’s dissonance’ was to be ‘tomorrow’s consonance’ (Figaredo 2010,
p. 91). Cultivating a New Music aesthetic through hands on compositional experience seemed
therefore to be a way not only of bringing the young into contact with cutting-edge music of their
times, but also of allowing them to feel its strengths and merits even at a moment when it still was, as
a newborn art, unpopular. ‘Children who have experimented in this way would certainly be better
equipped to approach the work of contemporary artists’ (Paynter and Aston 1970, p. 6).
Yet, progressive music educators faced an important antinomy. On the one hand, they were
committed to a cultivation of egalitarian modes of working with their students, encouraging
students’ agentic role as musical thinkers and trusting their ability to pursue radical and
unexpected ideas. But on the other, in order to lead to worthwhile results, students should
undergo a process of Ear Cleaning: ‘Before ear training it should be recognized that we require
ear cleaning’ (Schafer 1986, p. 46). Ear cleaning was more than cultivating focused and detailed
listening; and it was more than listening in an open manner. It induced a disjunction from
listening habits and from music listened to as a result of habit. Thus, CMinED neglected young
people’s own musical cultures, regarding them as an impediment to creative work: ‘[M]oving
away from familiar pop, rock, reggae or whatever, […] starting afresh with new stimuli in a
“neutral” region of sound that does not automatically create associations with the “classical/
pop” dichotomy’ (Paynter 1982, p. 117) seemed an imperative.
Even when elements of popular music culture were incorporated into school creative work,
they were regarded as material to be used stripped of exactly those delineations that rendered
them important to young people outside school. However, it is doubtful whether any such
‘“neutral” region of sound’ may exist (see Finney 2011b, pp. 60–62; also Vulliamy 1976, 1977,
1984). Rather, such instances might be revealing of teachers’ blindness to their own subtle
mechanisms of control – art educator Brent Wilson noted exactly the same problem with regard
to the child-art movement (2007, p. 19).
Concluding remarks
This chapter has tried to locate core features of the language of legitimation created by CMinED,
and to trace aspects of the cultural, aesthetic and educational trajectories that shaped its distinctive
character. It has been suggested that CMinED operated on the basis of three ‘invisible authorities’:
(1) the invisible authority of universalism, with regard to constructions of ‘the young’ and of the
music creative process, (2) the invisible authority of an egalitarian conception of creativity, and (3)
the invisible authority of an avant-garde educational approach that derived from the tradition of
child art and led to a particular framing of the ‘contemporary’ in music.
It is argued that sociological and socio-historical perspectives on how students’ agency in
relation to creative work have been framed through different music and music education
practices uncovers the constructs that mediate discussions of knowledge relevance and of
‘continuity between musics inside and outside of the classroom’ (Kallio, Westerlund, and
Partti 2014, p. 209). CMinED opened up invaluable pathways for developing children’s
agency, problematising the strict division between ‘professional’ and ‘immature’ musicians,
composers and performers. At the same time, it placed limits on what was permitted to ‘enter’
387
music education. The language of legitimation that was developed imposed compositional
logics and aesthetic criteria, and ironically did so in the name of the necessity to preserve a
freshness of perception, and to enable students to operate beyond stylistic limits of musics that
were considered as being resistant to experimentation.
It is also ironic, however, that the critique of sociologists Graham Vulliamy (1976, 1977) and
David Davies (1981) as well of music education scholar John Finney (2011b) regarding the feeling
of alienation that many students felt as a result of the symbolic violence of pedagogy (Wright 2015)
may still be relevant, but for entirely different reasons. Today, the dominant discourse that sur-
rounds creativity adopts a narrow market-driven approach that centres on its use-value and its role
as part of the apparatus of successful entrepreneurship (Gielen 2013; Kanellopoulos 2015;
Mould 2018). What Hanne Fossum (2017, p. 47) has referred to as ‘relevance rationality’ seems to
have taken the lead. As Fossum (Fossum 2017) argues, ‘relevance rationality’ ‘represents a debased,
utilitarian-influenced way of thinking’, that promotes reification and treats music ‘as merely a
useful teaching resource empty of its artistic, emotional, and vital powers’ (p. 47). Seen in this light,
Davies’ (Davies 1981 in Vulliamy 1984, p. 85) claim that ‘[s]chool culture does not penetrate the
subjective experiences of its pupils as a “whole way of life”’, today, sounds as important and timely
as ever. How to create a living school culture that cultivates students’ creativity, how to establish
links between such work and wider aspects of contemporary music culture, how to cultivate a
critical approach to market-oriented uses of creativity, how to problematise the musical and power
hierarchies that render music education a means for cultural reproduction of the status quo, these
are all issues to which Creative Music in Education daringly sought to offer a possible way forward.
These issues are still open.
1. Which are, in your view, the qualities of Creative Music in Education that may still be
valuable for music education today?
2. Which are the ambiguities and the contradictions that music teachers face in their quest for
a music education practice that is ‘relevant’ to their students? How would you approach
the question of relevance?
Notes
1 For this I am indebted to John Finney (2011b, p. 60) and his invocation of ‘The Anonymous Authority
of Creative Music Making’.
2 In earlier attempts to search for the underpinnings of Creative Music in Education (Kanellopoulos
2010, 2011) I underestimated the importance of those links - hence I was rather unduly critical of
Cox’s point. Mellers’ role as a supporter of the radical innovations of Paynter and others had been
crucial, and his views, together with his role as a composer and musicologist, greatly influenced
progressive music education in the UK during the 1960s. It is noteworthy that Mellers ‘launch[ed] a
series of books on music education in 1969 [that] provided the opportunity for Paynter and Aston to
publish some of the ideas that had come from their own teaching experience’ (Pitts 1998, p. 90).
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28
TOWARDS A MUSIC EDUCATION
FOR MATURING, NEVER
ARRIVING
Susan Young
[W]e might take a new approach, one in which, to value ourselves and each other, we
do not need to denigrate nature, the past or the condition of childhood. We can stop
pretending that some people are closer to nature, more primitive than ourselves. We
can begin again to practise human dignity, this time without regard for chronological
age. (Lee 2005, p. 71)
Introduction
My aim in this chapter is to expose and discuss the marginalisation and lower status of young
children in music education, to explain how this has come about and then to propose a shift in
theoretical thinking that could remedy the situation. I will explain how conceptions of young
children that are constructed from theories of musical development and socialisation are re-
sponsible for their marginalisation. The valuable contribution of Childhood Studies since its
inception in the mid-1990s has been to demonstrate how developmentalist discourses con-
struct the figure of the child upon ideas of linearity, progress, and standardisation. Childhood
Studies, particularly as articulated in the UK, adopted sociological and anthropological
viewpoints on childhood to counterbalance what were seen as the limitations of the dom-
inating psychological perspectives. Theorists within the field explained how age hierarchies are
constructed, legitimated, and maintained: hierarchies which clearly place the youngest chil-
dren at the very lowest point and characterise them as deficit and lacking in contrast to the
completed adult occupying the highest point ( James et al. 1998; James and Prout 1990). While
Childhood Studies is the theoretical field that I rely on in formulating the arguments for this
chapter, rather than attempt a synthesis of various approaches in Childhood Studies that might
serve to retrieve young children from their position on the margins, I select ideas from the
work of Nick Lee that I consider to be particularly fruitful (1998, 2001). Lee has challenged
the traditional divisions between adults and children which characterise children as dependent,
changeable, and incomplete, in contrast to adults who arrive at the endpoint of development as
independent, stable, and complete. In short, Lee upsets notions of maturity implied in de-
velopmental accounts and suggests that we are all, always, in a state of maturing; we never
arrive.
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Susan Young
Marginalisation
The marginalisation of the youngest children passes largely unnoticed and its consequences go
unheeded. There are innumerable, embedded ways in which the stereotyping of young
children and discrimination towards them operate (see also, Hendrick 2016, pp. 19–20). These
embedded ways are often difficult to capture, and when, as I will do in the next paragraphs, I
describe two examples from my own experiences, they can seem trivial, innocuous – or, worse
still, as if I am carping. I take that risk however, because such real life experiences reveal the
minor processes, the ‘micro-powers’ as Foucault would term them, through which
representations of young children are constructed (1977). These are the everyday patterns and
routines such as conference schedules and seminar invitations that contain small strategies,
tactics, and techniques that determine how these constructions of young children are produced,
reproduced, and reinforced.
Several years ago I submitted a paper on the topic of improvisation with educational
percussion instruments among three- and four-year-olds to an established international music
education conference. On arrival I was pleased to find that a prime-time symposium on
improvisation and composition had been organised, bringing together collected papers on the
topic. Surprised that my paper was not included in this symposium, I eventually found it tucked
into the ‘early childhood’ slot at the end of the final day along with three other papers that
focussed on diverse aspects of early childhood music education. My paper, incidentally, had
been rated with high scores by the conference reviewers so its exclusion was unlikely to have
been a decision based on quality. In the early childhood session each presenter spoke about
topics that were completely unrelated. The only unifier between the presentations was the
broadest category of the young age of the children. What this scheduling very clearly illustrates
is that young children are defined first and foremost by their age and assumed developmental
stage and not by their musical activities. Longstanding developmental constructs of young
children’s musical activity have characterised it as unformed and incomplete and so it would
not, therefore, have been considered of relevance or interest to the central, flagship symposium
focussing on composition among older children and young people. The conference organisers
thus held and perpetuated clear ideas as to which children and their musical activities were of
value to be seen and heard in their prime-time session. It was an indication of whose voices and
what knowledge counts as important in music education scholarship and who is sidelined. The
confinement and exclusion of early childhood in academia is widely evident – confined not
only to separate slots in conference scheduling, as I illustrate here, but also to separate sections of
handbooks and special issues of journals.
Here is a second story. My then university had an active music sociology research group,
mainly intended for postgraduate students, headed up by a lead academic within the field. As a
fellow academic on the staff, I was invited to join the group and to present some ongoing work
into young children’s everyday musical activities. My presentation focussed on ‘Thomas the
Tank Engine’ videos (at that time very popular with young children) with an analysis of how
the songs and music engaged the children in the experience of watching and the multi-modality
of their engagement. This study, undertaken by an international team, was part of a larger-scale
study on everyday lives among two-year-olds that has since been published (Gillen and
Cameron 2010). As I played video clips that showed small children at home engaging with the
music videos; a domestic scene of children’s pyjamas and sippy cups, small bodies flopping
playfully on the sofa, the small group of research students broke into uneasy laughter; part
amused, part embarrassed, and part derisory. The lead academic acted swiftly, challenging the
students’ responses and then inviting them to explore the reasons behind their laughter and
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Towards a music education
unease, drawing them to recognise issues of status around what counted as worthwhile in
academic research and anxieties around their own identities as emerging researchers. The
nascent researchers looked to the seminars to bolster the status, seriousness, and sophistication of
their own research in a forum which relied on the trappings of academic research; the jargon,
the obscure, and fashionably esoteric topics focussed on young people, adults, and their music.
Research with young children, their domestic bodily presence and the sounds of their childish
commercialised music threatened the order and rationality of what was implicitly an adult-
defined space and unsettled the hierarchical position of the students’ own work for which they
sought validation through the research seminar.
These two examples from my own experience draw attention to how young children are
made invisible in academic activity through processes of excluding and not taking them ser-
iously. This mirrors the situation in society at large. In our age-segregated Westernised societies,
young children are excluded from public places and spaces, hidden away in specially secure and
safety-conscious environments. Not only are young children perceived as needing very par-
ticular attention and separate places, they are increasingly seen as a threat to the order that
defines adult spaces. So when they are made visible and audible, as in the second example, the
group will employ other means by which to attempt to re-assert the boundaries of exclusion;
laughter, mockery, showing disinterest, and so on. These regulatory mechanisms are familiar to
those who represent the interests of non-dominant groups: those arguing for women’s, in-
digenous groups’, LGBTQI rights for example, but would rarely be considered in relation to
small children. Academic importance and seriousness is associated with adults and young
people, their music, and with the higher sectors of education. The neglect of young children
has been ever-present in music education scholarship yet remains remarkably unnoticed.
Despite the routine side-lining of young children, few would consider this a form of prejudice
that leads to stereotyping and discrimination. A deficit view of the youngest children as ‘lesser
than’ and as ‘other’ has for so long been inscribed in developmental theory (Burman 2017), and
assumptions of developmentalism are so entrenched in educational thinking, that these con-
ceptions pass without question (Walkerdine 1993).
Let me unpick the assumptions of developmentalism. Musical development is
conventionally conceived as a progressive, linear process; a pathway towards becoming the
complete adult musician. The theoretical conceptions of development from sociology and
psychology are, in the broadest terms, more or less parallel in that both position the completed
adult as the aimed-for endpoint. In mainstream sociological theory, socialisation is based on a
one-way process of transmission from adults to children in which young children are the passive
receivers. Developmental psychology assumes a process of progressive acquisition of skills and
knowledge that transforms as children mature. On such pathways, young children sit at the far
end of a continuum which positions the mature adult musician at the other end. Thus, on these
continua they are viewed as the least mature, least rational, most child-like, closest to nature,
and so on. The evident superiority of the finished adult musician who has entered the doorway
of musical culture – and the young person nearing the doorway – assume an importance over
the small child.
The marginalisation of the youngest children is accompanied by the marginalisation of those
who work with them. The small stories from my own experience not only defined and re-
stricted the musical subjectivity of the youngest children, but they also served to position me
outside the grown-up, adult worlds of conference symposia, and research seminars. Moreover,
the early childhood sector is made up of an almost exclusively female workforce and so there is
a key linkage between the construction of young children and feminist understandings of the
women who are closely associated with their care and education. A focus on young children
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and how they are positioned in mainstream music education theorising cannot avoid the
inevitable mutualities between women and children. This is an important theme that I in-
troduce briefly here and will return to later in the chapter.
Young children and the sociology of music education

Turning now to consider the position of young children within the sociology of music edu-
cation, much of the current activity operates with a surprisingly unexamined view of children
and childhood. Despite astute critiques of how the traditional sociological preoccupations of
gender, class, and racism and how stratification and inequality via these categories can be
perpetuated in music education practices, the ‘child’, childhood, and the category of age are
absent from the dominant discourses (see Wright 2016). Race and class are social categories that
can be sub-divided quite easily, gender is now also sub-divided rather than binary, but age is a
gradual differentiation that defies easy sub-division. Where do the distinctions between young
and old lie, or between child and adult? Indeed, age serves to remind us that any form of
categorisation, or distinction, cannot be marked against a fixed benchmark, but is always
graduated, subtle, flexible, contingent on many other aspects and that one form of distinction,
always incorporates others. In the case of young children, however, age, and its assumed
characteristics, as we have seen in my two examples, is taken as the dominant factor that defines
young children and overrides any other category.
There is a growing body of work around age as a social category, not a merely chronological
marker, and the forms of prejudice and discrimination (ageism) that can accompany it. This
work tends to focus on the oldest in society, but very little (although my literature search
revealed a little, for example by Westman [1991]) that considers the application of ageism to
youngest children. In the field of early childhood music education Maria Wassrin (2016)
challenges power structures based on age and starts to frame ideas of ageism, although not
termed so by Wassrin. Wassrin describes musicking in early childhood settings that brings adults
and children together. She explains how this practice can shape conceptions of musicality which
challenge and confound age-based inequalities.
The majority of writing in the sociology of music education draws its theoretical sustenance
from the sociologies of education and of music, and is concerned mainly with the structural
level of culture, social group, and schooling. It is thus interested in the school subject of music,
its curriculum, and underpinning musical values; the associations of class and/or race that music
and musical practices embody; and how music education continues to employ discriminatory
practices in relation to these social demarcations. There is no implied criticism in these
observations. In no way do I dismiss the value and importance of these topics and as with any
relatively new field of scholarly activity there are certain initiating theoretical priorities and
directions. However the sociology of music education is not, generally speaking, deploying
analytic concepts at the frontiers of thinking in the sociology of childhood and, in the main,
appears to be overlooking some theoretical developments that are now well established in
Childhood Studies (see also Young 2018).
By failing to position the child and childhood within the current developments in sociology
of music education theory, the problematic issues of ‘developmentism’, the complications of
‘being’ in contrast to ‘becoming’ that have been so central to Childhood Studies, are not
confronted. It is the assumed older child/young person who is by default the subject of
mainstream music education scholarship. The focus on young people attending secondary and
higher sectors of music education is easily explained by the fact that the majority of music
education academics who hold university positions have progressed from positions as secondary
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or higher education music teachers. They formerly taught older children and young people and
now research and think about them. In the stratified, hierarchical world of education, very
young children and early childhood education are beyond the sightlines, knowledge, and
awareness of most music educationalists. The majority may well see early childhood education
only in terms of rudimentary, preliminary preparation for what follows; necessary perhaps, but
not of great interest or importance to education ‘proper’. This indeed is a major problematic
factor, for as long as music education is so rigidly segmented by age, academics primarily
specialise in one relatively narrow age band of pupils and educational context and lack the
wider view.
There is another straightforward explanation for why early childhood music education is not
easily encompassed by the mainstream. Although it has been around for a long time, in the last
20–30 years the early childhood music field has expanded and proliferated considerably
(Young 2018). Those of us who have spent our life’s work in early childhood music still
struggle to keep up with its rapidly shifting landscape. That expansion has included the
extension to even younger ages. Early childhood music now routinely includes the birth to
three age phase and then encompasses children up to five or six years. Prior to this shift in age
phase, early childhood music education usually spanned the three to eight years age phase. This
relatively rapid development has considerably changed the scope and nature of practice in
affluent post-industrial countries. Early childhood music education is no longer a small-scale
sector of activity that mainly occurs in preschools during the year or two prior to mainstream
compulsory schooling, but has become a substantial and highly diversified field of practice in its
own right. Unlike the music education sectors that cater for older children early childhood
music is not neatly contained within recognisable and longstanding structures such as schooling,
instrumental lessons, large-group ensemble rehearsals, and so on. It takes place in a patchwork
of different types of setting, led by a varied range of practitioners. The distinctions between
education, community music, therapy, performance arts, library and museum services, the
private commercialised music sessions, and so on, are blurred and entangled. This complexity
and diversity of practice and the absence of structures that are taken for granted in school-based
music education means that familiar music education concepts and theoretical ideas are unlikely
to be directly transferable, but have to be thoughtfully reconfigured or abandoned altogether.
Even at the most straightforward level, an assumption of class music teaching and all that goes
with it (one lead teacher, a certain sized group of children, a music room and resources, a
time-table slot) is unlikely to transfer, at least not without modification and adaptation. As a
result, early childhood music education cannot be easily incorporated within mainstream
pedagogical and theoretical discussions.
Challenging developmental definitions

Notwithstanding the general situation that I have outlined, it is possible to identify two ap-
proaches in the literature on early childhood music that have sought to challenge rigid de-
velopmental definitions and the low status of very young children that accompanies them and
present alternative images of young children as musical. Both are worth exploring in more
detail because they provide alternatives to a view that positions young children as lacking and
deficient, and would seem, therefore, to be positive moves. Here is the first. Early childhood
music scholars have attempted to bring very young children into focus in their own right. The
music education concern with the ‘mature’ and completed musician has required researchers to
look for how young children can somehow be attributed properties assumed to belong more
normally to adults. So, for example, young children’s activity has been analysed to reveal
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hitherto undiscovered forms of musical competence, agency and autonomy that have been
overlooked, revealing how they are not deficient musically, as assumed by developmentalism,
but that they possess forms of emergent and meaningful musicality. These analyses typically seek
to demonstrate how young children may be further advanced along a developmental trajectory
than developmental models assume – or, alternatively, that they possess forms of core
competence or agency that collapse and fore-shorten the trajectory. Indeed, the research study
on improvisation among three- and four-year-olds that I brought to the music education
conference (as I described at the start of the chapter) sought to challenge conceptions of their
improvisational incompetence. I had analysed spontaneous music-making to suggest that young
children’s musical activity possesses core, schematic structures that are also present in ‘more
mature’ forms of musical thinking and that therefore young children’s musical activity is equally
deserving of attention and recognition as musically structured. It should not be dismissed as
merely random, chaotic, and unthinking – so my argument proposed (Young 1999, 2003).
There is an alternative response which is also frequently present in early childhood music
education scholarship. This response is to reify the activity of young children and demonstrate
how it belongs to a separate musical world of early childhood, completely detached from
adulthood. I would position some of my earlier work in this vein (e.g. Young 2005). This
approach typically suggests that young children retain forms of imagination and creativity that
in our older age we have lost; a kind of golden age of pure, innocent, early childhood located in
some idealised natural space outside of the adult world. If children are conceptualised as pos-
sessing a musicality that is all their own, they slip out of age-based hierarchies and develop-
mental deficit models in one easy move. These reified constructions of young children as
musical continue to circulate as a dominant theme in much writing about early childhood
music. Embedded in these arguments is a return to the child of Rousseau, the innocent, pure,
capable child of nostalgic romanticism. It is an intrinsically appealing construction that is well
entrenched, receiving impetus from different theoretical articulations at different times during
the last century. In current times of precarity and concern it has resurfaced, Moss (2014) arguing
that an image of innocent childhood as hope for the future offers a message of salvation and
reassurance to an anxious society. Young children are then trapped yet again by constructions
that stereotype by idealising and infantilising them, holding them in place to serve adult
emotional needs (Young 2018). Thus, I would argue, much research and theorising about early
childhood music and its education has done little to address the marginalisation of young
children, but indeed, unwittingly, has had the opposite result of reinforcing its separation.
An alternative view
The problem with these two approaches that seek to challenge the positioning of young
children and address the problem of their inferiority in developmental terms – the one that tries
to show how children have musical competences that are precociously ‘adult-like’ and the other
that seeks to show that their musicality is unique and stands outside adult music-making – is that
they do nothing to challenge the fundamental premise, and primacy, of rational, autonomous,
mature musical behaviour on which developmentalist and constructionist images hinge.
Proposed changes of conception that arise out of predetermined models are not really trans-
formative, they are unavoidably conformist. They leave in place a linear pathway of progress
from incompetence to competence, from immaturity to maturity, from dependence to in-
dependence, from innocence and naivety, to worldliness and cultural experience; the dualistic
structure that inevitably places value on one at the expense of the other. The proposition, then,
is to rethink the core premise of maturity, the linear progression with its simple oppositions and
398
the arrival at pinnacles of achievement, all of which are the defining assumptions of develop-
mental models and theories of socialisation. Here, as I indicated at the start of the chapter, I turn
to Nick Lee’s (1998) ideas around conceptions of maturity. In a nutshell, he challenges the idea
of arrival and completion in ‘maturity’ and suggests that ‘maturing’ is an ongoing, never
complete process. We never arrive. We are all, always, in some ways immature and incomplete.
In one clean, rhetorical move the whole framework of developmentalist assumptions collapses.
We cut loose from the hierarchy.
Indeed, the notion of any kind of pinnacle of musical achievements and elitisms, particularly
prevalent in the practices of Western art music has largely been dismantled by sociological and
philosophical perspectives and by ‘new’ musicology (e.g. Cook and Everist 1999) and ethno-
musicology (e.g. Titon 1992). But the full implications of that dismantling on how we view
children’s musical activity and theorise it in education have not been thought through. If there
is no final, fixed, elite end-point, and thus no teleological pathway, then, very simply, there can
be no minimal starting-out point. In contemporary reconceptualisations of childhood that draw
inspiration from philosophical thinking, dualisms, and the image of linear progress are often
replaced by images of networks, or cyclical or wave-like structures in which there are multiple
changes, pathways, recursions, dead-ends, and so on. Alan Prout (2005), another key academic
within Childhood Studies, has proposed that we adopt languages of non-linearity, hybridity,
network, and mobility drawing on actor network and complexity theories.
This may seem simple enough, to adopt non-linear, non-hierarchical models on which to
base conceptions, but this shift creates another set of issues to consider carefully. If everyone is
to be viewed as immature musicians, never arriving, but always changing then we also need to
account for all the multiple forms of immaturity and the ever-moving, processes of transfor-
mation. Change and promoting change, increasing the possibilities for growth and musical
creating among children, is of course, the whole raison-d’étre of education. A flat ontology of
musical maturing/never arriving can, in theory, replace a linear hierarchy with its binary op-
positions, but as Nick Lee points out, there still need to be some forms of distinction (2001).
The aim is to replace distinctions that have constructed meanings and values attached to them,
that can therefore fall into simple binary oppositions and are thereby unjust and unproductive,
with more just, productive ones that are, as far as is possible, rooted in what is indisputable. Let
me start with the most obvious distinction. That infants and young children have certain bodily
characteristics that differentiate them from older children and adults is undeniable. They are
smaller in size, have different proportions in their body parts, have less muscular strength,
smaller lung size, soft vocal folds, and so on: all of which affect their capacities for making music
and shape the music they make. However, importantly, these graduated distinctions emerge
from biological, embodied aspects of being, not from socially constructed or psychologically/
cognitively defined aspects.
Even here, of course, we need to be wary of describing characteristics of young children’s
bodies as biological when in fact they are culturally defined. There are many theoretical ideas
circulating around musicality, particularly in relation to infancy, that are proposed as having
biological origins but when examined more closely, particularly from an anthropological
perspective, are revealed to be culturally constructed (Young 2018). For example, in affluent,
middle-class social groups verbal precociousness is prized and so infants are encouraged to
vocalise with kinds of conversational responsiveness that are described as being the roots of
musicality and universal therefore. Yet this parenting practice of vocalising is not found among
the majority of the world’s mother-infant pairs and so it is a culturally shaped, not innately
determined practice. Nevertheless, while recognising the risks of specifying biological
certainties and overlooking the contribution of culture in creating variations, young children
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have physical characteristics that create certain differences – and physical characteristics that are
constantly and gradually changing over the first years of life – that need to be accommodated by
music education practices. It is surprising, is it not, that music education theories seem little
interested in the bodily characteristics of the children who are taught, yet music is such an
embodied practice?
If bodily characteristics provide one form of distinction, I can suggest two more. There
will be others. I do not claim to be setting out a definitive list, but finding examples from
which to fashion my argument. First, by virtue of their age young children also have a
shortage of experience in comparison with older children and adults. Second, they are also
dependent on caregivers, particularly as infants and toddlers, for even quite basic everyday
care and nurturance. So now I can suggest at least three distinctions that we might address –
the physicality of young children, their shortage of experience, and their need for assistance
and support from both other adults and material items – and to think how all these impact on
their musicality and capacities for participation. We have to find a way to do this without
arriving at distinctions that once again place young children in opposition to older children
and adults, so that they are ‘othered’ and thereby attributed lower status. Distinctions can
easily collapse back into simple binary oppositions, bringing us back to square one. I also
hasten to add that this is not a return to framing childhood in normative, universalistic ways
that lead to recommendations for developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) although some
aspects, for example, taking into account children’s physical capacities for singing, or their
movement vocabulary and coordination skills, may look very similar to developmental
prescriptions for practice.
So, to understand graduated distinctions and take account of them through differentiation of
practice becomes key. With understanding differentiation we also need to consider and take
into account the degrees of differentiation that doing music always entails, for anyone, whatever
their age, their physicality, their quantity of experience, or the nature of their inter-
dependencies. The embodied nature of making music, the physical morphology and capabilities
of any individual musician, is intrinsic to their musicality anywhere on a map of musical im-
maturities and relationships. Our bodies shape what music is possible and the music shapes our
bodies. Likewise we all have varying levels of experience and expertise in a musical landscape
that encompasses all kinds of genres and styles. I may have plenty of experience as a classical
pianist but very little experience as a rock guitarist. If piano music is the focus activity, I might
be able to empower others less experienced than me, but I would depend on support from
others if we are to play rock music together. We all have interdependencies, both with the
social and material world around us. No musician can make music in isolation from social and
material contexts: we make music with people and with things, and are supported by them and
provide support to them, to varying degrees depending on the musical situation. The philo-
sopher John Dewey (1902) emphasised interdependence as the most important element,
educatively, because it accompanies growth: we only grow together with others. Most im-
portantly identifying distinctions, differentiated by degrees – embodied variations, level of
experience, and needs for dependency and support – are not reasons for inclusion/exclusion or
attributions of status.
Next we can turn to theories based on relational concepts drawn from assemblage thinking
and actor network theory (ANT) to accommodate these varying degrees of differentiation
(Müller and Schurr 2016). Relational approaches argue that there are no pre-existing essences,
only relations. So therefore autonomy, maturity, agency, rationality, and all those attributes
normally denied to young children are relationally produced and understood as distributed. In
other words they are what emerges dynamically from relational processes rather than an
400
essential quality of individuals. Thus a dualistic, oppositional ontology is replaced by an on-

tology of configurations, different combinations of elements that combine, articulate one an-
other and then disperse. The individual engaged in music-making is thereby dependent on a
network of relations between their own body, material items (the sound-makers), the texts,
other people, the spaces – all the variously associated elements that result in the musical event.
Here the new materialist philosophies offer explanatory ideas with their emphasis on the ever-
moving interactions of all the different elements that make up a musical event. In other domains
of early childhood education, relational, networked accounts of children’s participation and
learning have been presented by, for example, Taylor (2013) and Murris (2016), and in creative
and artistic areas there are active and emerging researchers starting to adopt these theoretical
premises (for example, in work reported in Macrae et al. 2018).
Feminised workforce
Now I interrupt the line of discussion I have been developing in the previous paragraphs in
order to return to the issue I flagged earlier, namely the position of professionals who work in
early childhood music education. A short detour is necessary because I need to introduce some
new ideas and information. However, the main aim of this chapter is to expose and discuss the
marginalisation of young children and that issue goes hand-in-hand with the marginalisation of
those who work with them: the two are mutually constituted. Shortly I will return to, and
integrate this discussion with, the main thread before concluding the chapter.
Early childhood music educators, both practitioners and academics, are overwhelmingly
female and the early childhood education field, as a whole, is feminised. As feminist scholars
have long explained, the identities of women are co-constituted with those of the children they
work with (Oakley 1972). Young children and women are collapsed into one, with an assumed
‘natural’ connection. The positions of women educators and young children in early childhood
education are often dialectically constituted where the one cannot be imagined without the
other. Because young children and their women carers and educators are aligned with one
another, constructions and conceptions of one overlay the professional activity of the other.
Characteristics are then ascribed to both which emphasise their connection and linkage. The
subtle stereotyping of young children, infantilising them, disempowering them, positioning
them as lacking, unskilled ,and irrational, permeates the assumptions made about those who
work with them. In other words, recognising the stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination of
young children has to go hand in hand with the same processes operating in relation to early
childhood music educators. The discrimination towards early childhood professionals is subtle
but a reality, as I showed in my opening anecdotes. This gendered division of labour brings
with it all the associated, embedded assumptions of lower status.
Women and small children are typically relegated to separate, private worlds that are dis-
connected from public, institutional worlds of work; a separation that has its historical origins in
the spread of industrialisation (David 2003; Oakley 1972). Much early childhood music edu-
cation practice similarly takes place in non-institutional settings, tucked away in playgroups and
daycares, taking place in village halls, hired rooms, and even homes; hidden and invisible. The
voluntary labour of women in various forms of childcare for young children is taken for
granted; it becomes a form of unskilled, ‘non-work’ (Shelton 2006). In early childhood music
education, the fact that there is no requirement for a professional qualification in many
countries reflects the assumption that this is unskilled work and reinforces its status as ‘non-
work’. Historically, in patriarchal societal structures, women’s work has been viewed as a
pastime and not a serious undertaking (Shelton 2006). The poor pay, insecurity of temporary
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and freelance positions, and lack of employment rights for early childhood music educators are
taken as acceptable for ‘unprofessional’ work that is closely aligned with voluntary care work.
Because young children are conceptualised in ‘natural’ and developmental deficit terms,
early childhood music education is thought to require simplified content that necessitates very
little musical skill, intellectual ability, imagination, or creativity. At secondary and tertiary levels,
broadly speaking, music education is subject-centred, conventionally focused on content and
skill acquisition, rather than child- or pedagogy-centred. Priority is given to learning music as
subject rather than the intellectual dynamics of pedagogy. Thus, viewed from a subject-centred
position, it is understandable that music for young children could be seen as a simplified form of
practice. Unfortunately, this conception of early childhood practice as unskilled and easy is
perpetuated by the sector itself in a circular process that is difficult to intercept and change. The
intricacies of pedagogy are often replaced by predetermined content and activity ideas, drawn
either from ready-made curriculum approaches/methods, or increasingly now from commer-
cial franchises that provide ‘off-the-peg’ teaching sessions. This situation has arisen because of
the lack of attention to the teacher education and professionalism of the field: the status quo is
thus perpetuated.
These connections and complications between young children and their female workforce
are not simply about assumed affinities between women and small children or differences in
approaches and conceptions of practice that need to be reflected and reconsidered, but are
deeply tied to political issues of status, power, and injustice. The opportunities for early
childhood educators to participate in the forums where debates and discussions in music
education take place and decisions are made are curtailed by the lack of professional, employed
positions, and adequate pay. I have been fortunate, as a university academic, to have the
resources to attend meetings, conferences, and seminar groups, but even then, as I have shown,
my presence on behalf of young children, their music, and the sector as a whole can be
excluded from the grown-up world.
At this point in the chapter I re-join and add to the main theme. A relational view of musical
experience in education, a ‘music education for immaturity’, would also reconfigure the po-
sitioning of professionals, irrespective of the age phase they work with. I propose a view of
music education which emphasises relationality, embodied and embedded in social and material
dimensions; which recognises variations in levels of experience among all of those participating
in musical events; which understands that we are always changing, moving, and growing within
music, never arriving; and which places commensurate importance on pedagogical process
rather than specific musical skill among its educators. This view of music education would
accommodate young children and educators with early childhood expertise on equal footing.
To illustrate what I have in mind I call up an example from experience of working with an
experimental children’s theatre group. The group may have had their roots in children’s
theatre, but they were exploring ways of working with young children in interactive im-
provisations that included sounding, time-based, rhythmic activity. Their work was evolving as
multi-modal, improvisations comprising cello music, micro-songs, vocalisations, words, ges-
ture, dance, and play with objects that brought together three adult artists with groups of under
three-year-olds in art-full, ‘play-full’ performances. The adult-artists had an initiating structure
and ideas in mind. These were not fixed, however, but were ‘immature’ in the sense that they
were unstable and incomplete. Their improvisations evolved in response to the contributions of
others, the children and their co-artists. The children could influence and control the direction
of the improvisational piece as it emerged. In one event a small girl proffered a banana she had
brought with her as a snack to the dancer. The dancer accepted it, and developed a micro-song
and dance around the girl’s utterance of the word ‘banana’. The micro-song was taken up by
402
the cellist who embellished it further while the girl bobbed and gyrated to his playing. In this
way the adults drew on their greater experience, relative to the children, but empowered the
children to contribute. Music in this conception arises, anew each time, from micro-social
processes. Pedagogy becomes a process of active self-making, for both adults and children,
growth through reciprocity with others in mutually created artistic events. Taking this dis-
cussion back to the realities of educational practice, one of the very negative aspects of
schooling and its hierarchy of sectors is to isolate according to age-normativity and fracture the
possibilities of cross-age connections and interactions, both for educators and students.
Ethnomusicological accounts of more diverse and socially embedded musical traditions, and
studies of music-making in Western families, reveal that cross-age connections and interactions
are among the defining features of how young children engage with and learn music in
everyday contexts, outside of formal educational settings. Anthropological accounts of how
children learn in communities that place less emphasis on formal schooling demonstrate the
forms of ‘intent participation’ in activities that are meaningful to the community (Rogoff
et al. 2003). Children’s singing games are a prime example. Those who document and describe
children’s singing games reveal the inter-age processes of participation through which older
children induct the younger newcomers, often their own siblings (e.g. Dzansi 2004).
Ethnomusicological accounts of music in diverse societies reveal ways in which children par-
ticipate in music made by adults, on the side-lines, listening in and imitating, given small parts
to play and so on (e.g. Duran undated). Cross-age, intergenerational non-hierarchical music
education practices would open up spaces for music-making where small children can be
lookers on, listening in and imitating, joining in as they want and are able, on their terms. Thus,
the inclusion of early childhood music education, rectifying the situation of its marginalisation is
not simply about making a few adjustments of attitude or conception, but calls for far-reaching,
fundamental shifts in both the structure of music education and the pedagogical approach to
embrace a non-hierarchical music education.
Conclusion
A conclusion to a chapter should ideally bring the threads tidily together and provide a neat
summing up. But I start my conclusion with topics that I have not been able to include in order
to take this opportunity to highlight yet more issues of importance. I would have liked to refine
my arguments within this chapter to an even greater extent by drawing attention to the dif-
ferences between babies, toddlers, and preschool children aged three to five years. But I risked
over-complicating my chapter and skimming over the main issues if I also introduced the many
ramifications that accompany considerations of these sub-groups within the age phase of early
childhood. It may seem that infants are occupying a more important position in music research
and understanding than hitherto. There is currently great interest in discovering musical
competences of infants and a quantity of a certain type of laboratory-based research is reaching
the pages of journals, often reduced to hyped-up claims in social media postings. The aim of this
research, however, is not to raise understandings of the musical lives of babies nor to improve
the quality of early childhood music education but a curiosity into the musicality of human
adults by attempting to pinpoint reductionist abilities that are the least affected by cultural
influences. Babies are little more than the passive objects of the researchers’ curiosity.
I would have liked to expand more on the serious and unjust consequences that result from
discriminations towards the youngest children. They include the myriad ways in which re-
sources are allocated and distributed via policy and politics. The youngest children in any
society are its poorest citizens and the early childhood education sector is impoverished. As a
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Susan Young
very obvious example from the UK, the allocation of funds in the National Plan for Music
Education completely excludes children under the age of five. This illogical and unjust decision,
as if music learning remains dormant until it suddenly ignites age five is a clear result of the
developmentalist assumptions within a hierarchical education system and the assumptions of a
subject-centred educational system.
In conclusion, to finally provide a proper ending to this chapter and summarise its arguments. I
started by pointing out that the marginalisation and often blatant exclusion of young children and
early childhood professionals is so endemic as to be almost imperceptible and based on deeply
rooted developmentalist constructions of young children. I suggested that attempts to retrieve
young children from this position either by proposing that their music-making has adult-like
characteristics or that their music-making is unique and in a special category of its own, have done
nothing to challenge the fundamental conception of musical maturity, of completeness on which
developmentalist constructions depend. The alternative approach is to do away with notions of
musical completeness and maturity and replace them with relational and networked conceptions
that are always in process. However, in line with Lee, this shift then creates a need to recognise
differences without falling back into dualistic contrasts in which one is accorded value at the
expense of the other (2001). I proposed three types of graduated differentiation: embodied dif-
ferences, variations in the quantity and types of experience, and varying forms and levels of
interdependence both social and material, all of which are intrinsic to musical experience for
everyone, irrespective of age – or any other social category for that matter. I went on to explain
how the marginalisation and low status of young children cannot be disentangled from the almost
exclusively female workforce with whom they are interdependent. This led finally for a call for
music education as a practice to be understood in relational terms and for pedagogy not to be
subject-centred, but processual and relational in conception, engendering possibilities for growth
as Dewey (1902) would say, and ideally not so strictly segregated by age. There are many ad-
vantages to inter-age, informal groups for musical practices where the youngest can learn through
imitation and informal participation.
Much remains to be done to counteract the prejudices against the youngest children in our
society, and the marginalisation and inequalities that they experience. Music education should be
where all children, wherever they are on a map of maturing, depending, gathering experience, are
seen as full-status holders, to be met and respected, never arriving, always growing.
1. Reflect carefully on what images and assumptions about young children as musical you
hold? How do these images and assumptions perhaps impose limitations on young children
and how might they be revised?
2. Does the core idea of this chapter that we are always growing and changing musically and
never arrive relate to your own experiences?
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29
FROM PARALLEL MUSICAL
IDENTITIES TO CULTURAL
OMNIVOROUSNESS AND BACK
Strategies and functions of multi-layered
musical conduct
Sidsel Karlsen
Introduction
Music is available in more formats and through more channels than ever before, and people engage
in multi-layered musical conduct – the use of a wide selection of musical styles and genres – in
different ways and for a variety of individual and social purposes. In this chapter, I will discuss
sociological frameworks pertinent to capturing, interpreting, and understanding such conduct,
with an emphasis on concepts such as parallel musical identities, musical agency, and cultural
omnivorousness. Each framework, and its related concepts, is examined with respect to its un-
derlying assumptions about how and for what reasons multi-layered musical conduct takes place,
and about the modes through which such conduct can best be investigated. Drawing on empirical
research conducted during the past one and a half decades, and through the theoretical lenses of the
sociological frameworks described in the chapter, I will show actual examples of individual and
collective strategies for multi-layered musical conduct as well as some of its functions, ranging from
the level of the single music listener and up to that of institutions for higher music education. The
overall aim of the chapter is to provide tools for investigating and understanding the meanings of
music in times characterised by musical super-diversity.
Multi-layered musical conduct: why and how do we engage in it?

The understandings of how and for what purposes humans engage in what I have chosen to call
multi-layered musical conduct – or the conscious use of a wide range and selection of different
musics and the different modes and levels of involvement in diverse musical practices – vary
among sociologists, perhaps most notably with the level of interest they show towards structural
or more individual or agency-oriented models of explanation. While many prominent socio-
logical theorists, such as Giddens (1984) and Bourdieu (1984), aim to provide frameworks that
weave these dimensions together instead of positioning them as dichotomies, the point from
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From parallel musical identities
which they choose to view societal phenomena might differ as might the forces they attribute
explanatory powers. For cultural sociologists having an interest in structural dimensions, like
Bourdieu (1984), Bennett et al. (2009), and Peterson (1992; Peterson and Kern 1996), music is
mainly understood as a medium and means of social stratification, which functions to produce
and signal social status and cultural as well as sub-cultural capital (see Thornton 1996), and
which is also attended to particularly, or at least partly, for this purpose. A tendency which has
been building up throughout the past 30 years is that which views exhibited breadth in musical
taste as equal to social mastery or dominance. In other words, omnivorous musical habits and
tastes have become a trait of the upper or dominant social classes, and this musical easiness has in
itself become one of the ‘games of culture’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 54). For more agency-oriented
sociologists however, like for example DeNora (2000, 2005) and Hennion (2007), musical taste
is not so much about social hierarchies and positioning as it is about individuals’ making and re-
making of themselves in relation to self. This both immediate and reflexive constitution of
subjectivity happens in and through the objects of the world, in this case the auditory medium
of music. Hennion (2007, p. 97) draws on the concept of sensitising in order to explain how and
why people, especially those that he denotes ‘amateurs’ – that is, the ‘average’ person engaged in
an activity – open themselves up ‘to things, to [them]selves, to situations and to moments, while
simultaneously controlling how those feelings might be shared and discussed with others’
(p. 98). In his understanding, amateurs do not believe that ‘things have taste’ (p. 98), and there
are no hidden and underlying agendas or social causes behind their engagement with cultural
artefacts such as music. A deep-seated and sensuous pleasure is the primary reason for in-
volvement, and multi-layered musical conduct hence becomes a question of following an inner
need to indulge oneself in various musical soundscapes, textures, and events, while simulta-
neously allowing and partaking in the active construction of oneself, as well as the ‘framework
for the organization of [one’s] social agency’ (DeNora 2000, p. 17).
As indicated above, the gap between the more structuralist and the agency-oriented cultural
sociologists is perhaps not as wide as it might seem, neither theoretically nor at the level of
practice. Bourdieu (1984) and Bennett et al.’s (2009) respondents and interviewees certainly
sensitise themselves and delve into music too, without necessarily lending too much conscious
thought to how or whether these actions construct them in terms of social class and status.
Likewise, Hennion’s (2007) amateurs as well as DeNora’s (2000) everyday musickers participate
in events that make it possible to pinpoint them as individuals placed at specific steps on the
social ladder, whether or not this is highlighted in the scholarly accounts of their actions. The
difference lies rather on the level of sociological analysis, and concerns whether the analyst – in
this case the cultural or music sociologist – believes in a certain cause-and-effect between the
micro- and macro-level actions and events of society (or vice versa for that matter), or simply
dismisses the thought of exploring such connections altogether, on the grounds that ‘they
cannot be captured analytically’ (Martin and Dennis 2010, p. 15) and, therefore, no link can be
established. In this debate, I position myself among the former scholars, believing that micro
and macro connections indeed can and should be explored on various levels and through
different theoretical and methodological means.
As already mentioned in the introduction, in this article I will explore the phenomenon of
multi-layered musical conduct through three different sociological concepts and frameworks,
each of them placed slightly differently on the structure-agency axis. I will begin with what I
perceive to be the least structurally oriented concept, namely the one of parallel musical identities,
largely supported by the ideas of Hall (1992), Giddens (1991), and MacDonald, Hargreaves, and
Miell (2002, 2017). Then, I will proceed to the concept of musical agency, which is related to the
former, but through which it is possible, to a larger extent, to trace connections between the
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Sidsel Karlsen
micro and macro levels of society. Here, the underpinning sociological theories are those of
Giddens (1984) and Barnes (2000), while from the field of music sociology DeNora (2000),
Batt-Rawden and DeNora (2005) and Small (1998) are the main contributors. Finally, the
notion of cultural omnivorousness will be explored, in particular with regard to what it yields in
terms of perspectives through which people’s omnivorous musical tastes can be understood.
This term was originally coined by cultural sociologist Peterson (1992; Peterson and
Kern 1996), but the works of Bourdieu (1984), Bennett et al. (2009), and those of Dyndahl
et al. (2014, 2017) will also be taken into account when unpacking this concept. Of all the three
conceptual angles chosen for the purpose of this chapter, the latter is the one which lends itself
most easily to investigations at the institutional and structural level of society.
In the following, I will look at ontological points of departure, theoretical assumptions, and
methodological consequences pertaining to each of the above-mentioned concepts. In other
words, I will explore their respective underlying ideas regarding how the (social-musical) world
is constituted, why people choose to engage with a wide variety of musics (at individual and
collective levels), and in which ways we may approach such endeavours as researchers most
fruitfully. Altogether, the aim is to analyse, from a (music) sociological point of view, some of
the very specific meanings of certain forms of musical use and consumption in contemporary
societies where access to musical abundance is the norm rather than the exception.
Parallel musical identities and the narrative construction of selves: music as/for
self-constitution
In order to have an understanding of the ideas underlying the concept of parallel musical
identities, it is necessary to delve into the ideas of some of the sociologists writing on the
phenomenon of the self-constitution of individuals towards the end of the millennium, and
discussing the conditions for being and becoming in post- or late modern societies.
In his 1992 article on cultural identity, Hall draws up a historical timeline for various
conceptions of identity development and claims that there exist three identifiable stages of ways
of understanding and constituting one’s self, each with its own connections to specific societal
circumstances. The Enlightenment subject is stable, with an inner core that remains largely the
same throughout life, and the individual is seen as ‘fully centred, unified … [and] endowed with
the capacities of reason, consciousness and action’ (Hall 1992, p. 275). The sociological subject,
which reflects ‘the modern world’ (p. 275), represents a development in the sense that the inner
core is no longer to be taken for granted; it must be ‘formed in relation to “significant others”,
who [mediate] … the values, meanings and symbols’ (p. 275) important in the culture or world
into which the individual is born. This particular notion of subjectivity was formed in a society
more complex than the eighteenth-century Enlightenment version, a society where one’s being
was not determined once and for all at birth, but where the chances of becoming reoccurred
regularly during one’s lifetime. With the post-modern subject, this recreation and reorganisation of
the self happens on a regular basis, or, rather, it becomes what selfhood is all about:
[T]he post-modern subject [is] conceptualized as having no fixed, essential or per-

manent identity. Identity becomes a ‘movable feast’: formed and transformed con-
tinuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural
systems which surround us.
(Hall 1992, p. 277)
408
This self is not coherent. Rather, it shifts as soon as its contextual circumstances are altered.
Without coherence or core, each individual needs to find well-functioning strategies for
putting one’s self, in all its multiplicities, together. For this purpose, we construct self-narratives,
and in these unifying stories, music may play a vital role (see e.g. Ruud 2013).
Describing the conditions for constructing subjectivity in late modernity, Giddens (1991, p. 53)
too emphasises the narrative aspects of this endeavour; preferring the notion of self-identity, he
holds it to be ‘the self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography’. Further, he
claims that an individual’s identity ‘is not to be found in behaviour, nor … in the reactions of
others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going’ (p. 54). This story of the self – told to
oneself and to others – is what integrates the person’s experiences of what happens in the world
and also the experiences of self to the self, so that we both have a sense of who we are, where we
have been and what we are becoming. Since we, as Hall (1992) reminds us, are addressed in a
multiplicity of cultural systems almost simultaneously, we construct parallel narratives and thereby
also parallel identities as a way of flexibly ordering and maintaining the many aspects of the self for
which late modernity not only allows but also produces and requires. The perils of this situation are
that individuals may face states of conformity or even fragmentation, if the flexibility of the self-
construction somehow shows itself to be inadequate. The mastery of the situation, however, is
characterised by a person who is able to ‘make use of diversity in order to create a distinctive self-
identity which positively incorporates elements from different settings into an integrated narrative’
(Giddens 1991, p. 190), that is, the ‘cosmopolitan person’ (p. 190).
In their seminal book on musical identities, MacDonald et al. (2002) make connections to
the above ideas, claiming that the self must be understood as dynamic, and ‘as something which
is constantly being reconstructed and renegotiated’ and further that ‘people have many iden-
tities’ (p. 10) – multiple identities – but also that ‘we construct particular narratives for our-
selves’ (p. 10) in order to keep our selves together and have an experiential feeling of unity. The
authors make a conceptual distinction between identities in music and music in identities (see p. 2),
of which the former denotes the many roles available in both amateur and professional musical
landscapes, such as that of musician, improviser, and conductor. The latter notion, then,
concerns ‘how we use music as a means or resource for developing other aspects of our in-
dividual identities’ (p. 2). In both cases, the narrative aspect is crucial, as it is the stories that we
tell of ourselves and of our lives with musics – about the musics’ related meanings, practices, and
events – that are both constitutive of and express our musical identities. A somewhat contra-
dictory point in this regard is that the construction of musical identities becomes a verbal
endeavour, at least mainly. This is a feature that may work to obscure some of people’s deepest
attachments to music since these may be visible through action only, or present as internal
processes exclusively. On the other hand, the ontological belief that verbal action in the form of
storytelling constructs self-identity, also of the musical kind, makes it possible to explore and
unpack such processes through for example research interviews. In the following, I will provide
a few examples.
In the research reported on in my doctoral dissertation (see Karlsen 2007), I followed the
theoretical and methodological path constructed above in order to explore the aspects of identity
relating to one particular music festival situated in the northern part of Sweden. One of the
research questions focussed specifically on the festival’s contribution to the audience members’
development and maintenance of parallel musical identities, and this matter was investigated
through three different sets of data. First, I looked into the preconditions that the festival created for
such identity work by attending a wide variety of festival events as a participant observer. This
extensive fieldwork gave me an overview of the types of musical styles and genres that were on
offer, and also of how the audience related to the various outputs. Second, I explored the
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Sidsel Karlsen
audience’s ways of using the festival by means of a survey conducted among 350 of the festival
attendees. This allowed me to track individuals’ concert-attendance habits, and thereby to see
whether they oscillated between a variety of musical styles when choosing events or seemed to
stick to one style or only a few. Third, and perhaps most relevant for this chapter, I conducted
audience interviews, through which I gathered musical life-stories or self-narratives. These ac-
counts gave me insight into how musical identities were constructed, performed, and expressed, and also of
the concurrent existence of such identities within each interviewee.
One of my oldest interviewees, Betty, was in her 80s. She was a master storyteller, who fed
me cookies and coffee during the interview, and kept talking for one and a half hours mainly
prompted by my opening question of, ‘Could you please describe your musical tastes and your
life with music?’ Betty responded:
Yes, I must say that I am a musical omnivore because I have lived with music ever
since I was four, five years, when my mamma sat me in front of the piano at home and
I got a piano teacher.
(Karlsen 2007, p. 108)
Thereafter followed a pages-long narrative about Betty’s musical life, as an adolescent growing up
in a big city with a rich cultural life, as a young woman seeking out the few opportunities to attend
concerts in the northern part of Sweden to which she had moved for work, and as an older woman
with time to spend, working as a festival volunteer and therefore having rich access to musicians,
both in person and on stage. Although Betty described herself as a musical omnivore, her om-
nivorousness seemed to be safely placed within the borders of what Bennett et al. (2009) would
describe as ‘cognate musical forms’ (p. 77), that is, musics that ‘are quite close to each other in
cultural space’ (p. 89). Betty’s musical identities spanned classical music, opera, and contemporary
classical music, and besides being a passionate music listener, she also found great joy in watching
famous performers and conductors live and following their careers through various forms of media.
The festival interviewee that seemed to be the most voracious omnivore in terms of musical
taste, and who thereby exhibited many potential musical attachments or identities, was
Maureen, the youngest of them all. Maureen was in her early 20s, and her musical self-narrative
spanned styles such as pop, rock, country, classical music, and folk music from various countries.
She was an eager festival attendee and had visited several of the nearby festivals for some years.
Of all the interviewees, Maureen’s musical life-story was the one that exhibited traditional
narrative features the least; it was quite short and rather scattered, without long stretches or
evident descriptive ‘strands’ of life lived with specific musics over time. At the time, I attributed
these characteristics mainly to Maureen’s young age (see Karlsen 2007, pp. 91, 194), assuming
that she was in the middle of the most intensive life-phase of constructing identities in general,
and perhaps inexperienced when it came to verbally expressing them. In hindsight, I see that
expressing and constructing her musical identities was precisely what she did in the interview.
While a tendency towards having wide musical preferences can be detected on a general level,
younger people are more likely to exhibit this trait than elderly consumers (Bennett et al. 2009,
p. 82). Consequently, the ‘scatteredness’ of Maureen’s story was most likely her way of nar-
rating a manifold of musical identities into a form of unity expressive of this expansive mul-
tiplicity. The parallels became the main construct, so to speak.
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Musical agency and the multiple repertoires of conduct:

music as/for action
While the concept of parallel musical identities comes to life in relation to individuals’ self-
constitution through a multiplicity of musics, the notion of musical agency takes into con-
sideration people’s different ways of engaging with music and how music becomes a constitu-
tional force for human action, a vehicle through which conduct might become both
constrained, regulated, and enabled. The multi-layeredness hence takes on a different meaning:
from multiple layers of self it transforms into multiple repertoires of action. In describing the
theoretical foundation for understanding the latter, I will again turn to the works of renowned
sociologists.
The notion of agency is central to Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration, which will be
briefly outlined here as a point of departure for explaining the meanings of the main concept of
this section (see also Karlsen and Westerlund 2010; Karlsen 2021). At its root, however, the
sociological concept of agency denotes an individual’s experienced room for action, that is,
what kinds of conduct are deemed possible (or impossible) in relation to the circumstances that
a particular person finds him- or herself in. A basic assumption of Giddens’ (1984, p. 281)
theory is that ‘human beings are knowledgeable agents’. This implies that our actions are not
predetermined by structures that are unknown or incomprehensible to us; rather, we have deep
knowledge about the conditions that surround us and also about the consequences of our
everyday doings and undertakings. While the concept of structure plays an important part in
Giddens’ world of ideas, it is not understood as a fixed or determinate grid. Structure denotes ‘[r]
ules and resources’ (Giddens 1984, p. 377), while the plural form – structures – implies ‘[r]ule-
resource sets’ (p. 185). As such, these are not tangible entities, but exist as ‘memory traces, the
organic basis of human knowledgeability, and as instantiated in action’ (p. 377). In other words,
when we act, we reinforce structure as restrictive rules, and, at the same time, we unlock the
potentials and resources that are embedded in structure. Further, the concept of duality of
structure recognises that structure is both ‘the medium and outcome of the conduct it recursively
organises’ (p. 374). When I draw on memory traces in order to make decisions about what
actions I wish or need to engage in and what consequences this may have, structure is the
medium of conduct. Similarly, when social rules and resources are reinforced and unpacked
through my actions, structure becomes the outcome. This process is continually ongoing and a
self-evident part of everyday life. In Giddens’ framework it is referred to as routinisation, and this
habitual day-to-day construction and re-construction of structure is what is thought to connect
the micro and macro levels of society. This can happen at the level of individuals, but also at a
socially broader level, as manifestations of collective agency. Drawing on Barnes’ (2000) work, we
can say that such efforts require a sense of large-group knowledgeability, in line with what
Giddens ascribes to individuals in the quotation above. In order for people to calibrate their
knowledge and understandings and transform this into joint action, they must consider each
other accountable, so that they can ‘sustain a shared sense of what they are likely to do in the
future and hold each other to account of what they have done in the past’ (Barnes 2000, p. 74).
Further, susceptibility is needed, so that the ‘the co-ordination of actions and their coherent
ordering around collectively agreed goals’ (p. 74) may take place. To sum up: Agency, in the
interpretation of the concept presented here, concerns the (mostly) conscious ordering of
conduct in relation to perceived opportunities, which again produces the conditions or frames
for the next set of actions, either on the individual or the collective level. While people may
experience different possibilities for exercising their agency, it may also be expressed through
various repertoires and mediums. One such medium is music.
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Sidsel Karlsen
In my previous work, I have made attempts to map out what characterises musical agency (see
Karlsen 2011). While the theories presented above have constituted the main sociological frame
of this work, I have also drawn on ideas more specific to the field of music sociology. By
analysing the works of DeNora (2000), Batt-Rawden and DeNora (2005), and Small (1998), I
have attempted to map, in as wide a range as possible, the various actions and repertoires of
action that are available in and through music in contemporary society. In correspondence with
the above definition of agency, musical agency is explained to denote ‘individuals’ capacity for
action in relation to music or in a music-related setting’ (Karlsen 2011, p. 110). More broadly, it
is also intended to capture people’s ability to use music ‘for regulating and modifying behaviour
and actions in order to negotiate their positioning in the world’ (p. 110). Such processes can
happen individually – when engaging with music in solitude – as well as collectively – joining
in musical activities while relating to others. Further, they span both bodily, social, existential,
spiritual, emotional, cognitive and practical, skill-based dimensions of human experience,
summed up in a total of 11 different aspects of music-related conduct. The individual-level
actions encompass using music for self-regulation, the shaping of self-identity, self-protection,
thinking, matters of ‘being’, and developing music-related skills, and the collective endeavours
are described as using music for regulating and structuring social encounters, coordinating
bodily action, affirming and exploring collective identity, ‘knowing the world’, and establishing
a basis for collaborative musical action (see Karlsen 2011, pp. 111–118 for a more thorough
explanation of each aspect). All these forms of music-related actions were gathered into a lens
intended to be used as a methodological tool, first and foremost in my own research (see
Karlsen 2012, 2014) but it has also proved useful for others (see e.g. Lill 2015; Rikandi 2012;
Strøm 2016). Below, I will present some of the ways in which this tool can be utilised to
explore routinisation in and through music, that is, the construction and re-construction of
structure with music as the primary medium.
In a research project conducted between 2009 and 2011, I explored immigrant students’
musical agency through ethnographic fieldwork in three different lower secondary schools in
Helsinki, Stockholm, and Oslo, respectively (see Karlsen 2012, 2013, 2014). The data en-
compassed observations of, in all, 24 music lessons, 19 group and individual interviews with a
total of 30 students, and six interviews with the three music teachers whose lessons I was
allowed to observe. Following the theoretical and methodological assumptions mapped out
above, the data were gathered in order to capture the forms of musical agency that were acted
out in the music classroom, the ways of engaging with music that the students reported to take
part in outside of school, in their everyday life, and how the music teachers facilitated and
conceptualised the development of their students’ musical agency. The empirical material al-
lowed me, in other words, to observe music-related actions that were immediately audible or
visible, both on individual and collective levels, but also the ones that occurred internally or had
taken part without me being present, through the interviewees’ verbal accounts. Since many of
the interviews displayed strong narrative features (see e.g. Karlsen 2013, 2014), it was also
possible to have an informed opinion of the music-related past, the present, as well as the future
aspirations of some of my research participants. This again enabled the analysis and identifi-
cation of instances of routinisation.
For Rona, one of the student interviewees found in the Stockholm music classroom, music
was a medium through which she negotiated the structural rules and resources connected to
what she understood as her points of departure for being and for the actions deemed possible
from this particular position. Like many of the other student interviewees, Rona was born in
the country where she lived, but her parents originated from elsewhere. Being in touch with
her parents’ homeland and her cultural heritage was important to her, and in this endeavour the
412
‘homeland music’ played an important role, so much so that Rona claimed that ‘[i]t [the music]
is part of who we are’ (Karlsen 2013, p. 168). Rona constructing herself as having a particular
kind of ethnicity happened, among others things, through listening to specific musics which
evoked memories of being in the parents’ homeland and thereby remembering ‘what you
normally do when you listen to that music’ (p. 167). Music, then, activated the memory traces
connected to the structural conditions of being in general, and of being and acting in the homeland
more specifically. Rona also knew how to operate music’s powers for creating future spaces for
action. She was an ambitious and determined student, who knew very well that the un-
favourable socio-economic conditions that surrounded her did not exactly work to her ad-
vantage. Here, again, she sought to negotiate her experienced frames for action by means of
music – this time popular music – through a re-construction of her perceived possibilities:
What I listen to, is often what I wish will happen in my future (…) [the singers] tell a
story, it might be a story of their lives written as a song, and then [I am thinking] ‘Yes,
I too want to be a person who reaches my goal in the end’.
(Karlsen 2012, p. 141)
Popular music was mostly the medium Carl used too, when he sought to facilitate the de-
velopment of musical agency in his students. Carl was one of my teacher interviewees, and he
worked in the Stockholm immigrant-area school where Rona was a student. He was aware that
many of his students faced hardship in their lives, and that they grew up in a district marked by
tough social conditions. His aim was to make music class a ‘free zone’, and one of the means
was to teach his students how to use music for self-regulation. In other words, Carl consciously
arranged for situations where his students could use music and musical activity to reorganise
their often turbulent emotions, so that the outcome would be something constructive, like
inner calm and concentration, instead of chaos and (self-)destruction. Practicing and hard,
disciplined work actively creating and making music was his prescription, not a ‘cosy’, laissez-
faire or therapy-like music education (see Karlsen 2014, p. 429). Although aware that there were
difficulties in the adolescents’ lives, Carl felt that their struggles did not always need to be
highlighted or be the basis for action. Describing how one student had come to a lesson in
emotional disarray, but decided to focus on playing music, he said: ‘[I think] she got an op-
portunity to calm down a bit’ (p. 429).
Cultural omnivorousness and the workings of musical gentrification:

Music as/for distinction
The two approaches and concepts described above have in common the characteristic that they
are suitable for exploring multi-layered musical conduct from the angle of experience, as ar-
ticulated by the research subject verbally or through action, and as gained by the researcher
listening to or watching such articulations. The level of investigation is at the micro level of
society mainly, although both approaches, and perhaps especially the one involving musical
agency, enable the researcher to draw connections to larger societal structures. The concepts
considered in this section, on the other hand, broaden the focus to the phenomenon of a
multifaceted use of music from a macro-level point of departure and allow us to look into the
structural consequences of a large number of individuals acting in similar ways, musically
speaking.
That music has distinctive powers is nothing new. Bourdieu (1984) wrote several decades
ago that nothing lends itself more easily to social distinction, ‘or more infallibly classifies’ (p. 18),
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Sidsel Karlsen
than music, since music is the most ‘“pure” art par excellence’ (p. 19). It thus ‘represents the
most radical and most absolute form of the negotiation of the [social] world’ (p. 19). Even in
our times, music is considered to be ‘the most divided, contentious, cultural field’ (Bennett
et al. 2009, p. 75) of all in terms of taste and social distinction, although certain taste patterns
have changed since the 1970s. At the time when Bourdieu carried out his empirical in-
vestigations, Western classical music was still at the top of the social-musical hierarchy and was
considered to be the most distinguished musical style, the one preferred by the members of the
dominant class. In the 1990s, Peterson (1992; Peterson and Kern 1996) noticed that this pattern
had changed. Comparing two rounds of surveys that had been conducted among US residents
in 1982 and 1992, respectively, exploring the participants’ cultural participation, Peterson and
his companions found that the typical ‘univore snobs’ of the elite had been replaced by people
exhibiting omnivorous cultural preferences. In other words, the highbrow taste had changed,
and what was now considered to be the hallmark of distinction was a consumer pattern
characterised by cultural omnivorousness. Later studies have largely strengthened this observation,
but also added some important nuances. In Bennett et al.’s (2009) exploration of the cultural
practices among people in Britain, they found, for example, that opera, or rather going to the
opera, was still a dominant-class endeavour with distinctive values. Further, there were certain
styles that were still considered to be too lowbrow or ‘culturally illegitimate’ to make it into
most omnivores’ musical diet, such as heavy metal and country music. Similarly, the breadth of
omnivore preferences was not endless; rather the researchers found ‘large amounts of “short-
range” omnivorousness linking musical genres which might be deemed relatively close to each
other’ (Bennett et al. 2009, p. 81), much like Betty’s taste pattern described above. The various
clusters showing multifaceted likings for music were not linked to characteristics of social class
exclusively, but also to age and ethnicity. Nevertheless, under the above theoretical and em-
pirical conditions, multi-layered musical conduct becomes a question of placing oneself, and
others, in a larger social-musical landscape, through the means of distinction offered by various
styles and genres of music, either separately or as occurring in clusters.
In a recent research study in which I took part, we approached the phenomenon of cultural
omnivorousness from the conceptual angle of musical gentrification. Borrowing the term of
gentrification from urban studies, musical gentrification has been defined as:
[C]omplex processes with both inclusionary and exclusionary outcomes, by which

musics, musical practices, and musical cultures of relatively lower status are made to be
objects of acquisition by subjects who inhabit higher or more powerful positions.
The logic behind this is that the extended content of the musical preferences of the dominant-
class omnivore must come from somewhere, and most likely it is appropriated from styles and
audiences with low(er)-brow characteristics, much like when middle-class residents take over
and ‘develop’ working-class areas through processes of urban gentrification. Put in another way:
[I]n order for the omnivores to be able to consume a rich cultural diet, the gentri-
fication processes need to infuse new produce so that this diet in fact can be provided.
What musics are infused or appropriated is not left to chance, however, since the overall
purpose of the appropriation still is to bring about distinction.
414
The concept of musical gentrification has been tested and employed empirically in a
comprehensive study of the academisation of popular music in higher music education in
Norway (see Dyndahl et al. 2017). By cataloguing and categorising the entire academic thesis
output (master’s and doctoral theses) in this particular field, from 1912 to 2012, my co-
researchers and I were able to explore which styles and genres of popular music have entered
Norwegian music academia, when this happened, and also which structural forces seem to
regulate and be implicated in the uptake of popular music. A total of 1,695 theses were ca-
tegorised, and the data were analysed statistically. This means that, instead of investigating the
experiences and actions of individuals mostly through their own verbal or written accounts or
through observation, as was the case with both the parallel musical identity and the musical
agency studies used as examples above, the data gathered in the musical gentrification project
allowed us to explore the chosen phenomenon at the structural level, and look into, for ex-
ample, the function of multi-layered musical conduct for institutions of higher music education.
Theses from, in all, ten higher music education institutions in Norway were included in the
musical gentrification study. Of these ten, three institutions stood out, both as concerns the
number of theses produced within each institution and the musical style profile of these works.
First, these institutions were by far the most productive ones, each institution responsible for a
large amount of the total number of theses produced,1 and the three counted together for
84.1% of the works. Second, similar proportions were found also when counting the popular
music theses only (see Dyndahl et al. 2017, p. 452). Third, within the body of popular music
theses written at each of these three institutions we found the most omnivorous taste-patterns
with respect to musical styles and genres, and it was also here – without exception – that the
uptake of new styles had happened. In other words, each and every one of the 21 popular music
styles categorised in the study had first entered Norwegian music academia through the written
works produced within this institutional triangle (see p. 449). The three institutions that ‘lead
the processes of musical gentrification in Norwegian academia’ (p. 449), also happen to be ‘elite
institutions’ (p. 451), the ones considered to be most prestigious, academically and/or artisti-
cally. I believe this to be no coincidence. Rather, I see it as an interesting institutional-level
parallel to the cultural omnivorousness-patterns described by Peterson (1992) and Bennett et al.
(2009): Just as elite consumers have wide musical cravings through which they distinguish
themselves from lower social classes, elite institutions, too, may utilise omnivorous musical
conduct as a means of distinction. Or, as Bourdieu (1984, p. 54) would say, they are able to
‘play the games of culture with … playful seriousness’ and thereby with the necessary lightness
and disinterest for these games to become positively distinctive.
Concluding remarks
As I pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, the gaps between the three layers of
theoretical-empirical understanding conveyed here are perhaps not as wide as one might think
at first sight. The perspectives, or the various forms of musical conduct, are not mutually
exclusive. Rather, I have tried to show how employing different theoretical frameworks as well
as directing the empirical interest towards different types and layers of data produces a variety of
research narratives about what multi-layered musical conduct is about. It all depends on which
level of practice one wishes to explore, and what assumptions one chooses to rely on when
interpreting the meaning of such practice. Hence, the meaning of multi-layered musical conduct
might concern both self-constitution, action/agency, and distinction at one and the same time.
For example, when Betty constructs her musical self-identity as being somewhat short-range
omnivorous within a specific musical sphere, she simultaneously invigorates and conveys a form
415
Sidsel Karlsen
of cultural capital that classifies her as someone who belongs to the dominant social class.
Likewise, if I had chosen to zoom in on the individual authors of the theses that were aca-
demically ground-breaking in the sense that they were the first to mention a particular musical
style, I am quite sure that the individual choice of focus would turn out to be related to each
author’s musical identity, and a deep personal attachment to a certain kind of music over time.
One interviewee who seemed to intuitively know but also deliberately explore the connections
between micro-level conduct and macro-level consequences and their multifaceted meanings,
was Rona, whose deep commitment to music listening involved efforts both to anchor her self-
understanding as well as to provide a soundtrack for herself which could help to lift her out of
undesired socio-economic circumstances.
So, should these correspondences be understood as strategies or functions? And how much
of such conduct is based on individuals’ conscious actions? The answers to these questions
would very much depend on what sociological stances we choose to take. For multi-layered
musical conduct to be understood as strategy, we would have to ascribe a considerable deal of
reflexivity to the individual or the collective, and acknowledge, with Giddens (1984), that
human beings engage in music-related routinisation with great knowledgeability. On the other
hand, if we understand the outcome of such conduct primarily as functions, or more-or-less
unintended consequences of individuals’ actions, we buy into Hennion’s (2007) belief that
there is no agenda behind people’s engagement with music other than the actual sensitising.
Still, by acknowledging that even such seemingly uncoordinated and unplanned musical ac-
tivities might have larger-scale social effects or that they may function, socially, in a particular
way, we accept one of the main sociological ideas, namely that the micro and macro levels of
society are, somehow, connected. How this should be explored or conceptualised, though, is a
choice left to each and every researcher.
1. Why do music teachers need to know that music can be used as a vehicle for self-
constitution, agency, and distinction?
2. How does the phenomenon of musical gentrification manifest itself in your cultural and
educational contexts?
Note
1 The percentages of the total number of theses were as follows: The University of Oslo (musicology
program): 46.2%; the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (musicology program):
20.4%; the Norwegian Academy of Music: 17.5% (see Dyndahl et al. 2017, p. 448).
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30
HUNKA, HUNKA BURNING LOVE
Vernacular music education
Kari K. Veblen and Stephanie Horsley
Introduction
Whitmer (1996, p. x) observed that Elvis, along with Jesus and Coke, form a worldwide trifecta
of words that ‘need no translation to convey their meaning’. Elvis’s impact on the development
of popular American culture is profound (Rodman 1996) and reverberates through popular
cultures in all corners of the earth (Sewall 2010). Although his last concert was in 1977, Cowan
recorded in 2010 that there were currently at least 85,000 male and female Elvis tribute artists
worldwide (Cowan 2010). They are found on every continent except Antarctica and in myriad
cultures, for example Thailand’s Visoot Tungarat (Gampell 2000 cited in Fraser and
Brown 2002) and Mexico’s ‘Refried Elvis’ (Zolav 1999). ETAs provide the main economic
stimulus in such towns as rural Parkes, Australia, where local festivals, competitions, and events
promote ‘kitsch tourism’ (Brennan‐Horley et al. 2007). The Guinness Book of World Records
reports the largest gathering of Elvis ETAs (894) was held in Cherokee, North Carolina, in
2015 (www.guinessworldrecords.com). Even now, more than 40 years after his death, over
600,000 people visit Graceland each year, making it the most visited residence in the United
States after the White House (www.graceland.com).
This study examines self-reported perceptions and musical enactments of four Elvis tribute
artists (ETAs) in Ontario, Canada, to understand how they learn tunes and negotiate their
musical identities. Although previous Elvis scholarship has focused on the acquisition of ETA’s
celebrity identification though media consumption and social experience, as well as how they
negotiate cultural identity while impersonating another (Fraser and Brown 2002; Oakes 2006),
little research has been done on how musical identity and skills are shaped and directed toward
the goal of becoming an tribute artist. As such, our research queries the decision and pathways
to becoming a tribute artist, focussing on musical learning and skill acquisition.
Within the wider field of impersonator scholarship, ‘impersonator’ and ‘tribute artist’ are
used interchangeably. However, prior research (Oakes 2006) as well as our data indicates that
these labels carry different, disagreed upon associations to the participants and their community.
The most commonly used identifier within the Elvis community as a whole is ‘tribute artist’,
which is the term used in this writing.
The Elvis tribute artists in this study were interviewed over a period of several months and
each ETA was viewed in a performance setting typical for them at least once. Through embodied
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Hunka, hunka burning love
performativity (Butler 1988; Clammer 2015), our informants become Elvis for reasons related to
economic, musical, and/or personal satisfaction. Themes of carnival and play thread through
these interviews and performances, and yet at core there appears to be adherence with an
archetypal narrative and overarching socio-economic-religious themes. These musicians spend
long hours rehearsing, dressing, learning to talk, and creating seemingly effortless patter to re-
create Elvis Presley, if only for a short time. While several collaborators described previous
formal music training in public school or through private lessons, others reported that they had
learned by ear or were self-taught. All participants came to this musical role as adult learners,
although much of their inspiration for assuming the role comes from pre-adult socio-cultural
experiences. As well, each informant reports their quest for extreme authenticity in conveying
encyclopedic comprehension of this dead singer, even as they ‘camp up’ for an audience and
understand that their very performance reshapes younger generations’ perceptions of who Elvis
was and is in the minds of their audience members.
Rationale and literature review

Studies examining musical participation and adult learning in informal learning environments
demonstrate the potential of informal musical practices to inform music learning in formal
environments (Veblen 2018). Beyond their contribution to helping us understand how musical
learners learn in authentic musical contexts (an admirable accomplishment in and of itself), such
studies as these trouble and question the ways in which we teach in our classrooms. For ex-
ample, in their work on the 2009–2013 international project entitled Creativity, Agency, and
Democratic Research in Music Education (CADRE n.d.), Westerlund et. al have argued that new
phenomena such as karaoke, idol competitions, and online music leaning communities, ‘express
vast cultural changes in which people’s free participation, rather than passive consumption, is
central’. One of the CADRE project’s primary aims was to reconstruct music education
through the lens of participatory democracy, specifically through examining experiences and
expressions of agency in informal learning environments for the ways in which they might
promote opportunities for and access to meaningful musical learning regardless of age, gender,
race, or giftedness (CADRE n.d.). Thus, research that helps us understand the variety of ways in
which music is learned, practiced, and valued in the world outside our walls prompt us to
question how we might transform music education within them. Additionally, they recognise
that music education – both as a field and as a practice – should acknowledge that musical
communities that we may at first consider ‘outliers’ are vibrant communities of musical practice
in their own right. Such communities may have valuable contributions to make toward our
understanding of musical identity, community, skill acquisition, etc. in other learning contexts.
We suggest that one place to explore this question is by examining the musical experiences of
those inspired to engage in music making and participation because of a desire to emulate,
imitate, or pay tribute to a specific musical idol.
The phenomenon of Elvis has a rich site for sociological paradigms such as Weber’s varieties
of charisma (Mason 2007), Kelman’s social influence theory (Fraser and Brown 2002),
Goffman’s framing and presentation of self (Ferris and Harris 2011), and Bourdieu’s habitus
(Duffett 2011). Work of tribute artists and bands has been explored through the lens of mar-
keting, performativity, identity, fandom, memory, copyright, gender, and cultural phenom-
enon (for examples see Brooker and Joppe 2016; Brown 2018; Driessens 2013; Lockyer 2010;
Meyers 2011; Wood 2013). Little, however, has been documented on how tribute artists learn
the musical and performance skills necessary to ‘become’ another in performance, the wider
social interactions that facilitate this learning, and how this learning supports or is supported by
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Kari K. Veblen, Stephanie Horsley
the acquisition of musical skills unrelated to their performance as a musical ‘other’. Further,
while research such as that cited above has discussed the motivation for impersonation of or
paying tribute to musical idols in public spaces and the personal satisfaction gained from this,
these discussions have largely been framed around the concepts of celebrity, carnival, and
fandom. They rarely explore the ways in which desire to emulate another inspired musical
learning. Thus, this research has yet to explore how lifelong musical engagement is supported
by and through ‘paying tribute’ to a musical idol, nor has it examined the ways in which these
musical engagements affect, direct, and enhance the quality of everyday life. Exploring these
connections to the musical practice of impersonators and tribute artists may reveal new paths to
musical engagement, community building, and personal fulfillment through musical practice.
Research objectives
This chapter, then, explores informal learning in vernacular music among four Elvis tribute
artists (ETAs) in Southern Ontario, Canada. This study began in a lighthearted way, only for us
to discover that we were much like our collaborators who enjoyed the playfulness and sense of
carnival about the ETA persona, but who really take it all quite seriously for a variety of reasons.
This world has proven – to quote Doss (1999) – ‘that there is, in fact, something quite playfully
serious to be learned’ about the study of Elvis culture (p. 4).
Our initial research objectives were to (1) document how these performers acquired their
musical and impersonation skills, (2) understand how they delineated their own musical and social
identities from the musical and social identities of their chosen celebrity model, (3) understand
how these performers continue to generate new musical dimensions and interpretations within a
genre of performance practices premised on the musical template made famous by another, and
(4) understand the support and mentorship processes of the wider tribute artist community. As is
common in qualitative research, however, we added to our list of objectives as we engaged in
ongoing data collection and analysis and began to uncover common – if unlooked for – themes.
Additional research questions were framed as: (5) In what ways do those who engage in learning
to pay musical tribute to their idols find unlooked for – yet meaningful – personal, social, pro-
fessional, and musical engagement and fulfilment? and (6) How has the study of what we ori-
ginally perceived of as a ‘musical outlier’ in the spectrum of communities of musical practices
caused us to re-think music education and our own musical lives?
Methodology
Qualitative research strategies of participant observation and interview are integrated with online
and print sources for this ethnographic study. Our four collaborators are professional or semi-
professional Elvis tribute artists who are established in Southwest Ontario. We located participants
through social media or by referral and interviewed each for approximately one to two hours. We
compiled a list of questions beforehand to give to our collaborators prior to their interviews (see
Appendices 1 for questions). These interviews, however, were open-ended, allowing us to pursue
ideas, themes, and concepts as they arose. Data was triangulated through documenting participants
in performance settings to understand how they uniquely capture and define Elvis’ performance
style while (or if) retaining their own sense of musical interpretation and/or the well-documented
social, racial, gender, and religious facets of Elvis’ persona. Where available, we also examined
publicly available documents associated with each collaborator (see Appendices 2).
Interviews were transcribed and coded using MAXQDA12 to identify common themes,
which were then compiled, summarised, and analysed. Analysis was interpretive as we integrated
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emergent themes from words, actions, and documents. Our participants were asked for their own
feedback during the analysis process in order to ensure their personal narratives were accurately
represented in the study’s final results.
Participant cameos
Encounters with Elvis iconography and music were present in the early lives of each of our
collaborators, and those encounters shaped their musical learning and engagements from an
early age. While we present a more detailed explanation of the themes emerging from our
analysis in the discussion section below, we first present a cameo of each collaborator that
summarises key encounters with the image of Elvis and his music and critical junctures of
musical, social, and professional actions related to these encounters. Participant names and their
individual quotes have been retained in this study at the request of the ETAs as, given the
performative nature of their work, all the ETAs found professional and personal value in being
identified as study participants.
Reverend Matt Martin

Anglican priest Rev. Matt Martin was born in London, Ontario. He regularly performs as Elvis
some 40 times a year as part of his ministry or to raise money for good causes. He performed as a
tribute artist for years preceding his 2013 ordination and continues to commit ‘random acts of
Elvis’ (Martin, interview, 2016). Martin’s first memories of Elvis pre-date elementary school.
His mother was an avid Elvis fan. He remembers that,
I thought he just looked like a superhero, with those jump suits on and, ah, I just
thought that was, you know, the coolest thing,’cause kids love, you know, Superman
and Batman and all these guys. So, for me, it was almost like, well look, here’s a
superhero that just happens to be a singer kind of thing.
Martin idolised Elvis – as a child, he would dress up as Elvis, and even felt envious of other kids
in Kindergarten who could sweat like Elvis. He recalls that, ‘it was almost like he could take on
the world, like nobody would stop him, and he was, like, invincible kind of thing. And … this
masculinity thing, too, like, … being up there, and he’s sweating, but he’s still pushing through’.
Martin overcomes his natural shyness by adopting the Elvis persona, because, ‘that’s a part of
me, and it’s probably a very strong part of me, that’s coming out. … It’s less about me im-
personating Elvis … I’m kind of letting myself be out there, like even the silly jokes that come
out, or the goofiness – that’s really more of who I am than me impersonating Elvis, I think’.
Even though he was enthralled with Elvis from an early age, Martin kept his interest ‘tucked
away’, performing largely for family. He recalls thinking that people in high school probably
thought he was ‘an idiot’ for having an Elvis patch sewn on his jean jacket.
Nonetheless, he covertly continued this interest through his adolescence and took piano
lessons, informally learning guitar and playing saxophone in band. Efforts to join a vocal quartet
in high school were thwarted when he was told that he ‘sounded too much like Elvis’.
However, his first public singing role was in his high school’s production of Joseph and the
Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, in the role of the Pharaoh, who takes the form of an Elvis
impersonator. He was a sensation. This led to sneaking into karaoke bars underage, often being
offered beer by other patrons who wanted him to ‘sing Elvis’. Through these experiences, he
began to understand that people were truly interested in his performances.
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After completing his schooling, Martin became an office worker for an industrial electronic
company. He then became a stay at home dad, when he posted several YouTube Videos with
his twin boys, such as ‘Elvis Getting Groceries’ and ‘Elvis Makes a Smoothie’. After receiving an
unexpected call to the ministry in 2009, he went back to school. While studying for his Masters
of Divinity, Martin held informal Christian ‘get togethers’, dubbed the ‘Church of Good
Cheer’ at the Black Shire pub in London, where he would don his white jumpsuit and perform
as Elvis to discuss the bible with patrons. He holds that the links that Elvis has with gospel music
make it much more comfortable to begin a discussion about God and faith while in this
persona. So, while Martin, having never competed before, won the non-professional Concert
Years category at Collingwood, Ontario Elvis festival in 2010 (the largest ETA festival in the
world), he continues to view his ‘work’ as Elvis as an extension of his ministry. He told us that,
If Elvis and I share in some things in our personality, (it would be) love for people.
There are stories of Elvis always wanting to talk with people. He always knew how to
treat people. He always cared for people. He wanted to be generous with people. And
those are part of my personality. But more so than Elvis, those are the messages that
Jesus gave us: Love the other person, love your neighbor.
Norm Ackland Sr.

Norm Ackland Sr., AKA Midnight Elvis, claims the title of Canada’s first ETA and celebrated his
50th year of this title in 2018. He is also the eldest in an intergenerational ETA family, which, to
our knowledge, is the only three-generation family in Canada with all members currently still
performing. He remembers hearing Elvis for the first time around the age of 5, when his step-
mother would play records around the house and also on the radio: ‘I liked music and then I
started singing along … doing skits and all that at camps and different things along that line, singing
the Elvis songs’. Ackland Sr. formed his first band at 13, playing bass and singing Elvis songs for
various youth clubs and dances, and he still continues to perform regularly in full costume now that
he is in his 60s. He has performed in over 700 shows, with highlights including a performance at
the Las Vegas Hilton and recording at Sun Records. He feels fortunate to have seen Elvis twice
after winning tickets from radio competitions.
Unlike some of our other participants, who went through adolescence after Elvis’ death,
Ackland Sr.’s love of and desire to pay tribute to Elvis grew out of experiencing Elvis’ music and
persona as it unfolded. While he takes great pride in his meticulously researched knowledge of
Elvis’ life and music as well as his own extensive collection of painstakingly reproduced and
commissioned Elvis jewelry and stage costumes, Ackland Sr. states firmly that he is not claiming
to be Elvis when he assumes the persona: He is a tribute artist, and it is the audience dynamic and
engagement that matter most to him:
An impersonator … it’s hard work to mimic every single move Elvis does. So you might
as well be a mime, just like a robot. That’s not what people want … Me, I’m always
mingling whether I’m performing or not, I’m always mingling with the crowd. Now like
in Collingwood, like I’m walking along singing to the ladies. Now one lady, her husband
passed away but her wedding song was ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love.’ So, I get on one
knee and sang ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ and hold her hand without music to her. That
type of stuff, that's just what I do. To me I put the fans as always first. Singing in the
shower alone is not very pretty. So you definitely want to be singing in front of people.
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Tim “E” Hendry

Born in Sault Saint. Marie, Ontario, Tim “E” Hendry’s family moved to London, Ontario,
when his father retired. For Tim, both music and Elvis were present from his early days. He
claims relation to professional, ‘wicked’ musicians from both the French and Scottish and the
Irish sides of his family. His family basement, nicknamed ‘Little Graceland’, was dedicated to
Elvis paraphernalia collected by his father, ‘Diamond’ Jim, ‘the biggest Elvis fan I’ve ever seen’.
Tim began to learn guitar informally during elementary school, but outside the formal
classroom, where, ‘We all stayed and played piano and we all sang. That’s where I started to
learn how to play guitar and some stuff’. By age 18, he was touring across Canada as a drummer
for various cover bands and had released several recordings. Around 2000, Hendry attended the
Collingwood Elvis Festival and became inspired by the professionalism and seriousness of the
ETAs there. He began to work at being Elvis:
I still watch his videos and listen to him every day, and just practise, practise, practise.
Contests are when you have to be as close as you can to Elvis to win. You have to stay
in Elvis character and try to sing the songs like he did … very, very hard to do.
Soon after his 2000 visit to Collingwood, he began his career as a tribute artist and is still touring
North America with his 12-piece professional show band, ‘The Yes Men’. Although he has
worked as a computer technician, he explained ‘I’m a musician, that's what makes me happy,
that’s what keeps me even, and uh, so then I just started doing this. I never thought it would
take me to where it’s taken me. You know?’
Hendry has won many awards, including Grand Champion at the Collingwood Elvis
Festival in 2010 and in 2018. ‘I try to portray Elvis’ music in a respectful way with integrity and
a lot of class’, said Hendry, adding his favourite part about being a tribute artist is the fans. ‘I tell
the guys all the time, those are Elvis’ fans out there and we’re here to help them’.
Matt Cage
Matt Dousett, stage name Matt Cage, was born in Toronto and grew up in Belleville, Ontario.
He is a professional, nearly full-time ETA. He has won many contests portraying all stages of
Elvis’s career and starred in the only all Elvis Tribute Act on the Las Vegas strip.
Cage’s earliest memories of Elvis are of hearing and seeing his mother’s Elvis albums, specifically an
LP that had ‘Big red letters: ‘Elvis’ – and he's standing there in his white suit and I just remember
thinking, ‘He's something special,’ so I was always intrigued by him’. Cage sang in elementary school
choir, but other than that, did not engage in public music activities until his mid-20s. He loved
listening to Elvis but remembers hiding his passion from friends in high school so they wouldn’t
discover that he was doing this ‘not cool thing’. He first started singing when his father remarried in
Cage’s early 20s. The woman his father married had a large, musical family that would sing around the
piano. During one Halloween party, the family pressured him to sing since he was in an Elvis
costume. At this time, Cage was ‘dreadfully shy of singing in front of people, just, I’d rather be strung
up than sing’. So, he lip-synced along to an Elvis track. At that point, his brother-in-law persuaded
Cage to record himself singing along to a track of ‘Love Me Tender’. He was then encouraged to
perform in karaoke bars. This led to Cage learning guitar so that he could sing ‘my Elvis songs’. By the
late 2000s, Cage had gained skills and enough confidence to be the ‘star’ of house parties.
In 2009, having never seen an ETA, Cage went to the Elvis festival in Collingwood. He thought
to himself, ‘well, it's kind of now or never … If I ever want to do this, I better just do it’. He
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entered the non-professional category in 2010, finishing just under the top three finalists. After a
year of intense practice, which included playing for small gigs, Cage returned to Collingwood and
won the category. Cage describes his participation in the Collingwood festival as discovering a
‘whole huge world’ and meeting ‘his people’, being able to do something he loves, and finding
friends and mentors in what is referred to among ETAs as a ‘brotherhood’. He now lives what he
calls his Elvis ‘dream’, touring North America, performing in venues large and small for many
different types of audience year-round, and producing a festival called the King Trilogy.
In his ‘previous life’, Cage worked as a manager in a call centre. When he realised that he
could make a career from impersonating Elvis, he returned to school to earn a diploma in
General Arts and Science and another in Recreation/Leisure. His long-term plan – once he
feels that he is too old to accurately depict Elvis in concert – is to take what he has learned and
begin producing festivals full time. However, until then, he’ll keep on performing.
Discussion
A number of common themes emerged from this study.
Enamored from an early age

As these vignettes indicate, participants reported ‘noticing’ Elvis even before entering formal
schooling. They actively consumed and participated in Elvis performance through available
media, viewing him as a kind of ‘superhero’, larger than life, hyper-masculine persona who they
desired to emulate. Perhaps most interesting here is that several expressed a certain degree of
shame or bashfulness about their interests in Elvis among their peers growing up. In all cases, it
was this initial drive to emulate Elvis that led to self- directed musical learning. ETAs are ‘fans
first’, with each of our participants noting that they believe that Elvis himself possessed specific
character traits, such as charitableness, largess, spirituality, and charisma, that make aspects of his
persona still valuable in some way to their audience and society in general. Perhaps this is most
clearly embodied in Martin’s ‘random acts of Elvis’.
Family support
Family played a pivotal role in learning to become Elvis. In some cases, like Tim “E”, it was a
father who was ‘the biggest Elvis fan I’ve ever seen’, while Martin and Cage received maternal
support. For Martin, familial support was present throughout growing up. Cage’s interest in Elvis
was fueled by his mother’s record collection, but it was largely his involvement with his step-
mother’s family and his musician brother-in-law that enabled him to develop the skills and
confidence to pursue his ‘Elvis dream’. In Norm Ackland, Sr.’s case, the whole family contributes:
My daughter’s done shows with me … Norm [ Jr.]’s wife, sings background of

Amazing Grace … My older two granddaughters have performed with me. My oldest
granddaughter has laid down tracks for ‘In the Ghetto’, ‘Don’t Cry Daddy’, and ‘If I
Can Dream.’ And then performing with [my son and grandson], so there are two
more grandkids and I'll entice them into doing something … My other grandson, I
said, ‘want to sing with me sometime,’ and he said no.
Home artifacts such as recordings, but also images and secular shrines, played a significant role in
the development of these tribute artists. In addition to musical items, such as videos and
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recordings as well as performance gear (outfits, jewelry), several of our collaborators and their
family members collect or collected Elvis items such as posters, pictures, stuffed animals, china,
outfits, replicas of jewelry, and costumes.
Role of public support and wider community

When these budding performers began to break out, they were astonished to find that people
loved their Elvis performances. Martin’s role as the Pharaoh in a high school musical led to
singing in karaoke bars – a site where both he and Cage found acceptance. Eventually, both
men came to embrace their inner Presley and understand the value of the role they played in
the community, be it among parishioners or on the competitive festival and concert circuit. In
addition, it was the acceptance of ETAs at the Collingwood Festival that inspired both Cage
and Hendry to dedicate considerable time and resources to hone their musical and performance
skills in pursuit of becoming a better ETA. Akland Sr. also notes that it’s through interacting
with fans that he derives his primary motivation for continuing his 50+ years as an ETA.
In addition to the support from fans, these ETAs noted the support of a wider network and
what they termed several times as ‘the brotherhood of Elvis’: Supposed competitors who were
also ETAs would lend each other shirts for performance and share tips, give feedback, and
provide encouragement. This extended to extensive social media communities who support
and cheer on tribute artists (see Brown 2018).
Gaining proficiency
Becoming Elvis, if only for a short while, involves mastery of an array of musical, kinesthetic,
and factual materials; understanding the interaction of nuances of an activity; and sustaining that
performance with fidelity and finesse. Becoming an expert also requires a passionate com-
mitment and usually total immersion in the subject area.
However, becoming an expert does not mean being equally proficient in all aspects of this
celebrity’s public persona. Each performance component, be it singing, moving, ad libbing, or
stage presentation, offers a discrete platform for deep knowledge. Likewise, each skill may be
approached cognitively, intuitively, emotionally, or technically, with creative and expressive
possibilities. Thus, each ETA may excel in one or several areas. For example, Ackland Sr. not
only knows what rings Presley wore for specific movie scenes, but also has reproductions made
by the original jewellers. Hendry mentioned the level of specific knowledge that many ETAs an
Elvis fans pursue:
My dad was a professor in Elvisology, you know what I mean? Like he, he knew
everything. He had all the books, so I grew up knowing everything about him.
There’s still stuff I find out, it’s like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that!’
Our data indicates that these ETAs mastered their art through self-directed learning. While they
acknowledged formal music education in public school and private lessons, such experiences
neither whetted nor satisfied our collaborators. Love of Elvis inspired musical growth. Being
Elvis gave them permission to test out musical skills and be judged not as themselves as mu-
sicians, but as another. It was from this point that these men developed their showmanship as
well as discrete musical skills.
Their interests caused them to collect Elvis using what came to hand, be it recordings, TV
specials, or YouTube. In the case of Ackland Sr., the record player and LPs were essential:
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I sang along with the record back then. That was the only way you could learn them
back then, sing along with the record. And even back then, you used records as a back
track. There’s nothing like now where you could spend a fortune on tracks. Like I
have probably 800 different tracks.
Hendry and Cage specified the car as a site for listening, and all four ETAs mention current use
of YouTube videos and movies. As they became absorbed and initiated into their process, they
began self-taping, sometimes posting online, reading, and analysing performances. When asked
what he watched for in YouTube videos of Elvis, Cage replied:
It’s sort of whatever I want to work on. And, initially, you just sort of watch it and
take as much as you can. But, after a while, you start saying, ‘what’s he doing with his
hands while he’s singing?’ Right,’cause I found I watch videos of myself, and I’m
looking awkward, and, that doesn’t look right. So, just see what he’s doing with his
hands. Or I’ll watch the way he walks onto stage or walks off of stage, or facial
expressions, or … So, I try to watch for something specific every time.
While Martin and Cage also received vocal coaching from a family member. Hendry
commented,
I took some vocal lessons from Brian Vollmer from Helix--the Bel Canto [method]. I
took as many as I could, when I was a starting musician, so. Ah, it taught me wonders,
how to properly sing opera, and Elvis is very operatic in the 70s—that’s my favourite
era to do.
Being Elvis offers opportunities for collecting and curating knowledge of aspects of the per-
former’s life. This encyclopedic knowledge may involve variations in song text, nuances of tone
and physical movement moves for any given song that Elvis sang. An ETA might focus on
specific costuming worn at specific events or movies. While some seek to interpret Elvis as
precisely as possible, others channel Elvis more freely. The ETAs in this study indicated that
there was a certain freeness in assuming a persona that let them explore their musical and
performance abilities in a way they may have been too shy or lacked confidence in if per-
forming as themselves. For example, Ackland Sr. noted that,
As soon as you are in a costume, it’s like a clown. Nobody really knows who you are.
It’s not you. It’s who you are portraying, so you get rid of the nervousness while you
are out there. I’m still nervous when I’m getting ready, but once you are out there,
the nervousness goes away and the adrenaline takes over. To me, I always say it’s the
spirit of Elvis taking over and I’m just along for the ride.
These learners offer a prime example of incidental learning becoming conscious. Schugurensky
(2000) refers to incidental learning as, ‘experiences that occur when the learner did not have
any previous intention of learning something out of that experience, but after the experience
she or he becomes aware that some learning has taken place. Thus, it is unintentional but
conscious’ (p. 4). Assuming the persona allowed them to set aside their self-consciousness and
experiment with becoming not only Elvis, but also musicians and performers. They also report
that they don Elvis’s persona knowing that this identity is roomy enough to hold their regular
identity with permission for outrageousness and expressivity.
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Sense of good fortune and appreciation

All four collaborators expressed appreciation for their good fortune in becoming a tribute artist.
When asked why he does what he does, Hendry explained:
it means everything to me, because I love the music, I love him, so … That’s the first
and foremost, I’m an Elvis fan. … he changed the world. He really did. He changed
everything. He just went in and recorded some music and he changed everything …
he was a great humanitarian. He tried to help everybody. He donated millions to
charity, he just helped people, pay bills that he didn't even know, you know, and he
just had a big heart. He cared more about others than he did about himself … And
he’s just so cool. He’s Elvis – I mean he just, he could just stand there and just … a
little smirk and his cheeks.
Elvis as a platform for larger life goals and dreams

When asked to envision what he will be doing thirty or forty years hence, Hendry mused:
I’ll be a musician for sure, but I don’t think Elvis will be walking out (Does impression
of an elderly sounding Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel) you know with a walker and
stuff. … I think I’m going to produce some shows …
Cage has based his future on skills learned from becoming and ETA and participating in ETA
festivals:
I am always looking for the next thing. Right now, I'm looking at doing more acting.
Not just Elvis stuff. I really enjoy the theatre and know that Elvis himself would
encourage me to be me and do stuff for me. Hopefully I can do something there. Also,
I'd like to be more involved with show production and promoting the next gen-
eration of tribute and musical acts.
(MacArthur 2018)
As noted above, Cage returned to school with the goal of gaining knowledge and skills to being
producing festivals and is one of the co-founders of the King Trilogy festival.
Social media: learning, connection, and identity formation

One unanticipated finding over the course of this study was the extent to which and how
pervasively our collaborators were infused in social media. It became apparent that these four
ETAs participate and connect fluently in online networks that afford opportunities for music
learning, global community, and scope for influence. They exemplify behaviours in what
Jenkins (1992, 2005) terms as participatory culture, by which media users are primarily un-
derstood as active and creative participants rather than merely as passive or simplistically re-
ceptive consumers (see Stevenson 2018). As well, these ETAs illustrated collecting and
assembling fan behaviors as noted by Fiske (1991). Fiske’s work details ways in which fans
generate alternative identities and construct meaning through accumulating images, artifacts,
and information – in this case -- all the details of gesture, performance logistics, song variations,
and visual presentation associated with ‘the King’.
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Links to social media would seem to be blindingly obvious, and yet it is worth remarking
upon as much research indicates that learning – especially music learning – is a social process. In
the case of these Elvis tribute artists, asserting musical identity involves complex and fluid
processes as these individuals construct, transform, and express themselves musically through the
affordances of pervasive and dominant cultural environs of social media (Waldron et al. 2020)
Conclusion
Elvis’ impact on popular culture was and continues to be profound. This study provides insight
into the social and musical practices that continue to support the ongoing production and
reproduction of Elvis as a cultural icon, commodity, and touchstone as experienced in the
context of Southern Ontario, Canada. It explores musical lifelong learning practices; the in-
terplay of intentional, incidental, and accidental music learning; and uses of social media. Issues
of musical and social identity construction are also very much at the core of our explorations.
As has been shown through their biographies and their words, what started out as a desire to
emulate a musical icon has led to deeply fulfilling musical lives for these four men – lives that
are centered around a musical practice that may at first glance appear based solely on mimicry,
camp, and general goofiness. In reality, however, their desire ‘to Elvis’ is transcended by the
acquisition of their own musical identities and the ways in which they have appropriated the
work of ‘Elvising’ to reach their own personal and professional goals and support the com-
munities around them.
1. The tribute artists in this chapter credit Elvis Presley as a primary inspiration for their
current musical lives. Why is Presley so compelling to so many people? Are there other
musicians of comparable influence? How are music educators to understand the power and
influence of celebrity and fandom?
2. Throughout interviews featured in these case studies and through others encountered
during the course of the investigation, the authors met tribute artists whose first public
performance was as an adult in Elvis gear before a festival crowd of hundreds of fans. While
they had not connected to music in school, these collaborators found unexpected
achievements, success, social connection, and joy later in life. What implications can be
drawn for lifespan musical engagement from their narratives?
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MacArthur, C., 2017. Spotlight on: ETA Tim E. Hendry. Sideburns. 1 December 2017. Viewed 22
October 2018, https://www.sideburnsmagazine.com/blog/2017/11/29/spotlight-on-eta-tim-e-
hendry.
MacArthur, C., 2018. Spotlight on: ETA Matt Cage. Sideburns. 18 May 2018. Viewed 22 October 2018,
https://www.sideburnsmagazine.com/blog/2018/5/15/spotlight-on-eta-matt-cage.
Mason, T.J., 2007. Varieties of charisma: serious and unserious forms of the extraordinary. PhD Thesis,
Department of Sociology in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Meyers, J.P., 2011. Rock and roll never forgets: memory, history and performance in the tribute band
scene. PhD dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.
Oakes, J.L., 2006. All the King’s Elvii: identifying with Elvis through musical tribute. In: Homan, S. (Ed.),
Access All Eras: Tribute Bands and Global Pop Culture. McGraw-Hill Education, Berkshire, pp. 166–181.
Rodman, G., 1996. Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend. Routledge, London.
Schugurensky, D., 2000. The forms of informal learning: towards a conceptualization of the field, WALL
working paper 19, SSHRC Research Network New Approaches to Lifelong Learning. Viewed 11
November 2018, https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/2733/2/19formsofinformal.pdf.
Sewall, H., 2010. Image, music, text: Elvis Presley as a postmodern, semiotic construct. Journal of Literary
Studies vol. 26 (no. 2), 44–57.
Stevenson, N., 2018. Celebrities, fans, and fandom. In: Elliott, A. (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Celebrity
Studies. Routledge, London, pp. 141–156.
Veblen, K.K., 2018. Adult music learning in formal, nonformal and informal contexts. In: McPherson, G.,
Welsh, G. (Eds.), Special Needs, Community Music, and Adult Learning: An Oxford Handbook of Music
Education, vol. 4. Oxford University Press, London, pp. 243–256.
Waldron, J., Horsley, S., Veblen, K.K. (Eds.), 2020. The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music
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Whitmer, P., 1996. The Inner Elvis: A Psychological Biography of Elvis Aaron Presley. Hyperion, New York.
Wood, G., 2013. Outback Elvis: riding with the King. Southern Cultures vol. 19 (no. 1), 98–110.
Zolav, E., 1999. Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture. University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Appendix 1 Questioning for Elvis impersonators

These questions are open-ended, following the collaborator’s lead. General questions included
the following:
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Did you study music formally?

Did you sing in a school or church choir? Play an instrument in a band or orchestra in
school? Did you take private lessons on an instrument?
Do members of your family sing or play music? Are there dancers in your family?
What kinds of musical experiences do you recall at home or in your community?
What are your earliest memories of Elvis Presley?
Do you admire Elvis? Why or why not?
When did you decide to become an Elvis impersonator? Where you perform?
How do you learn your material?
Do you use Youtube? Have you taken courses? Do you read about his life?
How long does it take to work up a song or a routine? Is this easy or hard for you?
How much latitude is there for improvisation or variation in your performance?
What kinds of adjustments do you do vocally? Do you work to acquire a Southern accent?
How do you consciously look like Elvis? Are there gestures you take from him?
What kinds of costumes do you have? Do you use makeup or wigs?
Do you compete? Do you make money impersonating? Does this matter to you?
How much fun is this? How much work is this? Why do you impersonate Elvis?
What other celebrities would you want to impersonate if not Elvis?
Appendix 2 Websites associated with Elvis tribute artists

Reverend Matt Martin
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tzFsG_wT5s Oct 2, 2007.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqCHsxI-lU Nov 9, 2015.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf_b9GsSw6E Dec 11, 2011.
Holy Trinity Anglican parish https://www.holytrinitylucan.net.
Linked in Matt Martin https://ca.linkedin.com/in/matt-martin-08a78523.
Norm Ackland, Sr.

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47koLRu6k3g Aug 6, 2011.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwTFhjStEyA Jan 28, 2013.
Linked in Norm Ackland, Sr.
Note: Norm Ackland, Jr. is a prolific ETA with his own YouTube channel and many online
links. The Ackland family performs on his channel including Norm Ackland, Sr.
Tim “E” Hendry

The Tim “E” Show https://www.tim-e-show.com contains awards, tours, 9 Youtube links.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_7pB1W9nFsJune 13, 2016.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a0cHmtcl9M April 4, 2017.
FB Page for bookings https://www.facebook.com/time.hendry.
Linked in Tim ‘E’ Hendry.
Interview https://www.sideburnsmagazine.com/blog/2017/11/29/spotlight-on-eta-tim-e-
hendry.
Pete Doiron
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaF5hNoftSU Mar 2, 2008.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFmRZ8lbUvE Jan 8, 2011.
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YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPXt_vm4QyY Aug 1, 2016.

FB Page for bookings https://www.facebook.com/rocknrollpete/.
Matt Cage
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XntEDqC31d8 April 15, 2014.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTbxVkijSgYAug 1, 2017.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up4S5Dx-rAQ Aug 1, 2017.
Matt Cage Tribute Artist http://www.mattcage.com.
Interview https://www.sideburnsmagazine.com/blog/2018/5/15/spotlight-on-eta-matt-cage.
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31
CHALLENGES IN MUSIC AND
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Diversity, musical canon and trialectic contract
Introduction
In this chapter, issues surrounding the concept of inclusion in music education will be
problematised. Each country has its own history regarding the rights of children and adults,
and the development of policies and standards related to equality. Based on a Nordic
research perspective, this chapter focuses on the challenges faced and the possibilities
opened to children with different minority backgrounds, as well as to the varied
circumstances that can affect work with inclusion in music education. By working with
creativity in art and music, opportunities arise for intercultural forms of interaction; but
this does not necessarily mean that forms of exclusion and alienation just disappear. Thus,
this chapter will offer a sociological analysis of the complexities and the contradictions of
inclusive music education practices. The chapter begins with a discussion of issues related
to the role of the musical canon in the classroom, as well as to recent conceptualisations of
the teacher’s role that emphasise embracing and welcoming students’ perspectives and/or
cultural expectations. Furthermore, as will be shown, in culturally diverse areas
preconceived notions held by both teachers and students often create obstacles as well as
opportunities, which can trigger or impede pedagogical development. Teachers with
foreign backgrounds are sought after in the labor market to encourage new groups of
children to participate in music education outside of school hours. These teachers em-
phasise that there is a strong link between language and music that functions as an obstacle
when it comes to teaching in a different linguistic context than the music’s origin. Based
on the notion of the trialectic contract, the chapter tries to grasp the dynamic power
relationships between teacher, student, and parents in a classical teaching context.
Furthermore, the chapter discusses how family values and expectations can deeply affect
participation, by, for example, inducing feelings of shame and avoidance in connection
with music. Thus, in what follows, we focus on pedagogical aspects and strategies that
promote each child’s learning and the possible struggle of identities that can arise in both
students and parents, and how school leadership can adapt to that.
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Challenges in music
Inclusion in educational contexts through a musical canon

The word inclusion comes from the Latin word includere, ‘enclose’. The Salamanca Declaration
of 1994 officially adopted the concept. On the 10th June, 1994, 300 participants from 92
governments and 25 international organisations gathered in Salamanca, Spain, in order to
discuss the basic political changes needed to promote the programme ‘Education for All’
(Swedish Unesco Council 2006). Three important aspects in terms of an inclusive school were
developed:
1. The pedagogical aspect – development of appropriate pedagogical strategies that promote all
children’s learning.
2. The social aspect – acknowledgement that the equal status of all human beings entails that
differences should be seen as valuable sources of enrichment.
3. The financial aspect – acknowledgement of the fact that integration is costly and that there is
a need for increased financial support.
In the context of Nordic music education, migration and immigration have had some influence
on the content of repertoire and the instruments used in classrooms as well as on the discourse
surrounding such issues ( Johnson 2020). Small gradual changes have taken place in the class-
room repertoire and the range of instruments from different parts of the world. Also, at con-
ferences and in music teacher institutions, in real life and on social media, repertoire is being
discussed and ways to embrace societal changes are being debated. A number of dissertations
highlighting issues of music teaching and cultural diversity have begun to appear. These dis-
cussions reached a peak in Sweden in 2015 when 188,000 refugees from Syria resettled in a
period of less than 10 months. A concrete engagement and a genuine commitment to help with
practicalities like clothes, food, and beds grew as the influx of immigrants affected more or less
all municipalities. At the same time a right-wing party with neo-Nazi roots began to grow.
In times of recession and social challenges, a debate has periodically flared up about whether
we should still have a ‘literary canon’ in primary schools, a canon that could, according to its
supporters, create a common ground for everyone in society regardless of background. It must
be noted that, since 1994, when a new curriculum was implemented, Sweden does not use a
literary canon in school. This curriculum has been based on a social constructivist perspective
on learning. There has been a strong debate among natural science and cognitive science re-
searchers who advocate a view of knowledge as knowledge of ‘hard’ facts and researchers in
education and language who support the view that students should take greater responsibility
for their own learning, arguing that the teacher’s prime task is to create an environment that
facilitates learning.
In Scandinavia, discussions related to the ‘cultural canon’ have taken place not only in
relation to reading, but have also extended to music. The question that arises is this: can a canon
in school and pre-school function in an inclusive manner, or does it necessarily result in ex-
clusion? Knutsen (2018) states that because a ‘song canon’ is understood as being part of the
construction or preservation of a group or a nation’s identity, its use will inevitably impose
boundaries and limitations.
Over the last decade, a change can be observed in preschool and school music education in
Scandinavia, a change whose objective has been to extend children’s influence and participation
in the shaping of the content and the structure of the music lesson. In the context of Norwegian
pre-school research, the work of (2009) has had a significant impact, highlighting the need for
increased children’s agency in pre-school education. Baés discusses the involvement and the
433
relationships the child builds with pre-school teachers. She argues that the quality and the depth
of learning is entirely dependent upon the children’s sustained and meaningful interaction with
significant adults. The musical interplay in pre-school is therefore a form of interaction where
the child’s inclusion is important for development of knowledge. Baes has had a strong
influence over how the Norwegian canon has developed over the years (Knutsen 2018). From a
Swedish perspective, Abrahamson and Wennberg (2015) argue that one has to recognise
children’s ‘voting rights’, even in relation to musical practice, inducing children’s musical
participation to a greater extent on their own terms and not primarily on the teacher’s terms.
Knutsen (2018) writes that the pre-school would benefit from ‘leaving the traditional singing
time and allowing children to be co-creators and fellow musicians’ (Knutsen 2018, p. 131). In a
discussion about music education in Swedish secondary schools, Georgii-Hemming and
Westvall (2010) write that students’ own choices and priorities have increasingly begun to play a
significant role. Recent developments has also tended to stress the role of music as a means for
social cohesion and identity-building, emphasising that the teacher’s role is more about
stimulating and inspiring children to discover and develop their own musical preferences than
to enforce and transfer the cultural values of the majority society (Knutsen 2018).
These are basically democratic aspirations for strengthening the opportunities available to
children for participation. Students’ right to influence choices in school may, however, be
challenged, when these choices are being regarded as the result of imposition of powerful
cultural/musical canons: while it is true that when children are given the space to create a song
repertoire on their own terms this opens a space for more inclusion and diversity, teachers often
seem to worry that children and young people select music on the basis of an already imposed
canon that relies heavily on commercial standards (Kärjä 2006).
Inclusion of student perspectives in music education

Bunar (2001) emphasises the elementary school’s potential to remedy the negative self-image
that many children in suburban environments take on. After studying and supervising music
teachers in diverse areas for some years now in municipalities with high foreign background
populations (>50%), I have found that educational innovation is more likely to happen in
schools that have strong leadership and a high level of cooperation among the teachers. In such
cases, new educational approaches are tested, approaches that take into consideration young
people’s thoughts, and the preferences and activities they may have beyond school. This creates
the basis for building a good school environment. Sernhede (2002) argues that inclusion of rap
and hip-hop helps the young to articulate aspects of their struggle for self-development, identity
formation, and resistance. In such cases, local and personal perspectives that arise from living in
the suburbs are linked to larger issues of identity-building, to issues of cultural and national
identity, to gender, and sexuality. Through such musical practices young people are actively
trying to find their place in the ‘glocal’ context (Hofvander Trulsson and Burnard 2016).
Sæther (2008) has studied music education in a multicultural learning environment, focusing
on teacher-to-student and student-to-student relationships. In her study, the largest percentage
of students had a foreign background, the majority with Arab-speaking parents. Saether de-
scribes that, in contrast to her expectation that students’ home culture would play a significant
role, the classroom was dominated by multinational, global youth music. This can be connected
to what Kärjä (2006) says about the dominant role of commercial culture. In Saether’s study the
gender climate appeared to be liberal and young Muslim girls played bass in the various pop
groups. The study’s survey revealed that the students were not particularly interested in the
music from the background countries of their parents. Sæther (2008) discusses that citizens with
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Challenges in music
a foreign background are often taken hostage in a sort of ‘cultural terrorism’ from the majority
society as minority groups are expected to show cultural labels reflecting their origin. Saether’s
2008 study, as well as Hofvander Trulsson’s 2013 study with adolescents with foreign back-
grounds in the UK, suggested that cultural and national identity operate in parallel within the
different arenas of everyday life. Sometimes, it is the cultural identity that takes centre stage,
other times, it is the national. Students do not always have to identify with something, but
would sometimes rather prefer to just be a young person free to listen and play music without
explicit cultural labels. These perspectives can open the door for interplay in school-related
contexts, so that diversity, inclusion, and diversification are made possible in the work between
teachers and students. This may also be so beyond the school context, in creative projects and
culture school operations.
Complexities of a trialectic relationship

Many arts education institutions have sought to recruit teachers with minority backgrounds,
with the aim of achieving a more diverse teaching profile. Coban and Hofvander Trulsson
(2018) write about the perspectives of three Sweden-based immigrant teachers. All three come
from different parts of the Middle East and teach both at a municipal music and arts school and
in a primary school. These teachers describe the different ways in which they use their home
country’s music in education. All three have studied at music academies in Sweden, and this has
played a significant role in their pedagogical thinking and in the ways they select their material.
They feel it is difficult to teach songs and music from their various home countries in Swedish
and to Swedish students. They emphasise that there is a strong link between language and music
that functions as an obstacle when it comes to teaching in a different linguistic context than the
music’s origins. Their own memories as refugees also make it emotionally exhausting to teach
their home country’s music. The songs from their own home countries are nonetheless in-
troduced a little later, when the children begin to have a certain command of their instruments.
The teachers say that initially it is easier for the students to play songs that they already know
and recognise. With instrumental students with whom they share the same background, things
are different. In the interviews, they say that with them there is a stronger incentive to teach
them music that comes from their common musical and linguistic background.
In interviews conducted as part of an earlier study (Hofvander Trulsson 2010), the parents
with diverse cultural background described how they encouraged and pushed their children to
play and focus on their music. That interactions between teacher and parent, parent and child
and student and teacher, form a matrix that trialectically nourishes a teaching situation. Based on
statements with the parents, it is clear that they, together with the music teacher, can persuade
the children to shape particular priorities, placing restrictions on friends and other activities.
This is this phenomenon we have called a trialectic contract (Hofvander Trulsson 2010). One
mother said: ‘Friends just turn up, but we say no, you can play with friends only at the end of
the week’ (Hofvander Trulsson 2010, p. 33). The parents proudly attributed their decision to
act in this way on the music teacher’s affirmation of their child’s talent, a talent that needed to
be cultivated. The trialectic contract is a relationship between the three parties and sometimes creates
considerable stress on the child and her/his music and music education activities (Hofvander
Trulsson 2010). According to Foucault (1980), disciplinary power plays a significant role in the
internalisation of behaviour which gradually becomes integrated in the self. For Foucault,
knowledge is inseparable from power, inducing power/knowledge relationships that shape
distinctive truth claims. The teacher can use the parents as a proxy in relation to the student, to
control and influence him or her at home. The parent can also use the teacher’s professional
435
status as an alibi to control the child and limit other influences from friends, for example, and
other distractions. The child who moves between these two poles is dependent on the
encouragement and care of both parties to ensure the receipt of praise and love. Interaction
occurs when the child is given positive interpellations (Hofvander Trulsson 2010).
Children’s creative musical work is seen by many as conflict-free and unproblematic, and for
some, even as a safety-net from criminality (Hofvander Trulsson 2010). It is seen as being
generally positive because children develop their creative side; some also see creativity as a tool
for developing children’s general learning competency. However, Ouis (2018) draws our
attention to the fact that not all children are allowed or want to participate in creative subjects.
Participation in such activities can even create guilt and anxiety in the child. There are several
areas in the school curriculum that may be the subject of parental disapproval, such as religious
teaching, sports, and swimming where boys and girls are mixed, as well as excursions and school
trips. Högdin (2007) writes that a quarter of girls and almost a fifth of boys with a foreign
background are requested by their parents to withdrow from lessons regarding topics related to
sex and cohabitation. Ouis (2018) states that certain activities and subjects are perceived as
challenging on moral grounds, encouraging immoral (sexual) actions. For example, for certain
readings of Islam, children should not be encouraged to depict and sculpt that which has life
(Ouis 2018). For some strict religious Muslim families, the pursuit of instrumental music is
considered unacceptable. As Ouis (2018) notes, this may be the result of a direct religious ban,
but it might also be an indirect consequence of a perception of music as morally unacceptable.
In an earlier study (Hofvander Trulsson 2010), I tried to document the complex approach
that many Swedish-Muslim parents develop towards the music of their country of origin. One
example was a music teacher in an Iranian immigrant association who described how parents
actually bribed their children to learn Persian music (Hofvander Trulsson 2010). One father said
that he was proud of his son who played guitar at the municipal school of music, but when his
relatives from Iran and the USA called, he felt he had to conceal his son’s great interest in
Western music. The father also described that the son played both Persian and other music and
that this cultural musical breadth places his son in an advantageous position. In this study it has
been also shown that, unlike other national groups interviewed, Muslim families did not regard
music as a means of protecting the young from deviant behaviour. On the contrary, music was
seen as an activity that could provoke condemnation, placing young people, particularly girls, in
a vulnerable position.
There also seems to be a concern among certain strict religious parents that their children’s
morality may be challenged in school situations where pupils are required to participate in
mixed gender groups. Ouis (2018) asks the question: how should such concerns be addressed by
the majority society? Should this be seen as strictly related to religious views, or is there
something more at stake here? Ouis (2018, p. 81) suggests that this issue can be seen as an
instance of ‘honour-related violence and oppression’. In this context, the negative reactions
against music and music education may be interpreted as strategies for the preservation of
personal and family honour – an honour which is seen as a collective responsibility. Ouis (2018)
suggests that we use the concept of shame to understand the problem, and shows how per-
ceptions of honour (and shame) affect and restrict certain children in school. Often, restrictions
have been explained as the result of a perceived need to control sexuality. But Ouis would
instead like to see this as being more about preventing shame through controlling situations
where youth can encounter a sexual invitation or be subject to a rumour about sexual
immorality.
Thus, to avoid a rumour spreading, parents can play it safe and request that children don’t
attend music classes in school. In many segregated areas, group pressure and social control are so
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Challenges in music
intense that they do not leave much choice (Ouis 2018). Feelings of shame and avoidance in
connection with music can affect a number of children and parents, not only the most religious,
based on a more pronounced and general honour mindset. This issue is rarely discussed and is
often dismissed as something that applies only to a small group of extremely religious people.
It is predominantly through hip-hop that many young Muslims practice ‘Islamic music’.
Music teachers often take note of this and use hip-hop as a way to interact with the youth in
their world, embracing their wishes and experiences (Ouis 2018). At the same time, one could
say that it may be completely restrictive and unjust if teachers do not offer these young people
the chance to interact with other musical styles, treating them as ‘immigrant kids’ who should
practice what they know best, namely hip-hop. Furthermore, gender should also be taken into
account: hip-hop is generally considered to be male-dominated, even if there is a growing
number of women involved in and influencing hip-hop.
As Ouis (2018) argues, it is ‘important that the view of some strict religious Muslims, that
music is haram’ (p. 82) must be discussed and negotiated, possibly bringing into the discussion
examples of Muslim musicians in the Islamic world who have been successful and accepted. It is
important that schools and their personnel discuss and negotiate music participation, empha-
sising the importance of children’s rights to education, embracing parents’ concerns and lis-
tening to their worries on the basis of mutual respect.
Inclusive learning in practice

The chapter has so far focused mainly on the social aspects of everyone’s equal opportunity to
participate in music education and in ways to handle that to enrich teaching. In what follows we
will focus on pedagogical aspects and strategies that promote every child’s learning.
Discussing the ‘method’ of democracy in music education Väkevä and Westerlund (2007)
argue that,
[w]hereas some emphasis[e] the special role of music as an aesthetic art form in making
all students conversant with values of European (high) culture, others openly argue for
the need for non-elitist music education that does not subjugate alternative bases of
valuation. (p. 98)
Westvall and Carson (2014) argue for ‘multi-musicality’ in music education, which means that
students should gain insight into many different music traditions through an active exchange
and participation in their own culture and the culture of others. At the same time, Westvall and
Carson (2014) warn against stereotyping of the ‘others’ and their music when teaching in
diverse classrooms, which can, according to the authors, lead to ‘musical tourism’ that, in turn,
results in an us-and-them-thinking. Westvall and Carson (2014) also insist that music education
should show the diversity of musical practices, enabling students to interact with and develop
through both the familiar and the unfamiliar.
According to Alfakir (2010), three components are central to success with inclusive
education:
1. Communication. Achievement of communication is regarded as of seminal importance.

When communication between children, parents and teachers is lacking, vulnerability
arises in the continued work at hand. Alfakir argues that cultural and religious differences
can erect walls that lead to lack of understanding. But with structured work, focussed
strategies, and continuous communication, these walls can be bridged.
437
2. Acclimatisation. All children who start school have to go through a process of acclimatisation.
To acclimatise means to adapt to the prevailing rules and codes of conduct. When teachers
and students share the same cultural background, this often happens relatively quickly.
Parents have relatively good knowledge of how the school works and are able to guide
children appropriately. If parents have relatively poor knowledge of the school’s ex-
pectations, rules and codes, this process takes much longer, sometimes remains incomplete
and often results in tensions and misunderstandings (Hofvander Trulsson 2015).
3. Acculturation. The process of acclimatisation is closely linked to the process of acculturation
(Berry and Sam 1997; Berry et al. 2006). It is important to note that both children and
parents are immersed in processes of acculturation to the social context and the school, in
different ways and to different extents. Successful acculturation may be a matter of how
parents experience interacting with the staff of school or preschool, as well as of how
diversity is being addressed in everyday school life. It also depends upon the peer group’s
experiences. In any case, knowledge about interaction between the majority and minority
society’s expectations concerning possibilities in childhood becomes important for building
bridges between the parties and creating pathways for both girls and boys.
When family and school norms conflict

Based on a number of studies (Alfakir 2010; Bouakaz 2007; Goldstein Kvaga and
Borgström 2009; Hofvander Trulsson 2010, 2015, 2018; Sjögren 2006), it can be argued that in
cases of successful interaction between parents and school, parents adopt a position of openness
and confidence in their children’s participation to music and sport activities, regarding them as
welcome opportunities. In cases of failed interaction, however, parents resist anything that is
‘new’ to them, placing restrictions regarding the children’s opportunities to meet other children
from the majority society, to participate in activities such as swimming lessons, music schools,
sports clubs, and more, both in and outside school.
Högdin (2007) has explored the educational situation of youth and their experience re-
garding the support and involvement of parents and teachers in their schooling. Högdin in-
terviewed head teachers at different elementary schools, seeking to find out how they relate to
parents’ approaches to school subjects that are perceived as conflicting with cultural expecta-
tions of minority groups. Among other interesting findings Högdin (2007) reports that, during
the interviews, headmasters revealed that they were reluctant to contact parents, fearing that this
might be regarded as a sign of disrespect for the family culture. They made this decision on the
basis of the assumption that prevailing norms are an expression of a cultural identity that is
‘other’. The belief that discussion of differences might be perceived as an act of discrimination
and therefore as disrespectful might lead to the reproduction of stereotyping, unintentionally
contributing to exclusion and segregation (Högdin 2007, p. 131).
Kymlicka (1996) refers to the fact that there are a multitude of unique rights, which do not
stand in conflict with the values regarding the equal rights of all people. Unique rights relate to
decisions, for example, about home language teaching or about adjusting public holidays so that
no particular religion is favoured. These unique rights are necessary means through which
contemporary democracies manage to accommodate minorities. In the United States and
Canada, some children in some religious groups have been exempted from compulsory
schooling, for example Amish, Mennonites, Doukhobours, and Hutterites. Members of these
groups have the right to take their children out of school before they reach the prescribed
schooling mandatory age limit and children do not need to follow the usual curriculum.
Kymlicka believes that the justification for this unique right is the concern of parents that
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Challenges in music
children would be tempted to leave the group if they gained a broader education. This is similar
to the rights given to indigenous groups to protect their traditions and their past way of living.
Australian aboriginal schools and Scandinavian Samí schools are also previous examples of this
practice (Hofvander et al. 2015).
However, Shachar (2001) argues that a minority group’s wish to preserve its way of living
restricts children’s social mobility, limiting their chances to interact with more pluralistic and
diverse parts of the curricula. Shachar (2001) believes that it is an obligation of the democratic
state to protect the right of young people to social mobility, as well as their right to develop
their moral and intellectual abilities as complete persons and future citizens. Högdin (2007,
p. 33) argues that,
Compulsory elementary school exists to ensure this right for the country’s children
and youth. A minority group should not have the right to deny access of their children
to humanity’s accumulated knowledge and to their right to shape their own way of
living. On the other hand, they have the right to mediate their way of living together
with knowledge.
Several studies show that young people who grow up in families that preserve traditional norms
and values from their home country run a higher risk of experiencing ambivalence in the de-
velopment of their identity (Högdin 2007). The literature overview that we have presented so
far shows the complexities of trialecic contract, and the ways in which many young people are
torn between the requirements of group belonging and individual identity. To belong to two or
more different ethnic cultures is often described as involving a testing of identity and feeling of
belonging via the interaction with values, beliefs, traditions and customs, which can sometimes
be all too different and disparate (Hofvander Trulsson and Burnard 2016). For example, conflicts
may arise between the beliefs of parents and the pedagogy of the teacher, which further adds to
the vulnerability of the students. As mentioned before, it is therefore important that teachers and
staff in compulsory and music schools who work with families of diverse backgrounds consider
how to communicate their policies to parents and carefully reflect on how to discuss those
policies with the parents when the latter feel that the school challenges their cultural positioning.
Music as a possibility for interpersonal action

In my supervision sessions with music teacher students at the conservatory, I regularly come
across students who have mixed feelings regarding their role as an authority. I interpret this as a
sign of a change in how the teacher’s role is perceived, a change that requires us to look for
egalitarian leadership tools, and to provide musical feedback while refraining from being jud-
gemental. Assessments and value-judgements are interpreted as inhibitory and students feel that
open-exchanges should be preferred, inducing a kind of dialogue that is enriching for both
student and teacher. Such views stand in clear contrast with the trialectic contract referred to
with regard to individual music lessons, where discipline and control of the music student from
central adults, like parents and teachers, prevailed (Hofvander Trulsson 2010).
Westvall (2018) has stressed the relational nature of music making, arguing that the latter is an
important means for developing human interaction. She emphasises that it is not about music used
as a tool for any other purpose, but about music making as creator of relationships and meaning in
itself. The interpersonal perspective that Westvall adopts derives from Small’s (1998) notion of
musicking, and is supported by Martin Buber’s views about equal interactions and reciprocity.
439
Westvall also talks about decentralised leadership and body percussion, here described as a
method, which allows leadership to roam throughout the group. The genre is also affected by this
decentralised leadership and this becomes clear through the ways the music being used is ac-
centuated by both leaders and participants. In light of this, music is created in the moment, with a
repertoire that mirrors the participants and where several become drivers of co-creativeness
(Westvall 2018). In a context of understanding how the musical canon can create debate between
representatives who want to renew educational content and those who want to preserve and
strengthen the majority culture, the musical canon appears ambiguous, particularly in comparison
to more open, less genre specific and teacher centred forms of music pedagogy such as body
percussion. In such an inclusive approach, the decentralised leadership opens and gives access to
new expressions in teaching-methods. Westvall (2018) provides examples of music learning
without spoken language. In a collaboration with a Brazilian group which came and taught body
percussion in Sweden with great success, one of her respondents said: ‘music is not necessarily a
language, but it is a hub’ (Westvall 2018, p. 113). Body percussion represents two important
parameters: it is partly a way to get to know one’s body via the music, and partly to get to know
the music via one’s body. The Brazilian group highlights that they are working with another type
of participation and progression than what is traditionally performed in music-pedagogical
contexts (Westvall 2018). Their approach is based on the fact that one learns and develops
technology and expressions in making music together with others. One sees, listens and provides
impulses to each other and can ‘participate directly’ (Westvall 2018). Here, interpersonal di-
mensions and reciprocity become an important prerequisite for musical progression.
Conclusion
An approach to teaching that seriously considers and reflects upon the socio-cultural conditions
of children and youth provides us with an opportunity to create the ways in which we can work
at schools, during leisure activities, in the culture school or in an association. These conditions
also play a decisive role in the youth’s establishment in society and how the individual will be
able to cope with the future and its challenges. The complexity faced when dealing with issues
of musical canon implementation, and the ambiguities that emerge in the trialectic contract are
so great that our perceptions and understandings need to be deconstructed again and again.
Teachers, researchers, and other important adults in young people’s lives have an important
function in communicating knowledge and experience to young people so that they can
become whole human beings, both in their background culture and in becoming part of the
national and cultural context in the majority society. Such work with inclusive pedagogy is
about an approach that involves educators who: (1) are curious about and show a willingness to
get to know the student’s home culture and language; (2) are able and willing to communicate,
negotiate, and interact with parents and children about their experiences, opinions and values
regarding child nurturing and education; (3) have a positive attitude towards a diverse society;
(4) have the ability to reflect issues of majority/minority culture and ethnic identity from a
global perspective.
Children and youth are part of many social arenas, including those in school, but also in
leisure time through associations, and various institutions of society such as libraries, concert
venues, museums, and more. They are full of interests and dreams about the future. Sometimes,
perhaps, the straps on the family cultural backpack have to be loosened a little, so that these
children have the opportunity to become their true self. After reflecting on the above through a
number of perspectives including diversity and inclusive education, a musical canon or
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Challenges in music
decentralised leadership in music learning, I argue that it is no longer a multicultural education

for which we should be striving. Multiculturalism is a state rather than an interaction or process.
Most importantly, the opportunity for young people to engage in mutual exchange of cultural
norms which creates an environment for mutual respect, understanding and learning from each
other should be a goal not only in music education but across the curriculum at large.
1. What is interpreted as the cultural canon in your country and what philosophical and
pedagogical consequences can be drawn from the analysis of cultural canon formation?
2. On the basis of the analysis presented in this chapter, discuss what pedagogical challenges
lie in the trialectic contract for the teacher and child. Base the discussion on examples
drawn from your own experience.
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32
COLLABORATIVE VIDEO LOGS
Virtual communities of practice and aliveness in
the music classroom
Christopher Cayari
Introduction
The social learning theories of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger have provided a sociological
framework useful across many disciplines, and music educators have found it particularly helpful
to use these theories when discussing music learning, especially outside of the classroom. This
chapter uses a community of practice (CoP) framework that takes heed of Waldron’s (2018)
suggestion that we should consider how people use informal music learning 2.0, a concept that
explores how Internet users have access to not only static resources such as texts, recordings, and
lessons available online, but also have the opportunity to connect with other Internet users to
form and develop communities that allow for music making, learning, and social connections.
A brief socio-cultural look at how the Internet has shaped the way we communicate may help
the reader understand how prevalent online musical communities are and the potential they have
for social-learning relationships. In the 1990s people predominantly used the Internet to sift through
websites that provided static information, and social interactions were fostered in text-dominant
chatrooms, message boards, list serves, and direct messages (DiNucci 1999; Negroponte 1995). At
the turn of the twentieth century, the evolution of Web 2.0 encouraged Internet users to create
user-generated content through easily editable websites on social media, template-driven webpages,
and collective knowledge archives like Wikipedia (Jenkins 2006; Tapscott 2009). Now a Web 3.0
proliferates, as mobile phones, tablets, and smart watches connect us constantly to the Internet
(Lassila and Hendler 2007). No social media site has gathered more momentum and popularity than
the video sharing website YouTube, as it became the second most visited website in the world in
2016 and has retained that spot through the time this chapter was written (Alexa 2019). Waldron
et al. suggested that using social media platforms and practices in tandem with performance practices
that are common in music education programs might lead to students ‘participating or engaging
with and through music in ways they find interesting, enjoyable, or meaningful’ (2018, p. 291). By
applying common online practices to the classroom, educators may find that they are providing
relevant and impactful experiences for students who live in a society that affords social and learning
opportunities mediated through the Internet. Waldron (2018) implored music educators to critically
examine concepts of community, music making, and learning in the age of the Internet. She insisted
that YouTube ‘deserve[s] special attention in terms of bridging the divide between formal music and
out-of-school contexts for music learning and teaching’ (p. 108).
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Christopher Cayari
YouTube as an online platform provides a digital space where video creators, curators,
viewers, and commenters interact with each other’s content (Burgess and Green 2009), and there
are vibrant pockets of musicians, music lovers, and musical critics who participate in online
communities. YouTube research regarding music learning has focused on online learning (Kruse
and Veblen 2012), performance practices and musical presentation (Cayari 2011, 2016a, 2016b,
2018; Lange 2014), applying the practices of YouTube creators to the classroom (Biamonte 2010;
Cayari 2014; Rudolph and Frankel 2009; Thibeault and Evoy 2011), and virtual CoPs
(Waldron 2013). This chapter explores how video-based discussions modelled after popular
YouTube practices have the potential to help students co-construct learning, develop social
connections with others, and express their own ideas effectively.
A sociological framework for situated

learning within communities of practice
Lave and Wenger (1991) published a seminal sociological text that posited learning as a social
and interactive endeavor. Rather than thinking about learning as knowledge being bestowed
unto someone by a person or resource, Lave and Wenger situated learning in social interactions
within a community. Learning occurs through engaging in legitimate peripheral participation
(LPP), a concept that describes how newcomers and old-timers within a community interact,
thus co-constructing knowledge as members of the community interact. The goal for a
newcomer in a community is often to perform or participate in some way rather than to simply
talk about the things they learned. Therefore, members of a CoP typically get together regularly
to pursue shared interests, and social interactions provide the context for members to learn,
perform their desired tasks, and grow their community.
Wenger (1998) further advanced CoP theory by discussing how members learn, find
meaning, and develop individual identities. Old-timers as well as novices take on roles that
afford – and sometimes require – differing levels of participation, and members learn from
various modes of participation. CoP theory does not condemn non-participation, referring to
those who abstain from enthusiastic participation as slackers, but instead Wenger states that
‘experiences of non-participation are an inevitable part of life’ (Wenger 1998, p. 165) that takes
on a type of importance when experiences of participation and non-participation are considered
in tandem. Learning within a CoP can take place through explicit and tacit means. This in-
cludes activities in which members purposefully interact with others as well as passive-seeming
undertakings like observing, lurking, thinking, and listening. Moreover, CoPs have all types of
people who choose their level of involvement. Wenger maintained that each member within a
CoP could find meaningful experiences that promote social learning, whether they are part of a
core group of old-timers or are a peripheral participant who occasionally contributes to the
community but focused on absorbing what they can from others. While a member of a CoP
participates within their community regardless of their role as an old-timer or newcomer, they
assess their relationships with others as well as their individual concept of self, and both as-
sessments can lead to learning.
Unfortunately, both aforementioned texts about CoPs were devoid of discussion about
online spaces. However, I agree with Waldron’s (2009, p. 102) suggestion: ‘Had YouTube
videos existed in 1998 – the year Wenger’s book was first published – he most likely would
have included them [in his list of artefacts that help participants negotiate their roles within
CoPs]’. CoP theory has been applied to online musical environments to better understand
music learning and social interactions. The exploration of text-based discussion on social media
has shown that musicians, music educators, and students dialogue about teaching and learning
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Collaborative video logs
strategies, garner feedback, and elicit advice in online CoPs through discussion forums (Bauer
and Moehle 2008; Pinch and Athanasiades 2012; Salavuo 2006), Facebook (Bernard, Weiss and
Abeles 2018; Palmquist and Barnes 2015), and YouTube (Cayari 2016b). For more details on
these studies and others, see chapter 33 in this volume by Veblen and Waldron. However, the
research regarding online CoPs and music education has been largely situated outside of
learning institutions, untied to the classroom.
Nearly a decade after Lave and Wenger first published on LPP, Wenger et al. (2002, p. 50)
offered suggestions on how CoPs can be fostered within institutions: ‘What makes [CoPs]
successful over time is their ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value to
attract and engage members. Although many factors …, can inspire a community, nothing can
substitute for this sense of aliveness’. Wenger et al. (2002, p. 51) identified seven principles that
contribute to the aliveness of a community of practice giving it a sense of momentum, growth,
and energy. They were:
1. Design for evolution. 2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives.
3. Invite different levels of participation. 4. Develop both public and private com-
munity spaces. 5. Focus on value. 6. Combine familiarity and excitement. 7. Create a
rhythm for the community.
In summary, CoPs should change and evolve depending on the needs and desires of the
community members. Participants will develop an insider understanding that links the com-
munity together while retaining their experiences from outside of the community, and a
dialogue that draws upon both of those perspectives will help develop a sense of aliveness. All
levels of involvement are valid and encouraged within a CoP; this includes but is not limited to
lurking, mentoring, teaching, observing, creating, and supporting. Aliveness is also experienced
when people partake in both public and private exchanges. Public events often serve as ritual-
building, purposeful activities that foster connection; private exchanges, often situated in the
minutia of daily activities, breed a sturdy ‘web of relationships among community members’
(Wenger et al. 2002, p. 58). Aliveness is experienced when members of a CoP know the shared
and individual value being a part of the community has. Familiarity combined with excitement
motivates members to keep coming back to a CoP and be long-standing members.
Finally, Wenger et al. (2002, p. 62) suggested that a ‘beat [that] is strong and rhythmic
[provides] the community [with] a sense of movement and liveliness’. However, too fast of a
beat will result in exhaustion, and too slow of a beat will lead to boredom and apathy. These
principles became a useful framework for analysis as I researched how CoPs could be developed
as part of a music classroom through video-based discussions online.
YouTube research and collaborative vlogging

Educational researchers outside of music have explored how YouTube and the practices of its
users might be incorporated into the classroom. The website has provided spaces in which
subcultures developed where users communicate through videos, ratings of thumbs up or
down, and text responses (Chang and Lewis 2011). YouTube has allowed for a ‘shift from
media to social media [that] requires us to rethink the spatial relations between communication
and politics in everyday life’ (Meek 2012, p. 1430, italics added). Yet, while YouTube was not
explicitly designed to encourage collaboration between groups of video makers, the site has lent
itself to participation between users, and people have formed communities where interaction
and social relationships are valued (Burgess and Green 2009).
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Christopher Cayari
Educational inquiry into YouTube has explored ways online videos can be integrated into the
classroom. Hung’s (2011) use of vlogs in an English for Specific Purposes undergraduate course
revealed that vlogging allowed for reflection through visual representations, flexible time limits,
self-evaluation, professional development, and peer learning. Lin and Polnecki (2009) found that
students in a Grade 8 art classroom who created activist documentaries inspired by similar
YouTube videos developed a critical eye for news reporting, social awareness, and online media.
Juhasz (2008) attempted to conduct an entire class on YouTube including publicly available
lectures, class discussions, and homework responses. Unfortunately, the students had to combat
negative feedback from non-student YouTube users. Logistics and technical issues for students
were troublesome and time consuming for both students and instructor. While the idea had
merit, Juhasz concluded that she and her class were ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of this
pioneering effort. An additional concern with online communication comes from Turkle (2012),
who warns that social media and the internet have the potential to replace human connection
with a love of machines; in other words, humans may become so accustomed to interacting with
technology and through computer screens that they may crave robotic connection so deeply that they
lose the ability or desire to interact with other people.
While concerns of how social media and the Internet have potential to disrupt and replace
humans interactions, the study in this chapter focused on exploring how students might connect
with each other through asynchronous dialogue through vlogging in hopes that they felt more
connected to others, rather than the machines they used to converse on the internet.
Researchers have found that through vlogging, YouTube users are able to form identities,
amass an audience of fans and friends, build communities, and learn together (Burgess and
Green 2009; Lange 2014). Vlogs can cover any imaginable topic. Collaborative video logs
(CVLs), in which two or more people respond to each other through a single YouTube
channel, have become prominent. Perhaps the most prevalent and longest-standing CVL began
when John and Hank Green, brothers who found themselves moving to disparate locations,
created the YouTube channel vlogbrothers and swore off text-based communication for a year.
They did not text message or email each other during that time and instead used YouTube to
create asynchronous video communications that viewers could watch at their leisure. They
started vlogging on January 1, 2007, and continued to talk to each other through vlogs in 2019
when this chapter was written, amassing over 1,750 videos on their YouTube channel.
In YouTube’s early years, there was an insurgence of CVLs as video creators formed col-
laborations. A prominent trend was for groups of five people to post a video on their respective
weekday. Five Awesome Girls started a fad when they created their channel on November 30,
2007. On January 4, 2008, they were joined by Five Awesome Guys, and less than a month later
5 Awesome Gays hit the Internet. The five awesome moniker was used by affinity groups ranging
from baristas to gymnasts and Rubik’s cubers to Vegans. This author and friends even created Five
Awesome Muxians. Unfortunately, we were unable to snatch the Five Awesome Musicians title
before another group did.
Additionally, as a doctoral student I was a founding member of the EPSFourFifteen CVL, a
class project in which I participated during an education and technology reform course. An
ethnographic study on our CVL led to finding that the project lent itself to feelings of own-
ership about one’s learning, and our CVL had both academic and social benefits (Cayari and
Fox 2013), which included but were not limited to fostering a learning community, realising
potential, developing technological literacy, getting to know group members on a personal
level, embracing differences, and expanding relationship beyond the classroom. In contrast,
members of EPSFourFifteen suggested that there were drawbacks to their CVL. Some members
perceived a steep learning curve for how to create video discussion responses. However, this
446
hurtle was an emotional hurdle, as less technologically experienced members quickly developed
an approach to recording and publishing. The amount of time required to create a vlog varied
drastically by participant and sometimes took more time than participants anticipated.
Depending on the vlog style, one might have to prepare a script, record multiple takes, and edit
together a finished product, while another would shoot their video with little preparation and
no editing. Finally, technological problems were experienced, which included but were not
limited to file corruption that caused audio and video inconsistencies, errors in format pro-
cessing while uploading to YouTube, and software limitations that caused videos to cut a
vlogger off while speaking mid-sentence. Informed by these benefits and challenges, I assigned
CVL projects in my music courses and conducted a study guided by the question, ‘How might
a CVL exhibit aliveness and thus be conceived as a CoP within music courses?’
The collaborative vlogging projects

As an educator who wanted to facilitate social connections and learning through CoPs, I as-
signed CVL projects to seven different courses at three large public universities at which I
taught between 2014 and 2018. For each iteration of the project, I made small changes to adapt
for my students and the subject matter, and I consistently asked students for feedback on the
project. Two courses were undergraduate Introduction to Music Education Technology hybrid
courses that met both online and offline with approximately 50 students in each section.
Students in this class will be referred to as majors because they were majoring in music edu-
cation. Three sections of an Integrating Music into the General Classroom course made up of
elementary education students met offline, and students in these courses will be referred to as
generalists. Finally, the students in two Music Appreciation online courses open to all majors will
be referred to as electors, because they took the course as an elective.
Students were asked to find a group for a video discussion-based project. The number of vlogs
per student ranged between five and 11, and I suggested to students that the ideal group size was
between three and five students; however, the number of collaborators per group ranged from
two to six. Groups were then asked to create a group name and YouTube channel. The topics
students discussed differed by course, which depended on my objectives for the project for each
semester: Majors and electors were given complete freedom to vlog about anything musical. To
consider how giving students predetermined topics would affect the experience, generalists were
given guidelines for their CVLs to discuss specific required readings in some weeks, discuss
broader course-specific topics, or make music depending on the week. However, they could
develop their own prompts within my prescribed guidelines. Required topics in the generalists’
courses included musical identity, teaching and learning music, music and culture, make music
somehow, and integrating music with other subjects. Giving students the autonomy to create
their own group-specific prompts was an intentional step towards designing for evolution.
To encourage the development of a rhythm, schedule guidelines were given to help students
stay on task and hold each other accountable. In the majors and electors courses, each student
selected a day of the week to be the designated vlogger. Using a five-person weekday-only
schedule, the Monday vlogger asked a question and answered it. Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Thursday vloggers added their responses. On Friday, the vlogger posted a three-part video: a
response for Monday’s prompt, a new prompt, and a response to their own prompt. The
process would repeat with Monday’s through Wednesday’s vloggers answering Friday’s
prompt, and Thursday’s vlogger started the process over again. To explore a different sche-
duling format, the generalist courses were given a calendar on which each student had to sign up
to be discussion leader for the week, which meant that they asked a question on the first day of
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Christopher Cayari
the week. Then, vloggers signed up for one day each week. At the end of each week, the
discussion leader would post an additional final video synthesising the group discussion.
After finishing all vlog videos, students were asked to fill out a group checklist that included
a list of prompts, answer a text-based individual reflection form, and create a final group project
that addressed their experiences in the CVL. The final project was an open-ended assignment
that manifested in five-page essays, 15-minute group video discussions, documentaries, music
videos, interpretive dances, and other creative endeavours.
Method of inquiry: Looking at CVLs in various music courses

Inquiry was a methodical analysis of the archived student projects from all seven of the courses listed
above. My institutional review board (IRB) approved an exemption since the research was con-
ducted in an established educational setting and involved normal educational practices through
comparing instructional techniques. However, as part of the reflections, I asked students to check a
box if they would be willing to let me share their work with others for pedagogical purposes. As a
courtesy, I only included those students for this research project because of my own convictions
about sharing the opinions of only those who want to be shared (DeVault 1999). The reflections of
individual students answered 11 questions about their experiences throughout the project and dealt
with the following topics: what vloggers would do the same and differently if they were to do the
project again; favorite and disliked aspects of the project; perceived educational implications; future
plans for vlogging; suggestions for improving the project in the future; how the project affected
their group dynamic; and assessment of themselves and their group members.
Analysis of data
All reflections were assigned a priori codes based on the seven principles of aliveness discussed by
Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002). To do this, I developed 46 sub-questions to guide my
assessment of how each response might attend to the principles. All 1,364 reflections were entered
into Excel, and each response was marked with points of interest if it addressed one or more sub-
question. This yielded 2,382 points of interest. Each sub-question was then analysed separately
through a three-step process (Emerson et al. 2011) to gain a better understanding of each principal.
First, initial emergent codes were assigned. Then, similar codes were combined, and all statements
were double checked to make sure the combined codes still accurately portrayed the vloggers intent.
Finally, the statements grouped into categories that were analysed and used for writing the results.
Redundancies and irrelevant material were deleted to leave a total of 1,450 usable codes.
Additionally, prompts that were created by majors were compiled and analysed in the same three-step
process. The 122 prompts were analysed and six categories were identified, each discussed below.
Results: students’ reflections of CVLs within college music courses

The rationale for the CVL projects was to allow students to discuss music through asynchronous
video discussion while developing mini-communities of practice. I wanted my students to
create a community around music, find meaning in doing so, and further develop their own
identities. Wenger (1998, p. 45) asserted that, ‘collective learning results in practices that reflect
both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations’. Each CVL was to pursue
the enterprise of music, and this study explored the collective and co-constructed learning
results and attendant social relationships implicated. To best explain the data and my analysis, I
have grouped the principles of aliveness (Wenger et al. 2002) into three categories. First, I
448
discuss the design elements that were put in place by me and how my students reacted to those
boundaries. This includes the first and last principles dealing with designing for evolution and
developing a rhythm. Next, I provide analysis of my students’ reflections on the nature of their
participation focusing on the third and fourth principles: Allowing for differing levels of par-
ticipation and creating public and private spaces. Finally, I discuss my students’ perspectives as
they dealt with principles two, five, and six, which are creating a dialogue between inside and
outside perspectives, finding value, and balancing familiarity with excitement.
Designing a collaborative vlog

Fostering a design for evolution can lead aliveness in a CoP. Aliveness situates itself in the ability
of communities to ‘reflect on and redesign elements of themselves through [a CoP’s] existence’
(Wenger et al. 2002, p. 53). I purposefully designed the CVL so students could evolve the
project in the ways they saw fit. The freedom to discuss student-chosen topics led to a sense of
ownership and autonomy. One musician wrote,
The lack of rules for the project was confusing at first, but it gave us freedom for
interpretation. I think students are too used to having everything laid out for them.
The basic guidelines led to a wider range of creativity. Looking back on this class, I
really enjoyed having the freedom to bring individuality to this project.
Analysis of majors’ prompts revealed six categories: aspirations, challenges, experiences, philo-
sophies, preferences, and teaching. Aspiration prompts often started with, ‘If you could’, and
dealt with hypothetical situations and future endeavors from instruments students wished they
could play to possible professions both inside and outside of music. Students also challenged
each other to create music in special ways. Examples included turn a rap song into a ballad and
do something musical in a public space. The sharing of experiences included questions about
musical memories, accomplishments, practice strategies, and musical influences. Discussion of
philosophies and opinions ranged from discussing pros and cons of competitive reality televi-
sion, the importance of music in education, and compensation for running extra-curricular
activities. Prompts asked about preferences or opinions often included ‘favorite’ or ‘least fa-
vorite’ and ranged from discussion about albums and genres to performance practices and past
teachers. Finally, prompts about education were discussed problematising the way music has
been taught in schools, suggesting what courses to take as an older student, planning how to run
future classes once vloggers became professional teachers, and other topics.
While the variety of prompts show how conversations evolved, analysis of the reflections
uncovered various other evolutions. An evolved sense of self-identity was apparent as nearly
half of the students explicitly reflected about how the project helped them grow, step out of
their comfort zones, talk about themselves, and evolve as musicians, educators, or thinkers.
CVLs afforded a platform for students to talk through ideas and beliefs, thus challenging them to
form stated opinions that resulted in personal growth. In the words of an elector, ‘I felt that this
project allowed me to grow as a person and to not be shameful of what I think’.
Positive statements on the reflections were prevalent throughout all courses and apparent in
most vlogs, especially by those that were able to adhere to their schedule. Adherence was
instrumental in developing relationships that were based on reliability. Wenger et al. (2002,
p. 62) suggested, ‘[a]t the heart of a community is a web of enduring relationships among
members, but the tempo of their interactions is greatly influenced by the rhythm of community
events’. Strictly following the schedule helped CVLs develop a rhythm that was productive and
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Christopher Cayari
conducive to learning. In contrast, the biggest pitfall that prevented students from experiencing
a positive, productive flow was not following their schedule. There were moments when
vloggers were unable to post their videos on their assigned days. From a generalist,
After working together for 5 weeks, I have learned a lot about my cohort. I loved
working with them. Each of us posted our video on our specific dates. If we had an
issue, we would switch days. Collaboration was key during this time period. We all
worked effectively together.
Adjustments to the schedule was the second most common code found in data pertaining to
rhythm. While missing a deadline had the potential to throw off rhythm, open communication
regarding missed deadlines often strengthened bonds between vloggers and encouraged pro-
blem solving. Common adjustments to the schedule included switching days; posting a day late,
but before the next vlogger; posting earlier in the week if a future conflict was known; and
notifying group members that a post will come late due to sickness or field trip.
Ultimately, a sense of (dis)community within a CVL became detrimental to relationships or
counterproductive to learning. This manifested when group mates stopped participating or did
not follow through with the promises they made. Inconsistencies in rhythm often led to conflict
and disrupted learning. A domino effect might occur when a vlogger missed their day, especially
if they were to post the prompt for the week. Additionally, unavoidable disruptions were caused
by academic breaks, holidays, or large class trips. Holiday and seasonal breaks often threw vloggers
‘off the groove.’ If a rhythm was developed and students felt vlogging was part of their weekly
routine, taking one week off due to university policy made some forget about their vlogs all
together, and others experienced internal resistance in the form of laziness, lack of creativity, or
anxiety due to additional homework responsibilities. Unfortunately, disruption in rhythm affected
not only their CVLs but also the rhythm of their schedule outside of the course.
Participating within a collaborative vlog

The schedule offered a structure that encouraged a healthy rhythm for students’ CVLs.
However, members within a CoP learn through non-participation and legitimate peripheral
participation rather than requiring heavy involvement or equal contribution to a group.
Therefore, there was (and is) a source of contention for a CoP that is connected to a classroom
project that is being graded. To address this paradox, I graded my students solely on completing
their videos, reflection, and final project, not assessing the quality of their videos, strength of
argument in discussion, or even their interaction with other students. It was my hope that
students would create their own mini communities of practice, and for the most part, I was
pleased to hear about their journeys. In the following paragraphs, I discuss the findings re-
garding the levels of participation and the spaces in which vloggers participated in their CoPs.
Students were able to choose how much energy and time they put into the project without
being penalised in their grade. Self-reported involvement in the project ranged from slackers
who did not participate at all in their asynchronous discussion until after the vlog officially
ended (students who turned everything in late) to students who volunteered to do all the
filming and editing for every member in their group. In instances where extremes like these
occurred, reflections revealed problematic experiences.
Groups worked best when they perceived that everyone was participating to the project in a
meaningful way. However, when a vlogger did not participate, it affected the experiences of
their group. One musician explained,
450
After her first video, one of my group members never posted again. We didn't know
why she wasn't posting. She ended up telling me that she was going through some
personal issues, but she was going to classes. I think she could made up the video and
get back on track. But she didn’t. Not everything was her fault – we could have tried
to confront her and figure out if she was going to do her part. We were worried about
offending her or seeming like we were ‘on her case’.
Some groups experienced a collaborator ghosting, a vernacular term that describes when
someone stops communicating for no apparent reason. While ghosting led to feelings of be-
trayal and drove a wedge between group members, groups that exhibited individual respon-
sibility, teamwork, dependability, and collaboration expressed positive sentiments and
strengthened relationships.
In contrast to ghosting, taking excessive control of any aspect of the project was dangerous
for group dynamics. A highly ambitious veteran video creator in a majors course offered to do
the filming and editing for his whole CVL. However, doing so every day quickly became
overwhelming, and his inability to keep up with the workload made everyone’s videos late
because group members did not take the initiative to do their own recording or editing. They
did not want to upset the veteran. While the veteran’s intentions were to make sure that his
group had the best-produced videos, by doing the work for other students, they were unable to
develop their own skills which also led to remorse. A group mate wrote, ‘I had no idea how to
[edit videos], so I sat there with him and learned through watching him edit. I do feel very
irresponsible for not taking the initiative to learn and do it myself'. While this relationship
resembles the interactions between a master-apprentice relationship discussed by Lave and
Wenger (1991), a master does not do the work of the apprentice. Lave and Wenger suggested
that social learning within a CoP often occurs between apprentices who are observing their
master(s), discussing their observations, practicing themselves, and co-constructing knowledge
together; not when a master does work in lieu of the apprentice.
The co-construction of knowledge in CVLs expanded beyond the conversations on video
and manifested as brainstorming sessions for topics, informal talks, and face-to-face discussions
before or after class times. Other media were used to facilitate participation outside of the
classroom and beyond the boundaries of the CVL on YouTube. Platforms for communication
included messaging tools like GroupMe and cellular text messages, social media like Facebook,
and document editing platforms like Google Docs. Some relationships formed in class were
intended to continue after the course was completed. An elector wrote,
I think that I am friends with everyone in my crew now. They are all someone I
would see in the world and speak with. I would attend these people’s events if they
asked me to. I would hang out with them, jam, and maybe donate to their causes.
The CoPs developed in this group showed promise that vloggers would continue co-
constructing knowledge after the completion of their course.
Wenger et al. (2002) insisted that ‘[t]he key to designing community spaces is to orchestrate
activities in both public and private spaces that use the strength of individual relationships to
enrich events and use events to strengthen individual relationships’ (p. 59). Students described
feeling that CVLs were simultaneously public and private. Recording usually occurred in a
private space like a dorm room or practice room. Once uploaded, what happened in private
became publicly accessible. Fellow vloggers were expected to watch each other’s videos;
however, viewing also usually occurred in private. Knowing that classmates would watch each
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other’s videos made students feel ‘much more comfortable when talking to a camera in an
empty room.’ Additionally, while students knew that their videos could be accessed by a global
audience on YouTube, most realised that their videos would only be watched by their group
members. None reported the criticism or abuse by non-class viewers like the comments dis-
cussed by Juhasz (2008) in her YouTube-situated classroom. Additionally, I noticed connec-
tions between fellow-vloggers form and strengthen through the physically proximity of
students’ bodies. For example, many CVL groups started to sit together and discuss more
passionately within small groups as the semester progressed. This observation exemplifies how
the private conversations that occurred in the CVLs expanded to the public space of the
classroom.
Developing perspectives through collaborative vlogging

Perspectives developed through CVLs addressed the principles that attended to combining fa-
miliarity with excitement, dialoguing between insider and outsider viewpoints, and finding value
in the shared endeavours of the community. Wenger et al. (2002, p. 62) suggested that ‘lively
communities combine both familiar and exciting events’. However, vlogging was an unfamiliar
experience with nearly all students, and that proved to be both exciting and challenging. While
most students had watched vlogs on YouTube, creating their own videos was a task that only a
few students had attempted. While talking to a camera with no human response was highly
unfamiliar, many were excited to pursue personal learning goals through making vlogs and found
value in their individualised learning while meeting the concerns of the collective.
Students also found value in nine areas: vlogging, technology, music, creativity, aesthetic
enjoyment, self-reflection, discussing, relationships, and teaching. The first six areas in this list
have to do with personal values as students explored and experienced new things in these topics.
The last three areas show value placed on community interaction and social learning. Students
appreciated a platform to share their opinions and discover how their classmates’ opinions were
similar or different. Vloggers valued being able to discuss topics in depth, often building upon
in-class discussions. They found worth in the seemingly simple task of speaking as CVLs re-
quired them to practice their presentational skills. This was of value particularly to students
whose first language was not English, who were shy of speaking in public, or who wanted to
present different aspects of their identity, which confirms and adds to the findings of Hung
(2011) discussed earlier. Majors and generalists particularly noted that they could practice their
‘teacher voice’, speak with a fun accent, or develop an online vlogger persona.
The development of personae and identity also touches on another principle of aliveness.
Wenger et al. (2002, p. 54) insisted that ‘[o]nly an insider can appreciate the issues at the heart of
a domain,’ and when insider understandings are considered with individuals’ perspectives
brought from outside the CoP, robust and lively interactions ensued. Outside perspectives
helped students see the similarities and differences they had with their co-vloggers, particularly
in the areas of musical interests and abilities. The development of inside group understanding
was heavily influenced by the design of the CVLs, because the project encouraged students to
get to know each other through sharing personal information as they listened to their classmates
talk about themselves, their opinions, and understandings. For example, sharing music from
vloggers’ cultures was a common prompt in elector courses as they were the most racially and
ethnically diverse. Since these courses were online, students filmed from a variety of locations
that expanded beyond their physical university campuses. One CVL experienced videos from
seven countries as students recorded their videos while traveling abroad, sharing the music of
their home countries and the ones they visited.
452
The potential of how this project might be able to develop CoPs and encourage new colla-
borative relationships was summed up well in a elector’s reflection, ‘This CVL project definitely
made me feel a strong connection to my crew and helped me feel like I truly was an important part
of this class’, a feeling that may be difficult to achieve in an online course. The student continued,
I think this project allowed for us to grow as people together and really connect on
ideas and interests we had. After completing the last video log, I felt extremely sen-
timental thinking of my crewmates, and I realised we had a strong bond and went
through something significant together. Thus, I feel very positive about the re-
lationship developed and am proud of all of us for being such a great team together!
This student did not know her cohort when the course started, and her experiences exemplified
how outsider perspectives might contribute to co-constructed knowledge by exposing vloggers
to new ideas.
In contrast to groups of strangers, most existing friend groups that chose to work together
noted that CVLs helped them feel closer. A generalist reflected that being able to choose her
friends made her ‘glad that [she] was able to choose [her] group members’. She postulated, ‘I
feel that if I was not allowed to choose my group members, I would have struggled with this
CVL project much more’. This sentiment was echoed across all courses, except for a small
minority of situations – only two instances – where a student reflected that the project did not
affect the closeness of their preexisting friend group in any way. Existing friend groups afforded
a natural insider perspective, and the project had a strong tendency to encourage the
strengthening of relationships as students co-constructed knowledge.
Conclusions, implications, and suggestions for the future

Conducting asynchronous discussion through video in a small group setting proved to be
advantageous in undergraduate music courses as students developed their own CoPs. The
practices of CVLs was unfamiliar to nearly all of my students, and while the project was met
with initial skepticism, the majority of students found that the project provided for them the
opportunity for self-grown, reflection, and expressing their opinions as well as a community in
which they could develop relationships, co-construct knowledge, and make music. This ex-
ploratory study of how CVLs can cultivate aliveness within a CoP provided promising data that
should encourage educators and sociologists to adapt social media trends for the classroom and
institutionalised music communities. The courses I taught spanned the gambit courses offered in
music education programs sans performance-based classes.
CVLs may not be as prominent in popular culture on YouTube as they were in the late 00’s;
however, by using the practices collaborative vloggers developed in the classroom, I saw my
students develop mini-CoPs within the institutionalised structure of larger classrooms. By
designing the CVL for evolution and helping them establish a rhythm, students were able to
take the project in directions I did not initially conceive. They brought their individual per-
spectives to their CoPs and got to know each other, thus developing groups that established
insider knowledge and identity. Allowing for varying levels of participation encouraged stu-
dents to pursue the skills they wanted to develop while allowing others to experience CVLs
with minimal effort. The semi-private community spaces of each YouTube channel often
provided the groundwork for other private, close-knit relationships as well as bonding that
manifested in the public space of the classroom. Finally, all students found meaning in some
aspect of the CVL, and aspects that were important to individuals and groups gave the CoPs
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Christopher Cayari
value. While students were able to support each other and cultivate meaningful relationships
that helped them learn, explore, and grow, there were challenges in the CoPs, most notably
extremes of participation, feeling overwhelmed by workload, and internalised fear or shyness.
Future research should be conducted to see how CVLs could enhance ensembles, seminars,
and distance-learning courses. There are scenarios of interest in which I have not yet had the
opportunity to experience CVLs that may yield positive results. For example, when students are
starting their lives at a new college, program, or career, it may behoove both students and
instructors to cultivate a CoP through CVLs as they get to know each other. Also, CVLs while
student teaching might provide students with peer support, camaraderie, and an outlet for
discussion as they transition from the academy to the workforce. A cohort of students working
on writing, research, or capstone projects could share progress, emotional support, and con-
structive critique as they share their work and discuss progress. Finally, CVLs could be intra-
institutional allowing for students across the world to form a community as they work through
their college programs. The CVL is a versatile pedagogical tool that can be designed to suit the
needs of almost any course or community. By encouraging students to discuss important topics
through asynchronous video posting, CoPs can exhibit the principles of aliveness and flourish to
help students learn, develop their own voices, and find a support system of collaborators.
1. How might allowing students to choose the subjects and discussion prompts for a colla-
borative vlog be advantageous or problematic in courses that require specific skills or topics
to be covered, particularly in performance-based courses?
2. Communities of practice are often considered to be outside of and even contrary to
classroom learning. What types of activities, projects, or interactions have potential to
develop aliveness within a music education course conducted online, offline or as a hybrid?
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33
DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY, MUSIC
LEARNING, AND ONLINE
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
Kari K. Veblen and Janice L. Waldron
Introduction
Music education scholars historically have drawn extensively on literature from other fields,
most notably philosophy, psychology, education, and sociology, the last example being the
most obvious as it is the focus of this volume. With the rise of the ‘digital’ over the past 20 years,
literature from new media, social media, communications, and the cross-disciplinary fields of
digital sociology and digital anthropology are other disciplines that have significant implications
for music education research as well, most notably around issues of Internet enquiry, the
broader category of all things ‘digital’ (for example – smartphones, ‘big’ data, ‘small’ data, apps,
and mobile networks among others), and online research frameworks.
However, as a field, music education scholars have remained largely oblivious to the
emergent developments over the past 20 years from the above areas. We maintain that, in
twenty-first-century society, it is essential for researchers to be aware of research practices and/
or frameworks necessary for relevance in a digital age. This requires that music education
scholars consult, consider, and understand literature on Internet enquiry and online research
methodologies before undertaking any investigations that involve the Internet and/or the
‘digital’, and especially so in sociological research focused on social media sites (SMSs) and
music learning.
This chapter first lays out theoretical groundwork in this emerging field, then considers new
research in formal music education communities of practice. Originally we envisioned this
work encompassing all current research in digital music education sociology. However, we are
constrained to one aspect of music teaching and learning due to the burgeoning and ex-
ponential research interest in this area and the word limitations of this chapter. Our next article
will survey current research in informal music education into areas of genre (vernacular, tra-
ditional, popular), interest (fan-based, urban), composition, and open-sourced work and im-
plications of this body of literature for all music educators.
Although we draw on literature from new media, social media, communications, and digital
anthropology to illustrate the connections between those fields and their usefulness for music
education scholars and research, we begin with a discussion of the cross-disciplinary field of
digital sociology, as it is the area most closely aligned with the purpose of and the perspectives
presented in this book.
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Digital sociology, music learning
Digital sociology
The field of digital sociology is perhaps the most significant cross-disciplinary field for music
education sociology scholars who either focus on Internet enquiry or who include digital data
in their investigations. According to Marres (2017, p. 1), the ‘digital makes possible new ways of
conducting and knowing social life’, with ‘the capture, analysis, and manipulation of data,
networks and interaction by computational means produc[ing] new interfaces between social
life and social research’ resulting in the relatively new cross-disciplinary field of digital so-
ciology. Researching digital culture therefore draws on ‘sociological traditions as well as new
media studies and computer science’ (Marres 2017, p. 2). Further, ‘for some theorists, the very
idea of “culture”’ or ‘society’ cannot now be fully understood without the recognition that
computer software and hardware devices not only underpin, but actively constitute self-hood,
embodiment, social life, social relations and social institutions (Lupton 2015, p. 2).
While the term ‘digital’ was once used specifically to reference a distinct group of practices
involving early adopters, experts, ‘geeks’ and the like, it is now an accepted part of daily social life
(Lupton 2015, p. 8). Further, as the ‘digital’ intersects with technology, culture, and knowledge, it
results in new ways of being in the world. While this opens up new areas for sociological study –
and this is reflected in music education research from the past decade as well – it also presents
critical challenges to sociologists and/or scholars who draw on sociological frameworks, as Marres
(2017, p. 8) explains:
What makes the digital such a relevant phenomenon for sociology that goes beyond its
importance as a research topic? Its contemporary significance must also be understood
in terms of the transformation of social research, and of its role in society that it makes
possible. These transformations have been described in various ways, but they can be
summed up in the belief that social research, through its implementations in com-
putational infrastructures, may gain the capacity to intervene in social life and thereby
to address or even solve social problems.
The result therefore is that debates surrounding the meaning of ‘digital’ as it relates to sociology
tend to focus on one of three following areas:
1. The general claim that the digital makes possible new forms of knowing social worlds,
2. The concepts, methods and techniques required for the study of today’s digital societies, or,
3. The normative, political and ethical issues raised by the new, digital forms of social
research (Marres 2017, p. 2).
Not surprisingly, all three of the above areas reflect similar issues that music education sociology
scholars also must grapple with when undertaking Internet-based research. Also similar are the
kinds of questions that Marres (2017) believes that digital sociologists must consider before
beginning online and/or digital fieldwork. These include:
• Who is capable of social enquiry?

• Who owns the means of its production and distribution?
• What are useable data?
• What techniques of intervention can sociology use?
• What relations between researchers and research subjects should we strive for?
(Marres 2017, p. 21)
457
We are struck by how familiar these questions are for both music education researchers in-
vestigating social phenomena and music learning in general, but even more specifically their
appropriateness for music education scholars who deal with Internet enquiry, social phe-
nomena, and music learning in their work. So – ideas encapsulated from digital sociologists
have definite relevance for music education, thus the area is an important one to draw on for
music education sociology researchers.
Perhaps the biggest problem for sociologists studying digital social data and the platforms which
facilitate it – and by extension, music education sociology researchers who do so as well – is that ‘the
resulting research often ends up telling us more about digital technology than about society’
(Marres 2017, p. 5). There are two issues here that we in music education are certainly guilty of as a
field; first, music education research categorised under the broad umbrella term of ‘technology’ –
often with ‘digital’ thrown in for more appeal – tends to focus on hardware and software (the latter
includes social media platforms) designed for music learning. The interactions between users that
happen on/from both that are examples of successful music learning, making, and teaching are
however not examined – we tend to be ‘blinded by the light’ of shiny new technologies as stand-
alone artifacts. One has only to look at the table of contents of the leading journal in the field in this
area, the Journal of Music, Technology, and Education, for examples of this (https://www.intellectbooks.
co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=152/). This is not a bad thing in and of itself – but we are often so
enamoured with each new technology that we pay more attention to the technology ‘as is’ and not
to the ways people use the technology for music making, learning, and teaching and their inter-
actions with it, one another, and their learning community as they do so.
The second problem is how we in the profession view sociological studies of online music
learning – because, although they typically have more in common with sociological studies of
music learning and teaching in offline contexts, these studies are frequently abandoned under
the general heading of music technology. We argue that this reflects a basic misunderstanding of
the delineations of sociology and technology in music education research. This last point is
related to another issue beyond the scope of this paper – that is, underlying assumptions as to
how ‘technology’ in relation to music education is defined, what it looks like, and/or what the
term encompasses. Regardless, Marres’ earlier point above regarding technology and sociology
certainly but unfortunately still applies to our profession as a whole. Perhaps we should consider
developing a new disciplinary subfield – the digital sociology of music education.
From a sociological perspective, what is more interesting and significant than the technologies
themselves are the interactions that people have with one another through them that render music
learning, making, and teaching possible. In other words, it is what people do with one another to
make, learn, and teach music through the hardware and software (including social media platforms),
and not the software and hardware as stand-alone ‘things’ that are valuable in digital sociological
enquiry in music education. From a theoretical perspective, the only difference between ‘traditional’
offline studies from music education scholars using sociological constructs and music education
academics doing sociological research online then is the context, and later in this chapter we present
formal music education research on online, and on and offline convergent communities of practice
as examples of this (Wenger et al. 2009). What are different between ‘traditional’ offline sociological
music education research and its online counterpart however are important issues and questions
surrounding and regarding online qualitative ethnographic research methods, again, addressed later
in this chapter. To reiterate, as mentioned by Marres (2017) above, the latter is one of the main
concerns of digital sociologists.
So – regardless of discipline, one must be careful when undertaking sociological Internet enquiry
to ensure that the resulting research focuses on the actions taking place on the platform but not the
underlying technologies, as they only facilitate whatever interactivity is taking place – in the case of
458
music education, music learning, making, and teaching. The solution is then: ‘To become more
flexible in our ontological assumptions; it depends on our research topic, question, research design,
and chosen methods. And the forms of our data, whether we end up shedding light on digital
technology or on digital social life’ (Marres 2017, p. 5).
Good advice for researchers regardless of field, but absolutely necessary advice to heed for
music education scholars doing Internet enquiry. We are not alone here as a discipline, as
Marres makes clear: ‘The main attraction of digital sociology is precisely that it enables the
development of experimental forms of enquiry that cut across the divides between the sciences
and the humanities’ (Marres 2017, p. 6).
We would also add music education research to the last statement above, because the field
can straddle the divides between music making, music learning and teaching with the tech-
nological fields of new media/social media studies, communications, digital sociology, and the
cross-discipline of digital anthropology, which we present next.
Digital anthropology
As a related social science to digital sociology, digital anthropology merits mention as literature
from the discipline also has similar implications for music education sociology researchers
working in and/or with online or on and offline convergent contexts. Boellstorff (2012, p. 146)
defines digital anthropology as:
[A] juxtaposition of two terms – anthropology is traditionally associated with the study
of custom and traditions in small-scale societies rather than the cutting edge of
modernity. Then there is the digital, which, by contrast, seems to ratchet up the speed
of the social change and represents the epitome of rapid transformation. It is no
surprise that social networks (SNSs), the very latest of the major digital media, seem
also to have been the fastest in terms of their ability to become a global infrastructure.
Further, the digital in digital sociology discussed by Marres (2017) above is analogous to the
digital in digital anthropology. Horst and Miller (2012, p. 13) explain that:
The digital should and can be a highly effective means for reflecting upon what it
means to be human, which is the ultimate task of anthropology as a discipline. We
need to be clear as to what we mean by words such as digital, culture, and anthropology
and what we believe represents practices that are new and unprecedented and what
remains the same or merely slightly changed. (italics added)
So – while digital sociology and digital anthropology differ as fields in the same way their ‘tradi-
tional’ offline counterparts do, what they do share is a concern for developing and using appropriate
methodologies for online qualitative Internet enquiry and digital research, the methodologies of
which are similar and/or nearly identical in each discipline. As Horst and Miller (2012, p. 4)
contend:
Digital anthropology is [more of] a technique, and thus a domain of study only in-
directly. It is an approach to researching the virtual that permits addressing that object
of study in its own terms (in other words, not as merely derivative of the offline),
while keeping in focus how those terms always involve direct and indirect ways online
sociality points at the physical world and vice versa.
459
Thus, the only difference between the two fields regarding qualitative Internet enquiry is the
disciplinary lens through which the object of study is framed and viewed. This brings us to
online ethnography, discussed next.
Online Ethnography
Although there are numerous empirical methods designed for both online enquiry and data
scraping (Sloan and Quan-Haase 2017), we focus on online ethnography because it is the
primary qualitative methodology used by digital sociologists and anthropologists. Because
specialists in both fields were the original designers of the online ethnographic method in the
early 1990s and continue to develop and hone the method (Baym 1995; Hine 2000, 2005,
2015; Markham et al. 2018; Marres 2017; Sloan and Quan-Haase 2017), we contend that this
also makes it the most appropriate method for music education sociology researchers doing on
and/or on and offline convergent qualitative research. It is particularly appropriate for socio-
logical and/or anthropological research studies of social media sites like Facebook (Miller 2011,
2012; Miller and Venkatraman 2018). Thus it is also the method that music education sociology
researchers might find worth drawing on when doing qualitative investigations of social media
sites formed around music making, learning, and teaching as well.
Further, because the Internet is so tightly woven in all aspects of daily life – which includes
research – the ‘online’ must be considered as part of the research project even if it is not the
focus of a sociological investigation. This is because in the twenty-first century: ‘No one lives
an entirely digital life and … no digital media or technology exists outside of networks that
include analogue and other media technologies’ (Horst and Miller 2012, p. 16).
Online ethnography, due to the nature of both the Internet and its relative newness as a
method, does continually re-shape and evolve. Originally labelled virtual ethnography as well as
netnography, the name then morphed to cyber ethnography, and currently (and we think
finally) to the term online ethnography. The method’s name changes itself is indicative of how
quickly the method and the Internet as ‘field’ have (1) evolved since 1992, and (2) how the
views of social scientists have evolved in how they perceive the relationship of the online to
and/or with the offline relative to one another (Baym 1995; Baym and Markham 2009;
Hine 2000, 2005, 2015; Markham et al. 2018; Marres 2017; Sloan and Quan-Haase 2017).
More importantly, the name changes reflect how the method has evolved along with each
iteration of the Internet, which itself has gone through several reincarnations with each new
technological breakthrough as of the point of this writing (Hine 2015). However, we will not
go into that here as that is beyond the scope of this chapter.
Regardless, the four terms above – virtual ethnography, netnography, cyber ethnography, and
online ethnography – refer to ethnographies with the Internet as ‘field’; data, in the form of visual
images combined with written texts – ‘posts’ – are collected by the researcher as participant-
observer – either actively or as ‘lurker’ – and participant interviews are undertaken through e-mail
and/or online video chat systems such as Skype, Zoom, or Google Hangout. What distinguishes
online ethnography from ‘traditional’ offline ethnography then is that all data are collected online
via computer-mediated-communication (Hine 2000, 2005, 2015), and Hine (2015, p. 13) explains
why it is now an essential method for 21st century qualitative social science:
The Internet needs ethnography, but those very factors that make it fascinating are also
challenging for ethnographers as they seek to find coherent ways to carve out a re-
searchable object from the mass of temporal and spatial complexity and the interweaving
social and cultural processes that create the Internet and embed it in everyday life.
460
The Internet is inherently diverse, flexible, and heterogeneous, and thus demands an
adaptive, satiated, methodological response, some inventive methodological strategies
are required to enable us to explore the textures of social life which result as people
combine online and offline experiences in complex, and unpredictable fashion.
In the next section, we present examples of music education sociological research using
Wenger’s Communities of Practice (CoP) theory as a framework. These studies are situated
either as online and/or as convergent on and offline music communities of practice in formal
music education settings. These digital sociological investigations also demonstrate the possi-
bilities that online ethnography has for qualitative music education research.
Towards typologies: musical online communities of practice

Since the pioneering online community The Well was established in 1985, knowledge-sharing
infrastructures have expanded exponentially and corresponding theoretical frameworks have
been proposed. In particular, a musical online communities of practice (CoP) perspective offers
a useful framework for researching convergent on and offline communities.
Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 49) first proposed that humans learn socially through ‘an
evolving, continuously renewed set of relations’ and that people who share a profession or craft
constitute a community of practice (CoP). Subsequently Wenger (2009) expanded on this
concept; Kenny’s Communities of Music Practice theory (2015) offers a more specific fra-
mework for examining music communities. Lave and Wenger’s CoP theory will function as the
‘meta’ framework for this research, with Kenny’s CoMP theory acting as a discipline specific
‘micro’ framework.
Herring (2004) (as cited in Meredith 2017, p. 20) presents six criteria that must be visible in
an online environment for it to be considered an online CoP:
1. Active participation and a core of regular participants

2. Shared history, purpose, culture, norms and values
3. Solidarity, support, reciprocity
4. Criticism, conflict, means of conflict resolution
5. Self-awareness of group as entity distinct from other groups
6. Emergence of roles, hierarchy, governance, rituals
Various scholars (Waite and Pratt 2015; Smyth 2001; Hibbert and Rich 2006) have delineated
the difference between on and offline CoPs, with some debating whether online CoPs could
support situated learning, debated since participants are geographically removed and it was an
original prerequisite for a CoP. However, Wenger et al. (2009) expanded notions of com-
munities of practice to consider participants as connected when online (Meredith 2017).
Music educators networks

Music educators who are often isolated from peer contact during their working days seem to
gravitate easily towards social media networks. These serve as collegial and professional com-
munities, particularly when their school boards may not offer specialised professional devel-
opment in music. Nicklas (2003) analysed a group of early adapters in the mid 1990s who
comprised the Trombone-L to conclude that this Trombone-L served as an educational arena
for over 1000 subscribers.
461
Bauer and Moehle (2008) analysed content for band, choir, general music, and orchestra
threads in an online discussion forum for the academic year 2004–2005. The discussion forum
was founded under the auspices of what was then MENC (Music Educators National
Conference) and is now the NAfMe (National Association of Music Educators). The Band
forum provoked the most discussion with 45% of all interactions. Curriculum and planning
were the most popular topics across all areas with repertoire being a major concern to all.
An Australian study followed 39 participants over a seven-month period as they interacted
on a free open-source platform – wordpress.com. The teachers who worked in isolation and at
a distance from each other were vocal and instrumental studio teachers who taught one-on-one
in their own studios as well as in universities, school systems, and private conservatories.
McPhee (2015, p. 112) found that the most frequently asked questions focused on (1) making
technical work fun and relevant for students and (2) helping students value ‘the boring stuff ’.
The School Orchestra and String Teachers Facebook group (SOST v2), shares repertoire,
teaching tips, resources, and announcements with location and selection of repertoire being the
most frequently discussed topic and this was consistent with other research music educator
CVoPs. This finding was in agreement with other studies (Palmquist and Barnes 2015).
Rickels and Brewer (2017) investigate participation in the Band Director’s Group (BDG)
Facebook page to determine ways in which this Facebook page serves BDG. The researchers
reported that the membership is comparatively large (17,373 in 2016), but with a response rate
of 336 returned surveys, results were inconclusive. It would seem that although many people
are occasional users, much fewer are active participants online. This aligns with findings from
other studies (Brewer and Rickels 2014; Palmquist and Barnes 2015).
Bernard et al. (2018) analysed interactions of the Facebook Music Teachers (FMT) group
according to these CoP characteristics derived from Wenger (2006): (1) Members share a
common domain of values and interests, (2) members interact and form relationships in a
community, and (3) there is a common practice whereby members share knowledge and skill,
adding to a shared repertoire of resources. Bernard et al. (2018) note that ‘Wenger et al. (2009)
extended their theory of CoP to the world of online communities, describing that people may
participate online to exchange ideas, make meaning, and even form new identities within the
everyday functions of online life’ (p. 77).
The Facebook Music Teachers (FMT) group page was established in 2012 through the
initiatives of several individuals with over 10,000 members at time of data collection. Although
Facebook is a public social media, FMT is a semi-private page requiring permission to access.
Six music educators serve as administrators for this page to ensure that this remains a CoP
serving the public good. Dialogue amongst members ranges from active to occasional and from
empathetic to antagonistic. Bernard et al. (2018, p. 91) conclude that:
Beyond professional development, this online CoP is a vehicle to promote teaching

and learning through a professional lens and can contribute to music teachers’ ability
to reflect on their practice, continuous development, and growth.
Pre-service and novice music teachers

Ballantyne and Olm-Madden (2013) detail the collaborative opportunities realised through
Music Teachers OZ (MTO), an Australian initiative. During 2007 and 2008, academics from
four Australian universities (Griffith University, the University of Tasmania, the University of
Southern Queensland, and Charles Sturt University) developed a collaborative online resource
462
containing case studies, discussion threads, and other resources to engage pre-service and novice
music educators with real life situations.
Bell-Robertson (2014) created a Wiki discussion site for eleven novice instrumental music
teachers at middle and high school levels in one mid-western state in the US over the course of
a school year 2010–2011. The researcher found that ‘While the online community … did not
make as great of a contribution to the NMTs’ knowledge of curriculum, pedagogy, or the
management of a school music’ (p. 446), the site did serve an important role as sounding board
and emotional support for challenges of beginning music teaching. Online mentoring and CoPs
offer useful support systems for those new to the music profession, notes Bell-Robertson (2015)
in her review of current literature.
Slotwinski (2011) investigated nine student teachers engaging in a VCoP dedicated to them
to consider how this affected their student teaching. She found that interaction on Trading
Fours Wiki Discussion Board was primarily positive and professional. The asynchronous online
forum was convenient, focused on giving and receiving advice as well as lesson planning and
reflection on practice. While the student teachers tried to use the discussion board consistently,
it was only one of the support systems available to them and – contrary to findings from other
professional VCoPs, their posts did not increase in frequency as the semester progressed.
However, individuals reported benefits from their involvement.
In a similar vein, Fitzpatrick (2014) investigated the use of an interactive class blog amongst
nine undergraduate music education majors at a midwestern university in the US. These were
student teachers taking part in a seminar held in conjunction with their practicum in the schools.
Study participants were given an option to be in this study. However it was a class requirement
that students blog posts weekly. The study found that this interactive blog met the touchpoints for
a VCoP and offered an opportunity for interaction and problem solving. Nonetheless, the author
recommends that the teacher shape interactions: ‘Though the use of blogs and other interactive
social media may help facilitate learning within the music student teaching experience, it is still
the responsibility of the teacher educator to structure the learning environment in relevant and
effective ways’ (Fitzpatrick 2014, p. 103).
Vocal ensembles
As digital media allows enhanced access for singers, virtual choirs such as the sophisticated Eric
Whitacre Virtual Choir have grown increasingly popular and viable: The 4.0 Virtual Choir was
composed of nearly 6,000 singers from 101 countries. Paparo and Talbot (2014) explored the
motives of singers performing digitally in the Eric Whitacre Virtual Choirs. They found that cho-
risters feel a sense of belonging to a larger community and that singers support each other in learning
and practicing the music. They cite Konewko (2012): ‘Using the lens of the social capital theories of
Bourdieu, Coleman, and Putnam, Konewko (2012) argues that virtual choirs are a ‘place’ where
actual connections are strengthened within the virtual choir community’ (p. 6).
O’Flynn (2015) documented the ways a Dublin-based college choir interacted face-to-face
and online through a facebook page initiated by a choir member. During this study, several
Youtube versions of songs were posted for the choir to learn. This proved so popular that
choristers began uploading music videos themselves and one chorister requested the choir
director post videos for all new repertoire henceforth. O’Flynn (2015, p. 88) comments:
There are clear pedagogical issues emerging from this comment, but also of interest is
how engagement with YouTube or other music video files via Facebook can be
perceived as more socially engaging than learning one’s line alone via traditional
463
methods in a practice room, underlining the complexities involved in interpretations

of contemporary social experience.
O’Flynn found that the choir demonstrated positive symbiotic dynamics in their on and offline
communications.
Higher-learning institutions
Studies of online communities in colleges and universities query the nature of online CoPs.
Professors and doctoral students from three Swedish universities investigated the nature of
collaborative learning åthrough a seminar which incorporated on and offline components.
(Ferm Almqvist et al. 2017). They described their results as ‘beyond communities of practice,’;
noting that collaborative learning took place in different but shared rooms, each with distinctive
dynamics dependent on the participants (Ferm Almqvist et al. p. 15).
Meredith (2017) documented four music professors creating on/offline/convergent CoPs
for their students at four North American universities. She also challenged the nature of these
online communities due to diverse approaches in setting up and administering social media
sites. Meredith (2017, p.122) comments that:
if members remained part of the community indefinitely and the group was used by all
community members for learning about the topic. … [these] qualities would then
satisfy the CoP requirement for legitimate peripheral participation … However, not
all Facebook studio groups/pages are designed to provide this type of continuous
communication over time, instead focusing on student participation solely during his/
her academic studies at that institution.
Meredith’s ethnography revealed (1) the growing awareness of the impact of social media on studio
teaching and learning, (2) the ways that Facebook and other sites promoted learning through en-
culturation, and (3) the ways that convergent media knit the group through lived experiences.
Conclusion
Digital technologies are fluid, facile, and evolving while at the same time the Internet is closely
knit into everyday life, and this ‘has provided scholars with a wealth of research that has re-
focused, challenged, and reconceptualised concepts that have long been a staple of sociological
enquiry’ (Orton-Johnson and Prior 2013, p. 1).
As seen through the online communities of practice explored in this chapter, music edu-
cators have been swift to adapt social media networks. Current research indicates that the
Internet has become an infrastructure for music teaching and learning practices and a natural
extension of existing relational practices. At the same time, the possibilities of the Internet
contributes to globalization, and move to participatory culture which has the potential to re-
shape roles of teacher, learner, musician, consumer, and creator.
1. This chapter posits that digital technologies allow new ways to create and know social worlds. If
so, what are political, ethical, and normative issues raised by new digital forms of social research?
464
2. In what ways does an online community of practice – particularly a community structured for
and through music making – resemble an offline CoP? How do these spheres converge?
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34
THE CREATIVE YOUTH CLUB
Double features of organic music education in a
post-industrial city
Johan Söderman
Introduction
In order to develop a deeper understanding of youth’s involvement in non-formal learning
processes within a creative youth club, I draw on the work of French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu (1984, 1986) – particularly his theory on forms of capital. Applying such a theoretical
perspective makes it possible to unravel how music education contributes to the accumulation
and maintenance of particular forms of capital, particularly symbolic capital such as cultural
capital or academic capital. Building on the Bourdieusian tradition, and borrowing from Gittell
and Vidal (1998), Robert Putnam (2000, p. 38) extended and elaborated on the notion of social
capital, distinguishing between ‘bridging (or inclusive) and bonding (or exclusive)’ social capital.
Bonding capital refers specifically to capital gained from within an association, for instance in
the form of establishing internal relations. Bridging social capital instead refers to that form of
capital that is gained by external relations connected to individuals’ engagement in civil society.
Another theoretical concept relevant for this chapter is Gramsci’s notion of the organic in-
tellectual, which, together with the educational tradition of folkbildning (Söderman 2019), has
inspired the concept of the ‘organic educator’.
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the complexity of three themes, or double features,
related to the function of cultural activities of a specific youth association. A common feature
of all three themes is that contradictory discourses are employed, discourses that relate to the
perennial debate between an ‘autonomist’ view of the value of aesthetics vs. the possible social
benefits of musical engagement. This double feature also connects to Bourdieu’s discussion of
l’art pour l’art (1996) and can also be linked to the music education discussions of formal and
informal learning (Folkestad 2005; Green 2001; Kanellopoulos and Wright 2012). The
empirical examples are drawn from a research project that studies Swedish urban youth as-
sociations in three major cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, financed by the
Swedish Research Council (e.g. Sernhede et al. 2019). The specific youth association that is
the focus of this chapter is Rörelsen Gatans Röst och Ansikte (The Movement of the Voice and Face
of the Street) most commonly referred to by its Swedish acronym RGRA. RGRA is based in
the Swedish city of Malmö and is an association that has evolved around hip-hop culture,
aspiring to increase political and social awareness and commitment among Malmö’s youth. As
one of the researchers in the project, I followed the Malmö youth association systematically
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Johan Söderman
between 2014 and 2015. During this time, I conducted several semi-structured interviews,
individually and in focus groups, with leaders and participants of the association and con-
ducted observations, attending different events and everyday activities. The fieldwork and
methodological approach for this study was inspired by the ethnographic tradition that
evolved in the field of Cultural Studies (Back 1996; Cohen 2011; Kvale 1997; Lalander 2009;
Willis 1977) and by previous research on Scandinavian youth culture (Ambjörnsson 2004;
Fornäs et al. 1995; Sernhede 2002).
Malmö-based RGRA is part of a contemporary Swedish urban youth movement (the so-
called Orten-rörelsen) that started to emerge among young people with immigrant backgrounds
in the 1990s (Sernhede et al. 2019). Other organisations that are part of this movement include
Stockholm-based Megafonen (The Megaphone) and Pantrarna (The Panthers) from Gothenburg. All
three organisations have hip-hop culture as part of their foundation and have also employed the
educational philosophy of folkbildning (e.g. popular adult education) as a framework for their
activities. The folkbildning tradition stresses emancipation through certain forms of informal
education and critical pedagogy but can also refer to the institutions of folkbildning (such as folk
high-schools and study associations) (e.g. Brändström et al. 2012). By applying a folkbildning
perspective to their activities, contemporary Swedish urban youth organisations can be said to
have contributed to a renaissance of the Swedish folkbildning tradition (Sernhede et al. 2019).
In the decades following World War II, when rock music in the Western world was sy-
nonymous with youth and rebellion, the teacher was cast as a symbol of conservative values and
repressive practices against which the young vehemently revolted (Grossberg 1983). However
in the context of hip-hop culture, the figure of the teacher emerged as pivotal
(Söderman 2018), and knowledge became the fifth element of hip-hop (the four others being:
emceeing, b-boying/b-girling, deejaying, and graffiti) (Chang 2005). In the Swedish context,
informal hip-hop educators often become actively involved in civil society organisations and
study associations that are part of the institutionalised and state funded folkbildning (e.g.
Söderman 2018). The educational philosophy of Each One Teach One that underpins global hip-
hop culture may be regarded as maintaining firm links with visions of education as emanci-
pation. Here, the principle is that those who have gained knowledge and skills by dedicating
themselves to the various crafts that exist within hip-hop culture are expected to communicate
and pass on these skills to novices. As a result of this educational tradition, there are young
people without formal training who, being masters of valued and respected forms of musical
knowledge, have become respectable teachers-agents of hip-hop culture. Said (1994) uses the
Gramscian concept of organic intellectual (Gramsci 1971) to refer to individuals who are actively
involved in society and represent and unify the views of subaltern groups. According to
Cammett (1967, p. 203), although every social group develops its own organic intellectuals, the
industrial proletariat has relied mostly on “assimilated” traditional intellectuals for leadership’.
Inspired by Antonio Gramsci I have chosen to describe youth educational leaders without
formal teacher training as ‘organic educators’ with regards to their teaching, innovation skills
and strong passion for education present in their involvement in civil society.
Bourdieu has employed economy-derived terminology in order to conceptualise aspects of
the cultural sphere. The notion of ‘capital’ entertains a pivotal position among them. For
Bourdieu, there exist various forms of capital (Bourdieu 1984, 1986). Cultural capital refers to
the cultural and educational experience each person gradually accumulates, ‘which is con-
vertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form
of educational qualifications’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 281). Bourdieu uses the concept of social
capital as an analytical tool that helps him understand how people construct and participate in
various networks and how they are accorded different positions in society. Extending and
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The Creative Youth Club
building on the Bourdieusian tradition, Putnam (2000) elaborates on the notion of social ca-
pital, distinguishing between bonding social capital and bridging social capital. Bonding social
capital is important in an association for ‘getting by’ within the group of people, but bridging
social capital is crucial for ‘getting ahead’, reaching out in society (Putnam 2000). Bonding
social capital can be important for establishing values of solidarity within a particular group,
inducing a sense of belonging. Bridging social capital allows people to create and develop
contacts with people outside the association, creating bonds between people with different
backgrounds (for example gender, social class, age, ethnicity).
Over the past three decades, distinctions between formal and informal learning have been
extensively discussed within the field of music education (Folkestad 2005, 2006; Green 2001;
Jeanneret and Wilson and Jeanneret 2018; Kanellopoulos and Wright 2012; Söderman and
Folkestad 2004). Eshach (2007) has pointed out that the notion of non-formal learning has been
used to describe processes taking place in civil society contexts not directly linked to education,
such as churches and different types of associations. This type of learning is voluntary, group-
based and lacks a set content or curriculum. I argue that learning that takes place in RGRA
could be seen as non-formal in Eshach’s sense. RGRA practices are closely linked to those
found within the field of community music (Higgins 2012). There is, however, no clear
agreement among scholars and practitioners as to whether community music practices as a
whole should be regarded as located outside formal music settings (Karlsen et al. 2013;
Silverman 2009). Within the Swedish folkbildning tradition, non-formal learning is often em-
braced and highlighted as being in opposition to traditional learning practices employed in
school settings, which are regarded as primarily of instrumental orientation. It is possible,
however, that a double discourse may be at work here, as according to the established un-
derstanding of folkbildning, the people (folk) on the one hand are seen as subjects who them-
selves act to bring about change in their lives, striving for emancipation, while, on the other,
they are perceived as objects who depend on others to help them become enlightened, edu-
cated and cultivated (Brändström et al. 2012). From a Bourdieusian perspective, the de-
termining factor regarding who enlightens and who is or becomes ‘the enlightened’ may relate
to the possession of certain forms of cultural capital or lack thereof (Skoglund 1991;
Rydbeck 1997).
Introducing RGRA
Since its start in 2004, RGRA has developed into a well-established youth association in
Malmö, organising a number of various after-school activities for young people between 7 and
22 years of age (with the most active age group being that of 13 to 20). The association was
founded by a rapper/activist after an inspirational trip he made to Brazil (Snell and
Söderman 2014). The activities of the association have, therefore, from the beginning been
inspired by global organisations such as Universal Zulu Nation and Moviomento Cultura Del Rua.
One of the goals of RGRA is to increase democratic awareness among children and adolescents
with immigrant backgrounds, and to help them follow positive paths in life. RGRA’s work is
based on a social pedagogical approach that maintains firm links with Paulo Freire’s liberatory
education ideals as well as with the Swedish folkbildning tradition. RGRA’s Facebook page states
that they are a ‘nonprofit organization that is always open’, and that ‘urban expressions of art
form the basis for our commitment to create a platform where more young people get the
opportunity to be seen and listened to, and also to reflect their thoughts and feelings directly to
the public’. Emphasis on creating opportunities for young people to express themselves with
and through a variety of media and other means renders RGRA a creative after school centre.
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Johan Söderman
During school breaks, intense activities such as talent hunts, hip-hop clubs, and panel discus-
sions with local politicians enable young people to share and give voice to their perspectives,
experiences, and thoughts about their hometown. In 2017, RGRA was part of a state-financed
cultural initiative; this followed a series of successful and established partnerships with study
associations and the Malmö municipality that have financially supported RGRA. RGRA also
has clear ambitions to participate in the public and political debate – on both a local and a
national level. Thus, they have participated in the annual national political week in Almedalen,
Gotland (which was originally initiated by former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1968).
During that week, representatives from all political parties and their party leaders participate in
public speeches and seminars that are both well-attended, often televised and extensively
covered in national media. Since the political week in Almedalen is such an important arena for
exchanging and debating views, the event also attracts organisations and associations with a
commitment to societal issues.
RGRA is active in the city of Malmö, which is the third-largest city in Sweden. Malmö is
however characterised by a different form of segregation compared to the two larger cities,
Stockholm and Gothenburg, which have white, prosperous, inner-city areas and suburbs with
lower socioeconomic status. In the Swedish context, the term suburbs denotes socially stig-
matised areas, sharply distinguished from middle-class American suburbs – indicatively, such
middle-class areas are never referred to as ‘suburbs’; rather they are vaguely described as ‘re-
sidential areas’. In Malmö, however, the inner city is divided into different types of suburban
areas with different, lower, socio-economic status. In the inner city of Malmö, over 40% of
residents have foreign backgrounds, half of all inhabitants are under the age of 35, and one third
live in relative poverty (Blomdahl et al. 2017). However, there are two parallel narratives about
Malmö: one in which Malmö is described as a segregated city with high crime rates, and the
other in which Malmö is depicted as a creative, trendy metropolitan city with more in common
with New York and Berlin than other Swedish cities (Åberg 2017). The report of the Malmö
Commission (2014) describes Malmö primarily as a divided city, emphasising that social pro-
blems would probably had been even more extensive had it not been for the commitment of
civil society organisations; RGRA is of course one of those. For the groups of children and
young people for whom the activities are aimed, it is essential that they are free of charge. This
can be understood, for example, in relation to another report that showed that a quarter of
young people in Malmö worry that their parents’ low income will not suffice to cover their
leisure activities (Stigendal and Östergren 2013).
RGRA has had, from the beginning, very few paying members, something that has been
publicly criticised (Gudmundson 2012). The founder has however repeatedly responded to this
critique, emphasising that RGRA is a movement that engages young people from socio-
economically disadvantaged backgrounds – which is the reason why the association needs to
remain, largely free of charge. One of the leaders, now in his 20s, who has been a member of
RGRA since the age of 9, said, when I interviewed him, that kids who come to RGRA often
‘have trouble with money’. He also added that for him free admission to the association was
important, since his parents did not have the financial capacity to pay for his leisure activities.
Analytical themes
The three themes, or double features, discussed in this chapter are based on empirical examples
from a research project that focuses on Swedish urban youth associations in Stockholm,
Gothenburg and Malmö (e.g. Sernhede et al. 2019). All the themes that emerged are char-
acterised by the co-existence of contradictory discourses, discourses that sometimes favour the
470
inherent value of musical experience, and at others emphasise the social benefits of musical
engagement. These discourses can be seen as linked to the larger debate that relates to issues of
formal, informal and non-formal learning that have been going on in the field of music
education.
The youth association as a springboard and/or fertile soil

The first analytical theme concerns the double function of RGRA as, on the one hand, a
springboard for dynamically shaping personal future careers, and, on the other, as a more slow-
paced and fertile soil – on an individual level and on the level of the association as a whole.
These metaphors can be seen as connected to Putnam’s notions of bridging and bonding forms
of social capital; the springboard connects to gaining access to bridging capital, while fertile soil
refers to the possibility of gaining bonding capital. The data indicate that RGRA participants
seem to enter the association and to engage in various activities within its context without
predetermined learning goals and objectives. However, their participation leads to learning –
not only music-related learning in the form of cultural capital, but also learning related to the
acquisition of administrative and pedagogical skills, or to the development of the ability to
engage with local society (Söderman 2018, 2019).
The career of the RGRA founder can be seen as a characteristic example of how RGRA
may function as a springboard. Through his commitment to RGRA, the founder was able to
establish himself not only as a rapper but perhaps more importantly as a socially committed
activist. The association thus allowed him to gain both bonding and bridging forms of social
capital by enabling him to establish various valuable networks outside of RGRA. Meanwhile,
inside the association, he could bond with the other members. By establishing RGRA as his
springboard, the founder could later move on to become artistic director of a cultural institution
in Stockholm. He also took part in the Swedish branch of the Eurovision song contest, and
worked on developing a political party’s arts policy. Furthermore he educated students in ar-
tistic colleges in Stockholm on postcolonial theories, and conducted work on diversity issues at
the national Swedish Television company (SVT) as well as for one of the national study as-
sociations. Moreover, his charisma and rhetorical talent rendered him an asset to RGRA and its
youth participants, enabling him to contribute significantly to the development of the asso-
ciation as a whole by establishing bridging social capital (Putnam 2000).
Besides offering a springboard for individual careers, the association is also important as an
arena of fertile soil, enabling many young people to immerse themselves in the aesthetics of hip-
hop culture. In the association, youth are offered the opportunity to begin writing hip-hop
lyrics and/or engaging in music production. Through RGRA’s collaboration with the muni-
cipality and other funders, participants are given the opportunity to increase their cultural
capital, but also to develop their bonding and bridging capital. There are empirical examples
(Sernhede et al. 2019; Söderman 2019) of how participants who have joined the association at
an early age as a result of their hip-hop music interest, develop over time a variety of skills that
eventually enable them to take on responsibilities and even lead and assist new members. Thus
the creation of a safe non-formal learning environment functions as a fertile soil, leading to
accumulation of bonding social capital. Members of RGRA have described this during inter-
views as a slow process that started when they were younger, allowing them to gain more
responsibilities, gradually taking on the role of youth leader, and, eventually, sometimes, en-
abling them to play a leading role in the association as a whole. This could all be discussed in
terms of accrual of capital linked to Freirean issues of conscientisation and emancipation
(Freire 1972).
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Johan Söderman
The association as an arena for promoting ‘good character’ from within and/or
disciplining from above
The educational philosophy that has evolved through the practices of RGRA reaches well
beyond notions of learning as skill acquisition, towards the cultivation of attitudes and modes of
practice that contribute to character formation. This is in line with the Each One Teach One
approach that exists within hip-hop culture, but it also connects historically to what can be
referred to as a double feature of folkbildning (e.g. Söderman 2011; Brändström et al. 2012).
Thus, in a way that seems to contradict the expressed ambition of RGRA to act as a grassroots-
based association where all initiatives arise from below, there are certain values that have clearly
been imposed from above – through the ways in which leaders ‘care for’ young participants, or
through ideas and values that are promoted by specific policies put forward by the funding
authorities. In the Swedish history of folkbildning and other popular movements there is a long
tradition of promoting good character from above (Ambjörnsson 1988). Popular movements
have often been dependent on people from middle class backgrounds, with more cultural
capital, that take on the role of preaching the value of sobriety or of leading a life as a God-
fearing citizen. This relation both links to and contradicts the conceptualisation of these in-
dividuals as organic educators inspired by Gramsci’s reference concept of the organic in-
tellectual, and also suggests that those who develop into ‘organic educators’ might in fact
already possess certain forms of capital.
On a daily basis RGRA’s ‘good character training’ occurs in the form of leaders fostering
responsibility through providing help with simple things like doing homework, but also
through fostering the cultivation of socially just behaviour and good moral values through
participating in the association’s varied activities. In 2014, situations arose when some of the
participants expressed racist and sexist opinions towards the youth leaders (Söderman 2019).
These incidents led to extensive discussion among the crew of leaders as to whether or not they
should file a police report regarding threats and harassment. Discussions however concluded
with valuing the social pedagogical approach of ‘a second chance’ as more beneficial in this case.
After these incidents, aspects regarding social justice were put on the agenda, including lectures
on LGBTQ+issues for the team of leaders as well as the participating youths. Another example
of how the association contributes to promoting awareness of social justice among participants
relates to active engagement in discussion with youths about their personal dreams for the
future. Instead of leaving young participants alone with their aspirations of having a successful
hip-hop music career, also abandoning them to their own devices when faced with a possible
‘failure’, leaders in the association function as counsellors, discussing possible ways forward that
also include a more realistic ‘plan b’ that could relate to plans to pursue the role of teaching hip-
hop to others or becoming a youth leader. On an individual level, this can be seen as both a
kind of character training and also as a way of increasing youths’ employability. In Bourdieusian
terms it could be regarded as an example of how the accumulation of cultural capital is activated
through education: the choice of pursuing more narrow and, in terms of employability, riskier
educational pathways, such as those related to the arts, is to a high degree dependent on an
individual’s class background, as students from more privileged classes are more likely to invest
in higher artistic education (Kristoffersson 2015). A rhetorical question might be whether the
youths of RGRA would be more inclined to pursue ‘insecure’ artistic careers if they had
privileged class backgrounds.
The way in which the municipality and other funders have handled the financial support to
RGRA can generally be seen as supportive – but also as a means of subsuming the association
into existing infrastructures for associations and municipal policy-hegemony. Initially, when
472
RGRA was started, funders expected that young people, through their involvement in the
association, would acquire knowledge to assume also the financial responsibility for the asso-
ciation. However, when it later turned out that RGRA did not live up to this, the munici-
pality’s trust in the association decreased rather dramatically. RGRA reported on this in their
annual report for 2014. This not only shows that learning as a result of participation in asso-
ciations such as RGRA extends to issues beyond the associations’ prime focus (such as man-
agement and economy), but it also reveals a common tendency: politicians tend to first support
associations, almost uncritically, only to turn their back on them when associations do not live
up to their pre-set expectations (Nordvall 2013). In a city like Malmö, where social policies are
driven by a stated ambition to promote a range of civil society organisations and associations,
the municipality might perhaps have taken a more productive course of action in terms of
following up on the use of the financial support and providing instruction for associations on
economic management. Such procedures would also have the possibility to promote bridging
social capital between different associations or between the association and the municipality
financial representatives. In RGRA’s case however, the road to efficient financial management
involved the costly process of learning from mistakes, and then working from there to rebuild
lost confidence. It is, however, also possible to interpret this way of handling associations as a
de-radicalising action on the part of the municipality and other funders. This issue has been
eloquently expressed by one of RGRA’s members in the following manner: ‘It is difficult to be
an activist and criticise the municipality, when at the same time being dependent upon its large
scale financial support’. In this way, the municipality of the city of Malmö can be seen as
limiting or even de-radicalising an association such as RGRA whose original foundation has
been the cultivation and transmission of progressive hip-hop culture.
Branding the city and/or using the association as a correction strategy

RGRA and the city of Malmö are in many ways intertwined, especially due to the fact that the
municipality of Malmö promotes itself as an association-friendly authority, supportive of youth
cultural initiatives. RGRA fits well with this aspired image as it engages Malmö-youths in
political awareness but also in aesthetics and culture. On RGRA’s public pages on social media
this is depicted clearly through postings and images that display values of success, community,
and quality (Söderman and Söderman 2020). This relates to a wider tendency over the past
decades, where cities around the western world sought to portray themselves as creative cities
(Florida 2002). Meanwhile, RGRA also presents itself as an association that contributes to
combatting Malmö’s image as a segregated city with high crime rates through engaging youths
in activities intended to help address the social problems of Malmö.
RGRA regularly advertises events and activities using the municipality logo on posters and
in social media. Åberg (2017) has criticized the support that RGRA received from Malmö
municipality regarding it as a kind of project inflation where politicians have invested too heavily
in short-term integration projects. In this context, RGRA can also be seen as a good example of
how Malmö has actually achieved some success in handling social problems, given that RGRA
has been active for over a decade. It is possible that there is a reciprocity between RGRA and
the municipality of Malmö where the association needs the city, and the city needs the
association.
RGRA can also be understood in relation to what Trondman (1997) noted: that a general
consensus seems to exist that all forms of culture are beneficial for education and learning
(which contrasts the notion of l’art pour l’art). Such an attitude, according to Trondman,
contributes to the marginalisation of the artistic and musical practices, inducing a number of
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Johan Söderman
conflicting discourses about culture and aesthetic learning. In schools, it appears that aesthetic
learning is often marginalised and is accorded a low status, which may also explain how an
association like RGRA is treated in the city of Malmö, which could be understood as based on a
naive notion that all kinds of arts and culture activities promote learning. Lindgren (2006)
similarly writes that aesthetic learning in the educational sphere tends to be viewed as a ‘remedy’
for curing all kinds of social problems. Aesthetic learning then functions as a correction strategy
and is not regarded as something that has status or value on its own. According to such rea-
soning, local politicians in Malmö may of course be seen as having located a ‘problem’ (poverty,
segregation, violence), that the work of the RGRA might be able to ‘cure’.
Concluding discussion
RGRA constitutes an arena that can be described as fertile soil for young people who are given
the opportunity to develop both skills and learning, and also to pursue their personal interests.
The association offers a venue where youth can start as participants when they are young and
eventually move on to become leaders of newer participants. The founder, in an interview with
the author (Snell and Söderman 2014) stated that although his involvement in RGRA was based
on hip-hop, it has never been about ‘breeding' the next big hip-hop star, but rather about
raising Malmö’s future local politicians. In this way, RGRA parallels classical Swedish study
associations and civil society organisations such as sports clubs or non-denominational churches,
helping its members to progress and gain trust and confidence (Söderman 2018). The hip-hop
philosophy Each One Teach One reflects a sort of IKEA pedagogy1 (Brändström et al. 2012):
personal progress is seen as inseparable from the progress of the organisation; one begins one’s
career on the store floor and works one’s way up the company ladder. Besides functioning as
fertile soil, founder’s unique career is a clear example of how RGRA constitutes a springboard
that has enabled him to be acknowledged both as an activist and as a Swedish national celebrity.
One of the leaders, who is currently in his twenties, started in RGRA as a child and is now
pursuing a similar career to the founder, initiating and engaging in a variety of public contexts,
through which he demonstrates similar multi-competencies as he did before him. As a meta-
phor, the ‘springboard’ becomes a way to understand how it is possible to establish a platform
relatively quickly – and how that platform can be used to enable youths to make their voices
heard, allowing at the same time the pursuit of a personal career. This, in turn, relates to what
Gillberg (2014) refers to as part of the logic of contemporary ‘attention society’ with social
media as an enabling platform. Gillberg describes the contemporary multilateral activist as the
renaissance man of our time. However, the metaphor of the association as a ‘springboard’
distinguishes RGRA from more traditional associations. The hip-hop philosophy Each One
Teach One permeates the association’s activities and gives participants great opportunities to
develop leadership skills while they are still young, and also enables them to receive the op-
portunity to develop slowly in the association (which for them becomes a kind of nursery).
Thus, RGRA can be understood to function both as fertile soil and as a fast-paced springboard
at the same time. This sounds somewhat paradoxical, demonstrating the complexity of RGRA
as well as the complexity of pursuing a social pedagogical approach in our time – where, for
instance, technology and social media contribute to reinforcing commercial logic on informal
and non-formal pedagogy (see Postman 1992).
Associations like RGRA offer a social and educational context that complements compul-
sory school. At the same time, in RGRA, activities promoting awareness of social justice are
incorporated and forced upon young people in ways similar to those historically present in the
Labour movement in Sweden (Ambjörnsson 1988). Through discussions on value-based issues
474
and discussions about future career choices, participants are also encouraged to take responsi-
bility for their own lives; this practice links RGRA to a larger tradition of popular movements.
The educational guidance and discipline that takes place within the association is clearly geared
towards giving young people the opportunity to develop realistic future dreams. This distin-
guishes RGRA from more traditional folkbildning associations where seemingly useless
knowledge is highly valued (‘there is nothing as useful as useless knowledge’). At the same time,
there is a clear objective present in RGRA to give people a second chance – an ideal that has its
foundation in classical, holistic popular education ideals. Youth leaders, who themselves lack
formal education, appear to have the role of organic educators able to implement innovative
ideas and practices. It is possible that organic educators’ access to cultural capital may be related
to their willingness to promote good character among the youths. This focus on holistic
educational ideals as well as the prioritisation of non-formal learning can be seen as a coun-
terweight to dominant trends in the Swedish school system, which has been moving towards
becoming increasingly instrumental, where control, ratings and assessment are highly valued
and rewarded. When RGRA participants engage in various activities within the context of the
association’s activities, they do so because they voluntarily joined the association, but without
predetermined goals and expectations regarding what they should learn there. The association
provides a platform for many young people to start becoming immersed in hip-hop culture
through learning processes that are not based on strict curricula and do not comply with the
logic of attaining measurable goals.
RGRA’s position as a creative association directed towards local youths that often come
from under-privileged backgrounds is deeply intertwined with the existing duality of the city of
Malmö, that is perceived both as a creative city and as the crime-capital of Sweden, at the same
time. In RGRA’s social media presentations the association advertises its success in a manner
that seems to be directed mostly to the representatives of the municipality and to local poli-
ticians. In other words, social media sites of RGRA are rather a shop window for their quality
and success in promoting creativity among young people. Thus, RGRA’s function as a creative
association with inter-aesthetic activities, can also be seen in relation to Malmö’s branding as a
creative city. This is in line with Malmö’s creative ambitions but in a folkbildning perspective the
co-existence of a market-oriented outlook with radical educational ideals certainly appears
paradoxical. However, this is in line with the perspective of the double feature of folkbildning
(see Brändström et al. 2012) which highlights that folkbildning has traditionally employed a top-
down perspective, by being a means of disciplining the lower classes in society, while also being
an educational arena that promotes empowerment and emancipation.
Fornäs et al. (1995) show how informal learning among young people playing in rock bands
contributes to the development of administrative skills. This is also apparent in RGRA, where
young people, through their participation develop their sense of responsibility. It is possible that
the status of the teacher’s role as one that contributes to emancipation and self-esteem within
the association context is restored by the leaders who often inspire participants through their
actions. It may also be easier for these youth leaders to inspire and teach because they do not
have to work on assessing, documenting and following curricula, something the schools are
expected to do. The increased educational role of civil society associations shows that school is
no longer seen as the only way into society for young people in Swedish multicultural areas.
Through the activities of RGRA, it becomes clear that young people in these associations also
acquire knowledge that is relevant for being an informed citizen, and for partaking in politics
and public debate. With such an understanding, it is possible that Swedish youth associations’
work needs to be recognised as important to the further support of young people’s individual
educational life journeys. An explanation as to why young people today do not see school as the
475
Johan Söderman
natural way forward can, of course, be that they are not given the trust to use and translate the
knowledge gained through participation in RGRA and other seminal associations. It is thus
possible to identify another paradox: although the education of young people is regarded as a
core means through which they can cultivate and appreciate the values of democracy, they are
in fact given limited opportunities in school to bring and express what they have gained from
their experiences of self-education and participation in society. Learning in an association in-
cludes gaining opportunities for personal liberation, including gaining skills that could be re-
levant in school as well as in future work life. For compulsory school, one of the keys to future
pedagogy based on trust can thus be found in young people’s community learning. It is hopeful
to think that young people with experiences from such non-formal learning, in the future will
become educators themselves and thereby contribute to the future development of Swedish
schools based on the historical understanding of the importance of holistic educational ideals.
1. Discuss the forms of music learning that are made possible through involvement in a youth
association like RGRA. Look at the issue both from the perspective of the individual as
well as from that of the collective.
2. Which are the possible risks that innovative and avant-garde forms of youth culture face
when they become institutionalised?
Note
1 In the narrative of world-famous furniture company IKEA their pedagogy for fostering new employees
builds on the approach that all IKEA personnel should start their careers low down in the corporate
hierarchy, but all with the equal opportunity to be able to work their way to higher positions.
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35
INTERGENERATIONAL
TRANSMISSION OF MUSIC
LISTENERSHIP VALUES IN FIVE
US FAMILIES
Music listening guidelines and sociolinguistic
analysis
Jillian L. Bracken
Introduction
This chapter offers insights into how language acts as a bridge between music exposures and the
development of music listening preferences. Findings are based upon a study that examined
how five families in Miami-Dade County (Miami, FL) in which neither parent self-identified as
a musician, talked about music, and the resulting legacies of shared discourse within the families.
The study examined discourse content, or how music values are established and transmitted
between generations within a family through the communication of different standards and
expectations that govern music listening.
The focus of this chapter is the content of participating families’ scripts; it discusses how
shared discourse in families guides music listening. Discourse around music listening is ex-
amined using sociolinguistics terms which include an examination of the family as a discourse
community (how information is transmitted within the family domain), register (ways to cate-
gorise how parents talk to their children/collective bodies of family language), taboo (discussing
larger notion of societal function, censorship of offensive language), and age appropriateness (a
factor that determines how/when/why/where parents enforce music listening guidelines).
Sociolinguistic elements found within family discourse comprise each family’s music listening
script and provide a blueprint for the ‘musical manners’ that are transmitted to children as
members of their respective families. The chapter closes with a review of participating family
members’ responses to and opinions of reported music listening guidelines.
Study background and participants

This study of music listening in families was a qualitative, sociological multiple-case case study
that utilized a screening survey, two phases of Internet-facilitated interviews, and participant
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Jillian L. Bracken
e-journals to collect descriptive data on music listening guidelines and corresponding discourse
within five families. To participate in the study, at least two members of a family, each re-
presenting a different generation, must have agreed to participate. All five case study families
involved a mother and at least one child. Participation also required that families live in Miami-
Dade County, and have reliable access to phone and Internet. The only exclusion criterion put
in place limited participating families to those in which neither parent (even if only one parent
participated in the study) self-identified as a musician. This limitation was put in place to focus
the study on the transmission of musical listening skills as opposed to the transmission of
musicianship skills. The five families are identified throughout the chapter using pseudonyms:
The Alonzo family (Pamela and Alicia): The Alonzo family consisted of a mo-
ther, Pamela, and daughter, Alicia. Pamela was separated from Alicia’s father who had
since remarried. Alicia was 11 years old and in Grade 5. Pamela worked as a co-
ordinator of a community-based program. Pamela was born in Argentina to American
and Argentinean parents; she had lived in the US for most of her life. Her first lan-
guage was Spanish; both English and Spanish were spoken at home. Alicia was born in
Miami and had lived in the US for her whole life.
The Cruz family (Lisa and Deborah): The Cruz family consisted of two daughters
and a mother, Lisa. The youngest daughter (age 3) did not participate in the study.
Lisa was divorced from Deborah’s father. Lisa’s eldest daughter Deborah participated
in the study; she was 8 years old and in Grade 2. Lisa worked as an arts administrator.
Lisa was born in Venezuela to Venezuelan parents; she had lived in the US for most of
her life. Her first language was Spanish; both English and Spanish were spoken at
home. Deborah was born in Miami and had lived in the US for her whole life.
The Morales family (Nancy and Liam): The Morales family consisted of a mother,
Nancy, her husband, and two children (a son, Liam, and a 14-month-old daughter).
Nancy and Liam were the two members of the family who participated in the study.
Liam was 9 years old and in Grade 3. Nancy worked in community outreach. She was
born in Colombia to Colombian parents but had lived in the US for most of her adult
life. Her first language was Spanish; both English and Spanish were spoken at home.
Liam was born in Miami and had lived in the US for his whole life.
The Santiago family (Brandy and Laura): The Santiago family consisted of a
mother, Brandy, her husband, and three daughters (ages 4 years old, 22 months old,
and Laura who was age 6). Brandy and Laura participated in the study. Laura was in
Kindergarten. Brandy was a former librarian who now stayed at home full-time with
her three daughters. She was born in the US to Cuban and Spanish parents; she had
lived in the US her entire life. Both English and Spanish were spoken at home. Laura
was born in Miami and had lived in the US for her life.
The West family (Amy, Kevin, and Kyle): The West family consisted of a
mother, Amy, her husband, and her two sons, Kevin and Kyle. All members of the
West family were African American. Amy, Kevin, and Kyle were the only members of
the West family to participate in the study. Kevin was 11 years old and in Grade 5. Kyle
was 13 years old and in Grade 7. Amy was married and worked as a teacher. She was
born in the US, where she had lived her entire life. English was spoken in the home.
Both Kevin and Kyle were born in the US and had lived there their entire lives.
Main sources of music for all families included Internet-based radio programs and YouTube, as
well as radio in the car. Occasions for listening across included while completing chores in the
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Intergenerational transmission
home, during celebrations or parties, while travelling in the car, and, generally, around the
house. These exposures include both active and passive listening, and collective and individual
listening. All of the participating families actively listened to music and did so by way of similar
sources (most Internet-based) in similar situations (around the home, while traveling).
Sociolinguistics and family scripts

The first theoretical framework guiding this study is sociolinguistics: ‘the study of language in
relation to society’ (Hudson 1980, p. 1). Other terms often used interchangeably with socio-
linguistics include ‘sociology of language’ (see Peñalosa 1981) and ‘ethnography of commu-
nication’ (see Saville-Troike 1982). It is a subdiscipline of linguistics that is ‘concerned with
language as a social and cultural phenomenon’ (Trudgill 2000, p. 21) and ‘with identifying the
social functions of language and the ways it is used to convey social meaning’ (Holmes 1992,
p. 1). Coupland and Jaworski (1997, p. 1) observe that ‘sociolinguistics is the best single label to
represent a very wide range of contemporary research at the intersection of linguistics, so-
ciology and social theory, social psychology, and human communication studies’. It is an in-
terdisciplinary field that unites linguistics, sociology, and anthropology; it also offers insights for
political scientific, philosophical, and psychological research concerning human language use.
The second outlook that comprises this study’s theoretical framework is family script theory.
The family script (Byng-Hall 1988, 1995, 1998) is used to discuss sociolinguistic discourse
around the establishment and communication of music listenership guidelines within the fa-
mily. A family script captures the totality of talk in the family – it is representative of the shared
body of knowledge and values that is passed between parents and children in the family unit
through discourse. This view of family scripts builds upon the work of Borthwick and Davidson
(Borthwick 2000; Borthwick and Davidson 2002). Their body of work demonstrates how
family scripts can be used to analyse family talk in more general terms outside of the therapeutic
setting, including analysing how families talk about music.
Family scripts can serve as both a theoretical and a practical concept, as mentioned by Byng-
Hall (1985). They simultaneously represent: (1) the way in which rules or routines around
music listening are both established in the family and communicated to members; (2) the re-
sulting legacy created by rules, routines, and discourse about music within a family unit. As a
practical framework, family scripts offer a way to discuss the family ‘practice’ of talking about
music as it occurs in everyday settings. Theoretically speaking, script theory offers a conceptual
way to analyse and discuss what this talk means and how the individual parts (the individual
family members) come together through discourse.
Sociolinguistic terminology
Sociolinguistic analysis provides insights into how language bridges music exposures and the
development of music listening preferences within the five case study families. Generally
speaking, sociolinguistics offer a way to discuss discourse shared in families. More specifically,
this analysis identifies some of the mechanisms at work within the discourse. While the content
of a family’s script around music listening may vary in terms of specific ‘bad’ words that are off
limits, artists that are deemed bad influences, or thematic content labeled as out-of-bounds (for
example), the ways in which language functions in these families when it comes to music
listening can be discussed using common sociolinguistic terminology. These terms include
discourse community, register, age-appropriateness, and taboo.
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Jillian L. Bracken
Discourse community
Little et al. (2003) define discourse community as ‘a group of people with sufficiently common
interests to use a vocabulary of words and concepts, whose meanings are accepted and whose
definitions are assumed, that are brought to bear on the subjects of the discourse’ (p. 74).
Bakhtin (1981) observes that discourse communities are everywhere – society is made up of
many different discourse communities. Little et al. (2003) argue that membership in a discourse
community offers security but in exchange for this, requires a certain amount of conformity.
Membership in a discourse community like the family brings with it certain limitations – shared
discourse within the family unit ‘potentially constrains what we should think’ (Little
et al. 2003, p. 74).
Family discourse features language that contains meanings and uses which are defined by the
group. This is a way of describing how the family comes to influence things like music listening –
through language and the ways in which language is used, the family transmits information to its
members about what language to use and how to use language. Discourse perpetuates ideas and
transmits meaning; it creates a body of talk and ideas, described here as a family script, which is
established, negotiated, transmitted, and replicated between generations. In the case of the
families participating in this study, to differing degrees, each family script written by shared
discourse contains information to avoid songs with ‘bad’ words and/or with certain unfavorable
thematic content.
Because of the relational nature of discourse, language is more than just a means of sharing
information, be it about music listening or otherwise. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977, p. 73)
discuss how language, especially language transmitted within relationships of the family, pro-
vides a means of navigating the world:
Moreover, language is not simply an instrument of communication: it also provides,

together with a richer or poorer vocabulary, a more or less complex system of ca-
tegories, so that the capacity to decipher and manipulate complex structures, whether
logical or aesthetic, depends partly on the complexity of the language transmitted by
the family.
Bourdieu and Passeron (1977, p. 116) discuss how ‘no one acquires a language without thereby
acquiring a relation to language’ (emphasis added). The acquisition of language involves not just
words but also knowledge of how, when, where, why, with whom to use language – situational
information that informs the language-user of ‘the objective relationship between the social
characteristics of the [language] acquirer and the social quality of what is acquired’ (Bourdieu
and Passeron 1977).
When parents communicate guidelines around music listening to their children, the
guidelines influence more than just their children’s exposures to certain music; they also
communicate information through which relationships are established and/or further defined.
These are the processes that make a family a discourse community. Discourse shared within the
family helps define family members’ relationships to music, and relationships to one another. All
of this information comes together to form a family’s musical script around listenership.
Register
Holmes (1992, p. 276) defines register as a term that ‘describes the language of groups of people
with common interests or jobs, or the language used in situations associated with such groups’.
482
Registers ‘refer to variation according to the context in which language is used’ (Swann
et al. 2004, p. 261). The term offers a way of describing different bodies of language that are
developed in different contexts. Registers involve routines and formulas ‘which involve a small
number of fixed syntactic patterns and narrow range of lexical items’ (Swann et al. 2004, p. 279)
which are ultimately determined by context. Language differs based on the role enacted in a
social situation. People filling common roles tend to talk the same way in similar situations.
Parents represent a unique discourse register. This term is embraced as a way to collectively
represent the verbal repertoire associated with the parent role and enacted in situations in-
volving the communication of music listening guidelines to their children. It is the body of
language by which ideas and language are transmitted to children. The parent register involves
the use of labels like ‘good’, ‘bad’, and ‘cool’ given to music in the context of talking to their
children. Parents use these terms in this context in ways they might not use the language
elsewhere in their lives. This term is linked with roles that parents fill and discussed and
connected with this term in the final chapter of this document.
Taboo
The next sociolinguistic term of interest – taboo – provides insights into how parents’ dis-
courses around ‘bad’ words are rooted in a broader, social idea of the appropriateness of words
in different settings and for different groups of people. Taboo is defined as a body of words that
are avoided for particular reasons and/or in particular contexts. This connects with the
forthcoming discussion of age-appropriateness, where age is embraced as a context for
avoidance.
Gao (2013, p. 2310) observes that ‘tabooed subjects can vary widely: sex, death, illness,
excretion, bodily functions, religious matters, the supernatural. But quite often they extend to
other aspects of social life’. Gao reports the origin of the word from Tongan, a Polynesian
language, means ‘holy’ or ‘untouchable’ (2013). Taboo terms include swear words (or ‘bad’
words, as they have been labeled in the present study), most of which have to do with body
parts, body functions, discriminatory language, sexist language, and racially biased or hurtful
terms. Wardhaugh (2006, p. 239) discusses how ‘taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in any
society of behavior believed to be harmful to its members in that it would cause them anxiety,
embarrassment, or shame’. He describes taboo as an ‘extreme politeness constraint’ that de-
termines when certain words can and cannot be used (Wardhaugh 2006).
In the earlier section examining ‘bad’ words, several families talked about how they disliked
it when artists used ‘bad’ words for no reason, or repeated them nonsensically. Trudgill (2000,
p. 19) explains how taboo terms can be used as swear-words ‘because they are powerful’ (original
emphasis). Trudgill (2000) observes that ‘[i]t is perfectly permissible to say “sexual intercourse”
on television. Taboo is therefore clearly a linguistic as well as sociological fact. It is the words
themselves which are felt to be wrong and are therefore so powerful’. Artists using words
without context or any understandable purpose demonstrate how ‘bad’ words operate as a
subsection of taboo – a particular category of socially understood terms deemed offensive re-
gardless of context.
A further challenge for parents, connecting with the need for a responsive approach to
enforcing music listening guidelines, is that taboo terms change to reflect larger changes to
language use and meaning in society. Trudgill (2000, p. 18) outlines how changes in societal
values impact language, bring about changes in social/political policies, political correctness,
and impact which words are considered taboo words. Changes rooted in technological de-
velopments, including the primacy of the Internet in the lives of the families in this case study,
483
Jillian L. Bracken
add another layer to this, sometimes removing the parent’s involvement in or knowledge of
changes to what should or could be considered ‘taboo’. The novelty and power of taboo words
sometimes make them attractive for artists looking to get attention; this same novelty and power
is what attracts people to their music.
Censorship is a way that society deals with language and ideas that are deemed taboo. One
form of censorship in response to taboo content discussed in the present study was the notion of
radio edits: popular songs, often heard on the radio, where certain words have been changed or
‘beeped’ (where a short sound is inserted to cover a particular word). Mothers Brandy Santiago
and Lisa Cruz mentioned that they like radio edits; they felt that edits allowed them to listen to
songs with their children without worrying about the presence of curse words. Brandy referred
to these edits as providing ‘PG versions’ of songs that were appropriate for all ages. Amy West
also mentioned liking them, commenting that radios lately ‘haven’t been doing a good job with
the beeps’ (Journal 4). Overall, the West family felt the editing was necessary to ‘protect and
control what minors hear’ (Journal 4).
When asked about radio edits as part of the larger discussion of ‘bad’ words in music, Natalie
Morales’s son Liam (age 9) commented that even when he hears a ‘beep’ he knows that there is
a curse word, mentioning that it almost draws more attention to it. It is interesting to see how
this comment connects with the earlier observation of Pamela Alonzo’s regarding how im-
plementing strict rules could have the opposite intended impact. In many ways, the intent of
trying to ‘protect’ listeners from particular words draws attention, and sets these words apart in a
way that makes them more taboo. In order to deal with this reality, parents must be informed
beyond a list of a few words – they must consider the meaning behind words and how the
context of usage impacts meaning. This was discussed by several case study parents, who ex-
plained how their guidelines take into account how a word is being used in a particular song.
Age-grading and age appropriateness

Thus far, the notion of a contextual, responsive approach to enforcing music listening guide-
lines has been discussed. Beyond implementing these approaches in response to music con-
taining ‘bad’ words and other forms of taboo contact, parents in the present study reported the
notions of age and age appropriateness as factors that impact how parents make their decisions.
Swann et al. (2004) argue that age involves life stages that can be described as childhood,
adolescence, adulthood, and old age. It is a number that represents biological and develop-
mental processes. Age impacts parental determinations of appropriateness. The notion of
age-grading is a sociolinguistic term used to describe how age and language use are connected –
younger and older speakers may differ in the way they talk (Swann et al. 2004, p. 7), about
‘using speech appropriate for your age group’ (Wardhaugh 2006, p. 196). The term also denotes
rules or expectations that are linked to age. Parents concerns with appropriateness involve both
exposure to music with specific words and themes, and what happens as a result of this –
children learning and using words that may not be appropriate for their age, or using words out
of context.
The notion of age-appropriate music was discussed throughout the case studies, both in
terms of the content of music being listened to and the transfer of content to children’s everyday
talk. This is another element of responsive parenting when it comes to music listening – as
children grow and change, passing through different age stages, what parents deem devel-
opmentally appropriate will also shift. In Journal 4, Pamela Alonzo discussed how her
daughter’s age will impact her listening guidelines:
484
As she gets older she will find the kind of music that makes her happy and I will accept
her choices. I know if I restrict something as a teen, that will make it that much more
interesting. I hope to continue to be available to her to provide context if it’s needed. I
can remember my parents hearing The Smiths when I was a teen and thinking it was
the most depressing thing in the world. It was, but as a teen it was what I was drawn
to. I will respect Alicia to listen to what makes her happy. (Journal 4)
This consideration of age appropriateness is one way in which parents make contextual deci-
sions about what music is allowed in their family. Parents do what they can to have their
children exposed to music that they feel is appropriate to what their children can handle. Lisa
Cruz reflected on the difficulties of this, in terms of not being present for all of the music to
which her daughter is exposed. In her first interview, she described her daughter Deborah’s
experiences at an ‘after-care’ (after-school) program:
So, after-care has the option to use the Internet, to use videos. That scares me so much
because it can be a very well-known artist, to give you an example: Shakira. She just
recently did a video that I don’t think is proper for my kids to see it yet. So, um, I
have to let them know … whenever they tell me a new song, or I hear them listening
or singing a new song, that I have never heard before, um, I basically Google it and go
to YouTube and I check the lyrics and video are proper for their age. (First interview)
This excerpt shows evidence of Lisa’s case-by-case response to what her daughter brings home.
One criteria by which her decisions are made as to the permissibility of Deborah listening to the
song is if Lisa feels both the lyric content and video are ‘proper’ for Deborah. These de-
terminations of age appropriateness are rooted in the two guidelines discussed earlier.
In the same vein as Lisa’s reflection, Amy West acknowledged that she cannot control all of
the music exposures in her sons’ lives. She mentioned age appropriateness in this excerpt, taken
from the family’s first interview:
I know I can’t control everything he listens to. I know they’re around … in my house,
they play video games but I don’t buy gun video games, anything with that, I don’t do
that. Like, they don’t have a Facebook, and they’re not on Twitter. I just think
everything is age appropriate. But if they go to school and their friends have it, of
course they’re going to listen to it. You know, ‘Hey listen to this new song.’ I just
want them to be aware of the reason it’s out there and the stuff … the music, the
pictures … all that stuff. ‘Cause we live in such a digital world right now. (First
interview)
Amy’s reflection ties together several of the themes that have been discussed thus far in this
chapter, including the challenges that come with new material constantly being released by
popular artists, how the Internet and videos that accompany music add additional layers of
meaning to a song, and how the family is an important influence on music listening but not the
only influence. Amy mentions that her sons bring music into the family to which they were
exposed at schools and/or with friends. She views her role in response to this as making de-
terminations of the suitability of the music based on the developmental readiness of her boys to
understand specific words and specific content in the lyrics of the music.
The case study families all reported age appropriateness as a way of deciding what language
and themes in music were permissible for their children. This is a never-ending process, with
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Jillian L. Bracken
parents constantly revisiting the notion of appropriateness as their children develop while
balancing this with the external, social pressure to have their children behave and speak a certain
way. At the end of the day, parents are left to make determinations of what children ‘can
handle’ based upon their own knowledge of their child while also balancing what external
sources tell them about taboo, the need for censorship and protection, notions of age appro-
priateness, and their own music values and experiences.
Responding to guidelines
Having established that families do talk about music, and that the discourse shared within the
family include guidelines passed between parents and children about what music is allowed, this
line of inquiry collected family member feedback about impressions of the impact and/or utility
of these guidelines.
All of the case study parents discussed the importance of the guidelines. Pamela Alonzo
talked about how implementing restrictions is a way of demonstrating cultural norms:
I think the restrictions are important because I am attempting to show her what my
values and cultural norms are, by showing what I don’t think is acceptable, maybe in
the same way I restrict what she may wear, or if she paints her nails, burps at the table,
or says ‘thank you’. I guess the words she uses are important because they shape your
worldview. I think that as she gets older the limits will change and she will listen to the
music she wants to listen to and what is part of her peer group, along with her dress,
and slang, but for now I want her to have a model and don’t think she might have the
maturity or ability to put context for some things yet. I guess it’s the same way I limit
movies or shows she may watch right now because of her capacity to understand
certain things. I think that at her age she needs limits on the media because there is so
much constantly coming at her, be it from magazines, radio, tv, music, etc. (Journal 4)
She described her restrictions as helping to foster a kind of ‘musical manners’ that shape her
daughter Alicia’s world view. Pamela discussed the importance of her role in modeling ap-
propriate behavior to help her daughter develop and mature.
At age six, Brandy Santiago’s daughter was the youngest in the study. Brandy saw the
importance of the guidelines as preventing her daughter from being exposed to content that
might be repeated without knowing the meaning. Lisa Cruz echoed this comment, adding that
the guidelines helped prevent her daughter Deborah from being exposed to ‘bad things’
(Journal 4). She described the guidelines as important to help alleviate confusion by the mes-
sages put forward in pop culture; the guidelines provide clarification and grounding.
Building upon her earlier comments about music not being censored because it is a form of
artistic expression, Nancy Morales discussed the absence of guidelines in her house:
As any other form of expression, music shouldn’t be restricted or censored. I believe

that by not restricting him to artistic content he will value the power of expression and
create an understating of the purpose of art, it being a reflection of society and how
people interact with each other. I guess if I put severe restrictions -there are always
some type of restrictions- I will be raising a hypocritical individual without the ability
to discern good vs. bad, the ability to criticise and form opinions. (Journal 4)
486
She articulated a desire for her son to come up with his own understanding of what is good and
bad, and saw the absence of severe restrictions as the best environment for that to happen. Just as
many of the other case study mothers discussed the importance of implementing their listening
guidelines, Nancy spoke about the importance of not placing what she believed to be hypo-
critical restrictions on her children’s listening which could be seen as a form of censorship.
The West family had the two oldest children participating in the present study (ages eleven
and thirteen, respectively). When asked to reflect on guidelines in their family, Amy West
mentioned how the guidelines have changed as their sons have grown. She described the
restrictions as providing guidance and outlined several steps she had taken to ensure for her sons
to avoid undesirable music while with friends:
The restrictions have eased up but they know I don't want them listening to Satan-
worshiping music or kill yourself or music that puts down others. It eased cause let's
face it they will attend parties where music will be played or at a friend house where
music is played so they know if they don't like the music cause I told them certain
music change [sic] the atmosphere to leave or ask them to change the music. I gave
them true stories of when I was in my club days and as soon as the gangsta rap this my
crib music came on the drunk boys began to fight and I would always exit soon
because by the 3rd song they can't control the crowd and I had a friend to lose her eye
in a club fight! If I don't have restrictions they would think it's ok to say and do
anything without consequences and they may believe what they hear and so it trying
[sic] to be like the musicians. (Journal 4)
Amy acknowledged that she cannot monitor nor control all of her sons’ music listening ex-
periences. She mentioned that her hope is that the guidelines she discussed with her boys will
provide guidance for situations when they are not together as a family.
The study recorded only two instances of children voicing concerns or being unaware of
guidelines – with the youngest participant, Laura Santiago (see earlier quote with mention of
not being allowed to listen to ‘Daddy’s phone calls), and with the second-youngest participant,
Deborah Cruz (see earlier quote with mention of sneaking around). Both the West sons and
Pamela Alonzo’s daughter Alicia demonstrated solidarity in the guidelines and evidence of
understanding the value of having guidelines in place (see the earlier exchange between Pamela
and Alicia where Alicia mentions ‘we’; both West children repeated several times, almost
verbatim, the concern with bad music ‘getting in your spirit’ – a phrase which their mother
Amy referred to several times).
Conclusion
This chapter offered specific sociolinguistic terminology as a way to describe the above-
mentioned guidelines as mechanisms of family discourse – components of each family’s script,
discussed in general terms to codify the idea of ‘musical manners’ as established by shared
discourse. Sociolinguistic terminology was used as a way to describe how talk about music,
shared through the discourse community of the family, links music exposure with the devel-
opment of individual music values, describing how the identified guidelines operate within the
intimate, informal discourse around music listening shared in the five case study families.
Discussion included mention of family as a discourse community (how the family domain is able to
do what it does in terms of discourse, transmission), register (to examine the connection between
talk and roles), taboo (discussing larger notion of societal function, censorship of offensive
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Jillian L. Bracken
language), and age appropriateness (a factor that determines how/when/why/where parents

enforce guidelines; shifting as children grow, breadth/depth of what is permissible increasing as
children age). Together, these terms illustrate how discourse operates as a mechanism of transfer
of value between generations around music listening.
Excerpts were shared to put forward what participating families think of the guidelines in
place in their families. Parents expressly conveyed the importance of guidelines around music
listening as they function to influence and shape the music to which children are exposed.
Parents reported making determinations on a situational basis, accompanying their enforcement
of guidelines with conversations intended to clarify implementation. These guidelines under-
gird parents’ responsive approaches to music listening in their family which are shaped by a
desire to protect their children from content they deem age-inappropriate, harmful, hurtful, or
obscene. Analysis revealed how the identified guidelines are not strict rules; rather, they inform
context-dependent approaches to influencing what music children are both exposed to and
come to understand as ‘good’. This process involves negotiation, with guidelines as touch-
stones, amid a tumultuous landscape of popular music where content is always changing.
Parents use their relationship to influence children’s opinions and shape their exposures; dis-
course in the family is shaped by relationships and, conversely, shapes relationships within the
family.
The study’s findings are consistent with extant research into guidelines communicated in
targeted areas of adolescents’ lives, many of which are concerned with parental safeguarding of
children: discussions of parents’ rules around underage drinking (Friese et al. 2012), sex edu-
cation (Leyson 1982), and driving (Scott-Parker et al. 2015), in addition to countless popular
media newspaper and magazine articles that almost endlessly put forward various parenting
advice and suggested guidelines. Rules and guidelines found in these sources are similar to those
detailed in the present study in that shared discourse between parent and child imparts both
language itself and information about language use. They are also similar in that both this study
and general research on parental guidelines are focused on safety, and the important place of the
parent in protecting and guiding their children. Safety concerns with music exposures seem to
be rooted in worries that musical messages could lead to the development of negative behaviors,
or the adoption or internalization of age-inappropriate messages that might damage a child’s
character, personality, or ‘spirit’.
1. Reflecting on your experience growing up, what forces influenced the music you listened
to and enjoyed? How did your preferences change over the course of your life?
2. Do you agree with the notion that there is a common parent register? How factors could
influence the development of a register?
References
Bakhtin, M.M., 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Borthwick, S.J., 2000. Parenting scripts: the pattern for a child’s musical development. PhD thesis, University of
Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.
Borthwick, S.J., Davidson, J.W., 2002. Developing a child’s identity as a musician: a family ‘script’
perspective. In: MacDonald, R., Hargreaves, D., Miell, D. (eds.), Musical Identities. Oxford University
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Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.C., 1977. Reproduction: In Education, Society, and Culture. Sage, London.
Byng-Hall, John., 1985. The family script: a useful bridge between theory and practice. Journal of Family
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Byng-Hall, J., 1988. Scripts and legends in families and family therapy. Family Processes vol. 27 (no. 2),
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Byng-Hall, J., 1995. Rewriting Family Scripts. Guilford, London.
Byng-Hall, J., 1998. Evolving ideas about marriage: the re-editing of the re-editing of family mythology.
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Coupland, N., Jaworski, A. (Eds.), 1997. Sociolinguistics: A Reader. St. Martin’s Press, New York.
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Gao, C., 2013. A sociolinguistic study of English taboo language. Theory and Practice in Language Studies vol.
3 (no. 12), 2310–2314.
Holmes, J., 1992. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Longman, London, UK.
Hudson, R.A., 1980. Sociolinguistics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Leyson, J.F., 1982. Twelve golden rules for parents regarding sex education. The Journal of the Medical
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Little, M., Jordens, C.F.C., Sayers, E., 2003. Discourse communities and the discourse of experience.
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Peñalosa, F., 1981. Introduction to the Sociology of Language. Newbury House Publishers, Cambridge, MA.
Saville-Troike, M., 1982. The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction. Basil Blackwell, New York.
Scott-Parker, B., Watson, B., King, M.J., Hyde, M.K., 2015. “I would have lost the respect of my friends
and family if they knew I had bent the road rules”: parents, peers, and the perilous behavior of young
drivers. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour vol. 28, 1–13.
Swann, J., Deumert, A., Lillis, T., Mesthrie, R., 2004. A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics. The University of
Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Trudgill, P., 2000. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. Penguin Books, New York.
Wardhaugh, R., 2006. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.
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36
ENGAGEMENT AND AGENCY IN
MUSIC EDUCATION ACROSS
THE LIFESPAN
Jennifer Lang
Introduction
The sociological perspective informing this chapter begins with Christopher Small’s (1998)
notion of musicking as a means of referring to the process by which humans participate in all
forms of music-related activities. To Small (2010, p. 283) musicking functions as an ‘instrument
of socialization’ exploring, affirming, and celebrating our sense of ourselves and negotiated
relationships through the processes of learning and experiencing. This brings to the forefront
the sociological concept of agency – the will, the ability, and the power to act. When such
agency is exercised in a musical setting, Karlsen (2011) defines it as musical agency. More
specifically, musical agency accounts for experiences of discovering, rediscovering, and learning
about oneself in and through music (Karlsen 2010).
A complimentary perspective may be drawn from the psychological construct of engage
ment. Engagement is the amount of time, energy, and interest learners devote to an activity
with the understanding that engagement is a reciprocal investment between participants and
facilitators to dedicate interest, time, and energy to musical programs (Lang 2015). These
programs, as opposed to stand-alone activities, refer to a series of activities designed sequentially
with an educative purpose (Lang 2015).
We begin from the premise therefore that music education is a human experience that endures
throughout the lifespan and is one in which humans, to a certain extent, are able to exercise
agency and engagement. This chapter presents research (Lang 2015, 2017), which explored the
relationship between these two concepts and the ways in which music education programs might
provide the affordances required for Small’s (1998) notion of lifelong musicking.
Why does lifelong musicking matter?

The importance of sustaining musical participation beyond and outside of classroom walls can
be seen through the multiple benefits of involvement in lifelong musical learning (Colwell and
Davidson 1996; Glenn 1992). Authors suggest that musical participation throughout the life
span brings with it wide ranging cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits (Hallam
et al. 2012). The positive effects of participation in music education programs have also been
associated with overall academic and social development for learners of all ages (Elpus and
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Engagement and agency in music education
Abril 2011; Fitzpatrick 2006; Miksza 2007). The impetus to continue researching music into
later life is provided by Cohen et al. (2002) who state that there is a ‘role for education in the
fields of gerontology, developmental psychology, music education, music therapy, and music
psychology to emphasize the importance of music in the lives of seniors’ (p. 99). Music edu
cation, therefore, can play a pivotal role in enhancing the quality of life as people age and also,
in educating and supporting those who assist in these efforts.
Theoretical framework
This cross-generational investigation employed an interdisciplinary theoretical framework. The
dual theoretical framework was drawn from the fields of psychology and sociology. Deci and
Ryan’s psychological Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan 1985, 2000; Reeve 2012;
Ryan 2000; Ryan and Deci 2000, 2002) was utilised in this context as was Karlsen’s (2011)
sociological concept of musical agency. SDT is based on the principle that all learners possess the
inherent growth tendencies of autonomy, relatedness, and competence that serve as a foundation
to achieve optimal engagement. My study attempted to identify factors associated with the
cultivation of these tendencies, in order to improve educational programming and learner en
gagement. This lens was combined with the sociological concept of agency and in particular the
construct of musical agency (Karlsen 2011) to shed light on how exercising the will, ability, and
power to act, ‘in relation to music, or in a music-related setting’ (Karlsen 2011, p. 110) may relate
to the engagement of people of all ages in active musical participation throughout the lifespan.
The constructs of engagement and agency are examined in relation with and to one another as
they are seen to, potentially, work in tandem to influence lifelong participation in musicking.
Agency and engagement
Agency
When discussing agency, sociologists gravitate to the seminal work of Barnes and Giddens as
they emphasise two key factors inherent in one’s experience of agency: responsibility and re
flexive awareness.
Responsibility
Humans are unique in the sense that we are free agents and able to make choices (Barnes 2000).
The construct of responsibility plays a significant role as a potential ‘nutriment’ in the socio
logical explanation of agency as it has ‘psychological internal capacities and sociological liability
and answerability’ (Barnes 2000, p. 2). Barnes reminds us that the role of choice and agency in
our daily lives is understood in terms of responsibility. This idea of responsibility is central to
understanding agency from a new perspective, as it has ‘not been a central element in the
building of any major form of social theory’ (Barnes 2000, p. 2). To relate this notion of
responsibility to the current research then makes specific the generic concept of autonomy as
one’s choice to be responsible and invest in one’s learning; whether it be a feeling of re
sponsibility towards the process or the recognition of one’s role in the learning process.
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Jennifer Lang
Reflexive awareness
For Giddens (1991), a central component of agency is that humans have ‘reflexive awareness’ in
which they not only have the ability to choose, but that they know what they are doing and
why they are doing it. Reflexive awareness is ‘characteristic of all human action. … Agents are
normally able, if asked, to provide discursive interpretations of the nature of, and the reasons
for, the behavior in which they engage’ (p. 35). The idea of ability with respect to constraints in
engaging in activities is an enabling feature for agency. In addition, one’s recognition and
articulation of the rationale for engaging in activities is critical in understanding the motivation
underlying behaviour.
Individual and collective agency

A key difference, however, between Giddens’ definition of agency and Barnes’ definition is
that for Barnes the living conditions of humans within social units are fostered not by in
dividual agency, but through their collective agency (Barnes 2000). It is humans’ effects on
each other through social interactions that constitute their role as social agents. Batt-Rawden
and DeNora (2005) connect the individual and collective dimensions of agency to Small’s
concept of musicking (1998) in that music’s meaning on a collective level may be far more
significant than that of the individual level. Small’s (1998) explanation that musicking is
exploring, celebrating, and affirming one’s experiences with music and with others empha
sises the collective and personal experiential process involved in musical participation, rather
than the reification of a work or product. In relation, Karlsen’s (2010) work wherein agency
recognises the experiences of discovering, rediscovering, and learning about oneself in and
through music highlights the experiential and active domains that encompass musical
participation.
Karlsen and musical agency

While Merriam (1964) listed ten different functions of music from an anthropological per
spective, Karlsen (2011) thoughtfully reduces and explores the individual dimension of musical
agency through the main types of musical use for self-regulation, the shaping of self-identity,
self-protection, thinking, matters of ‘being’, and developing music-related skills. In application
to the collective dimension, five musical actions are explained through its use for regulation and
structuring social encounters, coordinating bodily action, affirming and exploring collective
identity, ‘knowing the world’, and establishing a basis for collaborative musical action
(Karlsen 2011).
The common thread underlying the musical subfields of musical psychology and sociology
is that musical agency in ‘one way or the other, has to do with individuals’ capacity for action
in relation to music or in a music-related setting’ (Karlsen 2011, p. 110). The focus on agency
as an action coincides with Small’s (1998) reconceptualisation that music is not solely a noun,
rather a verb that carries an implicit understanding that ‘musicking’ is indeed action. The
importance that many scholars place on the relationship between the individual and the music
in terms of learning about music and experiencing music (Small 1998) calls attention to
examining the experiential conditions that enhance this relationship. Westerlund (2008)
reminds educators of our responsibility to recognise the learner’s experience, which has often
been neglected through the valuing of musical outcomes and products over experiential
conditions and formative process (Karlsen 2011). In the context of the research reported here,
492
where multiple cases were examined and ages varied from the teenage years into the nineties,
the learners’ experiential outcomes often from narrative accounts through interviews were
critical to revealing themes of engagement and agency and how these constructs might be
related.
Engagement
Vygotsky (1980) believed that all human learning is formed within a social context. SDT is a
known psychological theoretical framework, and as such provides one very useful perspective
on engagement. However because the learning process by its very nature is social, it is also
necessary to look at engagement from a sociological perspective.
Many definitions of engagement in education emphasise the importance of the world
outside the classroom in allowing us to situate musical engagement within a context.
Recognising that people are products of their environment and are socialised into a cultural
environment as constructed beings therefore provides a sociological perspective on engage
ment. A pervasive theme concerning learner motivation in engagement is the constructivist
view that education relates to students constructing their own knowledge (Krause and
Coates 2008) with the underlying assumption that learners bring their own knowledge to the
classroom (Richardson 1997; Scruggs 2009). As students enter new environments they bring
with them pre-existing frameworks and belief systems that influence their sense of belonging,
competence, ability, and future success. The view of the individual who constructs her own
learning experience is, therefore, an integral component in agentic engagement (Reeve 2012).
The role of the program facilitator

While a few definitions describe engagement as ‘the individual’s involvement and satisfaction
with’ (Harter et al. 2002 p. 269) an activity, the majority of perspectives on engagement re
cognise institutional and situational factors (London et al. 2007). Furthermore, several relevant
models posit that student outcomes such as engagement are affected by ‘human, social and
cultural capital’ (Porter 2006, p. 524). Haworth and Conrad’s (1997) theory of engagement
emphasises the dual role that all participants play in constructing and maintaining programs of
quality engagement. This implication is significant in that program facilitators are integral to
learner engagement. It is not solely reliant on the individual’s internal processes.
The role of context

The acknowledgement of context is crucial when students or learners are situated in a classroom
or learning environment (Reeve 2012). Essentially, the classroom can be seen as a microcosm of
the social world at large, which potentially renders the term ‘student engagement’ irrelevant as
it ‘cannot be separated or disentangled from the social context in which it occurs’ (Reeve 2012,
p. 152). In a musical context, children are socialised into a musical culture as ‘they engage in
musical activities that are part of the institutions and traditions of their sociocultural environ
ments’ (O’Neill 2005, p. 264). Many findings state that in relation to children and adolescents
particularly, familial and school environments are central developmental contexts that are
significantly related to student engagement (Lohman et al. 2007; Mahatmya et al. 2012; Roeser
and Eccles 1998; Steinberg et al. 1996) and can strongly influence engagement quality in a
positive or adverse way (Cohen-Mansfield et al. 2011).
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Jennifer Lang
Exploring the relationship: musical agency and engagement

The connection of engagement to agency is that by the very nature of being human and social
agents (Barnes 2000) we are thus afforded the provision of making choices; the choice to parti
cipate or not participate; the choice to engage or not to engage; the choice to be engaged or not
engaged; the choice to re-engage or not to re-engage. The elements of autonomy, relatedness, and
competence are the psychological nutriments in Deci and Ryan’s Cognitive Evaluation Theory
(CET) within the overarching framework of SDT, and are used to account for engagement or
disengagement, thus connecting sociological and psychological factors of engagement.
Considered in conjunction with engagement, the construct of agency broadens the in
vestigation into why people participate in musical activities and what keeps them committed as
full citizens in such activities. Deci and Ryan’s (1985) Cognitive Evaluation Theory emphasises
the vital role autonomy serves with respect to intrinsic motivation. Autonomy is referred to as
the perceived level of control and choice one has over one’s learning, which has been linked to
higher levels of intrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci 2000). As intrinsic motivation is linked to
the concept of ‘free choice’ (Ryan and Deci 2000, p. 57), the concepts of agency and autonomy
in their aligned terms of ‘capacity’, ‘power’, and ‘action’ can often be used interchangeably.
While the parallel definitions of these terms justify their relevance to this chapter, it is important
to note the differences between the theoretical paradigms from which they originate. For this
purpose, autonomy is utilised as one of the elements of Deci and Ryan’s theories and thus
originates from a psychological perspective. The construct of agency however originates from a
sociological perspective. This partnership can be demonstrated in Willis’ (1978, p. 14) defi
nition of human agency as ‘the ability to act and make decisions autonomously’. Furthermore,
O’Neill (2014, p. 19) challenges us to consider contexts which promote ‘learner autonomy or
choice, agency or voice, and personalized instruction’ as conducive to creating engaging ex
periences and environments. By extension, she states that the conditions necessary to ultimately
experience the concept she terms transformative music engagement (O’Neill 2014) are those
afforded by approaches that are learner centred and foster agency and empowerment.
Engagement and agency across the lifespan

Many theories and models have been developed surrounding the issue of engagement, yet there
have been none proposed that cross the temporal plane and link distinct generational age co
horts to one another, that investigate the grounds for lifelong engagement. Nor have there been
any that illustrate the relationship between the roles of musical engagement and agency as
experienced in relation to educational programming utilising a cross-generational perspective.
The literature on agency as applied to musical contexts has also been a comparatively recent
development. A perspective yet to be examined in this emergent literature field is the potential
relationship between engagement and agency as significant indicants and precursors of lifelong
engagement in musicking.
Fostering musical agency, whether individual or collective, requires acknowledgement of
the centrality of the learner’s perspective and recognition of one’s ideal experiential conditions
(Karlsen 2011; also Karlsen chapter 29 in this volume). The idea of student-centred learning is
not new to researchers or practitioners in the field of music education. However, little research
has been conducted into the interface between musical agency and engagement in this field.
Such research may allow better understanding of how music programs can enhance engagement
in musicking for learners of all ages, in addition to developing agentic learners who feel em
powered and motivated to continue their involvement in music education programs. Thus,
494
further understanding the connection between engagement and agency may serve to explain
not only the conditions in which musical participants reach engagement, but also those where
they are then propelled to continually engage, act, and exercise agency in these settings. To
facilitate this understanding, a research project was thus designed to capture experiences of these
sociological constructs for participants of different ages in a variety of music education contexts.
Methodology
The central focus of this investigation resided in understanding how musical agency and en
gagement might be related, nurtured, and connected to continued participation in musicking
throughout the lifespan. Therefore, a broad investigation of musical programming that trans
cended a generational span was required. A qualitative methodology was considered appropriate
as it allowed for researcher interpretation to make visible constructs, such as engagement and
agency that might otherwise appear invisible (Creswell 2013). A collective case study meth
odology (Stake 1995) was adopted. The programs investigated were (i) an informal music
learning class in one urban secondary school in Ontario, part of the Musical Futures Canada
informal learning project, (ii) a course in composing and improvising at the undergraduate level
in an Ontario university, and (iii) an afterschool intergenerational singing program involving
secondary school students and persons with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) offered at an Ontario
community facility connected with the local Alzheimer’s Society (see Lang 2015). All were
music programs structured with a curricular component; the contexts varied however, in that
two were situated within a formal educational setting and one was a shared school/community
music initiative. The observations made through field notes, interviews, video recordings, and
collecting reflections illuminated some significant themes of engagement and agency experi
enced by participants in the study.
Findings
Themes of engagement
In the first case study which explored accounts of secondary students’ experiences with informal
music learning, students largely focused on discussing their experiences of heightened en
gagement in relation to the elements of enjoyment, choice, freedom, variety, social connec
tions, contextualised learning, and developing confidence that encouraged them to devote
time, energy, and interest to their Musical Futures experiences.
The university-aged music education students in the improvisation and composing course
echoed similar sentiments as to their rationale for engagement in the music course identifying
enjoyment, social camaraderie, provision of choice, variety, ‘safe risk’ in experimenting, control
over learning, contextualised learning, and a sense of success as important factors. As in the first
case, there were challenges to their engagement in terms of their vulnerability, performance
anxiety, and fear in being compared or judged.
There were additional dimensions, however, in which the undergraduate students experienced
heightened levels of engagement and agency. One student’s comment nicely illustrates the
transfer in thinking that accompanies a transition between being a student and a future teacher:
I think the connection is really important to be engaged. I think you have to com
municate effectively in order to be engaged with your classmates … and um, I plan to
take that into the classroom and just listen to people a little more closely. Um, and she
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Jennifer Lang
(classroom instructor) says your job as a teacher is to mold yourself to your student and
figure out how you can best communicate with them. […] And I think that un
derstanding, that effective communication is really important to engagement.
These participants required the opportunity to envision themselves as leaders in their future
careers. They were presented with activities in which they experienced the position of their
future learners. This placement enabled them to recognise their own traditional backgrounds in
music and their insecurities so that they were able to negotiate their role from student to
teacher. This then drew attention to the need for the transfer of ownership in learning from the
teacher to the student. They were able to then project how that would impact programming in
terms of the compromise in structure and freedom, aural learning and written notation, and
Western art music and other musical genres. The process of becoming aware of their abilities
and inabilities, demonstrating agency in how they act upon this information, and then reflecting
on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their actions became a dynamic process in engaging
participants in this course. The critical thinking element presented itself as participants devel
oped a projected image of who they wanted to be, had to be, and needed to be as teachers in
order to engage their future students in music.
The third case study, which explored the experiences of persons with Alzheimer’s Disease
(AD) participating in an intergenerational singing program, also revealed themes related to
heightened engagement in this music education context. The elements of enjoyment, response,
choice/input, relevance, comfortable environment, social gathering/camaraderie, variety, po
sitive reinforcement, success/confidence, and appropriate challenges seemed to positively
nurture opportunities for heightened engagement for persons with AD. Additional require
ments that appeared to resonate with this particular age cohort were opportunities for the
participants to experience rejuvenation, relief and respite, recognition of people and songs,
connections, recollection, and reminiscence and the journey of return. While these were the
positive associations that participants experienced, there were accounts that demonstrated
participant resistance and reticence. Researcher observation detected participant hesitation as a
result of social anxiety, concern over embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of judgement from
peers, and fear of being singled out or standing out.
The opportunity to revisit singing, which was a familiar and favourite activity of many of the
persons with AD, offered many physiological and cognitive benefits. The medium of music
provided the opportunity to reminisce and remember past activities, relationships, and events
through the songs that were chosen. Additional elements were associated with feelings of re
juvenation, reminiscence and a sense of return and reconnection to music, to others, and to
their pasts. Since many persons with AD had enjoyed singing and music throughout their lives,
this program allowed some to revisit a pastime that was particularly enjoyable and special for
them. Furthermore, many participants identified physiological and spiritual enlightenment as
resulting from the sessions. This sense of allowing oneself to be lost in the music and in its
associated memories, but then to return again to the present seemed to be an important benefit
of music education programs for those who live with AD.
In summary, findings indicated common elements that fostered active heightened musical
engagement across the three cases (see Figure 36.1). Although they may have been worded
slightly differently in each case, the following themes were expressed concurrently by all three
generations: enjoyment, choice, variety, social camaraderie, comfortable environment to take
safe risks, and experiences of success and confidence building. Since the first two case studies
involved at least some element of experimenting with informal music learning, it was to be
expected that participants in both of these cases described the provision of freedom as an
496
important characteristic of their engagement. Indeed, both age-cohorts reported that the ele
ments of control over their learning and applying their learning in their desired contexts were
important. The undergraduate students, however, appeared to require the additional element of
negotiation whereby they could negotiate between their role as a student and that of becoming
a teacher; compromise between structure and freedom within the parameters of the teaching/
learning context; conceive of balance between aural and visual notation literacy; and consider
their ideal conception of both an educator and a desired pedagogical approach to music. The
persons with AD in the intergenerational singing program also expressed additional needs that
highlighted their engagement in the program. These themes included response, relevance,
positive reinforcement, appropriate challenges, rejuvenation, relief and respite, recognition,
connection, recollection and reminiscence, and return. While the participants in the other case
studies could very easily have identified the first four themes, the latter seven concepts that
speak to revitalisation and reconnection are particularly important for the learners with AD and
possibly for other senior populations.
The factors listed in Figure 36.1 present foundational requirements that the generations felt they
needed to experience in order to be optimally engaged in their music program. A synthesis of these
themes further reduced the conditions for optimal engagement to program factors and environ
mental conditions. There were, however, several elements that also related to exercising agency that
the participants described throughout their reflections on the educational music programs.
Themes of Heightened Engagement for Adolescent Students
Themes of Heightened Engagement for Undergraduate Students
Themes of Heightened Engagement for Persons with Alzheimer's Disease
Figure 36.1 Themes of heightened engagement
497
Jennifer Lang
Themes related to agency

Situations in which participants exercised agency were detected in the data when respondents
had occasion to assess their abilities, acknowledge, and realise their learning, and act voluntarily
to enhance the quality of their lives through their participation in the program.
Any opportunity in which participants were providing input or making choices and decisions,
and experiencing the freedom to take risks, demonstrated that they were acting as agentic beings.
Barnes’ (2000) notion that humans act as free agents when they are able to make choice illustrates
the agentic affordances of all three programs. While participants never identified themselves as
possessing agency, or feeling agentic, or being agentic learners, the descriptions in their responses
did represent qualities of agency. Therefore, the following prompting question was needed to
interrogate the data: While these factors assuredly contributed to higher levels of engagement,
what were the accounts that suggested participants were experiencing musical agency? In re
cognition of definitive principles of agency, comments and observations in which participants
expressed their will to act, their ability to act, and their power to act were extracted from the data.
The will to act

The will to act was demonstrated in comments that expressed a sense of urgency or desire to
act, which often presented itself as motivation for attending, stepping out of participants’
comfort zones and wanting to experiment.
The ability to act

Another dimension of agency was the perception of participants’ ability to act. This perception
was revealed in comments that related to their acknowledgement of their own ability to act.
This feeling was often established by the provisions of choice and freedom that program fa
cilitators afforded to participants so that they could seek out opportunities for safe and com
fortable risk-taking.
The power to act

Finally, the power to act was demonstrated in comments pertaining to the [actual] control
participants had over their learning. For example, students in the secondary school in the first
case study attributed their power to act to their increased rate of learning, and their control over
their learning environment, leadership role opportunities, and using their voices to express
opinions. In the case of the university students preparing for the profession of education, their
role in a leadership position and 'in charge' of their learning were demonstrations that these
students felt empowered to act. Statements referring to the nature of control over their learning
and being involved as active learners, rather than passive recipients of knowledge, suggested a
strong sense of power, which is integral to developing agentic learners.
Findings related to the relationship between engagement and agency

The data show that both engagement and agency are constructs that can be experienced at the
same time; however, I would argue that the internal constructs of will, ability, and power to act
which are integral to the exercising of agency, do not necessarily appear as isolated incidents.
They take time to develop and require repeated opportunities to present themselves. The fact
498
that all of these cases were programs carried out over an extensive period of time permitted the
presentation of agency as a construct requiring sufficient time and repeated opportunities to be
developed, established, and demonstrated. The key to researching programming instead of
simply stand-alone musical activities is that participants and researchers are able to see how the
passage of time, through establishing continuity and opportunities for reinforcement of these
foundational conditions presented in Figure 36.1 can translate into musical agency. Therefore,
the importance of continuity as a field underlying these conditions is not only integral to
providing the opportunity for participants to see skills, learning, and knowledge embedded in
context, but also to them recognising and realising their ability, will, and power to act.
In consideration of the themes of heightened engagement in Figure 36.1, I propose that the
conditions in which participants reported engagement are situational factors that can create
engaged learners and lead to engaging opportunities or interactions with music. It is quite
possible that learners in any activity or setting might experience these conditions, feel fully
engaged, and never return. These engaging events might be situations that could occur as
isolated experiences and could occur with varied frequency.
There was a significant theme that was presented by the participants in these cases, however,
suggesting that engagement can be taken to the next level when time and repeated involvement
in programs, as opposed to activities, are factors. This element is the opportunity for awareness,
which presented itself across all three generations in their realisation of learning. This concept of
learning awareness is integral to Karlsen’s (2010) sociological concept of musical agency, where
the individual recognises the experiences of discovering, rediscovering, and learning about him
or herself in and through music.
Regardless of the age, participants began from the position of assessment before they were
able to comment on their learning. As such, they identified their strengths and weaknesses,
abilities and inabilities, securities and insecurities. The data revealed that participants made
identifications of their abilities, and the knowledge used from this assessment enabled partici
pants to realise, or become aware of, the learning that had transpired over the course of the
Figure 36.2 The relationship between engagement and agency
499
Jennifer Lang
program. In Karlsen’s (2010) terms above they had discovered, rediscovered, and learned things
about themselves through music.
The realisation of their learning which participants reported as a condition required to
experience engagement, was thwarted if participants were only involved in infrequent activities.
It is through repeated opportunities whereby participants can exercise musical agency through
their will, ability, and power to act in musicking situations, that they are afforded the realisation
of learning. Thus, the passage of time affords the development of agency through the processes
of assessment and awareness, an integral facet of Karlsen’s (2010) musical agency. The re
lationship between engagement and agency can therefore be represented in the following
model (see Figure 36.2).
The programming factors and environmental conditions that facilitate heightened engage
ment act as affordances for agency to be developed and enacted. The concept of agency,
however, appears to require an additional dimension on a temporal plane whereby learners are
empowered again and again to act musically, to witness and believe in their abilities as musicians
and take ownership of these situational fundamentals on a continual basis.
This temporal element provides space and opportunity for participants to realise and come into
awareness of their learning. As a precursor to awareness, several participants reflected on their
background as musicians and their past and present levels of ability. Ultimately, this laid the
groundwork for them to eventually realise their growth in learning and this assessment fed into
their musical agency. Assessment and awareness played a critical role in considering: should I act?
How will I act? And what is my course of action? These processes were seen to influence the
course of action, modes and methods of music learning. This awareness becomes a catalyst to
effectively act or direct the course of musical action; in other words, awareness leads to action. To
complete the loop, ‘reflexive awareness’ is a key component to articulating what the learner is
doing and why the learner is doing it. This information then drives the thinking of whether the
participant will continue to devote time, energy, and interest into continued musicking.
Essentially, I argue here that time acts as fuel for agency. Time within programming permits
ongoing experience, rather than fleeting encounters. This speaks to the experiential and active
domains that encompass musical participation (Karlsen 2011).
This understanding of temporal longitudinal musical experience as affording agency in
addition to engagement is paramount to the present research’s contribution to the under
standing of Karlsen’s (2011) sociologically inspired ‘musical agency’ and the relationship be
tween engagement and agency.
Furthermore, opportunities for participants to assess their abilities and to become aware of
their learning are crucial to influencing their actions and exercising agency within music
education programs. According to Giddens (1989, p. 12) agency refers ‘not just to the inten
tions of the actor in performing an action but rather to the pattern or flow of actions over time’.
Agency as a temporal construct leads us to question what the forward trajectory is that will keep
participants acting and keep them involved in musical participation? If engagement funda
mentals are present in programs and participants are given the opportunity to exercise agency
through their continued will, ability, and power to act, then agency in turn fuels heightened
engagement. Recognising the temporal qualities of agency as a series of recurring opportunities
for action that precipitate the need for learners to return to the situation allows us to understand
that environmental conditions and programming factors are critical components of optimal
engagement. What keeps learners returning to the conditions of learning depends on the
perception of their will, ability, and power to act.
500
Conclusion
This chapter has provided an overview of a study in which optimal engagement and enactment
of agency presented themselves for participants in several learning contexts that spanned dif
ferent generational cohorts. The findings revealed key fundamentals of programming factors
and environmental conditions that provide the foundation for optimal engagement over a
sustained period of time and thus afford opportunity for agency. Successful programs will ensure
that participants are able to experience these fundamentals, which reside within the critical
constructs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence.
These components can be experienced by participants in a single occurrence as an activity or
multiple times throughout an educational program. The development of agency, however,
requires participants to experience the will, ability, and power to act over an extended period of
time. I would suggest that the more opportunity participants have to experience and exercise
agency, the more it will serve to strengthen this will, ability, and power to act. This forward
momentum is the trajectory required to encourage lifelong musicking. Participants who ex
perience a strong sense of musical agency will thus continue to participate in programs by
devoting their time, energy and interest, as they are able. As educational leaders then provide
the appropriate programming factors and environmental conditions suggested for participants to
experience optimal engagement, these provisions act as affordances for exercising agency, and
the cyclical process is established and perpetuated.
1. How can these principles of experiencing engagement and agency serve a broader edu
cational goal in meeting needs in other school subjects and by extension, music education
programs outside of the classroom?
2. How can the enactment of agency in terms of will, ability and power for action explain and
account for educational support for traditionally marginalised learners?
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503
INDEX
Aboriginal 93n2; see also Indigenous American Council on Education 42

Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander People 82, Americanisation 43
93n2; Australian aboriginal schools 439 Anglo-America 43–6
acculturation 77, 438 Anglo-European cultural hegemony 335
Actor Network Theory 84, 399–400 anomie 312, 313, 316–20, 322–3
adolescence 68, 136, 211–3, 421–2, 484 anthropologist xxv, 209; digital 460
aesthetic cosmopolitanism 350 anthropology 83, 209, 297, 481; digital 456,
aesthetic(s) 55–6, 68, 98–9, 102, 139–40, 141, 177, 459–60
179–80, 221, 244, 253, 316, 321, 331, 350, 358, anti-colonialism 1, 23–5, 31–6; anti-colonial music
363n2, 372, 377–9, 381, 383, 385–8, 437, 452, education 23, 36; anti-colonialist 385
467, 471, 473–5; aesthetically 293; anti-racism 131
aestheticised 235 anti-sociology 178–9
African American 355, 358–9, 362, 363n4, Arendt, Hannah 170, 173, 175, 222, 224–5, 255n7
372, 480 Asia 131
age-appropriateness 481, 483 Asia-Pacific 124
agency 1, 31–4, 36, 72, 81, 83–4, 89–91, 172–3, assimilation xxiv, 30–1, 103, 362
180, 193, 209, 240, 260, 263, 288–98, 302, 304, Australia 82, 93n2, 121–32, 197, 200, 212; New
318, 341n1, 346, 352, 354–5, 367–8, 400, South Wales 206, 212; Parkes 418
411–2, 415, 419, 490–501, 499; children’s 387, Australian Music Examinations Board 199
433; collective 411, 492; cultural 338; Austria 100
dimensions of 292, 492, 498; disruptive 294;
human 118, 168, 174, 288–9, 494; individual ballet 69, 196
175, 293, 295, 492; learner 298; music teacher Bartók, Béla 100
290, 292–3; musical 330, 406, 407, 410–3, 415, belonging, sense of 47–9, 155, 439, 469, 493
490–2, 494–5, 498–501; pedagogical 67; social Berger, Peter 2, 381
407; student 125, 128, 387; teacher 288–9, 291, Bernstein, Basil 2–4, 138–40, 147, 148n1, 168,
294–5, 298 173, 180, 197, 221, 301–3, 318, 320; discursive
agency-oriented; cultural sociologists 407; models gaps 173, 180, 295
406; sociologists 407 Bhabha, Homi 235–7
agentic 180, 238, 264, 288–9, 292–3, 295, 298, Bieber, Justin 216
387, 498; action 298; agentically 295–6; beings Biesta, Gert 169–81; Good Education in an Age of
498; -change 291; engagement 493; learners Measurement 169; qualification 169–75, 179–81;
494, 498; music teacher 288, 295–6, 298; socialisation 169–76, 179–81; subjectificaiton
possibilities 297; processes 238; teacher 289, 297 169–75, 179–81
alienation 104, 157, 192, 193, 281, 312–3, 316–20, bildung 249, 252, 254n5, 255n7, 303; unbildung 249
322, 388, 432 Black musics 28–9
504
Index
Blair, Tony 224 case study 153, 157, 184, 198, 202, 206, 264–8,
blues 203, 278, 305, 349 479–81, 483–7, 495–6, 498
BoomTown 304 censorship 53, 63, 479, 484, 486–7; self- 62–3
Bosnia-Herzegovina 338 Central Europe 100
Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Education 2, 44 childhood 75, 136, 144, 189, 211, 314, 340, 382,
Bourdieu, Pierre 2, 21, 44, 67–70, 73, 75, 77, 393–6, 398–9; early 68, 185–6, 398, 400, 402–3,
78n3, 138, 168, 175, 177–81, 184–7, 191, 193, 438, 484; early childhood education 397, 401,
197, 224, 232, 235, 255n7, 258–62, 263, 265–9, 403; early childhood educators 402; early
271, 343–8, 350–2, 275, 290, 301, 303, 318–9, childhood professionals 404; experience 191;
406–8, 413, 415, 419, 463, 467–8, 482; music 397–8; music education 394, 396–7,
Bourdieusian 68, 73, 179, 237, 258–61, 268, 401–3; music education scholarship 398; music
346, 469, 472; Distinction 179, 235; masculine educators 401–2; music scholars 397; practice
domination 343, 345–6, 348, 350–2; post- 402; sociology of 396; studies 393, 396, 399
Bourdieusian 179; see also habitus; capital; Chile 136–48
class; field Christian 26, 222, 253, 422; Christianity 46
Brazil 53, 172, 175, 469; Brazilian 115, 440; Belo class 68, 72, 186, 235, 260, 319, 346, 348;
Horizonte 113; Brazilian higher music see also Bourdieu
education courses 108 classical music 68, 74, 130, 167, 179, 190, 202–3,
284–5, 367, 371, 410; artists 75; culture of 68,
Callaghan, James 248 72, 77; education 67–9, 75, 77, 334;
Canada 25, 27–9, 82, 93n2, 93n3, 367, 369, 371–2, engagement in 73; events 74; field 68;
374, 377, 418, 420, 422–3, 428, 438, 495; instruction 67, 78n1; lifestyle 68; nature of 74;
British Columbia 81, 83, 89; Canadian 28, 82, Ottoman 103; paradigm of 70; performer 259;
93n3, 172, 216, 367, 372; Ontario 226, 418, teaching tradition 304; tradition 74; Turkish
420–1, 423, 428, 495; Toronto 366–7, 99–102; ubiquity 34; Western European 25–9,
369–71, 372–3 31, 34, 129, 185–8, 190–1, 193, 221, 233,
Canadian Mental Health Association 313 235–6, 243, 285, 294–5, 304, 331–2, 334–7,
capital 184, 186, 221, 235, 238, 243–4, 258–71, 340, 349–50, 352n1, 352n2, 414; world of 73
303, 306, 467–8, 472; academic 351, 467; classical musician(s) 67–9, 244, 331
accumulate 269; accumulating 269; code(s) 139, 188, 197–9, 232, 318, 334, 354, 438;
accumulation 265, 270; bestowed-giftgiving behavioural 67, 334; chasm 202; clash 204–6;
265; bonding 467; bonding social 469, 471; collection 4; cultural 67, 69, 167; disjunction
Bourdieu’s theory of 268; Bourdieusian 202; distinctions 197; divide 197; division 196;
approach to 268; Bourdieusian conception of elite 197–8, 200–1, 203–6; integrating 3;
261; bridging social 469, 471; conceptions of knower 197–8, 201, 203–6; knowledge 197,
268; career-positioning 265; collective nature of 199, 204; legitimation 197, 206; of conduct 438;
262; community building 265, 267; of representation 385; relativist 198; restricted
configurations of 270; cultural 68–9, 73, 76–7, 148n1; serial 4; shift 200; specialisation 197,
125, 139, 179–80, 185–6, 188–91, 193, 233–4, 198; subleties 68; tensions 204, 206;
238, 244, 260, 263, 265–6, 268, 270, 293–4, underlying 206
301, 304, 319, 331, 350–2, 415, 467–9, 471–2, cognitive imperialism 27, 32, 34
475, 493; decisional 261, 263; diversity of 268; Cold War 384; post- 227
economic 125, 186, 188–90, 260, 266–7, 270, collaborative video logs (CVL) 446–54
301, 319, 468; emotional 259–61, 264–70; Colombia 233, 480
exchange 270; generate 269; habitus as a form of colonialism 1, 23–6, 30–6, 36n2, 68; external 24; in
70; human 234, 241, 244, 259, 261; human music education 24; internal 24–8, 30–1, 34;
capital production 233, 238; inspiration forming settler 25–7, 29–30, 82
267; mobilisation of 271; mobilising 269; commercial music industry 129, 321
musical 128; operationalising 270; professional communities of practice 298, 448, 450, 464;
259, 261–70; sense of 265; social 87, 125, 186, convergent 458; formal music education 456;
259–62, 263, 265–7, 269–70, 291, 301, 366, offline 461; online 461, 464
463, 467–9, 471, 473; sub-cultural 407; community music 366–9, 371–3, 397, 469;
symbolic 69, 186, 260, 266, 268, 347, 351, 467; activities 366; as a discourse 367–9, 371–2; as a
theorising 270; weak 261; western cultural 320; tool for social development 367, 370; discursive
see also Bourdieu formation of 373; education 1; educator 367;
capitalism 24, 33, 175, 210, 251–3, 312, 368 engagement 238; history 368; initiative 495;
Carter, Jimmy 248
505
Index
lessons 372; practices 469; scholars 373; school(s) binds 295; structurings 295; subjective 157;
366–73; school teacher 372 transactional 157; underpinnings 293; varied 34;
Community of Practice (CoP) Theory 443–5, Western 27, 30, 34; Western musical 25–6
449–54, 461–2, 464 ethnicity 1, 46–7, 97, 121, 130–1, 175, 319, 343,
Complexity Theory 399 370, 412, 414, 468
Comte, August 2, 354 ethnocentric 26–7, 31, 33–4
country music 305, 349, 410, 414 ethnocentrism 26–7, 34, 36n5
Creativity, Agency, and Democratic Research in ethnography 460, 464, 481; cyber 460;
Music Education (CADRE) 419 netnography 460; online 460–1; virtual 460
Critical Race Theory 32, 82, 368 ethnomusicology xxv, 297, 335, 347, 399
Critical Theory 368 eudaimonism 225
cultural omnivorousness 406, 408, 413–5 Europe 45, 97–8, 249, 251, 354, 357, 362, 377;
culturally responsive 30, 44, 128, 131 European colonialism 24, 26, 33; European
culture history 248, 377; European nationalist music
culture bearer(s) 88, 92 98–9; European nationalist thinkers 98;
European sociology 354; medieval 102; social
Danish Rhythmic Music Conservatory 304 democrat governments in 248
Darwinist ideology 223 European Association of Conservatories 306
decolonise 45, 82; decolonial theory 21;
decolonisation 32, 53–4, 130; decolonising 92 facism 322
Dewey, John 103, 168, 224, 228, 400 fandom 215–6, 419–20, 428
dialogue 82, 108–11, 114, 117–8, 123, 130, 206, feminism 354–5
215, 248, 336, 382, 385, 439, 444–5, 449, 462; feminist 356, 360, 363n1; academics 361;
asynchronous 446; classroom 204; Bourdieusian 260; debate 345; ideas 262;
transcultural 335 practices 262; scholars 401; scholarship 258;
discourse community 479, 481–2, 487 sociological perspective 123; theorists 345;
distributive rules 3 theory 346, 361; understandings 395
diversity 41–2, 47–9, 130, 167, 201, 409, 434–5, field 68–70, 73–7, 181, 184–7, 193, 197–8, 237,
438, 440; as universal project 48; cultural 40, 259–62, 264–6, 268–70, 302–5;
433; dialectics of 48; epistemic 130; ethnic 101; see also Bourdieu
gender 131; issues 471; musical 197, 228, 406; of Finland; Helsinki 412
capitals 268; of music education 49; of musical First Nations 21, 81, 83, 88, 92, 93n1, 93n2, 93n3,
practices 397, 437; of nations xxv; of 130; Anishinabek 82–3, 85, 90; Dane-Zaa 83,
perspectives 48; of research cultures 49; of social 86, 89; Esquimalt 83; Gitxsan 83, 85, 89;
groups xxv; of worldviews 48; religious 101 Haudenosaunee 82; Hul’qumi’num 86, 88;
doxa 301–4, 306 Kanien’kehá:ka 83, 85; Nêhiýaw 82–3, 85;
Durkheim, Émile 2, 74–5, 98, 168, 317–8; Nisga’a 88; Nlaka’pamux 90; Nuu-chah-nulth
Durkheimian 98; The Division of Labour 317 83, 85, 87; Secwépemc 83, 85, 87, 90; Songhees
83; Stó:lō 83; Syilx 83, 87; Tla’amin 83, 85;
Each One Teach One 468, 472, 474 see also Indigenous
El Sistema 301, 332, 374; in Canada 374; in the folk music 28, 99, 101, 103, 141, 142, 144, 145,
United States 374 147, 203, 304, 331, 349, 371, 378, 410; Chinese
Elvis (Presley) 418–28 56, 62–3; improvisation 382; non-Western
empirical 4; conditions 414; data 259; examples 352n2; Norwegian 352n1; Taiwanese 56;
467, 470–1; information 167; interest 415; Turkish 99–101, 103; US 36n9, 36n10
investigations 413–4; material 350–1, 412; folkbildning 467–9, 472, 475
methods 460; research 139, 406; study 344; folklore 54, 140, 148n1
work 349 formal education 98, 102–3, 128, 192, 403, 468;
enlightenment 225, 368, 496; post- 225; subject settings 495
408; The Enlightenment 45, 222, 293, 408 formal music 443; education 162, 184–5, 187–90,
epistemology(ies) 25, 27, 34–5, 83, 292, 295, 361; 382, 425, 456, 458, 461; learning 189; learning
alternative 297; beliefs 290; concern 369; environments 1; settings 469; training 419
discourses 288, 298; Eurocentric 27; Indigenous Foucault, Michel 168, 180, 248–50, 254, 328,
82; lenses 82; multiple 32, 34; multiplicity of 26; 367–9, 373, 374, 435; The Birth of Biopolotics
musical 27, 298; non-Eurocentric 27; paradigms 248; disciplinary power 435; discourse 180,
289; perspectives 294–5, 297; privilege 328; 368–9, 373; Foucaultian 238, 248;
questions 297; sense 178; status 381; structural governmentality 248, 384; knowledge-power
506
Index
nexus 373; problematising theory 368; reason 250, 252–4, 254n1; of teacher-directed
subjectivation 180–1 learning 127; of technical rationality 251–2; of
France 36n3, 177 Western art music 196; resistance to 62;
Freire, P 108–18, 178, 296, 469, 471; scientific 384; structures of 351; Western
conscientisation 296, 471; Freirean 108–11 cultural 105; westernising 101
functionalism 4 Heidegger, Martin 255n7
hidden curriculum 185, 300–8
gaze(s) 4, 5, 33; analytical 347; sociological 1, 138 hierarchical knowledge 3, 200
gender 40, 44, 82, 88, 101, 121, 130, 175, 216, higher popular music education 219, 221, 227
258–62, 269, 306, 313, 327, 343–8, 351, 354–6, Hindemith, Paul 100
358, 361–2, 396, 419–20, 434, 437; diversity hip-hop; culture 468, 471; teaching 472
131; division of labour 401; dominance 349; homophobia 322, 360–3
domination 345–7, 351; heteronormative Hong Kong 52–63; Cantonese 54; Hong Kong
gender roles 155; inequalities 13, 258; mixed Special Administration Region 54–5, 58, 60–1
gender groups 436; racialised 355; relations Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers 58
343–4, 346–7, 352; segregation 345; Hong Kong Schools’ Music and Speech Festival 62
stereotypes 350 horizontal knowledge structures 3–4
General Certificate of Secondary Education humanising education 108–11, 113, 115
(GCSE) 277, 280–1 Hungary 100
geolinguistic 44, 46
geopolitics 1, 123; geopolitical 24, 40, 44, 46, 340 identities in music 409; see also music in identities
Germany 100, 284 identity 1, 23, 28, 42, 47–8, 71, 75, 81, 83–4,
Ghana 23, 26, 29; Ghanian 23 88–9, 91–2, 97, 137–8, 140, 157, 211, 233–4,
Giddens, Anthony 2, 288–91, 296, 318, 406–9, 241, 307, 323, 408–9, 419, 426, 439, 452–3;
491–2, 500; discursive consciousness 295–6; building 434; Caribbean 159; collective 412,
knowledgeability 289, 291, 296, 411, 416 492; colonial 53; cultural 41, 47, 62, 92, 238,
global development 2 408, 418, 434–5, 438; ethnic 440; formation 47,
globalisation 1, 41–5, 47–8, 56–8, 104, 159, 161, 290, 427–8, 434; gender 155, 159; Grenadian
320, 464; globalised 108; globalising 312; 158; Indigenous 88–9; markers 264; musical
globalism 105 415, 418–9, 428, 447; musician 2; national 1,
Gramsci, Antonio 100, 468; Gramscian 468 52–5, 57–60, 63, 106, 433–5; Palestinian 340;
Green, Lucy 2, 112–3, 115–7, 122–3, 125–30, 132, performer 76; personal 209, 409, 439; pre-
156–7, 162, 172, 202–3, 284, 301, 303–4 colonial 53; politics 32–4, 233; professional 67,
Grenada 153–62 75, 233, 263, 296; religious 160; self- 409, 412,
415, 449, 492; sexual 1, 361; social 59, 153, 428;
habitus 67–71, 73, 77, 136, 147–8, 185–7, 191, structures 233; subjective 77; teacher 44
193, 259, 261, 263–5, 268–70, 285, 301–6, illusio 301–3, 306
345–6, 352, 419; acquisition of 69; agentic imperialism 24, 26, 104; cognitive 26–7, 32, 34
capacity of 180; analysis of 68; Bourdieu’s inclusion
theory of 67, 184; collective 186; concept of Incorporated Society of Musicians 306
138–9, 180, 184, 345–6; conceptual tools of Indigeneity 5, 21, 24–5, 30–2, 34
268; cultural 68; Dekel’s 71; disrupting Indigenous 24–5, 82, 93n2; bodies 24, 35;
embedded 291; educators’ musical 128; effects Cherokee 85; communities 81; concerns 84;
of 346; embodied 68–9; individual 351; content 83; cosmologies 82–3; cultural
institutional 244, 259; manifestation 71; musical meanings 81; cultural practices 81, 91, 92;
68, 187–8, 191, 193, 258; musicianship 74; of culture(s) 21, 32, 87, 90; epistemologies 25, 82;
classical music education 75; of classical experience(s) 82, 130; First Nations 21, 81, 83,
musicians 69; professional 292; teacher 290; 88, 90, 93n1, 93n2, 130; governance 83; groups
Western classical 190; see also Bourdieu 30, 31, 395, 439; Inuit 93n2, 93n3; knowledge(s)
habitus-capital-field interplay 301, 304, 306 84; land(s) 24; land claims 25, 29; language 32;
heavy metal music 203–4, 304, 349, 414 laws 25; Métis 83, 93n2; misrepresentation of
hegemony 2, 43, 45, 53, 56, 60, 104, 106, 250, ideas 93n1; music(s) 26, 28, 30–1, 81, 91–2;
275–6, 285, 303–5, 308, 332, 334, 340, 471; musical expressions 91; ontological perspectives
Anglo-European cultural 335; cultural 1, 26, 82; ontologies 82; pedagogies 83; pedagogical
121, 333; discursive 302; economic 384; in perspectives 92, 131; people(s) 25, 28–30, 81–2,
music education 40; issues of 43, 49; Kemalist 93; perspective(s) 82, 90, 92; philosophies 32;
98, 101–2; managerialist 305; of instrumental populations 28; practice(s) 21; religion 32;
507
Index
research methodologies 94; research participants localisation 56, 58; localised; localism 105; locality
81, 91; research partners 93; researchers 81, 83; 25, 46–8
sciences 32; scholars 81, 85, 91; -settler relations Lorde, Audre 354–63
82; social practices 81; societies 85; sociological Luckman, Thomas 2
conceptions 81; sociologists 82; students 27;
studies 83; understandings 83, 85, 91; voices 25; makam 103
ways of being 130; ways of knowing 32; Malaysia 53
worldviews 83–4; writers 88; see also First marginalisation 307, 319; invisible 320; of Black
Nations; Inuit; Métis musics 28; of free improvisation 386; of
informal music; education 1, 162, 173, 175, 189, Indigenous musics 28; of knowledge 43; of
382, 456; language 204; learning 131, 167, 173, musical practices 473; of young children 393–5,
443, 495–6; pedagogy 113, 117, 121–2, 130; 398, 401, 403–4; processes of 320; social 320
practices 419 marginalised; aesthetic learning 474; groups 109,
institutionalisation xxiv, 177; of popular music 348 370; music education 45; peoples 322;
instrumental pedagogy 77, 128 perspective 368; questions 252; global regions
International Contemporary Ensemble 237 43; youth 314
international music education 43–7, 148n2 marginalising knowledge 41
internationalisation 1, 21, 40–4, 46–7, 49; of music Marx, Karl 2, 153, 175, 177, 316, 355, 368;
education 40, 45–7, 49 Marxism 4, 355; Marxist 247–8
internationalising music education 43, 45 master-apprentice 71, 451
internationalism 53 Mead, George Herbert 2, 356
Iran 436; Persian 436 meşk 103–4
Ireland 184, 190; Irish; Northern Ireland 220, 338; Middle East 131, 435
Republic of Ireland 187 modes of interrogation 3, 139
Islam 97–8, 436; Islamic 97, 101; Islamic music motivation 55, 73, 87, 203, 498; for learning 189;
437; Islamic world 437; Islamism 102; Muslim gendered 262; intrinsic 494; learner 493;
434, 436–7 pupil 123
ISME (International Society for Music Education) multicultural music education 148n2
44, 48 Music Educators National Conference
ISPME (International Society for the Philosophy of (MENC) 462
Music Education) 44 music in identities 409; see also identities in music
Israel 67–8, 70, 76, 78n2, 336, 341n4; Israeli music pedagogy 77, 132, 440; instrumental classical
conservatories 78n1; Jerusalem 338 77; informal 113, 116–7, 121–2, 130–2;
Israeli-Palestinian conflict 334 informal learning 115
music teacher education 128, 137, 140–2, 145
jazz 144, 167, 200–1, 279, 280, 281, 304–5, 331, music transmission; aural-based 202;
349, 372; arranging 203; performance 203 generational 1
Journal of Music, Technology, and Education 458 musical tourism 26, 29, 34–5, 36n7, 36n12,
36n13, 437
Kelman’s Social Influence Theory 419 Musical Futures 121–7, 129–32, 278, 279, 495;
Kemalism 102 Australia 122, 124, 129; Canada 495;
Kenya 26 International 124
Kosovo 338 musical gentrification 169, 179–81, 344, 347–8,
351, 413–5
Latin America 43, 45, 109, 141 musical practice(s) 28, 34, 80, 112–3, 116–7, 139,
learner autonomy 494 141, 187, 212, 215, 298, 328, 348, 358, 370,
Legitimation Code Theory 196–8; 373, 396, 404, 420, 428, 434; community-
specialisation 197 engaged 366; communities of 419–20; diverse
Levinas, Emmanuel 170–1, 173, 175 406; diversity of 437; experimental 386;
LGBTQ+; issues 472; rights 395; students 307–8 informal 419; marginalisation of 28, 473; non-
linguistic(s) 52, 55, 185, 260, 432, 435, 483; formal 172; non-Western 26; oppresive 328;
dominance 220 unjust 328; Western 26
literacy 102, 112, 125; cultural 169; musical 112, musical taste 114, 131, 136, 188–9, 407–8, 410
141, 145, 197, 201–2, 204, 206; notational 27, musical values 184–5, 191, 193, 281, 284;
497; orality-literacy dualism 103; political 169; dominant 184; hegemonic 289; ideologies of
preparation 141; technological 446 186, 193; reproduction of 185, 193
Little Mix 213 Musicians without Borders 338
508
Index
musicology 137, 140, 199, 202, 288, 293, 296–7, music instruction 67, 77; critical 115, 226, 288,
347, 399, 416n1 295–6, 297, 298, 468; culture of 44; deep-
rooted 127; deliberate 35; dual 78; educational
National Association of Music Educators 71; folk 279; formal 202; Freire’s 109; Freire’s
(NAfMe) 462 autonomy 113; Freire’s critical 118; Freire’s
National Curriculum (UK) 277, 281–2, 285, 381 dialogical 118; Freire’s love, faith and dignity
nationalisation 56, 58, 63; nationalising music 113; Green’s informal music 112–3, 115–7, 122;
education 45; nationalism 43, 55, 57–8, 167, ideological structuring of 295; IKEA 474,
209; nationalist 49, 99; European 98–9; 476n1; inclusive 129, 331, 440; Indigenous 83;
nationalistic 28, 99; nationality 53, 130 informal music 121–2, 128, 130–2, 172–3, 202;
Native American 29, 31; see also Indigenous instrumental 128; instrumental classical music
neocolonial 26–7; countries 25 77; intellectual dynamics of 402; intricacies of
neocolonialism 26, 36n15 402; intuitive 298; knowledge code 204; music
neocolonisation 53–4 77, 115, 132, 371, 440; music education 77;
neoliberalism 108–10, 121–3, 247–54, 303, 305, non-formal 474; notation-based 103; of the
327; ideology of 223 teacher 439; piano 379; practices of 69; punk
neo-Marxian 21 226; Rancière’s myth of 176, 178; subject 280;
Netherlands/Holland 338; Dutch army 338 symbolic violence of 388; traditional 129;
New World Symphony 233–4, 236–8 universalist 27
Nigeria 26; Nigerian 314 People’s Republic of China 52–6, 58–9, 61, 63,
non-formal education institutions 78n2 64n1, 274; Chinese 53–64
non-formal music 172 performativity 244, 278, 283, 292, 294, 419;
non-Western music(s) 25–8, 35, 36n8, 91, 201 agenda 280; embodied 418–9; terrors
North America 25, 45, 243, 314, 356, 362, 368, of 125
370, 373, 423–4; universities 464 PISA (Program for International Student
North Macedonia 338 Assessment) 45
Norway 305–6, 343, 347–8, 414–5; Oslo 412 Plan B, Ben Drew 313, 316
pluralism 104; comparative 102; cultural 357;
Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) 277, 285 pedagogical 128
Ontario Elvis Festival 422 pop music/popular music 31, 56, 123, 129, 131,
ontological gerrymandering (OG) 232 139, 145, 175, 179–80, 200–1, 205, 212–3, 220,
oppression 4–5, 32, 109, 343, 436; collective 363; 227–8, 284, 304–5, 347–50, 352, 372, 413, 415,
dehumanising 109; instrument of 178; perceived 488; academisation of 344, 347, 414; advocates
336; racial 359 130; aural-based music transmission strategies of
orality 102–3, 140, 141 202; business skills 219; culture 224, 387; dancing
144; genres 203, 347, 414; genderfication of 344;
Palestinian Foundation 334 gentrification of 348, 351; grassroots 219; growth
Palestinian Ministry of Education 339 of 220; in Chile 144; in Grenada 154; in school
Palestinian Music Academy 340 281; institutionalisation of 348; instruments 129;
Palestinian Music Centre 334 learning 128; -making 203; pedagogies 196;
Palestinian Union for Social Workers and performance 219; practices of 221; production
Psychologists 339 219; songwriting 219; styles 348–9, 414–5;
Palestine 334, 336–9; Palestinian(s) 335–7, 340; uptake of 414; value of 295; Western 29;
Palestinian Boycott movement 336; Palestinian workforce 129
identity 340; Palestinian Territories 334 popular culture 2, 61, 81, 179, 213, 220, 305, 418,
Parsons, Talcott 2, 84 427, 453
Passeron, Jean-Claude 168, 181, 186, 260, 301, popular music education 2, 123, 129–30, 196–7;
303, 319, 482 higher 219, 221, 227
patriarchal 355, 357, 361; societal structures 401 popular music learning 128
patriarchy 328, 356; hetero- 355–8, 360–1; popular musicians 112; professional 220;
racist 361 student 206
patriotic music 28 popular musicianship 197
pedagogy 2, 23, 67, 69, 88, 92, 102–3, 106, 112, popular pegagogy 2
131–2, 140, 187, 204–6, 227, 293, 295, 356, positionality 25, 32–4, 131, 156–7, 220; politics
403–4, 463, 476; alternative 173; anarchist 226; of 356
apprenticeship 71; Biesta’s interruption 174–5; postcolonial 26–7; literature 221; theory(ies) 32,
-centred 402; changing culture of 43; classical 471; violence 225
509
Index
post-colonialism 1 Self-Determination Theory (SDT) 491, 493–4

power relation(s) 23, 33, 35–6, 108–12, 116, 118, sexism 306, 361
173, 180, 235, 254, 258, 275, 296, 308, 345, sexual discrimination 306
366–7, 373, 432 sexual orientation 175, 306–7
power structure(s) 32–3, 45, 49, 68, 70, 181, Singapore 53, 58
308, 396 Small, Christopher 2, 328, 330–3, 336, 339–40,
power structures 32, 181, 308, 396; dominant 33; 341n2, 408, 411, 439, 490, 492; Music, Society,
hegemonic 68; hidden 45, 49; school 70 Education 330–2; Towards a Philosophy of Music
powerful knowledge 109, 111, 113, 117–8, 319 Education 330
Problematising Theory 368 soca music 153–62
Progressive Methods in Popular Music Education 227 social justice 30, 44, 52, 121, 226, 268, 292, 318,
Progressivist Theory 368 366, 371, 373–4, 472, 474; discussions of 331;
Psy 215 foundations 131; in music education 132, 298;
punk 226–8, 305, 349; beliefs 228; pedagogy 226; issues of 127; The Oxford Handbook of Social
punks 226; scholar(s) 226–8; scholarship 226 Justice in Music Education 331
social process(es) xxv, 21, 156, 238, 403, 428
R&B 305, 349 social reproduction 2, 77, 168, 185, 190, 193, 196,
race 1, 33, 44, 88, 131, 301, 306, 308, 319, 354–6, 258, 263
358, 360–2, 363n3, 367, 396, 419 socio-cultural background 136, 138, 142, 144,
racism 30, 301, 303, 308, 359–63, 396; 145, 147
internalised 361 sociolinguistic(s) 46, 479, 481, 483–4, 487
Ranciére, Jacques 169, 173–9, 181; The Ignorant sociological constructs 1, 458, 495
Schoolmaster 176; The Philosopher and His sociological critique xxv
Poor 177 sociological imagination 4, 21
rap music 339, 434, 449; gangsta 487; rapper(s) 1, sociological theory 177, 245, 312–3, 347, 395;
313–5, 469, 471 Bourdieu’s 21
Reagan, Ronald 248, 363 sociology of music education 1–5, 40, 44, 81, 92,
reciprocity 41, 81, 83–4, 86–8, 91, 403, 439–40, 114, 118, 169, 173, 178, 300, 313, 328, 360,
461, 473 396, 458
recolonisation 53–4, 59 South Africa 26, 29
reflexive awareness 491–2, 500 South Korea 53
reggae 387 Spain 45, 334; Salamanca 433
register 479, 481–3, 487 structural binds 292, 295–8
residential schools 27, 29 structure-agency; axis 407; debate 368; dialectic
resistance 31–4, 36, 53–4, 59, 211, 228, 236–9, 288, 292, 298
245, 254, 340, 346, 434; internal resistance 450; subjectification 169–76, 179–80, 181n1, 236–8,
participant 496; to change 128; to hegemony 240, 245, 253
62, 105 Sweden 304, 309–10, 433, 435, 440, 470, 474–5;
rock; band 127, 475; band instrumentation 127; Gothenburg 467–8, 470; Malmö 467–70,
guitarist 400; music 203, 278, 279, 280, 281, 473–5; Stockholm 412–3, 467–8, 470–1
304–5, 349, 387, 400, 410, 468; pop-rock symbolic power 181, 343–5, 350–1
aesthetics 350; progressive 144 symbolic violence 127, 168, 319, 343–8,
Royal Northern College of Music 190 351–2, 388
Royal Opera House 219 symbolically violent practices 275; see also Bourdieu
Royal Shakespeare Company 219
Rwanda taboo 53, 479, 481, 483–4, 486–7
Taiwan 53, 56, 58, 61, 63; Taiwanese 54
Said, Edward 235, 334; Edward Said National teacher training 75, 100, 102, 140–2, 468
Conservatory of Music 341n3, 341n7 theoretical-empirical understanding 415
Scandinavian; dance band music 305; Samí schools Theory of Practice 266; see also Bourdieu
439; youth culture 468 Time Perspective Theory 84
school music 127, 130, 132, 330, 463; access to Toronto Conservatory of Music 371
196; analysis of 288; classrooms 1; curricula 28; Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of
disengagement 127; education 26–7, 100, Canada 93n3
121–2, 197–8, 206, 355–6, 358, 433; in Turkey 97–100, 102, 104–6
Australia 126, 196; pedagogical tools 127; tween(s) 211–2, 214–5, 217; tweenager(s) 211–7
position of 199; teachers 56
510
Index
United Kingdom 122–4, 126, 129, 190, 212–3, Wenger’s Communities of Practice Theory 461
219–20, 222–3, 227–8, 259, 270, 277, 320, West Bank 334, 337, 340, 341n4
377–8, 380–1, 386, 393, 404, 435; Birmingham Western art music 100, 127, 168, 196–7, 201–2,
278, 279–80; Britain 52, 222, 228, 314, 323n2, 204, 228, 281, 285, 292, 294–7, 340, 371–2,
414; England 123, 212, 219–23, 275–7, 279–80, 374, 496; elitism 373; hegemonic discourses of
282–3, 285, 313, 368–9; Essex 314; Great 293; hegemony of 196; instrumental
Britain 248, 306; higher education 219, 223, performance skills 220; performance of 199;
227; higher music education 219, 221; London practices of 399; study of 199–200, 202; values
219, 278–80, 314–5, 379–80; Manchester 190; of 292
Northern Ireland 220, 338; Scotland 220; Western Europe 26–8, 41, 43–6, 69, 83, 90–1,
Wales 220 100; culture 371
United States 2, 25, 27–30, 36n7, 123–4, 126, 233, Whiteness 28, 35, 82, 356, 358
320, 367, 369, 374, 418, 438; American 276, Whiteness Theory 82
356, 480; American citizenship 358; American world music 27, 167, 331, 348
Dream 318; American music teachers 358; Wright, E. O 4, 313
popular American culture 418; Florida 233, 242; Wright, Ruth 2, 80–1, 114, 172–4; Sociology and
Oregon 233 Music Education 2, 16n2, 44, 312; Sociology and
Universidade de Brasília 113, 115, 172 Music Education: Towards a Sociology of
Integration 173
virtual community(ies) 46, 234
vlogging 445–8, 450, 452 xenophobia 322
Vygotsky, Lev 493
Zuckmayer, Eduard 100
Weber, Max 2, 46, 84, 153, 248–52, 254n6, 419;
varieties of charisma 419
511

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK TO

SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC EDUCATION

The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education is a comprehensive, authoritative, and

Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos is associate professor of music education at the University of

Patrick Schmidt is professor of music education at Western University, Canada.

Edited by Ruth Wright, Geir Johansen,

ISBN: 978-1-138-58636-9 (hbk)

1 Music education and the colonial project: Stumbling toward

2 Sociological perspectives on internationalisation and music education 40

3 Challenges of the post-colonisation process in Hong Kong schools: In

4 Habitual play: Body, cultural sacredness, and professional

5 Toward a sociology of music education informed by

6 Nation, memory, and music education in the republic of Turkey:

7 In search of a potentially humanising music education: Reflections

8 Questioning convergences between neoliberal policies, politics, and

9 Socio‐cultural background and teacher education in Chile:

11 Music education as qualification, socialisation, and subjectification? 169

12 Fish out of water? Musical backgrounds, cultural capital,

13 A field divided: How Legitimation Code Theory reveals problems

14 Music and the social imaginaries of young people 209

15 Doublespeak in higher music education in England: Culture,

16 Multiple hierarchies as change-innovation strategy: Ambivalence

17 Neoliberalism as political rationality: A call for heretics 247

18 Mobilising capitals in the creative industries: An investigation of

19 Curriculum and assessment in the secondary school in

20 Structure and agency in music education 288

21 The hidden curriculum in higher music education 300

22 Countering anomie and alienation: Music education as

23 Art-music-pedagogy: A view from a geopolitical cauldron 330

24 Music education, genderfication, and symbolic violence 343

25 Reading Audre Lorde: Black lesbian feminist disidentifications

26 Engaging contemporary ideas of community music through

27 Cage(D): Creativity and ‘the contemporary’ in music

28 Towards a music education for maturing, never arriving 393

29 From parallel musical identities to cultural omnivorousness

30 Hunka, hunka burning love: Vernacular music education 418

31 Challenges in music and inclusive education: Diversity,

32 Collaborative video logs: Virtual communities of practice

33 Digital sociology, music learning, and online communities

34 The creative youth club: Double features of organic

35 Intergenerational transmission of music listenership values in five US

36 Engagement and agency in music education across the lifespan 490

9.1 Repertoires from university context 146

3.1 Perceptions towards Learning and Teaching of Putonghua Song

Christopher Cayari (he/they; Twitter: DrCayari) is an assistant professor of music education

focuses on mediated musical performance, YouTube, informal music learning, virtual

Renée Crawford is a senior lecturer with extensive experience as a teacher educator,

Marion Haak-Schulenburg is a community musician, music educator, and researcher in the

Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos (Editor) serves as associate professor at the University of

Alexandra Kertz-Welzel, is professor, chair of music education, and currently executive

Patrick Schmidt (Editor) is professor of music education at Western University, Canada.

Garth Stahl is an associate professor at the School of Education at the University of

Øivind Varkøy is professor in music education at Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo,

What is the sociology of music education?

The field of sociology of music education in the twenty-first century

Circulation of knowledge is different in each of these discourses. Horizontal discourse,

Advancement in such knowledge structures therefore happens by the development of new

elaborating a systematic diagnosis and critique of the world as it exists; envisioning

Nurturing clear-sighted understandings of what it would take to create social institutions