The Journal of Popular
Music Education is now publishing an Internet Special Issue edited by Christopher
Cayari (Purdue University) which is focused on Internet-based music learning. This has become an important topic especially under the Covid19 pandemic conditions.
Among others, the
special issue includes the following article:
Brudvik, S. & Hebert, D. G. (2020). What’s stopping you?: Impediments to
incorporating popular music technologies in schools. Journal of Popular Music
Education, 4(2), pp.135-152. Below is a public domain image (from LSDB's Anatomography project) of the hippocampus, which plays an important role in music appreciation.
Have you considered teaching a
World Music course for a college or university? Is your administration hoping
to see World Music courses offered, or do you know someone who has mentioned
the possibility of teaching this subject? For some lecturers, this vast field can be an
intimidating assignment for which it is hard to know where to begin. Even for ethnomusicologists who have taught World Music for years, it can be difficult to envision
fresh and creative approaches to the subject beyond standard textbooks. This new
book offers helpful stimulation for anyone interested in teaching a successful World
Music course to students in higher education.
William Coppola, David G. Hebert, and
Patricia Shehan Campbell (2020). Teaching
World Music in Higher Education (World Music Pedagogy Series, vol. 7).
New York: Routledge.
It has now been over 13 years since I started posting various activities and announcements on this website, which across time has turned into a kind of digital portfolio. It is hard to believe, but according to statistics from the host Blogger, by mid-Autumn I am projected to have had a total of over 250,000 visitors to Sociomusicology. Those numbers are much larger than I would have ever expected, but some of the traffic might be "bots" rather than real live humans.
The very first post on Sociomusicology was about visiting Kyoto, Japan, in 2007 to complete research for my first book, while working as a young Assistant Professor at Boston University. As I would later write, just a few months afterward, it was a pleasure to have such activities as playing trumpet in Boston for Honkfest with Charlie Keil and Reebee Garofalo, and with bluesman Lou Pride in Victor Coelho’s great band. I was also excited about the work of my doctoral students, as well as the landmark Tanglewood-II symposium, but by the end of the year I left for a new job as a full professor in Finland, and eventually ended up in Norway.
Since 2007, there have been so many developments and activities that I could never have imagined. Those who have done any online writing in a blog, or related medium, will know that it can be difficult to decide what to write (and what to leave out), and inevitably issues arise across years in one’s older posts, such as broken links, formatting changes, and images that are no longer online. Meanwhile, the technology keeps evolving, especially across more than a decade. With time, I have gradually started to include more videos and photos, but never felt the need to have much interactivity built into the site. I figured that if people were curious about something they read, they could always just send me an email, and indeed, there have been many messages from strangers. I regret that sometimes I have been so busy that it has taken a while to reply.
Today most online activity is centered on proprietary social media that emphasize instant interaction and enable “big data” analytics for targeted advertising and surveillance: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Nevertheless, I think it still remains useful to maintain a site with one’s own content, something to link to with relative autonomy, so Sociomusicology will probably keep going for a while longer.
Displayed above are various systems that humans use to represent numbers, as well as a bit of time-lapse photography taken a few days ago from beside my home as mist was drifting across the lake.
For over 15 years (since 2007), this website has offered musings on contemporary society and its music by David G. Hebert, PhD. He is a sociomusicologist specializing in global music education who has held academic positions with universities on five continents. Dr. Hebert is now a tenured full Professor with Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen. There he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group and manages the multinational government-funded Nordic Network for Music Education, which organizes annual intensive Master courses and exchange of teachers and students across eight countries. He is also an Affiliated Professor with University of the Faroe Islands and an Honorary Professor in China with the Education University of Hong Kong.
Professor Hebert's research applies an international-comparative perspective to issues of pluralism, identity, and cultural relevance in music education, as well as processes by which new music traditions emerge and change - both sonically and socially - as they are adopted into institutions. Born in the 1970s, he is among the most widely-published and globally-active music scholars of his generation (h-index:20; i10-index:30), with professional activities in an average of 8 countries per year across the past decade (2008-2020).
Keynote Speaker - Across recent years, Professor Hebert has had keynote speeches in Poland, Germany, Uzbekistan, China, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Lithuania, Tanzania, and Thailand, and chaired two sessions at ISA-Japan.
