Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Pedagogies

Part 3: Beyond the Songs contains three chapters. “Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Pedagogies” presents summaries of these teaching approaches alongside strategies to responsibly integrate the repertoire into school curriculums. “Music in Central America” is a brief overview of the diverse and rich music genres of the region and how historic events introduced, shaped, and eradicated music traditions. Genres described include music in the classic Mayan period, folkloric dance, Spanish music, the marimba, Nueva Canción, Garifuna music, Miskitu music, and current traditions. “A Brief History of Central America” provides a historical context for the song collection. Beginning with the first civilizations and ending with current events, this chapter chronicles the political history of the region, including the involvement of the U.S. government in business affairs and civil wars. This overview allows the reader to develop an awareness of the effects of colonization, continued foreign involvement, current political situations, and a basic understanding of human migration patterns from Central America to North America.

Escaping aesthetic control

Spanish pianists, educators, and commentators have relished passing down to following generations the performance practices of their own tradition, with the renowned institution L’escola de música de Barcelona claiming to offer specialist training in “Spanish music”. In this context, Granados’s Goyescas have inevitably become the almost-exclusive domain of native musicians, herding artists’ creativities towards sets of performance instructions familiar to them. That we should continue to consider this repertoire as a specifically separate entity, fully knowable only by local artists or those trained within their tradition, is worthy of attention, as it places anyone outside this educational background and performing tradition as ‘other’ in need of acceptance. While the study of Granados’s output has recently been enriched by analytical investigations, recording projects, and new critical editions, it is the still unfamiliar early-recorded legacy by the composer/pianist that will be the catalyst for insights in this article. His Welte-Mignon roll recordings show a dynamic and flexible artistry, unsurprising in pianists of his generation, together with a lack of highly articulated ornamental inflexions and the rhythmical rigour we might expect in performances of such repertoire. The question that I wish to raise is whether at some point during the twentieth century there was a cultural shift that shaped ‘Spanish music’ to sound as distinctively national as possible. Such a shift would have occurred, in the minds of players, in parallel to wider changes in performance styles taking place throughout the continent. Exploring these aesthetic ideals through the lens of the country’s cultural history during the troubled years across the middle of the last century may hint at the subtle but meaningful ways that defined a canon flavoured with local folklore, both within and without the Spanish borders. The aim throughout is to challenge these orthodox approaches controlling the repertoire, resulting in my own renewed performance of El amor y la muerte; the hope will be that of empowering pianists to make different choices, diversifying performance options in the future.

Social Support as a Facilitator of Musical Self-Efficacy

Previous research has shown that musical self-efficacy is one of the predictors of academic achievement, but few studies have analyzed the function of social support in the construction of musical self-efficacy. In this study we analyze the relationship between three sources of support perceived by music students – parents, teachers, and peers – and their influence on levels of self-efficacy for learning and for public performance. We analyze three groups of students under the hypothesis that relationships among those variables can vary with age and the level of education. A total of 444 students enrolled in six Spanish music schools, two music universities, and four advanced music schools, completed the Social Support Scale for Music Students, as well as the General Musical Self-Efficacy Scale. Results reveal significant relationships among the aforementioned variables, with considerable variation according to academic level. For the youngest students enrolled in advanced music schools (conservatorios profesionales), the role of parents and teachers was crucial, especially for predicting self-efficacy for learning, which, in turn, is the best predictor of self-efficacy for public performance. For the 16–18-year-olds enrolled in the same advanced music schools, their peers play a particularly relevant role in reinforcing their self-efficacy for learning. Social support had a negligible influence on the self-efficacy of university-level students, but they did experience a strong relationship between self-efficacy for learning, on the one hand, and public performance, on the other. We interpret these results in view of potential long-term careers in music, relating them with a series of different agents.

Exploring the jazz festival experience amongst local and non-local residents: The case of the Jazzaldia Festival in Spain

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the jazz festival experience at the Heineken Jazzaldia Festival in San Sebastian, Spain. It focuses especially on the relationship between participants’ area of residence and their experience of the festival, concert expectations, preference for different festival settings and perception of the best aspects of the festival.Design/methodology/approachThis study modifies and applies the Audience Experience Survey (Radbourne et al., 2009) to the Heineken Jazzaldia Festival in San Sebastian, Spain. A total of 406 valid questionnaires were obtained. A quantitative analysis technique was used for the area of residence, on the one hand, and for concert expectations, audience experience and venue setting, on the other. A qualitative approach was applied for identifying the best aspects of the festival.FindingsThe results suggest that the audiences’ festival preferences differed according to their area of residence. Audience members who lived in Spain outside of the Basque Country were more motivated to attend the festival, had higher concert expectations and greater indoor venue concert attendance, and considered music diversity to be one of the most important aspects of the festival. Local participants were more likely not to have expectations prior to concerts, had higher outdoor venue concert attendance rates and preferred ambience compared with residents from outside of the Basque Country.Practical implicationsFindings could be relevant to festivals’ organisers for management and marketing purposes in terms of their audiences’ needs and preferences. One of the main results obtained is that local residents were more likely not to have expectations prior to concerts. They also equalised music diversity, artists, stages and atmosphere as the best Festival’s aspects while participants from outside of the Basque Country prioritised music diversity aspect.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature regarding residents’ behaviour in the Spanish music festival context. Our findings add to the body of knowledge around local audiences’ and non-local audience’s experience in jazz festivals.

Prevalence of Burnout Syndrome and Job Satisfaction in Music Therapists in Spain: A Cross-Sectional, Descriptive Study

Background: Burnout syndrome and job satisfaction are topics of increasing interest due to their relevance in people’s health and well-being. Besides, they are considered very relevant in the fields of social and health care studies. Objective: The objective of this study was to analyse the professional profile of music therapists in Spain and the prevalence of burnout syndrome and job satisfaction among them. Methods: This was an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study, carried out using an ad-hoc online questionnaire, the Maslach Scale and the general satisfaction scale on a sample of employed Spanish music therapists with more than two years of working experience in Spain. Results: Eighty questionnaires were analysed. The majority of the participants were between 30–39 years old (38.8%) and were women (85%). They combined their profession with other occupations (76.3%), mostly in care roles with a fix term contract and were self-employed (40%). The prevalence of burnout syndrome was 3.8% (p < 0.001) and the predisposition or tendency to develop this condition was over 57.5% (p < 0.001). The highest levels of burnout syndrome were found in professionals with trainee contracts (p = 0.001), in those who were providing training (p = 0.021), who attended 6 to 10 patients per week (p = 0.001), who were usually working with a therapist colleague (p = 0.046) and those who did not take prescribed psychotropic drugs (p = 0.034). The highest level of job satisfaction was observed in music therapists working in the field of disability (p = 0.010) and mental health (p = 0.022) and with seniority in their job position. The lowest level of job satisfaction was seen in music therapists with trainee contracts (p = 0.041), with less working hours per week (p = 0.016), working in the field of education (p = 0.006) and in those who did not feel valued by their colleagues (p < 0.001) or by the director of the centre where they worked (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Based on the results of this study, Spanish music therapists show a low prevalence of burnout syndrome but a moderate-high predisposition to develop it. Music therapists with burnout syndrome are those who work longer hours and perform their job in palliative care setting. In general, music therapists have a high level of both intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. The lowest level of job satisfaction was found in music therapists with trainee contracts and the highest in music therapists with senior positions.

Joaquin Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo y Vidre (b. 1901–d. 1999) was born in Sagunto, in the province of Valencia, Spain, on 22 November 1901, the feast day of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music. Rodrigo was a productive composer for over six decades, and his roughly two hundred works include masterpieces for orchestra, chamber ensemble, chorus, solo voice, piano, and especially guitar, an instrument on which he was not proficient but the one with which his legacy is inextricably connected. Indeed, by far and away his most famous work is the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, composed in 1938–1939 and premiered in 1940. The middle movement’s main theme has provided inspiration for a whole assortment of arrangements by jazz artists such as Miles Davis and Chick Corea, and it has often been quoted in music for film and television. The unfortunate consequence of this melody’s viral popularity, however, is that it has tended to put much of his other music in the shade. Rodrigo’s achievement is remarkable because he lost his eyesight at age three as a result of diphtheria. Fortunately, the family moved to the city of Valencia in 1906, where advanced institutions for educating the deaf and blind were located. He received excellent training in piano, violin, and composition, as well as in regular academic subjects. Rodrigo became proficient in reading Braille notation for both words and music. He would eventually use a machine to type up his musical ideas in Braille, which he would then dictate to an assistant to write out in conventional notation. The music would thereafter be played at the piano so that he could hear it and make any necessary changes. In 1927 he moved to Paris to continue his studies in composition with Paul Dukas, at the École Normale de Musique. It was during his years in Paris that he met and married Victoria Kamhi, a Sephardic Jewess from Istanbul who was studying piano there. Composer and wife returned to Spain for good in 1939, settling in Madrid after the end of the Spanish Civil War and on the eve of World War II. The successful premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez cemented his reputation as a leading figure in Spanish music. He also became a music critic for Radio Nacional, the newspaper Pueblo, and he assumed administrative responsibilities for ONCE, the national organization for the blind. Rodrigo’s international reputation began to grow steadily during the 1950s, and he would be the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, at home and abroad. He passed away at the age of ninety-seven, two years after Victoria. His legacy is preserved and promoted by the Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo in Madrid (see online), which maintains his apartment as both a museum and a research archive. It is headed by the composer’s daughter, Cecilia (b. 1941).

Mechanical instruments and everyday life: the player piano in Portugal

This paper examines player pianos in Portugal between the 1890s and the 1930s. In a small European country with few production facilities, mechanical music developed in a particular way since a local recording industry was expanding rapidly and radio was not yet disseminated. Despite the local market's reliance on imported goods, the music business concentrated on Portuguese pieces. The mechanisation of the piano and its display as a product that embodied modernity illustrates the transformations that took place in Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century. These were reflected in new forms of entertainment, such as cinemas and nightclubs that incorporated new music genres. At the dawn of the century, the leisure market relied on the popular music theatre, which was dominated by Portuguese, French and Spanish music. In the interwar period, English and American pieces made their way into people's lives, transforming the music business.

A social support scale for music students in music schools, academies, and conservatories: An adaptation into Spanish and a factorial invariance study

Social support is one of the variables that exert the greatest influence on the motivation of music students, as well as on emotional aspects that affect their results. Research, however, is limited by the current scarcity of evaluation tools. This article thus presents the process of adaptation into Spanish of the Social Support Scale. We report on the elaboration of the questionnaire’s exact wording through direct and reverse translation. We subsequently present analysis of internal reliability and validity based on a sample of 668 music students in music schools and university-level music academies, aged 12–60 (mean 16.9). The study is complemented by an analysis of factorial invariance comparing secondary education and university. The results reproduce the social support factors stemming from parents and teachers; peer support is subdivided into two subcategories. Discrepancies with the original version are not so much due to the adaptation process, but can be attributed, for the most part, to differences between the sample compositions. Our results indicate that Spanish music students perceive a considerable amount of social support for their music learning activities; differences stand out, however, in terms of age, gender, and educational level.