facing the music shaping music education from a global perspective dec 2009

[...]... classical, popular, jazz, and world music On closer examination, however, they are often applied with ambiguous or even contradictory meaning A cross-cultural exploration of these concepts reveals that they are not nearly as clear, stable, and value-free as they may appear A more dynamic interpretation of these terms can open the road to greater understanding of contemporary realities in music education. .. song The place was alive with music and dance That is more than can be said of the next experience that helped shape me as a music educator While I was on a trip in north Bali in 1994, a village elder in Singaraja told me about a large funeral ceremony in a village in the hills A long trip along dark and curvy roads on the back of a motorcycle led to the all-night event As I arrived, the villagers... Indian classical music, then tango, and later Turkish music While he strategically designed curricula that closely resembled standard conservatory curricula, the dedicated subjects and critical mass opened the way for other learning styles Indian music remained an aural tradition and was supported by classes in Indian music history, raga analysis, and Hindi ¯ With more than a hundred students taking these... to music learning and teaching” in order to emphasize the focal importance of the recipient of the instruction and to remind the reader that there is music teaching without learning, as well as a great deal of learning without formal teaching From the time that music education started taking a serious interest in musical genres and practices from a variety of backgrounds and cultures some four decades... enjoying the shadow puppet play on the central square While I was watching with them, I heard the sounds of gamelan music from another part of the village I walked over and saw a full Indonesian orchestra playing virtuoso pieces When the performance ended, there was no applause The entire audience consisted of urns containing the remains of the deceased, who were being accompanied into the next life with these... how music learning and teaching music are given shape Musical diversity does not only contain lessons about “new arrivals” in the musical arena, such as world music, but, when looked at closely, it also inspires reflection on approaches to musical practices that many of us have come to see as a primary frame of reference for thinking on music and music education: Western art, jazz, and popular music. .. meaning that each entails This is followed by an analysis of modes and methods of learning and teaching in formal, nonformal, and informal contexts and a critique of approaches and practices from the past that may have survived in much formal music education The study culminates in a framework that makes visible a number of the explicit and implicit choices made in music transmission and learning in... public acclaim Sometimes, vast differences between approaches to learning and teaching can be used explicitly as an educational tool At a conference in Basel, I met ¨ Eva Saether of the Music Academy of Malmo in Sweden She described a total immersion program her institute was developing They sent small groups of students to the Gambia to work with traditional musicians (Wolof, Mandinka, and Fula) at a custom-built... backgrounds in the diverse cultural landscape that characterizes so many contexts of learning music at the beginning of the twentyfirst century v chapter 1 f Journeys in Music An Auto-Ethnography The elementary school music teacher I met at the International School of Kuala Lumpur had a slightly unusual background Jennifer Walden was the daughter of a jazz musician; she played in pop and brass bands during... classical music and the systems of music education associated with that tradition, I came into the world of music with clear ideas about a canon of great music and a well-structured path to proficiency in interpreting it I assumed that gradual progression from simple to complex, supported by technical exercises, notated music, and regular individual lessons, was the way people learned music across the . multicul- tural and intercultural matters of music education, of world music pedagogy, and of the realities of cultural diversity in music education. Facing the Music encapsulates the decades-long. play, and share their music, with unabated passion for the quality and value of their work. The musicians I feel most indebted to are my two Indian music gurus: Ustad Jamaluddin Bhartiya and the late. with ambiguous or even contradictory meaning. A cross-cultural exploration of these concepts reveals that they are not nearly as clear, stable, and value-free as they may appear. A more dynamic