A Comparison of “Popular Music Pedagogy” Discourses (original) (raw)
Related papers
Perspectives of Popular Music Pedagogy in Practice: An Introduction
Journal of Popular Music Studies, 2009
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum We've all been there. Whether it's your daily gig in a classroom or a special presentation, we know that the simple act of playing popular music in a formal educational setting sparks new levels of interest among students of any age. For this reason, popular music is an appealing device that educators often use to help students connect what they already know to new concepts and ideas. Facilitating links between new and familiar concepts is a fundamental process for learning, which lies at the heart of any pedagogical practice. But the quality of learning depends on the depth of these links. If educators simply use popular music as an attention-grabber and fail to engage students in the music itself, a student's connections remain limited. Once teachers have drawn a student's attention with popular music, what do we do with it? A deeper engagement with popular music-its performances, sounds, industries, cultures, traditions, histories, technologies, social spaces, forms, and meanings-offers students and educators so much more. Academic institutions increasingly accept the validity of popular music studies. As the membership of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US branch demonstrates, faculty in disciplinary fields that once frowned upon scholarship surrounding popular culture increasingly accept popular music content in courses, syllabi, and even degree programs. Many collegiate and university-based departments even support tenured faculty who explore the history and culture of popular music with their students and publish research that speaks to critical issues in many fields of study. Certainly this acceptance is not without limits. Many continue to question the "seriousness" of popular music courses, portray them as "fun" hobby-like diversions, or reluctantly embrace them as enrollment generators. While courses that focus on popular music as a primary component may have high student appeal in high
During the past several years a variety of issues related to multiculturalism in music education have been extensively discussed in literature. Music educators, researchers and scholars have successfully convinced themselves that the musical sounds created by the planet's human inhabitants have a right to exist in our classroom. However, many theorists tend to disregard the fact that multiculturalism suggests the multiplicity of the instructional approaches, as well. The diversity of music teaching practices, which constitutes a notable social and cultural phenomenon, has not been perceived as a multicultural issue, and has been excluded from the discussion (Sprikut & Bartel, 2010, 29th ISME World Conference, Beijing). Not infrequently, internationally trained music educators are culturally isolated from the music education mainstream in host societies around the world. While professional flexibility is commonly perceived as a necessary prerequisite for a successful pedagogical adaptation process, internationally educated music teachers often seek to preserve and reaffirm their pedagogical cultural identity. This discrepancy not infrequently results in their inability (and reluctance) to participate on an equal basis in both the educational discourse and educational process. In this paper, I discuss certain aspects of culture that pertain to the realm of music pedagogy, and explore some of the factors that further the process of cultural separation. In order to find a common ground for the discussion, I offer a working definition of music pedagogic culture. The aim is to facilitate meaningful democratic dialogue, which would assist in bridging the gap between diverse music pedagogic traditions and practices that coexist in a contemporary society. The paper concludes with the suggestion that deeper understanding of the cultural factors and processes that shape music pedagogic practices will greatly benefit not only music education profession but also a society as a whole.
Editorial Introduction: Popular Music in Education, Special Issue
This Popular Music in Education (PME) special issue includes contributions discussing developments in several countries, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Singapore and the United States. It covers a range of approaches, exploring technology, hermeneutics, theory, guitars, jazz, songwriting, DIY/DIWO, politics and music industry perspectives. As music institutions have increasingly opened their doors to popular music, this has inevitably led to a greater level of interest in how you teach and learn popular music. PME is presenting a louder presence within Popular Music Studies (PMS), as the ground prepared by PMS has made space for a wave of new PME courses and students to sweep through educational contexts. In the wake of such expansion, this special issue intends to promote a further understanding of pedagogical best practice. The development of PME is something that is long overdue, and that seems likely to greatly expand and enrich the frame of PMS.
Abstract We offer a multi-voiced performance autoethnography where contemporary music education practices are informed and imbued with the voices of teachers and learners. By dialogically and musically engaging with the very people who live, make music, and engage with learners in music classrooms, we promote contemporary qualitative forms of research and the (re)conception of a sociology of music education as a political and an ethical construction that needs to be grounded in serving communities of music practitioners. Through a pedagogical story, told from the perspectives of music teachers using their own voices, we begin an open conversation about the nature of power structures and struggles in music education research. We invite new possibilities in developing understandings of the complex socio-cultural dynamic of music making, music learning, music teaching, and music researching in all facets of contemporary society. By embracing a broader set of traditions—Arts-Based Educational Research and Creative Analytical Practices—that enable us to go beyond socio-cultural frameworks and orthodox beliefs that currently exist in the music education profession, we seek to (re)form a culturally contextualized, ethos-rooted, sociology of music education.
"""The roots of much of the world’s popular music may be traced to blues and rock – styles that originated in the Southern Mississippi Valley in the early 20th century – yet, when considered from a global perspective, performance of these genres has been especially slow to gain wide acceptance in schools of their homeland: the USA. This paper begins with identification of some inevitable challenges associated with institutionalization of novel artistic movements, and then contrasts these with factors perceived to have engendered resistance to the growth of popular music pedagogy (PMP). That PMP is increasingly accepted while genres such as blues and rock come of age (and stake a claim to cultural heritage) is no coincidence. This discussion illustrates the perennial educational challenges posed by originality and cultural diversity in music, as well as the need for research to more fully understand opportunities and risks associated with the array of PMP approaches currently advanced. """
The Discovery of Music Pedagogic Culture: Music Teaching as Communication Process
2015
This qualitative study introduces the concept of music pedagogic culture, and explores this phenomenon, as a pedagogic communication process in a variety of educational and social contexts. Within the framework of a popular discourse on multiculturalism in music education, the issues related to the multiplicity of world musics have been covered extensively. However, many theorists tend to disregard the fact that multiculturalism suggests the multiplicity of the instructional approaches, as well. The diversity of music teaching practices has not been perceived as a multicultural issue, and as a result has been excluded from the discussion.
Four Questions on Popular Music Education
PME is an integral component of the paradigm shift towards a more diverse and inclusive education. The diversity of ensembles and pedagogical styles the continually changing musical landscape has provided is one of the hallmarks of a well-rounded music education. Estelle Jorgensen, considering curriculum renovation in her book Transforming Music Education, notes that “each generation needs to renew education and culture for its time and place…and this renewal constitutes the seeds of musical, cultural, and societal transformation.” (Jorgensen, 8) If our mission is “encouraging the study and making of music for all,” shouldn’t we continue to diversify the styles of music we study, create, and perform? Our NAfME preamble states, “Music allows us to celebrate and preserve our cultural heritage”. The inclusion of popular music genres affords us the opportunity to broaden our understanding and appreciation of styles and cultures that might be unfamiliar to us while, at the same time, allowing us to connect with our students while modeling a culturally responsible environment. How do we go about shifting the educational paradigm, and the conversation, to one of inclusivity, diversity, and cultural responsibility in regard to our students’ experiences, musical preferences, socioeconomic status, and demographic? That is the $64,000 question.
Popular Music Education A White Paper by the Association for Popular Music Education
Journal of Popular Music Education, 2018
Popular Music Education A White Paper by the Association for Popular Music Education Introduction The Association for Popular Music Education (APME), founded in 2010, is the world’s leading organization in popular music education, galvanizing a community of practice, scholarship and innovation around the field. Popular music education (hereafter PME) is exciting, dynamic and often innovative. Music education – meaning formal schooling in music – has tended most of the time to exclude almost all forms and contexts of music, and therefore has also elided most models of music learning and teaching. Popular music is among these excluded musics. The report is based on the knowledge, perspectives and experience of APME Board members, and therefore reflects the Anglophone and largely US American orientation of the contributors. We recognize that popular music is as diverse as the world’s cultures, and that writing on popular music education is as nuanced as the languages in which it is communicated. What is Popular Music Education? Popular music is qualitatively different from other forms of music, in function and aesthetics (although there are areas of commonality). PME, therefore, may also be understood as necessarily different from Western Art Music (WAM) education. However, APME does not intend to construct or to construe PME as existing or working in opposition to existing music education programs and paradigms. PME, like popular music, is highly complex, problematic and challenging, as well as being inspiring and deeply meaningful to many people, individually and collectively. This is true of all musical traditions, their associated hierarchies, embedded practices and assumptions, and attendant educational practices. APME recognizes that change, stasis and tradition all constitute the lifeblood of popular music. As such, and to reflect that ongoing change, the authors assert that popular music education practice and scholarship must remain reflexive, allowing for and embracing constant revision and re-contextualization. As such, this paper marks a moment in time, but is not intended to codify, define or delimit PME. Popular music has a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programs, courses and classes in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting, production and areas of music technology are becoming commonplace across higher education and compulsory schooling. In the context of teacher education, classroom teachers and music specialists alike are becoming increasingly empowered to introduce popular music into their classrooms. Research in PME lies at the intersection of the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, community music, cultural studies and popular music studies. Who are the Popular Music Educators? The following page quotes and borrows from the editorial article introducing the issue 1, volume 1 of the Journal of Popular Music Education. 1 The popular music education world is populated by two largely separate but far from discrete communities. One of these groups comprises mostly school music teachers and those who work in higher education institutions to ‘train’ teacher/musicians for the workplace. For them, music education is a high art and prized craft; PME is one part of the jigsaw puzzle of a schoolteacher’s diverse portfolio of approaches to learning, teaching and assessment. The other community primarily teaches popular music studies (including popular music performance, business and songwriting) in institutions of higher education. For them the goal is to learn (about) popular music; ‘education’ is implicit in the fact that this activity takes place in a college or university. These two communities (crudely bifurcated as they are here, for the purposes of this short paper) collide and collaborate at APME conferences. They rarely seem to bump into one another, however, at meetings of IASPM (frequented primarily by members of the popular music studies community) or ISME (attended mainly by music teachers and music teacher teachers). People’s experiences of education are frequently self-defining and life-changing – affirming, uplifting, crushing, celebratory and (dis)empowering by turns; the same can be said of people’s encounters with music. Humans’ engagement with popular music and experiences of education are vital to people’s understanding and tolerance of themselves and one another. APME believes in the necessity and transformative power of deep educational experiences that critique and enable, challenge and transform. Popular music exists at the intersection of folk and celebrity cultures, combining the everyday with the exceptional and fantastic. It merges commerce, community, commodity and the construction of meanings. People live their lives both as popular musicians and through popular musicians, realizing identities as fans, consumers and practitioners. Popular music scenes, communities and subcultures are local, regional, national and international. PME thus takes place at the cross sections of identity realization, learning, teaching, enculturation, entrepreneurship, creativity, a global multimedia industry, and innumerable leisure, DIY and hobbyist networks – online, and in physical spaces. Popular music education is business and social enterprise. It is personal and it is collective. It is vocational and avocational, and it builds and develops communities. Popular music stands as a vital part of our modern lives. A valuable form of artistic expression, it embraces all facets of the human experience. It blends art with contemporary culture and tradition to make relevant the ever changing now.