**Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 29** 

Alexis Anja Kallio · Heidi Westerlund Sidsel Karlsen · Kathryn Marsh Eva Sæther *Editors*

# The Politics of Diversity in Music Education

## Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education

Volume 29

#### Series Editor

Liora Bresler, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA

#### Editorial Board Members

Magne I. Espeland, Stord University, Stord, Norway Helene Illeris, University of Adger, Kristiansand S, Norway Koji Matsunobu, Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Liesl van der Merwe, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Donal O'Donoghue, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Tone Østern, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Mike Parsons, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA Shifra Schonmann, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel Merel Visse, Drew University, Madison, NJ, USA

This series aims to provide conceptual and empirical research in arts education, (including music, visual arts, drama, dance, media, and poetry), in a variety of areas related to the post-modern paradigm shift. The changing cultural, historical, and political contexts of arts education are recognized to be central to learning, experience, knowledge. The books in this series present theories and methodological approaches used in arts education research as well as related disciplines - including philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology of arts education. The series editor invites you to contact her with plans and ideas for books that would fit in the series. For more information on how to submit a proposal, please write to Associate Editor, Lay Peng, Ang. E-mail: laypeng.ang@springer.com

All proposals and manuscripts submitted to the Series will be subject to external peer review.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6199

Alexis Anja Kallio • Heidi Westerlund Sidsel Karlsen • Kathryn Marsh • Eva Sæther Editors

## The Politics of Diversity in Music Education

Editors Alexis Anja Kallio Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Sidsel Karlsen Music Education and Music Therapy Department Norwegian Academy of Music Oslo, Norway

Eva Sæther Malmö Academy of Music Lund University Lund, Sweden

Heidi Westerlund Sibelius Academy University of the Arts Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

Kathryn Marsh Sydney Conservatorium of Music University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia

ISSN 1573-4528 ISSN 2214-0069 (electronic) Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education ISBN 978-3-030-65616-4 ISBN 978-3-030-65617-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021. This book is an open access publication.

Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

## Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by the Global Visions through Mobilizing Networks project funded by the Academy of Finland (project no. 286162) and the ArtsEqual project funded by the Academy of Finland's Strategic Research Council from its Equality in Society program [grant number 314223/2017], the Sibelius Academy's Music Education Department, and the University of the Arts Helsinki.

## Contents



### About the Editors

Alexis Anja Kallio is senior lecturer in music and research at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. Her research investigates processes of legitimation in music education policy, practice, and research that structure opportunities for equity and justice. She is editor of Difference and Division in Music Education (2021, Routledge) and co-editor of Music, Education, and Religion: Intersections and Entanglements (2019, Indiana University Press).

Heidi Westerlund is professor at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, where she also serves as the leader of the music education doctoral studies. She is PI in Global visions through mobilizing networks and The Arts as Public Service: Strategic Steps towards Equality (ArtsEqual), as well as CoPI in Music for social impact research projects. Professor Westerlund has published widely in international research journals, anthologies, and handbooks and has co-edited several international books. She serves on several international editorial boards and is the editor-in-chief of the Finnish Journal of Music Education.

Sidsel Karlsen is professor of music education at the Norwegian Academy of Music where she also serves as one of the leaders of the Centre for Educational Research in Music (CERM). Professor Karlsen is also a docent at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland, and one of two PIs in the research project Global visions through mobilizing networks: Co-developing intercultural music teacher education in Finland, Israel and Nepal. Professor Karlsen has published widely in international research journals, anthologies, and handbooks and serves on several international editorial boards.

Kathryn Marsh is professor emerita of music education at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, where she was formerly chair of music education and associate dean of research. She has been the editor of Research Studies in Music Education and visiting fellow at the Universities of Oxford, London, and Washington. Her (2009) book The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children's Songs and Games (OUP) won two international awards and her related cross-cultural field recordings are held as a special collection in the British Library.

Eva Sæther is professor of music education at Lund University, Malmö Academy of Music (MAM), and docent at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. She has developed a research profile that focuses on intercultural perspectives on musical learning and creativity(ies). She teaches educational sciences at the music teacher education program, and since 2017, she is heading the research education in music education at MAM and is a board member of the International Society for Music Education (ISME).

## Introduction: The Politics of Diversity in Music Education

Alexis Anja Kallio , Kathryn Marsh , Heidi Westerlund , Sidsel Karlsen , and Eva Sæther

#### 1 Introduction

The Politics of Diversity in Music Education attends to the political structures and processes that frame and produce understandings of diversity in and through music education practice, policy, and research. With the contemporary, globalized world characterized by intense mobility, mass migration, and fast-paced advances in technology and communication, music education is in a unique position to (re) consider the "modes of cultural confluence... and the ways in which individuals in complex settings relate to each other from different vantage points" (Vertovec 2010, p. 67). Recent surges in nationalist, fundamentalist, protectionist, and separatist tendencies pose a heightened imperative for music education to engage with diversity, particularly with regard to the ways that education contexts such as schools or

A. A. Kallio (\*)

K. Marsh Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: kathryn.marsh@sydney.edu.au

H. Westerlund Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: heidi.westerlund@uniarts.fi

S. Karlsen Music Education and Music Therapy Department, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, Norway e-mail: sidsel.karlsen@nmh.no

E. Sæther Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: eva.saether@mhm.lu.se

© The Author(s) 2021 A. A. Kallio et al. (eds.), The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1\_1

Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: alexis.kallio@griffith.edu.au

universities uphold or unsettle understandings about society and the ways in which knowledge about diversity is produced. Accordingly, critical analyses of diversity in music education scholarship have not only drawn attention towards who is included (or excluded) as part of teaching and learning but has also framed diversity as a normative expression: a value to which all institutions, teachers, and students ought to be committed.

Although many music education policies outline an explicit agenda for diversity, little attention has been paid to the complex situations that arise when negotiating diversity in practice. The Politics of Diversity in Music Education aims to remedy this knowledge gap by critically attending to the ways in which difference is promoted, represented, negotiated, navigated, contained, or challenged in various music education practice, policy, and research contexts. Diversity, here, is not a label applied to certain individuals or musical sounds and repertoires per se but is rather understood as socially organized difference, produced, and manifested in various ways as part of complex relations and interactions between people and social groups. Thus, the aim of this book is not to fortify the categorization of people and their musics but to focus on the power relations that are "inherent in the constitutive conditions of differences and constantly (re-)produced, shifted and thereby potentially transformed by every act of differentiation" (Dobusch 2017, p. 1648). The politics at hand are thus not those concerning politicians acting for the people or those relating to the political functions and roles of musics as part of public protest, for example (see Hesmondhalgh 2013). Rather, the politics of diversity here refers to the everyday processes by which we all exercise agency, negotiate power and identity, and assign meaning to difference.

This book builds upon a legacy of scholarship and practice that has positioned education as an important arena for social change, cultural change, and ethical practice. One of the most well-established and enduring developments towards social transformation through education is multicultural education. As James A. Banks wrote already in 1993, "[m]ulticultural education... is a movement designed to empower all students to become knowledgeable, caring, and active citizens in a deeply troubled and ethnically polarized... world" (p. 23). In music education, the late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed an important shift in terms of what repertoires were taught in school and university classrooms and what for. Music education was seen as an arena wherein all learners could be engaged as a community, by both bringing people together through musical practice and heightening their intercultural sensitivities. For example, Keith Swanwick (1988) suggested an intercultural approach that holds the potential to "reduce the power of [cultural] stereotypes" (p. 4) through cultivating an awareness of the "universality of musical practice" (p. 8) and the unique sonic beauty of different musical traditions through the creation of "new values and transcending both self and social culture" (p. 6). Comparing music to language, Swanwick (1994) argued that "it is nonsense to say that we cannot understand music without understanding the culture from which it came. The music is the culture" (p. 222). In this sense, teachers were directed to approach music as a universal phenomenon that in itself holds the potential to exist distinct from sociocultural context or social ties and rise above the power relations relating to the politics of diversity that arise in any given education context. Scholars working at the intersection of music education and ethnomusicology challenged this understanding, as Anthony Palmer (1992) argued, "artistic expression weakens when it becomes generalized. One thing that we must learn about art is its undeniable and crucial need for specificity" (p. 35). Accordingly, while music was seen as a "pan-human" experience, it was also positioned as a "culture-specific" practice (Campbell 2017, p. 16; Volk 1998) warranting particular considerations when transferred from original settings to education contexts. Some scholars advised teachers to work to preserve the authenticity of musical expressions (Elliott 1995), while others emphasized the inevitability of "recontextualization" (e.g. Schippers 2010; Määttänen and Westerlund 2001).

As the attention of ethnomusicologists has focused more on issues such as "identity, representation, nationalism, gender, diaspora, globalisation, human and cultural rights, and education" (Pettan 2009, p. 56), the political nature of music and musical participation has been understood in increasing complexity with regard to questions of culture, social change, and ethics. For instance, discourses in ethnomusicology and music education have shifted from "realist assumptions of authenticity" to authenticity as a "socially constructed phenomenon" (Vannini and Williams 2009, p. 2; Kallio et al. 2014) and from easily recognizable borders between insiders and outsiders to a more blurred and dynamic conception of the borders and boundaries (Campbell 2018) that define the mainstream and the margins. As Patricia Shehan Campbell (2018) has argued, "[m]usic is a powerful means of defining heritage, developing intercultural understandings, and breaking down barriers between various ethnic, racial, cultural and language groups," also holding "potential to impact... the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, an equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture" (p. xvi). In higher music education, intercultural projects have consciously challenged once taken-for-granted professional boundaries and understandings of what it means to study music at the tertiary level, with collaborations established between institutions, with students, as well as together with underserved communities (Marsh et al. 2020). Further, practice-based research at the intersection of music education and ethnomusicology has underlined the importance of societal networks and expanded notions of professionalism (Sæther 2020), highlighted the inherently unpredictable nature of intercultural collaboration and the need for flexibility (Westerlund et al. 2015). Such partnerships have called into the question the underlying values and fundamental principles upon which music teacher education is based, raising questions as to who higher music education serves and to what ends (Kallio and Westerlund 2020).

Related to such critical perspectives, music education scholars have problematized the conditions that give rise to music's potential to promote intercultural understanding and equity in light of contemporary individual and social experience. For example, Karlsen (2017) notes that "access to a multicultural education experience seems to depend on the existence of 'roots,' understood as individuals acknowledging that they in fact do belong to specific cultural traditions that can either be moved beyond, strengthened, or understood as processes" (p. 216). Similarly, Hess (2015) explains that multicultural music education can itself serve as a mechanism of inequality, positioning the majority culture as the neutral core of the curriculum while arranging "so-called 'other' musics... around its periphery" (p. 338). Indeed, Westerlund et al. (2020; also Karlsen and Westerlund 2015 and Westerlund, Partti and Karlsen 2017) argue that the provision of appropriate music education repertoires and approaches according to categories derived from peoples' geographical and ethnic backgrounds is overly simplistic, increasingly irrelevant, and possibly fallacious, resulting in the essentialization of identities, the reification of dominant hegemonies, and the reinforcement of inequity. Contemporary understandings of culture as multiple and fluid (Bauman 2010), combined with the normative and critical ideals of any education not just to describe and reproduce culture but also to enact positive sociocultural and political change, is at the heart of the increasing need to rethink the politics of diversity in music education. An example of this can be seen in the life story of a Newar musician from the Kathmandu Valley (Westerlund and Partti 2018) who is at once a culture-bearer concerned with the protection and sustainability of his musical heritage but also a committed cosmopolitan activist working towards radical social change and transformation. Hence, as Westerlund and Karlsen (2017) explain, we must do more than diversify our repertoires or pedagogies in order to engage ethically and meaningfully with our students and consider "the ethics, politics, and ideologies of diversity that condition our understanding of diversity itself" (p. 100). Professionalism in music education can thus be seen as a moral commitment to "understand our relationships (in music education) as under construction" and a turn to responsibility, while constantly "reflecting what responsibility means" (Westerlund 2019, p. 513). In moving beyond the good intentions and visions of diversity in music education that foreground togetherness and harmony, in this book we recognize that learning and practicing "the art of living with difference" (Bauman 2010, p. 151) is a complex process that is always in the making. Furthermore, as a process inherently bound with societal transformation and institutional change, we position music education as a social and political arena wherein we may productively grapple with uncertainty, conflict, and change in working towards mutual respect without necessarily reaching mutual agreement.

The Politics of Diversity in Music Education includes and extends recent work conducted within the Academy of Finland funded research project Global Visions Through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Finland, Israel and Nepal, by broadening the critical and collaborative deliberations of diversity in music education to a broad array of disciplinary perspectives and sociocultural contexts. While a number of the editors were associated with this project, the idea of such a collection was initiated at the 13th Cultural Diversity in Music Education Conference in Kathmandu in 2017, where presentations and ensuing discussions challenged contemporary understandings of diversity in music education scholarship. The "mobilizing network" (Ball and Tyson 2011, p. 412; Darling-Hammond and Lieberman 2012) of the project was thus enacted, bringing together an editorial team from different geographical regions and areas of scholarly expertise. Contributions to the volume were sourced through an open call for chapters, seeking critical perspectives on the politics of diversity from a variety of scholarly and geographical standpoints, thus contributing to "networked expertise" (Hakkarainen 2013). Chapters attend to the politics of diversity as conceptualized and manifest through different theoretical, empirical, and methodological perspectives, in the contexts of higher education, school music lessons, community music programs, curricula, and policy directives, highlighting the international imperative and opportunities for music education to engage with diversity in complex and critical ways. We are mindful that the contributing authors and editorial team, although diverse in many ways, do not adequately represent the diversity of many student populations or communities to whom music educators and music education systems are answerable. Furthermore, a reflexive and critical reading of these chapters and the book as a whole raises important questions that continue to trouble and inspire us, with regard to the Eurocentricity of knowledge production, the political economy of the publishing industry, and the processes by which some of us are able to claim universality and others are relegated to the margins of particularity. This remains as an ongoing practical, theoretical, methodological, ethical and moral task for each of us, and our field more broadly: how can we engage ethically with the politics of diversity when we ourselves are complicit in existing inequities and injustices? Answering and acting upon this question is a shared responsibility for all music education scholars and practitioners, and we hope that the critical discussions, new perspectives, reconsiderations, and redirections offered within these pages contribute towards this learning and change.

#### 2 Introduction of Chapters

The Politics of Diversity in Music Education is structured in four sections. The first of these sections focuses on the politics of inquiry in music education research, inviting the reader to interrogate the processes by which we come to know ourselves and others in music education research and practice. Drawing upon the crisis of representation in anthropology (Marcus and Fischer 1986), postcolonial, and indigenous research perspectives, the authors explore the power dynamics that shape encounters and understandings and the opportunities and limitations of the researcher as instrument. In the initial chapter, Eva Sæther searches for "the smell, the groove, [and] the music" in her own ethnographic research through drawing upon the concepts of radical empiricism (Jackson 1989) and sensuous scholarship (Stoller 1987, 1989). The chapter considers the roles of the body and of music in developing reflexive research methods that take into account different ways of knowing and attend to the complex ethical imperatives of interculturality. This discussion is furthered in Ailbhe Kenny's chapter, which draws on her interactions with asylum seeker children and mothers in Ireland. Understanding the researcher body as political, Kenny offers insights into the multiplicity of positionings for researchers in the field. Troubling the polarity between researcher and researched, she critically explores the process of performing and being recognized as a pregnant researcher in the field, suggesting that researchers ought to reflexively consider the self as "research tool, and thus intimately connected to the methods we deploy" (Cousin 2010, p. 10). The relationality of research practice is further considered in the chapter by Vilma Timonen, Marja-Leena Juntunen, and Heidi Westerlund, as they analyze the politics of reflexivity that emerged through an intercultural collaboration between Finnish and Nepali music teachers. Acknowledging the centrality of reflexivity to deep professional learning, the authors also raise critical questions of power, epistemic imperialism, and coloniality that illustrate the inherently discomfortable and uncertain qualities of reflexive work in crossnational settings. Concluding this section, Alexis Anja Kallio's chapter argues that many enactments of reflexivity in music education serve to reinforce the very inequities they aim to dismantle, "reaffirming the benevolence of the privileged researcher whilst doing little to disrupt the structures that keep such privileges at the center of academic practice." She invites researchers to consider reflexivity not as a source of superior insight or awareness or a solution to unequal power relations in the research process but as a means to locate opportunities for relational learning and engage critically in the politics of diversity.

The second section of the book attends to the paradoxes and challenges that arise as music teachers negotiate cultural identity and tradition within the changing political frames and ideals of the nation state. Exploring the complexity of teachers' responses to government mandates in four very different contexts, the chapters shed light on the various ways in which music education might instigate and guide social and political change. The section opens with a chapter by Michael Webb and Clint Bracknell exploring a paradox that has emerged in Australia's mainstream music education system, where, despite curriculum mandates, the inclusion of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander musics in school music programs has been hampered by teacher apprehension and persistent colonial social structuring in contemporary Australia. Through critically attending to issues of definition, considering the intended audience(s) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musics, and highlighting pedagogies of partnership and dialogue, the authors argue for approaches that are respectful and mutually enriching and embrace the educative power of indigenous music for all students. In a context with similar policy ideals of cultural inclusion, Jan Sverre Knudsen examines the shifting discourses of diversity over three decades of the national Concerts Norway program in schools. He illustrates the ways in which the promotion of diverse music to children can be a component of state policies and state-run development aid, raising important considerations of the ways in which programs are reflective of, and shaped by, musical, multicultural, and political ideologies. Wai-Chung Ho highlights the complex negotiations required of teachers in responding to changing state policies and cultural ideals in China. Focusing particularly on the recent push to engage students' imaginations and cultivate critical thinking skills in the classroom, Ho explores the conflicts that arise between such political directives for creativity and Confucianist educational values that emphasize obedience and order. Through interviews with teachers in Beijing, Ho explores the ways in which music education serves as a locus for the realization of national identity and traditional values, which are not necessarily congruent with each other. This dynamic nature of culture is further explored through the final chapter, by Danielle Treacy, Sapna Thapa, and Suyash Neupane investigating the legitimation of music, music education, and both being and becoming a musician or music teacher in Nepal. In the background of this chapter is a familiar paradox, a society in which music is supported by national policy documents, omnipresent, readily enjoyed, and shared among individuals and social groups but one that also stigmatizes the career of the professional musician. Intensified by a context characterized by extreme and highly complex diversity and a long history of social stratification, the authors illustrate the ways in which musicians and music educators engage in dialogue between aspirations and sedimented traditions as they navigate both the dynamic nature of culture and questions of legitimate knowledge. These negotiations lead to a conceptualization of professionalism in music education beyond musical expertise, to an ethical responsibility encompassing broader questions of how music teacher education might foster a strong and critical sense of non-discrimination and inclusion.

The third section of the book challenges commonly held conceptualizations of diversity in music education as pertaining only to issues of race or ethnicity. Highlighting diversities in music education that are often overlooked or silenced, these chapters raise pertinent questions as to whose difference, and what quality of difference, is considered "diversity-relevant" and by whom (Dobusch 2017). Minja Koskela, Anna Kuoppamäki, Sidsel Karlsen, and Heidi Westerlund illustrate the ways in which the multiple and intersecting identities of young people are often obscured through simplistic and homogenizing notions of popular music as "youth music" in Finland. Conducting an intersectional analysis of previous and current school curricula, they argue for a broader conceptualization of diversity at the policy level and the development of professional reflexivity and a "praxis of reflexivity" (Bubar et al. 2016) in music teacher education, in responding to the needs of an increasingly diverse and changing society. How discourses of diversity are mobilized in music education is the focus of the next chapter by Elizabeth Gould, who argues that much of this work supports and maintains the biopolitics of neoliberalism that upholds the privilege of white heteropatriarchy and feeds antidemocratic ends. Challenging the notion that sameness is a prerequisite of equality, she suggests that queer of color critique may equip music education researchers with perspectives to invest in people and musics that have thus far been overlooked or excluded in music education research and practice. Similarly extending the scope of diversity discourses in music education, Vincent Bates, Anita Prest, and Daniel Shevock situate music and education within a broader ecodiversity in approaching concerns of justice in a more holistic way. Considering how music education might attend to climate change, the destruction of ecosystems, and threats of extinction, the authors draw upon new materialism, political ecology, and indigenous knowledges, calling for a view that extends beyond the anthropocene while also nurturing local practices. Such an ecocentric approach to music education, they suggest, allows for a more sustainable, ethical way of musicking and living in the world.

The final section of the book turns to matters of leadership in higher music education, as an inherently political undertaking. There is an unprecedented demand upon institutions of higher education to respond to the current global climate of social demographic change, economic instability, technological advances, and crisis of social inequality. Such a response "inevitably forces examination of core values and brings to the fore the issues of ethics in higher education leadership" (Torrisi-Steele 2020, p. 2), in considering what higher education ought to be, why, what, or who, for. The discipline of music education is by no means exempt, and questions pertaining to the politics of diversity in music education leadership are arguably more acute and urgent than ever. For instance, as the recent crises faced by many higher education institutions, staff, and students in the wake of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic illustrate, dramatic changes have already taken place with regard to how international students are positioned in the university and to considerations of how institutions can meet the evolving needs of a diverse student body. In the opening chapter of this section, Biranda Ford interrogates the implicit colonialism of international recruitment policies and pedagogical practices of many Western conservatoires, raising questions as to how international students can be included as part of the educational community in more ethical and equitable ways. She challenges the positioning of international students as "in need" of a Western education and negative cultural stereotypes that shape the reception of their performance practices. Ford draws on the theories of Homi Bhabha (2006) in proposing that higher education can facilitate the decolonization of knowledge and culture through the creation of a "third space" in which transcultural dialogue can take place, forging a more sensitive and ethical relationship between institutions and international students. Considering what a sustainable global music education community might look like within the culturally sensitive internationalization of higher education institutions, Alexandra Kertz-Welzel offers critical considerations for leaders to promote intercultural understanding and a global mindset. Embracing the complexity and multiplicity of similarities and differences between musics, traditions, and cultures, she suggests that conceiving of the global music education community as symbolic and cosmopolitan may allow for a sense of unity while also respecting and cherishing diversity. In challenging the hegemonic dominance of any one music, language, or research culture, Kertz-Welzel invites us to reflect upon, and refine, our ideas of the community to which we belong and what we want this community to be in the future. In the final chapter of this section and the book, Sidsel Karlsen considers what might be required in the cultivation of such global higher music education communities, through an intercultural collaboration between higher music education institutions in Finland, Israel, and Nepal. She finds that institution leaders are required to perform complex negotiations between local and global discourses, navigating different values, traditions, hierarchies, as well as sociocultural and economic conditions. Karlsen critically examines the potential difficulties that may occur within and through collaborative processes, concluding that, paradoxically, "intercultural collaboration in higher music education might produce inequalities just as much as it aims for equality." Together, the chapters of this final section of the volume posit a strong argument for more relational, culturally responsive, and context-specific approaches to higher music education leadership as the field works towards conceptualizing and engaging with diversity in more complex and ethical ways.

In sum, this book contributes towards a growing body of scholarship that reaches beyond a "happy image of diversity" (Ahmed 2012, p. 152) to a more critical, complex, and nuanced understanding of the ways in which the politics of diversity shape our ideals of what music education is, what it is for, and the actions we take in pursuing these ends in various contexts. If music education research, policy, and practice are to meet the needs of contemporary societies, it is essential for scholars and educators to continuously and critically examine the relationality, contextuality, and the ethics of such practice. Read together, the chapters of this book remind us that the ethical demands of music education resist approaches to the politics of diversity that are hinged upon finding "solutions" to diversity or the challenges that arise in diverse settings through rigid or all-encompassing rules, methods, or frameworks. The Politics of Diversity in Music Education thus serves as an invitation to ongoing reflexive inquiry; to deliberate the politics of diversity in a fast-changing and pluralist world; and together work towards more informed and ethically sound understandings of how diversity in music education policy, practice, and research is framed and conditioned both locally and globally.

#### References


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## Part I Exploring the Politics of Inquiry in Music Education Research

## The Art(s) of Getting Lost: Halting Places for Culturally Responsive Research Methods

Eva Sæther

Abstract This chapter revisits the ideas of radical empiricism and sensuous scholarship, embedded in current music education research. Focusing on the development of methodological implications of cultural responsiveness and arts-based research methods, the chapter argues for epistemic openness. The discussion is located within the author's own experiences of course development for Swedish music teacher students in Gambia, field studies in multicultural classrooms in Sweden, and research design that includes the fiddle, opening up for music to ask the questions. Borrowing from anthropological research the concepts of radical empiricism and sensuous scholarship, music education researchers might find useful tools to approach project planning, to perform the analysis of the material and to communicate the results in culturally responsive forms that inform both research and praxis. By studying music transmission with culturally sensitive research methods, this chapter suggests possibilities to do more than observing and reporting. There is a possibility to engage with different knowledge systems and politics, in all types of retrieved material – and to generate inclusive knowledge building.

Keywords Cultural sensitivity · Epistemology · Intercultural · Music education · Radical empiricism · Research methods · Sensuous scholarship

#### 1 Introduction

... however, we will reach a destination where we will no longer have to write about writing ethnography, we will simply write our tales and sense that they are right. (Stoller 1987, p. 156).

E. Sæther (\*)

© The Author(s) 2021 A. A. Kallio et al. (eds.), The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1\_2

Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: eva.saether@mhm.lu.se

Perhaps it all began that night in Abidjan, 1986. Against all good advice I was in Youpogoun, the district where all the Ivorians went for a good night of dancing. The open air "dance palaces," larger than football arenas, were crowded and beyond the fence wound a long line of those poor souls who could not afford the entrance ticket. This was where the best musicians played and the perfect place to be for a young, white music education student with research aspirations.

I had travelled as a participant observer of a group of Norwegian women who were learning African dance in Oslo at the Center for African Culture (CAK). Some of these white dancers had already been interviewed, in my gathering of material for a thesis on the drum as a tool for identity construction. Some of our co-travellers were Ivorian drummers, working in Norway as musicians for the Norwegian women's dance lessons. My interest was on the possible transformation of the values that the Ivorian drums carry in their original context, compared to the values the same drums come to carry both to the emigrated master drummers in exile, and the Norwegian women with an interest for the immigrants' culture.

There I was, dancing, against all good advice: "No you can't go there, yes, it is the place where we go, but it is not a place for you, you are white," said my friend the dance teacher. "No, you can't go," said the hotel receptionist. "Yes," his colleague said, "I will protect you." While my rescuer kept an eye on my soft drink and handbag, I was drawn into the circles of dancers, sweat dripping, and every now and then a paper banknote was put on my forehead.

The day after, these sweat pasted banknotes puzzled me. I know I am not a good dancer, so for sure they were not a proof of quality. To swipe away the sweat? To show the little value of money? I had to ask my friend. The answer is inscribed in my understanding of the emic and etic dimensions of practicing music education research with intercultural ambitions:

Didn't you understand that? The dance is everything to us? It carries everything in our culture, all of our lives. When you dance our dance, you show that you partly understand us, that you are part of us. That is why we put the banknotes on your forehead.

As years have gone by, these banknotes have kept haunting me. Through studies in musicology, music education, teaching at Malmö Academy of Music, developing courses, defending a thesis in music education, and continuing with research projects on intercultural approaches in music education, these banknotes tend to do their work as trouble makers: Who am I, as a White,<sup>1</sup> privileged "homo academicus" (Bourdieu 1990), to "give voice" to "the other"? How might I use the episode of the banknotes to do more than unsettle my privileged position, to develop reflexive research methods that take into account the ethical imperatives of interculturality?

In this chapter, I revisit the ideas of radical empiricism (Jackson 1989), and sensuous scholarship (Stoller 1987, 1997), embedded in the development of current music education research. The methodological implications of cultural responsiveness (Kallio and Länsman 2018; Karlsen et al. 2016; Sæther 2015) form the

<sup>1</sup> Here, the term "White" is used with reference beyond phenotype. In this context "White" points to the embedded power relations that were at play during the field work.

background to this effort to discuss how and why ethnographic work might be conducted, recognizing power dynamics, different ways of knowing, and more senses than the visual. As a background to the methodological considerations, I shortly introduce current trends in research on intercultural music education.

#### 2 Unstable Meanings

Intercultural, as a concept, is elusive. Sometimes it appears in a "double-faced approach that reduces people to a (national) culture but at the same time claims that they have multiple and complex identities" (Risager and Dervin 2015, p. 3). In an effort to reach beyond essentialist thinking on culture, interculturality in this chapter is used as a concept that "foregrounds what could most inclusively be referred to as diversity and encounters" (Risager and Dervin 2015, p. 9) emphasizing the "inter," trying to avoid culturalism by a more "flexible, unstable and critical meaning" (ibid. p. 10).

In music education research, the concept intercultural appears in various contexts and combinations, for example, (i) in discussions on educational programs that enhance music teachers' intercultural competence (e.g., Hebert and Sæther 2014), (ii) on how institutions need to change in order to build structures that enhance intercultural learning and teaching (e.g., Miettinen et al. 2018; Schippers and Campbell 2012), or (iii) on critical reflections on the use of the concept (e.g., Kertz-Welzel 2018; Westerlund and Karlsen 2017). In her (2018) book Globalizing Music Education: A Framework, Kerz-Welzel argues for a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education, based on research from the field of intercultural education. Her vision of global music education rests on a critical (re)consideration of internationalization and constructs a framework for developing new ways of conceptualizing global music education. In this framework some of the components are educational transfer, global knowledge production, and a global mindset, where "international" is understood as intercultural encounters. Westerlund and Karlsen (2017) suggest that in order to avoid simplified and ethnocentric notions of interculturality, it is fruitful to focus on knowledge production. In doing so "...the acquisition of intercultural competences becomes a central concern" (p. 92) which helps avoid essentialist understandings of culture. In addition, with a strong focus on collaborative and interactive knowledge production "...co-developing intercultural music teacher education might provide one possible way to break the dominating, panoptical approach of diversity" (p. 100).

Schippers and Campbell (2012) are concerned that the implementation of intercultural music education is slow and present three possible reasons for this: (i) preconceptions and power structures in culturally diverse societies; (ii) static approaches to concepts such as authenticity, tradition, and context; and (iii) limited understanding of teacher-learner interaction across cultures. In an attempt to map possibilities and challenges for those involved in intercultural music education, Miettinen et al. (2018) asked music educators in Israel and Finland how they describe their own intercultural competence and how they look at important factors at the institutional level. The study reveals a lack of possibilities for music educators to learn from each other. It also pinpoints the importance of "subtle nuances brought out in and connected to specific localities, individuals and subject-related matters" (p. 83). In their discussion of the institutional level of intercultural music education, Hebert and Sæther (2014) argue for programs that provide music students with strong learning experiences outside their comfort zones. As the results from a study on the GLOMAS camp in Ghana show, the students were concerned about the quality of intercultural fusions. However, they strongly expressed the desire to "create something new" (p. 430) and the importance of respectful interaction.

#### 3 The Absence of Shortcuts

The story line draws on Kirsten Hastrup's (1995) book A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory where she, between experience and theory, writes herself back to Academia after a period of serious crises, where she had to question the validity and relevance of her own work. Each chapter in her book is a reflection on halting places, necessary for the continued journey. At each of these halting places, she unfolds experienced issues, such as context, symbolic violence, motivated bodies, unarticulated thoughts, the emic voice, and responsibility. There are, she argues, no shortcuts; the emic voice has to be heard, which implies responsibilities toward the "researched" as well as toward academic quality criteria. My interpretation of her work is that a cartography of research, following strict methodological formulae, is of no use. What is needed, in intercultural music education research and practice in particular, is the courage to get lost, in order to find new deterritorialized places for contemplation and reflection.

The art(s) of intentionally getting lost furthermore paves the way for the intuitive practitioner (Atkinson and Claxton 2003), the type of music education researcher and music teacher that current societal changes call for. In his expansion of Schön's (1991) reflective practitioner, Claxton (2003) explores dominant traditions of understanding the teacher profession, where rational, explicit, and articulated understanding is given priority over other knowledge forms. However, much of the work a teacher does happens in the moment, with the help of intuition. Not arguing for an anti-rational stance, Atkinson and Claxton (2003) show how the rational and the intuitive interact, together leading to development of professional practice. In my view, the questions posed addressing the teacher profession are also relevant to music education research: Can intuition be cultivated, and its quality improved? Is intuition a way of knowing that has "particular value in dealing with complexity?" (p. 3). In outlining the anatomy of intuition, Claxton (2003) highlights the non-mystical qualities of sensitivity, creativity, and rumination: "A balanced view of intuition is one which sees it as a valuable source of hypotheses, which are nonetheless capable of being interrogated" (p. 43). With references to a study on Nobel Prize winners' approach to intuition, the aesthetic and physical dimensions of learning and problem-solving are drawn into focus, as valid forms of knowing:

Professional development involves a shifting, dynamic interplay of different ways of knowing, and models of specific situations need to be developed which take into account their unique rhythms and 'melodies' of learning. (Claxton 2003, p. 46)

Thus, intentionally following the rhythms and melodies of emic voices and a plurality of knowledge forms, the following section takes a detour, halting at central theoretical and methodological concepts.

#### 3.1 Radical Empiricism and Writing Culture

In retrospect, interrogating the banknote episode in Abidjan might serve as an accompaniment to a search for halting places for radical empiricism, sensuous scholarship, and cultural responsiveness in music education. The earlier mentioned "banknote on the sweat" incident was followed by a critical statement from the opponent at my public dissertation, musicologist Jan Ling. "There is no smell of Gambia in the text," he claimed. I was distressed. In my method chapter, I had clearly described how I used my own dancing as prompts before the interviews, to open up for a conversation on attitudes to musical learning in the Mandinka tradition. Furthermore, in the results chapter, I had pointed at the critical incident where the analysis took an unexpected turn – the questions were played by the ostinatos of the kora<sup>2</sup> , thus guiding the interview conversation that took place on top of and in the music (Sæther 2015). However, as my opponent stated, the text of a dissertation is read as a text. Little did it matter that I had a CD attached to the book; it was still just an attachment.

During and after the fieldwork in Gambia, I had experienced the complications of giving the knowledge of Gambian master musicians a relevant and valid place in a Swedish PhD publication. Jackson's (1989) proposed concept of radical empiricism temporally served as a possible way forward. Expanding, or rather crumbling the notion of the participant observer as a researcher with ambitions to understand and represent the other by spending time together with the observed in rigorous fieldwork, radical empiricism focuses on experiences of the body. The concept asks researchers to rethink their scholarly being-in-the-world, in order to develop methods which do not violate or caricature the complexity, diversity, and ambiguity of culture and the human experience of culture. This is why I used my own dancing as an informal prelude to the more formal interviews, performed together with a musician, a jali.

A jali, in this case jali Alagi Mbye, is the "glue" of Mandinka society both historically and presently, the mediator between different power positions, the

<sup>2</sup> 21-stringed West African harp lute.

peacemaker in local conflicts, the expert in communication, and the one who sings and plays in a manner that penetrates and transforms the listener. With this long list of professional functions, it is not surprising that jali Alagi Mbye during the research project changed in relation to my function as researcher – from translator and travel guide to co-researcher. This transition is completely in line with the epistemological openness and the positioned narrator that radical empiricism entails. I, the positioned music education narrator and jali Alagi Mbye, the professional jali, found ourselves in the middle, being both/and rather than either/or.

When performing radical empiricism, the aspiration is not so much to narrate the truth; rather the interest lies in what truth effects the narration has (Jackson 1989). In the case of my PhD project, the effect can be described as twofold: (i) in my home, Academia, the dichotomy of formal-informal music education was questioned, and (ii) in jali Alagi Mbye's home, the Mandinka oral university, the conception of a wonderful and holy past was troubled. In these double truth effects lie traces of what Jackson (1989) describes as narration as shape-shifting and the narrator as shapeshifter. In a radical empiricist manner, we had dwelled in the middle, trying to resist typifications which hierarchize or demean human relations.

But the opponent still had a point, where was the smell, the groove, the music? There are conceptual and methodological implications of writing culture (Fortun 2009) constantly under development and in process. According to the anthropological understanding of the concept, culture can be understood as always under construction and in creation, something that is done in time and space, by inscription – a writing that is more than writing (Fortun 2009). Music education researchers, as other researchers, create culture by the very methods used in approaching, analyzing and writing about the research material. Therefore, we need to turn our attention toward how culture is written and the asymmetries between the observer and the observed. The problems of inscription are, for example, found within translation between different languages, formulation of field notes, and genres for ethnographic voices to have a conversation:

There is no formula. The right textual structure emerges from the material it structures. It draws readers into an intellectual labyrinth, laying out where they go without determining it, opening pathways for movement in different directions//...//music might be the best way to translate alien forms into something with which imagined audiences can connect. (Fortun 2009, pp. xiii–xiv)

In analyzing inscriptions – for example, our own research reports – there are critical questions to be asked. Who is speaking? When and where? With who or to whom? In what institutional and historical constraints? What forms for inscription tend to structure our work and structure meaning? As Fortun (2009) states, we already know that our work is read within social webs. But, as she rhetorically asks, have we imagined how our work might help produce these webs? There are tasks waiting and conversations to take place provoked by books "and other performances" (Fortun 2009, p. xiv).

#### 4 Sensuous Scholarship and Partial Truths

Understanding the "banknote on the sweat" as inscription, culture inscribed in dance, performed by using the sweat from my body to inform earlier inscriptions with other languages, it is worthwhile to dwell a little more with the banknotes. Was it pure serendipity that created this critical moment? Or was it my own cultural and bodily knowledge of what traditional folk music and dance might carry in terms of community building and expressive, emotional communication of important values? Of course, serendipity plays an important and welcomed role, but of equal importance is the blend of inscriptions that were at stake that night in Abidjan. As a researcher in the cross-disciplinary field of music education, my enculturation was inscribed with the help of ethnomusicological theories and methodologies, thinking not of music and culture but of music as culture.

Within music education research, questions about transmission of knowledge (learning) are in focus. What musical styles are considered important enough to study within higher music education? What kinds of teaching are promoted, studentcentered, group-based, or one-to-one methods? As Nettl (1995) stated, the answers to questions like these point toward the realization that it is in the teaching methods the core values of cultures become visible: "teaching methods, musical events, and institutions particularly involved in teaching – must be the ones in which the aspects of culture that music teaches are most characteristically found"(Nettl 1995, p. 70). His fieldwork results from studying music education at home (in America) raised concerns about a monocultural, hegemonic school music practice, based on Western art music teaching and performance traditions. In Sweden, the hegemony of Western art music in music education in schools was broken in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a result of a national reform (Olsson 1993) demanding a wider pallet of genres within higher music education. However, the teaching methods and the ways of conceptualizing music still remained based on the Conservatory tradition, which was one of the reasons for my study in Gambia – searching for other attitudes to music and musicality that would make sense in widening participation at home.

Struggling with the fact that my thesis did not smell like the red earth of Gambia, I turned to Paul Stoller, the American anthropologist who in his early career travelled to Niger to study language use. His initial and very serious intent was to inquire into how and when different coexisting local languages were used in different social contexts, such as political decision-making or household issues. He failed completely. Prepared with a research design that included, for example, a quantitative survey (in a village where reading was not a common skill) and with very vague ideas about the concept of time in an orally transmitted culture, he quickly reached a point of despair. Running out of funds, realizing that the villagers had deliberately not provided him with the answers he was hunting for, he finally sat down with one of the elders in the village. The advice was to learn how to listen and "how to smell the world," that is, to engage with the ontology of the culture he had planned to study: "Listen to the godji (violin) and let its cries penetrate you. Then you will know the voice of the spirits, they would tell me. Feel the sound of the drum and know the power of our past" (Stoller 1989, p. 101).

Consequently, the embarrassed early career researcher with an interest in linguistics stayed 10 years in Niger and learned how "to smell the world." On his return he wrote In Sorcery's Shadow (1987) and Sensuous Scholarship (1997), both books reminding us about the importance of including an open attitude toward epistemology and ontology – in teaching as well as in research. In later works, Stoller (2004) shows how a sensuous description "propels social scientists to reconsider the analysis of power-in-the-world" (p. 820), in improved clarity and force of the ethnographic work. Stoller (2004) offers the practice of sensuous scholarship as much more than an epistemological practice belonging to isolated researchers. It is an answer to wider questions of scholarly responsibilities and the purpose of social science: "...many contemporary scholars have lost their way in the academic maze" (p. 832). By sensuous work, there is a potential to "shock readers into newfound awareness...to think new thoughts" (p. 283) and contribute to research on the human condition. For the field of music education, our being-in-the-world with music might already have influenced our ways of performing research; however, there might be more to it, following the line of thought within sensuous scholarship. In this line, the poetic and the political are intertwined, and ethnography as an art situated between different systems of meaning (Clifford 2009). "Ethnography decodes and recodes, telling the grounds of collective order and diversity, inclusion and exclusion. It describes processes of innovation and structuration and is itself part of these processes" (Clifford 2009, pp. 2–3). Therefore, all ethnographic texts cannot be more than "partial truths" (Clifford 2009, p. 7), as power and history work through the researcher. Still, ethnographic work, in exploring the limitations of representation, is potentially counter-hegemonic. Writing, within the realm of sensuous scholarship, includes power, institutional resistance, and innovation. Thus, as a PhD student, the intuitive decision to include a CD-recording of the kora asking the questions had to compromise with the standard format of writing up a thesis. Now, 13 years later there are other solutions available, allowing both for acknowledged co-researching and modes for presenting results that at least partially reduce the problem with "partial truths" by including for example sound files, videos, and poetry in the research report.

#### 5 Cultural Responsiveness

The dilemmas for music education researchers involved in cross-cultural and intercultural projects like developing music education in majority world countries, with reference to Western epistemological approaches toward learning, are plenty. Striving with different forms of co-working, Treacy et al. (2019) and Westerlund and Karlsen (2017) in their results highlight the learning process that lies in working outside of the learners' comfort zones, realizing the need for developing culturally responsive research methods.

In a meta-analysis of projects carried out within the Sibelius Academy, based on a review of international intercultural pedagogic practice (Karlsen et al. 2016), some of the major ethical considerations related to intercultural research and practice emerge:


The responsibility for developing the professional competence needed to engage with lists such as the seven ethical considerations lies largely within institutions for higher music education and their capacity to reach out for partnerships that stir academic cultures. The Global Visions projects' activities is one example of such ongoing initiatives. Based on the Manamaiju total immersion musical workshop in Nepal March 2017, the deeply involved masters and PhD students report on inspiring, yet challenging, learning experiences from making music together with master musicians in a village recovering after the 2015 earthquake (Johnson 2018). Through musicianship practiced as an integrated form for knowing, creating, developing, and performing, the non-Nepali participants were invited to reconsider both educational and research-related issues, including culturally responsive approaches. For the Nepali participants, the collaborative musical workshops opened up spaces for negotiating the global and the local, in ways that minimized Othering. Notwithstanding, there is reason to be aware of long-lasting power structures and long-lived colonial discourses. In discussing the pedagogical outcomes of the Manamaiju musical meetings, Upadhayaya (2018) is concerned about the potentially naïve expectations of confluence:

In order to tackle all the complexities and challenges (the socio-cultural, the socio-political, the socio-economic, and the socio-religious) that can surface during the process of intercultural or cross-cultural amalgamation and learning the variety of discourses that exist in music, critical research to ensure unbiased interpretation, negotiation, and production is called for. To do so, I would suggest that rather than aiming at overnight cultural confluence which would in fact be a waste of time, money and energy, all the stakeholders in this process should try to primarily understand the power dynamics rather than trying to diffuse them, to ensure a safe house for an envisaged confluence in globalized, social and virtual spaces. (pp. 98–99)

There is no quick fix. In Finland, as in the Nordic countries in general, there is a majority belief that the national policies on inclusion and democracy ensure the rights of minorities. However, there are reasons to go beyond this safe zone of official declarations. The problems of "partial truths" and power dynamics require thorough methodological work. Through "joik<sup>3</sup> -research," Kallio and Länsman (2018) managed to collaboratively create the composite character of Áile through an "indigenized analysis approach" (p. 9) where Áile's voice is "the polyphonic tapestry of many" (p. 9). Through collaborative narrative analysis, the voice of Áile was crafted as a joik, a powerful inscription.

Together, the researchers decided to penetrate the role of joik in communication and meaning construction. Their joint and engaged work with creating the character of Áile enabled a visionary discussion on future directions for Nordic extracurricular arts education, based on the Sami gift philosophy Attaldát that acknowledges interconnectedness. The "joik-research" performed by Kallio and Länsman (2018) is described as sometimes pushing the researchers into an area of discomfort. This is not to be interpreted as a problem; rather it is a method to include "those who understand and/or experience the world differently. Thus, significant learning – ethical learning – requires an element of discomfort" (p. 16). Cultural responsiveness in this discomforting quality thereby enhances community inclusion in issues of validity and reliability.

#### 6 Concluding Discussion

Following the line of thought from sensuous scholarship and radical empiricism, there is a need to analyze how music education research texts function as inscriptions, that is, texts that are more than texts and texts that are created by culture and creating culture, including more senses than the visual. Understanding texts as inscriptions invites texts that allow for other ways of knowing, for example, intuitive experience. As Fortun (2009) suggests, "music might be the best way" (p. xiv) to reach new audiences and to produce knowledge with the help of culturally responsive methods. Nevertheless, institutional and historical limitations always guide researchers' work, as the researchers' analyses are "always enmeshed in global movements of difference and power" (Clifford 2009, p. 25).

Emerging collaborative research formats, such as "joik-research" of Kallio and Länsman (2018), show how academic culture might be renewed in the in between of different subjects in different power relations. The growing body of results from the ongoing Global Visions project further adds to the picture of how music and music education have a capacity to contribute to knowledge on diversity and culturally responsive research methods.

With roots in the troubling banknotes from early fieldwork in Ivory Coast, the efforts to develop a research profile on intercultural perspectives on musical learning at the Malmö Academy of Music have focused on "borderland" educators and "borderland" researchers (Sæther 2015), didactic and epistemological awakenings,

<sup>3</sup> The Sámi vocal tradition of Joik is not a song, or a way of singing per se, but "a means to establish solidarity and position oneself and others in Sami communities" (Kallio and Länsman 2018, p. 9).

and intercultural pedagogic competence (Lorentz 2016) all very "uncomfortable" positions and activities. Getting lost, or rather the art(s) of getting lost as the title of this chapter suggests, is an effort to invite both intuition and discomfort. They are invited as ingredients in music education research, as parts of theoretical frameworks that might frame and advance contemporary understandings of diversity in music education.

By borrowing from anthropological research the concepts of radical empiricism and sensuous scholarship, music education researchers might find useful tools to approach project planning, to analyze the material and to write about/publish the results in culturally responsive forms that inform both research and praxis. Music, and music education, has a potential to contribute to knowledge inclusion. There is a close relation between research and teaching methods since, as Nettl (1995) suggests, it is in the teaching methods and teaching institutions that we will find the core values of a culture. It is therefore, by studying music transmission with culturally sensitive research methods, possible to do more than observing and reporting.

Finally, inscriptions that include the music, the body, the sweat, inspired by sensuous scholarship and radical empiricism, still need to be rigorous. Clifford (2009) writes about ethnographic work as poetry, a form of poetry that is precise. Likewise, music education researchers have the possibility to regard inscription as creating culture – in music and with music. There is a possibility to engage with different knowledge systems and politics, in all types of retrieved material. And there is a possibility to imagine research as creative, collaborative deliberations, generating social and cultural forms for knowledge building.

#### References


Eva Sæther is professor in music education at Lund University, Malmö Academy of Music (MAM), and docent at University of the Arts, Helsinki. She has developed a research profile that focuses on intercultural perspectives on musical learning and creativity(ies). She teaches educational sciences at the music teacher education program, and since 2017 she is heading the research education in music education at MAM. From 2017 to 2020 she serveds as a board member of the International Society for Music Education (ISME).

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## Body Politics: Positioning the Pregnant Researcher Amongst Asylum Seekers

Ailbhe Kenny

Abstract Researcher positionality has gained increased attention in recent years, and music education is following suit. Carrying out research that addresses diversity in music education demands a high level of reflexivity and a problematising of one's own position as researcher. This chapter offers critical insights into the complexity of such a positioning and how research practices might reflect, confirm and/or disrupt the existing 'body politic' that our bodies signify. Researcher positionality is here examined in terms of pregnancy within a research project based at an asylum seeker accommodation centre. Applying a Butlerian lens to the examination, the chapter uncovers how the researcher's pregnant body was 'performed' and became the main focus of 'recognition' amongst the people encountered at the centre. These processes of 'performing' and being 'recognised' as a 'pregnant researcher' manifested in various ways such as gaining access, credibility, trust, relationships, ethical considerations and power. Thus, the chapter opens a space to reflect critically on researcher positionality and specifically its influence on the research process in sites that seek to understand diversity in music education.

Keywords Positionality · Pregnant researcher · Identity · Embodied research · Researcher body · Reflexivity · Motherhood · Asylum seeking

#### 1 Introduction

Bodies are political. The term 'body politic' has medieval origins where states, towns, guilds, churches and families were considered in such terms – as 'bodies'. As such, the political and social body was understood in a manner similar to the physical, either healthy or corrupt, in need of intervention, often through purging and disciplining. 'Purifications', for example, were as much physical as intellectual

© The Author(s) 2021

A. Kenny (\*)

Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland e-mail: ailbhe.kenny@mic.ul.ie

A. A. Kallio et al. (eds.), The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1\_3

(consider the expulsion of Jews, witch-hunts, and enclosures of nuns). In contemporary contexts, a 'body politic' can be a nation regarded as a corporate entity, the state or collective unit of people. Such a 'body politic' is known all too well to those who are subjected to racial persecution, sexual harassment and abuse, gender-based violence, reproductive restrictions and disability discrimination, to name but a few. When working with marginalised groups, what becomes especially pertinent in any examination is how our research practices might reflect, confirm and/or disrupt the existing 'body politic' – essentially the power structures and political histories – that our bodies signify.

Researcher positionality has gained increased attention across scholarly domains in recent years, and music education is following suit. The complexities of positionality are manifold, often attributed to race (Milner 2007), gender (Butler 1999) and class (Hurst 2008), not to mention other polarities such as insider/outsider, practitioner/researcher, performer/writer and teacher/learner. Carrying out research that addresses diversity in music education demands a high level of reflexivity and a problematising of one's own position as researcher. This chapter highlights the role of the music education researcher as 'embodied' and 'situated'. As Cousin (2010) reminds us, "The self is not some kind of virus that contaminates the research. On the contrary, the self is the research tool, and thus intimately connected to the methods we deploy" (p. 10). The chapter opens a space to reflect critically on researcher positionality and specifically its influence on the research process in sites that seek to understand diversity in music education and 'the marginalised'.

Taking one site-specific case study in Ireland, I interrogate my own researcher position within a participatory research project that sought to examine the musical lives of children of asylum seekers. The research involved music workshops, focus group interviews, video data and researcher reflective logs over a 3-month period at a temporary communal accommodation centre for asylum seekers. Drawing on my 'field identity' (Srivastava 2006), within a space that is separated from society at large, there are multiple facets to consider in the discussion of positionality. I am white, Irish and female. I was also both music facilitator and researcher within the project. Negotiating, enacting and performing these numerous positions could not be separated from the research itself, and thus these 'multiplicities of identities' (Ruppel et al. 2008) influenced and shaped the research process. Of particular focus for this chapter is that I was also pregnant while carrying out the research fieldwork. Applying a Butlerian lens to the examination, I will highlight how my pregnant body was 'performed' (1999) and became the main focus of 'recognition' (2004) amongst the people I encountered within the research. These processes of 'performing' and being 'recognised' as a 'pregnant researcher' manifested in various ways such as gaining access, credibility, trust, relationships, ethical considerations and power. Thus, the chapter offers critical insights into the complexity of such a positioning for researchers in the field.

#### 2 (Em)Bodied Research

The concept of 'researcher as instrument' is well established across qualitative research and literature. This concept highlights the distinctive function and influence of the researcher's background, knowledge, perspective and subjectivity that they bring to the research, arguably influencing the process from conceptualisation through to fieldwork, analysis, interpretation and finally write-up. Ellingson (2006) states, "Rather than apologizing for our subjectivity or simply stating our 'biases,' we should instead carefully consider how ourselves and our experiences influence our research processes" (p. 307). Using the concept of 'researcher as instrument' as a point of departure, viewing research as an 'embodied practice' (Coffey, 1999) pushes us further to consider the researcher's body itself – how it looks, is perceived, is positioned, is classified, etc. – and how such a body matters to the research process and research accounts given.

Embodied research takes a reflexive position, seeing researcher as both agent and participant in the research process. Bresler (2008) claims that researchers, "research who we are" (p. 267). The performativity of the research encounter and the role played by all participants are also in focus here. As such, how the researcher and research participants inscribe material and discursive dimensions on the body during the research journey (from access through to writing) is problematised. These identities are inevitably intersectional and context-dependent and according to Bresler involve a "mutual shaping" between "the experience of being a researcher and on how this experience shapes who we are" (2008, p. 268).

Research carried out with asylum seekers, and children of asylum seekers, immediately distinguishes them as 'other', just as is often the case with research exploring any marginalised communities. Acknowledging, and more importantly interrogating, the relationship between power and identity is therefore called for. Ellingson (2006) notes:

It is the privilege of the powerful to leave their bodies unmarked...today it is the privilege of being unmarked, of having one's positionality obscured as the norm that signifies power. White bodies, for example, are rarely noted by authors, whereas bodies of people of color are marked in texts as "different"... (p. 301)

When researcher bodies are 'neutralised', or 'written out', Ellingson goes on to argue, "they reinscribe the power of scholars to speak without reflexive consideration of their positionality, whereas others' voices remain silent or marginalised by their marked status" (2006, p. 301). Simply stating researcher biases therefore is not enough. An examination of how research participants relate to the researcher, their own perceptions and assumptions, their willingness to participate in the research, how access is obtained, how the environment shapes the research, why some actions are constrained while others are enabled, etc. all require problematising. In short, an embodied approach to research needs to not just explore how the researcher views themselves but also how the researcher is viewed by others.

#### 3 Situating the Body

The continuing worldwide migration 'crisis' has brought about many challenges including the controversial nature of asylum seeker accommodation. Direct Provision (DP) was set up in Ireland in the year 2000 as a state system of housing asylum seekers with an average time period spent inside these centres of 4 years. The system accounts for almost 6000 residents, of which one third are children. There are 47 DP centres across Ireland where the types of accommodation provided include hostels, guesthouses and holiday camps. These shared, communal, temporary accommodation settings for asylum seekers create 'accidental communities' (Malkki 1997; Weston and Lenette 2016); the people within them have not come together out of choice but rather from a 'zone of exclusion' (Malkki 1997). My research to date has focussed on how asylum seekers and children of asylum seekers participate musically and potentially form 'communities of musical practice' (Kenny 2016) within these accommodation centres.

For the purposes of this chapter, I revisit a study carried out in one DP centre in the mid-west of Ireland (see Kenny 2018). The research took a qualitative case study approach where I was both researcher and music facilitator. Music workshops were carried out with a group of 7–12 year olds between April and June 2016 involving activities such as group song-singing, ensemble playing with small handheld instruments, group composition, vocal improvisation, performance and listening tasks. As part of a varied methodological approach, a researcher reflective log was kept recording thoughts and observations directly following each workshop. Upon reflecting on my researcher positionality for this chapter, I have revisited my field notes and reflective log from this study to focus specifically on how being a pregnant researcher impacted the research process itself, to reflect on my thoughts during fieldwork in relation to this, to examine interactions with my pregnant body, to look at how my pregnancy was defined by others and to trace how being pregnant was negotiated into research practices engaged in.

#### 4 Performing the Body

Judith Butler's theory of 'performativity' is a useful lens to bring to this work, particularly in its attempts to critically reflect on researcher positionality as well as offer alternative narratives about research with marginalised communities. In applying this lens, the discussion seeks to examine a common, lived, embodied experience of identity as opposed to highlighting 'difference' between the researcher and the researched community. For Butler (1999), the body is produced through discourse:

Performativity is thus not a singular "act" for it is always a reiteration of a norm or set of norms, and to the extent that it acquires an act-like status in the present, it conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repetition. (p. 241)

As such, reality is constructed discursively and performed, not just through language, body norms and physical acts themselves but is also contingent on power relations, historical events and environments. According to Butler then, the subject is made and remade through repetition of these discourses which often support or uphold existing power structures. For example, queer bodies are defined to uphold heteronormativity and bodies of colour, white privilege.

Directly linked to pregnancy are the dominant discourses on motherhood of course – women viewed as virtuous, sacrificial, non-threatening, and all-loving. Both Rose (2018) and Rich (1995) have repeatedly criticised this 'idealisation of mothers' and 'maternal virtue'. Rich (1995, p. xxiv) states, "I do not see the mother with her child as either more morally credible or more morally capable than any other women". Yet, such idealisation is not equal for all women. Motherhood too gets caught up in the political and media frenzies of the day with migration in particular being a target. Rose (2018) writes of the demonisation of "alien mothers" as the "objects of visceral revulsion" in society (p. 167), while Reynolds and Erel (2016) identify how migrant mothers are often projected as 'benefit cheats' and 'welfare scroungers'. This is not just borne out in tabloid headlines but within legislation, where, for example, children born in a host country do not enjoy the same rights as other children or deportations continue to separate parents from children.

Directly related to the focus of this chapter, the heterosexual, female, pregnant, white researcher body represents multiple performativities, holding the complexity of the power that comes from racial and sexual orientation alongside patriarchal and gendered norms, while nestled within dominant discourses of motherhood. In order to be 'a subject' in this research, however, one must be rendered 'recognisable' through regulatory, social and normative discourses (or performativity). Butler (2004) is keen to remind us that such recognition functions as a site of power: "...if the schemes that are available to us are those that 'undo' the person by conferring recognition, or 'undo' the person by withholding recognition, then recognition becomes a site of power by which the human is differently produced" (p. 2). Applying a Butlerian lens then, both I and the other mothers' feasibility as subjects required that we be recognised as such – as mothers – but this was only possible within existing norms and overarching motherhood discourses. Discourses are multiple and shifting of course, and so it is worth pointing out that within interactions with myself as researcher, motherhood offered an alternative identity for the women in the centre that went beyond 'an asylum seeker'. While power imbalances abounded, this shared gendered performativity did offer a level of agency for the women to resist the dominating forces they were subjected to within the accommodation centre (illegal status, enforced poverty, restricted rights and limited food choices to name but a few), even within short periods of interaction.

#### 5 The Pregnant Body

The pregnant body is a public body. I was 6 months pregnant when I entered the field for this research project, and so I was from the onset, 'a pregnant researcher'. As it was my first pregnancy, I was naïve to both the privileges and constraints such a new body brought with it. The influence of my pregnancy on the research actually began months before embarking on the fieldwork. I was told by a male senior administrator at my institution that I, 'would not be able' to carry out the project and may have to return the funding awarded. Another male colleague on 'congratulating' me, commented, 'that will put a halt to your gallop'. Such comments were not restricted to gender. I also received frequent statements from female colleagues that my publication list would now have a 'massive gap' and that I would have 'different priorities now'. It was clear from the outset, therefore, that being a pregnant researcher (and thus a soon-to-be mother) was awash with political, gendered and moral judgments, freely given without invitation. As Butler (2004, p. 21) states, "my body is and is not mine". I was no longer 'recognised' as a female academic but a pregnant female academic.

This new positioning also had its advantages. As far back as 1988, female anthropologists noted how their marriages, pregnancies and motherhood offered access to 'women-centred worlds' (Warren 1988). How my pregnancy influenced access within the research site was most interesting. An extract from my researcher log below 'sets the scene' regarding my first visit to begin music workshops with children at the DP centre:

It is 3.30 pm, time for the music workshop but nobody seems to be waiting or ready. I knock on a door marked 'managers office' and a young woman emerges. She explains that they will need to be 'rounded up', puts on her jacket and goes outside. A lady passes me with a baby in her arms and keeps walking. I am shown the room for the workshop. It resembles a primary school classroom to a large degree and so is very familiar to me. It has posters on the walls, everything is labelled with flashcards, there are whiteboards, there is a teacher's desk, children's desks and chairs. It is bright and colourful but I am surprised at just how much it replicates a classroom. I set about pushing back tables and arranging chairs in a circle to try to create an atmosphere that has not been the same as their school day. I place the musical instrument box of handheld percussion in the middle and wait. And wait. After 20 mins nobody arrives and I decide to go see what is happening. I return to the reception area. (Reflective Log 1).

As revealed above, the arranged workshop failed to recruit any children to the designated room. After much angst, I sat down at a couch in the main reception area, hoping that perhaps some children might appear. This is not what transpired however. Instead, my bodily positioning on the couch, while visibly pregnant, enabled other mothers to connect with me, as illuminated in the following log extract:

I sit on the couch and am filled with anxiety. What now? As I contemplate my options, time moves on and I absent-mindedly rub my pregnant belly (perhaps for comfort, perhaps to remind myself that there is life beyond this research project or perhaps both!). The lady who previously passed me carrying a baby has circled round again and on seeing my 'bump' sits next to me. She asks the many questions I have become accustomed to since my body announced I was pregnant, 'When are you due?', Is it a boy or girl? How are you feeling? Is it your first?...and I similarly respond by asking the customary questions expected to ask of one carrying a baby, 'What is its name?', 'How old is she?', 'Does she sleep?'...during this exchange another pregnant lady walks by and joins in the conversation, following this two mothers with small toddlers also gravitate toward our expanding group on the couches. After a time, I begin to tell them what I am doing here and ask if they have or know children aged between 7 and 12 (Reflective Log 1).

Following this exchange, the group of children for the workshops are established through these mothers and continue to engage for the project duration. Despite this positive outcome, I was also troubled by the interaction. My pregnancy and imminent motherhood stood in stark contrast to theirs. The relationship between gender, pregnancy and migration politics is never far from public view. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), one in five women of childbearing age in crisis settings is likely to be pregnant, and 60% of all maternal deaths occur in these settings (see https://www.unfpa.org).<sup>1</sup> Furthermore, asylum seekers and refugees are particularly vulnerable due to arduous journeys often undertaken, their high risk of trauma and exposure to sexual violence, limited access to health facilities and care, enforced poverty, as well as such things as language, culture and social barriers on arrival in the host country.

In my situation, I felt the differences were further exacerbated by the women's obvious illegal status (as well as the illegal status of their children and unborn children) while living at the centre. Yet, my pregnancy facilitated a building of trust and therefore access. It represented in a very explicit way, a common, situated, gendered, embodied knowledge we could all share. And as noted by Rich and Rose earlier, pregnant women are not generally perceived as threatening (rightly or wrongly).

The discourses previously discussed extended to my interactions amongst the children. The girls involved in the music workshops appeared very familiar with pregnancy and were keenly interested in the baby's arrival throughout the project. The log notes here highlight the curious and caring attitude taken towards my physical state:

The girls stay behind as I move back the desks, they rush in to help and ask me questions about my pregnancy, 'is it a boy or girl', 'what will you call the baby', 'when is it coming'? They continue to help me with the chairs and desks as we talk and then walk me all the way out to my car helping to carry the instruments. They wave energetically and yell 'goodbye' as I drive off. (Reflective Log 3).

The girls were therefore part of the 'women-centred worlds' (Warren 1988) referenced earlier, playing into (and 'performing') gendered norms, cultures and expectations. Not once did a boy in the group query my expanding body week to week. When the girls would ask questions, and sometimes request to rub my belly, the boys would typically look away or busy themselves with an instrument.

<sup>1</sup> In contrast, Ireland has one of the world's lowest rates of maternal death, consistently ranking around joint sixth in the world.

Applying a Butlerian framework to this, 'recognition' of my pregnancy was thus also performed by the boys through gendered, cultural, social and perhaps religious norms, just as much as the girls performed them (though in opposite ways). The boys, akin to my male colleagues referred to earlier, were thus through a process of 'repetition' (Butler 1999) performing certain expected norms through such distancing.

#### 6 Body Matters: Concluding Thoughts

A researcher's positionality can both be established and shift according to the social, cultural, economic and political values and norms in a given context. This chapter has revealed that even further to this, the researcher's body itself can shape and be shaped by the research process and interactions within it. In particular, it has been shown that 'the pregnant researcher' significantly influenced the research process carried out in an asylum seeker centre in terms of negotiating access to participants, building trust and credibility, establishing (gendered) relationships and influencing interactions. Furthermore, how the researcher was viewed by others, through 'recognition' (Butler, 2004), also defined this role. Through a reflexive examination of this research journey, the importance of considering and revisiting one's researcher identity and positionality is highlighted.

The chapter has also shed light on the complex interplay of migration, politics, identity, the body and gender, as well as the various power dimensions associated with this. I carried with me a certain amount of social, cultural and economic capital into a research context that was inhabited by people seeking asylum. I was also coming from a place of racial privilege within a host country where the research participants sought to gain legal status. The imbalance of power in such a situation is obvious and, yet, commonality was found through the pregnant body and through a dominant virtuous discourse of motherhood (Rich 1995; Rose 2018). While this translated as an acceptance by the females at the centre, it also meant a distancing from the males. This raises questions around how a researcher's body in the field can both be simultaneously inclusive and exclusive.

What is abundantly clear throughout this examination is that any real or perceived boundaries between the 'researcher' and the 'researched' are false. Furthermore, through our discourses and interactions 'in the field', we are 'performing' (Butler 1999) and made 'recognisable' (Butler 2004) within established societal, cultural, historical and political norms. 'Recognition' did indeed act as a site of power in this study but not just for me as researcher but for the migrant mothers encountered. We shared a common lived experience of motherhood/pregnancy that was relational, performative and embodied, therefore connecting the researcher with the researched and countering exclusionary research processes and practices. Furthermore, by acknowledging the body of the researcher in this discussion, it reaffirms a shared humanity with the marginalised female community encountered. It is recommended therefore that researchers pay careful attention to their bodies and their multiple positionings when conducting research and writing about it. Researcher reflexivity (including researchers' bodies as integral to this) can thus open up a critical space to destabilise simple truths, challenge power structures and interrogate the taken for granted. Such an embodied approach to research that deals with diversity issues in particular offers exciting opportunities for more nuanced, critical and detailed understandings for the field of music education and beyond.

#### References


Dr. Ailbhe Kenny is based at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. Ailbhe's research is widely published internationally; she is author of Communities of Musical Practice (2016) and coeditor of Musician-Teacher Collaborations: Altering the Chord (2018). She is a EURIAS fellow and Fulbright Scholar and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Ailbhe is currently a PI on the HERA-funded project 'Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and Integration in Europe' (NITE). Ailbhe has held previous positions as a primary teacher, research fellow and as Arts and Education Officer at The Ark – a children's cultural centre. She is actively involved in community projects, including directing the MIC Children's Choir and working in asylum seeker centres.

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## The Politics of Reflexivity in Music Teachers' Intercultural Dialogue

Vilma Timonen, Marja-Leena Juntunen, and Heidi Westerlund

Abstract In this chapter, we explore the politics of music teacher reflexivity that emerged in a transnational collaboration between two institutions, the Nepal Music Center (NMC) and the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki when co-developing intercultural music teacher education. We examine in particular the reflexivity in this intercultural dialogue and how the collaboration became a complex field of issues of power related to social positions and epistemologies. Such reflexivity may act as an invitation to discomfort but at the same time as an invitation to deep professional learning. The empirical material was generated in the flow of activities within teachers' pedagogical studies organized by the Sibelius Academy for the NMC teachers in Nepal. The authors' experiences and the omnipresent colonial setting were taken as a backdrop of the overall interpretation and discussion. We argue that in an intercultural dialogue, negotiating one's premises, stance, and the ethical relations with the Other requires reflection on one's existential groundings. However, professional learning in intercultural dialogue is prone to persistent paradoxes that cannot be swiped away, or even solved. The politics of reflexivity thus keeps the questions open, with no final answers or ultimate solutions.

Keywords Reflexivity · Politics of reflexivity · Deep professional learning · Intercultural dialogue · Music teacher education

An earlier draft version of this chapter was published as part of Vilma Timonen's doctoral dissertation: Timonen, Vilma (2020). Co-constructing globalizing music education through an intercultural professional learning community – A critical participatory action research in Nepal. University of the Arts, Helsinki. Studia Musica 83. ISBN 978-952-329-171-3.

V. Timonen (\*) · M.-L. Juntunen · H. Westerlund

Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: vilma.timonen@uniarts.fi; marja-leena.juntunen@uniarts.fi; heidi.westerlund@uniarts.fi

#### 1 Introduction

Reflective practice and the reflective practitioner are established concepts in the international literature on teacher education and teachers' professional development (e.g., Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999). In music education, a reflective practitioner typically refers to the socioculturally formed thinking that is part of a cognitive apprenticeship, where one learns to think in action and reflect critically while focusing one's attention and awareness on the details of music making, listening, or other musical activities (Elliott 1995). Moreover, the concept of "reflection" has often been reserved for thinking processes that are "linked to learning 'how' rather than learning 'about' or 'what'" (Leitch and Day 2000, p. 180). In other words, the starting point is that reflection is about the 'hows' of acting according to the known and valued practices, instead of questioning and changing any elements of the practice or tradition. As described in Schön's (1983) work, many of the reflective practitioner's tacit processes of thinking, which take place in tandem with doing, remain unconscious. Through the two forms of reflection – reflection in action and reflection on action – that according to Schön form the "epistemology of practice" (p. 49), the practitioner can become aware of the success and relevance of his actions and accordingly change "the situation from what it is to something he likes better"(p. 147). Reflection is therefore often limited to "an in-depth consideration of events or situations outside of oneself" (Bolton 2010, p. 13). Reflexivity, however, relates more to thinking about the mind itself and refers to "finding strategies to question our own attitudes, thought processes, values, assumptions, prejudices and habitual actions, to strive to understand our complex roles in relation to others" (Bolton 2010, p. 13). According to Bolton (2010):

[t]o be reflexive is to examine, for example, how we – seemingly unwittingly – are involved in creating social or professional structures counter to our own values (destructive of diversity, and institutionalizing power imbalance for example). It is becoming aware of the limits of our knowledge, of how our own behavior plays into organizational practices and why such practices might marginalize groups or exclude individuals. (p. 13–14)

Intercultural dialogue has been said to provoke such reflexivity (Westerlund et al. 2015; Mateiro and Westvall 2016). This kind of reflexivity, which requires becoming aware of power structures, stepping into uncertainty, and engaging in complex dialogue, can emerge "between the diverse cultural logics that attend different cultural territories" (Biddle and Knights 2007, pp. 5–6). In such intercultural dialogue, there is a new need to see culture as constantly undergoing "co-constructions, negotiations, questionings (...) manipulations and instabilities" (Dervin and Machart 2015, p. 3). This kind of reflexivity is more related to one's own existential groundings and is expected to provide "support for cross-cultural dialogue" (Nasar et al. 2016, p. 5), through which professional identities and epistemologies can be seen as ongoing change processes. Moreover, such dialogue requires "a commitment to discomfort, a commitment to questioning oneself and one's identity, a commitment to engagement with difficult truths and alternative histories, a commitment to developing ethical relations with the Other" (Martin et al. 2017, pp. 252–253).

In this chapter, we explore the politics of music teacher reflexivity that emerged during a transnational collaboration, by recognizing both the risks for colonial oppression that are omnipresent in intercultural collaboration on the one hand and, on the other, the potential for the transformation of professional identity through such dialogue. We examine the emerging reflexivity in intercultural dialogue between and among a group of Finnish and Nepali music educators and how the collaboration itself became a complex field of issues of power related to social positions and epistemologies.

#### 2 Reflexivity and Intercultural Engagement in Late Modernity

Recent sociological and philosophical literature identifies a number of definitions for reflexivity. The term can be traced to the pragmatist and social constructionist ideas of the self as being "created through social interaction with others as people come to see themselves in the way others see them" (Giddens and Sutton 2014, p. 36). In the social sciences, reflexivity also refers to the "fundamentally reflexive nature of social life per se" (p. 37). Reflexive awareness "is characteristic of all human action... [as] all human beings continuously monitor the circumstances of their activities as a feature of doing what they do" (Giddens 1991, p. 35). As a concept, reflexivity is also used in understanding contemporary late modern society as a "'de-traditionalized' social context in which individuals are cut adrift from the social structure and, hence, forced to be continuously reflexive in relation to their own lives and identities" (p. 37). In this emerging post-traditional globalizing society, the balance between tradition and modernity is altered (Giddens 1994), and "modernity is best understood as a matter of the routine contemplation of counterfactuals, rather than simply implying a switch from an 'orientation to the past', characteristic of traditional cultures, toward an 'orientation to the future'" (Giddens 1991, p. 28–29).

Lately, it has been suggested that in the late modern view human beings have the temporal priority, relative autonomy of experience, and causal efficacy that allows them to become social beings with powers of transformative reflection and action, which they can then bring to their social context (Archer 2012). This social relationality is "the fuel or food for the reflexivity" (Donati 2006, p. 39). Donati (2010) points out that "social networks are not only a context where personal reflexivity takes place but can have their own reflexivity of a distinctive kind in respect to personal (agential) reflexivity" (p. 147). Also, situations where joint activities are planned and based on co-production or peer-to-peer production, such as in this inquiry's intercultural dialogue, require more than personal reflexivity, as the consequences pertain to the whole social unit or system. For Donati (2010), such personal and social meta-reflexivity:

is that form of turning back on oneself by a subject who considers (internally as well as in interaction with others) the outcomes of his/her own deeds, both direct and indirect, and tries to relate them to a horizon of values that transcends what is already given. (p. 159)

Meta-reflexivity, in this sense, is related to such values that might "constitute a utopian life-project" (p. 159) or a utopian social project. This kind of metareflexivity can be seen as part of the intercultural dialogue examined in this chapter. Moreover, such meta-reflexivity involves epistemic reflexivity, albeit not leading to a unified epistemic community, as perspectives and histories vary vastly in the intercultural dialogue in question. It has been argued that in epistemic reflexivity "reflection becomes reflexivity when informed and intentional internal dialogue leads to changes in educational practices, expectations, and beliefs" and "to action for transformative practices" promoting "deep professional learning" (Feucht et al. 2017, p. 234). Besides a commitment to a degree of discomfort, this kind of epistemic reflexivity can be a collective and collaborative activity (Leitch and Day 2000), as in this inquiry.

#### 3 The Context

In this inquiry, music teacher reflexivity is explored in the context of an intercultural collaboration between two institutions, the Nepal Music Center (NMC) and the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts, Helsinki,<sup>1</sup> that agreed to co-develop an intercultural music teacher education system between Nepal and Finland.<sup>2</sup> The collaboration between NMC and the Sibelius Academy commenced in 2013, aiming at – in addition to mutual professional learning – the co-creation of a music teacher education program for advanced level students at NMC. In this collaboration, the idea of co-development is not understood as something that is directed, pre-planned, or even necessarily fully orchestrated but rather "a complex process of transformation that comes with difficult choices" and that "must attend to a multiplicity of interests and identities" (Heller and Rao 2015, p. 5). Therefore, the process, rather than the ends, of the development is also a focus of this inquiry.

To support the program's development and to alleviate the lack of opportunities for formal education in the country, the Sibelius Academy provided the opportunity

<sup>1</sup> The Nepal Music Center is an institution hosting approximately 300 students and 30 staff members, providing tuition in (Western) popular music, Eastern classical and Nepali folk music, as well as traditional Nepali dance. The Uniarts Helsinki's Sibelius Academy is one of the largest music academies in Europe. At the Sibelius Academy, music teacher education is an extended and integrated 5-year program leading to a Bachelor's and Master's degree.

<sup>2</sup> The collaboration commenced through a project called "Developing music teacher education in Nepal" 2013–2014, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Finland, and continued under a larger research project "Global Visions Through Mobilizing Networks: Co-Developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Finland, Israel and Nepal," funded by the Academy of Finland in 2015–2020.

for four of the NMC teachers to take part in the Teacher's Pedagogical Studies that are required for teacher competence in Finland.<sup>3</sup> These pedagogical studies had to follow the general goals of Finnish teacher education that aim at preparing studentteachers for a reflective practice and research-based professionalism, paying particular attention to building "pedagogical thinking skills, enabling teachers to judge the bases and values of one's teaching, and to manage instructional processes in accord with contemporary educational knowledge and practice" (Sahlberg 2015, p. 109).4

The pedagogical studies of the NMC teachers included regular assignments, such as writing portfolios, reflective essays, and a final paper based on individually conducted research. The studies were in this case integrated into the curriculum writing for NMC, reading educational and Asian anthropological theories, and philosophical literature far beyond that of the Finnish context. The studies also included a long cycle of group discussions that functioned as the core arena for both for the studies and professional development. Some of the reflective material produced during the pedagogical studies also functioned later as empirical material for this inquiry. In this tailor-made program, for example, presenting one's own research results at international music education conferences became a centerpiece, with the idea that such a wider positioning would trigger critical thinking beyond that of the Finnish-Nepali dialogue, aiming in this way to balance the international impact. Hence, the studies engaged all participants in constant reflection as the main approach, resulting in a hybrid generative process – "grafting" (Ahenakew 2016) – where certain ways of understanding knowledge production were applied and also introduced into the Nepali context. In this way, the ideal of reflexive practice in studies and research created an epistemological dominance in this context and at the same time also created a distinction between "better" and "worse" ways of developing music education.

#### 4 Research Approach

#### 4.1 Empirical Material and Research Objectives

The empirical material was generated within the pedagogical studies and intercultural dialogue, as well as through our experiences during and after the process.<sup>5</sup> The material used for this chapter consists of eight reflective essays that the four NMC teachers wrote as part of their pedagogical studies; five discussions

<sup>3</sup> As stipulated in Decree No. 986/1998

<sup>4</sup> The first and third authors of this chapter were responsible for various study modules, and all three authors were involved in the organization and teaching of the studies.

<sup>5</sup> Every participating teacher has signed a consent form that states where the material will be used and by whom. All publications related to the process will be read and accepted by all participants before submission, and the participants have been given the possibility to withdraw from the research at any time.

among the NMC teachers and Finnish teacher-researchers, as well as the first author's research journal; and the collective discussions among the authors. When reflecting on the process of the pedagogical studies as a whole and the intercultural collaborative setting with its inherent power structures, we have engaged with the empirical material through the question: What kind of meta-reflexivity is emerging in the transnational and intercultural dialogues, and in the music educators' professional learning processes, that took place between these two educational institutions?

#### 4.2 Approach to Analysis

In addressing the research question, we first analyzed the empirical material and then contested it with our own dominant position in the intercultural dialogical setting. In the analysis, conducted through the NMC teachers' essays and the first author's researcher diary, we explored the taken-for-granted expectation of reflection as a teacher and how this expectation reinforced the distinction between 'us' and 'them' in the intercultural dialogue (Sect. 1). We then moved on to analyze how the professional meta-reflexivity of the participants critically engaged with each of their larger sociocultural frames (Sect. 2). The analysis then proceeded from the first-stage content analysis to the second stage of exploration, in which the outcome of the first-stage analysis was contested through co-reflexive discussions against the scholarship on intercultural interaction and decolonial frames (Sect. 3). In this way, the entire process of participating in the pedagogical studies was reflected against the larger context of power issues, promoting collaboratively produced epistemic reflexivity and co-developed "deep professional learning" (Feucht et al. 2017, p. 234) during the analysis and writing process of this inquiry.

As reflexivity can also refer to simply becoming more aware of one's own biases and theoretical assumptions as qualitative researchers (Giddens and Sutton 2014), in this inquiry we lean on the type of reflexive understanding in which critical, interpretive work "conceptualizes social reality as being constructed, rather than discovered" (Alvesson et al. 2008, p. 480). The second stage of analysis is seen to hold implications for the interpretation of the representation of participant voices (Carducci et al. 2013, p. 15) and also our own self-reflexivity and positionality as scholars toward investigating "the absences, blind spots, and invisibilities inherent in research designed to interrogate, disrupt, and ultimately upend educational inequities" (p. 6). Moreover, we highlight the position that there is no gap between the researcher and research subject (Giddens and Sutton 2014) by including ourselves in the analysis. In this way, instead of aiming only for the endpoints of clarity and explanations, we aim at digging into the complexity, ambiguity, and even paradoxes of the process of intercultural interaction in transnational settings. In what follows, the analysis will be accompanied by direct quotes from the written essays, discussions, and researcher journal.<sup>6</sup> Our own experiences and the power hierarchies in the transnational setting are taken as the backdrop of the overall interpretation and discussion.

#### 5 Findings

#### 5.1 The Journey from Reflection to Reflexivity

The NMC teachers' professional work consisted not only of teaching in the music school but also of playing music in various bands and studios and performing in public arenas. None of them had a degree in music education but had become teachers through an apprentice model of teaching and learning. Critical (co) reflection as a part of teaching and learning was somewhat unfamiliar to the NMC teachers. Thus, at the beginning of their pedagogical studies, reflection in itself became a central topic of discussion and a focus of collaborative reflexive processes. Instead of reflecting on how to teach music in a more effective way, the following questions emerged: What is reflection? How can you learn to reflect and use it for your work and teacher development? Why are we expected to reflect as teachers?

Reflective assignments became a part of their pedagogical studies, as required for the formal degree. However, after some months, in their written essays, the teachers expressed how understanding the meaning of reflection and learning to articulate one's own thoughts through writing had taken time:

Writing has been very challenging for me. This is not what I have been used to do. Therefore, it took a lot of time to write down my thoughts in words. (Reflective essay, August 2016, teacher 1)

The teachers also recognized the difficulty of establishing a co-reflexive practice. Not only was writing and reading about one's own activities as a teacher a new experience but also sharing ideas with colleagues as a facilitated practice:

At the beginning of this process, there were few awkward moments for me, such as team building activities where you had to open up in a new environment and present yourself as a strong individual, willing to contribute in a team. For me, it took quite a bit of time to understand the whole process, and develop communicative and supportive skills within a group of people. However, things started kicking off as I led myself to share my inner thoughts with others and visualized the connection between all these activities with my performance as a teacher. (Reflective essay, August 2016, teacher 1)

Through the development of a co-reflexive practice, the understanding of the benefits of reflection started to emerge. This was articulated already in the very first written tasks. As one of the teachers wrote in his essay:

<sup>6</sup> The quotes have been edited to be more grammatically correct.

This process of working together [in a group consisting of Finnish and Nepali teachers] made me realize that reflecting while working simultaneously is not only possible but very essential to any work that you are doing. (Reflective essay, August 2016, teacher 2).

As reflection was related to interaction with the Finnish partners, it naturally also concerned the assumed differences between the practices in the two countries. Cultural differences were seen as legitimizing the differences between "us" and "them":

In my experience, the working cultures in Finland and in Nepal differ from each other quite a bit. In Finland, work is very precisely planned, everyone knows their exact role in their work and the exact time for the work. The Finns are making a constant reflection on the work, asking questions like why, how, what if, what, paving a path towards deep thinking, that even provokes their own thoughts. (Reflective essay, August 2016, teacher 2).

At the same time, the constant comparison between "us" and "them" helped in identifying one's own professional epistemology, as the time spent with reflective tasks in the studies invited the teachers to ask: Why am I doing my work in the ways I am? For the first author, the process led at times to fundamental questions, such as:

I don't know how to proceed. Educational values? Musical values? What is my take on traditional music? What is important [for me] as an educator, and why? What is important [for me] as a musician, and why? (Researcher diary, 15.2.2016).

The unexpected uncertainty of one's own professional taken-for-granted values and principles questioned the constant comparing and thinking of the differences between 'us' and 'them', and gradually led to realizing that reflexivity in transnational collaboration and intercultural dialogue might move all of us into a deeper consideration of inescapably inherent sociocultural matters.

#### 5.2 Reflexivity beyond the Existing Practices and Sociocultural Hierarchies: Emerging Meta-Reflexivity Supporting Professional Learning

The collaborative work on creating a new educational program as part of the studies guided discussions on how to create consistent learning paths for the students, in order to achieve desired educational outcomes:

The overall process of curriculum writing helped me pinpoint the actions that I take in my classes on a deeper level. I started to ask questions: Why do I do things in the way I do? What is the purpose of my actions? What are the outcomes that I am looking for in a student? Am I succeeding in achieving the desired goals? If yes, why? If not, why?" (Reflective essay, January 2016, teacher 2).

Working and co-reflecting as a team inspired further discussions about community building, not just about the teacher community but the whole institutional community, to which the students also belong:

Moving forward another step has meant becoming self-aware and creating awareness in a team. It has helped us in understanding the broader meaning of music education. It has become a way to explore different dimensions of my teaching and classroom activities. Meanwhile, in the process, I've realized that music education is more than just transferring knowledge; rather, it is about building a strong teacher-student relationship as well as understanding the needs and interests of the students. (Reflective essay, August 2016, teacher 1).

Joint discussions demanded time for building trust, which enabled alternative thoughts to be discussed and tested collegially. One of these complex sociocultural issues was the country's caste system. The caste system has been legally forbidden since 1962 but continues to be a strong force in defining social roles and relations within institutions (Bennett 2008), including educational systems. The caste system thus intersects musical practices and music education in various ways, including the historical perspective that music teachers in Nepal, as also musicians, traditionally come from the lower castes. In their essays, the teachers reflect on how the caste system and cultural habits support ways of conducting mundane activities that do not allow critical thinking or social change and how the possibility of social mobility and thereby individual choice is more relevant for lower caste children and more challenging for upper class children:

In Nepal, ...one's upbringing depends on what caste and what customs one is brought up with. I personally have found it easier to teach pupils who are from the lower middle, or middleclass families, since in the higher classes, children [are] brought up in a strictly disciplined way. [In the higher classes], superstition is also in practice. [For example], you cannot drink water from a glass touched by a lower caste person. These kinds of beliefs and practices often make pupils insecure, low self-esteem, sealed and hesitant beings, as everything in their upbringing is pre-planned. These children have a very slim chance to make decisions. When a teacher comes to know that a pupil comes from such a background, the teacher should try to make the learning and teaching environment as relaxed, friendly, fun, and enjoyable as possible. This type of friendly environment helps the students in opening up and gaining self-confidence. (Reflective essay, January 2016, teacher 2).

In the process of co-reflection among the teachers, the emerging meta-reflexivity that relates to values and being aware of social relationality elicited a social environment wherein teachers' choices, also regarding alternative strategies, started to emerge:

But have we, as teachers, provided the students with such a [supportive and friendly] environment, the right atmosphere in our classes? Have we encouraged the students to make mistakes, not to be afraid of failures, but to take them as a part of their learning process? I presume that asking these questions of ourselves as teachers will definitely increase the self-realization in the teaching sessions. This is very important, as I strongly believe that the teacher's role in making a better society is larger than we have realized. (Reflective essay, January 2016, teacher 2).

The teachers' essays also dealt with the identified professional and economical differences between the two contexts, Finland and Nepal, and how the conditions of professional work shape the reflexive practice, or condone the lack of it:

(07:14) R: Mostly...because of the situation in our country ... one job is not enough. So, you are always thinking of getting another job. So, ... we don't reflect on what we have done, how we did it. Before, ... I never reflected on my own work, and I haven't seen that being done, either in any company or by our friends. [Here in Nepal] it's always about the new thing: What do we want to do next? And, that's what I grew up with. And, it [the reflective approach] was never part of my working habit. (Discussion 25.3.2016, teacher 4)

Here, reflexivity appears as a privileged activity for those who can afford it. As Indian-born anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (2013, p. 180) argues, "the better off you are (in terms of power, dignity, and material resources), the more likely you are to be conscious of the links between the more and less immediate objects of aspiration." Realizing this led us, the Finnish participants, to turn back to ourselves and ask: Who is reflexivity for? Is reflexivity really a luxury only for those who have the time and means for it?

#### 5.3 Meta-Reflexivity on Epistemic Imperialism and Exploitation

NMC's first expectation had been that the Finnish music teacher educators would consult with them and share their knowledge of music teacher education and in this way help in building a new music teacher education program in Nepal. Yet, as shown above, we ourselves were painfully aware that many of our teaching and learning practices, as well as organizational ideas, were challenging the local understanding of who gets to decide what is done, how things are done, when, and by whom. Hence, organizational efficiency rather than the questions of how to teach music became central in the dialogue. As a consequence, we constantly revisited our own understandings, while becoming increasingly aware of the potential consequences of our intervening actions in NMC. The persistent question arose as to how to recognize the colonial frame omnipresent in the dialogue; or rather, how to deal with the fact that the power issues were present throughout. As Leigh Patel (2016) argues:

the location of some actions as within and others outside of systemic coloniality mutes and collapses necessary conversations, not only about the function and impact of oppressive deeds and acts but also about the theories of change for more desired dynamics. (p. 2).

For us, setting up processes of complex reflexivity, instead of introducing professional certainty, became one necessary strategy in our attempts to work through the paradoxes and ambiguity of the situation (see also, Carducci et al. 2013, p. 8).

The NMC teachers' participation in the pedagogical studies repositioned all participants and can be seen as strengthening the already existing hierarchies between the partners. The power hierarchies (established due to professional authority and economical privilege) became even more complex when the initial positions between the Sibelius Academy and the NMC teachers were formally changed from an international teacher exchange relationship to teacher-student relationships, at the same time as the studies provided the NMC teachers access to formal qualifications and professional knowledge. Moreover, the pedagogical studies as a kind of 'institutional intervention' became a significant part of the research project as a whole,<sup>7</sup> thus making the position of the NMC teachers even more vulnerable. Therefore, during the studies and the concurrent discussions, the question of what might be epistemic injustice became central. While the studies were conducted with the understanding that practicing reflexivity is a necessity for teachers, the project – with its many sub-studies – constantly dealt with such questions as whose knowledge is legitimate in terms of educational organization, when to intervene and when not, and how to anticipate whether our presence and interventions initiated a transformative change or not, as the consequences could only be seen afterward. Indeed, we had to ask: Does enhanced reflexivity itself create tensions that can be more destructive than transformative? Questioning our own actions became an inherent and constantly present part of the process and continues to be so as we write. Hence, the pedagogical studies aimed to support in every way the attempts of the NMC teachers to become equal members of the international community of music educators and researchers. This resulted, for instance, in the NMC teachers becoming co-authors in international peer-reviewed publications, participating as presenters in major international conferences, and their home institution organizing major conferences in Nepal. The joint processes of inquiry in various sub-studies can be seen as having partially blurred the student-teacher division.

Intercultural/transnational collaboration, in which all participants were regarded as learners of some sort, albeit learning different things, can be seen as a strategy to work through the paradoxes encountered. Our own stance in facilitating the collaboration was drawn in large part from Appadurai's understanding, where research can be seen as a democratic activity: "one which is not restricted to the sphere of high science, policy experts, or other elites" (Appadurai 2013, p. 267). Appadurai (2013) eminently advocates that this kind of right for research, meaning to practice epistemological and intellectual capacity to navigate between alternative knowledge horizons, should be included as a basic human right for all, and would be especially relevant to citizens in poorer countries. Accordingly, it became important to consider all participants as equal professionals, working in a joint co-reflexive collaborative process of knowledge production, to support and value all participants' involvement in the inquiry.

Despite these attempts, however, we still had to consider whether facilitating the participants becoming researchers and members of the international academic community was simply an enforced idea, as it seemed unrealistic at least in the beginning for those without any academic background in music education. Moreover, the goals of the pedagogical studies may continue to be seen as epistemic imperialism, which privileges science and research-based knowledge production – a paradox that cannot be hidden in this case and that pertains to the whole of academia, also including the international music education network. As Gorski (2008) points out, there cannot be neutrality, as "in fact the very act of claiming neutrality is, in and of itself, political,

<sup>7</sup> Global Visions Through Mobilizing Networks: Co-Developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Finland, Israel, and Nepal.

on the side of the status quo" (p. 523). Most importantly, the pedagogical studies that produced the empirical material for the research can themselves be critically seen through the concept of epistemic exploitation, where "epistemic labor is coercively extracted from epistemic agents in the service of others" (Pohlhaus Jr. 2017, p. 22), even though the intentions were for developing "critical consciousness and against marginalization"(Gorski 2008, p. 523). These questions remain to be reflected upon even though when the inquiry as a whole was based on an intention to co-create a hybrid epistemic community that is neither 'Finnish' nor 'Nepali' but an outcome of a community that engages in the creation of Utopian life-projects for all participants.

#### 6 Conclusion

This chapter has aimed to show that intercultural dialogue in a transnational project can develop a type of meta-reflexivity that questions one's existential groundings independently of the position of the participant. In such a dialogue, negotiating one's premises, stance, and the ethical relations with the Other – when also confronting and facing a different social order and belief system, among other things – invites or even requires reflection on one's existential groundings. Such reflexivity is an invitation to discomfort, but at the same time, it is an invitation to deep professional learning. The inquiry has illustrated, however, that professional learning in intercultural dialogue is prone to persistent paradoxes that cannot be swiped away, or even solved, but rather will continue haunting in future interactions. Another important question remains: Can or should one expect such commitment to produce discomfort for anyone else except oneself? Although failures have been argued to be a necessary element of intercultural dialogue and learning (Dervin and Gross 2016), the ethical imperative is that failures cannot be welcomed at the cost of harming others. This question relates to the very politics of reflexivity in music education practice and research. Although intercultural dialogue is based on intense communication and serious attempts to form a joint arena for collaboration through discussion, as has been the case for this inquiry, in such a dialogue one can only begin to understand what is not communicated in professional communities, where the personal is often subsumed under the benefits of the organization, project, or the very community, including the research community. The politics of reflexivity thus keeps the questions open, with no final answers and or ultimate solutions.

#### References

Ahenakew, C. (2016). Grafting indigenous ways of knowing onto non-indigenous ways of being – The (underestimated) challenges of a decolonial imagination. International Review of Qualitative Research, 9(3), 323–340. https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2016.9.3.323.


Vilma Timonen is a Lecturer in Folk Music at Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. Her extensive career as a folk music educator and musician comprehends working in various fields of teacher education as well as being one of the pioneers bringing traditional Finnish folk instrument kantele into new musical environments. As a researcher, her work focuses on intercultural collaborations as means for educational development.

Marja-Leena Juntunen (PhD, MM) works as professor of Music Education at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. She has published widely in international research journals and is a contributor to anthologies such as Approaches to Teaching General Music: Methods, Issues, and Viewpoints. She has served as a review reader in several research journals. She is a researcher and group leader in the current ArtsEqual research initiative.

Heidi Westerlund is a professor at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland, where she is also responsible for the music education doctoral studies. She has published widely in international journals and books. Her research interests include higher arts education, music teacher education and professionalism in the arts, collaborative learning, cultural diversity, and democracy in music education.

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## Doing Dirty Work: Listening for Ignorance Among the Ruins of Reflexivity in Music Education Research

Alexis Anja Kallio

Abstract Recent research in music education has emphasized the importance of reflexive approaches in unsettling the concept of a neutral, objective researcher and critically considered the ways in which cultural others are represented in research texts. Seen to enhance both the rigor and ethical dimensions of research practice, reflexivity has emerged as a hegemonic virtue, highlighting the inherently political aspects of research practice. In this chapter, I interrogate the politics of inquiry involved in reflexive research, considering the ways in which reflexivity may afford the researcher methodological power and hinder relational and responsible work. Reflexivity is thus positioned as a ruin: perpetually reaffirming the benevolence of the already-privileged researcher while doing little to disrupt the structures that keep such privileges at the center of academic practice. However, rather than abandoning such practices altogether, I suggest that reflexivity might be better considered as a way to listen for ignorance and direct attention toward ontological or epistemological difference. In this way, reflexivity serves as an invitation to engage in the politics of diversity through the transformation of researchers themselves.

Keywords Ignorance · Music education · Political listening · Qualitative inquiry · Reflexivity · Research ethics · Research methods

A. A. Kallio (\*)

Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: alexis.kallio@griffith.edu.au

#### 1 Introduction

Educational research not only has a long history of speaking of and speaking for cultural Others but also of projects that endeavor to "civilize" or "include" by transforming those who do not fit into the norms or values of the "mainstream" (Patel 2016). In music education, although multicultural and intercultural work has highlighted the importance of representing and engaging with cultural difference as part of school and university curricula, the research methods that have been employed in coming to know cultural Others have largely remained within the onto-epistemological frameworks of White Western academia. Accordingly, the processes by which cultural Others are included in music education may simultaneously serve to delimit, categorize, rank, govern, and possess them (Simpson 2007; Westerlund and Karlsen 2017). In recent years, reflexivity has been raised as an important response to such concerns, particularly for non-Indigenous, non-racialized, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, and in other ways privileged scholars seeking to position music education as a transformative practice for social justice (e.g., Hess 2018; Kallio and Länsman 2018; Lind and McKoy 2016; Trulsson and Burnard 2016). Yet, if such reflexivity also takes place within the confines of already-privileged onto-epistemologies and is limited to introspection of – and by – the researcher self, it may be asked whether such research approaches are able to dismantle inequitable power structures or whether such "methodological selfabsorption" merely serves to alleviate White researcher guilt (Patai 1994, p. 69). In her seminal (1999) work, Decolonizing Methodologies Linda Tuhiwai Smith noted that the term "research" itself is "one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary" (p. 1). The question is thus posed: despite all of our reflexive, ethical intentions, are we (still) doing dirty work?

In this chapter, I interrogate the politics of inquiry in music education, particularly attending to the demand of reflexivity in research concerning music education and social justice that often involves individuals and/or social groups who are marginalized or excluded from mainstream music education systems. Following a conceptualization of reflexivity in qualitative research and a brief outline of how it has been pursued in recent music education scholarship, I consider the politics of engagement involved in this reflexive work. Through critically considering some of the ways in which reflexivity may afford the already-privileged researcher methodological power (Pillow 2003), I explore the failures of reflexive approaches in assisting music education scholars to work relationally in ways that go "against the grain" (Kovach 2015, p. 53). Reflexivity is thus positioned as a ruin: perpetually reaffirming the benevolence of the privileged researcher while doing little to disrupt the structures that keep such privileges at the center of academic practice. Yet, rather than abandon reflexivity altogether, I here follow Patti Lather's (2001) advice that "terms understood as no longer fulfilling their promise do not become useless. On the contrary, their very failures become provisional grounds, and new uses are derived" (p. 478). It is precisely through working the ruins of reflexivity that we may envision alternate relations between researcher and research participants. While we might be comfortably complacent doing dirty work, if music education research is to be ethical in its engagements with cultural difference, perhaps it is time to get our own hands dirty in the politics of diversity.

#### 2 The Reflexive Turn: A Promise of Rigor and Ethics

In the mid- to late twentieth century, interpretivist approaches (most notably those associated with symbolic interactionism) unsettled the concept of the objective, neutral researcher through insisting that researcher subjectivity imbues the entire research process (Peshkin 1982). Situating the researcher in relation to the field, the research process, the research communication, and the production of knowledge, highlighted the limits of perception and understanding, challenging earlier approaches that afforded the researcher a "god's eye view" (Gergen and Gergen 2000, p. 1026). Accordingly, it was seen as essential that researchers "'keep in touch' with the grounds of what they do as an integral element of doing it" (Giddens 1991, p. 36). Reflexivity, broadly defined as a "turning back of the experience of the individual upon [themselves]" (Mead 1934, p. 134) as "a social scientific variety of self-consciousness (Delamont 1991, p. 8), has been seen as one way for researchers to approach "'culture' [as] always relational, an inscription of communicative processes that exist, historically, between subjects in relations of power" (Clifford and Marcus 1986, p. 15). In this way, the "reflexive turn" (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Van Maanen 1988) embraced inquiry as an inherently political and ethical process and found a particularly firm foothold in scholarship relating to "critical theory, standpoint theory, textual deconstruction, and sociologies and anthropologies of knowledge, power, and agency" (Macbeth 2001, p. 36). While the definitions of reflexivity are too many, and too varied, to survey within the confines of this chapter, education scholar Douglas Macbeth (2001) outlines two broad programs of reflexivity that are relevant to contemporary music education research practice: positional reflexivity and textual reflexivity. Positional reflexivity, he explains, "takes up the analysts' (uncertain) position and positioning in the world he or she studies and is often expressed with a vigilance for unseen, privileged, or, worse, exploitative relationships between analyst and the world" (p. 38). In the educational sciences (in addition to fields such as anthropology and ethnomusicology), the explorations of emic/etic perspectives and the complexities of power and hegemonies that accompany expressions of positional reflexivity have become part and parcel of rigorous post-positivist research. As Ball (1990) explains:

[the s]elf conscious engagement with the world... provides the possibility of technical rigor in the ethnographic process. The basis of this rigor is the conscious and deliberate thinking of the social process of engagement in the field with the technical processes of data collection and the decisions that that linking involves. I call that linking reflexivity. (p. 159)

Related to positional reflexivity, textual reflexivity is defined as work that "directly [addresses] the work of writing representations" (Macbeth 2001, p. 41). Through turning back and interrogating representations of Others in the communication of research through scientific publications, textual reflexivity aims to disrupt "realist assurances about representation and textual coherence" (Macbeth 2001, p. 43).

#### 3 Reflexivity as a Hegemonic Virtue of Music Education Research

The long-standing dominance of the aesthetic philosophical tradition and positivist research practices in mainstream music education research has meant that reflexivity, or at least explicit calls for reflexive research practices, has been a relative latecomer to the field. As Gouzouasis et al. (2014) have argued:

music education research is generally unreflective in terms of the historical challenges that questioned issues of representation, legitimation, and interpretation in the research process. The field seems unaware or unable to come to terms with the challenges to the very nature of the research project that are at the heart of qualitative research. Assumptions of objectivity and positivism abound with little explication of reflexivity. (p. 17)

However, recent decades have witnessed a significant shift in music education, from reflexivity made explicit in research relating to cultural diversity (e.g., Dunbar-Hall 2009; Karlsen 2007; Marsh 2002; Saether 2003) to being positioned as an essential element of inquiry more generally – particularly that which contributes toward social justice in/through music education policy or practice (e.g., Allsup 2017; Bartleet and Higgins 2018; Laes 2017; Miettinen et al. 2018; Nichols 2016). As in the social and education sciences, reflexivity in music education research has been seen as a way to work toward scientific rigor through a more accurate representation of the Other, and toward a more ethical research practice through lessening the power divide between researcher and researched.

Related to the substantial body of ethnomusicological work surrounding concerns of cultural representation and authenticity in multicultural music education practice (e.g., Campbell 2002, 2018; Schippers 2010; Volk 1998), concerns have arisen regarding the accuracy and sensitivity with which we write about cultural Others in music education scholarship. Reflexivity has been seen as one means to bolster the validity of representation, acknowledging the researcher's own positionality/ies as insider, outsider, or occupying a cultural space in between. Trulsson and Burnard (2016) argue that intercultural music education research is "an interpersonal meeting which also involves a meeting of self" (p. 123), as is seen in Dieckmann's (2016) acknowledgement that social constructions of her own "race, national identity, heritage identity and heritage culture" (p. 41) influence the research process. In working toward an accurate, and complete, portrayal of the ethnocultural other, Dieckmann cites Pascale (2011) in emphasizing the importance of acknowledging one's own subjectivities:

Processes of subjectification give researchers access to ways of thinking and writing about categories such as race, gender, sexuality, and ability without reifying them and without divesting them of the historical relations of power through which they are produced. Analyses and narratives about who people are, and the lives they have lived, will always be incomplete if we cannot see the processes of social formation through which they become inaugurated as subjects. (p. 154–155)

In this way, reflexivity is worked into inquiry procedures as what Altheide and Johnson (2011) term "validity-as-reflexive-accounting" (p. 585), a means to enhance the accuracy of produced knowledge through "redressing some of the researcher's bias" (Dieckmann 2016, p. 41).

Related to these concerns of accuracy and rigor, the research ethics attended to by reflexive approaches in music education are not those stipulated by institutional review boards or ethics committees but, rather, those that arise relationally during the course of research (Kuntz 2016). These ethics are those that develop in situ, as part of the interactions between those involved in the research process, requiring reassessment as these relationships change and develop. Accordingly, a relational ethical practice:

is created and recreated at each step in the process; ... it is the accumulation of granular decisions to be accountable to the participant, to the community, to academia, and to the reader that ultimately shapes the researcher's ethical orientation and determines the moral arc of a study. (Nichols 2016, p. 450)

Positional reflexivity, as an ethical imperative of socially just research practice, is perhaps most clearly seen through the recent rise in positionality statements in music education research texts. These statements refer to researchers' own racial, ethnic, cultural, or gendered identifications, as well as their musical positionings. For instance, in her article on the ethics of world music participation, Hess (2013) positions herself as a "white Western woman" when describing the challenges that she experiences in reconciling her background as a university vocal major with her interest in Ghanaian drumming. In contrast, Saether (2003) has described her background in Scandinavian folk traditions as an asset in conducting research in the Gambia, with "the way to talk – or not to talk – about music or teaching is in many ways similar in these two oral cultures" (p. 70). In this way, recognition of one's own positionings, both cultural and musical, has been seen as one way to recognize and "mitigate power relations" (Bradley 2007, p. 136), bringing the worlds of researchers and research participants into view, moving away from the categorization and classification of Others, toward a more complex, ethical dialogue and interaction as part of the production of knowledge (Westerlund and Karlsen 2017).

Particularly as a follow-up on previous studies, textual reflexivity in music education has provided researchers with opportunities to learn from previous mistakes and to reflect upon the standpoints from which we "look around and draw up what we see" (Allsup 2017, p. 9). While scholars have made attempts to overcome a one-sided approach to ethnography and other research approaches that are reliant on the researcher having "monolithic power over others" (ibid), working relationally as co-researchers often does little to alleviate the "actual dilemmas of [research] practice" (Josselson 2007, p. 538; Laes 2017; Nichols 2016). For instance, Nichols (2016) attends to the ethical dimensions of her earlier representation of Rie, a transgender musician, considering the ways in which textual representation is a product of power structures that support "limited dichotomous thinking" about gender and enable the erasure of identity on paper (p. 447). Textual aspects of the research that might otherwise have remained unattended to, such as the use of personal pronouns, are interrogated through a critical collaboration between Nichols and Rie. Similarly, Laes (2017) analyzes the mistakes she felt were made in her study conducted together with a musician labeled in the category of having cognitive disabilities. She argues that it is "not enough that... research participants are considered as experts of their own personal experiences" (p. 144) and that reflexivity ought to "reshape research practices and discourses" (p. 139). Such work often requires researchers to acknowledge their own complicity in the very hierarchies and knowledge systems that they aim to critique (Laes 2017, p. 138; Kallio 2019), requiring them to operate within what Trulsson and Burnard (2016) term "discomfort zones" (p. 123). These zones have been described as research processes involving feelings of "dread, guilt, and shame" (Nichols 2016, p. 442; see also Kallio 2019), yet, this same discomfort is also seen to facilitate "strong connections... with the people with whom we research and work" (Barton 2014, p. 111). Redressing the power dynamics between researcher and research participants, reflexivity has emerged as a hegemonic academic virtue (Lynch 2000) of relational music education research that is essential for advancing both scholarship and practice (e.g., Bartleet and Higgins 2018).

#### 4 Reflexivity in Ruins

Although reflexivity is often associated with critical, anti-objectivistic, relational work, it has been suggested that many conceptions and enactments of reflexivity may not afford the radical social reconstruction they promise (Gorski 2008; Lynch 2000). In exploring the potential shortcomings of reflexive work in music education, I draw upon Lather's (2001) characterization of ethnography as ruin, a space in which scholars are repeatedly confronted with "necessary failure" (p. 482) in order to move beyond "wrestling with representation, blurred genres and the ethics of the gaze" (p. 480) and find their way "into post-foundational possibilities" (p. 482). In this way, walking among the ruins of reflexivity, I aim to not only be reminded of what is no longer, or imagine what might yet be, but to also destabilize and possibly change the critical perspective employed in doing reflexive work. In interrupting the romance of reflexivity as a grand narrative of rigorous, ethical research, I look at what grows in between the cracks and crevices, in aiming to work the ruins in new and productive ways.

#### 4.1 The Fine Line Between Introspection and Indulgence

I have often heard the academic idiom that scholars always research the self, and perhaps this is more characteristic of reflexive research approaches than others and perhaps more surprising when working with individuals or social groups with considerably different backgrounds or perspectives to one's own. It also raises questions with regard to what, or who, research is for, and the purpose that reflexive work serves. Writing an article on decolonizing music education research and methodological responsibility (Kallio 2019), I found myself struggling to write my own story as a means for readers to locate me within the descriptions of relational research that followed. In the few paragraphs I assigned to introduce myself in relation to the Indigenous Sámi artists, musicians, scholars, and educators I was working together with, I described the nationality of my family changing almost with each generation, my childhood memories of coloniality and Indigenous activism in White Australia, the vibrant diversity of Hong Kong where I grew up, and the unexpected research journey that had led to me working in Indigenous contexts in Finland. The promises of such reflexive work, making researcher positionality explicit, lay in the contextualization of analyses and findings as "situated knowledge" (Haraway 1991), an acknowledgement of non-neutrality and of engaging in critically aware, collaborative processes. However, if we understand that social reality and individual identity are multiple and always in flux and if I think of the deep learnings and significant unknowings that this research entailed, this selfnarrative seems insufficient and insincere in its cohesion and linearity.

Where the research process was driven by dialogue and discussion, grappling with misunderstandings or discrepancies between interpretations, writing out my own subjectivity in relation to others felt like an attempt to regather the reins, to re-establish myself as "ethnographic authority" (Britzman 1995, p. 229) when such authority had already been relinquished. Such reflexive work, whether engaged in as part of the research process or written as part of research communication, depends upon an assumption that the researcher is able "to know her/his own subjectivity" in the first place, to select which of these subjectivities are reflexivity-relevant to any given research relationship and context, and "to make this subjectivity known to the reader" (Pillow 2003, p. 184; see also Kumsa et al. 2015). Furthermore, it is dependent on "the possibility of taking a detached position from which it is possible to objectify naïve practice" (Lynch 2000, p. 31) – of which, it may be argued, neither music education nor research ever are. My experiences and understandings of coloniality, music, education, national and cultural identity, research, and so on are undoubtedly different to those of the Sámi artists and experts I collaborated with. Who am I to determine which of my identities or experiences came into play over the course of this research? Who am I to make sense of these subjectivities? Who am I to try to convey the significance of these subjectivities divorced from all of the other encounters and experiences of my life? Who is to say that I can even be aware of or distance myself from who I am, if such becomings took place in relation to others – of whose worldviews, experiences, and perspectives I am only partially aware of (at best)?

Reflexive work is often restricted to researcher introspection, without considering the politics of knowledge that the researcher is enculturated into and contributes toward. Indigenous scholars have long critiqued academe as "profoundly saturated by colonial... assumptions and practices which define and characterize the conditions of academic and intellectual endeavours" (Kuokkanen 2007, p. 106). If reflexivity remains within one's own onto-epistemological boundaries (and one may ask if it is indeed possible to extend beyond them), such work risks reinforcing epistemic privileges that determine "what counts as theory, whose work is cited, and what tools are deemed necessary to any project" (Pillow 2015, p. 428). Reflexivity, as introspection therefore reverses a foundational sociological premise: that "we no longer have knowledge of the self through relatedness with others, but rather come to know the other only in so far as we know the self" (Webster 2008, p. 67). It may thus be argued that such reflexive work cannot result in more ethical research relationships or a more equitable research process but rather continues to serve as a means to define and confine the Other through the (academic) domestication of difference.

#### 4.2 Reflexivity as Apologia

This is not to suggest that introspection is mere navel-gazing, as the feminist slogan of the 1960s reminds us: the personal is political. Confessions of privilege or oppression, or affiliative expressions with oppressed peoples, are oft employed means for music education scholars to recognize the subjectivities from which they speak/write and acknowledge an awareness of the political structures that frame their own research practice. I think here of the ways that scholars have introduced themselves at conferences or in academic texts as the products of settler colonial histories; as White, white-passing, or non-racialized; as cisgendered; as middle class; as first-generation college graduates; as immigrants; or as LGBTQI+. In music education research, these statements have also illustrated the dynamic intersections between such subjectivities and musical training, preferences, skills, and understandings, each of which manifests differently and affords music education researchers different agencies in different contexts and spaces (e.g., Karlsen 2012). This "struggle for accountability" illustrates what feminist poet Adrienne Rich (1994) termed a politics of location. A reflexive and critical engagement with the politics of location allows scholars to "interrogate the historical, political, and social contexts of our knowledge" (Kirsch and Ritchie 1995, p. 10). Without wanting to diminish the important and often courageous strides that many scholars have taken in voicing their own locations and subjectivities, it is also worth asking critical questions such as what is the political project that this reflexive work is working toward? And who benefits?

Media and Cultural Studies scholar Andrea Smith (2013) posits that reflexive rituals often do little to address the structures that enable inequity in the first place but instead become a source of power themselves through conferring "cultural capital to those who [seem] to be the 'most oppressed'" (Smith 2013, p. 263). In other words, reflexivity statements often reflect an understanding that one needs to have first-hand experiences of injustice (and that these experiences ought to illustrate specific forms of injustice, see Lorde 1984 on the hierarchy of oppression) in order to develop the empathy or awareness required to engage in social justice work and function to establish the author as a legitimate or credible (i.e., authentically oppressed) researcher in such contexts. Similarly, the confession of privilege re-centers "the angst of the researcher" (Lather 2001, p. 484), (re)presenting the researcher as positionally pious (Cousin 2010, p. 9). In music education research, this piety – and the cultural capital associated with it – can be achieved through reflexive statements relating to sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and so on but also through musical affiliations. Whereas Western art music has long been associated with cultural elitism and scholarship, the cultural capital bestowed upon individuals through musical omnivorousness (Dyndahl et al. 2014) can now also be seen in reflexive statements. I need not look far beyond my own work (e.g., Kallio 2015) for biographies that describe a researcher trained in, and devoted to, classical music but yet also belonging to the world of informal musicking through an interest in musics of other cultures and performing regularly in rock bands. As attempts to forge a closeness with those we research with and justify our right to work within certain spaces, reflexivity rituals may not offer opportunities for researchers to work relationally "against the grain" in dismantling the structures that enable privilege and inequity in the first place but rather serve as apologia. In this way, reflexivity "exonerates, redeems, and purifies [the researcher]; it unburdens him of his wrongs, liberates him, and promises him salvation" (Foucault 1976, p. 62).

Consequently, these reflexive processes risk reinforcing the very inequities they intend to dismantle, with the privileged scholar seen as capable of (and requiring) reflexivity, and the "diverse Other" as merely the occasion for it (Smith 2013). Reflexivity, when limited to researcher introspection, marks "the ontological end-game of each exchange" (p. 67) and secures methodological and conceptual power for the researcher alone to define difference according to a "fixed... picture" of identities, cultures, characteristics, and musics (Westerlund and Karlsen 2017, p. 79) and to (re)write the histories and stories of their research participants in relation to themselves. Perhaps particularly when music education researchers so often represent a privileged majority, "[t]his is a form of politics that is more than representational" (Simpson 2007, p. 67).

#### 5 Reflexivity on the Tree Line

In exploring the ruins of reflexivity in music education research, I do not intend to argue a case for abandoning these practices altogether but rather to reconsider the critical lens through which much of this work is done. To consider this work conducted in post-foundational times is not to "assume the absence of any ground; what it assumes is the absence of an ultimate ground, since it is only on the basis of such absence that grounds, in the plural, are possible" (Marchart 2007, p. 14). Thus, reflexivity should serve as more than a means to "superior insight, perspicacity or awareness" (Lynch 2000, p. 26), an opportunity for "methodological self-absorption" (Patai 1994, p. 69), or catharsis (Pillow 2003), as each presupposes a truth that silences or domesticates ontological or epistemological difference. Rather, in concluding this chapter, I suggest that reflexivity might be better considered as a way to listen for such other grounds and engage in the politics of diversity in ways that work toward a more equitable and responsible research landscape.

Reflexivity as a form of listening is not to suggest a wholly receptive engagement – listening is different from hearing. Listening also entails more than remaining silent, as political scientist Susan Bickford (1996) has noted, "words that continually fall into dead silence can have no worldly reality and lead to no joint action. This silent refusal, as deliberate not-listening, is clearly a drastic political act" (Bickford 1996, p. 155). Instead, Bickford (1996) describes listening as "a quality of attention inherent in the very practice of deliberation" (p. 25): as a process of political engagement. She adds that "political listening is not primarily a caring or amicable practice... [w]e cannot suppose that political actors are sympathetic toward one another in a conflictual context, yet it is precisely the presence of conflict and differences that makes communicative interaction necessary" (Bickford 1996, p. 2, emphasis added). With this in mind, reflexivity, or the failures and discomforts arising through reflexive processes, might better serve as the means to listen in order to locate ignorance. The term "ignorance" here is employed not to denote stupidity, inferiority, or a lack of capacity for knowing but rather a refusal of the hierarchy of knowledge: a refusal of authority. Drawing upon the work of philosopher Jacques Rancière (2010), we may better understand ignorance as an ignorance of inequality. This calls into question the power/knowledge dialectic, where knowledge is not obsolete but only one among many. Thus, reflexivity, as a "commitment to ignorance" (Quinn 2011) can be seen as a search for directions in which we might better listen (and listen better) – as a space in which to verify equality. This listening is inherently discomfortable work, unsettling norms and values, disrupting established hierarchies, and transforming the researcher self in often unpredictable ways. The virtue then does not lie in reflexivity per se but in the ignorances the process might locate and the opportunities for relational learning within such spaces. Such a commitment to ignorance is not one of resignation but one "that is strong and generous, requiring honor and courage" (Quinn 2011, p. 33).

It is important to note that I do not envision the learning generated through reflexivity as a series of ever-expanding ripples denoting the limits of knowing amidst unknowing, growing wider and wider as the researcher learns to listen and gains more and more knowledge and understanding. Such a metaphor continues to place the researcher at the center of research practice, suggests a clearly defined point of no return, and reinstates the right of academe to know everything and everyone. Rather, the researcher's path through unknowing might be better illustrated through the metaphor of a tree line – the point at which the forest meets the arctic tundra. Indigenous Sámi joik artist and musician Sofia Jannok (2016) describes the tree line as:

two completely different landscapes, still coming together somewhere or other. This is the world on the tree line. This land was never empty, she was never wild... .

[the tree line] is about diversity. The many, many trees are the ones creating the beautiful unity. Many of us live with several mother tongues, cultures, identities. Why isn't the norm shaped as a tree line?...

Here borders are to be crossed. Here opposites come together, equally worthy of existing. Here the contrast rises, showing the beauty. Here the conflicts begin, if I fight the divisions. Here the eye realizes the perspectives. Here the yearning finds peace, with one foot on either side. Here the storm gets its power.<sup>1</sup>

The politics of diversity that emerge from across, or within, or along this tree line can thus be seen as the norm of music education: as contexts characterized by diversities and multiplicities. Inclusion on the tree line cannot require transformation of one side or the other, or a knowing of the other wholly within the onto-epistemological frames of mainstream academe. Indeed, the tree line is not a fixed boundary at all; it is constantly changing, with roots that extend underground to the other side, mosses that grow beyond set borders, ever-changing dances between light and shadow, and leaves that fall where they may. In this way, the tree line is not something that is researcher-centered nor determined, not static or linear, and not something that can only be crossed once (i.e., into knowing). Rather, it is a path that researchers can traverse, admire the view from one side or the other, straddle with a foot on either side, or turn back. It is an invitation to deeply engaged, relational work. Through orienting oneself toward the discomfort that arises through reflexive practice on the tree line, researchers might find new ways to listen as an ongoing process of "learning to stay with the hard questions" (Thompson 2003, p. 92). Conceptualizing reflexivity as a form of listening here serves as an invitation to engage in risky methodological work (Bickford 1996; Kuntz 2016): work that generates newly dynamic and relational engagements with meaning-making and experience that require – above all – the transformation of ourselves.

<sup>1</sup> Sofia Jannok's poem is included here with her permission.

#### References


Alexis Anja Kallio is Senior Lecturer of Music and Research at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. Her research investigates processes of legitimation in music education policy, practice, and research that structure opportunities for equity and justice. She is the editor of Difference and Division in Music Education (2021, Routledge) and co-editor of Music, Education, and Religion: Intersections and Entanglements (2019, Indiana University Press).

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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## Part II Navigating Shifting Political Landscapes of Society and State

## Educative Power and the Respectful Curricular Inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music

Michael Webb and Clint Bracknell

Abstract This chapter argues for the full, respectful curricular inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music in order to promote a more balanced and equitable social and cultural vision of the nation-state in Australian schools. It challenges views that claim Indigenous cultures have been irretrievably lost or are doomed to extinction, as well as the fixation on musical authenticity. We propose that the gradual broadening of Indigenous musical expressions over time and the musical renaissance of the new millennium have created an unprecedented opportunity for current music educators to experience the educative power of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music. This means that culturally nonexposed music teachers can employ familiar musical-technical approaches to the music even as they begin to more fully investigate the music's cultural-contextual meanings. The chapter considers issues that impinge on the music's educative power, especially those relating to its definition, its intended audiences, and pedagogies. It aims to help clear the way for the classroom to become an environment in which students can sense the depth and vitality of contemporary Australian Indigenous music.

Keywords Indigenous music · Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music · Partnership pedagogy · Educative power

M. Webb (\*)

C. Bracknell

e-mail: c.bracknell@ecu.edu.au

This essay is based on the authors' experience in collaborating in the design and delivery of a tertiary course on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music for pre-service music educators at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (The University of Sydney), 2016–2018. Thomas Fienberg, whose work is mentioned in the chapter, taught the unit in 2019.

Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia e-mail: michael.webb@sydney.edu.au

Kurongkurl Katitjin Centre for Indigenous Australian Education & Research, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts – WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, Australia

#### 1 Introduction

In his memorable Redfern Park speech, to mark 1993 as the United Nations International Year for the World's Indigenous People, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating (1992) acknowledged that colonists "smashed the traditional way of life" of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The British colonists' assumption of racial superiority drove their relentless assault on established Indigenous customs that had been practiced over vast expanses of territory and time. The rapid and prolonged endangerment of numerous unique languages and performance traditions that followed was but one result of a denial of Indigenous sovereignty. A politics of exclusion developed around two of the settler colonists' founding ideologies. First, "terra nullius", the doctrine that no one was here when the settler colonists arrived ensured that the autochthonous residents and their cultural expressions were pushed to the margins of the national story. Second, the notion of the "noble savage", meant that Indigenous music created as a result of European colonization was for decades overlooked on the grounds that it was derivative or inauthentic (Guy 2015), just as Indigenous peoples with a non-Indigenous parent were denigrated as 'half-caste', a supposed "contaminated version of a pristine and primitive race" (Rowse 2017, p. 4).

This chapter challenges the long-term lack of engagement between Australia's mainstream music education system and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musical cultures. Such persistent indifference and inertia in educational policy and practice may be seen to perpetuate colonial logics and counter curricular ideals of cultural respect and inclusion. For purposes of remediation, we trace this history of educational neglect in an attempt to clear a path for corrective action on the grounds that Australia's Indigenous music possesses "educative power" (Boyea 1999, p. 32). By this, following Boyea (1999), we argue that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music can be "looked at from within the culture as part of the culture and from outside the culture as music only, music in itself. It can be examined for its meanings or simply for its musical traits" (p. 32). As Boyea elaborates, the music "can be looked at functionally or aesthetically, spiritually or secularly, as an object for observation and a process to be performed" (p. 32). This frees the non-Indigenous "nonexposed" music teacher (Boyea 1999, p. 36), that is, the teacher who has little experience of Australian Indigenous culture, from the pressure of having to authentically present the music "within a cultural context" as the syllabus support document requires (Board of Studies NSW 2004, p. 37). This, by the way, is a condition that is placed on no other music form, style or genre.

We begin by confronting the deficit discourse that has been so detrimental to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and their cultural expressions and remind educators that Indigenous Australians, particularly through music and performance, have "adapted and developed new ways of communicating the strength and histories of their cultures" (Casey 2012, p. 1). We also discuss the epistemological disjuncture that impeded more widespread curricular inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music by educationists until almost the end of the twentieth century. We devote the remaining space to an exploration of issues that impinge on the music's educative power, especially those relating to definitions, the music's intended audiences and pedagogies.

#### 2 Traditions and Curricula in Transition

The most detailed and sustained historical account to date of the music and dance of an Aboriginal nation is Anna Haebich's Dancing in the Shadows (2018), which demonstrates how the Nyungar people of Western Australia have relied upon performance culture "to survive" the catastrophic impact of colonization (p. 1). Haebich (2018) challenges the fallacy that Indigenous Australians "lost" their culture, which, she writes, "suggests a deliberate ignorance and forgetting on the part of settler colonists that validated the many cruelties and injustices of colonization" (p. 3). Related to this is what Jim Wafer (2017) terms the "doomed cosmology" theory, which maintains that "even if Aboriginal people have, against all odds, managed to survive, at least their cosmology is doomed to extinction, as they come to terms with the consequences of colonial history", another idea that has proven to be false (p. 5). Music educationists have much to learn from studies such as Dancing in the Shadows, which trace and draw out continuities – and, of course, differences – between past and present expressive performance practices.

As Ottosson (2015) explains, "[p]rior to the 1960s, Indigenous Australian expressive cultural forms were, in the main, categorized and evaluated by criteria for 'primitive art', and the lesser the 'contamination' by European contact, the higher their 'authentic' value" (p. 7). For example, in the early 1960s, Aboriginal performers from Bathurst Island and Yirrkala became involved with the Elizabethan Theatre Trust in the creation of "new dynamic performances" that took their music and dance traditions to enthusiastic audiences in Melbourne and Sydney (Harris 2017, n.p.). Such interest was based on particular assumptions about art and aesthetics that arose from an epistemology that was fundamentally foreign to Indigenous culture. One newspaper review of the work signalled at least a faint recognition of the need to engage at a deeper level with Aboriginal cosmological foundations: "Most of us have great goodwill towards Aborigines and their culture, without having more than a superficial knowledge of their art [...] This remarkable stage show is not to be missed" (Giese n.d.). At the same time, "non-Indigenous Australian composers and choreographers were creating hybrid works that drew on barely understood Aboriginal story, music, and dance traditions" (Harris 2017, n.p.). For the last decades of the twentieth century, works by composers such as John Antill, Margaret Sutherland, George Dreyfus, Peter Sculthorpe and Sarah Hopkins and a limited selection of folk and rock songs shaped secondary students' understanding of Aboriginal musical ideas.<sup>1</sup>

By the middle of the twentieth century, ethnomusicologists were studying Aboriginal music and attempted to understand it on its own terms (Ellis 1984). As Catherine Ellis stated, "many of the values we accept as 'normal' in music, products of our own middle-class culture, are seen by others as racist and elitist" (Ellis 1974, p. 25). Ellis recognized a great need for a bridge between the expressive cultural worlds of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. With Lila Rankine, she established the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM) at the University of Adelaide in 1972, where Aboriginal and Western ways of learning were merged to form a bi-musical pedagogy.<sup>2</sup> Nevertheless, from the late 1960s, even as attitudes, policies and practices that largely excluded Indigenous people from public life were being challenged, "monocultural understandings" that were "underpinned by specific notions of 'traditional' and 'authenticity'" became entrenched (Ottosson 2015, p. 6). During this same period, pioneering groundwork for a broader public awareness of musical changes that were underway was being undertaken by prominent Indigenous musicians including Jimmy Little (Yorta Yorta), Dulcie Pitt (whose stage name was Georgia Lee) (Torres Strait Islander) and Vic Simms (Bidjigal). Songmen such as the Yankunytjatjara songwriter Bob Randall, who composed the country style lament "My Brown Skin Baby" in 1964, and Gurnu musician Dougie Young, who around 1963 composed "Land Where the Crow Flies Backwards", began to sing of their experiences of deep loss under the colonial regime.

In the 1980s, scholars issued a call to mainstream music educators to teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music (Moyle 1981; Kartomi 1988), and some even offered model teaching approaches. For example, by 1980 Alice Moyle had created an extensive educational kit for primary school teachers, but all attempts to have it published were unsuccessful until 1991. Moyle (2019) wished to "develop understanding of the importance of music and dance in the culture that, traditionally, has no writing, and to foster recognition of regional differences in Aboriginal songs and dance" (p. 25). She proposed well-intended projects such as "class-created corroborees" (Moyle 1981, p. 19), which arguably perpetuated a distorted view of the traditions they set out to promote. For various reasons, teachers were halting in their response to such initiatives, and the majority continued to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music from their teaching repertoires.

As an overt politics of multiculturalism gained momentum in Australia,<sup>3</sup> non-Western music was validated in the syllabus of at least one state in the early

<sup>1</sup> For example, "Aborigine" by Gary Shearston (from the 1974 album Dingo), "Solid Rock" released in 1982 by Shane Howard's band Goanna and "Blackfella/Whitefella" by Neil Murray and George Rrurrambu of Warumpi Band, released in 1985. This quickly began to change in the mid-1980s as the discussion of pop, country, rock and reggae developments below indicates. On Australian pop music and its appropriation of Aboriginal music from the 1950s to the 1970s, see Casey (2018).

<sup>2</sup> For subsequent innovations see Chadwick and Rrurrambu (2004).

<sup>3</sup> For musical manifestations of this development, see Smith (2009).

1980s (Secondary Schools Board 1983, 8). At the same time, the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music continued. Compounding this paradox, in the lead up to the implementation of multiculturalist doctrines, "coincidental with assimilation polices that sought to destroy Aboriginal identity, a growing interest in Aboriginal art and culture captured the interest of Australians at large" (Kleinert 2010, pp. 176–177).

From 1980, Indigenous musicians had adopted rock and reggae to explore themes relating to the impact of settler colonialism. Marcus Breen (1989/2007) notes that such music "was a political statement that laid claim to a missing history" (p. xii). Its sound was a "bricolage of new and emerging expressions of identity that took tribal music, as well as Jimmy Little and rock and roll and cranked it up into a mishmash of cultural empowerment" (p. xi). The band No Fixed Address, formed by students at CASM in 1979, fashioned a sound "that has since defined popular Indigenous music in the country", which, wrote Brent Clough (2012), is "an assemblage of roots reggae, ska, country, rock 'n' roll and now hip-hop – allied to the proclamation of contemporary black identity" (p. 269).

The emergence of the academic field of popular music studies, the reverberations of which began to be felt in school music education in Great Britain and Australia in the 1980s, led educationists to envision the instructional benefits of the newer music forms:

The incorporation of Australian Indigenous popular music in school curricula may be viewed as a means to cultural tolerance, as a role model for Indigenous community members, as a source of musical knowledge, as current social comment or as emblematic of cultural intricacies [...] Aligned with the immediacy of student youth, Australian Indigenous popular music may then prove a potent mix essential to the ongoing process of developing an Australian musical and cultural identity. (Wemyss 1999, p. 36)

The positive reception nationally of the Arnhem Land, Northern Territory band, and Yothu Yindi, whose music appealed to mainstream music educators seeking ways to bring Aboriginal music into their classroom, promised to advance such agendas. The band's success coincided with the rise of the Internet; its website went live in 1995 and expanded the reach of the music, including into educational settings (Neuenfeldt 1997). For lead singer Mandawuy Yunupingu, Yothu Yindi's early 1990s breakout hit, Treaty, meant that:

we were able to take our music [...] to the world. But what 'Treaty' caused here, back in Australia, was the young people, black and white, of different nationalities, understanding our music – Aboriginal music, language, the thinking. When we went out and faced the world, the world accepted our music.<sup>4</sup>

The group included Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members, and its songs combined local language songs with rock and dance elements; thus it modelled a new way to express cultural complementarity, that is, diverse components all equally necessary to music's impact. Aaron Corn calls the band's song, Tribal Voice a "tour

<sup>4</sup> Mandawuy Yunupingu from an interview by George Negus on ABC TV, 8 July 2004, quoted on the ArtsEdge website: http://www.artsedge.dca.wa.gov.au/resources/Pages/Music.aspx.

de force [that ...] set forth a vision for an Australia in which Indigenous peoples can live in harmony and mutual respect with their fellow citizens, while continuing to practice sacred laws and care for country in their traditions of their ancestors" (Corn 2017, n.p.).

Although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island music began to be included in school music offerings with greater enthusiasm after Yothu Yindi, it was still treated as Other. Yothu Yindi was primarily considered a (Yolngu) Aboriginal band – it certainly highlighted its Aboriginality – but it was heard predominantly through a world music filter. Yothu Yindi's music tended to be exoticized, and the contributions of the band's white musicians as well as the elements of African diasporic blackness in their sound were downplayed or ignored, and for the most part, so were the subtler political messages of their songs (see Taylor 2007, pp. 156–159).

The new millennium witnessed an outpouring of creative musical expressions by Indigenous musicians, following examples set in the previous two decades by Warumpi Band, Coloured Stone, Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter, Christine Anu, Troy Cassar-Daley and many others. This gained added impetus following the National Apology to the Stolen Generations delivered in 2008 by the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, when it became evident that an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musical renaissance was underway. This was signalled by the release in 2008 of both Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu's self-titled solo album – the first full-length popular music recording sung entirely in an Aboriginal language (Yolngu) – and the first of Jessica Mauboy's outpouring of mainstream pop hits.

Subsequently, music teachers became more aware of, and sensitive towards, protocols and potential restrictions pertaining to the inclusion of certain Indigenous music forms in classroom practice, which was a welcome development. However, many were deterred from programming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music for fear of committing cultural errors (Locke and Prentice 2016). And so, the continuing absence of Indigenous music from classrooms perpetuated a distorted social and cultural understanding of the nation-state and has consequences for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to this day. Encountering music of their own cultural heritage in school can affirm Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in their histories and world views and offer comfort and validation (see Boyea 2000, p. 14). And, when handled judiciously, it can beneficially "unsettle" those non-Indigenous students fixed in their own histories and worldviews.

Music educators need to develop confidence and willingness to learn – then teach – about how an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander politics of identity and survival has been indispensable to Indigenous peoples' resilience and recovery and how music has been crucial to such initiatives. A meaningful first gesture would be for teachers to commit to recognizing the country or local region of every Indigenous musician whose music they bring into the classroom. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders "want to be known not just as [Indigenous] Peoples, but by their own distinct inheritance, their unique and separate nations and tribes" (Boyea 1999, p. 46).

The Australian Indigenous musical landscape is more diverse and complex today than it has been at any previous time. This gradual broadening of the music's scope has in certain ways enhanced its educative power, by, for example, offering the teacher a broader range of musical repertoire options. In other words, more potential points of entry into the world of Australian Indigenous music now exist. This is helpful for the nonexposed non-Indigenous music teacher who may have "a hard time hearing [Indigenous] music as music, a hard time noticing its complexity, variation, and range of styles, a hard time grasping its principles or organization" (Boyea 1999, 36). It is crucial to have a clear understanding of what comprises contemporary Indigenous music and to be able to discern its intended audiences. These matters have implications for pedagogy, although we are unable to discuss them in detail here. We will however briefly refer to recent innovative classroom work being undertaken in Western Sydney by our colleague Thomas Fienberg (see also Locke and Prentice 2016, pp. 145–148).

#### 3 Identify, Don't Define

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) website states that it is better "to identify rather than define Indigenous peoples [...] based on the fundamental criterion of self-identification as underlined in a number of human rights documents". <sup>5</sup> Indigenous music has been seen to include a wide array of "types and styles [...] such as traditional, ethnic, national, regional and folk" and "incorporate[s] song, dance, storytelling, instrumental music, games and drama" (Locke and Prentice 2016, p. 140). It is clear that definitions of what constitutes Indigenous music risk essentializing the music and culture, a situation that educationists have more recently been striving to overcome. As Bracknell has pointed out elsewhere, since both Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians in Australia now commonly operate within the same broad range of globally established musical style conventions, "it is counterintuitive to cast 'Indigenous music' as a separate genre" (Bracknell 2019, p. 102). For example, country music created and performed by Aboriginal musicians for a worldwide market need not be classified as Aboriginal country music, that is, it need not be marked as an unusual or divergent form of country music. Further, "Indigenous music" as a coverall term is often reliant on "outsider-perceived notions of authenticity and [it] pigeonholes Indigenous artists as exotic" (p. 103). Hence, Bracknell (2019) proposes a baseline description of Indigenous music whereby it is distinguishable both by its "inclusion of musical or lyrical content derived from Indigenous people" (p. 100), and the "Indigenous status of the artists involved in its production" (p. 100).

Bracknell's (2019) approach further clears the way for classroom engagement with the educative power of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music in that it places the music on an equal footing with other music proposed and prescribed by

<sup>5</sup> See Indigenous Australians: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: https://aiatsis.gov.au/ explore/articles/indigenous-australians-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-people.

the syllabus. Hence, an integrative approach to Indigenous music can be taken, whereby its sonic properties can be studied alongside music from any other historical-cultural tradition "to teach concepts, principles, generalizations, and theories" (Howard and Kelley 2018, p. 18). This goes hand in hand with creating opportunities for students to interact and create music with culture bearers, as discussed later in the chapter, "therefore", as one music education text announces optimistically, "debunking the thinking that one cannot understand another culture" (Howard and Kelley 2018, p. 18).

Versions of the NSW syllabus and supporting documents issued in the new millennium allow for this kind of development, although they still do not reflect the most recent developments in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music. For example, for the compulsory topic "Australian Music", the Stages 4 and 5 (Years 7–10) syllabus recommends – in addition to Australian art music – "traditional and contemporary music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within a cultural context" (Board of Studies NSW 2003, p. 37). Here the inference is that Indigenous Australian musicians do not participate in the creation or performance of art music, yet this is a musical context which has evolved rapidly over the past decade, as can heard in the work of such Aboriginal composers as William Barton, Deborah Cheetham and Christopher Sainsbury (see Macarthur 2019, p. 212; Sainsbury 2019).<sup>6</sup> Neither the Board of Studies (BOS) nor the New South Wales Educational Standards Authority (NESA) which superseded it has brought the documents into line with current musical reality, despite the fact that the Australian Music Centre (AMC) has released a secondary school educational resource kit relating to the developments (AMC n.d.).

The recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music should – or could – be taught "in a cultural context" (Board of Studies NSW 2003, p. 37) opens the way for fuller exploration of the music's educative power. This reflection of the influence of ethnomusicology in music education is a gateway through which Indigenous musicians and community members could – or should – participate in the teaching-learning process, thus pointing to the need for pedagogical expansion. Of the current ideas about Australian Indigenous music and education in circulation, the online Western Australian arts-in-education resource, ArtsEdge, perhaps comes closest to envisioning the music's educative power:

Contemporary Aboriginal music has a multi layered connection to both contemporary Western popular [and now, art] music and to traditional culture, song lines, dreaming, language, country and the spiritual. Like other art forms it has the power to simultaneously transform our understanding of history and culture and to communicate the authentic experience of what it is to be an Indigenous Australian today. (ArtsEdge n.d.)

Contemporary Indigenous music is not merely a hybrid or fusion of Indigenous and non-Indigenous elements but rather a much more nuanced set of musical convergences. Wafer's (2017) important discussion of the traditional-modern

<sup>6</sup> See Ngarra-burria: First Peoples Composers in Australia, an Australian Indigenous composers' initiative led by Christopher Sainsbury (Sainsbury n.d.) and Sainsbury (2019).

song continuum is apposite here, which, helpfully and critically for music education, he extends to encompass the entire field of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music making.

#### 4 Respectful Inclusion

We began this chapter by referring to the respectful inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music in teaching and learning schedules. Among ideas that have already been mentioned, respectful inclusion would involve acting upon an understanding that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music is generally created with a specific audience in mind (see Fig. 1). Teachers should bear this in mind when selecting music for study. Graeme Smith explained in a 1991 school music resource booklet:

Though many Aboriginal [popular] musicians perform for and aim to please a general market, they also often feel that they are singing especially for an Aboriginal audience and want to express their ideas to that audience in terms and styles that it understands (p. 82).

Casey (2012) makes this point too, stating, "Contemporary Indigenous theatre [broadly understood] is produced for multiple and various audiences; sometimes for specific and general Indigenous communities, and sometimes for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities" (p. 3). Teachers must learn to discern the intended audience for specific items of Indigenous music, as well as the music's key purpose.

Figure 1 conceptualizes the potential audiences and functions of Indigenous music. The most general audience domain, nation-state/world, includes music that


Fig. 1 Schema indicating the nested intended audience(s) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music, as well as its key function(s)

communicates Australian Indigenous peoples' perspectives, an informed awareness of which we would consider to be a necessary part of respectful inclusion. Twentyfive years ago, the celebrated Aboriginal musician Archie Roach explained that despite having written songs that dealt with "a lot of things that affected Aboriginal people, [...] I am a separate person from my race." (p. 139). He continued:

So, a lot of my songs I write now, I'd rather be seen as a singer-songwriter. Because you're an Aboriginal person, people think that you must have a statement or an opinion on everything. I think that slowly they're starting to see the music as being just good music. (Quoted in Coolwell 1993, p. 140)

Here Roach implied that he would rather have his songs considered "good music" than be singled out as "Indigenous". This significant point, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have both an individual and a group identity, carries a reminder that educators must guard against essentializing their perspectives.

Aboriginal rock singer Dan Sultan echoed Roach's sentiment two decades later and even wrote a song about it: "No More Explanations" from his 2014 album, Blackbird (Sultan 2014). "As Aboriginal artists", Sultan explained, "we find it hard to just be allowed to be artists" (Watt n.d., n.p.). He is grateful to those popular musicians who came before, since their accomplishments allowed him to explore other topics in his song writing:

It used to be that you had to sing about land rights, you had to sing about children being taken away, which I've done [...] but thanks to No Fixed Address and uncle Archie [Roach] I can just be in a rock'n'roll band. I don't have to be a martyr.' (Mathieson 2014, n.p.)

Indeed, the lyrical content in much of the music by contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians such as Sultan, Jessica Mauboy, Busby Marou and Thelma Plum addresses themes common in global pop and rock music.

The 2017 song "In Between" by the Aboriginal duo, Apakatjah, from Central Australia was composed with the intention of maintaining Indigenous group solidarity through shared experience and perspectives, as illustrated by the middle "Indigenous" domain in Fig. 1. The lyrics of its first chorus contain the lines, "In a world that sees just black and white/What about me, where is it I fit in?" (Apakatjah 2017). The 2018 rap song "My People" by Aboriginal musician J-Milla (Jacob Nichaloff) opens with these lines: "People forget that I'm half white/But now, I'm speaking out for my black side" (J-Milla 2019). These songs – and others like them – pick up where rock band Coloured Stone's 1984 hit "Black Boy" left off, with its message of pride in one's cultural heritage (Coloured Stone 1997). They also thematically echo the mid-twentieth century country song "Outcast Halfcaste" recently revived by Emma Donovan and Jessie Lloyd (Mission Songs Project 2017). Like "Black Boy" and "Outcast Halfcaste", "In Between" and "My People" primarily address Indigenous people who might identify with their lyrical exploration of Indigenous identity and belonging.

At the most specific level is music created by and for a Local Mob,<sup>7</sup> which may or may not be restricted in audience terms to members of that community. In parts of the country where Aboriginal "land-based cosmologies have survived down to the present day", the related singing practices that form part of an "unbroken tradition" may be specifically intended for a very particular local audience (Wafer 2017, p. 5). Still, one Aboriginal traveling song known by various names including "Wanji Wanji" was performed throughout the last century across half of the continent (Turpin et al. 2019).

Discerning the intended audience for a particular piece of music could, and in many cases should, involve consulting with representatives of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander communities. Students in our university class have successfully contacted musicians through social media, by which means they have gained insights into song meanings and have secured permission to perform certain songs. Music created for nation-state/world audiences is generally well suited for school study, although since each domain includes music that is commercially available, educators could explore such music for its educational potential as well.

#### 5 A Pedagogy of Partnership

Dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous music educators is of paramount importance when developing curricula involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music. Since the new millennium "non-Indigenous composers have engaged in collaborative projects with Indigenous musicians" (Macarthur 2019, p. 212), resulting in works such as Paul Stanhope's 2014 dramatic cantata, Jandamarra: Sing for the Country. For a number of years our colleague Thomas Fienberg has been developing and trialling new approaches to teaching Indigenous music derived from his study of such collaborative performance and composition processes. His PhD study tracked over several years the attitudes and levels of engagement of a cohort of non-Indigenous Sydney secondary school elective music students of diverse cultural backgrounds as he taught them about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music (Fienberg 2019a). The students' learning culminated in a project that involved the "collaborative reworking of two songs that had been shared with the class by Ngiyampaa composer and dancer Peter Williams" (Fienberg 2019a, p. iii).

Since 2017, Fienberg has participated in an ongoing school-based artistic outreach programme that "make[s] space for Indigenous voices to guide instruction and share knowledge" (Fienberg 2019b, n.p.). His recent working processes can be glimpsed in a video produced in 2020 as part of an artist-in-residence programme run at the Western Sydney secondary school where he teaches, which involved the

<sup>7</sup> The Aboriginal term "mob" is an English loan word that refers to a cohesive group such as a specific extended family, or more broadly, a linguistic community.

Fig. 2 Screenshot from the "Bapa" collaborative performance video involving student singers and dancers, Evie J. Willie (bottom right), Neville Williams-Boney (bottom centre) and teacher instrumentalists. (Source: NSW Department of Education 2020b, Used with permission of the NSW Department of Education)

Wiradjuri/Ni-Vanuatu singer Evie J. Willie (NSW Department of Education 2020a). With Fienberg himself on guitar and a fellow teacher on double bass, Willie and several students perform the song "Bapa" by the late Geoffrey Gurrumul, singing in the Yolngu language of the Northern Territory. The Wiradjuri dancer-choreographer Neville Williams-Boney created dance movements inspired by the song lyrics, excerpts of which can be seen being rehearsed in an inset in the video (Fig. 2). Not only is the approach collaborative and culturally inclusive; it also reunites song and dance in ways previously untried in the suburban school setting.

Such projects have the potential for expansion and broader application and indicate the educative power of Indigenous music and dance forms and practices, where the cultural aspects of language, song, dance and story can be explored from various mutually enriching perspectives. As Boyea (1999) convincingly argues, in the classroom, Indigenous music "provides, more powerfully than other media, opportunity for [non-Indigenous people] to sense the depth and power and intensity of [Indigenous] life, to experience its difference, and yet to feel a closeness to [Indigenous] ways that cannot be spoken, fully understood, or retained" (p. 36).

#### 6 Conclusion

In this chapter we have argued for the full, respectful curricular inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music, in order to promote in schools a more balanced and equitable social and cultural vision of the nation-state. Strategies we have proposed towards this end include avoiding making a binary distinction between traditional and contemporary music, learning to discern the intended audience for specific items of Indigenous music as well as the music's key purpose and guarding against essentializing Indigenous perspectives – the first step being to acknowledge the country of musicians studied, out of an awareness of Indigenous linguistic and cultural diversity.

A hopeful sign of changing attitudes in Australian society and musical culture is the recent upsurge in collaborations between non-Indigenous and Indigenous musicians. "The Campfire Song" by Kasey Chambers (2018) featuring Yawuru elder and musician Alan Pigram, "Someone" by William Crighton (2018) featuring Arnhem Land singer Stanley Gawurra Gaykamangu and Jaara Nyilamum by Yorta/Dja Wurrung composer Lou Bennett AM (2020) with the Australian String Quartet are but three recent examples of a trend that relates to aspects of Australia's often troubled national politics of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. As we have shown, these kinds of inclusionary musical expressions point to the potential of pedagogies involving partnership.

By drawing on the notion of educative power, it has been our intention to encourage – empower even – teachers of all backgrounds to explore ways to respectfully incorporate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music in their teaching repertoires and place it on an equal footing with other music they teach. Given the considerable diversity of Indigenous musical expressions now readily accessible, they can employ familiar musical-technical approaches even as they begin to more fully investigate the music's cultural-contextual meanings. The latter will entail consultation and partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural representatives – musicians, community members and Indigenous fellow teachers. This will help clear the way for the classroom to become an environment in which students can glimpse the vitality of contemporary Australian Indigenous musical expressions.

#### References


Michael Webb lectures in music education and ethnomusicology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney, where he is an Associate Professor. He specializes in historical and contemporary music of Melanesia and recently created for online delivery the unit of study, Australian Indigenous Music.

Clint Bracknell is a Noongar musician and researcher from the south coast region of Western Australia and Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University. He writes, performs and produces music for stage and screen while leading a programme of research on enhancing connections between song, language, culture and nature.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## To "Move, Surprise, and Thrill": Thirty Years of Promoting Cultural Diversity in Norwegian School Concerts

#### Jan Sverre Knudsen

Abstract This chapter examines how a politics of cultural diversity was implemented over a 30-year period in a Norwegian school concert program run by Concerts Norway. Departing from a historical overview, the chapter outlines the shifting agendas, values, and visions of diversity that governed this ambitious cultural effort. A central aim is to examine the ideological positions that influenced the program and the political and educational debates surrounding it. The concert program is discussed with respect to cultural diversity and anti-racism, democracy, tradition, hybridity, and the tensions between educational and artwork-based paradigms. Based on theorizations of cultural difference, the chapter shows how promoting music to children has been understood as an important part of shaping societal attitudes and laying the grounds for an anti-oppressive education. Critical issues regarding representation, influence, and power in the staging of music involving immigrant performers are raised. The chapter relates the concert programs to the political frames and ideals of the nation-state by illustrating how international cooperation effectively made the concert programs a part of Norwegian foreign policy. It points out how changing government policies had a profound impact on programs promoting cultural diversity, eventually leading to their termination as a national cultural strategy.

Keywords School concerts · Difference · Tradition · Hybridity · Anti-racism · State policies · Immigration

J. S. Knudsen (\*)

Faculty of Education and International Studies, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway e-mail: jansk@oslomet.no

#### 1 Introduction

For nearly three decades<sup>1</sup> , all public primary schools in Norway were involved in concert programs that aimed to promote cultural diversity. The government organization Concerts Norway (CN, Rikskonsertene) was responsible for the production of more than 9000 concerts each year with visiting professional musicians. This implied that practically all school pupils in Norway—more than 600 000 children—attended at least 2 concerts annually during school hours. Programs involving music from non-Western cultures, especially music related to immigrant groups, comprised about 15% of the total concert portfolio on average but were unquestionably the hallmark of CN. A policy of cultural diversity was highlighted in marketing, web pages, and publications; it shaped the image of the institution and contributed strongly to its political legitimacy both in Norway and in international cooperation. The intention of this chapter is to examine this extraordinary cultural effort in view of a politics of diversity and the ideological positions it was influenced by.

The promotion of live music to children in an educational setting must be regarded as an embodiment of cultural and social values. The visiting school concert programs were governed by particular ideologies of musical value and cultural diversity (Green 2003). The key concepts used by the programs, multicultural and cultural diversity, are social constructions, continuously subject to negotiations and changes<sup>2</sup> . How they have been understood during the 30-year history of the concert programs discussed here is the result of the discourses they are shaped by and contribute to shaping. As a major government-funded institution with substantial power, CN was a key contributor to public debates and discussions and to the shaping of these concepts through words and cultural practices.

As a background for a discussion of CN policies and practices, it can be useful to draw upon theorizations of cultural difference. Thinking in terms of differences is a fundamental cognitive strategy for learning, understanding, and identification. In an educational setting, it is necessary to carefully examine the consequences of thematizing, configuring, and promoting difference (Kumashiro 2002). Differences are produced through discourse, policies, and practices. As Kofi Agawu (2003) argues, differences are created, not given, and play an important role in the building of cultural stereotypes and negotiations of power, sometimes through coarse and fake images of culture and music (Agawu 2003). Lundberg et al. (2003) present a contrasting, but equally relevant, perspective by pointing to the necessary—and generally beneficial—production of difference through music in a culturally diverse Sweden. For minorities and other marginal communities, their self-definition as distinct from the surrounding world is vital for their survival as cultural entities.

<sup>1</sup> 1987–2016. The cultural diversity efforts started in 1987 and were in practice terminated in 2016 when Concerts Norway was shut down and concert programs were transferred to Arts for Young Audiences in Norway (AYAN; Kulturtanken).

<sup>2</sup> Both the terms multicultural and cultural diversity are used, reflecting the terminology employed by CN.

Marking cultural difference is essential in order to be seen and heard by others and paid attention to in society at large. Music "can be used as a means of expressing we are different, we are an ethnic group, we have our own culture" (Ronström 1995, p. 7).

In music education, the crucial point concerns the ways in which we address and contextualize difference and how children's engagement with diverse music traditions can play a part in the building of an inclusive, anti-oppressive education (Kumashiro 2002). This relates closely to the aims and strategies of CN. The concert programs discussed in this chapter involved the construction, marking, and maintenance of cultural differences in various ways, but at the same time, they involved developing strategies for understanding and engaging with difference through participatory musical experiences.

There is a substantial body of research related to the CN school concert programs (e.g., Bamford 2012; Borgen and Brandt 2006; Breivik and Christophersen 2013; Holdhus 2019; Holdhus and Espeland 2013), but only a few publications have explicitly addressed the cultural diversity efforts (Bergh 2007; Knudsen 2013; Skyllstad 1993 2004; Vandvik 2018). Although there are hardly any programs of similar dimensions or scope outside Scandinavia, there are several relevant publications on the role of teaching artists in schools (e.g., Booth 2009; Rabkin 2011).

In the remainder of this chapter, I first give an introduction to the school concert format and a historical overview of the CN cultural diversity efforts and the closely related international programs. This is followed by discussions concentrating on key issues of the school concert discourse, namely, cultural diversity and anti-racism, democracy, hybridity and the tensions between educational and artwork-based paradigms. The research material consists of documents, reports, webpages, and scholarly publications, as well as three interviews with CN organizers conducted in 2018. Experiences from Fargespill, a recent artistic program built on similar ideals, are included to supplement the discussion (Hamre et al. 2012; Kvaal 2018).

#### 2 The School Concert

Over the years, CN developed and refined a specific visiting school concert format. Concert groups were small, including two or three performers as the norm. They were either selected through auditions or headhunted by CN, and they always underwent a production process for tailoring their performance to the format and requirements of playing successfully for child audiences. Before a concert, schools would receive information about the performers and some teaching material in the form of recordings, sheet music, or suggested activities for preparations in class. The typical concert took place in the school gym. Concerts were "unplugged" or used simple, portable amplification. There was close interaction between pupils and performers; everyone was on the floor, on the same level. Performers would often make use of dramatic forms, moving around among the audience, addressing children directly through musical sounds and body movements, and inviting them to participate actively in songs, dances, or other activities. After the concert, children could spend some time engaging with the musicians, chatting, asking questions, or becoming acquainted with the instruments.

#### 3 Historical Overview

CN was established in 1968 as a government institution under the Department of Culture based on the ambition of promoting live music of high artistic quality to the entire population, especially in the rural areas rarely visited by major artists. From the beginning, concerts for children during school hours were a major part of the programs. Soon, all public schools were included, offering more than 96% of all children in Norway two concerts a year. The national education plan of 1987 established visiting school concerts as a compulsory part of Norwegian music education (Vandvik 2018).

As labor immigration to Norway increased during the 1970s and 1980s, the presence of immigrant culture became noticeable. Cultural programs and education policies soon became influenced by political debates on integration. In 1987, CN made the promotion of immigrant music a special focus area, an effort explicitly aimed at counteracting racist attitudes. A close cooperation with immigrant communities was initiated, both in the concert programming and the development of teaching material.

The early "multicultural" school concerts were soon linked to The Resonant Community (Klangrikt Fellesskap), a 3-year research project (1989–1992) based at the University of Oslo. The objective was to map schoolchildren's attitudes toward "otherness" in relation to their participation in music activities involving immigrant music cultures. The results were presented as overwhelmingly positive, indicating that in schools with the most intensive music programs, the prevalence of bullying and racist attitudes was substantially reduced and that minority pupils experienced increased respect for their cultural identity (Skyllstad 1993). The report from the project inspired various related programs in the following years.

Immigrants' music and other "world music" soon became an integrated part of school concert programs. Many performers were recruited through CN's Multicultural Music Centre (1992–2001) and the Ethnic Music Cafés—informal concert arenas featuring immigrant musicians. In 1994, CN initiated the Oslo World Music Festival, which from 1999 included activity programs for children called "Children's Art Exploration" (Barnas verdensdager). In 2001, school concerts became part of The Cultural Rucksack (Den kulturelle skolesekken), a national program for visiting artists, which also involved other art forms than music (Breivik and Christophersen 2013).

As the ideas of cultural diversity in music promotion took hold, CN became involved in international work, as consultants and organizers for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). From 2000, long-term contracts were signed involving music cooperation and cultural exchange with South Africa, India, and Palestine and, eventually, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Brazil, Jordan, and Bangladesh.

In 2001, the Multicultural Music Centre was shut down. A new international unit, and later a separate international department, took over most of CN's international work, including the promotion of artists from cooperating countries. In 2016, following a process of decentralization and changing national policies, CN was officially closed, and the school concert programs were transferred to a new organization, namely, Arts for Young Audiences in Norway (AYAN)<sup>3</sup> . This implied a broadening of visiting artist programs in schools through the inclusion of theatre, visual arts, and literature; at the same time, it inevitably led to a reduced focus on the potentials of music in the promotion of cultural diversity. The dominant position music had had in this kind of work for more than 30 years was challenged. Today, there is no national strategy for promoting cultural diversity in school concerts.

#### 4 National and International Policies

In a Nordic context, policies of cultural diversity are inseparable from a history of equality and democracy as defining values of the nation-states (Andersson and Hilson 2009). The prevailing policy of cultural diversity in education is an ideology of national dimensions that legitimizes certain values and practices over others (Kallio and Väkevä 2017). The Norwegian cultural diversity efforts were part of a state policy, although CN organizers had considerable independence in their programming and planning. The programs enjoyed strong political recognition, especially from the labor governments. This is evident in official documents, for example, a parliamentary report from 2007 asserts that cultural diversity must be a "permanent dimension" of all visiting artist programs in schools (KKD 2007, pp. 45–46). Moreover, it is no coincidence that two Norwegian ministers of culture, Åse Kleveland and Turid Birkeland, served as CN directors after they left their government offices.

The international dimensions of the school concert programs were ambitious and wide ranging. Through cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, school concerts effectively became a part of Norwegian foreign policy. The school concert model was "exported" in cooperation with local organizers, such as SAMRO<sup>4</sup> in South Africa, Sabreen in Palestine, and SPIC MACAY<sup>5</sup> in India (Korum 2019; Korum and Subramaniam 2020). School concerts were used as door openers for political and economic cooperation. The international music cooperation was governed by various agendas, including development aid, cultural rights, nation building, strengthening civil society, and, not least, the "state branding" of Norway

<sup>3</sup> The Norwegian name is Kulturtanken (The Culture Tank/Thought).

<sup>4</sup> The Southern African Music Rights Organization.

<sup>5</sup> Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth.

abroad. Norway was presented as a culturally diverse and egalitarian society based on the idea of a "national goodness regime" (Tvedt 2005, pp. 482), and concerts for children were an important part of this all along. Norwegian and immigrant musicians based in Norway would play for schools in cooperating countries, and at the same time, funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NORAD<sup>6</sup> allowed CN to invite renowned musicians who attracted huge audiences in their home countries to play for Norwegian children, sometimes at small schools with less than 20 pupils in remote mountain communities.

While the concert programs taking place in Norway never met any major political opposition, the international programs were more vulnerable to political change. After the conservative alliance led by Erna Solberg came into power in 2013, there was a marked change of policy. CN's cooperation with the Ministry of foreign Affairs was downscaled and eventually discontinued. Performances by international guest musicians in Norwegian schools came to a halt. Concert promotion for children, and to a large extent, music exchange in general, was no longer considered part of Norwegian foreign policy and development aid.

#### 5 Cultural Diversity and Anti-racism

In all the material from CN, there is no clear definition of cultural diversity or multicultural. The terms are constructed discursively through documents, reports, promotion, and musical practice. Use of the terms is varied and sometimes overlapping, their connotations generally taken for granted. As a major state-funded institution, CN was an instrument of majority cultural dominance and hegemony—a knowledge-producing institution with the power to influence and shape the meaning of such terms.

From the very start, multicultural was the buzzword, with the establishment of the Multicultural Music Centre in 1992, and various school projects with names like "Multicultural Music Experiments" (Knudsen and Berkaak 1998). Gradually, there was a move from multicultural to cultural diversity as the preferred label. This reflected a general change in terminology in the cultural and political discourse. Arguably, multicultural became "burdened" by increasingly being understood as a term referring exclusively to non-Western immigrants, while cultural diversity suggested a wider scope of differences. Labelling Norway as a multicultural society basically meant that there are many immigrants living here, and a multicultural school was a school with a large number of pupils born in non-Western countries.

The multicultural discourse in music education was constructed as a response to the challenges of immigration. It was based on the acknowledgement of a "new reality": that through immigration, European countries had lost their "homogenous character," and there was a need to build a society where people of many different

<sup>6</sup> The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

backgrounds could coexist and benefit from becoming acquainted with one another's cultures (Skyllstad 1993, p. 4). We may speak of a multicultural ideology based on commonly recognized ideas of human equality and social justice. The idea was that school concerts were to become cultural meeting points more than arenas for promoting Norwegian, or other Western music traditions. Obviously, in this area, the historical role of public education in the transmission and inculcation of a unified national heritage was challenged.

CN's involvement in cultural diversity can be traced back to the political climate of the late 1980s. Arne Holen, director of CN at that time, reports becoming frustrated when he heard some ugly, racist remarks on the subway following the 1987 general elections (Vandvik 2018). He decided to make a difference—there was so much talk about multiculturalism, but nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. Inspired by anti-racist movements in Europe and organizations like SOS Rasisme, the first school programs with immigrant musicians were initiated. The pioneers of the Multicultural Music Centre were especially inspired by models and experiences of the Swedish school concert programs and the World Music School in Amsterdam (Schippers 2010).

In these early years, instrumental justifications dominated concert programs and reports. Music was understood as an efficient tool for building positive attitudes toward the Other (Knudsen and Berkaak 1998, p. 10; Skyllstad 1993; Vandvik 2018). Cultural knowledge and familiarity with "otherness" was presented as a vaccine against racism. However, spreading knowledge was only part of the strategy. The understanding of xenophobia and racism as resting on emotional rather than intellectual grounds supported the development of concert formats involving active audience participation: "Racism cannot be countered through information alone" (Skyllstad 1993, p. 5) and "action creates attitudes" (p. 7). Bodily and emotional experiences through hands-on involvement with music and dance were understood as most powerful in affecting children's attitudes and bridging cultural differences.

The results from the Resonant Community research project were taken to prove that "music works" as an efficient sociopolitical tool in education. While the antiracist agenda was gradually downplayed and replaced by more general formulations of the benefits of widening horizons and learning from others, this ideology was doubtlessly the bedrock of 30 years of promoting cultural diversity through music.

Developing pupils' attitudes is an explicit goal in Norwegian education policies in general. In national education plans, didactical goals are related to three pillars of competence: knowledge, skills, and attitudes (e.g., Kunnskapsdepartementet 2016). A primary mission of the school system is to develop attitudes of respect, understanding, equality, and environmental awareness (KUF 1996; Kunnskapsdepartementet 2006, 2016). National music education curricula refer to Norway as a culturally diverse society where music can promote "belonging to your own culture and cultural heritage," as well as "tolerance and respect for the culture of others" (Kunnskapsdepartementet 2006, p. 137).

Many of the early CN concert programs targeting pupils' attitudes involved specific, often exotifying constructions of difference. The 3-year Resonant Community research project exclusively promoted non-Western traditional music, with 1 year devoted to each of the continents of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In reports and teaching material, familiar stereotypes prevail—Asian music is linked to myths, rites, and imagination, and African music is an expression of "contact with the earth and the mystical forces that support life," whereas Latin American music is seen as a fruitful synthesis, radiating vitality and reflecting "human decency and freedom" (Skyllstad 1993, p. 7). Parallels may easily be drawn here to some of the dominating presentations of non-Western music in school textbooks (Rønningen 2015) and in music scholarship—presentations that primitivize the Other through "fake and facile attributions" that maintain an imbalance of power (Agawu 2003, p. 231).

As CN gained more experience in the field, the most exoticizing stereotypes were replaced by more well-informed descriptions of non-Western music. When the Multicultural Music Centre was closed in 2002, it was based on the understanding that its mission was largely accomplished, since, by then, music from all over the world had become well incorporated into school concerts and other program areas. The decision could be seen as a step toward a more "diversified normality" in concert promotion, reducing the risk of reproducing insider/outsider dichotomies (Carson and Westvall 2016, p. 37). From this time on, all concerts underwent the same process of evaluation and production, without some of them being labelled as multicultural.

School concerts were intended to give children an experience that was different a contrast to what they would encounter through commercial music promotion. A central idea was to counter the hegemony of Anglo-American popular culture in children's lives<sup>7</sup> . In a promotional DVD, CN director Åse Kleveland argued that many children had rather narrow experiences with culture in their home environments and that school concerts might contribute to widening the scope of children's experiences (Rikskonsertene 2009). A frequently used promotional phrase through most of CN's history was that concerts should "move, surprise and thrill" <sup>8</sup> the young audiences (Vandvik 2018, p. 161).

Promoting performances for children involves marketing; it is necessary to "speak" to children in terms that raise their attention and interest, presumably leading to a successful concert. In teacher's introductions to the concerts, there was a dominating focus on cultural difference. For example, a primary school teacher introducing a performance with Indian kathak dancer Mahua Shankar and tabla player Mithilesh Kumar Jha would tell the children that they were about to meet some "colorful and exciting visitors" from a culture that is "very different," playing instruments that are "very unfamiliar," while at the same time highlighting the quality and reputation of the musicians (Knudsen 2013, p. 175).

While it is always difficult to pinpoint how a concert experience with any unfamiliar music affects children (Knudsen 2013), it is necessary to consider issues

<sup>7</sup> Interview with Tom Gravlie, head of CN's Multicultural Music Centre, 5 April 2018.

<sup>8</sup> Berøre, overraske og begeistre.

of status and power surrounding the event. A school concert is sanctioned by the school and teachers through information and preparations in class. The musicians are welcomed and introduced by an adult with authority—a teacher or the headmaster an act that symbolically transmits authority to the performers. In the most successful concerts, the school manages to create an atmosphere of respect, dignity, and appreciation for cultural expressions that most of the children have never witnessed before. While the music styles and performance modes may be unfamiliar, children are always affected by professionalism and artistic quality.

Interestingly, young children's reflections on their concert experience may also seem to concentrate on issues of difference. My conversations with school children (grades 1–3) following immediately after performances with Hindustani music and dance indicated a special focus on difference and novelty. When children were given the opportunity to meet the musicians, their first questions and comments would typically focus on aspects of the performance that were unfamiliar—the strange, different, and extraordinary: "Why do you have a red mark on your forehead?", "Why are you dancing barefoot?", "Why are you wearing those bells on your feet?", "Do you have to wear all that jewelry?", and "Does it hurt your fingers to play [tabla drums] that fast?" (Knudsen 2013, p. 175).

#### 6 Democracy

The visiting school concert programs were rooted in a democratic vision based on the idea that all children have a right to engage with art and culture, as promoted, for example, in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN General Assembly 1989). This corresponds with the "civilizing mission" of Norwegian cultural policies and art programs (Bjørnsen 2009, p. 382), as well as CN's goal of promoting art experiences of high artistic quality to all children, regardless of social or economic background. Still, there are aspects of the activity that are far from democratic. Participation in the programs was compulsory; a small number of specialists at CN had the authority to define what music the pupils were exposed to, without involving the schools. As Kari Holdhus argues, the comprehensive "for all" philosophy and the mainly centralized concert production process often resulted in schools lacking a feeling of ownership of the programs (Holdhus and Espeland 2013, p. 17).

As a major national institution, CN had the power to select performers and shape performances according to the organization's aims. As an employer of mainly unorganized freelance musicians working on short-term contracts, there was obviously an imbalance of power. Still, a cultural program of this size would hardly work satisfactorily without promoting reciprocity, equality, and respect. It was crucial for CN producers to acknowledge and respect cultural codes and modes of performance so that musicians would feel comfortable adjusting to the particular school concert format. Many musicians were initially unfamiliar with playing for school children, so producers also acted as coaches, training them to become school concert performers in a Norwegian setting.

When inviting performers from abroad, CN relied heavily on cultural knowledge and suggestions from immigrant communities, which often had their own cultural agendas and ambitions. Cooperating with CN was seen as beneficial, providing acknowledgement, some well-paid work for local musicians, and possibilities for inviting important artists to Norway. In the early years, the Pakistani community became especially involved, and various renowned performers were invited to Norway for school concerts and public concerts for the immigrant community, most notably Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, whose 1989 visit led to cooperation with saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the famous ECM album Ragas and Sagas (Garbarek et al. 1992).

#### 7 Tradition and Hybridity

Music represents and identifies people, cultures, and communities. In CN, there was a strong recognition of the important role traditional music played for the selfdefinition of immigrant communities. School concerts were aimed at making immigrant cultures visible, thereby empowering immigrant pupils through music they might identify with. One teacher in the Oslo area could relate how a concert with Hindustani classical music obviously made a difference for the Indian minority pupils at her school. She had observed how a previously "invisible" fourth-grader developed a new sense of pride and started to mark her cultural background by wearing traditional clothes on special occasions and even daring to sing an Indian song in front of the whole school at the annual closing ceremony<sup>9</sup> .

A conspicuous strategy in the multicultural music discourse of the 1990s was the promotion of crossover or hybrid expressions. CN and the Multicultural Music Centre especially encouraged "musical cooperation that crosses cultural boundaries" (Rikskonsertene 1992). The Ethnic Music Café in Oslo (1992–2001), through which many school concert performers were recruited, was an experimental stage where musicians of different cultural backgrounds would meet and play together in informal and sometimes improvised settings. This resulted in some surprising and striking cooperation projects, such as the widely praised "From Senegal to Setesdal," with musicians from Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Norway playing their traditional instruments in playful, overlapping, and contrasting ways (Berg, Cissokho, Sereba, Straume, & Kvåle 1997).

When performers of different backgrounds play together for a child audience, it has both symbolic and educational dimensions; musical cooperation can be seen as a representation of human cooperation. When crossover music "works"—when different musical elements sound good together—it suggests that people of different backgrounds can "work" successfully together too. Trym Bjønnes, part of the Norwegian/Tanzanian duo Rafiki that performed for CN, puts it as follows: "We

<sup>9</sup> Interview with Anne Moberg, project leader for The Resonant Community, 5 April 2018.

are cultivating our musical friendship; we don't say it in words, but we try to show it through our music and the way we act together. This is the foundation of our entire concert" (Rikskonsertene 2009, n.p.).

CN's encouragement of crossover music projects has been met with certain criticism. Anne Ellingsen (2008) maintains that CN enforced a constructed hybridity rooted in state policies of integration, implying that performers were strategically combined, sometimes contrary to their own ambitions and preferences. According to Ellingsen, immigrant musicians were used as tools to create images of successful integration, thereby legitimizing state policies. More recently, a similar critique has been directed toward the Fargespill<sup>10</sup> foundation (Hamre et al. 2012), which produces and promotes culturally diverse music and dance programs involving child refugees, Norwegian school children, and professional musicians. Fargespill has received increasing media attention and substantial government support for their programs featuring musical crossovers, often in the form of medleys combining Norwegian folk music and music of immigrant cultures. A heated debate arose after a critical article maintained that their performances are based on a staged formula that gives a false image of successful integration and, at worst, serves as a smokescreen diverting attention from the uglier sides of immigration policies, such as the forced return of young asylum seekers (Solomon 2016).

Such critical reactions raise issues of general interest related to cultural diversity in music education. Obviously, government-supported presentations of cultural crossover operate within a political sphere and must be understood as political utterances in the integration discourse. Still, as argued by the Fargespill organizers, live performances of intercultural music must be valued from social and artistic perspectives rather than solely the politics of representation. For the young refugees, participating in these crossover performances with Norwegian peers can provide an arena where they are more than their ethnicity, more than refugees. It may provide "a space where they feel empowered through artistic expression" (Moberg 2017, p. 46) and see themselves as artists, taking the emphasis off their adversities and status as minorities. Or, as Camilla Kvaal has pointed out in recent ethnographic research on Fargespill, the actual bodily engagement in processes of musical hybridity can create cross-fertilization or synergies, as well as affordances of companionship and compassion (Kvaal 2018).

#### 8 Art or Education?

The policies governing the school concert programs were influenced by well-known music education discourses, especially the tensions between an artwork-oriented approach, emphasizing the intrinsic value of the music experience, and approaches referring to the more educational and instrumental justifications. In this respect, the

<sup>10</sup>Literally "Play of Colors." The official English name is Kaleidoscope.

concert event involves a meeting between organizations and individuals with differing agendas and ideologies.

CN was always understood as an art institution rather than an educational institution, although the educational aspects are striking—not least in the cultural diversity programs, which initially were justified with reference to the role of education in shaping attitudes. School concerts with visiting musicians are professionally produced art experiences but take place within the school system, in an educational environment where art-based conceptions of quality are not necessarily relevant for creating a meaningful experience (Holdhus 2015b). When some schools failed to establish a sense of ownership of the concert event, it can be understood as the result of "a dominating rationale based on romantic aesthetic theories" (Holdhus and Espeland 2013, p. 1).

As Kari Holdhus maintains, an artwork-oriented paradigm may be problematic in a school concert setting, since it is not relational, but values artistic qualities more highly than qualities of human interaction (Holdhus 2015b). During CN's first 20 years (until 1987), an educational paradigm was dominating. Most CN staff had backgrounds as music teachers, and the cooperating schools were encouraged to include preparations for concerts in their regular music classes. From 1988, when a new leadership took over the CN concert department, the artwork-oriented paradigm gradually took hold. This happened at the same time as the multicultural programs were initiated, arguably emphasizing the divide between the ordinary concert promotion and the more instrumentally justified multicultural efforts. Western music (jazz, classical, or contemporary) was art and required no further justification, while music related to immigrants was largely justified as a tool for creating beneficial attitudes. Still, it is important to stress that all CN productions were widely recognized for their artistic quality. A guiding principle for concert producers was that political aims should not overshadow artistic requirements (Vandvik 2018, p. 160).

Until today, the artwork-oriented paradigm has had a strong anchoring in policies governing CN and other art programs for children. According to Holdhus (2015a), (based on observations from 2010/11), the CN program committee that evaluated and selected musicians for concert tours at that time understood "nonverbal presentation of absolute music" as more valuable than when children participate bodily or interact dialogically with performers, as was the case in most cultural diversity programs. Still, in recent years, the artwork-oriented paradigm has increasingly been challenged by theorizations that shift the point of focus from the artwork to the relation, encouraging the development of new performance modes that are dialogic, "polyphonic," and more comprehensive (Holdhus 2019, p. 243).

#### 9 Conclusion

Although CN was closed in 2016, many Norwegian children still enjoy school concerts with visiting artists, now organized by AYAN. Music no longer has a special priority in national art programs, and the emphasis on cultural diversity has all but disappeared in the organization. Still, policies of cultural diversity continue to inspire and shape art programs in other fields and through other institutions, not least in recent music education programs involving young asylum seekers and refugees (Kvaal 2018; Roaldsnes 2016). To what extent these policies will have any significant influence on future art programs for children remains to be seen. However, whatever view we may have of presenting art to children, there is no reason to doubt that CN's policies of diversity over 30 years have influenced children's lives and their relationship to art, culture, and difference, through musical experiences that move, surprise, and thrill.

#### References


Jan Sverre Knudsen is a professor of music at Oslo Metropolitan University, Faculty of Education and International Studies. His research and publications focus on the role of musical practices in immigrant communities, intercultural concert promotion in schools and kindergartens, and issues related to nationality and ethnicity in music education. Knudsen is currently engaged in FUTURED, a major research project investigating music in teacher education.

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## The Challenges of Implementing Diverse Political Directives in Contemporary China: Between Creativity and Confucianism

Wai-Chung Ho

Abstract The People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded as a communist state in 1949 within the framework of the collective leadership model under the Communist Party of China (the single-party system in China). After experiencing sociopolitical and economic changes, the PRC has moved to the free market economy of globalisation in the global age. The evolution of Chinese politics and the economic system has resulted in more diversity and changes in school education, along with struggles to adjust to these changes. Along this line, this chapter will examine the complex relationship between the politics of diversity, Confucianism, and creativity education, particularly in response to the views of Chinese teachers from Beijing via in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews on the implementation of a creativity policy in school music education. Based on current education policies and the interview data collected for this study on the examination of the nature of creativity, this chapter will conclude with a discussion of how school music education may help initiate a dialogue on the politics and nature of creativity and cultural identity in response to the challenges of contemporary political and cultural values between creativity and Confucianism that prevail in the global age of China.

Keywords Contemporary China · Politics of diversity · Creativity in music education · Between creativity and Confucianism · Teacher's perceptions

W.-C. Ho (\*)

Department of Music, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, China e-mail: tediwch@hkbu.edu.hk

#### 1 China's Dream

Over the last two decades, creativity development in China has been bolstered by strong government support, economic transformation, and technological advancements. Simultaneously, China has experienced a steady decline in central government control over the political system, society, and the economy as a whole, resulting in increased cultural and industrial diversity. President Xi Jinping noted that China needs to go through three transitions in order to take the global stage and to advance an open world economy: "From China's speed to China's quality; from China's products to China's brands; and from 'made in China' to 'created by China'" (Liu 2016, p. 53). "Made in China 2025" (a 10-year industrial plan announced in October 2015) is a strategic plan for the future of China's industrial modernisation, with an emphasis on increasing its business with the rest of the world. The supportive role of Chinese authorities has encouraged greater participation among private and educational sectors in this national development process. However, Chinese education also intends to integrate contemporary Chinese politics and Confucianism into the curriculum, as can be seen in the implementation of creativity directives in education.

Chinese education has long been criticised for its focus on the mastery of knowledge and on test-taking at the expense of students' critical thinking and creativity; it has also been condemned as unhealthy, as it emphasises discipline, drilling, and rote memorisation (Watkins and Biggs 2001; Zhao 2012). The philosophy of Confucian education and its policies have become central to the curriculum, particularly through the establishment of the Confucius Institutes programme affiliated with the PRC's Ministry of Education (MoE) in 2004. This policy is the latest and greatest of the Chinese authorities' efforts to embrace Confucianism and traditional culture, which are regarded as the constitutional role of education (see Billioud and Thoraval 2009; Yau 2018). Traditional Chinese classics are regarded as basic moral education materials for children and their achievement of the contemporary "China's Dream" (Ambrogio 2017, p. 124). After Xi Jinping became the leader of China upon his selection by the CPC at the CPC's 18th Party Congress in 2012, his use of the words "China's dream" (as a description of China's national rejuvenation to construct a better society) has appeared across state media platforms, in schools, and throughout other social media platforms to promote the Confucian virtue of filial piety.

In this chapter, I will examine the extent to which Chinese music teachers view traditional music teaching and creativity education (which is referred to as cultivating students' imagination and critical thinking) as the aim of school music education (see MoE 2011, p. 4, 2017 p. 2), as well as the challenges of teaching creativity in school music education in response to these diverse political directives. With particular reference to school music education in Beijing (the capital of China), this study examined the under-researched relationships between political transformation, cultural diversity, creativity, practices, and challenges in teaching, focusing on culture-based creativity. Beijing has a well-established education system, from preschool to teacher education. The curriculum of elementary and secondary schools in Beijing is a model of the national curriculum. To analyse the impact of relevant social changes and politics on creativity in music education, this chapter will employ the analysis of official documents, an interview survey of school music teachers, and other relevant literature. This chapter will cover three areas: (1) the policy demands of music education in a changing sociocultural climate; (2) teachers' perspectives on teaching creativity in school music education; and (3) a discussion of the challenges of teachers who find themselves caught between the ideal of creativity and those of obedience and order and the contradictory relationships in the curriculum between creativity education and traditional Chinese education and Confucianism. I argue that creativity in school music education has been limited by the official teaching materials regulated by Chinese politics and the extent of teacher education, as well as the provision of training courses for both pre-service and in-service teachers.

#### 2 The Policy Demands of Music Education in a Changing Sociocultural Climate

With a view to removing impediments to Chinese economic reforms, President Xi has promoted a new moral education campaign in the form of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" to stress the teachings of Confucius, particularly obedience and order. In a speech presented by President Xi on 24 September 2014, at an international symposium to commemorate the 2565th anniversary of the birth of Confucius in Beijing, President Xi supported the rejuvenation of Chinese culture with Confucian values by authenticating the official endorsement of Confucianism. For example, the MoE has maintained that the experience of arts education and music education in school learning should result in a moral education by aesthetic means (Ho 2010; Xu 2016; Zhao 2009). For the sake of Chinese political ideologies, Chinese teachers are now encouraged to be more culturally sensitive to the process of school education (Liu and Feng 2015).

At the same time, with a view to enabling China to compete in a globalising age, China, from the 1980s to the 2010s, has enacted various stages of education reforms to promote best practices in education, with particular emphasis on creativity, critical thinking, innovation, moral education, and character education for personal integration and social advancement in a global context (see MoE 2001, 2011, 2017). The Chinese Government's cries for expanding "creativity" have arisen as a response to "new calls" for schools to rebuild educational practices and ideology (Woronov 2008, p. 401). Teachers in China have conceptualised the factors of creativity, including "critical thinking, independence, and motivation", though obstructing factors involve the "evaluation system and resource limitations", while creativity has been easily displayed in the arts and sciences (Zhou et al. 2013, p. 239).

Three official documents—the 2005 "Nine-Year Compulsory Middle School Education Instructional Outlines" (i.e. a guide to teaching practices for 9-year compulsory middle school education), the 2005 "Nine-Year Compulsory Elementary School Music Education Instructional Outlines" (i.e. a guide to teaching practices for elementary school music education), and the 2011 "National Music Curriculum Standardization for Compulsory Education" (i.e. a music curriculum guide for compulsory school music education)—have provided a new conception of school music education (Zhang 2017, p. 71), including a focus on aesthetic education as the core of school music education, exploration of the richness and diversity of music cultures, respect for and love of diverse cultures, advocacy of musical creativity, individual development, and the promotion of an integrated approach across disciplines (Ho 2010, 2017). In addition, in 2010, the MoE issued the Notice about Creating Art Schools to Inherit Fine Chinese Culture in Primary and Secondary Schools in China in an attempt to improve the quality of students' knowledge of the arts and to help them to be active participants "in diversified and colourful artistic activities" (Guo 2013, p. 18). According to this guide, the aim of school music education is to provide aesthetic experiences, model perfect morals, enlighten wisdom, enhance creativity, highlight national arts, increase the understanding of world music, strengthen friendship and communication among people, and build a harmonious society (MoE 2011, p. 1, 2017, p. 1; also see Xiong and Zheng 2012).

#### 3 The Study of Teachers' Views on Creativity in Music Education: School Music Lessons in Beijing

In Beijing's schools, music is a compulsory subject in the school curriculum for 9-year basic education. Most schools present two weekly 40-min music lessons in Grades 1 through 5 and one music lesson per week in Grade 6, while secondary schools usually offer one weekly 40- to 45-min music lesson in the curriculum. The class size of both primary and secondary sectors usually ranges between 35 and 50 in each class. The most popular adopted music textbooks are published by the People's Music Publishing House (the only national publishing house in China) and the People's Education Press under the leadership of China's MoE. Based on Ho's analysis (2019) of these two selected textbooks, the feature of creativity materials is mainly on composition/improvisation activities. These textbook materials are also an attempt to explore the connection between creativity and the elements of Confucianism regarding family values and obedience to teachers (Ho 2019). Under the new instructions implemented by the CPC, the MoE has taken steps to revise all liberal arts textbooks with a view to enhancing students' "socialist core values" in primary and secondary schools (Gao 2017).

In response to the sociopolitical context, education in Beijing takes place within a diverse landscape. The recent education reforms in China have been a challenge to developing students' creativity as the key movement to improve the nation's education in Beijing (Woronov 2008). Besides the implementation of creativity education, President Xi has emphasised that "socialist education with Chinese characteristics has been focused on nurturing the younger generation" (Xinhua Net 3 September 2018). The Commission of Education has stated that all kindergarten and primary school teachers in Beijing are now required to receive 40 h of training on the core values of Chinese socialism and traditional Chinese culture by 2020 (see Cui 2017).

Creativity and diversity in Chinese school music education has largely been implemented in terms of the teachers' selection of music genres and activities. However, the teachers' own perceptions of what creativity in music education is, and should be, have not been investigated. In light of recent education reforms (MoE 2011, 2017), the study reported in this chapter explored the extent of the diversity of ways musical and nonmusical elements can be taught and learned in China's music curricula in response to political diversity in China. The research intended to examine the status of music in education and teacher education in Beijing to provide a fuller understanding of the process of creativity education in school music learning. Focusing particularly on teachers working in Beijing, the main purpose of the study was to collect music teachers' views on the challenges they experience in teaching creativity in school music education and their instructions and practices of creative music learning in response to the implementation of the creativity policy in the school curriculum.

#### 3.1 Research Method

As elsewhere in China, it is difficult for outsiders to gain access to schools for research purposes; consequently, these schools and school teachers were accessed mainly through local academics. Thus, the sample of teachers could not be selected randomly, nor were they purposefully chosen. The study employed semi-structured interviews as the major data collection method. All of the individual interviews were conducted between the summer and autumn of 2017. The sample involved one-onone interviews in Putonghua (a standardised variety of Chinese and the sole official language of the PRC) via Skype, and the in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with 15 elementary and 13 secondary school music teachers from government schools in Beijing, mainly located in urban areas, elicited their views on students' creativity learning in school music education.

The teacher informants desired anonymity in the study, and they maintained that they would not sign the informed consent form; however, they had an opportunity to read the consent form beforehand. They were also advised that the interviews would be recorded; they were informed of their right to withdraw from the interview process if they were uncomfortable; they were told that the recording of the interviews could be stopped at any time upon request; and they were given the opportunity to choose the day and time of their interview. All interviews were audio recorded with the permission of the interviewees and generally lasted from 40 min to an hour; the recordings were destroyed immediately after the interviews were transcribed. In addition to being asked to provide certain personal background information, the individual semi-structured interviews were mainly guided by a series of open-ended questions (including the teachers' views on the aims of school music teaching and major changes in school music education, their opinions on the use of music textbooks and creativity in education, and their perspectives on teaching creativity via diverse music cultures). This qualitative study collected audio and visual data from the respondents using voice and video across the Internet via a synchronous (real-time) connection, and the interviews were transcribed afterwards. The thematic analysis focused on the organisation and rich description of the data set before moving on to identifying implicit and explicit ideas within the data (see Braun and Clarke 2006; Yin 2014).

#### 3.2 Major Findings of the Study<sup>1</sup>

A small sample of 28 music teachers from 28 schools was involved in the study. The interview findings from the 28 music teachers revealed the practices and challenges of fostering creativity in music education in general. Among these 28 teacher interviewees, only 2 were male teachers.<sup>2</sup> Teaching experience ranged between 1 and 10 years (most teachers had 3 years or more of teaching experience).

#### 3.2.1 Teachers' Perceptions of the Aims and Changes in School Music Education

Overall, all the teacher interviewees agreed that music should be part of the compulsory school curriculum. Most of them generally believed that music education as aesthetic education was the prevailing philosophy of school music education and school music instruction was expected to have a demonstrable impact on students' musical lives in ensuing years. According to the teacher interviewees, efforts to achieve the aim of aesthetic education through music education were many and varied; for example, teachers described their wishes as follows:

To cultivate students' love and enjoyment of music.

To explore music and its other forms and their cultural connections.

To understand music and its integration with other subject disciplines.

To improve students' aesthetic qualities and enrich their emotional experiences.

<sup>1</sup> The reporting of a few questions in the interview guide was omitted in this chapter, as they were not along the theme of analysis and discussion.

<sup>2</sup> Teacher training programmes graduate far more females than males. In particular, teaching in elementary schools has long been dominated by female teachers in China. The call for more maleoriented education has prompted a broader debate about gender imbalance, gender inequality, and social identity in school education.

To cultivate artistic sentiment and excellent character qualities that affect students' lives.

Surprisingly, only 1 teacher (out of 28) stressed that "[h]elping students to have selfawareness, to know and to identify themselves, to be innovative, and to accept new ideas" should be important aims in classroom music instruction.

All the teachers felt that they were either not forced by their schools or had a consensus among teachers to teach creativity in school music instruction. However, some of them reflected that the discussion on this topic became clouded as the term "aesthetic education" was used in different ways and in different contexts associated with music and the arts in the dimension of experience in any discipline. One teacher pushed her school to integrate more education changes into its creativity policy for school education because, as she stated in the interview:

[m]y students have to prepare for studying abroad. Most of them will study in the United States and the United Kingdom. We assume that these overseas schools are more likely to admit creative students, as students are required to show their creativity in their applications. Hence, our school curriculum has attempted to integrate creativity education for their educational preparation.

#### 3.2.2 The Use of Textbooks in Creativity Teaching

Only one teacher noted that the recent publications of music textbooks largely included creativity elements and moved away from traditional instruction prioritising the transmission of musical knowledge. Most teacher interviewees generally conceived that the biggest change in music education was the popularity of music textbooks' adoption of Western musical notation (a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that represents a different musical pitch).<sup>3</sup> The other major changes included the comprehensive training of students' musical capabilities in music-making with respect to performing, composing/improvising, and listening (or music appreciation); an emphasis on the promotion of traditional Chinese music; the development of quality teaching; and a strong emphasis on the professional quality of teachers for both pre-service and in-service music education. One teacher said that the official music textbooks were very traditional and boring and she could not figure out how to cultivate creativity with these old-fashioned teaching materials. One young teacher noted that she entered her teaching career a short time ago and she mainly followed the textbooks to conduct music instruction in the classroom; thus, she had no idea how to carry out creativity in her music lessons.

<sup>3</sup> The simplified musical notation (also known as jianpu or numbered musical notation) has been widely adopted in music publications (including music textbooks) in China. It is an adaptation of the French Galin-Paris-Cheve system that gained importance in the eighteenth century. It uses a movable do system, with the scale degrees 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 standing for do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and si. This notation designates musical notes through a system of numbers (for pitch), dots (for octaves), and lines (for note length).

#### 3.2.3 Recognising Creativity and Learning Diverse Music Styles

When asked about the extent of how well their schools helped students learn about creativity through various music styles, such as traditional Chinese music, Western classical music, and other world music, most teachers believed that they should support teaching and learning about and through other music cultures. They were also aware that they should introduce a wide variety of styles and genres of music and songs in their classroom music instruction. Some teachers illustrated examples of Western classical music, jazz and bossa nova, traditional Chinese music, Chinese folk songs, and African music and how these music genres could bring a unique style in exploring the possible relationships between the understanding of world music and creativity in classroom music learning. For example, one teacher claimed that she helped her students develop an attitude of creativity by discovering folk songs from Northwest China, as she knew about musical creativity and social interactions in Northwest China.

Through music listening activities (or music appreciation), the teachers conceived that the students could cultivate their ideas and make imaginative use of musical elements and musical devices. Many teachers agreed with the listening approach, and they encouraged their students to participate in group activities, which implied a comprehensive approach to creative music-making (particularly with a combination of musical elements such as melodies and rhythms). A few other teachers believed that the arts-integrated curriculum expressed their views about integrated curriculum implementation with other arts and language subjects. For instance, one primary school teacher described how she utilised the selection "The Aquarium" from Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens to provide an interactive listening activity that motivated students to divide themselves into different groups and improvise movement activities to interact with the music.

#### 3.2.4 Fostering Musical Creativity and Its Limits in School Education

Though the teachers did not highlight musical creativity as the aim of school music education, many of them generally agreed that teachers should attempt to find ways to implement creativity in their overall school education, as well as in their classroom music instruction. For example:

I believe that creativity education should be included in school music education. For instance, students should create melodies, improvise songs, dances, and musical sitcoms, and so on.

Of course, children's thinking is divergent... . We should respect their divergent thinking and encourage them to learn and to express themselves creatively... . At this point, I consider myself open-minded and hard-working (though not good enough) in promoting their creativity.

I don't know much about creativity and creativity in school music education. But I believe that creative education is essential...and I also believe that I should select appropriate means to inspire and guide my students in their creations.

Creative education should be carried out. This is the requirement of the times and is also in line with student development, as well as the official stipulation... .

Traditional music education (such as singing) is no longer satisfying and cannot attract our students' attention in classroom music learning... .

Overall, the teachers agreed that integrating creativity education into school music education could help learners to develop creative capabilities (i.e. the skills and attitudes needed for creative, imaginative, and innovative thinking).

Though the teachers maintained that students should have a creative, stimulating classroom environment in which to embrace creativity as part of learning, they also felt that their own teaching of creativity was narrow and limited. One teacher said that she did not promote creativity in her music classroom, as she taught senior secondary school music and did not find that the creative components were important for senior form students. Another teacher revealed that the class size in Beijing was generally very large, with a range of 35–49 students in each class, so there was no way to conduct creative activities in the classroom. Other limitations to conducting creativity in school music education included restrictions on syllabus boundaries by policy implementations and little support in the present music textbook materials for teaching creativity in the classroom. A few teachers expressed that they had no idea how to teach creativity in their classroom music lessons, as shown in the following:

I think we have many difficulties in implementing creativity in school music education and the problems are beyond my expression.

We are used to having singing performances in classroom music lessons. It would be very difficult to adapt to the new teaching methods to cultivate my students' creative musicmaking.

I have attempted to introduce creativity into my classroom music lessons, but I cannot tell whether my students find these activities to be the most interesting activities.

I am teaching senior secondary school students, and my creativity teaching for them is little. I believe that creativity may not be suitable for these senior grade students.

Some teachers expressed that the difficulties in fostering music activities for students were due to the students' musical backgrounds and their diverse learning abilities and learning motivation, and thus they conveyed that teaching music composition might be difficult to achieve in their classes.

#### 4 Discussion

Up until the end of the twentieth century, Chinese teachers were criticised for limiting creativity and creative ideas in their classroom teaching. However, creativity in music education in contemporary China has been promoted in the past two decades, resulting in new opportunities as well as challenges. China's current political culture is mainly dominated by Confucianism and President Xi Thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, in which individuality is discouraged. Moreover, schools are now required to integrate patriotism into their examinations and courses for the arts, Chinese language, ethics, geography, history, and physical education (Lau 2016). In this section of the chapter, I will discuss how school music education may help initiate a dialogue on Chinese-adopted creativity education amidst diverse political directives in the global age of China. In response to the main research question on the challenges of contemporary Chinese politics, the discussion will consist of two seemingly contradictory relationships in the curriculum: between creativity education on the one hand and traditional Chinese education and Confucianism on the other and between official approved teaching materials and teachers' perceptions of teaching creativity. This line of questioning views creativity in music education as a cause of political and cultural endeavours, not just as an effect of individual creation and educational development in Chinese school music education.

First, the role of school education involves both teaching creativity and Confucianism, for example, having Chinese students take part in competitive contests on Confucian culture. Confucian education seeks to foster desired character attributes, such as collectivism, respect, trustworthiness, social harmony, and love for people and the nation. Looking at China's music education, its breadth of view includes educational aims and values, as well as creativity, which have been transformed by the underlying beliefs of the sociopolitical system. With a view to achieving a global economy in the twenty-first century, Chinese authorities have adopted "globalisation" to approach "pedagogical and social means" through the cultivation of "creativity, flexibility, independent thinking and innovation" (Ross and Lou 2005, p. 227). This view is reflected by the implementation of official music documents (MoE 2011, 2017), as well as the phenomenon that creativity is a social construct and interaction in which a product must be made. This is also what Staats (2011) viewed as the cultivation of creativity in Chinese culture that is closely related to "the cultural climate and controlling power" in Chinese society (p. 45). In addition to Chinese nationalism and Communism, Confucian ideology is seen as a challenge to creativity in school music education in China. The official approved songs and song lyrics are regarded as an attempt to explore the connections between creativity and Confucian values in both the family system and hierarchical social relationships (including students' obedience to teachers) in the curriculum (Ho 2019). According to a survey conducted by an international progress evaluation group in 2008, the findings showed that Chinese students' calculation ability was ranked first in the world; nonetheless, their creativity ranked fifth from the bottom and their imagination ranked last (People's Daily News 4 August 2010). Issues concerning the historical development of the Confucian education tradition are seen as challenges to the implementation of school education reforms. Questions have also been raised about the extent to which the Confucian education tradition will accept and favour the implementation of creativity in the school curriculum.

Many Beijing teachers in the study, however, reflected that their perceptions of the aims of school music education mainly stressed delivering music instruction to cultivate students to appreciate different music cultures and to expand the development of aesthetic education (see MoE 2011). With regard to the aims of music education, the role of creativity in music education and the importance of creative self-expression in school music education was not mentioned or discussed (though self-expression was mentioned by one teacher in the study). Even though creativity is mentioned in the official curriculum, it may be the case that the Chinese authorities' highly top-down reforms of teacher education and the school curriculum may have hindered teachers' creativity teaching in school (see MoE 2011; Staats 2011; Woronov 2008). Only one teacher pointed out that she advocated creativity in school education, as many of her students would further their studies in the USA and the UK, and schools were being pushed to integrate creativity as a competitive advantage. The other teachers in this study might have been influenced by the traditional Chinese teaching that individuality should not be encouraged in classroom teaching. As found by Campbell and Hu (2010), not much time is spent on creativity and innovation during teacher preparation, as well as on the introduction of new education reforms in China. The teachers described the practicum system as the continuation of traditional practices rather than an emphasis on innovative teaching strategies. There should be a more conscious role for teachers in response to their support of official teaching materials, one that includes a suitable point of equilibrium between political and social expectations and their professional image and identity. Guiding teachers in the school context creatively, musically, and ideologically is a critical problem in China's school music education. An innovative model for training teachers in both pre-service and in-service programmes could encourage creativity education to cultivate students' musical imagination as proposed in the official music curriculum guidelines (MoE 2011).

Second, there is a need to make school music education a vital means for the cultivation of creativity and culture for both teachers and students in educational practice. Though the teachers in the study did not express political concerns about the development of creativity in school music education and did not view the extent of the aims and values of school music education as being framed by political considerations, they maintained that their teaching materials were highly related to the official approved music textbooks. The teachers' use of textbooks was clear in the study, but it was not necessarily clear whether these textbooks had materials for teaching creativity in their music teaching (see Ho 2019). Given this circumstance, some teachers in the study related that whether they taught or did not teach creativity was highly in response to the approved textbook materials for teaching creativity. As noted in the MoE report (2017), the design of the textbooks "follows the correct political direction and insists on the correct political standpoint", and the contents of the textbook aim to strengthen "students' moral education" and to "pass on the core value of socialism" (p. 1).

The results of the study indicated that in addition to relevant teaching materials, the professional development of teachers and instructional reforms are necessary to remain compatible with teaching creativity. Though creative music-making is encouraged in the approved music textbooks and official documents, most teachers reflected that creative music-making was limited in their classroom teaching. One teacher even stressed that she had no means to teach creativity in her music classroom and she only adopted her students' popular idols' songs. Many teachers also admitted that they lacked confidence in leading creativity lessons and some of them were heavily reliant on music textbooks. The teachers' recommendations included research on teacher preparation programmes' inclusion of creativity and professional development opportunities.

Challenges and limitations remain in introducing creative pedagogies to support a pedagogical shift from traditional pedagogic practices to creativity-fostering pedagogic practices in school music education. Schools and teachers continue to face an ongoing "political correctness campaign" to maintain "correct political direction" and to uphold "correct political direction" as the basic principle of school education, as well as the criteria for selecting appropriate curriculum materials in China. On the one hand, China's modern economy is driven by creativity and innovation in society and in education. On the other hand, school education continues to face the challenge of nurturing students' creativity in the music curriculum within the context of the Chinese political culture. For more impacts and more specific directions for teachers regarding how to teach creativity across music genres and through music activities, teachers should be encouraged to develop their own practices together with the official curriculum and students' experiences in their creative learning.

#### 5 Conclusion

This chapter has demonstrated the extent to which the politics of diversity in China has influenced creativity by requiring teachers to navigate between Confucianist educational policies that value obedience and order and the aims and values of creativity in school music education. This was clearly seen by the teachers' dilemmas in implementing creativity education via official music textbooks (or interpreted as official curricular policies). Despite the call to promote creativity in music education at the government policy level, the complex policy context has major implications for the implementation process in the interplay of Chinese policies, teachers' education, and the extent of the teachers' translation of the policies in practice in the music classroom. The challenge to music teachers and to teacher education is, respectively, to practise the diversity of Chinese politics in promoting both creativity and Confucianism in school music instruction and to support music teachers in introducing creativity through curriculum implementation. The integration of Chinese national identity and Confucian education into creativity education has been described as transformative and situational, but it is also subject to the continual negotiation of identity and tradition within the political fabric and ideology of the Chinese Government. Building on and extending the growing body of research on creativity and music education in China therefore provides a locus for the (re-)enactment of official institutional arrangements for creativity and school education, as well as negotiating and affirming the values that underpin them, in today's rapidly changing political and cultural landscape.

Acknowledgements The study presented in this chapter was a pilot study prepared for and generated from the project HKBU 12608618, generously supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, without which the production of this chapter would not have been feasible. The author expresses her heartfelt thanks to Beijing's music teachers who participated in the study.

#### References


Wai-Chung Ho is a professor in the Department of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her substantive research interests include the sociology of music, China's music education, and the comparative study of East Asian music education. Her research has focused on interlinked areas of social and political development, education policy, and reform in school education, as well as on values in education across school curricula in Chinese contexts, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## "Where the Social Stigma Has Been Overcome": The Politics of Professional Legitimation in Nepali Music Education

Danielle Shannon Treacy, Sapna Thapa, and Suyash Kumar Neupane

Abstract This chapter explores the actions musician-teachers in the extremely diverse and complex context of the Kathmandu Valley imagine that might hold potential for contesting and altering processes of marginalisation and stigmatisation in Nepali society. The empirical material was generated in 16 workshops involving 53 musician-teachers and guided by the Appreciative Inquiry 4D model (e.g. Cooperrider et al. Appreciative inquiry handbook: for leaders of change. Crown Custom, Brunswick, 2005). Drawing upon the work of Arjun Appadurai, we analysed the ways in which engaging the collective imagination (1996) and fostering the capacity to aspire (2004) can support musician-teachers in finding resources for changing their terms of recognition. We identified five actions that musicians and musician-teachers take to legitimise their position in Nepali society: (1) challenging stigmatised identities, (2) engaging foreignness, (3) advocating academisation, (4) countering groupism, and (5) promoting professionalisation. We argue that these actions suggest the need for music teachers to be able to ethically and agentively navigate both the dynamic nature of culture and questions of legitimate knowledge, which may be fostered through an emphasis on professional responsibility (Solbrekke and Sugrue. Professional responsibility: new horizons of praxis. Routledge, New York, 2011) in music teacher education.

Keywords Appreciative inquiry · Capacity to aspire · Co-constructed visions · Imagination · Majority world · Music education · Nepal · Professional responsibility · Teachers' visions

D. S. Treacy (\*)

S. K. Neupane Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA e-mail: sneupan@iu.edu

Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: danielle.treacy@uniarts.fi

S. Thapa University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI, USA e-mail: thapas@uwstout.edu

#### 1 Introduction

It was not until twelfth grade, when one of my music teachers invited me to teach in her grade nine band class as part of a mandatory Independent Study Unit that I discovered what I wanted to do after school. When I told my father that I had decided to apply to university to study music education, he was initially disappointed. He thought that it would be very difficult to make a decent living through music and that I would be better off pursuing engineering or the sciences. – Danielle

I grew up with academic parents who pursued music passionately. My grandmother – a selfmade businesswoman and fierce matriarch – believed in hard work and education and that music was only for people from lower castes and a waste of time that ruined families. She would call my parents 'Kami' or 'Damai' (lower caste people) and chant this 'ama maruni, bau madaley, chora chori bhaldang bhuldung – dey na latta ley' meaning 'parents who spend time playing or performing music and not looking after their children should be kicked'. – Sapna

Waiting to receive the Nepal Scholar Award from the President of Nepal, I overheard a fellow graduate say it was 'unfair' that a music graduate had won the Vice Chancellor Gold Medal, when somebody studying a more 'difficult' subject actually deserved it. Such experiences have often made me question the status of music students and musicians. People have a dismissive attitude towards those who study or play music – a subject they still consider unworthy of serious academic interest in Nepali society today. – Suyash

Despite the importance of music in daily life in Nepal – not only permeating social life and festivities but often expected or mandatory for various occasions – musicians have generally been positioned in a stigmatised position at the bottom of the social hierarchy (e.g. Tingey 1995). It is perhaps not surprising then that during a series of workshops focused on co-constructing visions for Nepali music education, musician-teachers aspired To live in a society where music is valued, including where people recognise that music is vital, where the social stigma has been overcome and where music is for all. Indeed, a desire for legitimation pervaded the workshop discussions and resulting visions (see Table 9.1), as the musicianteachers envisioned not only music and music education but themselves as musicians and music teachers and their choice to be musicians and music teachers, as legitimate and valuable. The musician-teachers, however, did not merely envision their desired societal changes. They also envisioned actions for achieving these changes. As stories of musics and musicians being devalued, discriminated against, or stigmatised can be found both inside and outside of Nepal, the actions envisioned by the musician-teachers not only have direct implications in Nepal but also suggest some of the challenges and ethical dilemmas music teachers and music teacher educators may face globally while negotiating a world of intensifying diversity and uncertainty.

In this chapter, we explore how the politics of legitimation intersect with music education and schooling, in a context characterised by extremely diverse musics,<sup>1</sup>

<sup>1</sup> We use the words "musics", "cultures", and "traditions" acknowledging the existence of their multiplicity and diversity in Nepal.

Table 9.1 Summary of the co-constructed visions (organised by order of reference in the chapter; see also Treacy 2020b)

To live in a society where music is valued, including where people recognise that music is vital, where the social stigma has been overcome and where music is for all

To develop an internationally recognised music and music education (music teacher training) course in Nepal through affiliations with an outside university for Nepali, eastern, and western musics

That music would be an included (and valued) subject in schools

To have properly designed music organisations with enough instruments, proper classes, etc.

To develop unity between the major music institutions in Nepal so that activities become more controlled and efficient

To create a music community that brings all music lovers to work together and create professionalism

That music teachers would use a variety of teaching and learning techniques in the classroom to make learning easier for students because no one method will work for every teacher or every student

ways of being and becoming a musician, and forces imposing stigma. Thinking with sociocultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, we examine how engaging the collective imagination (1996) and capacity to aspire (2004) supports musician-teachers in finding resources for changing their "terms of recognition" (Appadurai 2004, p. 66). After contextualising the stigmatised position of musician-teachers in Nepal and describing our mode of inquiry, the chapter presents five actions musicianteachers imagined that might hold potential for contesting and altering processes of marginalisation and stigmatisation in Nepali society. We then reflexively interpret these actions in relation to professional responsibility (Solbrekke and Sugrue 2011).

#### 2 Music and Stigma in Nepal

Nepal is characterised by extreme and highly complex diversity, and a long history of social stratification, wherein caste/ethnicity has long ascribed social status and profession. Although currently recognising 126 caste/ethnic groups, 123 languages spoken as mother tongue, and 10 religions (Government of Nepal 2012, p. 4), these categories are not separate and fixed but overlapping and in constant flux as identities are formed and reclassified, by both state and people, as groups work to "renegotiate their identities and their place in the state" (Hangen 2010, p. 28).

Since Nepal's founding in 1769, the caste hill Hindu elite have dominated cultural and socio-political life, while marginalised castes/ethnicities, including indigenous nationalities, Madhesis, and Dalits, have faced linguistic, religious, ethnic, sociocultural and geographical discrimination, and unequal access to state and societal resources (Lawoti 2012). This discrimination was formalised and legally enforced in the 1854 Muluki Ain (Law of the Land), a five-tiered caste hierarchy, based on the Hindu philosophical division of labour and relative purity (Hangen 2010). The 1962 constitution constructed "a deceptive façade of peace and ethnic harmony" through tight state control, official historical narratives, education, and the media (Lawoti 2012, p. 129), and although the 1990 constitution declared multi-ethnicity, secularism, and democracy, persisting inequality and discrimination fuelled a decade-long civil war (1996–2006). The post-2006 peace process saw inclusion become widespread rhetoric; however, this rhetoric has yet to manifest in areas of consequence hence informal discrimination persists (Lawoti 2012).

In the Muluki Ain, musician castes were positioned in the lowest two tiers, with some musician castes such as the Kusle and Kulu classified as touchable, and others, such as the Badi, Damai, and Gaine as untouchable (Subedi 2010), meaning contact with them required ritual purification (Tingey 1995). A disparity exists, however, between caste musicians' stigmatised position and the auspiciousness and indispensable nature of the musics, instruments, and musicians themselves (Tingey 1992, 1995), which are even considered "essential for the well-being" of society (Tingey 1992, p. 97). Besides stratifying society, the caste system also prevented cultural, including musical, exchange between caste/ethnic groups (Moisala 2013). While caste-related stigma and restrictions do not apply to those playing western instruments (Tingey 1995), these musicians are also affected by hierarchy and negative stereotypes, with female musicians in particular experiencing marginalisation (e.g. Treacy 2020a).

Despite the perceived stigma, music education is currently offered in music institutes and as extracurricular or curricular studies in some private schools. Music is included in the primary school national curriculum under Social Studies' "Creative and Performance Art". In addition, music curricula for grades 1–5 (ages 6–11) have been developed by the Nepal Music Center and approved by the Ministry of Education as a local subject, meaning schools can develop their own curricula. For grades 6–8 (ages 12–14) music is included as the second of two possible optional subjects wherein the school selects the subject from a group of possible subjects which is then taken by all students. For grades 9–12 (ages 15–18), music is implemented under the technical and vocational stream. At the tertiary level, it is possible to study music and dance at Tribhuvan University and ethnomusicology at Kathmandu University (see also Treacy 2020c).

#### 3 Mode of Inquiry

The empirical material for this chapter was generated as part of a larger research project through a series of 16 workshops involving 53 musician-teachers working in the Kathmandu Valley. These workshops were co-facilitated by the first author in three groups. Group A had eight 3-hour workshops, the first two of which were repeated on 2 separate days in an attempt to widen participation; group B had four 2-hour workshops; and Group C had two workshops from 1.5–2 hours each with the intention of Group C participants later joining Group B. The workshops were guided by the Appreciative Inquiry 4D model (e.g. Cooperrider et al. 2005) and resulted in seven co-constructed visions (see Table 9.1). The workshops have been described in detail elsewhere (see Treacy 2020b) as has the methodology of the larger research project (see Treacy 2020c).

The empirical material was analysed and reflexively interpreted (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2009) in relation to professional responsibility (Solbrekke and Sugrue 2011). The process of cross-cultural co-authoring was particularly influential. The authors are Danielle Treacy, a Canadian-born music educator and researcher currently living in Finland; Sapna Thapa, a Nepali member of the larger research project's international advisory board and associate professor in the USA; and Suyash Kumar Neupane, a Nepali workshop participant and graduate student of ethnomusicology in the USA. Our preliminary exploration of global influences in Nepali music education, an issue highlighted during the workshops, drew our attention to the local, while reflexive interpretation against the larger research project (see Treacy 2020c), the complex context of Nepal, and the co-authors' lived experiences underscored the desire for professional legitimation as a theme cutting across the co-constructed visions. Aiming at "inquiry as productive critique" (Kuntz 2015, p. 109) of stratification in society, we followed a process of abduction (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2009). Alternating between the empirical material, theory, and discussions, we identified five actions discussed by the musician-teachers related to contesting marginalisation and overcoming stigma. This involved relistening to and re-analysing the approximately 40 hours of workshop discussions, supported by individual and group written responses, and regularly reinterpreting the analysis with all co-authors. All direct quotations are of workshop participants and in their original English. As the focus of the workshops was on co-constructing knowledge, individuals are not identified.

#### 4 Legitimating Actions

Our analysis identified five actions described by the participating musician-teachers as "locally plausible ways" (Appadurai 2004, p. 66) of contesting and altering their marginalised position in society. These actions towards professional legitimation were: (1) challenging stigmatised identities, (2) engaging foreignness, (3) advocating academisation, (4) countering groupism, and (5) promoting professionalisation.

#### 4.1 Challenging Stigmatised Identities

While workshop participants were musicians by choice, they spoke of the challenges faced by "cultural musicians", those "who are doing the ritual duties, who are assigned by the society as musician, who have their grandfathers, forefathers... passing on the legacy to their children." Because of the desire for "freedom" and to be "socially accepted by other castes", the participants described how cultural musicians have been changing their surnames to names related to higher castes (see also Moisala 2013). This means, however, also abandoning their instruments because "if he is no longer Damai... he can no longer play damaha<sup>2</sup> ". The participants generally perceived cultural musicians to be "struggling... fighting ... for their identity" and Nepali musics to be "suffering" and "in crisis". It was even asserted that "We don't know what Nepali music is". The music performed by some groups, however, such as the Damai's panchai baja – a very auspicious ensemble compulsory for festivals and weddings – is so important that a story was shared of one village, where, after the Damai abandoned their instruments, "other castes took the initiative and they started playing the instruments, and they popularised them". Still, this raised a concern that "The instrument goes on but it loses its main essence because the context is completely different". Thus, while the stigma associated with being a cultural musician causes musicians to abandon their names and instruments, individuals, institutions, and local initiatives such as Project Sarangi are becoming concerned with the preservation of some musics perceived to be undervalued or at risk of vanishing due to their association with lower castes.

Accordingly, the musician-teachers envisioned music education in schools to play a crucial role in countering the crisis of the loss of Nepali cultural musicians and their musics and addressing the challenges they encounter. Much resistance was anticipated, however, as parents do not want their children to play low caste instruments or even bring them into their homes. Even Kathmandu University ethnomusicology students among the workshop participants had been questioned or scolded for playing certain instruments in their home or visiting certain communities or musicians to research their musics. This stigma, however, was perceived to be changing as some people from higher castes begin to show interest in lower caste instruments. Still, there was a perceived need for a movement towards greater acceptance of folk musics and instruments "regardless of social stigma", to "respect all forms of music players, not only the pop stars or rock stars, but also the panchai baja players". One musician-teacher elaborated:

If there is respect for individual thought, then I think it will be good for the people who want to do music, or any other thing that is not what society wants.... If he is in a higher class but he wants to do something that is in a lower class, because it is his individual choice, he should be encouraged.

#### 4.2 Engaging Foreignness

The musician-teachers described various ways foreign influences served social distinction. As music is not widely taught in government schools, it continues to be a subject usually taught by private teachers or at music institutes and private schools. Therefore, music education remains a privilege for those who can afford the related fees, and parents still often prefer their children to learn foreign instruments.

<sup>2</sup> Damaha is a bowl-shaped drum, played with a pair of sticks. It is usually identified with the Damai people.

Indeed, performing foreign musics was compared to "speak[ing] English properly" and occupying a "very heightened space". Lessons in instruments like the piano, for example, were associated with wealth and jealousy or competition between families. Consequently, some families not only encourage their children to learn musics associated with higher status but sometimes with "pushing, forcing", even if "the student... doesn't want to play anything". When one private school hired a famous Nepali folk ensemble to teach music as an extracurricular subject, they were teaching the cajon, not madal,<sup>3</sup> and guitar, not sarangi.<sup>4</sup> It was even suggested that students in private schools, where the primary language of instruction is English, feel embarrassed to learn Nepali musics. One musician-teacher explained, "In Kathmandu we are brought up in a rather western influenced environment. All of us want to play bass guitar and drums and guitars rather than our own instruments". Thus, it was lamented:

our music is dying, literally. It will die in two, three decades, and all of us will be in jazz combos, and funk music, and punk music, and rock and roll music.... Even the people who don't mind...being associated with the lower caste, we're just not into that music, I don't know why. It's us who are supposed to give a new direction to that music, to those instruments.

Others noted, however, that playing a foreign instrument had been their route to learning about or performing Nepali musics.

While foreign influences were described as pulling attention outwards, they were also seen to give power to local instruments and musics. Foreigners' appreciation for and interest in learning Nepali instruments like the sarangi were seen to elevate the instruments from something of untouchables to something people of higher castes were now willing and interested in learning. Even the desire to preserve Nepali musics was connected to them being valued by foreigners:

foreign people came to Nepal, and Nepalese people understood that Nepali music is something that [foreigners are] interested in. That's when the clever people wanted to preserve this thing.

Thus, the increasing interest in world music – defined by Schippers (2010) as musics that travel and interact with new contexts (p. 28) – draws international attention and enthusiasm to local Nepali musics.

The power associated with the foreign was also intimately connected to a desire for international comparability and mobility, seen in the vision, to develop an internationally recognised music and music education course in Nepal through affiliations with an outside university. Indeed, some of Nepal's music education institutions were established with foreign support, and some musicians choose to participate in foreign exams offered, for example, by institutions such as ABRASM or Rock School for western musics or by Kalanidhi Indira Sangeet Mahavidhyalaya –

<sup>3</sup> Madal is a cylindrical double-headed membranophone played with two hands and common in various Nepali folk music genres.

<sup>4</sup> Sarangi is a bowed chordophone played upright and associated with the untouchable Gandharva/ Gaine ethnicity.

accredited by Indian institutions – for eastern classical music. Furthermore, as part of the Global Visions project,<sup>5</sup> four Nepal Music Center teachers completed pedagogical studies according to Finnish requirements with context-specific content.

#### 4.3 Advocating Academisation

The musician-teachers recognised the important role of institutions in repositioning music in both schooling and society. Included in the co-constructed visions was that music would be included as a valued subject in schools and to have properly designed music organisations with enough instruments and proper classes. Valuing music in schools was often linked to music learning being structured, through syllabi, lesson plans, and assessments. Indeed, including music as a core school subject was described as "the first thing we can do right now" to legitimate music. Since the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations frame curricular choices, subjects and extracurricular activities not examined in the SLC are often discontinued in grades 9 and 10 (see e.g. Treacy, Timonen, Kallio and Shah 2019). If music were to be included, however, "parents will have in their mind that the exam is coming so [their children] will [be able] to practice". Moreover, "Having music education in the schools itself is a big thing because it provides opportunities for the teachers as well as the students", as schools "contribute by hiring us as teachers" and "provide a good salary for musicians to survive". Academisation was also important for preservation, and some private schools explicitly try to promote Nepali folk musics. The musician-teachers explained "We have to preserve our tradition" and "We have to create our own uniqueness, not following randomly the foreign traditions". Care was required, however, because "if you force that because it is our tradition, our culture, then... it's not gonna work" as students "will lose interest". Importantly, not only learning to perform Nepali musics was deemed necessary for preservation but also how to make Nepali instruments.

There was criticism, however, towards the perceived lack of value of music in schools. Music teachers were said to be hired only to teach songs as the schools "just want the kids to perform" not "grow in a musical direction...because that takes time". In particular, many schools "just want [music] teachers for Parents Day", where music is seen as a kind of publicity for the school. Some schools even hire teachers just to prepare a performance, firing them soon after. Another criticism was that music as an extracurricular activity was "just [to] earn more money from the parents" through "extra fees". Accordingly, the musician-teachers frequently discussed the need for what they called "music awareness", posing questions such as "Why are

<sup>5</sup> The Global Visions through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Nepal, Finland, and Israel (https://sites.uniarts.fi/web/globalvisions) is the larger research project to which this chapter contributes.

there music lessons in the school?" and "Why do you want your students or your children to learn music in school?"

#### 4.4 Countering Groupism

Discrimination was identified as not only coming from non-musicians in Nepali society. The musician-teachers identified "groupism" – a kind of discrimination depending on "what kind of musical circle you are in"– as an area of concern. The musician-teachers, for example, explained how music students differentiate themselves depending on whether they play western or eastern instruments and do not want to engage with students of other kinds of music, each group thinking that they are superior to the other. In addition, the musician-teachers discussed how "there is a lot of distance between" different music institutes in the Kathmandu Valley. Consequently, to encourage mobility between institutions and musical cultures, one of the visions was to develop unity between the major music institutions in Nepal. Additionally, "getting to know others from different backgrounds" and "appreciating and learning through difference" were seen to be important, as was learning "music from another culture or ethnicity". Overall, musicians' regard for each other was viewed as crucial:

Unless music teachers, music learners, and music researchers view one another with equal respect, we cannot expect society to view music positively as a whole and community building isn't possible.

Groupism appeared to be connected to a larger societal issue. While participants expressed that "The most important thing is building a community of music teachers to work together to improve the quality of music education", they added that "even if a community is formed, there will be fractures or factions based on nepotism, favouritism, difference in customs or ethnicity, or religion, or groupism". This was described as something that "prevails in our society", "how it has always been", and due to "the ill effects of politics and its infection on professionalism and community". Hence, it was perceived as an issue of equality that provoked the need to:

provide equal opportunities to all music professionals regarding ethnicity, regarding their caste, regarding their colour, regarding their physical disabilities. We should not create any barriers. We should have to provide equal opportunities for their growth and development.

#### 4.5 Promoting Professionalisation

Professionalisation was seen to be required for careers in music to be regarded as legitimate. Participants expressed that being "a musician is not regarded as a real profession" but a pathway to joblessness. Indeed, "the social image of musicians [is] useless"– even "in the dustbin"– and music is "just for passing your time, for entertainment". Workshop discussions addressed the lack of support from parents, both emotional and financial, and the awkwardness supportive parents experienced when explaining that their child was a musician or studying music, sometimes even hiding it. A musician-teacher recalled, "my father didn't tell even my relatives that I was studying music ... until I received my diploma.... Even parents they support you, but that's a secret support". Thus, convincing parents and grandparents – their own and their students' – that music was worth pursuing was felt as both a need and challenge.

Since "most parents think their children are successful when they earn money" there was also a "need to make [society] aware that [music] can be a career". Thus, the musician-teachers envisioned being "the practical example that anyone who is in music can have a secure future .... And is socially active". Indeed, many musicianteachers held a sense of social responsibility, for example, a small group volunteered to co-teach music lessons in a private school in exchange for free tuition for underprivileged children. Contrary to the beliefs commonly held in society, musician-teachers suggested that studying music helped in potentially "dealing with [the high] unemployment" rate in Nepal, because "safe career path[s]" like "engineering and science ... and medicine... don't have jobs because there are too many [people qualified in these fields]. And musicians, at least they can play and earn some money" or work as music teachers. However, an unseen hierarchy regarding teachers of various subjects and discrimination in salaries were described as challenges to being equally valued.

In addition to securing employment, professionalisation was also associated with being trained or qualified, with particular importance placed on recognised certificate courses. This was particularly important in the absence of government-recognised music teacher education, which caused challenges for participants in proving their skills when applying for jobs. One piano teacher stressed the importance of his ethnomusicology degree from Kathmandu University, despite not receiving any piano lessons as part of the degree, and another described how "the principal just asked me one question, do you know how to read notation?.... She didn't even ask me what you are going to teach with that notation?" Certification was also necessary to "apply for a university outside, and get a scholarship". However, it was also suggested that "not all music teachers should have that academic qualification" because "in eastern and folk music we don't have that system of certification". Instead:

if you learn dhimey...<sup>6</sup> people know you're qualified... after the function called Pirane Puja... when the music student comes out to the public and plays .... So, that's how the whole society says okay, now he is qualified ...that's his certificate.... So we need to consider them based on their experiences.

Finally, sustaining a network of music teachers was also seen as a means to professionalisation, as in the vision, To create a music community that brings all music lovers to work together and create professionalism.

<sup>6</sup> Dhimey is a double-headed cylindrical membranophone played by Newar communities during festivals and rituals. It is played with the combination of a thin stick and hand on each side.

#### 5 Towards Professional Responsibility

The five actions above make clear that music education is not neutral but entangled with various historical, political, economic, and sociocultural complexities. By highlighting tensions musician-teachers must negotiate, both as individuals and as an emerging profession in Nepal, the actions also suggest that conceptualisations of professionalism in music education require a move beyond expertise to considerations of professional responsibility, encompassing wider conceptions of social service and ethical standards (Solbrekke and Sugrue 2011). In particular, the tensions in these actions suggest that professional responsibility in music education requires, among other things, a capacity to ethically and agentively navigate both the dynamic nature of culture and questions of legitimate knowledge.

The actions of challenging stigmatised identities and engaging foreignness remind us that culture is not static, but "a dialogue between aspirations and sedimented traditions" (Appadurai 2004, p. 84) and "an arena for conscious choice, justification, and representation" (Appadurai 1996, p. 44). This challenges national objectives for education, like "prepar[ing] citizens committed to conserve and promote Nepali art, aesthetic values, ideals and other specialties" (Government of Nepal 2007, p. 32), as workshop discussions indicated both an uncertainty regarding what "Nepali music" is and a need to find a unique Nepali musical identity. In an extremely diverse, post-conflict country, where each of the over 120 caste/ethnic groups has unique musical cultures, whose musics are conserved and promoted as Nepali? Moreover, considering the historical association of outside influences in Nepal with both constructing social distinction and "dangerous defilement" (Liechty 1997, p. 23), what Nepali musics have been and what they may become are shaped not only by the past and local but also by the future and global. In aspiring to a more equitable future, therefore, professional responsibility could also encompass the sense of agency, even activism, demonstrated by the workshop participants in countering societal resistance – by raising awareness and respect for individual choice – and dismantling societal and musical boundaries and hierarchies. However, as recognised by the participants "changing the attitude of society" is "a very long process".

It is not only individual music teachers and the music teaching profession who are required to contend with such dilemmas. The actions advocating academisation and promoting professionalisation remind us of the legitimating function of academic institutions. Indeed, the musician-teachers envisioned music as legitimate knowledge (Apple 2004), legitimating music not only as a subject of study but also as a career more broadly. Consequently, as music enters schools, professional responsibility also involves ongoing critical reflection on this legitimating function, as "schools confer cultural legitimacy on the knowledge of specific groups" (Apple 2004, p. 61, our italics) rather than all groups. Thus, intense debates about which musics should be studied, researched, and performed in academic institutions, such as those that took place in the workshops, are profoundly complicated and ethical debates. This demands that institutions examine their visions for music education and their role in reproducing and dismantling hierarchies, as – contrary to the place of schooling in the public imagination as enabling social mobility – education has long been "the primary sorting mechanism in society" (Patel 2016, p. 30). An explicit vision to promote Nepali folk musics was held by some of the schools in this study. Such a vision enables musics that have traditionally held lower status to enter schools. This musical gentrification (Dyndahl et al. 2014), however, not only changes lower status musics into something to be acquired by people of higher status and power. Educational contexts also reshape the musics (Dyndahl et al. 2014). Thus, professional responsibility ought to include constantly asking, and re-asking, what musics are included, what musics are excluded, why and with what consequences, and how might different musics need to be reshaped, so that systems of inequity are not maintained.

#### 6 Concluding Thoughts

In this chapter, we explored the politics of legitimation in music education in an extremely diverse society. In particular, we focused on actions described by musician-teachers in the Kathmandu Valley for legitimating music (in general and the vast diversity of musics in Nepal), music education, and both being and becoming a musician or music teacher. The chapter emphasises the important role of music educators' imaginations and aspirations in articulating and countering discrimination through envisioning actions that may contribute to a more transformative and socially just music education and society more broadly. The case of musicianteachers in the Kathmandu Valley, therefore, reminds us of the need to critically re-examine our own contexts. Thus, we suggest that it is imperative for music teacher education globally to nurture future teachers' capacities to aspire and to envision not only their ideal future classrooms or what good teaching could be but also the place of their teaching and subject in shaping more just future societies. To this end, music teacher education could be developed to include critical reflection on societal structures and power issues shaping the field and provide space for teachers to not only imagine how those structures may be dismantled (Patel 2016, p. 74) but to allow their imaginations to become the "fuel for action" (Appadurai 2004, p. 7). In doing so, professionally responsible music teachers and music teacher educators could work towards the social changes required to meet global calls for more inclusive societies, such as the Nepali objectives for education which aspire to counter hegemonic constructs like untouchability and "develop a strong sense of non-discrimination towards others despite their caste, ethnicity, religion, language, gender, class, and disability" (Government of Nepal 2007, p. 41).

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the musician-teachers who participated in the workshops and shared their perspectives and experiences as part of this research, dhanyabaad! We would also like to thank Iman Shah, principal of the Nepal Music Center, for his assistance verifying the current state of music education in Nepal, and the doctoral community at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki for comments and guidance in refining this text.

Open Access An earlier draft of this chapter was originally published in Treacy's (2020) Imagining Possibilities: Musician-Teachers Co-constructing Visions in the Kathmandu Valley (Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Studia Musica 80, http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fife202002145503). The earlier draft was licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Very minor changes have been made to the Abstract and Mode of Inquiry in this version, and the reference list has been updated.

Funding This research has been undertaken as part of the project Global Visions through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Nepal, Finland, and Israel funded by the Academy of Finland (2015–2020, project no. 286162).

#### References


Danielle Shannon Treacy is a lecturer at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the ethical and methodological deliberations involved in intercultural music teacher education policy, practice, and research, and collaborative learning and reflective practice in higher arts education. At the university level, she currently teaches in the MuTri Doctoral School and the Global Music Department.

Sapna Thapa is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Teacher Education in the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Her research interests are cultural teaching practices, diversity, and equity in early childhood education. Her recent research project is a cross-cultural collaborative study that explores emotional experiences of preservice teachers.

Suyash Kumar Neupane is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Ethnomusicology at the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University Bloomington, USA. His research interests include structural casteism in the musics of Nepal, collaborative ethnographic approaches to the recontextualisation of archival and museum collections of South Asian musics, and multisensorial ethnography pertaining to the relationship between food and sound.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Part III Extending the Scope of Diversity in Music Education

## The Paradox of Democracy in Popular Music Education: Intersectionalizing "Youth" Through Curriculum Analysis

Minja Koskela, Anna Kuoppamäki, Sidsel Karlsen , and Heidi Westerlund

Abstract In this chapter, we unpack the complex politics of popular music education (PME) in schools through an examination of the ways in which youth and youth culture are represented in the Finnish National Core Curricula (2004 and 2014). Interrogating commonly held conceptualizations of diversity in music education, we identify a paradox in school-based PME which, on the one hand, aims toward democratic classroom practice yet, on the other, neglects diversity by approaching youth as a homogenous group. Challenging common analytical points of departure in PME research, we argue that scholars and educators need to recognize the multiple and intersecting identities of students if PME is to afford them equal opportunities for participation. Overall, we suggest that through the analytical lens of intersectionality, PME may be better positioned to take into account students' own experiences of inequalities, providing new perspectives on diversity at the policy level. Thus, intersectionality could provide a useful analytical frame in the process of furthering further democratic practice in the classroom.

Keywords Popular music · Music education · Intersectionality · Democracy · Diversity · Curriculum

Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: minja.koskela@gmail.com; anna.kuoppamaki@gmail.com; heidi.westerlund@uniarts.fi

M. Koskela (\*) · A. Kuoppamäki · H. Westerlund

S. Karlsen Music Education and Music Therapy Department, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, Norway e-mail: sidsel.karlsen@nmh.no

#### 1 Introduction

In this chapter, we will address the need for change both in classroom practice as well as in policy texts, such as music curricula, in diversifying societies to better enhance democracy and tackle increasing inequalities. More specifically we will examine the ways in which students and students' culture are represented in the Finnish National Core Curricula (Finnish National Board of Education 2004, 2014), particularly in relation to the teaching and learning of popular music in increasingly culturally diverse Finnish schools.<sup>1</sup> Heterogeneous societies – now defined as "super-diverse" (Vertovec 2007) <sup>2</sup> – are facing a rise in xenophobic and nationalist expressions, requiring a new politics of diversity in order to enact solidarity. At the core of this global democracy project are young people, acting as the "architects for the future" (Mansouri 2017, p. 3).

For decades, popular music education (hereafter PME) has been treated as the democratizer of music education not just in Finland but globally. It has been argued that popular music making and garage bands "can serve as a model for nonhierarchical music education," thus increasing classroom democracy (Allsup 2011, p. 31), and that PME offers "the new channel of general musical learning" (Wright 2017, p. 10), pushing forward a broader democratic revolution in education. Underlying is the assumption that popular music best represents students' musical interests (e.g., Bennett 2000; Väkevä 2006) and that democratic practice in itself positions the student at the center of the learning process (e.g., Allsup 2011; Väkevä and Westerlund 2007; Väkevä 2006; Westerlund 2006). Consequently, popular music forms a well-established and somewhat hegemonic mode of musical expression within school music education in the Nordic countries (e.g., Dyndahl et al. 2017; Georgii-Hemming and Westvall 2010; Kallio and Väkevä 2017; Smith 2015). This is the case also in Finland, where popular music was first introduced in the school music curriculum in the 1960s (Väkevä 2006; Westerlund 2006).

The early inclusion of popular music in Finland, while lacking theorization of popular music's pedagogical implications was mainly based on the democratic ideals of PME enhancing students' participation by bringing youth culture as a point of departure of the teaching and learning (Väkevä 2006). This can be seen as a necessary shift from the dominant hegemony of classical music values. Earlier music education research indeed refers to popular music as teenagers' "own" music (e.g., Bennett 2000; Green 2006; Väkevä 2006). This premise is however not unproblematic. For example, according to Georgii-Hemming and Westvall (2010), the studies have shown that despite the general intention of education to

<sup>1</sup> For example, according to Statistics Finland's PX-Web Database (2019), the share of persons with foreign background in Helsinki has doubled between 2004 and 2016.

<sup>2</sup> According to Meissner and Vertovec (2016), super-diversity can be used in three different ways: (1) as a descriptive summary term to exemplify changes in population; (2) as a methodological term that seeks to understand complex new social formations; and (3) by highlighting the need to recognize new social conditions shaped by global migration and population change. Here we refer particularly to the second and third aspects.

"take account of students' 'own' music" (p. 22), all students' musical worlds are not necessarily represented in the Swedish classroom. Furthermore, Kallio and Väkevä (2017) note that it is no longer possible to "rely on a consensus with regard to which popular music students identify with and call their 'own'" (p. 75). The rapidly diversifying teaching contexts undoubtedly beg us to question the premise of popular music as a "more or less homogenous cultural field shared and liked principally by the youth" (p. 78) and challenge the assumption of teenagers as a homogenous category which would unquestionably share similar musical interests. In this chapter, we ask: what kind of politics of diversity is represented in the national curriculum for basic education and music in Finland in terms of who the students are expected to be?

By analyzing the most important curricula texts guiding compulsory schooling in Finland, we wish to unpack the complexities of the politics of PME by showing that teachers in this context have to learn to engage in a complex negotiation between their own teacher education and the changing policy texts, which may be incompatible. As a whole, this chapter argues that the current analytical point of departure in PME research, which adopts youth as a taken-for-granted homogenous category, can be challenged by recognizing the multiple and intersecting identities of the students. Furthermore, we argue that such recognition would allow us to discuss democratic learning processes in a more complex analytical way through the notions of equal possibility for active participation and of radical democracy (Mouffe 2005), the latter emphasizing disagreements and diversity as prerequisites for democratic action. Radical democracy in music classrooms would require acknowledging diversity and letting it exist, thrive, and be addressed by allowing and encouraging a multiplicity of viewpoints and even disagreements. This approach would "indicate that democracy is alive and inhabited by pluralism" (Mouffe 2000, p. 34). Thus, in this chapter, we argue for such a negotiation of music education practices that can transform social and cultural structures and categories, thereby guiding young people to work not only as architects of their own lives but also as architects for the future.

#### 2 The National Core Curriculum and Popular Music in Finnish Schools

Comprehensive schooling throughout grades 1–9 in Finland (students 7–15 years old) is publicly funded and governed. General education is guided by the National Core Curriculum, a policy document that aims to maintain the cohesion, quality, and legal protection of education throughout Finland. The most recent Core Curriculum for Basic Education (Finnish National Board of Education 2014) was published in 2014, and the process of implementing this curriculum started in 2016 and was completed in 2019. Following the structure of previous curricula, the document contains a general overview with guidelines for education relevant for all teachers and students and a subject-specific section, in which these broader guidelines are operationalized for each subject. Each school develops its own local curriculum based on the guidelines of the Core Curriculum – a process in which teachers are heavily involved and are afforded considerable autonomy.

The music curricula of the 1980s and 1990s and music teacher education in Finland emphasized the learning by doing principle (Muukkonen 2010). This emphasis is still visible in the 2014 music curriculum which highlights musical action as the basis of musical learning. In Finnish schools, the learning by doing principle is mainly executed through PME. The hegemony of popular music practices in Finnish general music education might be seen as a consequence of the music teacher education programs (Westerlund and Juntunen 2015), in which hands-on popular music skills have been emphasized and highly valued for decades as a response to the earlier hegemony of western classical music and emphasis on listening and singing. Popular music and popular band instruments fitted well with the idea of performance and music production being central in learning, even when struggling with the limited time and students' heterogeneous skills – an idea relevant in other than Finnish contexts, too. It is noteworthy that the popular music pedagogy in Finnish schools is not based on students' informal peer-learning processes, as in the seminal approach by Lucy Green (e.g., Green 2002, 2008); rather, it takes the teacher as an expert of student-centered popular music pedagogy (Westerlund 2006) and a facilitator in group teaching situations (e.g., Cremata 2017). However, it is notable that the 2014 music curriculum does not specifically emphasize popular music but rather musical versatility. Yet popular music often forms the starting point for classroom teaching and learning in Finnish schools (Kallio 2015).

#### 3 Theoretical and Analytical Lenses: Intersectionalizing Youth

In this chapter, we understand social identities as multilayered and believe that each layer of one's identity might come with its related structural systems of oppression, domination, and discrimination. To acknowledge the relational interplay between the student identities and the structures involved in PME, we utilize intersectionality (e.g., Bradley 2016; Crenshaw 1989; Grzanka 2014) – a concept originally coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) in the context of fighting for black women's rights and recognition and currently imported into numerous disciplines that deal with inequalities and identities (Lutz 2015). Intersectionality is here used to highlight how social constructs and identities, such as social class, gender, race, age, sexuality, disability, and religious affiliation, intersect among youth and adolescents and, by doing so, also shape the social world and the structures of school in which inequality may be produced and experienced. By intersectionalizing youth, understood as a homogenous group of consumers of popular music, we aim to highlight how different social constructs and inequalities may co-construct one another in the classroom (see also Grzanka 2014, p. xiii). This contrasts with the past de-intersectionalization of "youth music," in which age has been taken as the main categorical criterion. De-intersectionalization is a process in which "the variety of possible relevant categories are ignored and people are treated by way of one, usually essentialized, category only" (Vertovec 2015, p. 13; also, Faist 2015). We thus recognize the use of the concept intersectionality as a political project meant to make the social and material consequences of various identification categories visible. Moreover, in line with Apple (1979) and Pinar et al. (1995), we understand the written curricular texts as political as they reproduce, as well as aim to transform, hidden structures and hegemonies of the society.

In the context of music education and PME, utilizing intersectionality enables shifting the focus from the musical styles and practices to the conditions in which musical action takes place and to the experiences of the students. Hence, we recognize that the very processes of community making and enacting solidarity (see above, Mansouri 2017) are not necessarily arising through musical repertoires but are conditioned by students' own identification and the categories that their peers and teachers use, or may not use, for identifying them. Furthermore, we acknowledge that one of the most important criteria for how music education is experienced by students with various backgrounds may be the possibility to cooperate musically in their everyday peer-group (see also Sæther 2008). Thus, intersectionality here serves as a lens for exploring the interplay between the different identities, school structures, and the conditions in which music education is put into action.

We use intersectionality as a methodology (e.g., Lutz 2015, p. 367) to identify representations of assumed categories related to students' identity in the Finnish National Core Curriculum as well as in the "inter-categorical" sense (p. 365) by problematizing the primacy of any specific category in PME, independent of the situation. Intersectionality is therefore used as "a heuristic device ... in detecting the overlapping and co-construction of visible and – at first sight – invisible strands of inequality" (p. 366). Previous music education research has pinpointed the workings of gender, sexuality, social class, ethnicity, and race (e.g., Bates 2019; Bradley 2007; Gould 2005; Green 2003; Hess 2015). However, given the vastly diversifying teaching contexts in Finland and worldwide, further understanding on the interrelatedness of student identities and structural inequity is needed. Building toward such understanding, intersectionality here serves as an analytic tool. Furthermore, for music educators to understand what popular music does within the school context requires an understanding of how "structures are constituted by the actions of agents (people, institutions)" and also that this "action itself is organized within the parameters of existing structures" (Bradley 2016, p. 14). It should be noted, however, that our analysis is limited to only providing scenarios of the potential mechanisms of inequality in PME.

#### 3.1 The Method of Analysis

To explore how the Finnish National Core Curriculum represents students, students' culture, and the aims of music education in the changing Finnish society and also how such articulations have changed over time, we have analyzed the curricula from 2004 (Finnish National Board of Education 2004) and 2014 (Finnish National Board of Education 2014). We analyzed the general part of both 2004 and 2014 curricula in order to identify the general changes in policy; however, the music subject part was analyzed only from the 2014 curriculum.<sup>3</sup> We first coded curricular texts deductively by using qualitative content analysis (Brinkmann and Kvale 2014) and color coding to identify the categories that we attended to before exploring their intersections and consequences. The categories were selected by considering the demographic parameters which may construct "Otherness" and, thus, inequalities in their interplay with school's sociocultural structures. In defining the categories, we drew on the literature on intersectionality (e.g., Bradley 2016; Grzanka 2014; Lutz 2015) to unify our theoretical ground. These categories – also identified by Bradley (2016) – were social class, gender, "race," age, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. We then compared the two curricular texts with respect to which of these parameters was present and which was absent, in order to identify how students were represented in terms of identity categories and their intersections and also of how such representations might vary between the analyzed texts.

The analysis was conducted in three phases. Following our methodological choices, we followed the principles of inter-categorical complexity (McCall 2005), which "begins with the observation that there are relationships of inequality among already constituted social groups ... and takes those relationships as the center of analysis" (pp. 1784–1785). We then focused on the places in the curricular texts where understandings of culture, cultural diversity, or musical culture were articulated, either explicitly or implicitly through broader descriptions of society and of the surrounding world of the students. This was done to investigate how the policy texts envisioned the students' lifeworlds and the broader conditions for enacting the variety of cultural belongings on the societal level. Finally, the curricular representations of students and their surrounding cultural conditions were interpreted against the conception of "youth," and the understandings of popular music as equivalent with "students' own music," to grasp the complexity of the politics of diversity in school music in Finland.

<sup>3</sup> In a preliminary analysis communicated in a conference paper (see Koskela et al. 2017), the music subject part of the 2004 curriculum was also included. However, its content was not seen as vital for underpinning the findings discussed in this article.

#### 4 Intersectionality and Cultural Diversity as Addressed in the Finnish Core Curricula

The current Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (Finnish National Board of Education 2014) emphasizes equal opportunities for all students and calls for inclusive practices. Below, we will address the understanding of diversities through two broad themes, namely, how the analyzed two curricula texts represent the students in terms of identity categories and their possible intersections and how culture and cultural diversity are constructed. Finally, we will reflect these understandings with respect to PME in Finnish schools.

#### 4.1 Representing "The Student": Identity Categories and Their Intersections

The general and overarching part of the Finnish 2014 curriculum considers a variety of social constructs on the part of the student, such as gender, culture, age, disability, ethnicity, sexuality, and religious affiliation, although the latter is only implicitly mentioned in relation to culture and cultural differences (see p. 30). Social class is not mentioned, the document refers to the varying socio-economic backgrounds of the students thus implying, yet not fully covering, the class difference. The multifaceted nature of gender is addressed, for example, by stating that one of the goals of schooling is to promote "information and understanding of the diversity of gender" (p. 18). In this respect, the 2014 curriculum clearly advances on the 2004 one, which mentions gender only twice throughout the whole document (see Finnish National Board of Education 2004, pp. 12 and 18).

Whereas the general part of the 2014 curriculum quite broadly recognizes a variety of identity categories, the music part of the curriculum employs a far narrower construction. This part of the text, extended to encompass three different grade spans (grades 1–2; grades 3–6; grades 7–9), centers on the music subject and its related practices and understandings, rather than employing a broad conception of who the student might be. Nevertheless, the music curriculum conveys an understanding of students as having their "own cultures" (p. 284), a "cultural heritage" (p. 152), and as belonging to "communities" (p. 284). Furthermore, age is mentioned once (p. 152), and the fact that students might have "different needs, abilities, and interests" (p. 152, see also p. 284 and p. 456) is noted, indicating an awareness of challenges related to social and ability differentiation. The student is only implicitly constructed as gendered, through recognizing that the teacher should aim to change "potentially gendered practices of the music culture and music instruction" (p. 456) and in using the expression of "his or her/him or her" to refer to the student. The latter strongly reinforces a binary gender system and limits other expressions of gender. Overall, however, the impression of the students as viewed through the 2014 music curriculum is that they, above all, are constructs of culture, in the sense that belonging to a culture, having a cultural heritage, and being connected to a community of some sort stand out as the primary markers of identification.

From the student's point of view, having an ethnic minority background and living in an area with low economic income might manifest as an experience of intersecting inequality. Thus, awareness of how identity categories and their corresponding (dis)advantages merge, transform, and overlap is needed if schools and teachers are expected to cater to the needs of a diverse group of students. Also, such lenses and knowledge are necessary for fulfilling the curricular aims of, for example, incorporating students' "musical interests" (p. 454), their "activities outside of school" (p. 454), and "expand[ing] their musical competence and worldview" (p. 454). In the music subject part, the complexity of students' social positioning is not addressed, and cultural diversity and interaction are mentioned solely in positive terms, as a source of richness and as something to respect (see p. 16). Another layer of complexity is removed from the curriculum, one which could have aided the teacher in navigating the diversifying society. We will next move from the level of how the student is represented and look further into how understandings of culture and of cultural diversity are shaped through the Finnish curricular texts.

#### 4.2 Representations of (Finnish) Culture and Cultural Diversity

In the 2004 National Core Curriculum, Finnish culture is articulated as a homogenous monolith, from which non-Finnish cultures are differentiated and separated. The document states that "the basis of instruction is Finnish culture" (Finnish National Board of Education 2004, p. 12) and that students should be guided to understand the "essence of the Finnish and European cultural identities" (p. 37). Instruction should promote "tolerance and intercultural understanding" (p. 12), and Finnish culture is seen to be diversified "through the arrival of people from other cultures" (p. 12). Overall, though, a picture of Finnish culture as a solid and unified entity appears, both through the consistent use of the singular form ("culture"), the belief in "cultural essence," and the repeated distinctions between Finnish culture and "other cultures." This bipartition is also visible in the part of the curriculum that specifically handles Sámi students and the education in the Indigenous Sámi areas in Northern Finland. Instruction should "reinforce the [Sámi] pupils' indigenous identity and afford possibilities for learning their own language" (p. 32), and they should have knowledge of "their own culture and history" (p. 32). There is no mention of the need for all students to familiarize themselves with Sámi cultures. In an understanding where Finnish culture is seen to have "an essence," Sámi students are positioned as being an "Other" to that essence and thus as outside of Finnish normality.

In contrast, the 2014 curriculum recognizes that Finnish culture has never existed as consistently coherent and that current societies are undergoing transformations. Finnish society is referred to as "culturally transforming and diverse" (Finnish National Board of Education 2014, p. 29) and also as a context "where the local and global overlap" (p. 29). Basic education should now be "built on a diverse Finnish heritage" (p. 16), and school should be a place for students to be "acquainted with cultural traditions, constructively discuss different ways of thinking and acting, and create new ways for acting together" (p. 29). The cultural diversity manifested in each and every student is underlined by pointing out that "[e)ach community and community member is multilingual" (p. 29) and that this multilingualism opens up different viewpoints and should be appreciated and encouraged. In the 2014 curriculum, the constructions of tradition, culture, and heritage no longer rely on the singular form but are plural to begin with, and any mentioning of essence with reference to culture is absent. The plurality is even acknowledged as existing within each student, which also means that no one in particular, or perhaps everyone within themselves, represents "the Other." The school system has been given the task, explicitly, to bring "up the importance of the Sámi culture and various minorities in Finland" (p. 29), so the responsibility for intercultural negotiation and exchange is no longer exclusively the task of the minorities themselves. Thus, the general part of the National Core Curriculum both seeks and in many ways succeeds to respond to the current societal changes in Finland.

The same openness toward inherent plurality cannot, however, be seen to characterize the 2014 music part of the curriculum. Here, again, the understanding of cultural heritage as singularly homogeneous is the dominant one (see Finnish National Board of Education 2014, p. 152, p. 284 and p. 455), and differences arise mainly from outside sources, through the students being allowed to "familiarize themselves with a diverse range of musical cultures and genres" (p. 152). Although not made explicit in the curricular text, the singular "cultural heritage" could be interpreted as being similar or close to the essentialized "Finnish culture" articulated in the 2004 curriculum, since there is no further discussion of what this heritage might be or to whom it might belong. Moreover, the view of musical differences that come into the classroom from outside could be construed as a reinstating of the bipartition between Finnish music/culture and other musics/cultures. Still, the music curriculum does acknowledge the plurality of students' cultures and communities (see p. 152) and conveys, as such, a limited recognition of complexity.

#### 4.3 Intersectionalizing "The Youth" in PME

Whereas the general part of the 2014 curriculum manages to recognize multiple and varying identity categories, the music curriculum's construction of plurality is far narrower. Next, we will move on to explore how the understandings of student identities in music education practice and in related PME research relate to the constructions of plurality presented in the curriculum.

Through the comparison presented above, a picture emerges that shows how the understandings of diversity and diverse student identities have evolved over time in the Finnish National Core Curriculum and have gradually become more complex. However, the analysis also shows how teachers must navigate a complex array of constructions within one and the same document and thereby also apply diverse ideological starting points in their teaching practices, which in Finnish school music education strongly rely on PME. It is clear though that students' culture/cultures cannot be understood or essentialized as youth culture, or vice versa. To some extent this essentialization has, however, taken place in the earlier PME research when it has assumed popular music as teenagers' "own" music (e.g., Bennett 2000; Green 2006; Väkevä 2006), thus treating both "youth" and "popular music" as unified categories.

Nevertheless, nothing supports the assumption that students' own music should necessarily be equated with popular music. On the contrary, the latest research has shown that at its worst, PME policies can even work as instruments of social exclusion (Kallio and Väkevä 2017) and, thus, dissonances with regard to which (popular) music the teenagers call their "own." In short, whereas within the general part of the curriculum intersectional ideas have developed between 2004 and 2014, PME's premise of "youth" as a homogeneous category fails in acknowledging the plurality of teenagers. This premise is especially problematic now that the teaching contexts are diversifying rapidly thus including exponentially the varying musical worlds of the students. This is not to say that students' musical preferences would not serve as a sufficient starting point for pedagogical action, such as the earlier PME research suggests (e.g., Green 2006; Väkevä 2006; Wright 2017). Instead, the growing diversity calls for changing understanding of what these preferences are and for theorization of popular music's pedagogical implications (see also Väkevä 2006) with respect to changing pedagogical contexts. For this task, intersectionality might serve a useful tool, as intersectionalizing the category of "youth" reveals that treating teenagers as a homogeneous category may even lead to bypassing differences and inequalities. Moving toward a more complex understanding of diversity in PME and music education in general can also help the teachers to navigate their work within the changing teaching settings as well as to include students' varying musical worlds more competently in their teaching.

#### 5 Discussion: Toward a More Complex Politics of Diversity in (Popular) Music Education

In this chapter we have argued that the current approach of PME, in which the "youth" category is used for justifying certain practices, obscures other categories that may be relevant to identity and related to experienced inequality in increasingly super-diverse societies. We have suggested that by using intersectionality as a lens to examine not just curricular texts but also the very educational practices that make use of them, we could enhance understandings of when, how, and why inequalities may potentially be experienced. Although the conceptualizations of the politics of diversity have seemingly deepened in Finnish compulsory school curricula in the period between 2004 and 2014, the ways that student identities and cultural diversity appear in the music subject curriculum do not represent the complexity of identity work nor the rapid changes of the population. While the general part of the 2014 Finnish National Core Curriculum does recognize different social constructs and acknowledges today's school and society as fluid and multiple, it at the same time fails in addressing how the various identity categories may intersect in the everyday lives of the students, even when the context can be described as seemingly homogeneous. Moreover, if popular music's use is justified by de-intersectionalizing (e.g., Vertovec 2015; Faist 2015) the category of youth, it may even further reinforce the assumption of homogeneity of students in the classroom.

Importantly, in the latest music curriculum, labels of musical styles and practices form the main way to address diversity, while in the general curriculum discourse, difference can also involve and point to inequality, injustice, and even discrimination. This change is not, however, manifested in the music curriculum in which difference is mainly taken as something to celebrate and sustain. The music curriculum, then, does not articulate teaching and learning situations as social constructs that are constructed with, through, and by different (and intersecting) social positions which may sustain cultural hegemonies. Furthermore, PME – even when understood as a heterogeneous and diverse category in itself (Allsup et al. 2012) – might not respond to Finnish National Core Curriculum's call for adding multiple musics to the educational repertoire, as a minimum attempt toward acknowledging diversity. Moreover, it is notable that even though religious affiliation appeared in our analysis only as implicated in culture and cultural differences, religion may have practical consequences in music teaching and learning situations. Religion, or belief, is indeed a category that seems vastly forgotten in PME scholarship (see however Kallio 2015 who identifies religion as one censorious narrative through which teachers in her study conducted their popular repertoire decisions), as well as by the Finnish music curriculum, and is rather taken as a matter of private space instead of an issue to be dealt with publicly. For instance, Westerlund et al. (2019) have argued that the development of secularism in schools has created a false assumption that students arrive at the music classroom without their (non)religious backgrounds or beliefs and identity categories.

This chapter has aimed to show that new perspectives on diversity discourses at the policy level are urgently needed and that intersectionality could provide a useful analytical tool in the process of rethinking how inequalities of PME in Finland, or elsewhere, could be tackled in classroom practices in schools. These perspectives are timely, as in a vastly diversifying society PME can no longer stem from an assumption of homogeneity of students and, thus, needs to acknowledge other social categories than youth, too. However, as Lappalainen and Lahelma (2016) state, we should perhaps not overstate the impact of national curricula but rather see these documents as a somewhat compromised reflection of the diverse powers operating in a society at a given time. Yet, the clear difference between the general guidelines in the latest Finnish National Core Curriculum and the music-specific part of the text raises further questions about how wider professional reflexivity and "praxis of intersectionality" (Bubar et al. 2016, p. 283) ought to be developed in music teacher education programs in the future. Acknowledging, cherishing, and debating diversity in the music classroom would also fulfill the radical democracy (Mouffe 2005) requirements of encouraging a multiplicity of viewpoints and even disagreements. This demands not only intersectionalizing youth in PME but also a deeper understanding of diversity in education in general. Reflexivity – a method which helps to analyze and challenge one's actions and immediate interpretations (e.g., Alvesson and Sköldberg 2018) – would then be a requirement for teachers and need to be practiced and developed also by students. This would enable teachers to extend their expertise as the facilitators of the student-centered curriculum and the students to better position themselves as architects of their own futures.

#### References


Minja Koskela is a doctoral candidate in music education at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Koskela has taught music in high school and upper elementary school level for 5 years. In her doctoral dissertation, she explores the democracy of popular music education through intersectional feminism and inquires into her own teaching context. She has written popular nonfiction books on her research area (Ennen kaikkea feministi [A feminist before all else] 2019; Toisin tehty - keskusteluja koulusta [Differently Done – Conversations about school] 2020).

Anna Kuoppamäki (DMus) is a music educator, songwriter, and music education researcher. Kuoppamäki works as a teacher at the Music School of West Helsinki and as a postdoctoral researcher in ArtsEqual research initiative coordinated by the University of the Arts Helsinki. She is also an experienced workshop leader and teacher-in-service trainer and has given courses on creative and interactive teaching methods widely across Finland. In her current project, G Songlab that offers open-access and free-of-charge songwriting workshops for young people interested in writing their own music, she examines the meanings of songwriting, particularly as part of citizenship agency.

Sidsel Karlsen is Professor of Music Education at the Norwegian Academy of Music where she also serves as one of the leaders of the Centre for Educational Research in Music (CERM). Karlsen is also a docent at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki in Finland, and one of two PIs in the research project Global visions through mobilizing networks: Co-developing intercultural music teacher education in Finland, Israel, and Nepal. Karlsen has published widely in international research journals, anthologies, and handbooks and serves on several international editorial boards.

Heidi Westerlund has been working as professor at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland since 2004. She has served in the editorial and reviewer boards in several international journals and is the editor in chief of the Finnish Journal of Music Education. She is the co-editor of Collaborative learning in higher music education (Ashgate, 2013), Perspectives on Music, Education and Religion: A Critical Inquiry (Indiana University Press, 2019), and Visions for Intercultural Music Teacher Education (Springer, 2020). She is the PI in The arts as public service: Strategic Steps toward Equality (2015–2021) and Global Visions Through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Finland, Israel and Nepal (2015–2020), as well as the CO-PI in Music for Social Impact: Practitioners' Contexts, Work, and Beliefs, AHRC (2020–2022).

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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## Where Does Diversity Go Straight? Biopolitics, Queer of Color Critique, and Music Education

#### Elizabeth Gould

Abstract Diversity discourses in music education have evolved from (white) liberalism of the 1990s that conceived difference in terms of dualisms such as insider/ outsider to global neoliberalism currently in which sources of difference are interchangeable as long as the historicity of each remains occluded. In this way, so-called "diversity-relevant" groups, such as white queer people are positioned against non-white groups, straight or otherwise, in ways that support neoliberalism and contribute to violence against the latter. To ask where diversity goes straight assumes a place where it is not straight—if not exactly queer, with queer understood (in the context of race) as a "refusal to inherit" kinship relations in which queer(s) disappear (s). Whether conceived in terms of culture, race, (dis)ability, gender, and/or sexuality, diversity has become "all the rage" in music education and academic research generally. Theorizing diversity discourses in music education at their discursive limits, I argue that those limits are also where they also may be exceeded and demonstrate this through an example using queer of color critique to analyze interactions of sources of difference as a way to historicize and racialize "diversity" in music education.

Keywords Diversity · Queer · Biopolitics · Race · Music education

#### 1 Introduction

To ask where diversity goes straight assumes a place where diversity is not straight—if not exactly queer, with queer understood (in the context of race) as a "refusal to inherit" kinship relations in which queer(s) disappear(s) (Ahmed 2006). Whether conceived in terms of culture, race, (dis)ability, gender, and/or sexuality, diversity has become "all the rage" in music education and academic research

© The Author(s) 2021 A. A. Kallio et al. (eds.), The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1\_11

E. Gould (\*)

Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: e.gould@utoronto.ca

generally. Our metaphorical and material trafficking in diversity may be described as cool (Horning 2013): "a new fusion of social and cultural capital with demonstrable competencies in consumption—knowing what to buy [research and travel], and when, and how to seize opportunities to display [present and publish] it" (para7). As the very definition of cool, queer theory also is a "hot commodity," evidenced by changes in the politics of diversity from music education's liberalism of the 1990s based on difference expressed through dualisms (rather than "binaries") <sup>1</sup> such as insider/outsider, to the biopolitics of global neoliberalism now.

In this chapter I take up neoliberalism using the vocabulary of French philosopher and social theorist, Michel Foucault, as a "power-knowledge regime ... shap[ing] subjectivity, relations of production, gender and race politics, ... artistic practices and aesthetics" (James 2014b, p. 139) and theorize "diversity" at its discursive limits through Judith Butler's (1993) discussion of the discursive limits of "sex." With diversity "the explicit aim of neoliberalism" (Winnubst 2012, p. 94), I argue that cultural diversity discourses in music education implicating music (James 2014b) and race support and maintain the biopolitics of neoliberalism in which all diversityrelevant (Dobusch 2017) groups are interchangeable, positioning cool, straight (ened) white queer gender/sexuality groups against non-white, obliquely positioned groups in ways that uphold neoliberalism, contributing to state violence and antidemocratic ends (Ludwig 2016). Biopolitical neoliberalism may be where cultural diversity discourses in music education confront their discursive limits, but it is also where they may exceed them with queer of color critique, which emerged from women of color feminism and Black<sup>2</sup> lesbian feminism during the 1970s and1980s as "a reading practice" examining interactions of race, gender, sexuality, and class, in and as "histories of racialization" (Ferguson and Hong 2012) and sexualization. Queer of color critique provides the frame for my analysis historicizing and racializing "diversity" in music education.

#### 2 On the Discursive Limits of "Diversity"

Butler (1993) argues that "sex" is normative; in Foucauldian terms, it is a "regulatory ideal":

In this sense, then, "sex" not only functions as a norm, but is part of a regulatory practice that produces the bodies it governs, ... whose regulatory force is made clear as a kind of productive power, the power to produce—demarcate, circulate, differentiate—the bodies it controls. Thus, "sex" is a regulatory ideal whose materialization is compelled, and this materialization takes place (or fails to take place) through certain highly regulated practices. In other words, "sex" is an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time. (p. 2)

<sup>1</sup> Binaries are parallel or opposing terms; neither is intrinsically more valued than the other. Dualisms are closed hierarchical systems that value the first term over the second.

<sup>2</sup> I use "Black" in reference to African Americans living in the USA but also to resist biopolitical diversity in which any "diverse" (in this context, non-white) group may be exchanged for any other. I use "white" as an adjective; it does not refer to any specific national, cultural, or ethnic group.

Rethinking materiality as "the effect of power" (p. 3), Butler insists that subjects do not possess or are defined by "sex"; rather "sex" is "one of the norms by which [a subject] becomes viable[,] ... that which qualifies a body for life within the domain of cultural intelligibility" (p. 2). She refutes "second wave" feminist concepts of "gender" as the social construction of biological "sex," arguing that (social/ cultural) constructions of "sex" as "gender" assume "the cancellation of the natural [sex] by the social [gender]" (p. 5), and ignore the historicity of "sex." Moreover, concepts of gender construction presume a subject that precedes or follows its construction—rather than the performative "I" produced discursively as an ontological effect (condition of human existence) through "a process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter" (p. 9, emphasis original). In other words, the material(ized) gendered body is not indicative of an inner essence that an already gendered subject performs and society reads but is produced (materializes) as a function of repeated iterations (presentations) of gender "through the gesture, the move, the gait (that array of corporeal theatrics understood as gender presentation)" (Butler 1991, p. 28). A central question related to bodies produced as an effect of discourse addresses how bodies that do not materialize support and "provide the necessary 'outside' ... for the bodies which, in materializing the norm, qualify as bodies that matter" (p. 16) in this discussion, bodies that are diversity-relevant.

Conceiving regulatory ideals as "always a racial industry, ... the reiterated practice of racializing interpellations" (p. 18, emphasis original), Butler concurs with theories that argue that "'race' is partially produced as an effect of the history of racism and that its boundaries and meanings are constructed over time, not only in the service of racism but also in the service of the contestation of racism" (p. 18). Further, she rejects that race, gender, sexuality, and by implication other ontological differences are equivalent, parallel, or analogous; rather, they are "the conditions of articulation for each other" (p. 117, emphasis original), which is to say, gender, sexuality, and race not only intersect with each other but interact, as well.

#### 3 Neoliberalism, Biopower, Biopolitics

Roderick Ferguson (2004) argues that neoliberalism "denotes the triumph of liberal ideology through racial and class exclusion and through the expansion of normative gender and sexual regimes" (p. 115) in a "contradictory occurrence" by which liberatory movements enact exclusions. For example, US and European feminism formulated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries enacted exclusions based on race and queer sexuality, while Black nationalist movements in the USA during the middle/late twentieth century enacted exclusions based on gender and queer sexuality. These racial and gender exclusions are articulated in the title of the feminist women of color anthology, All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us are Brave (Hull et al. 1982). Racial, gender, and queer sexuality exclusions facilitate the universalization of white heteropatriarchy—"any system of social organization that assumes white hetero-masculinity as a norm, and compels us to distribute privilege and oppression according to this norm" (James 2013, p. 103)—in neoliberalism, producing heteronormativity as a white social formation, with all non-white sexuality, including non-white heterosexuality, produced as non-heteronormativity (Ferguson 2004).

Foucault (2003) traces biopower to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries during the rise of industrialization, describing it as "a new technology of power" (p. 243). Activated through biopolitics—"a power addressed to life" (James 2014b, p. 140; emphasis original)—in neoliberal societies, biopower is implicated in state racism associated with colonization and war (Foucault 2003), as well as in sexism and homophobia produced through medicalized discourses of the late nineteenth century. Instead of replacing disciplinary power, however, biopower complements it. The former disciplines individual bodies in terms of a sovereign's power to adjudicate death: "to take life or let live," while the latter administers populations in terms of life, "the power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death" (Foucault 1978/1990, p. 138, emphasis original). Similarly, disciplinary power disciplines individuals through institutions of surveillance and training (schools, hospitals, prisons), while biopower administers groups through "complex systems of coordination and centralization guarantee[ing] the optimal longevity of the population" (Foucault 2003, pp. 250, 251). Succinctly, "biopolitical neoliberalism ... uses statistics to optimize the life of some (privileged) groups, intensifying their access to 'life' by deintensifying the access of others" (James 2012, para. 8). Sexuality, because it "exists at the point where body [disciplinary power] and the population [biopower] meet" (Foucault 2003, pp. 251–252), becomes enormously important in biopolitics, requiring individualized disciplinary controls of behavior as well as generalized administration related to procreation and sexual health of the population. This also makes sexuality particularly vulnerable to neoliberal incorporation and monetization (Ferguson and Hong 2012).

Because neoliberalism attempts "to transform society itself into a mode of enterprise, ... of creative and competitive subjects" (Winnubst 2012, p. 83), difference is flattened and divested of historicity. Infinitely fungible, one form of difference such as race may be replaced by another, such as gender/sexuality, demonstrating how select groups become diversity-relevant at the expense of others. More perniciously, "the flexibilization of the apparatus of sexuality is ... deployed to legitimate ... antidemocratic and violent neoliberal state[s]" (Ludwig 2016, p. 417). Extending this "violent dynamic of biopower" (p. 425) whereby some groups are "killed" so that others may live is the point where "racism intervenes" (Foucault 2003). "[I]nscribed as the basic mechanism of power ... exercised in modern States" (p. 254), "racism ... makes killing acceptable" (p. 256). Beyond actual murder, "killing" includes "every form of indirect murder: ... exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, ... political death, expulsion, rejection" (p. 256). Biopower transforms a relationship of war (kill or be killed) into a "biological relationship" to protect the population.

Celebrating and legalizing white monogamous homosexuality, "homo-tolerant" neoliberal states in Europe and North America privatize social issues like sexuality in order to depoliticize them, creating conditions where individuals (discourses) marketize themselves, acting on their own behalf rather than for the collective public good. In music education and academic music programs generally, belated homotolerance is expressed in terms of a depoliticized form of social justice based on inclusion. With diversity monetized, difference is "intensified, multiplied and fractured" (Winnubst 2012, p. 93) in neoliberal biopolitics based less on capital than the human capital of individuals capitalizing themselves in ways that support hegemonic institutions, including hegemonic diversity discourses in music education. Rather than diversity conceived in terms of identity and transgressive difference associated with liberal ideology upholding white heteropatriarchy in (1990s) diversity discourses in music education, the biopolitics of "neoliberalism operates through the social rationality of success" (p. 96) in which everyone, at least in Western societies, is implicated regardless of their politics or ideological allegiances.

#### 4 Historicizing/Racializing Gender/Sexuality Diversity in Music Education

During the late twentieth century, gays and lesbians in North America and Europe sought access to heteropatriarchal institutions such as marriage and the military (and music education in the USA early in the twenty-first century) by asserting homosexuality as "a new category of normativity" (Ferguson 2005, p. 56), socially constructing it as "ethnically" white, a more neutral and geographically locatable term that is often used instead of race in European neoliberal discourse (El-Tayeb 2011). Lisa Duggan (2003) characterizes this as homonormativity by which society (music education) accepts (white/monogamous) homosexuals who uphold, rather than challenge, the ideals of heterosexuality, rendering them diversity-relevant (cool) to the extent they are like heterosexuals. In this way, sameness (resemblance) becomes a prerequisite of equality (Richardson 2005). Neither queer teachers and queer students, nor their experiences in US high schools, can be construed as the same as heterosexual teachers and students—even in music classrooms (Bergonzi 2009). Further, verbal harassment that queer students are virtually guaranteed to experience in high school extends into adulthood, particularly for non-white transgender people (Emlet 2016; Langenderfer-Magruder et al. 2016; Powell 2018).

Noting that the "interaction of race, class, and gender in constructions of deviant sexualities creates more complicated groupings and hierarchies," Fatima El-Tayeb (2011) posits "queer ... in opposition to homonormative formations," arguing that "Europeans of color are produced as 'queer,' 'impossible' subjects in heteronormative discourses of nation as well as migration" (p. xxxv, emphasis original). Although physically imposing, gay African American marching band drum major Robert Champion, Jr., was so impossible that the band's percussionists beat him to death, after which officials at Florida A&M University, the historically Black university they all attended, blamed Champion for participating in the brutal hazing ritual (Montgomery 2012; The NBJC Blog 2012). Jasbir Puar (2007) addresses issues of queerness and nationalization by combining Duggan's neologism with nationalism, as a contraction of "homonormative nationalism" or "national homosexuality," creating homonationalism, which Puar contends, detaches white "U.S. national gays and queers from racial and sexual others" (p. 39), specifically terrorists and migrants. Homonormativity and homonationalism depend on active complicity of gender/sexually diverse people, who underscore their similarity to normative (white) heterosexuals in the first instance and their dissimilarity to nonnormative (non-white) immigrants, refugees, and terrorists in the second.

Biopolitics intensifies this formulation by carrying "the economic calculation of enterprising, entrepreneurial interests into all domains of social, political, personal and even ethical life," making Duggan's homonormativity "a problem of 'homoneoliberalism'" (Winnubst 2012, p. 94)—in music education cultural diversity discourses. Neoliberalism's "fungible machine of enterprise" depends on obscuring historical differentiations of all categories of difference, not only gender/sexuality, race and class but those based on (dis)ability, negating "heterogeneity among communities' and people's subject positions, resources, ways of living, and desires" (Ludwig 2016, p. 422). Dehistoricized and decontextualized, with no connection or reference to the violence incited by, in this case, homo-, bi-, and transphobia, queer people are "straight" (liberal ideology), "cool" (biopolitical neoliberalism)—and worthy of celebration (music education cultural diversity discourses).

#### 5 Diversity Discourses in Music Education

Discourses of "diversity" in music education are reflexively associated with culture, expressed axiomatically as cultural diversity in music education. With neoliberalism, culture like virtually everything, is "used as a tool of capitalism," not only in an effort to make difference fungible and "empty out a politics of difference" (Chan-Tibergien 2006, p. 91, 102) but also to further the goals of the state and its hegemonic institutions, such as (typically) public school-based music education. Whether conceived in terms of educational projects requiring and producing curricular and pedagogical goals, outcomes and materials, professional development activities, such as in-service workshops, recurring conferences located around the world as a form of intellectual tourism, and various types of publications, performances, and recordings, cultural diversity in music education monetizes the human capital of all those involved in it.

The means by which nonnormative gender/sexuality functions in music education diversity discourses is not straightforward, however. It does not actualize in a hegemonic profession founded and funded, in neoliberal terms on white heteropatriarchy—even though that profession in Europe and North America is populated by gender/sexual others it historically sought to exclude: non-white people, women, and nonnormative gender/sexually diverse people. Neoliberal biopolitics turns this equation on its head for all diversity-relevant groups, as long as their historicity remains occluded and as a group they conform to white heteropatriarchal ideals, making them a good investment in that they produce "profitable human capital ... whose surplus value supports hegemonic institutions" (James 2014b, p. 149) such as cool cultural diversity discourses in music education predicated on inclusion (Gould 2013).

Music associated with people who are gender/sexuality nonnormative is extravagantly heterogeneous (Taylor 2012a), not only because queer people are diffused into every culture, society, and school but also due to their general invisibility in those cultures, societies, and schools—where they constitute neither an identifiably coherent culture as traditionally conceived nor a subculture situated in relationship to a dominant gender/sexuality culture (Taylor 2012b; Halberstam 2005). The heterogeneity of gender(s)/sexualit(ies)y militates against the former, while the latter is complicated by assimilationist impulses of dominant gender/sexuality that occur even as deviant gender(s)/sexualit(ies)y fracture among and between themselves musically and politically—underscoring, as well, how/why concepts of "cultural competence" and/or authenticity are inapplicable to queer diversity in music education. Without "institutions for common memory and generational transmission" (Warner 1999, p. 51), such as schools and the nuclear family, queer youths have only a vague sense of queer history, as an effect of the politics of shame<sup>3</sup> by which queer people are stigmatized socially and legally, attacked, and murdered literally (Cover 2013; Gruenewald and Kelley 2014; Mayers 2018). More prosaically, the politics of shame routinely involves "silent inequalities, unintended effects of isolation, and ... lack of public access" (Warner 1999, p. 7).

Shamed and isolated, queer youths (and adults) listen to music that resonates with them, which "strikes a chord" (Wasserbauer 2016), cobbling together a bricolage of musical styles and artists (Taylor 2012a) to whom they are exceptionally emotionally attached (Dolan 2012; Wasserbauer 2016). So-called queerness in music historically has been associated (in the USA and Canada) with activities and sensibilities consistent with white, urban, affluent gay male culture, such as drag and camp (Jarman-Ivens 2016; Taylor 2013), as well as with stereotypes of music genres. For example, opera, Broadway musicals (Koestenbaum 1993), and disco signify gay (Dyer 2002), while symphonies, (absolute) instrumental music (Ives 1991), and rock signify straight (Greene 2014). The disco-rock/gay-straight juxtaposition was vividly demonstrated in 1979 when thousands of straight-presenting white young men chanted "Disco sucks!" as over 50,000 disco records were literally blown up in Comiskey Park (home of the Chicago White Sox baseball team) during what was called "Disco Demolition Night," the apex of a nationwide "antidisco backlash" directed against the music genre and people associated with "disco culture" constructed as "gay and elitist" (Frank 2007, p. 278). By contrast, music (mostly folk but also rock and jazz) composed and performed by mostly white lesbian musicians in the 1970s enjoyed an intense and enthusiastic (white) lesbian audience, even as it generated so little attention from the straight white press and music industry that it was utterly obscure to the general public (Gould 2016).

<sup>3</sup> Hence queer celebrations focus on pride—rather than power.

The importance of affect for queer listeners, young and older, is primary and ubiquitous, suggesting that the "rubric of 'queer music'" may be productively understood in terms of an "ambiguous set of ideologies" that hinge as much on the creator's "intention and self-styled presentation as they are performatively located in the way the music is read and rearticulated" by listeners (Taylor 2012a, p. 150). This includes multiple musical styles: "rock, punk, metal, hip-hop, electronic dance music (EDM) and pop" (Taylor 2013, p. 194). Scholars in music, sociology, and music education regularly associate music with identity formation (e.g., Bowman 2004; Cook 1998; DeNora 2003; Lum 2017), but this process is rather more fraught for queer youth who do not readily find music groups and musicians with whom to identify—including in music education classrooms focused on issues of diversity. Cultural diversity research in music education may resist "privileges of heterosexuality" (Bergonzi 2009, p. 22) by using queer of color critique to analyze spaces that canonic music education research overlooks, despite their importance in the lives of queer students, families, schools, and communities. Natasha Sandraya Wilson's (2009) research of a queer space in New Orleans, the city which likely had "the largest black/African American queer population" (p. 119) in the USA before the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in 2005, demonstrates how queer of color critique might be taken up in cultural diversity research in music education.

#### 6 Potentialities of Queer of Color Critique in Music Education

In a small nightclub known as the Groove, located in the impoverished, African American 7th Ward of New Orleans "female bodied women (FBWs), female bodied men (FBMs), and male bodied women (MBWs)" (Wilson 2009, p. 105), sing what they call the "lesbian anthem," despite describing themselves as "gay" or in "the gay life" rather than "lesbian"; and the song they sing along to, rhythm and blues singer Miliria's recording of "Three's a Crowd," is about (heterosexual) infidelity rather than same-sex desire between women. With its capacity to "invoke a shared vision, history, experience, or consciousness" (p. 105), the song functions as an anthem for this community of poor, African American drag queens and gay African American women, the vast majority of whom have children whose fathers are caught up in the US "prison industrial complex" (Davis 2002):

The music begins, and before [the performer] walks out onto the stage, the melody hits the crowd and almost immediately, everyone starts to say, "Awh, yeah!" Some people raise their drinks in the air and lower their heads, a gesture that indicates something that has personal resonance. Arms fly into the air with palms facing up and fingers spread apart. Some fingers begin to snap while arms are still up in the air and everyone's body is moving back and forth with the rhythm of the song. (Wilson 2009, p. 104, emphasis added)

In addition to race, gender, and sexuality, Wilson addresses in her analysis how poverty and so-called welfare reform in the USA impact the lives of African American same-sex couples who present as women. She notes that the rich musical history of New Orleans provided a ground from which their cultural performance emanated—with rhythm and blues rather than jazz, which has attained the status of "'high' art in New Orleans," making it inaccessible to impoverished African Americans. Invoking queer of color critique, Wilson continues:

These rituals and cultural performances are necessarily connected to the various injustices that plague these women's lives and the lives of women in general. They are also about more than "queer" subjectivity, but they demand that we ask penetrating questions. Why are male bodied men—children's fathers—caught in the revolving door of the prison industrial complex? Why are female bodied women trapped in various relationships where they are mistreated? Why do female bodied men live with the fear of sexual assault? Why are there members of this community who cannot read and write? To answer any of these questions requires an honest interrogation of the institutions of the political economy in which the Groove and its communities [and schools] are embedded and the pervasive inequalities central to US society. (p. 119, emphasis added)

Taking up these questions in queer spaces with music and people who are neither diversity-relevant nor cool, cultural diversity discourses in music education might defund neoliberalism and "go into the death" (James 2015) of biopolitical fungibility, materializing—not celebrating—diversity, rendering it uncool by investing in people, students, and musics who do not currently exist in hegemonic cultural diversity in music education curricula and research, those groups and individuals (students) neoliberalism produces as excess, leaving them to biopolitical death.

Robin James (2015) describes this tactic of "counter-resilience" as melancholy: "the refusal to do the affective cultural labor [heteropatriarchal] capitalism requires of potentially resilient people [and potentially resilient cultural diversity discourses in music education]" (p. 141, emphasis original). Resilience discourses make us responsible for overcoming damage inflicted by white heteropatriarchy (James 2014a). Instead of demonstrating resilience by including what has been historically excluded, "queered" cultural diversity in music education intensifies exclusions as melancholy, injecting them into the profession/pedagogy/curriculum as "bad vibes," which is to say, "failed" or "misfired resilience" that produces "antisocial effects" unsettling and "killjoying" the white heteropatriarchal project of canonic music education through distinctly counterproductive means.

The political death of others cannot be resisted or foreclosed by cultural diversity in music education discourses of inclusion—which infer hierarchy and positionality, discursively producing a "domain of abjection" (Butler 1993, p. 3), as a constitutive outside, "a domain of unlivability and unintelligibility" (p. 22). Taking up queer of color critique as "a living methodology" (Chan-Tibergien 2006, p. 102) to reframe and rewrite the biopolitics of diversity through "a multiplicity of narrative knowledges in overlapping [sexual, gender, racial, economic] communities" (p. 99), cultural diversity in music education research might "realize a new democracy" (p. 100) grounded in the lived experiences of uncool diverse populations of students, musics, and communities. This necessitates changing what we do as well as what we think we know about ourselves, our profession, its purposes, and complicity in white heteropatriarchy and take up Wilson's question: Where/who are the displaced/ discounted/disallowed/discordant musics/peoples/communities in cultural diversity in music education?

#### References


Associate Professor Emerita Elizabeth Gould joined the Faculty of Music in 2005, teaching philosophy-based courses in music education and sexual diversity studies. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in the context of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, feminist assemblages, and queer theory. She is currently investigating interactions of race, class, and gender/sexuality in music education on antebellum Boston's Beacon Hill North Slope.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Cultural Diversity, Ecodiversity, and Music Education

Vincent C. Bates, Daniel J. Shevock, and Anita Prest

Abstract Diversity discourses in music education tend toward anthropocentrism, focusing on human cultures, identities, and institutions. In this chapter, we broaden conceptualizations of diversity in music education to include relationships between music, education, and ecology: understood as interactions among organisms and the physical environment. Diversity in music education can be realized by attending to the ongoing interrelationships of local geography, ecology, and culture, all of which contribute dynamically to local music practices. We situate our analysis within specific Indigenous North American cultures (e.g., Western Apache, Nuu-chahnulth, Stó:lō, and Syilx) and associated perspectives and philosophies to shed light on the multiple forms of reciprocity that undergird diversity. Indigenous knowledge, in combination with new materialism and political ecology discourses, can help us come back down to earth in ways of being and becoming that are ecologically sustainable, preserving the ecodiversity that exists and grows in place, forging egalitarian relationships and a sense of communal responsibility, fostering reverence for ancestors along with nonhuman lives and topographies, and cultivating musical practices that are one with our respective ecosystems.

Keywords Ecodiversity · Music education · Indigenous · Cultural diversity · Place · Local

V. C. Bates (\*)

D. J. Shevock Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts, Pennsylvania State University Altoona, Altoona, PA, USA e-mail: djs541@psu.edu

A. Prest Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada e-mail: aprest@uvic.ca

Department of Teacher Education, Weber State University, Ogden, UT, USA e-mail: vincentbates@weber.edu

#### 1 Introduction

When people discuss diversity in music education, they are usually referring to differences among social groups and institutions, often with political aims of promoting equity and culturally sensitive teaching relative to race, gender, and sexuality. Sometimes other considerations such as dis/ability, class, and religion come into play, but even the most inclusive and intersectional analyses tend to be anthropocentric—centered on human experiences, needs, and desires, regardless of impacts on nonhuman beings and places. In this chapter we embrace a holistic view of music and education, situating human diversity within ecodiversity (plant and animal life, water, minerals, landforms, weather, and so forth), thereby extending the scope of diversity and justice to include political concerns about climate change, ecosystem destruction, and extinction, while also deepening understandings essential to overcoming human oppression, domination, and exploitation. In other words, we believe that a more complete vision of justice, encompassing all environmental considerations, can serve to level both human and human/nonhuman hierarchies. To these ends, we first review relationships between cultural diversity and ecodiversity, outlining an ecocentric vision that blurs distinctions between culture and nature and places music as an element of diversity within ecosystems. Next, we consider biocultural perspectives of some Indigenous North American musical cultures in which sound, song, stories, spirituality, and sentient beings are bound up and intertwined with conceptions of place (understood in this chapter as physical geography). Finally, we recommend efforts in fostering ecodiversity in and through music education as means to environmental sustainability.

#### 2 Ecodiversity

How we perceive diversity in this chapter reflects the confluence of multiple scholarly streams. Within the field of sociology, new materialism recognizes that humans are just "one materiality among many"—a perspective that "has the consequence of cutting across animate/inanimate and human/animal dualisms that underpin the natural and social science conceptions and systems of privilege" (Fox and Alldred 2017, p. 25). In addition, political ecology maintains a "theoretical commitment to critical social theory and a post-positivist understanding of nature and the production of knowledge about it, which views these as inseparable from social relations of power" (Bridge et al. 2015, p. 7). Finally, new materialism and political ecology correspond with myriad Indigenous perspectives (MacLure 2016). For instance, in the Diné (Navajo) philosophical ideal of hózhó, four facets of "holistic living and learning"—cognitive, physiological, psychological, and intuitive—are "embedded in and reflective of the natural processes of nature and cosmos" (Werito 2014, p. 27). This reflects a general tendency among human cultures living in close proximity to nonhuman environments, Indigenous groups in particular, to adopt more inclusive and less anthropocentric perspectives (Esteva and Prakash 2014). Our own concerns about ecological sustainability seem to have grown from our respective origins, experiences, and work in rural music education (e.g., Bates 2013; Prest 2013; Shevock 2017). We tend to see anthropocentrism at work in environmentally destructive forces (e.g., industrialization, urbanization, militarism, and consumerism), which are present in educational institutions through teachers' pedagogical practices and in stated and hidden forms of curriculum. Holistic, Indigenous, rural, and new materialist perspectives offer environmentally sensitive alternatives to these forces.

An ecological perspective—where ecology is understood in its fullness and musical practices are situated as material realities within and among all other elements of nature (see Allen and Dawe 2016)—can expand the ways in which we think about music and music education. This ecological grounding is evident in Shevock's (2017) broad definition of music as "the intentional experiencing of sound" (p. 41), without centering humans as the ones intending and/or experiencing. Teacher, learner, and musicker (e.g., one who makes music) roles can be filled by a variety of entities, from people and birds to rivers and trees. A political ecology of music education can thereby help flatten current hierarchies, human or otherwise, and extend justice beyond the anthropocentric. Because this leveling envelops human hierarchies (Fox and Alldred 2017), it can also help music educators recognize "intersections between ... ecological crises, racial injustice, patriarchy, and economic stratification" (Shevock 2017, p. 110). This shift in thinking, difficult as it might seem for those of us socialized within anthropocentric Western paradigms, has important implications for how we perceive and the values we place upon cultural and natural diversity and, hence, music education. We will discuss four of these implications.

First, musical practices are integral elements in ecodiversity (Allen and Dawe 2016; Shevock 2017). They emerge in diverse landscapes alive with acoustic properties within which people and other organisms act and interact (Elsey 2013; Sercombe 2009). Within an ecological framing, people, along with other entities, affect rather than make music. In other words, musicking is a rich acoustic interaction or collaboration among living organisms and their environments. This necessarily situates human actions, including musical and educational actions, within geographical places—shared ecosystems abundant with plant and animal life, weather patterns, water cycles, and landforms (Titon 2016).

Second, ecodiversity develops within distinct geographical places and ecosystems. 250 million years ago, all land on earth existed in a single mass: Pangea. The separation of Pangea into continents led to increased species diversity (Jordan et al. 2016), the proliferation of which continued as organisms evolved to fit well within particular places (Ehrlich and Wilson 1991). This growing and evolving diversity eventually included humans and our cultural practices. Diverse musics evolved to reflect the ecosystems to which they were inextricably bound. Such rootedness is noted by Helena Simonett (2016) in her description of Indigenous Yoreme music making in Northwestern Mexico. In the fiesta, the performers merge with the world around them: musicking, singing, and dancing obscure the boundaries between humans, nonhumans, and environment. Musicians and dancers transform into the animals with whom they co-inhabit juiya annia, the "enchanted world" (p. 106).

Third, ecodiversity has both inherent and instrumental value. A core tenet of ecomusicology (see Allen and Dawe 2016) is that musical practices, as with all other ecological elements, have value within the ecosystems in which they are situated, growing as they do from various acoustic affordances. Furthermore, diversity is integral to overall well-being within ecosystems. Titon (2016) puts this in musical terms: "The healthier the habitat, the more 'musical' the polyphony of the creatures that occupy it" (p. 78). Due to this dynamic interconnectedness, to harm any aspect within an ecosystem, musical or otherwise, inflicts harm on diverse others.

Fourth, globalization can diminish ecodiversity, including cultural diversity. Globalization has been referred to as a New Pangea, recombining the continents through international travel and trade and thereby threatening ecological diversity (Lewis and Maslin 2018). This diminishment includes the loss of cultural diversity, as values, languages, and musics of a global culture replace the values, languages, and musics of diverse local cultures (see Snyder et al. 2003). The extractive forces of global multiculturalism can be especially harmful; when diverse species are separated from an already diverse ecosystem—a "web of interwoven lives" (Carson 2002, p. 56; Shevock 2017)—and are put in artificial isolation, they are apt to wither and die. Schippers (2016) raises this concern about the work of making audio recordings and otherwise attempting to preserve, through extraction, diverse musical practices: "these efforts do not always provide sufficient basis for the actual survival of music practices as part of an unbroken, living tradition, which many will argue is a key condition for maintaining the essence (explicit and tacit, tangible and intangible) of specific styles and genres" (p. 3).

An ecocentric outlook recognizes ample diversity within ecosystems and situates music first and foremost within that diversity. Complex musical practices emanating from a vast array of geological/biological forces have just as many or more points of diversity when compared with human cultural diversity. We agree with those who argue that diversity can be integral to developing empathy (e.g., Clarke et al. 2015) and suggest that diversity within an ecosystem serves that purpose at least as well as diversity across cultures. Kymlicka and Walker (2012) go so far as to suggest: "People must first be successfully socialized into the habits of moral particularism before they are epistemologically or psychologically capable of morally engaging with the claims of distant others" (p. 4). We argue that respect for diversity relies on respect for localism on its own terms, or in other words, a grassroots "pluriverse" (Esteva and Prakash 2014). Diversity, put simply, is enhanced when local communities nurture distinct, dynamic, evolving practices.

#### 3 Indigenous North American Philosophies

Indigenous cultural practices on Turtle Island (an original name for North America used by multiple Indigenous groups) reflect the situatedness of culture within ecological diversity and illustrate nonhierarchical forms of expression in which sound, song, stories, spirituality, and sentient beings are bound up and intertwined with conceptions of place. The examples we offer below reflect conceptions of music that highlight the importance of relationships among all beings, past and present, who exist in a place. Although the Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars we cite here have focused on the cultural practices that they have experienced, each reflecting unique worldviews, we emphasize that the living cultural practices they describe are not static, do not exist in isolation, and change over time. Among Indigenous groups on Turtle Island, cultural diversity is the rule—there are approximately 70 Indigenous languages spoken in Canada, 150 in the USA, and 89 in Mexico. We also wish to acknowledge our positions as non-Indigenous music education scholars who are engaged in learning Indigenous ways of knowing and their relation to cultural practices and the possibilities they afford to think about diversity and sustainability in music education.

The Dane-Zaa are a northern Athapaskan hunting people in northeastern British Columbia who "are profoundly egalitarian ... [and] deeply committed to communal responsibility, extending beyond relations between humans to include relations with the non-human persons who make up the natural environment" (Ridington and Ridington 2006, p. 217). For the Dane-Zaa, nonhuman persons include animals and ancestors. Dane-Zaa songs (naachene-yina), stories, and dances manifest this worldview, as they "honor the ancestors and spiritual places of the Dane-Zaa land" (Ridington and Ridington 2006, p. 27). Songs are conceived as hunting trails; their melodic lines represent the twists and turns, ups and downs of an animal's trail that hunters follow, and the drumbeat accompanying the songs evokes hunters' footsteps. Dances are physical manifestations of the trails and relationships between humans, their ancestors, and the animals they hunt. Dreamers—people in the community whose job is to communicate with ancestors through out-of-body experiences bring these songs back to the community. The mental trails that people create as they sing and dance to naachene-yina are pathways back to their ancestors, facilitating ongoing relationships with them. Likewise, the metaphor of a trail also evokes the reciprocal relationship between people and animals, as the Dane-Zaa traditionally relied on animals for sustenance and consciously acted in ways that showed respect for the life-forms that shared their environment.

Further south, in the central interior of British Columbia and along the Fraser River, Stó:lō and Secwépemc peoples also note the ways in which people, other organisms, and land interact, giving rise to poetic expressions (Elsey 2013; Ignace and Ignace 2018). It is through these expressions that "the land gets encoded into a territorial system of meaning, on an epic or folkloric scale, and is a primary aspect of collective selfhood and identity of the people" (Elsey 2013, p. 50). Elsey suggests that, for the Stó:lō (and others), songs—in addition to their role in expressing identity to a specific territory—convey the meaning of the land and the possibilities it affords. Community members' relationships to the land are embodied through stories, artwork, songs, and dances, representations of their individual and collective experiences over time. For the Secwépemc, "toponyms [or place names derived from topographical features] imply an entire system of references and relationships in the landscape" (Ignace and Ignace 2018, p. 234), invoking information on the "kind of animals, plants, sources of water, and shelter can be found at or near a place that is mentioned" (p. 235). Such place-names are oral "deeds to the land" (p. 254) because they articulate reciprocal relationships among people, ecological knowledge, and ancestral experiences on that territory. The following Welcome Song attests to the importance of relationships in Secwépemc tradition:

Tsecwmíntlmen ren kwséltkten. I greet all my relatives. Te kekéw re stet7ék-ep! You have come from far away! Penhénes-enke ne setétkwe k stet7ék-ep. Whenever you come to the river, te stsqwemqwúm, te seksekéwt, from the mountains, from the gullies, le7 re swíktelmen ey xwexwéyt-ep! it is good to see you all! Yerí7 me7 sucwentwécw-kt! Let us acknowledge one another! Nels Mitchell, "Secwépemc Welcome Song". (Ignace and Ignace 2018, p. 318).<sup>1</sup>

Yet further south in the place currently known as Arizona, Basso (1996) shines a light on "the significance of place in Apache thought and practice" (p. xv). His longterm study on behalf of the White Mountain Western Apache consisted of mapping approximately 300 places they identified as important to them, the names and stories associated with those places, and the ways in which place-names and respective teachings are bound up in everyday conversations. Similar to the Secwépemc and other Indigenous peoples, the Western Apache have developed relationships to specific and visually unique places through the historical events that they or others have experienced in those places. The evocative names given to these places constantly stimulate consideration of those historical events, the lessons learned from them, and the relationships that they bring to mind, also reaching "deeply into other cultural spheres, including conceptions of wisdom, notions of morality, politeness and tact in forms of spoken discourse, and certain conventional ways of imagining and interpreting the Apache tribal past" (Basso 1996, p. xv). Western Apache "relationships to places ... find expression through the agencies of myth, prayer, music, dance, art, architecture, and ... forms of religious and political ritual" (Basso 1996, p. 109); thus, music and other cultural practices are expressions and repositories of Western Apache collective wisdom (igoyá'í) required for survival. Self-reflexive individuals who journey on the trail of wisdom cultivate mental smoothness, resilience, and steadiness (p. 133) by developing "keen and unhurried reasoning, resistance to fear and anxiety, and suppression of emotion born of hostility and pride ... through extended reflection on symbolic dimensions of the physical environment" (p. 146). Place, musical expression, wisdom, and the capacity to survive are inextricably bound together.

<sup>1</sup> This song, like all other Secwepemc cultural property, represents the Indigenous intellectual property of the Secwepemc people, as stated in Ignace and Ignace 2017, p. xi.

The Nuu-chah-nulth people, who live on Vancouver Island, also view ecosystems, musical expression, personal and communal integrity, and survival as interconnected. Songs link the physical realm to the spiritual realm and all sentient beings within physical existence to each other (Atleo/Umeek 2004). Songs are expressions of the Nuu-chah-nulth constitutional principles of recognition, consent, continuity, and respect. For example, the Nuu-chah-nulth enact the principle of recognition at feasts where those who have been invited receive gifts (including songs), which "promote balance and harmony between beings" (p. 80). The principle of recognition extends "to include both people and the living environment" (p. 84). Likewise, the notion of consent, "a kind of consensus that reality is characterized by purposeful diversity" (p. 93), acknowledges both the importance of individual self-expression and the need for "balance and harmony within the diversity of community" (p. 95). In this view, community is understood broadly to include the entire ecosystem and the beings that inhabit it; therefore, individual selfexpression enhances both individual and ecological well-being. Consent leads to the continuity of and respect for all living things because "all life forms have value and all are to be allowed to continue to live sustainably because of this value" (Atleo/ Umeek 2011, p. 117).

Crucially, Atleo/Umeek (2011) states that these principles provide humans with a means to solve our global problems, a framework for "working to transform the inherent contradictions of reality into a sustainable balance and harmony so that all life forms can continue to live" (p. 58). Atleo/Umeek (2011) uses the metaphor of music to illustrate diversity:

A piece of music can have many variations and interpretations. Yet, in spite of variations in the way specific notes are played, the musical theme remains the same ... in spite of the multiple interpretations of each piece of music or dance, the original musical score or dance routine can be identified. (Atleo/Umeek 2011, p. 121)

He uses this metaphor to suggest one way to arrive at consensus when attempting to resolve our global crises; he encourages us to focus on those musical themes or shared attributes that we hold in common despite our different interpretations so that we might arrive at consensus regarding those we all hold most dear. In learning to "co-manage our common reality," we, as multiple species, survive. For Atleo/ Umeek (2011), "survival... is, metaphorically speaking, like harmonious music" (p. 122). Thus, across North America, for Indigenous peoples, diversity in musical expression is representative of and dependent on rich and diverse ecologies, geographies, and histories, which have cultivated unique insights that might offer humanity pathways to ecological sustainability.

#### 4 Music Education for Ecological Sustainability

In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2018) released a report giving a dire warning about "the impacts of global warming of 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels" and calling for an urgent "global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty." We believe that music educators can and should play a role—through their professional responsibilities as music educators—in addressing ecological crises and their impacts. Many schools have environmental education programs aimed at connecting students with and increasing their understandings of nature. However, as Fletcher (2017) postulates, these programs can end up reifying perceived divisions between culture and nature: "The idea that one could be disconnected from 'nature' ... is fundamentally grounded in a culturally specific nature-culture dichotomy, for without this sense of strict separation between the human and nonhuman realms this particular perception of alienation would not be possible" (pp. 228–229). When people recognize that they are part of rather than separate from or above the "morethan-human world" (p. 232), on the other hand, they may be more likely to recognize and care about the readily apparent environmental destruction around them.

Ecologically diverse approaches to music and musicking, such as the Indigenous perspectives outlined in this chapter, can engage students in experiences that embrace the inseparability of planetary diversity and see themselves as part of the whole. We do recognize the dynamic and evolving nature of Indigenous cultural practices and caution against romanticizing or essentializing cultural ecologies. In this light, Yeh and Bryan (2015) propose a political ecology that understands "Indigenous peoples as living [within] modern forms of economy and power—states and capital—in ways that [recognize] their embeddedness within colonialism, slavery, war, and capitalist exploitation" (p. 533). Nonetheless, we believe that music educators can draw insight from Indigenous and other ecocentric perspectives on music, teaching, and learning to shape curriculum and instruction in ways that further the goals of education for environmental sustainability.

The International Convention on Biodiversity, in 1992, "acknowledged the role of traditional lifestyles of Indigenous people related to the conservation of biodiversity, and recognized their property rights to biodiversity and associated knowledge" (Blanc and Soini 2015, p. 77). Music educators in Indigenous communities or in schools with any percentage of Indigenous students have a responsibility to help maintain these traditions as dynamic adaptive processes based in holistic conceptualizations of ecodiversity. Music educators in both rural and metropolitan settings can also introduce Indigenous cultural traditions appropriately to non-Indigenous music students; these traditions can potentially teach all students something about their own places in the world and responsibilities to care for the natural environment. Indigenous philosophies, as outlined in this chapter, provide an alternative to the Western anthropocentrism that has precipitated current climate crises. Henderson and Zarger (2017) write: "Acknowledging the profound inseparability among humans, non-human species, and the environment is paramount to understanding links between education and behavior, or learning and doing, and how these relationships are produced in pedagogical spaces" (Henderson and Zarger 2017, p. 286). Thus, rather than breadth, pedagogical approaches involving Indigenous music should emphasize enough depth to get at ecological understandings integral to Indigenous practices.

Ecodiversity can be fostered as each local community works, through schooling as well as through other means, to preserve its distinct practices and ways of living well in place. Too often, particularly for White and majority students, multicultural music education (in which Indigenous musics traditionally play a part) is focused on "exposing" students to a diversity of distant cultures, drawing minds and hearts away from local places. We believe that students have a right to initially experience musical heritages in school that reflect the places where they live. Too often, educational discourses elide local ecosystems, even to the extent of promising "social mobility" intended to "liberate" children from local places, culturally and physically; in the words of Prakash and Esteva (2008), "children learn to leave home, not to stay home" (p. 3). On the other hand, conceptions that enculturate students to honor geographical, ecological places can serve to perpetuate diverse local cultures and preserve natural environments. Redirecting the scholarly gaze beyond the anthropocentric, in this way, is a necessary antecedent in forging sustainable alternatives to currently destructive trajectories.

Music educators can be influential in foregrounding local musical traditions and emphasizing musicking within local contexts of community and family, especially with the guidance of local human and nonhuman musickers. Where possible, music educators can have students of all backgrounds research their own placed histories and try to uncover musics and stories connected to the ways their ancestors related to the natural world. Thus, children may begin to find alternative ways to live regeneratively in place. This rerooting praxis (Shevock 2017) is in line with Weil's (2002/1949) "need for roots," which stands at odds with uprooted global, technological ways that can make flourishing difficult, to say the least, considering the previously mentioned threats human "progress" poses to Earth's ecosystems. For Weil, rooted collectivities preserve the past as "the sole agency for preserving the spiritual treasures accumulated by the dead, the sole transmitting agency by means of which the dead can speak to the living" (p. 8). The protection and rehabilitation of diverse natural ecosystems can further bolster efforts to preserve and revitalize cultural diversity and, reciprocally, strategies that foster cultural diversity can encourage and stimulate ecodiversity. If the diminishment of one kind of diversity can adversely affect the other, then this threat represents a powerful advocacy argument for the need to promote each, and both (Grant 2012).

#### 5 Conclusion

Indigenous knowledge, in combination with new materialism and political ecology discourses, can help us come back down to earth in ways of being and becoming that are ecologically sustainable, preserving the ecodiversity that exists and grows in place, forging egalitarian relationships and a sense of communal responsibility, fostering reverence for ancestors along with nonhuman lives and topographies, and cultivating musical practices that are one with our respective ecosystems. Music educators, who recognize that such actions bring to light and push back against unquestioned hierarchies and social bias, discover that contributing to diversity in music education is inherently political. In foregrounding their students' musical traditions and emphasizing musicking within local contexts of community, family, and soundscape, with the guidance of local music makers, these music educators actively support ecodiversity in music education. Indigenous traditions and actions are proving especially vital in this work because they—along with other ecomusicological experiences and forms of local musicking—can facilitate our return to ecodiversity and sustainability, not in the sense of further appropriating or enclosing cultural traditions but in concert with communities as they nurture their musical roots, attuned to their respective geographical locations.

#### References


Vincent C. Bates is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, where he teaches arts integration and educational foundations. Vincent's research interests include intersections between music education, place, and social class. Prior to WSU, he was a member of the music faculty at Northwest Missouri State University for 6 years and taught K-12 music and art in Eureka, Utah for 12 years.

Daniel J. Shevock is a music education philosopher and author of the monograph, Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy, published by Routledge, and a blog at eco-literate.com. He teaches at Penn State Altoona and plays jazz vibraphone. Dan's scholarship blends creativity, ecology, and critique.

Anita Prest is Assistant Professor of Music Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada). Her current research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC), examines the ways in which public school music educators in rural British Columbia, together with First Nations community members, facilitate the appropriate embedding of local Indigenous knowledge, pedagogy, and cultural practices in music classes. Prior to her appointment, Anita taught K-12 music for 20 years in rural and metropolitan settings.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Part IV Reconsidering the Politics of Music Education Leadership

## From a Different Place to a Third Space: Rethinking International Student Pedagogy in the Western Conservatoire

#### Biranda Ford

Abstract Conservatoires in the West are now made up of a significant body of international students who come to study the Western canon of classical music. With the canon arising in the same milieu as Enlightenment notions of shared humanity, historically, many have argued that this music has a wide, cross-cultural appeal. Though such tropes of classical music still exist, they also have the potential today to act as awkward anachronisms, markers of elitism, whiteness and cultural hegemony. This chapter starts from the perspective that the considerable economic contribution of international students to host institutions risks reproducing colonial relations if their pedagogical experiences are not thought through carefully. Looking to postcolonial theory to make sense of the dynamics at play, key concepts from Homi Bhabha are used as a lens to view the conservatoire. It is argued that international students are marginalized through stereotyping and positioned 'in need' of a Western education, even with attempts to bring their cultural experience of learning into account. I advocate that the conservatoire must move beyond its attempts to contain the effects of cultural diversity and instead harness the potential for self-renewal that comes from embracing cultural difference in a third space.

Keywords Western classical music · Music higher education · Conservatoires · Music pedagogy · International students · Cultural difference · Music education research · Intercultural education · Postcolonial theory · Third space

© The Author(s) 2021 A. A. Kallio et al. (eds.), The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1\_13

B. Ford (\*)

Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, UK e-mail: biranda.ford@gsmd.ac.uk

#### 1 Introduction

Conservatoires in the West, within the contemporary context of a globalized market for higher education, are now made up of a significant body of international students.<sup>1</sup> Though the increased mobility of students worldwide is a relatively new phenomenon, conservatoires have long supported an international body of faculty and students who come together to learn and teach the Western canon of classical music. With the canon arising in the same milieu as Enlightenment notions of shared humanity – for instance, Kantian cosmopolitanism – historically, many have argued that this music has a wide cross-cultural appeal. In the nineteenth century, the century of the founding of many of Europe's prestigious conservatoires (Ford 2010), much was written about music's ability to transcend language barriers or to function as a fundamental pre-language speaking to universal emotions and direct human experience (for instance, Schopenhauer 1818). Though such tropes of classical music still have currency – witness Daniel Barenboim's references to classical music as 'international language' (2016) – they also have the potential to be read as awkward anachronisms, markers of elitism, whiteness and cultural hegemony as today's identity politics negate any appeal to universal experience. So how might we understand what happens when Western classical music is taught to international students in the contemporary conservatoire?

This chapter starts from the perspective that the considerable economic contribution of international students to host institutions risks reproducing colonial relations if their pedagogical experiences are not thought through carefully. Looking to postcolonial theory to make sense of the dynamics at play, I use key concepts from Homi Bhabha (1994) as a lens to view the conservatoire. Concepts such as Bhabha's 'hybridity' – that peoples and cultures no matter where they seem to originate are always irreducibly hybrid – and 'the third space', a notional site that enables students to negotiate and reimagine different hybrid identities, are considered in terms of current and suggested future conservatoire practices. More specifically, I argue that international students are marginalized through stereotyping and positioned 'in need' of a Western education, even with attempts to bring their cultural experience of learning into account. I advocate that the conservatoire must move beyond its attempts to contain the effects of cultural diversity and instead harness the potential for self-renewal that comes from embracing cultural difference in a third space. Though I speak primarily from my UK location, I bring in literature also from Australia and the USA, in the hope that my observations will be applicable to other settings.

<sup>1</sup> Here, 'West' or 'Western' denotes Europe and Northern America and also countries that are English speaking and draw substantially on Europe for political, social, cultural and educational traditions, for example, Australia. I use the word 'conservatoire' here to mean schools of music in higher education, either independent institutions or within university music departments, that focus on the tuition of Western classical music performance.

#### 2 The Economic Imperative of Internationalism in Higher Education

The higher education market in the UK is increasingly reliant on international students. By 2017 the contribution to the overall economy by international students was in excess of £25 billion (Universities UK 2017). Though the need to recruit internationally to the UK has existed since cuts were made to government funding in the 1980s, where once a significant number of students came from the European Union, repeated financial crises in the Eurozone from 2008 onwards have resulted in an increased dependence on non-Western students. Reporting in 2017, the Higher Education Statistics Agency noted that students from China had outnumbered students from all EU countries since 2012, amounting to one fifth of the entire international student population. Though non-EU students have always paid a premium in fees over their EU counterparts, the now uncertain future of Britain in the EU is predicted to further increase higher education's reliance on overseas markets.

For British conservatoires, 'overseas markets' primarily means East Asia. Staff embark on annual recruitment circuits in cities across China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and neighbouring countries, and conservatoire website information can be found translated into Mandarin and Japanese. Whilst this geographical concentration builds upon the historic popularity of classical music in the region, where once Japanese and Korean students came to study in British conservatoires, they are joined by Chinese students who are now a dominant force in classical music studies across the world.

Based on press reports in the UK and the USA that cite up to 40 million children across China playing the piano and 50 million the violin, Huang (2012) has presented numerous commentators' predictions that China could overtake Western countries in their expertise in classical music. This is perhaps evidence of the success of the Chinese government's endorsement of classical music at the highest political levels, an endorsement which has also triggered the mass building of concert halls and opera houses in recent years. In stark contrast to the banning of classical music under Mao at the time of the Cultural Revolution for exemplifying Western bourgeois values, it would seem that classical music in China has been officially realigned with traditional Confucian values such as discipline and hard work (Huang 2012). This points to another distinguishing feature of the classical music boom in China, namely, that it has not required the suppression of its own traditional music or cultural values. Whilst the Japanese favoured Western classical music over its own musical traditions (Schippers 2010), the Chinese interest in Western music has taken place alongside a proud promotion of its own. For instance, Chinese traditional song is used in school education to inculcate a strong sense of national heritage and identity (Ho 2018). Huang (2012) does suggest that Western classical music taps into a contemporary Chinese need to demonstrate its superiority and modernity to the rest of the world by excelling at Western cultural traditions. However, that this takes place alongside the championing of its own music could suggest also an embracing of plurality rather than an overriding impulse to respond to past Western colonial domination.

In this light, the decision to study in Britain and other Western conservatoires by Chinese students would seem to involve the matching of existing teaching expertise with a growing demand for tuition. Those who justify internationalism in higher education as an efficient way of providing skills for students around the world to become workers in a global economy would perhaps see this as a happy meeting of consumer and provider. The teaching of a common repertoire and musical values to all students, home and international, who have enrolled by choice and who might notionally compete for the same orchestral positions across the world, might appear to be a reasonable approach to take. However, is this education as neutral an endeavour as this argument would suggest? Can the discourse of a global workforce prepared by an international education dispel a modern distrust of universalizing explanations?

A formative experience in my own journey into this topic was the informal conversations with students and teachers that alerted me to the fact that international student education – so common in the conservatoire world as to be invisible – might not be as unproblematic as it might seem. In tertiary music education institutions in the UK, Belgium and USA, I have heard strikingly similar accounts of how Chinese and other East Asian students as musicians are seen through the eyes and ears of those brought up through the Western classical music system. Stories of 'excellent technique' and 'amazing sound' but a lack of 'true' musical understanding, or 'shallow' readings, have been voiced, along with assertions that European composers base their instrumental music on their mother tongue, therefore rendering those that come from other language traditions unable to access the full implications of 'the composer's intentions' (see Wang 2019). These comments would suggest that classical music's universal status in its performance, reception and teaching is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. In addition, if students who do not match up to Western norms might be placed at a disadvantage, then we ought to take a closer look to untangle the complexity at play.

#### 3 Conservatoires: Evading Four Decades of Debate on Cultural Diversity

Despite their history of internationalism, conservatoires, whether independent institutions or embedded in university music departments, have not normally been known as sites of cultural diversity. In terms of their core curriculum offerings of a music education based on the Western European canon of classical music, many have successfully resisted a fundamental change in the repertoire they teach and the master-apprentice pedagogy by which it is taught. Long-standing challenges to the authority of the canon, through showing the sociocultural construction of the standard repertory (for instance, Goehr 1992; Citron 1993) or through raising awareness of the variety of musical practices that take place across every human culture, have made little change to contemporary mainstream conservatoire practice. For instance, in Britain, whilst contemporary music, jazz, music theatre and national folk musics have made it onto selected courses either as elective choices or as degree programmes in their own right, these additions are notable for staying within familiar Western genres.<sup>2</sup>

That Western musics have been the focus of Western curricula has been problematized extensively in the field of music education. Over four decades, multiple calls for more diverse curricula roughly fit into two categories: (1) the musical, that there are a host of benefits to musicianship from studying a range of musical traditions, and (2) the social – that social justice through cultural representation or that understanding and tolerance of people from other cultures arises from learning other musics (Drummond 2005). These debates have effected a profound change in school music curricula which now include different world musics and varied genres from popular culture as part of their mainstream offering. Though all of these debates are directly applicable to specialist higher education, with a few notable exceptions (for instance, Sydney Conservatorium's Balinese gamelan and Chinese orchestra programmes or the Glomas network's support of intercultural projects across partner institutions), conservatoires have remained largely unaware of the need to engage with these direct critiques either in theory or in practice (Lind and McKoy 2016).

However, at the level of policy, the most recent calls for radical change in the tertiary sector have put cultural diversity as a central pillar of a new vision for music education. Sarath, Myers and Campbell's Manifesto for Progressive Change (2017), targeted at undergraduate music courses in the USA, draws both musical and social arguments for diversity together into a vision of ambitious scope. It is argued that a thorough knowledge of different musics of the world would give students the ability to grapple with sameness and difference by, on the one hand, experiencing music at a common perceptual level of 'sonic structures' (Sarath et al. 2017, p. 425) whilst also learning about specific cultural contexts. The purpose of diversity here is both transformative and compensatory, for instance, in drawing upon improvisation traditions to bring about a shift from interpretation to creation as the basis for musical engagement and at the same time to increase access of minorities to music higher education.

Further recent developments in the debates over diversity have sought to shift the centre of debate away from curriculum. Fears have been voiced that additive approaches to curriculum can result in tokenism, with poorly understood or integrated new content acting as a smoke screen for a more politically ambivalent praxis (Sharma 2004). In addition, this approach has been open to hijack from multiculturalists insistent on entrenching a rigid identity politics through curriculum

<sup>2</sup> Examples taken from a selection of UK conservatoires: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's BA and MA courses in Scottish traditional and folk music; Royal Academy of Music's MA in Musical Theatre performance.

(Karlsen et al. 2016). Looking instead at the efficacy of pedagogical processes through 'culturally responsive teaching' (Gay 2018), Lind and McKoy (2016) make the case that music's close connection to culture and personal identity requires teachers to be aware of the elements of cultural socialization that most directly concern learning in the classroom. However, they also acknowledge that 'the path to greater understanding is challenging; remedies are not readily apparent and the topic is sensitive in nature' (McKoy et al. 2009, p. 52).

This account of existing debates in the music education literature has shown that school music has received more attention in the literature and made more changes in practice than conservatoires in both curriculum content and pedagogy in response to the need to engage with cultural diversity. To open up a rationale to problematize the teaching of international students in the conservatoire, I now turn to the literature on higher education that critiques internationalization at the level of institutional policy and, in turn, how these critiques affect international students in teaching.

#### 4 Internationalization in Higher Education: Policy and Pedagogy

International students are coming to study at Western institutions in increasing numbers; however, there is a growing disquiet with the shortcomings of the perceived dominance of an economic discourse. Critiques have existed for a number of years now that argue that in policy internationalization has only been crudely enacted as a drive to bring more people into campuses (Robson 2011). More recently, Haapakoski and Pashby's inquiry into policies behind the increase of international student numbers in Western higher education found that economic factors were cited most often in policy directives. When civic benefits were mentioned, these too were with recourse to discourses of economic benefit for host countries (2017). This has fuelled fears that higher education is being reduced to a predominantly commercial enterprise that could also work to reproduce global inequalities in the absence of questioning 'the assumptions behind who benefits from [higher education] and internationalisation and how' (Haapakoski and Pashby 2017, p. 361).

These concerns might seem exaggerated given that diversity is often overtly celebrated in the discourse of higher education. Even beyond this generalized approval, research shows tangible benefits are made available to all students in ethnically diverse education communities. Gurin et al. (2002) show that higher education coincides with a sensitive period in young people's identity formation and that peer influence forms a major part of how individuals construct themselves in relation to the socio-political world. A diverse student body therefore gives rise to tolerant and worldly graduates. Via Piaget, Gurin et al. argue that diverse communities bring with them discontinuity and discrepancy that 'spur cognitive growth' (2002, p. 335) across the wider student population. However, whilst there is broad agreement that engaging with 'cross-cultural ignorance' (Singh 2009, p. 185) can enable intellectual development, in practice this does not happen. Expressions of diversity are usually limited to the general environment of an institution, whilst the stuff of teaching and learning remains unaltered.

This suggests that host institutions are failing to maximize the benefits of internationalization. What, however, might be the effects of this restricted vision on international students themselves? The emergence of a sizeable literature on specific pedagogies for international students would perhaps suggest that when asked to learn solely within the frames of reference of the host institution, problems do arise. For instance, one such popular resource for teachers that coincided with the rise of internationalism in higher education (Biggs 2003) described three phases that teachers would go through in attempting to negotiate cultural divides in the classroom. The first two phases were described in terms of a deficit; by holding up host countries' often tacitly expressed educational values as a norm, international students were seen as lacking. Whilst phase one hoped that students would assimilate themselves into the new way of doing things, phase two typically involved the teacher accommodating difference by adopting new and creative teaching techniques to 'plug gaps' in perceived holes in student knowledge or behaviour. The third stage was called 'education', where the focus returned to the students but this time within the larger context of the student's educational experiences and cultural frames of reference in which prior learning had taken place (Biggs 2003, p. 133).

The desired conceptual shift for teachers is that once the wider context of learning was taken into account, differences that were once attributed to a characteristic of race, for instance, being passive and uncritical, unwilling to participate in class discussions and relying on rote learning (Biggs 2003) would now come to be located somewhere different, as part of another cultural perspective rather than a fixed attitude or property of cognition. Akin to culturally responsive teaching (Gay 2018), Biggs (2003) revealed these stereotypes as myths that dissolved once the teacher worked out which cultural understandings underpinned the behaviour and then skilfully directed students to reach the intended goal. Thus, once a wider context was taken into account, good teaching could give a level playing field to all students.

#### 5 Constructing Diversity in the Conservatoire

To what extent are attempts made to negotiate the wider context of learning of international students in Western classical music? I will now look at two examples from the research literature that articulate teachers' points of view, coming from a Western perspective, of teaching Chinese students. Esslin-Peard and Shorrocks (2017) write of a university music programme in the UK with a high number of international students from China, whilst Huang and Thibodeaux (2016) come from faculties of music in the USA and write of the masterclasses they give to Chinese students in summer programmes in China. Both accounts give the wider cultural context of music students in China, explaining that the study of classical music is often chosen as an accomplishment that can be seen to improve status in society and to advance through to prestigious schools and higher education. As such, visible markers of success such as competitions, and the need for the technical brilliance that goes with them, play an important role in students' aspirations.

In terms of taking into account the wider cultural context, both articles describe effort and rote learning, along with deference to instrumental teachers as originating in students' enculturated values of Confucianism. In their accounts, both sets of teachers are in accordance with Biggs' advice to look at what students might do to achieve desired results. Esslin-Peard and Shorrocks use reflective writing, an often advocated tool in Western teaching (Boud 2010), and ask whether Chinese students approach these with the critical outlook needed to provoke the necessary change in learning. Huang and Thibodeaux try a range of interventions, including educating about European music history and composers. Further strategies are aimed at prompting Chinese students to break free of performing 'woodenly by rote' and instead direct them to 'thoughtful engagement with the music' and 'depiction of detailed emotional content' (2016, p. 30).

What is notable here is that these results are always discussed within implicit frames of Western values, from expectations around being critical to what counts as emotional engagement, musical understanding and, perhaps more fundamentally, being musical. Thus, even when attempting to teach in a culturally sensitive manner as per Biggs, whilst the goal is a fixed notion of what counts as right by Western standards, teaching can only ever be enacted as transmitting a set of norms of the host culture. Students who do not assimilate are understood as stereotypes, fixed by explanations to common culture (on both sides), so that Chinese students are always positioned as being 'in need' of a Western education.

With this bleak reading, Haapakoski and Pashby's plea that we look at 'the assumptions behind who benefits from [higher education] and internationalisation and how' (2017, p. 361) would seem timely. Undoubtedly, there is general approval on the ground for a culturally diverse student body, but does this go beyond surface expressions of a politically correct multiculturalism, the hubris of publicizing a conservatoire's 'world-class' status, or, taking steps to manage practical difficulties that arise by, for instance, providing extra language support? It would seem that without a clear sense of articulating what international students can bring beyond fulfilling admissions quotas and fees targets, conservatoires can suffer from the same charge of economic exploitation that Haapakoski and Pashby bring to the rest of higher education.

#### 6 From (Containing) Cultural Diversity to (Playing with) Cultural Difference

I would like to suggest that Bhabha (1994), by merging colonial theory's concerns with how colonizers subjugate the colonized with post-structuralism's focus on the contextual and mutable nature of meaning, offers some useful ways for mapping out a space in which to make sense of and move through these observations. Like theorists such as Said (1978) before him, Bhabha looks at how stereotypes and identities are constructed within colonizer-colonized roles and how they enforce cultural supremacy. However, a key difference to his predecessors is that for Bhabha the mechanisms of cultural superiority, rather than working to produce clear-cut and fixed categories, are constantly relational, with colonizer and colonized implicated and imbricated within each other through a co-existing process of attraction and repulsion. This produces an ambivalence that works against conceptions of identity that are essentialist and explanations which are consistent and whole (Andreotti 2011).

In terms of thinking through China's relation with Western classical music – admiring but also with a motivation to demonstrate strength through engaging and perhaps even outdoing Western performance standards of classical music (see Huang 2012) – Bhabha's concept of ambivalence, suspending both attraction and repulsion simultaneously, has resonance. This is also seen in the rationale behind conservatoire recruitment strategies; after all, the decision to recruit heavily from China, as well as fulfilling economic need, is also made by way of arguing that Chinese students meet or exceed a certain standard. By possessing attributes, e.g. technical accomplishment and exemplary work ethic, they are chosen by audition panels in preference to their Western counterparts. This approval in recruitment also gives an endorsing sense of Western classical music's universal appeal and significance to those doing the recruiting. However, it can seem contradictory when seen to co-exist with the propensity to invoke marginalizing stereotypes once students have arrived.

As tools of understanding this uneasy relationship, two more concepts from Bhabha may be helpful: mimicry and stereotypes. The urge on the part of the colonizer to make the colonized reproduce its own culture, assumptions and values leads to what Bhabha calls mimicry. As something that is 'almost the same, but not quite', mimicry is always met with fear that to recognize the colonized as the same as the colonizer would erode the colonizers' sense of superiority which justifies domination. Thus 'it is at once resemblance and menace' (Bhabha 1994, p. 86). To cope with the fear of mimicry, colonizers resort to creating stereotypes, constructions of Otherness with fixed identities that characterize the colonized as 'knowable, unchangeable, and predictable' (Andreotti 2011, p. 26). The approval shown at recruitment stage as culture, assumptions and values are (nearly) replicated, later turns to the need to contain rather than engage with the Other, and this is done by recourse to stock Asian stereotypes.

How do we navigate away from this impasse? Bhabha suggests that the problem lies with our tendency to conceptualize cultural diversity as something fixed and knowable (2006). Hidden inside the notion of cultural diversity is an assumption that identities are stable according to ethnicity and that cultural concepts and customs are pregiven because of race (e.g. because of Confucian beliefs, all Chinese students will approach Western classical music in a given way/ people who come from the West will engage on an emotional level with music in a certain way). Bhabha argues that cultural diversity (2006) is conceptualized so that stories of common history, background and traditions all rely on verifying and proving links to origins to maintain their credibility. Perhaps unexpectedly, Bhabha also critiques universalism as flawed by the same logic, so that certain characteristics occur because we are all supposedly members of 'mankind'.

Stories of origins and 'fixity' (Andreotti 2011, p. 26) are problematic for Bhabha as they conceal the fact that peoples have always intermingled and there is no such thing as racial purity. By extension culture has been, and remains as a result of this intermingling, perpetually hybrid. This notion is crucial in reversing claims of dominance, as seeing hybridity in all cultural forms and meanings enables us to reject narratives which cast certain peoples as legitimate inheritors or sole carriers of traditions.

But, to Bhabha, culture is also fluid and unknowable in a further more basic sense as he sees language as necessarily ambivalent, even at its point of enunciation, 'it is only when we understand that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in this contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation, that we begin to understand why hierarchical claims to the inherent originality or 'purity' of cultures are untenable, even before we resort to empirical historical instances that demonstrate their hybridity' (Bhabha 2006, pp. 156–157). By moving from cultural diversity to cultural difference, Bhabha exploits this lack of common ground by suggesting that a truly international meaning can emerge in a third space of, 'the 'inter'-..., the in-between... that carries the burden of the meaning of culture.... It is in this space that we will find those words with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by exploring this hybridity, this 'Third Space,' we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves' (2006, p. 157).

How might these concepts be used to imagine and bring about alternative futures for international students in conservatoires, futures that 'elude the politics of polarity'? A key move would be to use the concept of hybridity as the basis to disrupt the authority by which those in conservatoires fix meaning, standards and norms, exposing the fabrication upon which Western classical music is said to belong to one group of people and not another. That would put the onus on teachers to move from being inheritors/guardians of traditions that can draw lineage back through generations of previous teachers to a supposedly identifiable origin. Instead teaching would become an act of facilitating the decolonization of knowledge and culture in a 'third space'.

In contrast to concepts of cultural exchange which all too easily can reduce to discussions of 'norm and Other' ('We do things here like this; oh, you do things over there like that...?'), the third space offers a neutral forum where discourses can be mediated, navigated between or imagined anew. Students can be given the chance to rewrite their narratives rather than be forced to live by the ones imposed upon them, negotiate local and global contexts and compare disciplinary knowledge and lived experience. Such an education would also give students a chance to make relevant a Western curriculum to their own personal and geographical contexts and, by refusing to marginalize in the face of difference, would be more ethically just.

Though this might seem fanciful when viewed through the lens of conservatoire realpolitik, it is of note that precedent already exists in graduate professional training to explicitly set up third spaces for students to navigate different and potentially contradictory domains, for instance, disciplinary and professional knowledge (e.g. Tremonte 2011). Music, arguably prone to more ambivalence in meaning than language, would be ripe for experiment and discussion in a third space that could bring the identity of the performer into dialogue with performance traditions. Furthermore, in Bhabha's definition of mimicry, based around the colonized's ultimately failed attempt to mimic the colonizer, there seems to be an additional resonance with classical music; to what extent are all attempts of interpretation acts of mimicry, more so in classical music than in other performance arts because of the dictum that through our performance we aim to 'recreate the composer's' intentions'? Could all performance students explore their relationship to mimicry through entering into a third space that would allow them to bring their personal identities, histories, qualities and neurodivergences into collision with the traditions and performance lineages of the works they perform? This example diffuses the unhelpful perpetuation of groups of colonizer and colonized and also takes up Bhahba's invitation to 'emerge as the others of our selves' (2006, p. 157). Stated thus more broadly, this is potentially liberating for all conservatoire students and promises a renewal of classical music that many contemporary commentators point to as a necessary condition of avoiding its obsolescence (e.g. Leech-Wilkinson 2016).

Ultimately, each institution would have to find its own platform for students to engage with learning in a third space. Though the relinquishing of traditional lines of authority in the conservatoire might seem unlikely, enabling cultural difference to be at the centre of teaching and learning would avoid the troubling prophecy that internationalization can only ever lead to economic exploitation via a marginalization of the very students it seeks to recruit. By actively engaging with difference, conservatoires could fully deliver on their duty of care to international students. At the same time, they would transform themselves from sites of cultural reproduction based on a Western norm to a more student-centred education – a move that would surely benefit all conservatoire students.

#### References


Biranda Ford is Graduate Research Training and Development Leader at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she teaches on the doctoral programme. She studied music at Oxford University, violin at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and completed her PhD at the Institute of Education, London. Her research interests centre around music education, including pedagogy, intercultural learning and decolonizing higher education.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Internationalization, Hegemony, and Diversity: In Search of a New Vision for the Global Music Education Community

Alexandra Kertz-Welzel

The work of internationalization is complex, multifaceted and fraught with power relations. (Aw 2017, xxiii).

Abstract In higher education, internationalization is often seen as an exclusively positive development, even though there has been increased critique. This critique concerns a superficial understanding of internationalization as copying what globally successful universities do, thus ignoring local or national needs. But it is also related to the danger of confusing internationalization with Anglo-Americanization, in general and in various fields such as music education. Therefore, an investigation of what internationalization is with regard to music education and how it could look differently is much needed. This chapter critically analyzes internationalization in music education. At the core is the question of how internationalizing music education can be shaped in a way that overcomes hidden structures of hegemony. This chapter envisions a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education which acknowledges various teaching and research cultures. A framework, suggesting conceptual categories such as educational transfer or global knowledge production, can facilitate the formation of a united, yet diverse, global music education community. Additionally, selected concepts of community are presented that can be models for what a culturally sensitive international music education community could look like.

Keywords Internationalization · Diversity · Educational transfer · Global music education community · Hegemony · Higher education · Global mindset

© The Author(s) 2021 A. A. Kallio et al. (eds.), The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1\_14

A. Kertz-Welzel (\*)

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, Munich, Germany e-mail: akertzwelzel@lmu.de

#### 1 Introduction

Internationalization, particularly in higher education, is often seen as an exclusively positive development. It offers universities opportunities for research collaborations and for proving their achievements in global rankings. Internationalization seems connected to endless possibilities for academic and financial success. But internationalization also has its downsides. By focusing on global dimensions, national, regional, or local aspects of universities are often neglected. Additionally, one teaching or research culture can dominate global discourses.

This chapter critically analyzes internationalization in music education, particularly in higher education. At the core is the question of how internationalizing music education can be realized in a way that overcomes hidden structures of hegemony. It envisions a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education which acknowledges various teaching and research cultures. A framework is presented, based on research findings from different fields. It suggests conceptual categories such as educational transfer or global knowledge production that need to be considered when aiming at the formation of a united, yet diverse, global music education community (Kertz-Welzel 2018). Furthermore, selected sociological concepts of community are presented to illustrate what such a community could look like.

The chapter starts with considerations about what internationalization is and what critical perspectives on it could mean, in general and regarding music education. The second part presents a framework with selected categories which concern music education especially in higher education.<sup>1</sup> The following section develops the notion of a culturally sensitive global music education community. The final part offers perspectives for the future.<sup>2</sup>

#### 2 What Is Internationalization?

Even though internationalization is an omnipresent term, there is a lack of general research about this topic. Therefore, it is often not clear what it entails.<sup>3</sup> Basically, internationalization has three different meanings. It stands for initiatives which go beyond national borders. It is connected to transnational political relationships. The term has likewise been used concerning a product which has been developed in one

<sup>1</sup> While the ideas presented are focused on higher education, they can easily be adapted to music education in schools, for instance, regarding the global mindset.

<sup>2</sup> This chapter is based on research results presented in the publication "Globalizing music education" (Kertz-Welzel 2018) but also going beyond the scope of this book. It further develops the notion of community and is more closely related to recent research in higher education studies (Aw 2017).

<sup>3</sup> There rarely is a comprehensive analysis of what internationalization means. Most studies investigate it as related to specific areas such as law (Varella 2014) or higher education (Knight 2012).

country and is adapted for the use in other countries (Kertz-Welzel 2018, pp. 3–5). Generally, internationalization is based on the notion of nation states.

Regarding higher education, internationalization describes initiatives going beyond national borders. It represents "the intentional process of integrating an international, intercultural, and global dimension into the purpose, functions, and delivery of post-secondary education ... to make a meaningful contribution to society" (De Wit and Hunter 2015, p. 3). This indicates that internationalization is a goal-oriented process which deeply affects the very nature of universities. It can concern research and teaching partnerships or a global exchange of ideas. But it might likewise be about adopting new learning styles, thereby addressing the concerns of global students. It is also connected to universities' mere general goals in terms of making meaningful contributions to society. Usually, there are four rationales for internationalization in terms of political, economic, social, and cultural as well as academic reasons, supporting the success of a university (De Wit 2011). They indicate internationalization's multifaceted nature.

But there has also been critique regarding a superficial understanding. Knight (2011, 2012) and De Wit (2011) underline especially four problems of internationalization. First, internationalization should not be an end in itself; rather, it is supposed to aim toward fostering developing intercultural competencies and help preparing students for life and work in a global world. Second, internationalization concerns more than global rankings and partnerships; it affects the very nature of universities and should lead to changes regarding, for example, the teaching and research culture. Third, national differences and characteristics in higher education worldwide are important and meaningful in respective contexts. Therefore, internationalization should build on the local context and common ways of knowledge production, and not ignore them in favor of global standards; this includes implementing intercultural and global dimensions into the policies and programs of universities. Finally, on institutional and individual levels, the development of intercultural competencies is much needed. In general, successful internationalization addresses the specific needs of a respective university and connects it with universities in other countries. But the significance of local context means that there is no one-fits-all solution. Rather, internationalization might look different in each country and is certainly no easy process. The term glocalization has been applied to various processes in attending to some of these aspects, however has not been uncontroversial (Roudometof 2016).

Higher education and specific fields of research such as music education are thus in need of a positive, yet critical, vision of internationalization (Turner and Robson 2008). Brandenburg and De Wit (2011) even call for a "postinternationalization age." It might be time to address the challenges internationalization poses. First, it is crucial to realize that internationalization is not a neutral term but is rather connected to specific cultures and knowledges. Aw (2017, p. xxii) states that "dominant paradigms in the conception of internationalization traditionally come from the English-speaking world and Western Europe." She notes that internationalization is most often a one-sided process, for instance, from the Global North to the Global South, and not mutual. She states:

Internationalization involves knowledge exchange and transfer. However, the current practice is to privilege a form of knowledge originating from the North and flowing to the South. It is important that knowledge flows be multidirectional. Knowledge generation and dissemination need to be decolonized. (2017, p. xxii)

This demand could help redefining what internationalization in higher education is. Addressing issues of hegemony and marginalization is crucial, for example, regarding which knowledge is privileged. Aw (2017, p. xxii) suggests transforming what internationalization means toward having more "equitable policies and practices," also more sustainable concepts of cooperation. A first step would be uncovering hidden hegemonic structures such as the dominance of the North (Aw 2017, p. xxii). This concerns higher education in general but also specific subject areas such as music education where the hegemony of Anglo-American music education has rarely been questioned.

Although internationalizing music education has been a topic addressed in music education research, it has hardly been investigated comprehensively. There also is seldom a distinction of internationalization in higher education and in schools (e.g., McCarthy 2012; Kertz-Welzel 2008). It would be interesting to identify commonalities and differences concerning internationalization in these two areas, particularly with regard to how they address diversity. McCarthy (2012, p. 57) generally argues for understanding music education from a global perspective, realizing its common purpose, but also acknowledging its national characteristics. She uses the metaphor of "global tapestry of music education," illustrating the shared responsibility and challenges of music education worldwide. McCarthy identifies six challenges in global music education, related to music education as part of the public school curriculum: (1) the status of music education, (2) music education advocacy, (3) curriculum development and reform, (4) whose music is school music, (5) renewing the culture of pedagogy, (6) professional networks and forums for research. Most often, there have also been similar rationales for music education as part of the public school curriculum, for instance, nationalism and patriotism (Hebert and Kertz-Welzel 2012). Furthermore, educational transfer in terms of copying successful policies, strategies, or methods from other countries has been a well-known process in music education worldwide (Kertz-Welzel 2015). Methodologies such as Suzuki or Dalcroze are successful examples. While educational transfer is certainly not unproblematic, particularly regarding issues of hegemony when imperial powers force their models of schooling or teaching methods upon colonies (Philipps 2005), educational transfer is necessary to improve the quality of (music) education. But globally, it needs to be shaped in a more reflective way, taking issues of power into account. McCarthy (2012, p. 55) warns that "international perspectives in music education are founded on and dominated by narratives from Western countries and those influenced by the colonial presence of European countries." There is indeed a need for raising awareness for geographical, geopolitical, and geolinguistic aspects of internationalization in music education. Acknowledging the diversity of music education and research cultures worldwide is therefore crucial for a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education in both universities and schools. A framework can facilitate this process.

#### 3 The Framework

A framework functions like a researcher's map of the area investigated, providing a specific lens or perspective for scrutinizing a topic. It offers "a theoretical structure of categories and conceptual elements which can facilitate becoming a united and diverse global music education community" (Kertz-Welzel 2018, p. 10). A framework suggests various analytical categories and conceptual elements which arise from research findings in a respective field and can lead to new insights. Regarding music education, it can facilitate a culturally sensitive internationalization, for instance, concerning university programs preparing students for a global music education world or concerning international encounters (e.g., cooperation, conferences). It should not be something static but rather be expanded or revised through new research findings. The framework suggested here aims at overcoming the dominance of one music education tradition such as the Anglo-American one toward acknowledging the diversity of music education and research cultures worldwide. The notion of community regarding global community plays a crucial role in this process.

What could a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education look like? First, more knowledge about music education in various countries and internationalization will be paramount. This includes understanding what music education looks like worldwide and the impact internationalization had on it so far, e.g., regarding global exchange processes. This also includes how music education globally could be improved and internationalization shaped in a way supporting music education worldwide. Therefore, the framework offers selected categories addressing specific aspects of international music education such as educational transfer, international or comparative music education, and global knowledge production or the global mindset. They can be important points of reference and help shape internationalization in a culturally sensitive way.

Since music education is not a national field anymore, international and comparative music education can function as foundational research areas. Understanding music education as a global field of research means acknowledging the significance of educational transfer. This exchange of ideas has been going on at least since the eighteenth century when travelers from various countries came, for instance, to Switzerland or Germany, looking for the best instructional methods (Kertz-Welzel 2015). Since then, educational transfer in terms of copying successful strategies, methods, or policies from other countries has been most common. It has in recent years even been encouraged by international student assessments such as PISA (Program for International Student Assessment).<sup>4</sup> Methodologies, for instance, the Orff-Schulwerk, represent global success stories of educational transfer. Even though they originated in a specific country such as Germany, they have been transferred to various countries worldwide, being adapted to new circumstances and respective musical traditions. The crucial issue, which educational transfer raises

<sup>4</sup> For more information, see: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/.

in view of comparative music education, is the fact that music education in various countries has already been globally connected and international for a long time. This relativizes the validity of comparative music education as a field and comparison as a method. Therefore, mapping the global flow of ideas might be more important for international music education than just being focused on comparing music education systems in different countries. Connecting comparative and international music education with analyzing the global flow of ideas in terms of educational transfer supports understanding music education as a global research area.

Furthermore, global knowledge production is a significant part of a framework facilitating a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education. No matter if the research is undertaken in a classroom or a concert hall, utilizes interviews or questionnaires, it contributes to the global knowledge in music education. However, even though research is going on worldwide, there is a significant impact of geographical, geopolitical, and geolinguistic factors. It matters where somebody conducts research, whether in a remote part of South America or in a well-known city of the United States. While knowledge is always generated in a specific context, it also needs to be generalizable and applicable to various circumstances in music education. Due to the international dominance of Anglo-American music education, it often seems to reviewers of journals, that knowledge which is not part of the Anglo-American music education world does not qualify to become global knowledge because it seems to be too locally bound (Kertz-Welzel 2018, pp. 64–73). Therefore, raising awareness of the politics of global knowledge production and critically analyzing them are important aspects of a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education.

Additionally, language is a crucial issue since English as lingua franca dominates international music education. Standards of good writing in English have long been accepted as international standards in music education. Not exactly following them, particularly regarding rhetorical choices, can mislead reviewers to conclude that authors do not only have a deficit in English but also in scientific thinking and research methods. Sociolinguistic research has frequently pointed out these issues (e.g., Mauranen 1993). There are, however, still problems with discriminating non-English native speakers in peer-reviewed journals as Lillis and Curry (2012) point out.<sup>5</sup> The inability to make the most common rhetorical choices often leads reviewers to the conclusion that the scholarly competencies of authors whose native language is not English are limited. While it is necessary to have a sufficient language proficiency in English to be active in global music education research, more sensitivity regarding the problems of non-native English speakers is needed. Addressing the problems of research and publishing in a global world is a vital part of a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education.

A culturally sensitive global music education community is in need of culturally responsive music educators and scholars. Therefore, the global mindset is a useful

<sup>5</sup> For more information about this topic regarding music education, see: Kertz-Welzel 2018, pp. 70–73.

concept. It summarizes the knowledge and abilities culturally sensitive people possess, for instance, regarding being open toward cultural diversity and to effectively communicate across cultures. It includes learning how to address cultural misunderstandings and conflicts, constantly learning and revising individual positions. The global mindset encompasses three different forms of capital in terms of psychological, intellectual, and social (Clapp-Smith et al. 2007). Regarding psychological capital, attributes such as curiosity, openness to new experiences, and cognitive flexibility are important. This likewise concerns being able to have a variety of perspectives on a situation, finding creative solutions that respect the values of different cultural contexts. Intellectual capital concerns having knowledge of different cultures, of globalization, of respective fields such as music education from an international perspective. The social capital of the global mindset describes the significance of relationships and networks for success in the global music education community. Gaining the different forms of capital the global mindset encompasses requires personal transformations which might not be easily accomplished. The global mindset is, however, an indispensable part of a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education.

The framework described above concerns different levels of internationalization in music education. By utilizing questions to investigate its current state in a specific country or region or regarding a respective topic, the framework can support the formation of a united, yet diverse, global music education community. Inquiring, for instance, which language or terminology is used in which circumstances, if there would be alternatives, or what terms are paramount can significantly facilitate internationalization and global encounters. This can include talking about the limits of translations, for instance, where we can easily understand each other and where not. Raising such issues opens up spaces for transformation and developing intercultural competence.

Certainly, the framework has many more areas than the ones mentioned above. Various sets of questions could be developed regarding research,<sup>6</sup> music education policy<sup>7</sup> or music education in general.<sup>8</sup> These and many more queries can support a critical and culturally sensitive internationalization of music education, on a theoretical level. But they can also foster it in a more practical way in terms of facilitating

<sup>6</sup> What are important topics? What does the scholarly culture look like? Who are significant scholars? Is there research about internationalization and its problems in respective contexts? Is research conducted in one country more likely to be published than if it would have been conducted in another country?

<sup>7</sup> What university model is implemented (e.g., British, German, American)? What role does educational transfer play, in higher education and regarding music education in schools? What is the role of music teacher education within the entire system of teacher education? What does internationalization mean in higher education? What opportunities and challenges are there? Who dominates international partnerships?

<sup>8</sup> What are the goals of music education? What is the status of music education in schools? What are the most prominent teaching philosophies, methodologies or approaches? What challenges and opportunities does music education face in a respective country? What could we learn from each other?

collaborations between two or more countries. This helps to realize what unites and differentiates music education in various countries, in theory, practice, and research. Eventually, this process can lead to understanding international encounters as intercultural encounters. This means acknowledging similarities and differences between music education traditions but without eliminating them for the sake of oversimplification, because we are supposedly all the same, or overemphasizing dissimilarities, because we might not be alike at all. Saether and her colleagues (2012) describe this approach of intercultural encounters as "breaking the equilibrium and keeping the imbalance alive" (p. 367). It is about accepting diversity and not being too much focused on either similarities or differences in international music education. Understanding international encounters as intercultural encounters calls for intercultural understanding and a global mindset. This can facilitate the formation of a culturally sensitive global community.

#### 4 The Global Music Education Community Today

In the rhetorics on internationalization, the term "global community" is frequently used, even though it is not always clear what it entails (McCarthy 2012; Kertz-Welzel 2018). To support the formation of a united, yet diverse, global music education community, it is crucial to further investigate what the notion of community means in this context and to apply useful sociological concepts to music education.

"Community" generally describes a group of people who have something in common. They are united by specific values and ideas, sometimes even locality and language. Today, in view of globalization, communities are more flexible but also fragile, often not bound to a specific place or language anymore (Delanty 2018). Community has become a versatile concept which offers multifaceted perspectives for music education globally.

Music education worldwide might qualify as global community. Music educators share the same purpose regarding engaging people in music and supporting their musical learning. In some instances, they also face similar challenges regarding music education as a school subject (McCarthy 2012, p. 50). Often, they even have joint visions of what music education should accomplish, for example, regarding social change. Additionally, English is the common language in international music education. But what kind of community could the global music education community be?

Froehlich (2009, p. 92) characterizes the global music education community as a symbolic community. It has shared practices, values, and beliefs. They create a sense of belonging. To be a member in a symbolic community, identity formation is necessary which happens in different ways: at international conferences where the international presentation and discussion culture can be studied, including the rules of networking; by reading internationally important publications and getting to know significant researchers and discourses; in contact with individual scholars; and in seminars at universities where international students or professors discuss issues of global music education. Identity formation within the global music education community is an essential process and should be a topic in music education programs at universities worldwide. However, while music educators internationally might agree in many respects, for instance, regarding music education's significance for children's development, different opinions are welcome. Froehlich (2009, p. 94) states that "diversity can be shared and celebrated best if a sense of belonging has been established." Shared basic beliefs provide a strong foundation for the global music education community, while it is enriched by a multiplicity of opinions and perspectives. In view of this diversity, the task of music educators should be to "work toward a sense of belonging across various geographical locales and for diverse social networks and groups" (Froehlich 2009, p. 94). The notion of symbolic community clearly indicates that a basic set of beliefs is sufficient to connect a variety of opinions and perspectives.

Aside from being a symbolic community, the global music education community could also be characterized as a cosmopolitan community. This notion is a useful model for addressing issues of globalization and internationalization, with community members of various nationalities and different perspectives who are united by basic beliefs (Delanty 2018, p. 179). A cosmopolitan community connects local and global perspectives and is de-territorialized, not restricted by space or time, flexible, but also fragile. At its core is the idea of humanity or the global civil society which has joint concerns such as climate change, refugees, and political populism – or everyone's right to music and music education. Communication is crucial for cosmopolitan communities, facilitated by technology allowing members in various parts of the world to participate. Since cosmopolitan communities often represent something which concerns humanity at large, global music education certainly qualifies as a cosmopolitan community.

The notions of symbolic and cosmopolitan community provide useful visions for music education internationally. They help to understand how the global music education community can be shaped in a culturally sensitive way. While being united by basic beliefs, diversity is an integral part of successful communities. There is no need for the dominance of one music education or research culture. More intercultural dialogue might certainly be an important starting point to understand the current state of hegemony and diversity and to envision how the international music education community could look differently.

#### 5 Conclusion

Times of crises often highlight aspects which we usually overlook. Internationalization and the notion of global community might be such dimensions. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that the world is closely connected and that some problems one country has are most likely to affect everyone. We are indeed a global community and more intensely linked than we ever thought. The global shutdown of universities and schools showed that we face similar challenges worldwide such as learning how to teach online. But the pandemic also led to a backlash of internationalization regarding an increased focus on national interests, for instance, resulting in closing borders. It exemplified that internationalization is still a work in progress and has so far not been accomplished in a sustainable way. There clearly is a need to critically reflect and refine what kind of global community we are and who we want to be, in general and in respective fields such as music education.

It will be the joint task of the global community to work on a culturally sensitive internationalization of music education. Only then can the challenges music education faces today and in the future be addressed. Developing a united, yet diverse, global music education community is the foundation for successful music education worldwide. This includes overcoming the hegemony of Anglo-American music education, particularly through investigations analyzing various music education and research cultures around the globe. This offers new ways of thinking and acting in music education, including new perspectives on global knowledge production. Canagarajah (2005) presents the following vision:

It is possible to develop a pluralistic mode of thinking where we celebrate different cultures and identities, and yet engage in projects common to our shared humanity. Breaking away from the history of constructing a globalized totality with uniform knowledge and hierarchical community, we should envision building a network of multiple centers that develop diversity as a universal project and encourage an actively negotiated epistemological tradition. (p. 20)

This is a call for embracing the diversity of music education and research cultures worldwide and to develop new ways of thinking and acting.<sup>9</sup> It concerns creating a network of multiple research centers with groups of scholars conducting research on internationalization, developing ideas about how to implement diversity in international music education, while at the same time underlining what unites us globally. These groups could present what part of their own music education cultures might enrich international music education, including specific terminology unique to one tradition. They could investigate new ways of international exchange and cooperation, based on the vision of a united, yet diverse, global music education community. This might also concern critically investigating existing cooperation, their challenges, and opportunities. The Global Visions Project of the University of the Arts Helsinki (Johnson 2018) is an excellent starting point for such an endeavor, exemplifying how research and the practice of teacher education could be linked successfully in a culturally sensitive way. Additionally, more interdisciplinary research, readjusting the vision of diversity and music education to new global conditions, is much needed. The rise of nationalist and populist movements around the world, proclaiming their home country's priority, can be dangerous for all attempts of internationalization. Addressing the challenges new political developments present

<sup>9</sup> The UNESCO document, Rethinking education: towards a global common good? (2015) also calls for embracing various kinds of knowledges and learning approaches.

to music education will be an important task. Therefore, internationalizing music education is also a political endeavor.

Another significant aspect is preparing students for being part of the global music education community. Thus, developing seminars on international and comparative music education, including educational transfer, is crucial, giving students the opportunity to learn more about music education theory and practice from a global perspective. This also concerns utilizing the international experiences many students bring to classes, not ignoring them in favor of Anglo-American standards. Internationalizing music education is a task for the global music education community. Each project and each scholar, student, or music teacher can be part of it supporting the vision of a united, yet diverse, global music education community.

#### References


Alexandra Kertz-Welzel is professor and chair of music education at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich (Germany). With research interests in international music education, philosophy of music education, and music education policy, she has regularly presented at international conferences. She is an author and editor of several books. She was co-chair of the ISME Commission on Policy (2016–2018) and chair of the International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education from 2017 to 2019.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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## The Politics of Intercultural Collaboration in Higher Music Education: Challenges Seen from a Leadership Point of View

Sidsel Karlsen

Abstract Internationally, various mandates and policy directives require higher music education institutions to engage in intercultural collaboration. These include fulfilling national policy demands for internationalization in higher education, providing students with experience of working internationally to increase their employability, and conducting proper diversity management so as to facilitate diversityconscious and responsible interaction with employees, students, and the broader educational community. In this chapter, the topic of intercultural collaboration in higher music education is approached from a different starting point, asking what, from a leadership point of view, creates obstacles to such collaboration and what makes it challenging or difficult either at the levels of individual participants, administrators, or the institution. Twelve leadership representatives from three different institutions of higher music education were interviewed about their experiences with intercultural collaboration and the benefits and challenges of engaging in such interactions. From the interviewees' experiences, their work of attempting to govern or manage situations of complex intercultural interaction while simultaneously negotiating between the different interests expressed within the frames of their respective institutions featured prominently in the empirical material. In this chapter, these negotiations and deliberations are theorized and discussed attending to perspectives borrowed from literature on intercultural competences, leadership in higher education, and new managerialism.

Keywords Challenges of leadership · Complex intercultural interaction · Higher music education · Intercultural collaboration · Leadership · Politics

S. Karlsen (\*)

Music Education and Music Therapy Department, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, Norway e-mail: sidsel.karlsen@nmh.no

#### 1 Introduction

Internationally, various mandates and policy directives now require higher music education institutions to engage in intercultural collaboration. These include fulfilling national policy demands for internationalization in higher education (Kertz-Welzel 2018), providing students with experience of working internationally to increase their employability (Westerlund and Karlsen 2017), and conducting proper diversity management, understood as developing and enacting "an organizational strategy which emphasizes the need to recognize ethnic, cultural, gender and other differences" (Wrench 2015, p. 254) so as to facilitate diversity-conscious and responsible interaction with employees, students, and the broader educational community. In music education, matters of intercultural collaboration have been explored from the experiential point of view of music teacher educators and their students as well as in-service music teachers, with the emphasis often focusing on the advantages of such endeavors. For example, music teacher students' participation in intercultural immersion courses and projects has been found to increase their level of reflexivity related to what and how they teach (Burton et al. 2013), their ability to approach teaching situations from an improvisational point of view (Westerlund et al. 2015), and their understanding of their "role in the construction of Otherness" (Bartleet 2011, p. 20). Likewise, music teacher educators involved in cross-national collaboration have been seen to develop new and deepened perspectives on diversity and interculturality (Miettinen et al. 2018), and in-service music teachers have experienced positive musical and personal transformations (Robinson 2005). Even experiential and emotional hardships, following from music students being forced to step out of their individual and cultural comfort zones, have been framed as positive outcomes of intercultural collaboration, with researchers claiming that such experiences have evoked students' ability "to engage in a deep reflection on the nature of teaching and the purpose of music education" (Westerlund et al. 2015, p. 55) and strengthened "their professional identities" (Sæther 2013, p. 48).

In this chapter, however, I have chosen to approach the topic of intercultural collaboration in higher music education from a different starting point, asking what, from a leadership point of view, creates obstacles to such collaboration and what makes it challenging or difficult either at the levels of individual participants, administrators, or the institution. Twelve leadership representatives from three different institutions of higher music education were interviewed about their experiences with intercultural collaboration and the benefits and challenges of engaging in such interactions. From the interviewees' experiences, their work of attempting to govern or manage situations of complex intercultural interaction while simultaneously negotiating between the different interests expressed within the frames of their respective institutions featured prominently in the empirical material. The area of obstacles and challenges related to such negotiations and deliberations is the focus of this particular chapter.

#### 2 Contexts and Sampling of Participants

The three institutions involved in this research were the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki in Finland; the Levinsky College of Education in Tel Aviv, Israel; and the Nepal Music Center in Kathmandu, Nepal. At the time of the interviews, these institutions were engaged in a large-scale transnational research project named Global Visions Through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Finland, Israel and Nepal (see Global Visions n.d.). Although belonging to the same network, the institutions were quite different with respect to the types of music education and programs offered, and they also represented vastly different cultural and social contexts as well as musical and pedagogical traditions. While the Sibelius Academy is a music conservatoire institution, educating musicians and music educators in Western classical music, folk music, and a variety of jazz and popular music styles, the Levinsky College of Education is a teacher training institution that includes a Faculty of Music Education which mainly educates music teachers to work within a variety of contexts. At this institution, Western classical music holds a dominant position, although other musics, such as Hebrew singing traditions, world music, and popular music are also taught to a certain extent (see Miettinen et al. 2018, p. 71). The Nepal Music Center is a music and culture nonprofit organization which offers courses in Western popular music, Nepali folk music of various kinds and traditions, and Eastern ragabased music. At the time of the research project, both the Sibelius Academy and the Levinsky College of Education were undeniably institutions for higher music education in the sense that they offered education at the university level (see Jørgensen 2009, p. 12), from bachelor's degree programs and above. The Nepal Music Center was in the process of becoming such an institution, waiting for approval of a bachelor's degree program to be launched in collaboration with the Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu.

As mentioned above, 12 leadership representatives were interviewed, among them 6 men and 6 women. The interviewees were selected because they all worked within music education institutions that were engaged in intercultural collaboration but experienced this phenomenon from different locations within the institutions and also from positions characterized by huge differences with respect to values, traditions, hierarchies, and sociocultural and economic conditions. Consequently, the sampling strategy used could be described as based both on a reputational case selection and a wish to achieve maximum variation (Miles and Huberman 1994), aiming to capture the specific experiences of a certain group of people, considered as key informants, as well as diverse variations within this particular sample, hoping to identify "important common patterns" (p. 28). With one exception, all the interviewees can be described as manager-academics (Deem et al. 2007) or managermusicians to some degree, in the sense that they were "academics [or musicians] who [had] become managers and leaders" (p. 102) in the institutions where they worked, either full time or as part of their workload. For reasons that have to do with protecting the anonymity of the interviewees, I choose not to give any further descriptions of their academic or administrative ranks or of how many interviews were conducted within each institution. For the same reason, when describing the results below, I also refrain from connecting contextual information to individual utterances.

#### 3 Procedures, Analysis, and Theoretical Points of Departure

The leadership representatives were interviewed in a place of their own choice, mostly in their own offices or in meeting rooms located within their workplaces. This was both a practical solution and a way of respecting the fact that the participants were interviewed in the capacity of their professional role and standing. The interviews were semi-structured, following an interview guide, and the interviewees gave their consent in accordance with the ethical guidelines provided by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (2012). All interviews were conducted in English, which was neither the mother tongue of the interviewer nor of any of the interviewees. This situation did of course complicate the conversations (see more on linguistic challenges below); on the other hand, none of us was privileged as the native English speaker. The interview transcriptions were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach, meaning that the texts were coded and categorized focusing on the factors that the interviewees saw as either beneficial or challenging in relation to intercultural collaboration. As mentioned above, in this chapter, I have chosen to concentrate on the part of the empirical material where obstacles, challenges, or difficulties were described. These aspects were divided into four main categories, namely, (1) common challenges connected to intercultural work; (2) the perils of university (or school) life; (3) the potential that intercultural collaboration could have for challenging the local culture and creating controversies; and (4) the phenomenon of institutionalized distrust. All four categories spanned utterances made by interviewees in all the three institutional contexts involved. The results are theorized attending to perspectives borrowed from literature on intercultural competences (MacPherson 2010), leadership in higher education (Whitchurch and Gordon 2017) and new managerialism (Deem et al. 2007).

#### 4 Challenges of Intercultural Collaboration

Instead of approaching the interviewees with a fixed understanding of what intercultural collaboration might imply, some of the initial questions in the interview guide were directed toward mapping their understandings of how this phenomenon appeared both within and beyond the borders of each institution, following the conviction that exploring intercultural encounters is not necessarily "a matter of defining assumed cultural boundaries" (Miettinen et al. 2018, p. 70) but rather of acknowledging "how we imagine and co-construct ourselves and the selves of others, across diverse contexts" (p. 70). Consequently, below the interviewees describe challenges that might occur in both internal and external intercultural collaborations, the former spanning, for example, handling ethnic, cultural, religious, or linguistic differences between diverse student and staff groups, but also tackling differences connected to various music traditions or to the divergences between researcher and musician cultures. The latter, external form, would typically involve encounters with other national bodies, such as higher education institutions or ministries or, as was most common, cross-national collaboration with international stakeholders.

#### 4.1 Common Challenges: Linguistic and Cultural Differences and Divergence of Expectations

Writing from the point of view of how decision-making is negotiated in intercultural teaching situations, MacPherson (2010) emphasizes mastering "[i]ntercultural communicative competences" (p. 273) as an important skill, including "cross-cultural listening" (p. 273), being aware of "power dynamics" (p. 273) and also being able to master more than one language and to code-switch whenever needed. A lack of such abilities was seen by the interviewees in the present study to be one of the more common sources of obstacles for intercultural collaboration, and it was evident both in internal and external encounters. Regarding linguistic differences, one interviewee explained:

English is not my [native] language, and it is not yours ... it sounds different [depending on who speaks], not intended, but ... how I understand [and] how you understand, there is this confusion. I am always, like, "OK, did you get what I tried to...?"

This quotation points both to the obstacles involved in speaking different versions of English but also, more implicitly, to the deeper layers of understanding that are connected to having different (cultural) frames of reference. Another interviewee emphasized the latter challenges, by saying:

First, [you have] to understand the culture well enough to allow you to cooperate. Because that is not easy. It is never easy, even if you work with [people from] somewhere very close ... the culture is always different. And you cannot go there and say, "Do it like this!" You have to listen.

Not fully mastering these layers of communication could have quite severe consequences, such as international partners withdrawing from collaboration, which had happened to some of the interviewees in previous projects. Lack of, or obstructed, communication could also enlarge a divergence of expectations among collaborators, which would potentially hamper the collaboration outcomes or at least the experienced usefulness of such outcomes for one or more of the partners involved. Describing such a discrepancy of outcomes from the point of view of her institution, and from her particular location within that institution, one of the interviewees expressed a certain disappointment with the way things had developed in one particular project:

In spite of [our] sincere efforts, desirable effects and outcomes have not been witnessed ... mainly because of not having enough funding or sufficient resources, I do not know ... the aspect of development [that was desired from our point of view], we have not seen.

While the interviewee in this quotation points to a lack of resources as one possible reason for the state of things, other parts of this particular conversation revealed a certain frustration with expressed expectations not being met by collaborators. Other points of frustration could occur when, for example, resources seemed to be shared unevenly among collaborators in cross-national projects: "Well, of course, very many of the benefits went to [the other institution]." While situations like these can be challenging enough among partners having similar cultural and linguistic frames of reference, the potential obstacles multiply when negotiations need to be filtered through linguistic and cultural differences.

#### 4.2 The Perils of University (or School) Life: Lack of Time, Resources, and Opportunities

Writing on new managerialism in higher education in the UK, Deem et al. (2007) recognize the increasingly heavy workloads that academics are expected to carry. Likewise, Whitchurch and Gordon (2017), describing the situation from a more international point of view, note that even though workload models exist, also of the kind that aim to achieve "transparency and equity" (p. 81), they do not necessarily "account particularly well for interdisciplinary and external partnership working" (p. 81). This description of academic working life reality was highly evident in the interviews, on a general level, but the various aspects of it were also seen to be among the main forces that hindered intercultural collaboration, perhaps especially of the kind that required cross-national contact and travel. One interviewee simply put it like this: "We don't have time!" Another emphasized the economic aspects when answering my question about the challenges of intercultural collaboration: "Challenges? It has always been finances ... that is the main challenge." A third interviewee elaborated further:


Some of the leaders interviewed feared that by engaging in projects that required extensive intercultural collaboration their staff ran the risk of being completely overloaded with work and burnt out. Others pointed to local priorities and cultures as something that perhaps needed to undergo change in order to make such collaboration viable: "Perhaps this institution appreciates teaching too much?" Finally, there was a concern that staff members did not even have time to talk among themselves about everyday matters nor to engage in domestic developments. Expressing admiration for those who took on intercultural and cross-national work but pointing out that such work also took the focus away from the institution, one interviewee stated: "We value what they do, but at the same time, we miss those who would concentrate on domestic issues." Such a view stems perhaps from the experience (or opinion) that work done elsewhere does not necessarily benefit the employing institution. Also, when institutional resources are viewed as scarce, the question easily becomes to whom, primarily, do the employees owe their time and effort?

#### 4.3 Challenging the Local Culture and Creating Controversies: Troubling Habits and Traditions

Aligning with previous research in music education (e.g., Westerlund et al. 2015; Sæther 2013 as referenced earlier in this chapter), some of the interviewed leaders argued that intercultural collaboration often required the participants to step out of their comfort zones. This was seen to evoke forms of learning that would affect the institution on a collective level and have the potential to destabilize the local culture and create unforeseen consequences and, sometimes, controversies:


Other interviewees attributed such tension not to the leadership level but to the level of staff members who, in their opinion, were not particularly willing or ready to change:

Another challenge is, you have this old-school thought of doing habitual things, like, you know they [the staff members] have been doing it for years and years, and then we have [other staff members] who are learning differently than what they have learnt ... when we start to try to change, there will be lots of ... tension.

Individual staff members' resistance was seen, not only as related to habits but also to the employees' close relationship with, or loyalty toward, their respective disciplines. Explaining how he assumed some of his staff members would react to intercultural collaboration and the changes potentially brought about by it, one leader said:

They will cling to their own discipline. I think it is part of the problem here ... we have people who come from the more theoretical side ... saying "Of course, music history is first and foremost about the Western civilization. I do not have time to start teaching Indian music, and I do not know Indian music, so just let me be".

In the data generated for this particular study, such resistance and discipline-related commitment to tradition were first and foremost seen by the interviewees as something characteristic of musical traditions and cultures and of the academics and musicians who represented those. Broader research on higher education management shows, however, that the phenomenon pinpointed above as a conserving or obstructing force in intercultural collaboration is, in fact, a quite common trait among academics. According to Deem et al. (2007), many academics typically "base their identity on their discipline or subject," and "[t]heir allegiance is more often to that discipline ... than [to] their university" (p. 70). Manager-academics, on the other hand, are "far more likely to express loyalty to their institution" (p. 70).

#### 4.4 Institutionalized Distrust: Envy, Selfishness, Censorship, and Surveillance

The doubt about staff members' willingness to participate in intercultural collaboration on constructive terms that emerges in the two last quotations above was evident also elsewhere in the empirical material. This did not concern only subordinate staff, however; the leadership representatives clearly felt that neither could their own staff entirely be trusted to engage willingly and fruitfully in such activities nor could the superior authorities be expected to endorse them wholeheartedly. With respect to the first group, the leaders found that their staff formed a conservative culture, they emphasized the conserving forces of the discipline- and traditioncentered approaches mentioned above, and they acknowledged that they worked in institutions where change took time and often could not be achieved before someone went into retirement. Change, then, required hiring new staff:

It is a huge problem ... there are not too many faculties that actually give tenureship ... It is a huge problem because you cannot make changes. So, the only way to make changes is to bring new people. Newcomers.

Lack of staff competence was also pointed to as one factor that would hinder new developments, as were inter-faculty differences and arrogance, especially when it came to fostering intercultural collaboration between musical traditions:

Sometimes they collaborate with each other, sometimes not, because of an arrogant nature on the side of [one musical tradition]. These people [from the other tradition] are feeling that they have been humiliated or they have been oppressed by [people from the first tradition].

Cross-national intercultural collaboration was imbued with other challenges as well; the interviewed leaders described, for example, how staff members would express envy that they were not chosen to participate in certain projects or that colleagues had chances to travel internationally. As one interviewee said, who had travelled himself: "When you are abroad, that creates envy ... amongst other teachers, and they think you are on holiday." A certain selfishness was also attributed to employees, and some of the interviewees feared that competences achieved through intercultural collaboration would be used for the benefit of the individual academic or musician, and not of the institution: "If you run away with your own agenda and you ignore the institution ... what is the point of us supporting all these people?" Thus, obstructions to fruitful collaborations were found on both collective and individual levels, according to the leadership representatives.

While the interviewed leaders expressed a certain distrust toward their staff, they themselves did not feel completely trusted by the authorities above them either. This was shown in two different ways with direct relevance to intercultural work and collaboration. First, there was a feeling among some interviewees that opening up the can of worms of tensions and challenges that discussing interculturality might imply could lead to political sanctions and censorship. During one interview in particular, I was given several examples of teachers being silenced for voicing their opinions, and the interviewee said:

It is also a question of being able to talk about these things. [In this country] there are many things where it is not clear within the Ministry of Education if you can or cannot talk about [it] ... It is very unclear.

As the politics of the country in question had developed, this interviewee found it increasingly hard to engage in discussions regarding intercultural issues and added: "It is a question of being able to air your opinions and not be shunned by society because of that." Second, several of the leaders were concerned that the outcomes of intercultural collaboration within the various institutions could not be controlled or audited in a way that the national higher education accreditation units would recognize or acknowledge. This was the case with both student and teacher outcomes, exemplified in the following quotation:

My hands are tied, because being [in this position] I have to go through strict curricula that I did not produce ... it is the Ministry of Education that actually decides ... the curriculum is very tight ... where do I put the multicultural thing in? So, it is difficult!

Other interviewees talked about challenges connected to giving students accreditation for courses that involved intercultural collaboration, and others again expressed worries that intercultural collaboration projects were not reported in ways that would be found satisfactory by the educational authorities.

The pattern of two-sided doubt about the good will and intentions of staff and authorities found above is not something particular to higher music education but strongly resembles what the new managerialism literature names institutionalized distrust. According to Deem et al. (2007), this phenomenon occurs when universities go from a system of "regulated autonomy" (p. 101) toward one in which "free market forces and private sector market discipline" (p. 101) rule the institutions. Such development requires "explicit performance and quality indicators" (p. 39) and also creates a bigger divide between the management or leadership and those who are managed. In other words, the university and its leadership are now subjected to "more intrusive state-centred intervention" (p. 25) than before, including increased and "detailed surveillance of professional training and accreditation" (p. 25). In this chapter, such surveillance becomes visible, for example, through the strict ministrydetermined curricula mentioned above but also, implicitly, through the expressed fear of not reporting to the authorities in a satisfactory or correct way. At the same time, "the power, status, and role of academics in university governance have declined" (p. 27) and with this the trust in academics as professionals. In my interpretation, such devaluation shines through in some of the not-so-flattering descriptions of staff members above. While the patterns of institutionalized distrust described here may not exactly be the same as the ones found by Deem et al. (2007) in UK universities, they are certainly similar. In the context of this chapter, it is also evident how these patterns create obstacles to various kinds of intercultural collaborations and interactions, both intra- and inter-institutionally, since the suspicion they involve seems to restrict the capacities for action of both leadership and staff.

#### 5 Concluding Remarks

As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, the leadership representatives were interviewed about the challenges and the benefits of intercultural collaboration. Thus, what is highlighted in this text does not cover the whole range of their experiences with or viewpoints about such endeavors. It is important for me to emphasize that the interviews also contained information about many positive aspects of intercultural collaboration for higher music education. This, however, will have to be the topic for another article. Here, the challenges have been explored, and the above examination shows that leaders in higher music education institutions perform complex navigations between local and global discourses. They engage in politics-related maneuvers that require them to negotiate various kinds of difference and diversity and also to tackle phenomena following from developments in higher education management, such as institutionalized distrust. This happens across institutions, countries, and continents. What should not be forgotten, however, is that institutions, when embarking on collaborative projects, bring different prerequisites for participation – culturally, status-wise, and not least economically – and these conditions will highly affect the power dynamics of such projects. If one reads between the lines of some of the quotations above, it is possible to trace some of the negotiations relating to such dynamics, perhaps especially in relation to who is in a position to have their institutional expectations met and to steer the development and outcomes of particular projects and also who has the advantage of bringing the money and thereby making decisions regarding the distribution of economic resources. Ultimately, then, intercultural collaboration in higher music education might produce inequalities just as much as it aims for equality and is thus a phenomenon pregnant with numerous ethical challenges (see Karlsen et al. 2016). The overarching challenge is, perhaps, to engage in intercultural collaboration bearing in mind that we need "[a]n ethics of difference" (Kenny and Fotaki 2015, p. 494), one that will allow us to work respectfully together in a world with inequalities for which there is no quick fix.

#### References


Sidsel Karlsen is a Professor of Music Education at the Norwegian Academy of Music where she also serves as one of the leaders of the Centre for Educational Research in Music (CERM). Karlsen is also a docent at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki in Finland, and one of two PIs in the research project Global Visions Through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Finland, Israel and Nepal. Karlsen has published widely in international research journals, anthologies, and handbooks and serves on several international editorial boards.

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