Ethnicity and Music Education

The role of ethnicity in music teaching and learning is a topic of increasing interest among music educators in the 21^st century. Recently I have been developing a chapter entitled “Ethnicity and Music Education: Sociological Dimensions” for the book Sociology and Music Education (Ed., Ruth Wright) that will be published on Ashgate Press in late 2009. Contributing authors to the book include Ruth Wright, Christopher Small, Lucy Green, Pamela Burnard, John Finney and others. I believe this will be the first multi-author book to provide an international overview of this topic by primarily European authors.

Here is a link to an article that describes a music education project among Native Americans: http://archives.dailyuw.com/2001/013001/N1.yakimafeat.html

Here is a link to a project involving Thai and Maori music educators:
http://www.drama.org.nz/ejournal_single.asp?ID=26

Hildegard Froehlich has also written a concise and unusually insightful book that provides an American perspective on the sociology of music education:

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/academic/product/0,3110,0131776967,00.html

Here is a link to a useful resource for sociology of music education compiled by Marie McCarthy:

http://www.maydaygroup.org/php/resources/bibliographies/sociology.php

There have also been five international symposia on the Sociology of Music Education, from which conference proceedings were produced:

http://www.sociologyofmusiceducation.com/

Ethnicity is a particularly complex topic in music education that must be considered in terms of the identities of teachers, students, and even the music itself. The following organizations tend to offer relevant research studies:

Society for Ethnomusicology

http://webdb.iu.edu/sem/scripts/home.cfm

Cultural Diversity in Music Education

http://www.cdime-network.com/cdime

Asia-Pacific Symposium for Music Education Research

http://www.tmue.edu.tw/~2011APSMER/

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UPDATE (summer, 2010):

Here are some of my recent publications related to this topic:

• Heimonen, M. & Hebert, D. G. (2010). “Pluralism and Minority Rights in Music Education: Implications of the Legal and Social-Philosophical Dimensions”, Visions of Research in Music Education, vol. 15.
  

• Hebert, D. G. (2010). Jazz and Rock Music. In W. M. Anderson & P. S. Campbell (Eds.), Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education, Vol. 2 (third edition). Lanham, MD: Rowman-Littlefield Publishers.

• Hebert, D. G. (in press, 2010). Ethnicity and music education: Sociological dimensions. In R. Wright (Ed.), Sociology and Music Education. Aldershot: Ashgate Press.

• Hebert, D. G. (2010). Educating Professional Musicians for a Multicultural Society: Emerging Issues and New Developments. In proceedings of Orally Transmitted Music and Intercultural Education, symposium offered by EU Culture Initiative Music, Orality, Roots, Europe (MORE) at Cité de la Musique, Paris, France (December 3-4, 2009) [http://www.music-orality-roots.eu/sites/default/files/MORE-Symposium1-HebertD-EducatingProfessional.pdf].

• Hebert, D. G. (2009). Rethinking the historiography of hybrid genres in music education. In V. Kurkela & L. Vakeva (Eds.), De-Canonizing Music History. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 163-184.
  

• Editor (with Sidsel Karlsen), special issue on multiculturalism:
  

Finnish Journal of Music Education, Vol.13, No.1