Abstract
Well into the 21st century, a lack of diversity still permeates many aspects of music education in the United States. Most music education courses present the White, Anglo culture as the default frame of reference. This is still the case more than half a century after the Tanglewood Declaration of 1967, in which the music education profession declared its intent to make its content less Western high art-centric. Diversity is also conspicuously absent among the music education student body. Female, White, and high-income students are overrepresented in K-12 music education courses, particularly in high school, whereas students from low socio-economic backgrounds and non-native English speakers are significantly underrepresented. Finally, admission processes and training programs for music teachers commonly exclude all music traditions but Western high art, leading to an overwhelmingly White and middle-class music teaching force. In The Song-Hunting Project students, parents, and music teachers from a dual-language elementary school created a collaborative class songbook. The students recorded their parents singing songs in Spanish and English and then transcribed and analyzed these songs working in teams. This process provided an opportunity for participants to learn about each other’s background cultures, fostering a sense of belonging to the school community. The Song-Hunting Project stands as a viable example of acknowledgement and validation of diversity in music education’s curriculum content, student body, and teacher force.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This is the case, for example, of Mariachi ensembles established in schools with large Latinx student populations, despite Mariachi music being representative of only Western Mexico, and other music genres, such as hip-hop and urban Latin, being arguably more pervasive and meaningful than folk-based genres for young Latinx born and raised in the U.S.
- 2.
Students were being asked to follow individual-centered classroom norms such as “no speaking” and “no touching (neither one another nor the instruments)” at nearly all times.
- 3.
The school’s general music teacher chose a group of third-grade students to carry out the Song-Hunting Project based on pragmatic reasons: this group met on Mondays and Wednesdays, both days when the author was volunteering at the school.
- 4.
This statement is based on the general music teacher’s description of his students. There were no African American or White girls in this class.
- 5.
Although the initial plan was for students to upload their songs and analyses to a common online repository, adding a stronger technological component to the Project, time constrains led to the author taking care of this task.
- 6.
Students wrote, for instance, that the Song-Hunting Project was “cool” and indicated their personal preference for particular songs and performances.
- 7.
The general music teacher wrote that the Song-Hunting Project created a learning challenge for students to critically listen to and evaluate songs from their families, and that it also generated a great opportunity for all of the parts involved to learn together. Likewise, he commented that it was “fabulous” to work with the author and expressed gratitude for being a part of this experience.
- 8.
The author recorded her mother through on-line video call and then analyzed her song along with the students following their criteria. This recording was included in the Project’s songbook along with all the others.
- 9.
The author. Students proved to be aware of this circumstance. One of the students, for instance, remarked that the author sounded like a movie character whenever she spoke Spanish, most probably alluding to movies doubted into Spanish from Spain, a variety with which the student may not have had any other contact in person.
- 10.
An indication of this general music teacher’s appreciation for the author’s regular assistance is the way in which he mentioned hers in the end-of the-year concert’s hand programs as “Special Teaching Assistant.”
References
Abril, C. R. (2009). Responding to culture in the instrumental music program: A teacher’s journey. Music Education Research, 11(1), 77–91.
Apple, M. W. (2000). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. New York: Routledge.
Bartók, B. (1979). Escritos sobre música popular [Writings on popular music]. México DF: Siglo XXI.
Bergonzi, L. S. (2009). Sexual orientation and music education: Continuing a tradition. Music Educators Journal, 96(2), 21–25.
Bouck, E. C. (2011). A snapshot of secondary education for students with mild intellectual disabilities. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 46(3), 399–409.
Bradley, D. (2007). The sounds of silence: Talking race in music education. Action, Criticism, and Theory of Music Education, 6(4), 132–162.
Carter, B. A. (2013). “Nothing better or worse than being black, gay, and in the band”: A qualitative examination of gay undergraduates participating in historically black college or university marching bands. Journal of Research in Music Education, 61(1), 26–43.
Carver-Thomas, D., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Bilingual teacher shortages in California: A problem likely to grow [Fact Sheet]. Palo Alto: Learning Policy Institute.
Choate, R. A. (Ed.). (1968). Documentary report of the Tanglewood Symposium. Washington, DC: Music Educators National Conference.
Counts, G. S. (1932). Dare the school build a new social order. New York: The John Day Company.
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Drummond, T. (2014). Singing over the wall: Legal and ethical considerations for sacred music in the public schools. Music Educators Journal, 101(2), 27–31.
Elpus, K., & Abril, C. R. (2011). High school music ensemble students in the United States: A demographic profile. Journal of Research in Music Education, 59(2), 128–145.
Eősze, L. (1962). Zoltán Kodály: His life and work. Boston, MA: Crescendo Publishing Company.
Gándara, P., & Contreras, F. (2009). The Latino education crisis: The consequences of failed social policies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. (2017). “No Promo Homo” Laws. Retrieved from https://www.glsen.org/learn/policy/issues/nopromohomo
Gustafson, R. I. (2009). Race and curriculum: Music in childhood education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
James, J. L. (1976). The music of Afro-Americans in elementary music series books: An investigation of changing textbook content, 1864 to 1970 (Doctoral Dissertation). The University of Southern Mississippi.
Keene, J. A. (1982). A history of music education in the United States. Hanover: University Press of New England.
Kelly-Mchale, J., & Abril, C. R. (2015). The space between worlds: Music education and Latino children. In C. Benedict, P. Schmidt, G. Spruce, & P. Woodford (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of social justice in music education (pp. 156–172). New York: Oxford University Press.
Kennedy, B. H. (2013). A qualitative case study of the bilingual teacher shortage in one Texas school district (Doctoral Dissertation). Lamar University.
Kilpatrick, W. H. (1918). The project method. In Teachers College Record. New York.
Koza, J. E. (2001). Multicultural approaches to music education. In C. A. Grant, M. L. GomezGrant CA, & M. L. Gomez (Eds.), Campus and classroom: Making schooling multicultural (2nd ed., pp. 239–258). Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.
Koza, J. E. (2008). Listening for whiteness: Hearing racial politics in undergraduate school music. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 16(2), 145–155.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.
Mark, M. L. (1986). Contemporary music education (2nd ed.). New York: Schirmer Books.
Mason, E. (2010). Multicultural music represented in current elementary music textbooks: A comparative study of two published music series. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 28(2), 29–41.
Miller, K. H. (2010). Segregating sound: Inventing folk and pop music in the age of Jim Crow. Durham: Duke University Press.
Nabb, D., & Balcetis, E. (2010). Access to music education: Nebraska band directors’ experiences and attitudes regarding students with physical disabilities. Journal of Research in Music Education, 57(4), 308–319.
Palmer, A. J., & de Quadros, A. (Eds.). (2012). Tanglewood II: Summoning the future of music education. Chicago: GIA Publications.
Querol Gavaldá, M. (1971). Cancionero Musical de la Colombina, Siglo XV (Colombina Musical Songbook, 15th Century). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto Español de Musicología, Barcelona.
Torner, E. M., & Bal y Gay, J. (1973). Cancionero Gallego (Galician Songbook), Vol. 1, 2. Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, Conde de Fenosa, A Coruña.
Yin, R. K. (1981, September). The case study as a serious research strategy. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization, 3(1), 97–114.
Disclosure Notes
An earlier version of the second section of this chapter was presented at the 21st European Association for Music in Schools (EAS) Conference celebrated in Leuven, Belgium on February 13–16, 2013.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
González Ben, A. (2019). The Song-Hunting Project: Fostering Diversity in Music Education. In: Sharma, S., Lazar, A.M. (eds) Rethinking 21st Century Diversity in Teacher Preparation, K-12 Education, and School Policy. Education, Equity, Economy, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02251-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02251-8_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02250-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02251-8
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)