Learning, linking and participating : transmitting African music in Australian schools

Considered in this paper is the concept of "change"for practising teachers who are teaching and learning African music in Melbourne, Australia. African music and culture is seen as an effective way for these teachers to experience a cross-cultural odyssey through both social and situated learning. This chapter reports on a music project where teachers perceived African music to be an effective way to leam link and participate with a new music and culture. The chapter summarises pertinent findings relating to why and how teachers are engaging with African music.

Travelling drum with different beats: experiencing African music and culture in Australian teacher education

This article reports on a study that examined the effectiveness of introducing African music and culture to Australian non-specialist primary teacher education students at Deakin University in Melbourne (Australia). The study demonstrates that African music enhanced the generic musical experiences, learning, motivation, interest, confidence and competence of students in their fourth year of teacher education. The research also addressed the significance and contribution of African music and culture as a cross-cultural experience for these beginning teachers who in turn could provide similar experiences for their own students. This study highlighted the author's role and cultural identity as a South African music educator in transmitting the music and culture represented in 'the travelling drum' to a cohort of students with a predominantly Eurocentric orientation. By extension, this curriculum initiative broadened students' understanding and application of indigenous methods of teaching and learning as part of a global experience. Such a curriculum represents a pathway to many other forms of non-Western indigenous knowledge of music, culture and pedagogy that can be mapped out as a journey along a multicultural route towards 'internationalising the curriculum'.

Music, language and emotion

This paper attempts to demonstrate the link between art and pain, or more specifically between music, forms of poetic language and emotion – a link that for me is often emphasised in times of grief and sadness.

Managing change without sacrificing quality: music teaching and learning at South African tertiary institutions

After the jubilation of the first democratic election in 1994, South African educational settings were faced with the challenge to rethink curriculum, content and delivery as part of its nation building process. Education continues to be a major player in stimulating wider change in society and is one arena where change may be readily facilitated. Changing the style and practice of teacher education programs remains a key feature in the transformation process. Twelve years on, curriculum, has undergone reform in terms of Outcomes Based Education (OBE)? Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) of 2002, accordingly, universities continue to prepare teachers for multicultural classrooms. Universities are now challenged to manage increased student intake (quantity) for teacher education programs without having to sacrifice quality for teacher education. This article focuses only on The University of Pretoria, a city university previously known as a traditional Afrikaans university situated in the greater Johannesburg area in South Africa. Through interview data with two music educators at this university, I present some of the current trends and challenges that tertiary music educators face in preparing music teachers in South Africa. This article also outlines a paradigm shift in the curriculum and argues for a holistic music education, one that endorses most of the major cultures and musics in South Africa. The question I pose is how then do we effectively manage change at tertiary level without sacrificing quality when preparing future music teachers to meet the needs and challenges of the curriculum and society.

Home, school, community and their role in the provision of music education

The Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), is supporting under the Australian Government Quality Outcomes Programme, a National Review of School Music Education. The review, which is intended to submit its report in mid 2005, is interested in investigating the current quality of teaching and learning of music in both primary and secondary schools. It aims to provide examples of best practice of teaching and learning of music, along with a set of recommendations for the development of future approaches and directions to improve the quality of music education offerings in Australian schools. This paper puts forward some proposals for consideration that will be forwarded to the Review and aims to generate debate about future approaches to the delivery of music education in Australian primary schools.
It argues that the home, school and community all have an important part to play in the music education of children, but that at present these three entities are insufficiently connected on a number of fronts, not least being an understanding about the purpose of young people’s engagement with music. There is no doubt that interest in the arts amongst Australians generally is high. A recent Australia Council report revealed that 85 per cent of its respondents agreed the arts are and should be an important part of the education of every young Australian and that what was needed was better arts education and opportunities for all young people. However, the opportunities need not be confined to those offered by the school sector. Engagement with out-of-school music includes both music encountered in the home, which may be affected by family influence, and music provided by the diversity of community organizations, which serve a real and complimentary role to classroom learning and achieve learning outcomes that schools often do not have the resources to foster. A number of proposals for action are suggested for consideration by those involved in education as a means of progressing the discussion. It asserts that there is much valuable activity occurring within the three locales of school, home and community, but a firmer relationship could be forged across all three to ensure young people’s on-going, life-long enjoyable engagement with music.

Smaller steps into longer journeys : experiencing African music and expressing culture

This paper outlines an exploratory research project that draws on survey data from both primary and secondary school music teachers in Victoria. The research stems from a study that I undertook in 2002-2003 with final year Deakin University undergraduate students. That project investigated the potential of African music to enhance the generic musical experiences, learning, motivation, interest, confidence and competence of non-specialist primary teacher education students. The research project being reported in this paper is an extension of the previous study to focus on practising music teachers at both primary and secondary school levels. The research addresses the significance and contribution of African music and culture as a cross-cultural experience for music teachers, their students and the wider community. It further considers my role as an African music practitioner in terms of transformation and acculturation. This paper outlines the progress of, and provides preliminary data about, the emergence of an innovative area of teaching and learning based on African music in Victorian schools. It also explores the notion of why cross-cultural and multi-cultural engagement matters in the contemporary context of educational change.

Missionaries, music and method - dissemination of tonic sol-fa in Asia-Pacific countries during the nineteenth century

The Tonic Sol-fa method of teaching choral singing and its system of music notation was developed in England by John Curwen and propagated throughout the British Isles as a means of both enhancing Christian worship and achieving social reform. Tonic Sol-fa may be identified as an entirely foreign musical practice introduced to indigenous people in many British colonies and in other overseas countries during the nineteenth century as an instrument of Christian evangelism as well as of European cultural imposition. Nevertheless, indigenous communities were introduced to other aspects of European musical culture including a choral repertoire consisting of four-part hymnody and masterworks by Handel, Bach, Mozart, etc which sometimes resulted in the emergence of a school of indigenous composers writing in Tonic Sol-fa notation and using the tonal harmonic style. The result has been that in several countries-such as South Africa and Fiji for example-Tonic Sol-fa has been so fully assimilated into the ethnic culture that it has been "indigenized" and may now be said to represent a significant exogenous aspect of the musical culture in these countries.

Tonic Sol-fa was most commonly introduced to countries in the Asia-Pacific Region -as in Africa - by Christian missionaries who sought to exploit the attraction of hymns, particularly when sung in four-part harmony, as a means of evangelizing indigenous people who frequently regarded this aspect of missionary activity as a form of "magic". In particular, the Tonic Sol-fa method and notation gained a significant foothold in what were referred to as the South Sea Islands--especially in Fiji where today, the Fijian Hymn Book (1985 edition) is notated exclusively in Tonic Sol-fa. The vast majority of the Fijians are literate in Tonic Sol-fa notation and congregational singing in four parts is the norm in Fijian churches.

This paper will draw on data from nineteenth century journal sources, particularly The Tonic Sol-fa Reporter (1853-1888) and The Musical Herald (1889-1920), and will document the introduction and dissemination of Tonic Sol-fa in several Asia-Pacific countries where, unlike Australia and New Zealand, the indigenous population has maintained its own cultural and demographic predominance. Countries to be considered will include India, China (including Hong Kong), and Pacific Island nations. There will also be a consideration of the contemporary usage and applications of Tonic Sol-fa in the region, with specific reference to Fiji. It will be argued that countries where Tonic Sol-fa notation has become the norm should resist any external pressure to transfer to the standard staff notation merely for the sake of conformity. In the case of Fiji, almost universal music literacy has been achieved through Tonic Sol-fa and this should be recognized as an enviable social and cultural asset.

The blind men and the elephant : music education in a changing world

Education provides unique opportunities for individuals to develop their full character as Australian citizens who can play a part in the shaping of the future. All educational settings have an important role to play in bridging differences and promoting mutual respect, tolerance and understanding between people of different races, cultures, and religions. The curriculum is one component of the wider educational milieu that should be 'an enabling mechanism that nurtures adjustment to change, and simultaneously provides a roadmap of expectation' (Bruniges, 2005, p.15). As the rate and diversity of both local and global change accelerates, education continues to be faced with a multiplicity of challenges. The ways in which we respond to this will influence both the society and the curriculum that we design, implement and evaluate. Currently music educators implementing the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) are faced with the challenge of developing multicultural practices that align with both curriculum initiatives and create authentic experiences for students. As in the well-known story of the blind men and the elephant, teachers are faced with resources that offer only a shallow introduction to what is a multifaceted field. The question we pose is: 'How do educators embrace a vast range of cultural and social dimensions in our school music programmes without being like a blind man, grasping only one perspective of an extensive and complex whole?'

Music education and minority groups cultural and musical identities in the 'newer' South Africa : white Afrikaners and Indians

Music Education, as well as cultural and musical identities are all being renegotiated, post-Apartheid, within the so-called 'newer' rather than the commonly known 'new' South Africa. The developing situation with certain minority groups is particularly interesting. Education in general has undergone much change since the first democratic elections in 1994: music education specifically has been affected by such change in terms of content, delivery and assessment. Within the South African context, cultural and musical identities are often intertwined with language, racial and even tribal identities, and discussing one implies the others. We are particularly interested here in the role of formal Music Education in relation to white Afrikaners and Indians as they renegotiate their cultural development, including musical aspects

From empire to filmi: a fusion of western and Indian cultural practices in Australian music education

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Indian culture was represented in Australia as part of celebrations of the British Empire. Children were presented with stereotypic representations of Indian culture, which provide a snapshot of contemporary perceptions. Such representations were rarely authentic. By removing music from one culture and presenting it in the symbolic gestures of another we strip away much of its meaning. Encouragingly, contemporary popular culture can incorporate a fusion of western and Indian cultural practices, such as filmi (Hindi: `film song' or `Indian film music'). This article describes early imperialist understandings of Indian culture in Australian school music to contextualize recent attempts to engage with more authentic intercultural understandings. To assist teachers in the presentation of `other' musics, guidelines for the inclusion of authentic materials are offered. By selecting music that is already a fusion of cultures and musical styles, it becomes easier for western music educators to engage with the other.

'It's a hungry home': postcolonial displacements, popular music and the sacred

This essay, through a theorized analysis of Australian popular song lyrics, investigates a range of understandings of “home”, including the exclusions and sacred connotations that inform the term. Against accusations of mere sentimentality or nostalgia regarding a desire for “home” as familiar and comforting and in response to Levinas's related arguments that a desire for home is at the root of splitting “humanity into natives and strangers”, it argues that it is necessary for postcolonial Australia to embrace “homelessness” at the heart of any understanding of “home”.

So much to do, so little time: multicultural practices and Australian school music

In this paper, the authors are concerned with the challenges, dilemmas and choices that teachers face when teaching multicultural music in classrooms in Australia in an already overcrowded curriculum. This paper considers the notion of changing and shifting cultures, looking at how teachers can break out of the familiar paradigms in which they were trained. There will be a consideration of the notion of cultural ownership questioning whose music is to be taught, how is it to be taught, and by whom. A discussion of how music is embedded in the culture that creates it is undertaken in relation to the concepts of authenticity and transmission. The authors contend that the exploration of other cultures enables the making of connections within and without the classroom and beyond the school into the local, national and global arenas. It is our position that teachers should not hesitate to explore other musics and cultures. It is noted that teachers need support to do this which can only enhance both their teaching and the learning of their students even though there is so much to do in so little time.