Interlocking Sounds, Interlocking Communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Clendinning
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Music Education ◽  
World Music ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
The Way ◽  
Percussion Orchestra

The chapter introduces Indonesian gamelan (percussion orchestra) and the roles that it has played in college world music education in North America and in the discipline of ethnomusicology. The chapter presents a musical overview of gamelan and its original cultural contexts in Indonesia, including religious ceremonies, tourist audiences, and local entertainment. Then it introduces new contexts that gamelan has come to occupy in North America, including performances on concert stages, at outdoor festivals, in prisons, and, most pertinent to this book, in collegiate music halls. Finally, the chapter introduces the premise of the volume—a biography-based examination of the way academic world music ensembles impact local and transnational educational and musical communities—and the book’s primary goal: that of suggesting ways to construct more sustainable academic music communities.

Sustainability and the Academic World Music Ensemble

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Clendinning
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
World Music ◽  
Tourist Industry ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Cultural Sustainability ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
Collaborative Models ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Music Ensembles

The chapter examines the cultural sustainability of American academic gamelan specifically and academic world music ensembles more generally. Gamelan ensembles in North America exist in different cultural contexts than do those in Indonesia; in particular, American gamelans lack the societal reinforcement of the arts derived from Balinese Hindu ceremonies and the tourist industry. Within the American gamelan artistic ecosystem, there are many reasons why ensembles may fail or fade away, including lack of interested students or available teachers (selection), competition for space and resources, performative and pedagogical adaptations necessary for thriving in a new environment, and reciprocity or exchange between the ensemble and its community. Building sustainable gamelan ensembles—and indeed, sustainable non-Western academic ensembles—requires embracing collaborative models of musicianship, teaching, and scholarship that move gamelan from a marginalized position in curricula to sharing equal footing with other types of music in educational settings.

American Gamelan and the Ethnomusicological Imagination

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Clendinning
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Music Teachers ◽  
American Music ◽  
World Music ◽  
Music Programs ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
College Music

The book seeks to answer these questions: Why are there more than 150 gamelans (Indonesian percussion ensembles) in North America, and why are more than half of them associated with American colleges and universities? How and why did gamelan ensembles spark the ethnomusicological imagination? What impact have these ensembles had on college music programs, their local communities, and transnational Indonesian performing arts scenes? How does a lifetime of teaching foreign college students shape the lives of non-American music teachers? First providing an overview of gamelan and its incorporation in education in North America, this book uses the story of the career and community of one performer-teacher, I Made Lasmawan of Bali and Colorado, as a case study to examine the formation and sustenance academic world music ensembles. It examines the way students develop musical and cultural competence by learning gamelan in traditional ethnomusicology ensemble courses and analyzes the merits of including gamelan ensembles in studies in percussion, composition, and music education. More broadly, the book argues that beyond the classroom, the presence of these ensembles shapes transnational arts education and touristic performing arts scenes in Bali. Finally, it advocates for world music ensemble courses as a powerful means for teaching musical and cultural diversity and sparking transnational exchanges, both in and outside the classroom.

Early Encounters in Bimusicality

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Clendinning
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Early Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Music ◽  
Educational Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Music Ensemble ◽  
World’S Fairs

The chapter presents an overview of the introduction of gamelan to North America and examines how the ensembles assumed a key role within the philosophy and practice of American collegiate world music education. Musical and cultural exhibitions at world’s fairs, the dispersion of early recordings of gamelan music, transnational performance tours, and the work of Western composers and pedagogues led to the importation of instruments and founding of early academic gamelans. The world music ensemble programs modeled after those founded at UCLA by Mantle Hood embodied a new and important paradigm in ethnomusicology termed bimusicality, as well as sparking the collegiate world music ensemble movement. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the current gamelan scene in the United States that reconnects the early development of academic gamelan ensembles to contemporary artistic and educational practices.

scholarly journals Musically Creolizing Subjects: Re(envisioning) world music education

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 155-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet Hess
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
World Music ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Shifts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

This paper explores possibilities for constructing creole subjects through world music education. Creolization results from the “fusing and mixing of cultures forced to cohabit together to render something else possible” (Walcott, 2009, p. 170 citing Hall, 2003, p. 193). As cultures fuse musically, our identity shifts. We become creole subjects through the encounters we experience, particularly, Walcott (2009) posits, in highly diverse urban spaces. The mobile nature of cultures is intrinsic to world music. My participation in an Ewe ensemble in Toronto demonstrates that cultures travel musically. The question then becomes: when cultures travel, who or what is refigured or remade and what becomes possible after the encounter? I posit that these encounters affect all parties; people become creole subjects—subjects constantly affected by their continuously changing cultural environments. In this paper, I think about this idea from a utopian perspective. I find thinking in this manner particularly useful in thinking about the future. In many ways, I feel we are mired down in academia with discussions of race and the “crisis of raciology” (Gilroy, 2000, Chapter 1) and that it might be quite productive to think beyond. I begin by arguing that there is the potential for world music education to be a colonizing project. I look specifically to Said (1993) and Thobani (2007) to inform my thinking on this topic. From there, I explore what might happen when an encounter facilitated through world music education occurs and the impact that this encounter could have on the way we define the category of the human. Finally, I think about what might occur after this encounter and redefinition take place.

Class, Control, and Classical Music

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bull
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
The Aesthetic

Through an ethnographic study of young people playing and singing in classical music ensembles in the south of England, this book analyses why classical music in England is predominantly practiced by white middle-class people. It describes four ‘articulations’ or associations between the middle classes and classical music. Firstly, its repertoire requires formal modes of social organization that can be contrasted with the anti-pretentious, informal, dialogic modes of participation found in many forms of working-class culture. Secondly, its modes of embodiment reproduce classed values such as female respectability. Thirdly, an imaginative dimension of bourgeois selfhood can be read from classical music’s practices. Finally, its aesthetic of detail, precision, and ‘getting it right’ requires a long-term investment that is more possible, and makes more sense, for middle- and upper-class families. Through these arguments, the book reframes existing debates on gender and classical music participation in light of the classed gender identities that the study revealed. Overall, the book suggests that inequalities in cultural production can be understood through examining the practices that are used to create a particular aesthetic. It argues that the ideology of the ‘autonomy’ of classical music from social concerns needs to be examined in historical context as part of the classed legacy of classical music’s past. It describes how the aesthetic of classical music is a mechanism through which the middle classes carry out boundary-drawing around their protected spaces, and within these spaces, young people’s participation in classical music education cultivates a socially valued form of self-hood.

Habits of Mind as a Framework for Assessment in Music Education

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-224
Author(s):  
Jillian Hogan ◽  
Ellen Winner
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Habits Of Mind ◽  
Public High School ◽  
Student Agency ◽  
Thinking Dispositions ◽  
Music Classroom ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
School Music ◽  
High School Music

Music making requires many kinds of habits of mind—broad thinking dispositions potentially useful outside of the music room. Teaching for habits of mind is prevalent in both general and other areas of arts education. This chapter reports a preliminary analysis of the habits of mind that were systematically observed and thematically coded in twenty-four rehearsals of six public high school music ensembles: band, choir, and orchestra. Preliminary results reveal evidence of eight habits of mind being taught: engage and persist, evaluate, express, imagine, listen, notice, participate in community, and set goals and be prepared. However, two habits of mind that the researchers expected to find taught were not observed: appreciate ambiguity and use creativity. These two nonobserved habits are ones that arts advocates and theorists assume are central to arts education. The chapter discusses how authentic assessment of habits of mind in the music classroom may require novel methods, including the development of classroom environments that foster additional levels of student agency.

Becoming an Anti-Racist Music Educator: Resisting Whiteness in Music Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
Juliet Hess
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Music Educator ◽  
The Way

In this article, I propose some ways that music educators might become anti-racist. I explore the ways that Whiteness manifests in music education and subsequently examine actions we might take to resist this Whiteness. Ultimately, I suggest anti-racism as a way forward for music education. I delineate some of the ways that Whiteness operates in music education, not to discourage educators but rather to encourage us to notice the way Whiteness pervades our field.

Scott Joplin: A Guide for Music Educators Part III—Ragtime Spaces

2021 ◽  
pp. 104837132110344
Author(s):  
Kendra Kay Friar
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
General Music ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
Student Activities ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Cultural Globalization ◽  
Music Standards ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activities ◽  
K 12

Scott Joplin was an African American composer and pianist of singular merit and influence. This article is the final entry in a three-part series considering the biographical, artistic, and cultural contexts of Joplin’s life and work and their use in K–12 general music education. “Ragtime Spaces” focuses on cultural globalization and the modernist entertainment aesthetic which supported Joplin’s work. Scott Joplin’s creative and entrepreneurial activities embodied humanism, racial uplift, and craftsmanship at a time when society became increasingly racially segregated and dehumanized. The discussion is followed by suggested student activities written in accordance with National Association for Music Education’s 2014 National Music Standards.

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