Music-making and the master–pupil tradition in teaching: The current state of music education in Germany and Community Music

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Grosse
Author(s):  
David J. Elliott

This article presents an overview of Section 2 of the Oxford Handbook of Music Education, Volume 2. It considers John Dewey's (1927) thoughts on the relationship between the “goods” (values, benefits) of some kind of activity and the nature of “community.” It argues that it is highly unlikely that there will never be a fixed concept or “how-to” of community music. For however and wherever community music is conceived and practiced, this elusive phenomenon continues to evolve and diversify locally and internationally to meet the changing needs of the people it serves today and those it will serve tomorrow. It reinvents itself continuously in relation to the musics and technologies its practitioners and clients desire and appropriate; and, of course, community music matures constantly as community music facilitators deploy their creativity to reframe, adjust, combine, integrate, and overlap existing ways of empowering people to make music for the realization of its many “goods” and the many ways that music making, musical sharing, and musical caring creates “community.”


Author(s):  
Raymond MacDonald ◽  
Graeme Wilson ◽  
Felicity Baker

Participating in musical activities involves an immersive spectrum of psychological and social engagement. Connections between musical participation and health have been discussed for centuries, and relationships between the processes of music making and well-being outcomes have garnered considerable research interest. This chapter reviews studies investigating such associations to identify how creative aspects of musical engagement in particular can be understood to enhance health. The chapter begins by offering some suggestions about why these processes may have beneficial effects. Three key contexts for beneficial musical engagement (music education, music therapy, and community music) are examined: an organization (Limelight) that delivers music activities for individuals from disadvantaged groups; group improvisation music therapy sessions for individuals with cancer; and songwriting sessions for individuals following spinal injury. The relative contributions of creative process and creative product are considered, and psychological concepts such as identity, flow, agency, and scaffolding are suggested as important. The discussion extrapolates wider implications of this work to include general music making beyond clinical, educational, and community contexts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Bryan Powell

The fields of community music and popular music education have expanded rapidly over the past few decades. While there are many similarities between these two fields, there are aspects that set these two areas of practice apart. This article seeks to explore the intersections of community music interventions and popular music education to explain how they are similar and in which ways they are unique. This discussion centres on examinations of facilitation, ownership of music, training and certification, inclusivity, life-long music making, amateur engagement, informal learning and non-formal education, and social concerns. The Greek philosophy of eudaimonism, understood as ‘human flourishing’ is then used to explore the opportunities for human fulfilment through popular music education and community music approaches.


Author(s):  
Lee Higgins ◽  
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet

Community music facilitators move in and between many diverse settings. They can be found facilitating local music activities in arts centers, schools, sporting grounds, recording studios, places of worship, living rooms, and a wide range of other community contexts. This article focuses on community music facilitators who have been invited into the school environment to stimulate or establish active music-making opportunities. It shows that community music facilitators can provide music educators working in schools with models of a range of teaching practices, which can connect to a wide diversity of learning styles, especially in socially and culturally diverse environments. Likewise, music educators working in schools (who tend to have formal education qualifications) can provide pedagogical models for community music practices. Both positions have much to offer each other in this respect.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Prest

The inclusion of local Indigenous knowledge, pedagogy, and worldview in music education is increasingly relevant to music educators globally. This article contributes to the extensive body of knowledge already written on the subject by focusing on the contribution of such inclusion to localized societal change. My doctoral study examined the growth and contributions of bridging social capital to rural community vitality in British Columbia (BC), Canada via three school–community music education partnerships. I found that the members of one of those partnerships, the International Choral Kathaumixw Festival in Powell River, BC, engaged in ongoing cultural dialogue with local Tla’amin First Nation members over a 30-year period in order to foster meaningful inclusion of local cultural practices in that festival. This cultural dialogue ultimately contributed to more harmonious social, cultural, political, and economic relationships between settler and Tla’amin First Nation populations. The mandate of the festival, the ongoing music making activities that featured Tla’amin themes and cultural participation, the large contingent of local community volunteers and performers, and the physical commons created by music making all contributed to a shift in relations between the community of Powell River and the Tla’amin First Nation. I offer that the bridging social capital fostered by this partnership may provide insight and direction for music educators globally who wish to promote Indigenous cultural practices in their schools. A bridging social capital or relational approach based on long-term reciprocity with local Indigenous culture bearers may help music educators work towards more culturally appropriate/responsive curriculum and pedagogy in their practice.


Author(s):  
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet ◽  
Dawn Bennett ◽  
Anne Power ◽  
Naomi Sunderland

Community music educators worldwide face the challenge of preparing their students for working in increasingly diverse cultural contexts. These diverse contexts require distinctive approaches to community music-making that are respectful of, and responsive to, the customs and traditions of that cultural setting. The challenge for community music educators then becomes finding pedagogical approaches and strategies that both facilitate these sorts of intercultural learning experiences for their students and that engage with communities in culturally appropriate ways. This chapter unpacks these challenges and possibilities, and explores how the pedagogical strategy of community service learning can facilitate these sorts of dynamic intercultural learning opportunities. Specifically, it focuses on engaging with Australian First Peoples, and draws on eight years of community service learning in this field to inform the insights shared.


Author(s):  
Valerie L. Vaccaro

This chapter reviews multidisciplinary research from the fields of consumer behavior, humanistic and positive psychology, music education, and other areas to develop a new Transcendent Model of Motivation for Music Making. One’s “extended self” identity can be defined partly by possessions and mastery over objects, and objects can “complete” the self. Music making involves a person’s investment of “psychic energy,” including attention, time, learning, and efforts, and is a creative path which can lead to peak experiences and flow. Music making can help satisfy social needs, achieve self-actualization, experience self-transcendence, enhance well-being, strengthen spirituality, and improve the quality of life.


Author(s):  
Lauren Kapalka Richerme

Authors of contemporary education and arts education policies tend to emphasize the adoption of formal, summative assessment practices. Poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s emphasis on ongoing differing and imaginative possibilities may at first glance appear incompatible with these overarching, codified assessments. While Deleuze criticizes the increasing use of ongoing assessments as a form of control, he posits a more nuanced explanation of measurement. This philosophical inquiry examines four measurement-related themes from Deleuze’s writings and explores how they might inform concepts and practices of assessment in various music teaching and learning contexts. The first theme suggests that each group of connective relations, what Deleuze terms a “plane of immanence,” demands its own forms of measurement. Second, Deleuze emphasizes varieties of measurement. Third, those with power, what Deleuze terms the “majority,” always set the standard for measurement. Fourth, Deleuze derides continuous assessment. His writings suggest that music educators might consider that assessments created for one musical practice or style should not transcend their own “plane of immanence,” that a variety of nonstandardized assessments is desirable, that the effect of measurement on “minoritarian” musical practices must be examined carefully, and that it is essential to ponder the potentials of unmeasured music making.


Author(s):  
Marissa Silverman

This chapter asks an important, yet seemingly illusive, question: In what ways does the internet provide (or not) activist—or, for present purposes “artivist”—opportunities and engagements for musicing, music sharing, and music teaching and learning? According to Asante (2008), an “artivist (artist + activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression—by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation” (p. 6). Given this view, can (and should) social media be a means to achieve artivism through online musicing and music sharing, and, therefore, music teaching and learning? Taking a feminist perspective, this chapter interrogates the nature of cyber musical artivism as a potential means to a necessary end: positive transformation. In what ways can social media be a conduit (or hindrance) for cyber musical artivism? What might musicing and music sharing gain (or lose) from engaging with online artivist practices? In addition to a philosophical investigation, this chapter will examine select case studies of online artivist music making and music sharing communities with the above concerns in mind, specifically as they relate to music education.


Author(s):  
Robert H. Woody ◽  
Mark C. Adams

This chapter discusses the innate differences between vernacular music-making cultures and those oriented in Western classical traditions, and suggests students in traditional school music education programs in the United States are not typically afforded opportunities to learn skills used in vernacular and popular music-making cultures. The chapter emphasizes a need to diversify music-making experiences in schools and describes how vernacular musicianship may benefit students’ musical development. It suggests that, in order for substantive change to occur in music education in the United States, teachers will need to advance beyond simply considering how to integrate popular music into their traditional large ensembles—and how preservice music teacher education programs may be the key to help better prepare teachers to be more versatile and philosophically open to teaching a more musically diverse experience in their future classrooms.


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