Books Galore

Pictured here is a photograph I took recently of one section of the Sibelius Monument, about a 10-minute walk from my new apartment in Helsinki. In between writing and making music at home, I have been taking many long walks around the Helsinki area. It is important to make a point of getting out, because suddenly I find I am writing for lots of books, which requires sitting for long periods of time. Most of my colleagues are also busy doing the same nowadays.

I would like to take a break to record a new album of original songs soon, so hopefully I can get caught up on all the writing within about a month. Probably I will not be posting any new material on this site for a while because I need to focus on finishing various book projects:

• My book Wind Bands and Cultural Identity in Japanese Schools will - hopefully - go to print by the end of the year (forthcoming, Springer press).

• I am currently co-authoring a book chapter with Patricia Shehan Campbell entitled “World Beat” for Volume III of Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (third edition), which will be published after the new Volumes I and II are released.

• I am also currently writing a chapter with the working title “Musicianship, Musical Identity and Meaning as Embodied Practice” for a very interesting book entitled Music Education for Changing Times: Guiding Visions for Practice (forthcoming, Springer Press). The contributing editors of this book are J. Terry Gates and Tom Regelski, and the other chapter authors are Wayne Bowman, Roger Johnson, Marie McCarthy, Elizabeth Gould, Scott Goble, Julia Koza, Daniel Cavicchi, John Shepherd, Anthony Palmer, Richard Colwell, Graham Welch, David Elliott, and Sandra Stauffer.

• I continue to work on two music book proposals that have strong interest from publishers but have not yet managed to see contracts: one co-edited with Alexandra Kertz-Welzel (Germany), and the other with Susan Battye (New Zealand).

• A few weeks ago I submitted my chapter entitled “Rethinking the Historiography of Hybrid Genres in Music Education” to Lauri Vakeva and Vesa Kurkela for their book De-Canonizing Music History (which is going to Cambridge Scholars Publishing). My chapter discusses the neglect of hybrid music genres within book-length national histories of music education in Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.

• About a month ago I submitted my chapter on “Jazz and Rock Music” for Volume II of William Anderson and Patricia Shehan Campbell’s book Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (third edition), which will be published soon on Rowman-Littlefield Publishers.

• Earlier this year I also published chapters on Maori brass bands in Alta Musica and on Japanese bands in Music of Japan Today.

• I am also beginning to write a novel on the theme of corruption in higher education, which is loosely based on personal experience. [Update: Having just read the tragic and allegedly nonfictional Post Millenium Writings of Henry Kingsbury online, I feel the need to mention that my own work in this area takes an entirely different approach and is intended to be consumed as authentic literary fiction: Challenging yet humorous and hopeful in tone, my stories emphasize creative solutions and survival within complex settings.]

• It has been quite a busy time, but certainly interesting and probably worth the effort. To obtain the complete bibliographic details for any of these publications, please visit the following website with a link to publications and a CV:
  

http://hib.academia.edu/DavidHebert