Below is an excerpt from an article entitled "Music Education in a Time of Cultural Transformation" by Patricia Shehan Campbell in the Music Educators Journal v89 n1 p27-32,54 Sep 2002. You will find a detailed history of multicultural music education as well as information about various organizations that promote multicultural music education. For the full article, please see the Articles section of this website.
Historical High Points in Multicultural Music Education
Historical evidence of a musical democracy in school programs can be traced to the first decades of the twentieth century. Physical education and recreation specialists, and a rare breed of music teacher, used RCA Victrola recordings of folk songs and dances in classes, but this activity was primarily an extension of the current interest in physical movement and dance. Folk song collections were appearing, and by the 1920s there were numerous music series texts that included both the German folk and classical songs of earlier editions, as well as the more recently included songs of England, France, and other countries in northern and central Europe. The “songs of many lands” phenomenon was on the rise by the 1930s, and textbooks and concert and conference programs showed the extension of the repertoire into the realm of African-American spirituals and work songs, with an occasional song (in English) from Eastern European, North African, and Native American cultures. Through the 1940s, a quest for inter-American unity through music was seen as an important thrust of music education. Spearheaded by the visionary ideas of musicologist Charles Seeger and coordinated by Vanett Lawler, then MENC associate executive secretary, the Advisory Council on Music Education in the Latin American Republics was established. Articles on Latin American folk music appeared in the Music Educators Journal, and conference sessions were organized around the pan-American theme. [5]
The servicemen returning from World War II and the Korean War brought with them a broader view of the world, which fueled the development of international studies. In the academy, some viewed musicological studies of Western art music as too narrow, and thus came the development of ethnomusicology to probe questions of music and culture beyond Eurocentric parameters. The founding in 1953 of both the Society for Ethnomusicology and the International Society for Music Education reflected this need to “go global” and supported the belief that an exchange of views on the study of music and its transmission was of central importance for both scholarship and educational practice. The music of Africa and Asia came trickling into textbooks of the 1950s and 1960s as transcriptions of recordings or remakes of missionary and military collections, complete with full piano scores. The internationalization of the music curriculum was sputtering along, with elementary music teachers increasingly translating the music of the world into suitable forms for performance by their young students.
Meanwhile, the civil rights movement was building its own momentum, fanned by African-Americans' growing dissent against racial discrimination, including segregated schools and unequal schooling for their young. Some music teachers working in urban districts, or in schools with large populations of African-American students, were turning toward the establishment of jazz bands, the performance of spirituals, and the study of assorted African genres (considered the musical roots of their students) and “youth music” (popular music with
African-American musical influences). More often than not, however, music programs of the early 1960s in schools with diverse populations were not distinguishable from those in all-white and suburban districts. Nor did the increase of Latin American and Asian immigration spark much curricular modification at this time. In retrospect, the civil rights movement allowed for the verbal testimonies of discontent—the protests—that led to proclamations and policies advocating change, which in turn pointed toward the reshaping of instructional practice. The emergence of “urban music,” which in reality was the music of African-Americans, was slow to come but was indeed a response by a few enlightened inner-city music teachers to the discontent they heard around them.
The Tanglewood Symposium of 1967, organized by MENC, was the ultimate watershed of a profession in a time of societal turmoil. The gathering occurred in order to resolve questions about the content of school music programs and the relevance of school music programs to young people. Performers, conductors, educators, sociologists, anthropologists, government and industrial leaders, scientists, and others met to discuss “polycultural curriculums,” the reality of a musical hierarchy (with European art music at its apex), and “teenage music.… American folk music, and the music of other cultures.”[6] Tanglewood, among the most cited professional meetings of the century, had to happen in order that change to music programs could be a national endeavor rather than the result of isolated efforts of individual teachers. The symposium brought meaning to the term “diversity” as it relates to the American school-aged population and the multiple musics to which people could have access.
MENC went to work on the heels of the symposium, implementing the recommendations of the Tanglewood Declaration. MENC's 1968 national conference in Seattle featured three hundred junior high school students in a performance of an African song with an African drumming ensemble (all led by Barbara Reeder) that took the conventioneers by surprise and by storm. The Goals and Objectives (GO) Project of 1968–69 included a “Music of Non-Western Cultures” subcommittee and sought to advance the teaching of music from all cultures.[7] In October 1972, editorial chair O. M. Hartzell oversaw the special Music Educators Journal issue entitled “Music in World Cultures,” with a foreword by anthropologist Margaret Mead and contributions by ethnomusicologists and educators on musical traditions from selected cultures of Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania (complete with a pair of two-sided floppy vinyl records).[8]
A counterbalance for the world-cultures approach was seen in several initiatives meant for the minorities in urban schools: the publication of James Standifer and Barbara Reeder's Source Book of African and Afro-American Materials for Music Educators in 19727 the organization of the National Black Music Caucus, and the formation of the Minority Concerns Commission in 1973. Clinics and published materials by Reeder, Standifer, William M. Anderson, and Sally Monsour[10] were pioneering efforts set against a backdrop of European folk songs (in English), Brahms choral arrangements, Mozart concerti for orchestras, and transcriptions for band. This work awakened teachers of various levels to materials and methods by which music programs could be multiculturalized.
Recent Moments in the Multicultural Movement
From the 1970s through the end of the century, the transformation of the profession's perspective on musical content and delivery continued. Conferences of professional organizations began to be seasoned with the musical traditions of African-Americans, as well as other world cultures. Particularly since the middle 1980s, programs of MENC, the American Orff-Schulwerk Association, the American Choral Directors Association, and the Organization of Kodély Educators were loaded with concerts and clinics meant to showcase and teach a broader repertoire. Of course, the International Society for Music Education was a natural forum for offering participants earfuls of the world's musical cultures and the inherent pedagogical systems through which they are transmitted, and this is where some of the most forward thinking has occurred on “heritage musics” in education. In recent years, conference sessions have featured “culture-bearers” (traditional musicians trained in the music of their culture) who present their music either alone or paired with teachers (who serve as “classroom translators”). These presentations have offered more than merely a new tune to take home; they aim to bring about, through a musical event, a perceptual shift in the understanding of the ways a group of people thinks and behaves.
Educators have teamed with ethnomusicologists in search of musical materials and appropriate methods for teaching the world's musics. The Society for Ethnomusicology's Education Committee has identified scholars who perform and teach and has linked these “resource ethnomusicologists” to organizations of teachers and university teacher-education programs. In 1984, MENC, Wesleyan University, and the Theodore Presser Foundation gathered ethnomusicologists and educators at the Wesleyan Symposium, where they discussed music's meaning and transmission systems across an array of world cultures. MENC's 1989 textbook Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education was another testimony of the effort of educators working with ethnomusicologists to recommend sources and procedures for teaching a broader sampling of musical cultures.[11] On the heels of this book, MENC, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Society for Ethnomusicology cosponsored the 1990 Symposium on Multicultural Approaches to Music Education in Washington, D.C., where music educators, ethnomusicologists, and culture-bearers were brought together in a plan designed by William M. Anderson to represent and demonstrate the music of African-American, Chinese, Cuban/Carribean, Mexican, and Native American cultures. The publication of “Music in Cultural Context,” an in-depth series of interviews in the 1995-96 volumes of the Music Educators Journal, was yet another collaboration of sorts, as eight ethnomusicologists responded to questions prominent among teachers concerning musical authenticity, representation, and possible instructional processes.
Materials and innovative technologies are being generated at lightning speed today, thus silencing one of the most frequently asked questions
of a generation ago: “But where are the materials?” In a host of instructional packages by professional societies and publishing companies, music has been found, arranged, and created to bring musical diversity to classrooms and ensembles in elementary and secondary school. Textbooks, recordings, song collections, videotaped series, and arrangements for classroom instruments and lot choral, wind, and orchestral ensembles are widely available to those with even the tightest of school budgets. CD-ROMS and Web sites offer further information to teachers seeking enlightenment on music, musicians, and cultural contexts for the music. A growing recognition of the value of culture bearers has led teachers to invite musicians from the community into school classrooms. Paid by PTAs or through arrangements as “contract teachers” (similar to part-timers who teach group violin, oboe, or French horn lessons), culture-bearers represent musical traditions beyond the expertise and experience of the music teacher; they may perform in special programs, lead small-group workshops, or serve in long-term residencies. Materials are no longer scarce, and sometimes the method of instruction is matched to the musicians and
traditions they represent.
A new phenomenon has taken shape in recent years, even as elementary students sing songs of Cambodia or dance a Croatian kolo, concert choirs sway to the lively polychoral sounds of the Zulu, and band and orchestra teachers conduct their students in arrangements of Korean melodies and new music from Latin America. Gradually, following decades of rhetoric on the notion that traditional music can be performed in schools on traditional-sounding instruments, new ensembles that use authentic instruments are finally emerging (and re-energizing music programs). A tidal wave of African drumming ensembles—in which participants play Akan, Asanti, Ewe, and Ga rhythms from Ghana in a circle format—is rekindling the musical interests of upper-elementary and middle school students. Trinidadian steel drums, or pan ensembles, are a popular music elective for students from upper-elementary school onward. Mariachi hands are sprinkled into high school programs from Oklahoma and Texas to Arizona and California. Latin-flavored selections that feature guiros, claves, reco-recos, and surdo (drum) are increasingly included in the repertoire of high school jazz bands. Shona-style marimba music of Zimbabwe played on Orff and oversized wood xylophones is a recent development from the Pacific Northwest that is making its way eastward. Secondary school teachers who wish to maintain their long-standing school ensembles may still develop new groups such as these to multiculturalize the curriculum.
/5. Terese M. Volk, Music, Education, and Multiculturalism(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Patricia Shehan Campbell “Music, Education, and Community in a Multicultural Society,” in Cross Currents, ed. Marie McCarthy (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, 1996); Marie McCarthy, “The Birth of Internationalism in Music Education, 1899–1938,” International Journal of Music Education 21(1993): 3–15./
/6. Robert A. Choate, ed., Documentary Report of the Tanglewood Symposium (Washington, DC: Music Educators National Conference, 1968)./
/7. Michael L. Mark, “MENC: From Tanglewood to the Present,” in Vision 2020: The Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education, ed. Clifford K. Madsen (Reston, VA: MENC, 2000)./
/8. “Music in World Cultures,” special focus issue of the Music Educators Journal 59, no. 2 (1972)./
/9. James A. Standifer and Barbara Reeder, Source Book of African and Afro-American Materials for Music Educators (Washington, DC: Contemporary Music Project, 1972)./
/10. See Standifer and Reeder, Source Book; William M. Anderson, Teaching Asian Musics in Elementary and Secondary Schools (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1975); and Sally Monsour, Songs of the Middle East (Miami: Warner Bros. Publications, 1995)./
/11. William M. Anderson and Patricia Shehan Campbell, eds., Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1989). A second edition was published in 1996./
Historical evidence of a musical democracy in school programs can be traced to the first decades of the twentieth century. Physical education and recreation specialists, and a rare breed of music teacher, used RCA Victrola recordings of folk songs and dances in classes, but this activity was primarily an extension of the current interest in physical movement and dance. Folk song collections were appearing, and by the 1920s there were numerous music series texts that included both the German folk and classical songs of earlier editions, as well as the more recently included songs of England, France, and other countries in northern and central Europe. The “songs of many lands” phenomenon was on the rise by the 1930s, and textbooks and concert and conference programs showed the extension of the repertoire into the realm of African-American spirituals and work songs, with an occasional song (in English) from Eastern European, North African, and Native American cultures. Through the 1940s, a quest for inter-American unity through music was seen as an important thrust of music education. Spearheaded by the visionary ideas of musicologist Charles Seeger and coordinated by Vanett Lawler, then MENC associate executive secretary, the Advisory Council on Music Education in the Latin American Republics was established. Articles on Latin American folk music appeared in the Music Educators Journal, and conference sessions were organized around the pan-American theme. [5]
The servicemen returning from World War II and the Korean War brought with them a broader view of the world, which fueled the development of international studies. In the academy, some viewed musicological studies of Western art music as too narrow, and thus came the development of ethnomusicology to probe questions of music and culture beyond Eurocentric parameters. The founding in 1953 of both the Society for Ethnomusicology and the International Society for Music Education reflected this need to “go global” and supported the belief that an exchange of views on the study of music and its transmission was of central importance for both scholarship and educational practice. The music of Africa and Asia came trickling into textbooks of the 1950s and 1960s as transcriptions of recordings or remakes of missionary and military collections, complete with full piano scores. The internationalization of the music curriculum was sputtering along, with elementary music teachers increasingly translating the music of the world into suitable forms for performance by their young students.
Meanwhile, the civil rights movement was building its own momentum, fanned by African-Americans' growing dissent against racial discrimination, including segregated schools and unequal schooling for their young. Some music teachers working in urban districts, or in schools with large populations of African-American students, were turning toward the establishment of jazz bands, the performance of spirituals, and the study of assorted African genres (considered the musical roots of their students) and “youth music” (popular music with
African-American musical influences). More often than not, however, music programs of the early 1960s in schools with diverse populations were not distinguishable from those in all-white and suburban districts. Nor did the increase of Latin American and Asian immigration spark much curricular modification at this time. In retrospect, the civil rights movement allowed for the verbal testimonies of discontent—the protests—that led to proclamations and policies advocating change, which in turn pointed toward the reshaping of instructional practice. The emergence of “urban music,” which in reality was the music of African-Americans, was slow to come but was indeed a response by a few enlightened inner-city music teachers to the discontent they heard around them.
The Tanglewood Symposium of 1967, organized by MENC, was the ultimate watershed of a profession in a time of societal turmoil. The gathering occurred in order to resolve questions about the content of school music programs and the relevance of school music programs to young people. Performers, conductors, educators, sociologists, anthropologists, government and industrial leaders, scientists, and others met to discuss “polycultural curriculums,” the reality of a musical hierarchy (with European art music at its apex), and “teenage music.… American folk music, and the music of other cultures.”[6] Tanglewood, among the most cited professional meetings of the century, had to happen in order that change to music programs could be a national endeavor rather than the result of isolated efforts of individual teachers. The symposium brought meaning to the term “diversity” as it relates to the American school-aged population and the multiple musics to which people could have access.
MENC went to work on the heels of the symposium, implementing the recommendations of the Tanglewood Declaration. MENC's 1968 national conference in Seattle featured three hundred junior high school students in a performance of an African song with an African drumming ensemble (all led by Barbara Reeder) that took the conventioneers by surprise and by storm. The Goals and Objectives (GO) Project of 1968–69 included a “Music of Non-Western Cultures” subcommittee and sought to advance the teaching of music from all cultures.[7] In October 1972, editorial chair O. M. Hartzell oversaw the special Music Educators Journal issue entitled “Music in World Cultures,” with a foreword by anthropologist Margaret Mead and contributions by ethnomusicologists and educators on musical traditions from selected cultures of Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania (complete with a pair of two-sided floppy vinyl records).[8]
A counterbalance for the world-cultures approach was seen in several initiatives meant for the minorities in urban schools: the publication of James Standifer and Barbara Reeder's Source Book of African and Afro-American Materials for Music Educators in 19727 the organization of the National Black Music Caucus, and the formation of the Minority Concerns Commission in 1973. Clinics and published materials by Reeder, Standifer, William M. Anderson, and Sally Monsour[10] were pioneering efforts set against a backdrop of European folk songs (in English), Brahms choral arrangements, Mozart concerti for orchestras, and transcriptions for band. This work awakened teachers of various levels to materials and methods by which music programs could be multiculturalized.
Recent Moments in the Multicultural Movement
From the 1970s through the end of the century, the transformation of the profession's perspective on musical content and delivery continued. Conferences of professional organizations began to be seasoned with the musical traditions of African-Americans, as well as other world cultures. Particularly since the middle 1980s, programs of MENC, the American Orff-Schulwerk Association, the American Choral Directors Association, and the Organization of Kodély Educators were loaded with concerts and clinics meant to showcase and teach a broader repertoire. Of course, the International Society for Music Education was a natural forum for offering participants earfuls of the world's musical cultures and the inherent pedagogical systems through which they are transmitted, and this is where some of the most forward thinking has occurred on “heritage musics” in education. In recent years, conference sessions have featured “culture-bearers” (traditional musicians trained in the music of their culture) who present their music either alone or paired with teachers (who serve as “classroom translators”). These presentations have offered more than merely a new tune to take home; they aim to bring about, through a musical event, a perceptual shift in the understanding of the ways a group of people thinks and behaves.
Educators have teamed with ethnomusicologists in search of musical materials and appropriate methods for teaching the world's musics. The Society for Ethnomusicology's Education Committee has identified scholars who perform and teach and has linked these “resource ethnomusicologists” to organizations of teachers and university teacher-education programs. In 1984, MENC, Wesleyan University, and the Theodore Presser Foundation gathered ethnomusicologists and educators at the Wesleyan Symposium, where they discussed music's meaning and transmission systems across an array of world cultures. MENC's 1989 textbook Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education was another testimony of the effort of educators working with ethnomusicologists to recommend sources and procedures for teaching a broader sampling of musical cultures.[11] On the heels of this book, MENC, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Society for Ethnomusicology cosponsored the 1990 Symposium on Multicultural Approaches to Music Education in Washington, D.C., where music educators, ethnomusicologists, and culture-bearers were brought together in a plan designed by William M. Anderson to represent and demonstrate the music of African-American, Chinese, Cuban/Carribean, Mexican, and Native American cultures. The publication of “Music in Cultural Context,” an in-depth series of interviews in the 1995-96 volumes of the Music Educators Journal, was yet another collaboration of sorts, as eight ethnomusicologists responded to questions prominent among teachers concerning musical authenticity, representation, and possible instructional processes.
Materials and innovative technologies are being generated at lightning speed today, thus silencing one of the most frequently asked questions
of a generation ago: “But where are the materials?” In a host of instructional packages by professional societies and publishing companies, music has been found, arranged, and created to bring musical diversity to classrooms and ensembles in elementary and secondary school. Textbooks, recordings, song collections, videotaped series, and arrangements for classroom instruments and lot choral, wind, and orchestral ensembles are widely available to those with even the tightest of school budgets. CD-ROMS and Web sites offer further information to teachers seeking enlightenment on music, musicians, and cultural contexts for the music. A growing recognition of the value of culture bearers has led teachers to invite musicians from the community into school classrooms. Paid by PTAs or through arrangements as “contract teachers” (similar to part-timers who teach group violin, oboe, or French horn lessons), culture-bearers represent musical traditions beyond the expertise and experience of the music teacher; they may perform in special programs, lead small-group workshops, or serve in long-term residencies. Materials are no longer scarce, and sometimes the method of instruction is matched to the musicians and
traditions they represent.
A new phenomenon has taken shape in recent years, even as elementary students sing songs of Cambodia or dance a Croatian kolo, concert choirs sway to the lively polychoral sounds of the Zulu, and band and orchestra teachers conduct their students in arrangements of Korean melodies and new music from Latin America. Gradually, following decades of rhetoric on the notion that traditional music can be performed in schools on traditional-sounding instruments, new ensembles that use authentic instruments are finally emerging (and re-energizing music programs). A tidal wave of African drumming ensembles—in which participants play Akan, Asanti, Ewe, and Ga rhythms from Ghana in a circle format—is rekindling the musical interests of upper-elementary and middle school students. Trinidadian steel drums, or pan ensembles, are a popular music elective for students from upper-elementary school onward. Mariachi hands are sprinkled into high school programs from Oklahoma and Texas to Arizona and California. Latin-flavored selections that feature guiros, claves, reco-recos, and surdo (drum) are increasingly included in the repertoire of high school jazz bands. Shona-style marimba music of Zimbabwe played on Orff and oversized wood xylophones is a recent development from the Pacific Northwest that is making its way eastward. Secondary school teachers who wish to maintain their long-standing school ensembles may still develop new groups such as these to multiculturalize the curriculum.
/5. Terese M. Volk, Music, Education, and Multiculturalism(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Patricia Shehan Campbell “Music, Education, and Community in a Multicultural Society,” in Cross Currents, ed. Marie McCarthy (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, 1996); Marie McCarthy, “The Birth of Internationalism in Music Education, 1899–1938,” International Journal of Music Education 21(1993): 3–15./
/6. Robert A. Choate, ed., Documentary Report of the Tanglewood Symposium (Washington, DC: Music Educators National Conference, 1968)./
/7. Michael L. Mark, “MENC: From Tanglewood to the Present,” in Vision 2020: The Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education, ed. Clifford K. Madsen (Reston, VA: MENC, 2000)./
/8. “Music in World Cultures,” special focus issue of the Music Educators Journal 59, no. 2 (1972)./
/9. James A. Standifer and Barbara Reeder, Source Book of African and Afro-American Materials for Music Educators (Washington, DC: Contemporary Music Project, 1972)./
/10. See Standifer and Reeder, Source Book; William M. Anderson, Teaching Asian Musics in Elementary and Secondary Schools (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1975); and Sally Monsour, Songs of the Middle East (Miami: Warner Bros. Publications, 1995)./
/11. William M. Anderson and Patricia Shehan Campbell, eds., Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1989). A second edition was published in 1996./