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.…

The point of departure in this article is the hegemony of technical rationality when it comes to the justification of music education. This is considered as an example of uniformity, sameness, and homogeneity, or worse, simplicity and naivety--or even worse, a sweet innocence--regarding understanding and thoughts about life, society, and culture…

We are living in a time of social and cultural changes. As in other disciplines, the foundations of music education are being increasingly challenged. Thus, it is no longer possible to specify reliably the aims and contents of music education and their implementation in school by simply basing them on lasting musical traditions and changeless…

The times we live in are described as pluralistic and diverse. In the Nordic countries, societies are often described--even officially--as multicultural. People with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds are expected to coexist and respect each other. Different values are set free from hierarchical conceptual models. Many stories about the…

The quality of education is currently considered to be a concern of the highest political priority. However, quality assurances of all kinds seem to be built on and result in a number of quantitative measures. In this essay, I discuss the traditional and philosophical meaning of the concept of quality and how it is being used today, but above all…

In this paper, I compare all three editions of Bennett Reimer's "A Philosophy of Music Education" with early Chinese philosophy, in particular, classical Chinese aesthetics. I structure my analysis around a quartet of interrelated themes: aesthetic education, education of feeling, aesthetic experience, and ethics and aesthetics. This…

This paper examines how significant musical moments, occurring within singular contexts, may be performative to the development of community. While community is often viewed within music education as an unequivocal good, I argue that this result may not always be beneficent. In this paper, I look at one unique performative moment through the lens…