Philosophical descriptions of democratic music education frequently rely on "inclusion" and "participation" as the defining features of democratically oriented music programs. Democratic epistemic considerations, such as regulatory ideals of musical quality and excellence, however, are less commonly cited, if not actively…

Inspired by the life and works of Grammy Award® winning artist, Lil Nas X, we explore ways a young Black queer musician has enacted emancipatory utopias to disrupt dominant cultural modes of being--offering unapologetic expressions and expansions of race, gender, and sexual identity. In this paper, we draw upon José Esteban Muñoz and Ytasha Womak…

Extending a nascent line of Asian philosophical research in music education, we mine Indian philosophies of music and education. Three key questions guide our project: (1)What are Vedic philosophies of music? (2)What are Vedic philosophies of education? (3)Taken together, what insights can we draw for contemporary music education writ large? To…

Despite a growing body of advocacy for the beneficial effects of music education upon individuals' development and wellbeing, lived experiences in the music classroom are testament to a diversity of both positive and negative musical encounters. For some pupils, classroom music-making is characterized by opportunities, achievements, and…

The shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the implementation of digital technology to advance many new applications. Digital applications were believed to be indispensable for changes in learning environments and strategies that would enhance the capacity and quality of learning through focused motivation, communicative…

In recent years, the study of musical cultures has gained popularity as a curricular intervention for increasing cultural diversity in school music curricula. Informed by Michel Foucault's analytics of power-as-effects, this paper examines some of the underlying epistemic premises of the notion of musical culture as it operates in music curricula.…

Flourishing has become a popular ideal in the educational debate. Could flourishing guide meaningful choices in education? My skepticism rests on unclear definitions of flourishing, a hidden insistence of theories of flourishing on selfish and individualistic themes, and an elitist vision of flourishing as the consequence of favorable conditions.…

This theoretical inquiry approaches the challenge of reflexivity in the music education profession from the perspective of a collective and social understanding of memory. While memory is typically understood as being an individualistic, psychological, and cognitive phenomenon, in this paper we argue that the perspectives of collective and social…

Music education holds an ambiguous relationship to social justice and social change; it is both complicit in perpetuating relations of inequality and a potential force for positive change. There is a need to turn the ambiguity of music's social function--the simultaneous production of transformative and reproductive social processes--into the…

This article is based on results from research that addressed the ways young Black Metal musicians construct their musical learning and socialization. In this article we will focus on one of the strands in that study; a trace of a classic ideal from "Bildung" theory. Using Bildung theory, we explore similarities between the ideals and…

Working with students in ways that emphasize creativity and improvisation presupposes a posture of openness and self-regard for all stakeholders. The teacher in such a setting can neither impose an ideology nor fix expectations for growth. The students, composing and improvising collectively, will encounter opportunities to test beliefs and…

This paper argues that the neoliberal (mis)appropriation of artistic creativity that begins to have a serious impact on music education can be seen as the result of a reverse détournement, whereby the very terms that used to play a pivotal role in describing the anti-systemic, anti-commercial, unsettling, emancipatory qualities of artistic…

This essay explores new avenues towards challenging inequity in these dark times. In these dark times, neoliberalism has coopted discourses that once challenged inequality and systems of power. Social justice, diversity, and identity politics--once powerful discourses that challenged inequality--have now been adopted by those in power to sustain…

The pedagogical strategy of students choosing their own friends with whom to work in classroom contexts (under the guise of democratic participation) because this is how popular musicians learn, has mostly gone uninterrogated in the literature. Approaching the question of how to create a common world through a critical examination of the…

The aim of this article is to analyze and discuss the role that sociological theory plays in music education scholarship. Using books published internationally and explicitly on the topic of the sociology of music education during the recent decade as well as abstracts published in the programs from the 2017 and 2019 International Symposium on the…