World Music Pedagogy, Volume II: Elementary Music Education

J. Christopher Roberts, Amy Beegle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351683418
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

World Music Pedagogy, Volume II: Elementary Music Education delves into the theory and practices of World Music Pedagogy with children in grades 1-6 (ages 6-12). It specifically addresses how World Music Pedagogy applies to the characteristic learning needs of elementary school children: this stage of a child's development—when minds are opening up to broader perspectives on the world—presents opportunities to develop meaningful multicultural understanding alongside musical knowledge and skills that can last a lifetime.

This book is not simply a collection of case studies but rather one that offers theory and practical ideas for teaching world music to children. Classroom scenarios, along with teaching and learning experiences, are presented within the frame of World Music Pedagogy. Ethnomusicological issues of authenticity, representation, and context are addressed and illustrated, supporting the ultimate goal of helping children better understand their world through music.

1

Teaching and Learning in Context

A loud bell resounds throughout the urban elementary school building as 200 children of many different ethnicities in grades 1 through 6 (ages six through twelve) stream onto two separate playgrounds for a much-needed recess break on a sunny spring day. The six- through ten-year-olds run and skip to the monkey bars and swing sets on the “little kids” playground, eager to play on their favorite equipment. Two girls begin to swing a long jump rope for two other girls who jump in while rhythmically chanting, “Cinderella, dressed in yellah, went upstairs to kiss a fellah … .” Several other girls watch and wait for their turn to jump. Some of the girls and boys are playing a chasing game, while a group of girls appears to be competing to see who can do the most cartwheels in a row.

Most of the older children on the “big kids” playground (reserved for grades 4 through 6) are playing in small groups of about six to ten children, kicking and throwing balls or playing touch football. Some of the children are standing around the perimeter of the playground talking and giggling with each other, and a few children are sitting or standing alone, watching others play. A teacher on recess duty approaches a child who is watching a music video on his cell phone … perhaps he has forgotten the “no cell phone” rule. The teacher confiscates the device, to be returned at the end of the school day. Another group of boys and girls are paired up, motivated by the challenge of perfecting the pattern of bumping fists, fronts and backs of hands to the beat of a new hand-clapping game that they learned during music class, “Choco-choco-la-la, choco-choco-te-te, choco-la, choco-te, choco-la-te!”

The bell sounds again, and one class of third grade children line up outside the music room. Two of the girls at the front of the line begin singing an Afro-Peruvian song that they had been listening to and practicing for the past two weeks in music class, and when Ms. Trembly opens the door, a blonde boy eagerly asks, “Can we play the cajóns and the donkey jaws again today with the recording of the Afro-Peruvian band?” Ms. Trembly smiles and says, “Si, señor!” as the children file into the room and sit on the floor in rows facing the interactive whiteboard, ready to participate in another lesson inspired by World Music Pedagogy.

Diving into World Music Pedagogy

In elementary school, children enter into most musical experiences with enthusiasm and energy, ready to “dive in” to instruction that involves listening, singing, and moving activities with a wide variety of music. Elementary school music education has the potential to change and expand children’s musical values if teachers use age-appropriate methods to introduce a wide variety of music to children. From the onset of their education, across the primary grades, and through their intermediate-level studies (that may run to grade 5 or 6 in American schools), the world of music is open and available to children as teachers present and facilitate it. One way of opening children’s ears and minds to an amazing multiplicity of musical practices and products is through World Music Pedagogy (WMP), in which active repeated listening in conjunction with participatory music making engage children in coming to know the sounds, transmission processes, and performance practices of music from around the world.

Children today find themselves in an educational atmosphere in which technology is bringing distant lands closer, student populations are growing more diverse, and 21st-century skills such as global awareness, multicultural literacy, and social justice literacy are often emphasized. This is an exciting time for educators to develop more culturally sensitive teaching methods and to bring more culturally diverse content and knowledge into their classrooms. The elementary school years are a time of great physical and cognitive development during which children start formal schooling, discover a sense of identity, explore their social roles, and develop preferences and orientations that they will carry into adolescence. These years are among the most impressionable periods in a child’s life for building multicultural awareness, understanding, and empathy for cultural others. Elementary school music educators are in a unique position to encourage children’s cultural awareness through active engagement in listening, singing, playing instruments, creating, reading, and writing musical genres and practices from groups of people who live locally, as well as those who live on the other side of the planet.

The purpose of this volume is to address the ways that the five dimensions of World Music Pedagogy can serve as a framework for building children’s understanding of the beauty and benefits of diversity by opening their ears and minds to the sounds, functions, processes, and practices of various musical cultures within the context of elementary (primary) schools in the United States and other countries where multicultural, intercultural, and diversity-oriented education is valued. World Music Pedagogy is unique among other methods for teaching music of the world’s many cultures, in that a strong focus is placed on listening, as well as on determining how musicians of particular cultures teach and learn music. This chapter includes definitions of terms to be used throughout the text, provides a bit of historical context for multicultural and world music education in American public education, offers a rationale for implementing World Music Pedagogy in elementary school music classrooms, addresses developmental characteristics of children ages six through twelve, suggests ways to choose world music for elementary-aged children, and provides some ideas and resources that can help teachers get started with World Music Pedagogy in elementary music classrooms.

“World music” in the context of World Music Pedagogy refers to both the sonic qualities and sociocultural contexts of various musical processes and products from cultures both near and far from children’s homes and schools. It is not the catchall phrase used by music marketers to categorize all recordings that do not fit into the usual record store classification system. World Music pedagogues view the Western classical tradition as one of many rich musical cultures that should not necessarily be prioritized above other musical practices. A music teacher who uses World Music Pedagogy wants to open children’s ears, bodies, and minds to listen to and interact with many varied musical styles and cultural expressions, from Afro-pop to Aboriginal Australian music, from European to Japanese court music, from Appalachian to Sri Lankan folk music, from Javanese shadow puppet theater to South Indian kathak dance, and so much more! Teachers of elementary school-aged children know that active music making opens many doors for young musicians who can be inspired by or want to perform the music that they have been listening to. Therefore, just as important as close listening to the sonic qualities of each musical culture (often through recordings) is the process by which the music is taught and learned, in a way that respects both traditional transmission practices and the needs of the children being taught in a contemporary elementary school setting.

The Dimensions of World Music Pedagogy

Elementary school music teachers who implement World Music Pedagogy in their classrooms utilize many resources, such as sound recordings, videos, maps, and world music instruments. They also invite “culture-bearers” (musicians who were raised in the culture in which the music and/or dance originated and/or is currently practiced) to share their music and stories. Through the five dimensions of World Music Pedagogy, children are encouraged to repeatedly listen to recorded or live music in order to experience and explore varied musical cultures. These dimensions (also called “phases”) are Attentive Listening, Engaged Listening, Enactive Listening, Creating World Music, and Integrating World Music (Campbell, 2004). It is common for teachers to implement strategies from more than one of these dimensions in a single lesson.

The first dimension of World Music Pedagogy is Attentive Listening, in which children listen to a brief musical selection (often from an unfamiliar culture), attending to particular sonic qualities and patterns of the music in order to begin an examination of the ways that musicians make music in various geographical, societal, historical, and/or cultural contexts. Elementary school music teachers who use World Music Pedagogy carefully select music and structure activities that will catch the ears of children and provide a basis for further study. Even when musical selections are too challenging and complex for elementary-aged children to perform, the students can listen attentively, answering carefully posed questions from teachers and following visual aids such as listening maps or various types of music notation.

Engaged Listening, the second dimension of World Music Pedagogy, occurs when the listener is asked to participate in the music in some way while the musical selection is playing. Children might clap or play a rhythmic pattern on body percussion, sing or play part of a melody, move to demonstrate the form while listening to a piece performed by a culture-bearer or sounded via audio or video recording. Engaged Listening can be almost any type of musical participation while the musical listening sample is sounding, and in an elementary classroom situation, teachers plan “participatory musicking” activities so that children can tap, hum, sing, play, or move along with the music at a volume that makes it possible for everyone to hear the selection.

The third dimension of World Music Pedagogy, Enactive Listening, is similar to Engaged Listening in that it involves participatory musicking but at a much deeper level. Planning for Enactive Listening requires the teacher to choose a musical recording that matches the children’s skill level so that they can perform all or most of the selection with and without the musical selection sounding, attempting to replicate it as closely as possible. Once children have practiced Enactive Listening, they may choose to perform the music for an audience.

Attentive, Engaged, and Enactive Listening will often motivate school children to want to invent their own music, and Creating World Music—making their own music that is inspired by the sounds and/or musical practices of a particular culture—is the fourth dimension of World Music Pedagogy. Children ages six through twelve can be encouraged to extend, improvise, arrange, and/or compose music that reflects the sounds and structures of the musical culture under study at developmentally appropriate levels. Elementary school music teachers must thoughtfully consider which musical practices best lend themselves to children’s understanding at a level that will allow them to synthesize their knowledge into new music.

The fifth dimension of World Music Pedagogy is Integrating World Music, in which the listening selection is contextualized in order for children to develop greater cultural awareness. There are many avenues through which teachers can open doors to cultural understandings for elementary-aged children through music. Stories, maps, language, food, musical instruments, costumes, and currency from various cultures can be utilized to connect musical learning with children’s experiences with people outside of school and also with other subjects within school, such as visual arts, drama, technology, physical education, language arts, social studies, math, and science. Visits from culture-bearers or guest artists can also enhance World Music Pedagogy integration experiences, but teachers should not shy away from World Music Pedagogy if they do not have access to such visitors from far-away locales because there are many other resources available, which will be discussed in this volume.

Together, these five WMP dimensions create a rich experience in which children can come to better understand musical practices of people who may be different from them. As their ears and eyes are open to new sounds and cultural values, children may learn acceptance and awareness of “others” that can last into their adult lives.

Organizing World Music Pedagogy Experiences for Elementary School Children

Teachers who use World Music Pedagogy know that in-depth experiences are usually more valuable than those that simply skim the surface of a particular musical culture. Therefore, World Music Pedagogy plans will almost always take place across multiple lessons, and units of study might even last for an entire semester or school year within an elementary school music curriculum. Such lessons or units could be comprised of the comparison of a particular musical element or instrumental family across cultures, an in-depth study of a particular musical culture, or an in-depth study of a particular cultural issue, theme, or musical function across cultures. For example, third graders might compare the percussion ensemble traditions of various African and Latin American cultural groups, sixth graders might listen intently and delve into the culture and performance practices of xylophone music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, and first graders might study the ways that lullabies are performed by Navajo, Pashtu, and Aboriginal parents and caretakers.

There are many different ways to apply the dimensions of World Music Pedagogy in a curriculum for primary and intermediate level children. For example, a teacher may select several musical pieces from a particular culture for a series of Attentive and Engaged Listening experiences that integrate with the cultural knowledge they are studying in their social studies curriculum, and choose not to utilize the Enactive or Creative dimensions of WMP. Another example is that a teacher may choose to use all five WMP dimensions with one piece over a series of lessons, first asking students to attentively listen to particular aspects of the piece, encouraging them to participate in Engaged Listening experiences with the same piece during a subsequent lesson, providing activities that allow children to listen enactively in the next lesson, then challenging children to improvise new musical ideas while preparing a performance of the piece over the next few lessons, all the while integrating cultural information and experiences into each lesson.

World Music Pedagogy in Context

Elementary Music and Multicultural Education

World Music Pedagogy has close ties to multicultural education, and scholar-educators such as James Banks and Geneva Gay have informed the thinking of theorists and practitioners of multicultural music education. James Banks’s (2013) four levels of multicultural curriculum reform can be observed in an increasing number of elementary music classrooms today. A contributions approach to curriculum reform occurs when the curriculum remains unchanged but the content is occasionally varied. In an elementary music class, if a teacher selected one song played on a North Indian bansuri flute for fourth grade students to play on the recorder, this would be viewed as an intervention at the contributions level if it was the only piece and there was little or no attention paid to the cultural context. In the additive approach to curriculum reform, the diverse content is more extensive than in the contributions approach, but the curriculum is still viewed from the perspective of the dominant culture. If the fourth grade teacher planned a series of lessons that incorporated pieces from different flute traditions of the world, but still addressed the differences in timbre or the significance of the music compared to Western recorder repertoire, that would be an example of the additive approach. The transformation approach to curriculum reform occurs when a topic is viewed from the perspective of diverse ethnic and cultural groups. An example of the transformation approach would be if fourth graders learned to play penny whistles and/or Native American flutes instead of recorders, and ideally would include visits from Irish and/or Native American culture-bearers performing on their penny whistles and/or Native American flutes. They would also discuss their role in the culture, with conscious attention paid to helping the children replicate the specific inflections of the different flute genres. A social action approach occurs when students take action to achieve change about a social issue. Social action curriculum reform would occur if fourth graders, after completing a unit on various flute cultures, decided to make panpipes that they could distribute to Peruvian children who did not have access to their native instrument.

Along these same lines, the t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 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