Musicking with the Other 80%

Lurking in the background of my musical upbringing was a tension between my formal, academic musical identity and my informal, household musical identity. Because of this tension, I worked hard during my time as a music teacher to implement two ideas I learned as a music-teacher-in-training: Christopher Small's (1998) “musicking” theory, which challenges people to stretch their thinking about the definition of a musician, and David Brian Williams & Rick Dammers's (2014) “the Other 80%” theory, which challenges music teachers to question why only 20% of secondary students participate in a traditional school ensemble when many more have rich musical lives outside of school. This chapter challenges PoC and non-PoC music teachers to consider the practical implications that these theories may have on the development of student musicians with diverse musical upbringings.

Keywords: Bilingual ; Christopher Small ; constraints ; David Brian Williams ; ESL ; general music ; Latino ; Mexican ; non-traditional ; Rick Dammers ; tension