Music, Education, and Diversity: Building Cultures and Communities

Abstract

Patricia Shehan Campbell, a US-based scholar and writer on music education and diversity, offers a compelling analysis on the role of music as a bridge to intercultural communication in Music, Education, and Diversity: Bridging Cultures and Communities. She examines critical perspectives on music education in the United States gleaned from more than three decades of personal encounters in the field as a multicultural music educator, scholar, and applied ethnomusicologist. Her overall objective is to address “philosophy and practice from the distinctive and overlapping perspectives of music education and ethnomusicology, while also keeping the essence of multicultural education very much in mind” (xvii).Campbell strongly advocates for the centrality of music throughout educational curricula. When implemented in a culturally inclusive way, incorporating music can enhance multicultural appreciation, raise awareness of social justice, and act as a prescription for many of society's discords. These issues regarding music education, advocacy, and diversity are current and pertinent. At this time in US education, as communities of color are in danger of being further marginalized and silenced in some schools’ curricula, it is even more essential that we honor, celebrate, and explore the music and voices of our diverse communities.Music, Education, and Diversity documents key ideas and practices that have influenced current music education programs in US elementary and secondary schools, bringing together some of the most pertinent arguments and considerations from Campbell's previous publications into one text. Published in Teachers College Press's Multicultural Education Series, edited by James A. Banks, a prominent education scholar and advocate for multiculturalism in education, Campbell's book joins more than seventy titles related to themes surrounding multicultural education, equity in pedagogy, and social justice. Her contribution to this series extends a voice to those in the field of music, interfacing with both ethnomusicology and music education.The text is divided into eight chapters, each addressing a particular issue or trend within multicultural music education. Throughout the volume, Campbell weaves many captivating autobiographical vignettes from her musings in musicking as a veteran “multi-culti” music specialist (69), providing thick descriptions of her own musical journeys that complement the content of each chapter. Three of the eight chapters have been adapted from prior publications, offering updated insights and perspectives to her earlier highly acclaimed text Teaching Music Globally, published twenty years ago.Campbell opens Music, Education, and Diversity with a reflective prelude, inviting the reader to consider music's functionality in daily living and how we construct musical meaning in our own lives, both locally and globally. She follows this with a brief historical sketch of US music education's evolution from a Eurocentric, notation-based curriculum and pedagogy to a culturally diverse musical community with a global music focus. Each of the following chapters considers a particular issue or trend within multicultural education.Of special interest to ethnomusicologists is Campbell's exploration of the interface between music education and ethnomusicology. She demonstrates that each field draws from the expertise of the other to gain new understandings and insights on music teaching, learning, and human interaction. She specifically refers to crossover scholarship between ethnomusicologists and music educators, including the participant-observer research approach as well as Mantle Hood's bi-musicality, each of which places the researcher in the role of student and participant in the learning process. Campbell acknowledges how these two fields are intimately interconnected with multiculturalism, social justice, and music education, which are each explored through her book.Campbell addresses the concept of teaching as a political act with inherent civic responsibility. She explores the connections between multicultural education and the aims of social justice, as described by James A. Banks. Campbell guides the reader through Banks's four levels of curricular reform specifically geared to the field of music education, which span a contributions approach of diverse musics to an emphasis on music for social action. She provides several real-world examples of these curricular approaches as they unfold in elementary and secondary education.Another area of crossover between ethnomusicology and music education pertains to the processes of teaching and learning. Campbell considers various music transmission models including formal, nonformal, and informal/enculturative learning processes, each contributing to a cross-cultural understanding of music pedagogy. She discusses differing approaches to learning, from analytical and notation-based to holistic and aural, stressing a pedagogical perspective that embraces both equity and inclusivity and positioning the discussion directly within diverse real-world situations.Drawing on her work as editor of Routledge's World Music Pedagogy series, Campbell devotes attention to the exploration of world music pedagogy as a musical gateway to studying other cultures. This sociocultural approach employs a multidimensional instructional methodology that exposes students to diverse forms of music through a process that is both immersive and participatory. First introduced in Teaching Music Globally, Campbell guides readers through the five stages of the world music pedagogy framework (attentive listening, engaged listening, enactive listening, creating world music, and integrating world music), providing sample recordings that demonstrate its applicability to a wide variety of classroom and ensemble contexts. In the text's concluding discussion, Campbell broadens her focus to the music of the community beyond the classroom. She considers the importance of engaging and collaborating with local heritage musicians and culture-bearers as a means of fostering appreciation and intercultural exchange and inclusivity.As both an ethnomusicologist and educator, I commend how successfully and succinctly this text addresses ways in which ethnomusicologists and music educators blend musical and cultural understanding into educational practice. The target readership for Music, Education, and Diversity includes undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of music and the arts as well as any professionals who “seek the realization of multicultural aims, on the role of music in the curriculum as a powerful bridge to cultural understanding” (xvii). This text is a must for those who seek to explore the influence and importance of ethnomusicology in music education pedagogy as well as realize the cross-fertilization of scholarship into participatory practice to enhance community consciousness in elementary and secondary schools. Campbell presents a highly inspired exposition of the multiple ways in which both ethnomusicologists and educators work together to forge musical experiences and educational programs that engage both children and communities in musically expressive practice. Additionally, her recent publications in the World Music Pedagogy series further discuss implementing components of world music pedagogy in the school/community (volume VI) and higher education (volume VII).

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