Music For Inclusion And Healing In Schools And Beyond

"The chapters that make up this book recognize through examples from research, practice and evaluation of quality with lived experiences that diverse contemporary popular musics can provide useful tools not just for entertainment and fun, but for learning, growth and healing/wellness. Hip hop, techno, grime, drill and suchlike are contemporary genres that have been stigmatized through association with the BAME community. At the same time, however, these musics are typically the listening diet of choice today in our inner cities. These contemporary musics of the inner-city and their associated music-related activities (e.g., deejaying, beat making, mixtape making but also dance, visual art and more) are celebrated and embraced as extraordinarily powerful tools for building and maintaining academic, social, and emotional competencies. These musics are loved and they can open up opportunities for creativities among those who often feel seriously marginalized. In turn, these musics (and activities associated with them) can provided opportunities to engage and/or support those at the social and educational margins. In other words, the musics at the heart of this book have faced exclusionary pressures but they can also work for inclusion when utilized in educational/pedagogical or therapeutic practices. As a whole, the book seeks to account for the power and impact of a set of contemporary popular musics in educational, therapeutic and community contexts, and to ask questions as to just where this power comes from, how we can measure its impact and where the future might lead"--

The selected articles cover issues related to teaching in urban and rural schools and teaching students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Teaching special learners and teaching beyond the school years are also addressed in this collection, which is drawn mainly from MENC publications.

This book outlines how teachers, music / arts therapists and teacher trainers have engaged in participatory action research to facilitate regular group music listening and improvisational music making with children and young people in their classrooms, highlighting its impact in addressing issues of mental health and providing social and emotional access to learning. The book includes examples of classroom practice, evidencing how safe, inclusive and interactive music making can stimulate experiences that alter children and young people’s moods, enhance their social skills and enable their connectivity with each other and with learning. It describes participatory action research approaches that support inter professional learning between teachers and music / arts therapists. Five narrative accounts of classroom episodes provide a basis for continuing reflection and critical theorising about young people’s relational health and sensory engagement. The book explores outcomes from non-verbal dialogic interaction and attachment focussed practices. It advocates new forms of rights respecting professionalism. Providing new frameworks with which to enhance the wellbeing of vulnerable children and young people in classroom settings, the book will be important reading for researchers and students in the fields of inclusive education, music / arts therapy and teacher training. The contents are significant for practitioners looking to support children and young people’s recovery and reconnections in the classroom.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential for increasing informal music-making in elementary school culture, and create a model of such music-making. Precedence for this model can be found in the literature of ethnomusicology, educational psychology and learning theory, multicultural music education, and cultural anthropology. Literature from four distinct traditions and contexts of music-making in integrative sociocultural contexts-sub-Saharan African ngoma, and Community Music as manifested in New Orleans second lines, old-time music and dance, and summer camp music-making-was parsed with a philosophical lens to determine and assess possible areas of intersection between these four participatory cultures and North American public school culture. Each of these five areas was examined through a comprehensive review of literature to define their salient characteristics. These characteristics were sorted to determine commonalities between areas, and the zones of intersection became the basis for a speculative model of integrative music learning, featuring the inclusion of musical opportunities and interludes throughout the school day, thus taking school music beyond the confines of the music room. Instruction in music classes would still continue, enhanced in this model by supplemental learning opportunities inspired by the informal learning of traditional world musics, the participatory practice of New Orleans second line parades, old-time music and dance, and summer camp music culture. This model of integrative learning is also informed by current educational best practices such as child-centered learning, peer tutoring, experiential learning, and multicultural perspectives. It acknowledges the diversity of traditions consulted, while aiming for the unity in their seemingly disparate disciplines. Five universal characteristics were uncovered in the search for areas of intersection between North American elementary school culture, child culture, ngoma music-making, and Community Music-style music-making in New Orleans, old-time music and dance, and summer camp contexts: (a) Song; (b) play; (c) informal learning, as evidenced by oral tradition, peer tutoring, self-learning; (d) kinesthetic learning; and (e) contextualized learning, as evidenced in the sociocultural uses of music and situated learning. This model strives for the enactment of school music as a vital and integral part of daily school culture.

In this book author Cathy Benedict challenges and reframes traditional ways of addressing many of the topics we have come to think of as social justice. Offering practical suggestions for helping both teachers and students think philosophically (and thus critically) about the world around them, each chapter engages with important themes through music making and learning as it presents scenarios, examples of dialogue with students, unit ideas and lesson plans geared toward elementary students (ages 6-14). Taken-for-granted subjects often considered beyond the understanding of elementary students such as friendship, racism, poverty, religion, and class are addressed and interrogated in such a way that honours the voice and critical thinking of the elementary student. Suggestions are given that help both teachers and students to pause, reflect and redirect dialogue with questions that uncover bias, misinformation and misunderstandings that too often stand in the way of coming to know and embracing difference. Guiding questions, which anchor many curricular mandates, are used throughout in order to scaffold critical and reflective thinking beginning in the earliest grades of elementary music education. Where does social justice reside? Whose voice is being heard and whose is being silenced? How do we come to think of and construct poverty? How is it that musics become used the way they are used? What happens to songs initially intended for socially driven purposes when their significance is undermined? These questions and more are explored encouraging music teachers to embrace a path toward socially just engagements at the elementary and middle school levels.

Beyond the Roof of the World is a benchmark in Medical Ethnomusicology and integrative, complementary/alternative medicine. Koen explores ancient practices of music, prayer, and healing among the Pamiri people of Tajikistan.

Activism through Music during the Apartheid Era and Beyond documents the grassroots activism of Sharon Katz & the Peace Train against the backdrop of enormous diversity and the volatile social and political climate in South Africa during the early 1990s. Among the intersections of race, healing and the "soft power" of music, Katz offers a vision of the possibilities of national identity and belonging as South Africans grappled with the transition from apartheid to democracy. Through extensive fieldwork across two countries (South Africa and the United States) and drawing on personal experiences as a South African of color, Ambigay Yudkoff reveals a compelling narrative of multigenerational collaboration. This experience creates a sense of community fostering relationships that develop through music, travel, performances, and socialization. In South Africa and the United States, and recently in Cuba and Mexico, the Peace Train's journey in musical activism provides a vehicle for racial integration and intercultural understanding.