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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2017
Journal of Popular Music Education - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2017
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Dilemmas of purpose in higher popular music education: A critical portrait of an academic field
More LessAbstractSince the first degree programme in popular music opened in 1990, the academic field of higher popular music education (HPME) has grown exponentially in the United Kingdom. The current provision includes 128 programmes offered by 47 institutions including Russell Group universities, specialist conservatoires and private providers. The majority of programmes, however, are found within ‘post-92’ institutions, reflecting the political and cultural conditions from which the field has emerged. This article critically appraises the field’s emergence within the frames of higher education policy, discourses of employability and widening participation, the high/low culture dichotomy and the dialectic of commerce and art, which has been identified as a perennial issue at the crux of popular music as a cultural phenomenon. It proposes that the field is characterized by dilemmas concerning its nature and purpose, and that the narrative of HPME’s emergence might serve as a valuable case study against which other young fields or subject areas might be compared and appraised.
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Teaching the ‘people’s music’ at the ‘people’s college’: Popular music education in the junior college curriculum in Los Angeles, 1924–55
More LessAbstractThe historical foundations of formal popular music education in post-secondary institutions in the United States has rarely been explored. This article provides an overview of the seminal popular music courses and degree programmes at three post-secondary public institutions, from their establishment in the 1920s until the 1950s. Several important music educators responsible for these innovative programmes are profiled, including band director Audre Stong at Pasadena City College, department chair Leslie Clausen at Los Angeles City College and band director Dwight Defty, who introduced the first popular music degree programme, Modern Music, in 1936 at Long Beach City College. Factors that led to the introduction of popular music in the curriculum included the expansion of vocational education in California public schools, softening the boundary between highbrow and lowbrow musical traditions in the Los Angeles music scene, strong local public school music education and the democratic movement towards student- and community-centred education.
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Becoming a rock band: The challenges of group identity
By Tobias MalmAbstractRock bands feature increasingly in music education. They are essential parts of popular culture and are increasingly highlighted as entrepreneurial organizations in a global music industry. However, to develop and stay together as a band is a difficult task. This study aims to develop an understanding of the challenges of becoming a rock band, shedding new light on previously underexplored complexities of band life by considering the impact of group identities. The methodology entails storytelling and identity work, inspired by a biographical approach. Six explorative interviews with band members were conducted. The results suggest that productive activities form several kinds of work group identities, whereas low-activity periods threaten group identification. The article discusses how diversity of group identities promotes development while uniformity promotes stability. To cope with this paradox, this article suggests that band members ought to learn to develop multiple group identities and flexible ways of relating to one another.
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Rocking against patriarchy: Single-sex solutions for female musicians
More LessAbstractOpinions on the merits of single sex education are divided, but it is acknowledged that this context for learning offers certain benefits for female musicians. This is particularly true for female rock guitarists and drummers, who are under-represented and rarely achieve virtuoso status. The scarcity of women musicians in rock and heavy metal is noted by various feminist scholars, but solutions to the problem of under-representation are elusive. In order to perform rock music professionally, women must develop initial musicianship skills. However, many girls and younger women report being intimidated, marginalized or excluded in rock bands, making it harder for them to gain experience. This article draws attention to two recent developments – female rock tributes and rock camps for women and girls – presenting them as offering a feminist solution for women who would like to perform metal and rock music with confidence.
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Rethinking the Guidonian hand for twenty-first-century musicians
By Paul FleetAbstractThe immediate recognition and description of the thirteen enharmonic intervals within an octave is a quest upon which students on popular music degree programmes frequently embark, but which they rarely complete. The problem often lies in a disconnect between the sound heard and the sound recognized when the task is undertaken without recourse to an instrument. During the eleventh century, Guido d’Arezzo used the joints on the hand (phalanges) to help music students recognize and sing intervals from hexachords. This article considers rethinking this tool with regard to recent investigations into corporeal intentionality. The approach is developed across three short incremental exercises that are designed for the twenty-first-century musician. It begins by connecting the familiar singing of a major scale whilst pointing to the phalanges of the hand, moving towards inflecting the scale by singing and pointing to non-sequential intervals.
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Giving it all away: Race, locale and the transformations of blues harmonica education in the digital age
By Adam GussowAbstractThis essay explores the transformation of blues harmonica education in recent decades, via changes in the racial cohorts of teachers and students, emergence of digital technologies and dematerialization of teaching contexts. As a by-product of the ‘whitening’ of the American blues scene between 1960 and 1970, ‘old-school’ pedagogical exchanges constituted by black masters and apprentices modulated to include white apprentices. Tony ‘Little Sun’ Glover’s instructional Blues Harp (1965) marks a key transition: an erstwhile white master engaging in distance learning with an invisible cohort of students. Subsequently, literature scholar and blues harp player/teacher, Gussow, vowed to ‘give it all away on YouTube’, creating a pioneering website for peddling instructional videos. He also interrogates racial problematics of his business model, sketches his blues apprenticeships with older African Americans and concludes with a story about his own younger black apprentice, a Memphis teen who wins a ‘Star Search’ competition, harmonica in hand.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Julie Beauregard and Sarah GulishAbstractRemixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education, Randall Everett Allsup (2016)
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 198 pp.,
ISBN: 978-0253021427, $27.00
When Music Goes to School: Perspectives on Learning and Teaching, D. Littleton (2015)
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 172 pp.,
ISBN-13: 978-1475813357, paperback: $30.00, hardback: $60.00
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Welcome to the journal
Authors: Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell
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