World Music Pedagogy, Volume VI: School-Community Intersections

Patricia Shehan Campbell, Chee Hoo Lum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351655040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

World Music Pedagogy, Volume VI: School-Community Intersections provides students with a resource for delving into the meaning of "world music" across a broad array of community contexts and develops the multiple meanings of community relative to teaching and learning music of global and local cultures. It clarifies the critical need for teachers to work in tandem with community musicians and artists in order to bridge the unnecessary gulf that often separates school music from the music of the world beyond school and to consider the potential for genuine collaborations across this gulf.

The five-layered features of World Music Pedagogy are specifically addressed in various school-community intersections, with attention to the collaboration of teachers with local community artist-musicians and with community musicians-at-a-distance who are available virtually. The authors acknowledge the multiple routes teachers are taking to enable and encourage music learning in community contexts, such as their work in after-school academies, museums and libraries, eldercare centers, places of worship, parks and recreation centers, and other venues in which adults and children gather to learn music, make music, and become convivial through music

This volume suggests that the world's musical cultures may be found locally, can be tapped virtually, and are important in considerations of music teaching and learning in schools and community contexts. Authors describe working artists and teachers, scenarios, vignettes, and teaching and learning experiences that happen in communities and that embrace the role of community musicians in schools, all of which will be presented with supporting theoretical frameworks.

1
Teaching and Learning in Context

Recipe for success: A devoted music teacher, her students, her interest in music as a global phenomenon, her belief in the necessity of school-community intersections. The success she and her students know pertains to their study of music for how it is learned and taught, as it is humanly expressed, and as it is culturally reflective of human diversity. The school-community intersections she advances are both local and global and include the music and musicians of such practices as Korean samulnori; Appalachian-style bluegrass; Japanese koto; Argentinian tango; Shona mbira; Mexican son jarocho; Lakota Sioux powwow; Chinese jiang nan si zhu (silkstring ensemble); Jamaican reggaetón; Javanese gamelan; and South Indian trio of violinist, singer, and player of the double-headed drum known as mridangam. Some of these musicians are down the block and around the corner from the school, others are within the metropolitan area in which the suburban school is located, and several hail from further afield, visiting the area or coming across the Internet. As a devoted teacher to her K–12 students of various ages and experiences, she facilitates their understanding of music as a presence in all communities, “near and far” from their experience; on all manner of instruments; in various vocal styles; with the integration of dance, drama, poetry, the visual arts, and various curricular subjects. She carries the concept of community close to the heart; over nine years of successful teaching, she has shown her students and co-workers not only that their neighborhood is rich with diverse musical practices but also that a sense of community is created when her students gather to sing, dance, play, create, and even listen together. She has configured a socially inclusive program that leads students to a full reckoning of the diversity of musical expressions that can be listened to (live and on recordings) and learned, and that can form the basis for developing community consciousness and cultural understanding. Like a prism of many-splendored colors, she has embraced “community” in all of its shades of meaning, and the musical education of her students is full evidence of the success of her commitment to the cause.

Music Happens in Every Living Community

Across the planet, in small villages, and in teeming city neighborhoods, people make music because they must, as it is a human penchant for young and old to want to sing, to sound on musical instruments as extensions of themselves, and to listen to music. They respond to music in ways that span from the external need to move and to dance all the way to the intimate meaning-making of music that transpires within themselves. They make music in community, that is, through the interaction of voices and instruments (and dancing bodies) together in a gathered group. Every community, in every culture, knows the music that defines them, contributes to their identity, and carries with it shared meanings. Music and community are linked, too, in that communities are created, re-created, and perpetuated through a network of music-makers, music listeners, and music supporters.

This volume gives accent to music and community, with attention to the diverse musical practices that are performed in communities—by culture-bearing community musicians—and that can be taught and learned in schools. It acknowledges World Music Pedagogy as a multifaceted avenue for knowing diverse musical expressions and that the concept of teaching and learning a diversity of musical expressions is relevant and useable in contexts within schools and communities. It accepts that artists in the community are powerful players in efforts to lead children and youth to an understanding and valuing of music of every sort. It maintains that teachers and artists together, be they music educators or teaching musicians who working within the contexts of schools and communities, can benefit greatly from occasions to work collaboratively to make music and design experiences that nurture the musical capacity and cultural awareness of students. With World Music Pedagogy as a pedagogical sequence, this volume suggests that there is bridging to do between people who make the music and the contexts in which music is made and that beneficiaries of school-community collaborations are manifold in that they serve students, their teachers, the musicians who live and work in the community, families, and the wide span of various other residents who live in the local neighborhoods that surround the schools.

As one of seven volumes devoted to cultural diversity in music education, this volume is intended for all musicians-who-teach. In fact, it is aimed at those who teach in educational institutions that encompass public and private schools (as well as conservatories, colleges, and universities) as well as those who call themselves teaching artists, teaching musicians, and community musicians. It reaches also to performing musicians; to composers and improvisers; and to various others with portfolio careers who give recitals, perform in chamber (and larger) ensembles, and engage in musical collaborations with other musicians. Because we view music education broadly, we recognize that music and music learning occur in a grand variety of contexts. We embrace the community at large as alive with music and musicians and with rich potential for making music, teaching and learning music, and connecting musicians to teachers and students. Thus, we see a need for this volume to address music education in its breadth of possibilities and to reach beyond the narrowly channeled, conventional interpretations of those who teach. Indeed, we challenge convention by enveloping within the teaching-learning process all those who pledge their time and effort in schools and communities to effect the acquisition by people both young and old of musical knowledge, skills, and values.

Interfaces of Music With Community

A successful partnership of school music educators with community musicians, audiences, and “arts agents” in support of school-community connections rests in an understanding of the interfaces of music with community (and schools). A critical launch-point to the discussion is in selecting out the various meanings of familiar terms, “music” and “community”, since they are so variously used and so frequently favored in everyday conversation and clarifying their particular meanings to the enterprise we are undertaking here. Certainly critical, too, is an awareness of the diversity that exists both culturally and musically in communities (and across school populations) and a recognition of diversity as it relates to music, community, and conviviality. By conceptualizing these terms, the frame will thus be set for a consideration of pedagogical avenues that facilitate learning pathways for students to experience intricate and increasingly evolved encounters with music and culture.

Music

Music is in the ear of the beholder. It exists as an art form, as a force of socialization, and as an expression of cultural identity. It consists of sounds and silences, of elemental features such as pitch (and melody), duration (and rhythm), timbre, texture, and various expressive features such as dynamics and articulation. Not always do musicians care to include all features in their performance, such as the case of rhythmic percussion music produced by a group of Haitian musicians playing same-size hollowed-out bamboo stamping tubes (gangos), where pitch pales in comparison to the rhythmic complexities of the music. On the other hand, performances may go beyond the musical sound in order to encompass also dance, drama, the visual arts, poetry, and more—at times together in a kind of all-encompassing pageantry whose multisensory experiences are nonetheless referred to merely as “music”. In many sub-Saharan African cultures, ngoma is the term applied to music as sound-plus, that is, sound that is typically blended with any number of artistic practices.

One person’s music may be another person’s noise, and there is no guarantee that any two people—particularly from different places in the world—will define music, or identify with music, in precisely the same way. To be sure, carefully designed learning encounters do well to make sense out of what might seem initially to a student like sonic chaos so that the logical structures of music rise to the surface through repeated listening. Likewise, student understandings of unfamiliar music do also develop through a realization of people’s uses and values of it and its historical and contemporary roles in cultural life. There is a wide spread of musical possibilities and preferences, of course, which makes the selection of music for casual use or formal learning a challenge in itself. The question arises: “Do I listen, perform, teach, and compose in the style of Beethoven or Beyoncé, Haydn or hardcore punk, Copland or conjunto, Mozart or maqam? Or all of these and more?”

Music that has been historically prescribed for use in various educational settings frequently excludes the music of many musicians living in local communities, and many more musical expressions found elsewhere in the world may not be found in classrooms. School music teachers have canonized what music is taught and not taught to children and youth, and it’s possible that they have learned what’s appropriate through their university training as well as from finely experienced master teachers in schools who, intentionally or not, continue to perpetuate the music of their own training without reaching out to the wider world of musical possibilities. Inroads have been made, of course, with exemplar musicians and teachers leading the way in opening ears to a broad musical range. Still, it is astonishing that in this time of demographic diversity and tremendous technological access, music is still in the ear of the beholder whose musical taste may be confined to a narrow band of the rich assortment that is so easily available.

Community

Derived from the Latin communitas, the concept of community speaks to people who gather together as a group acting collectively—working, playing, and otherwise conducting themselves with a strong sense of shared purpose. They are bonded by their shared beliefs, and they develop a sense of solidarity that derives from group-thought and collective experience and action. Community is a concept that is receiving considerable play in sociology, anthropology, psychology, the arts, and music in particular (Higgins, 2012). Its academic home is in the social sciences, and yet the term “community” is also so frequently used as to be colloquial and certainly conversational. It is a term favored on local government websites and in circulars, and it appears regularly in school district manuals and curriculum guides. Community signifies camaraderie, a fellowship, and even friendship, of belonging and mutuality (Ansdell, 2004), and it denotes an association of people through one or more cultural facets. There are communities of people who identify by race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, age, and lifestyle, as there are also regional, national, and virtual communities that connect electronically. There are international communities (e.g., surgeons, school superintendents, and symphonic orchestra conductors in Berlin, Brussels, Boston, and Buenos Aires) as there are also intergenerational communities (e.g., civic groups or religious congregations consisting of families of children, parents, and grandparents). Community signifies people in collaboration, as it also refers to a cooperative spirit among people.

Music and community are wedded in ways that include the conglomerate of musicians living and working in a given location, the individual subcultures of musicians in a location (from choristers to jazzers, rock guitarists, brass-band players, and classical pianists), and the potential of a local population of music fans and supporters, and music aspirants, amateurs, and learners of every age and experience level becoming participants in music-making encounters through their interactions with musicians. Another relevant meaning of community is the sense of oneness that derives from people gathering together for a purpose, including the purpose of making music together or otherwise enjoying music as responsive listeners. Community denotes coalition, too, as in the coalition that develops when people are drawn together for music functions, and the bonding power of music is notable for its capacity to create a sense of community—and a coalition.

Of course, to act collectively and develop solidarity requires a substantial effort from each individual member of a community. Aided by active communication and action, a communion of individuals can emerge who share strong intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual connections. The development of a sense of community brings with it an invitation to members “to reflect upon the ecology of sociocultural life” (Stige, 2004, p. 91), whether it be within the small social unit of a family; in neighborhoods; in work, worship, and leisure groups; in special-interest networks; or across a full cityscape of multiple mini-communities. Community denotes a commitment by individual members to the mutual support of one another and a conscious aim by members to interact and intersect with one another. Community members experience togetherness when they strive for an intimate understanding of the context in which they live and when they share a willingness to critically and creatively communicate, negotiate, and collaborate for the good of the group. Community is closely linked to the formation of traditions that result from questioning and affirming identity through collective action. A community can thus be a litmus test for equity, diversity, and inclusion as living and fluid entities within a society that embodies concepts of the local and global in all their manifestations.

The musical and artistic life of a community reflects the community’s sociocultural composite and its identities, traditions, and values. Lee Higgins (2012) observes that the music of a community is any and every “music (that is) made by any community at any time” (p. 3.) The music of a community arises in various contexts and through various circumstances. Consider these: A church choir that rehearses on Wednesdays and performs every Sunday morning; a weekly fandango gathering at El Centro de la Raza where people sing, play requintos and vilhuelas, and dance in hard heels on a raised wooden platform; adults and their children, and a few senior citizens, who enjoy participation in Saturday afternoon drum circles at their local community center; a small group of professional string players who meet two Saturdays a month on their own time in order to expand their horizons by creating new and experimental music; a community band of brass and wind players ranging in age from high school seniors to “mature” adults who come together to play for fun (and seasonal community concerts); an internet or online band, where members collaborate musically across varied geographic boundaries without meeting face to face but who can nonetheless share their musical outcomes on social platforms with their local or other virtual communities. Music of a community ranges widely and can be inclusive of a diverse range of people with various musical interests who forge their individual identities into a collective whole.

Community Music

One merging of music and community is the phenomenon of Community Music, an influential movement in group music participation that arose from UK-based local sociomusical activity as early as the 1960s and which has spread internationally into communities and schools across the globe (Higgins & Bartleet, 2018). The crux of the movement is to provide music-making opportunities for all who desire to join in, and the process of group music has asserted the importance of expression by group members from the ground up (rather than top-down by teachers and conductors) of which music to make and how to make it. In Community Music practice, some of the music may be known to group members, familiar and “fixed”, and other music may arise from group improvisation activity in which all members work together to make something musically interesting to them. Importantly, Community Music asserts all members should have an equal opportunity to shape the music of the collective, and the task of the professionally trained community musician is to assist in realizing the group’s interests and ideas. This informal music-making process is maintained in some settings, while it has also been modified as the principles of group improvisation have gradually made their way from informal to formal educational settings. Community Music ideals, then, are evident not only in community centers where songwriting, “African drumming”, and samba groups are organized but also in school-based music education settings where a more democratic practice of student ideas and interests are shaping the musical experience. In its exemplary form, Community Music involves communal music-making activity, including the exposure and active participation and performance of music to bind people together. The interjections and interventions of a community music facilitator is meant to guide but not lead music-making experiences; this facilitator suggests but does not teach and honors the musical ideas of all present in forging a collective musical expression. The emphasis in Community Music is on “active participation, sensitivity to context, equality of opportunity, and a commitment to diversity” (Higgins, 2012, p. 174).

Figure 1.1 The classroom as a musical community in the hands of culture-bearing Brazilian musician Eduardo Mendonça

Photo by Susie Fitzhugh

The concept of community music is, in fact, a metaphor for music education in its finest manifestation, where music teachers succeed in providing students of music with the opportunity to make something beautiful together through group engagement in a process that helps them to gain hold of their collective musical self (which leads to group gratification of the process in which they engage as well as the musical product that they accomplish). In the context of school music classes, community can be viewed from four perspectives: In place (boundedness, rootedness, interconnectedness, feelingfulness, and a sense of empowerment), in time (sense of dynamism, means of regulation, basis for tradition, and awareness of finitude), as process (of becoming, sense of reflective action, dialogue, and pilgrimage [of travel and the spiritual]), and as an end (uniting diverse people in pursuit of an objective, having an idealistic vision, codification, practicality, and anticipatory) (Jorgensen, 1995). An examination of music in community in many of the world’s cultures allows for an understanding of music in its past and present contexts, valuing differences and similarities, feeling connected to others, accepting and loving musical traditions close to heart, and feeling the empowerment to change and embrace new musical perspectives. Music in local and global communities quite naturally features active musical participation by community members who enjoy making music for which they have a personal buy-in (i.e., music that is already f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Episodes
• Chapter 1 Teaching and Learning in Context
• Chapter 2 Attentive Listening for Cultural Awakenings
• Chapter 3 Participatory Musicking
• Chapter 4 Performing World Music
• Chapter 5 Creating World Music
• Chapter 6 Integrating World Music
• Chapter 7 Surmountable Challenges and Worthy Outcomes
• Appendix 1: Learning Pathways
• Appendix 2: References and Resources
• Index