Striking Up the Band: Music Education through a Foucaultian Lens.

Abstract

Large ensembles (e.g., choirs-orchestras-bands) have become prominent fixtures in most secondary schools and university schools/faculties of music in Canada and the United States. At the secondary school level, large ensembles have become, in effect, practically synonymous with the words “music education.” This paper derives from my own experience with and interest in wind bands as a means of enacting music education. Specifically, I interrogate, through a Foucaultian discourse lens, the kind of relationship with music fostered in and through what I term the pedagogical band world—the world comprising school and college/university wind bands that has developed from around the middle of the twentieth century. Based on an intensive examination of pedagogical band world discourse and a consideration of the historical appearance and evolution of bands, I argue that as bands became entrenched as the primary medium for music instruction in secondary schools (and concurrently became a major component of university schools/faculties of music), and as education increasingly became the target of state concerns over “progress,” the discourse of band performance changed from one of supplying music in order to create a sense of community and personal enjoyment to one of edification through exposure to Art (i.e., great repertoire).

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