With this article, the author alludes to Brian Roberts' 2004 article "Who's in the mirror? Issues surrounding the identity construction of music educators," and the "looking glass self" famously described by Charles Horton Cooley a little more than 100 years ago. Both authors speak to the notion that one's identities are as much constructed by how…

Does music education need a new philosophy that is scientifically grounded on common agreements with educational and musical standards? If such standards are commonly accepted, why do people reflect philosophically about music teaching and learning? At first glance, these questions sound very abstract and theoretical because people love music, and…

In this article, the author discusses the down side of a personal/professional makeover at any age, less to discourage risk-taking than to render it transparent, even plausible. He explores one aspect of the experience of redevelopment, what John Dewey called the "reconstruction of experience", with attention to the role of personality, ingrained…

This paper initially looks at Nietzsche's two different concepts of music: Apollonian and Dionysian, named after the two Greeks gods Apollo and Dionysus. In coming to terms with a Dionysian view, Nietzsche's elaboration of how one perceives and relates to music will be regarded both on its own terms and in the context of Nietzsche and "samba".…

This paper is a beginning attempt to "decolonize" one's understanding of multiculturalism in music education. The author first considers the ways race is embedded as coded language in discourse, and the ways one's use of coded language hinders one's ability to talk about race directly. In this regard, the author addresses the silence that…

In his recent historical-philosophical offering, "The Enormous Flywheel of Society: Pragmatism's Habitual Conception of Action and Social Theory," Finnish scholar Erkki Kilpinen explores the historical development of pragmatism as a philosophy and describes its varying influence on the development of the social sciences in the United States.…

One of the major changes in twentieth century philosophy was the so-called linguistic turn, in which natural and formal languages became central subjects of study. This meant that theories of meaning became mostly about linguistic meaning, thinking was now analyzed in terms of symbol manipulation, and rules of classical logic formed the nucleus of…

In this essay, Kilpinen responds to Terry Gates, Scott Goble, and Pentti Maattanen, who have provided reviews of his dissertation book "The Enormous Fly-Wheel of Society." As the reviewers noted, the book attempts to make two points simultaneously, and it may be that this made its argument hard to follow. The first point, that thorough knowledge…

Music appears to engage humans in a holistic, abstract and often unconscious way. This paper theorises that music contributes to the fulfilment of basic human needs. It suggests how these needs may have developed and describes the unique features of music that might meet those needs. The article concludes by proposing that an understanding of how…

This article reports on a project called, "Everyday life as a perspective on music education in the classroom." Part of this project involved the construction of texts and lyrics by a group of students from year 5, in weekly music lessons at a regular primary school from Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. The article describes the…

Most people think of the teaching and learning of music as taking place in formal, institutional contexts like schools and universities. This study looks at the transmission of music teaching and learning that takes place in a more informal, musical environment, namely at a "popular music festival." In particular, it discusses the OM music…

In many ways, culture is rooted in the arts. While one may argue that "public policy debates are connected to information technology" (Snyder, et. al., 1999), public policies are also profoundly influenced by the sounds and images that form the content of all aspects of broadcast and print media. Contrary to an information technologist's…

In the author's research, she studies the professional identities of music educators. Through her ethnographic studies of elementary school general music teachers, she has come to better understand the ways that elementary general music teachers express and enact their identities. It is often said that academics study themselves when they conduct…

In this fifth installment of what has become a series of essay reviews of books that raise issues important to music education and relevant to the ideals of the MayDay Group, the author turns his attention to a topic rarely considered or discussed in conjunction with music education: race. Race, assert Radano and Bohlman, is a specter that lurks…

Hip hop is the most multicultural of popular musical forms--all races and ethnicities are involved. Simultaneously hip hop is also the most racialized, and indeed the most blackened, musical form of individuals' times. How did this happen and why should it be of interests to music scholars? In this short essay, the author attempts to suggest that…