Journal of Popular Music Education - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2019

This article explores the tensions between ‘doing gender’ and ‘doing popular music’ within the context of informal popular music learning for one group of girls of age 12–14 in a Southwestern Ontario elementary school. Using the transposition of Bakhtin’s concepts of monoglossia and heteroglossia to the performance of gender, the authors explore how members of Group G, an all-girl popular music band, perform heteroglossic gender behaviours, even while maintaining and presenting an outwardly monoglossic performance of gender in other respects. Furthermore, we explore how aspects of the girls’ behaviours vacillated between traditional gendered discourses and traditional discourses of popular music. Finally, findings suggest that the girls of Group G may not have been deliberately transgressive in their performances of gender but that they may have produced heteroglossic gender performances as part of a process of exploring their own identities. We conclude by considering the informal popular music classroom as a space that may be conducive or constricting towards the possibilities of heteroglossic gender performances and the need for a broadening of pedagogies of popular music that take into consideration both gender and power as it relates to gender.

This article explores music talent reality television (RTV) and conceptualizes it as a site of music education. It also considers whether music talent RTV might magnify sociocultural traits that are less easily detected in other sites of music education. A considerable body of research has developed around RTV, notably from the fields of sociology, media studies, cultural studies and women’s studies. These scholars frequently draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital to analyse participant and audience engagements with the genre. Judgement is central to these discussions, particularly in the subgenre of music talent RTV, with several authors showing how taste and distinction are influenced by habitus. Reviewing the RTV literature highlights how certain musics and musicking experiences are judged, and how such judgement can devalue the musical experiences of those young people who are least likely to access school music education. This raises questions for further study about music talent RTV’s relationship with school music education, and for the study of music talent RTV as a music education setting in its own right, but it also highlights themes that warrant consideration in school music education sites, where judgements and their impacts on access and participation are often disguised or unquestioned.

Popular music education continues to increase in North American educational settings. While popular music teaching and learning are recognized in a variety of contexts, contemporary Christian church praise bands have not been significantly addressed in music education literature. In addressing this gap, the purpose of this study is to examine the musicking practices occurring in the contemporary worship music (CWM) context and how these lead contemporary Christian musicians to acquire and develop their musical skills. Green’s five principles of informal music learning were found to apply in part, yet other distinctive features were also present in study findings. Themes such as elitism, excellence, hierarchies of musical engagement, and inclusion/exclusion of worshippers and the congregation also arose, providing interesting areas for future research.

This article engages the narratives of three Toronto hip-hop artists to explore the pedagogical possibilities revealed through the processes of performance identity construction. By immersing themselves in hip-hop communities, artists learn ways of knowing and negotiating their place at the interstices of the normative frameworks that underlie their unique combinations of cultural contexts. Artists’ stories reveal how they bring themselves into being through movement and sound. These narrations of identity become indicative of an artist’s style through performative iterations embedded with the opportunity for enacting difference. For hip-hop artists, deviating from performative expectations is not a mere possibility, but formative intention in the tradition of the African American practice of Signifyin(g), as delineated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Conversations with hip-hop artists invite reflection on what we could accomplish through a music education pedagogy that cultivates creative deviancy that reveals, breaks open and overturns limiting conventions.

Research on popular music pedagogy tends to centre on teaching and learning practices related to school-aged students; less research has focused on the training of pre-service teachers. We present the perspectives of two pre-service teachers on their experiences taking the first iteration of a popular music pedagogy course at a university in Canada as part of their music education studies. The examination we present is limited to one site and two pre-service teachers’ perspectives, but focuses on some important themes including group dynamics, songwriting, integrating technology and learning popular music instruments. We begin by surveying some recent related literature on popular music pedagogy before outlining our purpose and method. Then, we detail the underpinning ‘informal learning’ ethos of the course and provide a course description. Finally, we present our findings on the two pre-service teachers’ experiences with the course and conclude with a brief discussion that contextualizes these results with related literature.

Scholars theorizing in the area of social justice and music education argue that music has the potential to prepare students to engage in a society that cultivates personal freedom and democratic participation. The continued reliance on values and practices of Western art music within music teacher education has resulted in a disconnect between this discourse and professional practice. The status quo perpetuates conditions that limit accessibility, privilege western art music and maintain whiteness as ‘normal’. In this article, I suggest that this disconnection can be addressed by introducing culturally relevant pedagogy within music education training programmes. Culturally relevant pedagogy, focusing on reflexive practice and place-based education, requires pre-service music educators to think deeply about experiences of marginalized music education students and critically examine the values and beliefs they hold. Embedding the values of culturally relevant pedagogy within music education training creates space for music from different cultural contexts including popular music.

This article offers guidelines to secondary music ensemble directors who are interested in incorporating informal approaches common to popular music making within their ensemble. The approaches provided utilize listening, improvisation, arranging, composition and collaboration in order to incorporate popular music learning. The examples discussed are specific strategies and methods which can be used by secondary music ensemble directors as entry points into popular music making activities. Strategies and methods presented place focus on approaching popular music making from the students’ musical interest and experiences promoting student-led learning.

This article draws upon the experiences of the author as a music educator creating inclusive music programmes over the past 24 years. She describes how informal learning gleaned from the approaches of popular musicians, combined with musicking as a means of building powerful relationships and critical pedagogy to infuse student voices into the teaching and learning process is a potent recipe for building an inclusive music class. Such a method needs to be guided by music educators throughout the learning process. Examining inclusive music education leads to further questions regarding what constitutes musicality and non-musicality in western society. When persons of all ages are involved in musicking in school and community contexts, music educators need to be involved in the challenges surrounding notions of musicality and non-musicality to steer processes that can create spaces for learning and growth.