After three
intensive seminars across the past two weeks, the Music Education strand
of the CABUTE project is going very
well! Our Master students have robust research proposals for their theses and
our PhD student has completed his study with even more ideas for how to expand
on his findings.
We eagerly look
forward to seeing what these fine students will achieve in the long term to
strengthen teacher education and music heritage in Uganda.
Paperback editions
of the books in our series Deep Soundings: Critical Studies in Historical Ethnomusicology
are now available through Bloomsbury
press.
The books
have received outstanding reviews and are now in many libraries.
I look forward
to giving a keynote speech soon for the 2025 Music
Research Today (Musikforskning idag) conference of the Swedish
Society for Music Research, hosted by the School of Music, Theatre and Art
at Örebro University. This year’s conference theme is Music and Politics.
Click HERE
for a description of the keynote speeches. Below is the title and summary for
my presentation.
Music
Diplomacy Amid Populism and Protectionism
If one were
to summarize the main political tendencies impacting the world today, far-right
populism (with the rise of authoritarian leaders) combined with protectionism
(featuring preoccupation with borders, migration and tariffs) would seem to be
among the most prominent. There is also a noticeable shift from multilateralism
toward transactionalism, which appears to be eroding the post-WWII world order
through the ascent of BRICS and related alliances. How does music interact with
these tendencies, and what hope might music provide in efforts to nudge
humanity toward a more just and sustainable world in these uncertain times?
Music can play a highly effective role in cultural diplomacy that aims to
bridge between ideological divides exacerbated by social media siloization. One
relevant case comes from Samarkand, a great city on the historic Silk Road: The
Sharq Taronalari Festival, which is one of the world's largest international
folk music events, funded by UNESCO and the government of Uzbekistan. I participated
in this spectacular festival on three different years, experiencing remarkable
performances of traditional music from all inhabited continents. There are
also entire institutions devoted to music diplomacy, a prominent example of
which is the Barenboim-Said Academy, a conservatoire in Berlin founded with the
purpose of inspiring cooperation between Arabs and Jews through classical
music. In the field of Chinese music, a notable case was Copenhagen’s Music
Confucius Institute, which I researched by interviewing expert pedagogues who
had taught traditional Chinese musical instruments to European students. In the
opposite direction, the Intensive World Music Concerts—developed across recent
years among Chinese traditional instrument majors in the “Cross-Cultural Music
Diplomacy” course at Beijing Language and Culture University—are another
example, through which Chinese students learned to perform songs from Europe,
Africa, Middle East, Polynesia, and the Americas. Finally, music diplomacy can also take
the form of research and development initiatives. For example, the Sapmi
Singing Map is a Norwegian Research Council-funded project that features close
collaboration with Sami joikers to develop educational resources so their
music, which had long been marginalized, can be sensitively taught to all
students in Nordic schools. For each of these cases, anecdotes will be
shared from direct personal experience, and each example will be considered in
relation to state-of-the-art theories that provide a deepened understanding of
music diplomacy. However, today perhaps the greatest threat to all these
inspiring forms of heritage is AI’s unregulated colonization of human arts, so
promising ways of responding to AI must also be briefly discussed. Taken as a
whole, these examples show how the power of music diplomacy can foster forms of
empathy and reconciliation that emphasize our shared humanity and thereby
counteract the threat of deepening political divides.
Here I will note that I gave a speech covering some of the same examples in Hong Kong last month, but it looks quite unlikely even one person will be in the audience in Sweden who was also there in Hong Kong, so presumably nobody will notice or mind. I continue to refine the topic as well as how these examples are discussed.
Image
source (Orebro Castle): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%96rebro_slott_May_2014_01.jpg
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The Grieg
Academy Music Education (GAME)
research group has been achieving so much across recent years, exciting to see:
many publications, grants, lectures, workshops and performance activities.
Recently we
have meetings about once a month, and lately these are hybrid events with
participants gathering in person in Bergen, Norway as well as online from North
America, Asia, and Africa. Many GAME members plan to give presentations at the 2026 ISME World Conference
in Montreal.
Pictured above is renowned composer Edvard Grieg, the most famous person from the city of Bergen, where the GAME research group (named for his legacy) is based.
Here is a photo from a GAME research group meeting (3 October 2025), which included many special guests. In person, we were joined by one of the GAME founders, Steinar Sætre, who brought guests from Uganda that are in the CABUTE project, Music subject leader Dr. Nicholas Ssempiija, PhD student Erisa Walubo, Vincent Muhindo, and Hellen Hasahya (new Master students who were traveling outside Uganda for the very first time), as well as Kjersti Elisabet Lea, a recent department head at University of Bergen. PhD student Knut Eysturstein was also here from University of the Faroe Islands. The event was hosted by HVL PhD student Kristian Iversen with support from our HVL postdoc Dr. Karan Choudhary, and included online guests from the CABUTE project in Uganda as well as Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) and other institutions.
Online we were joined by HVL Associate Professor David T. Johnson, Julia Katarzyna Leikvoll (University of Bergen), Craig Resta (Kent State University, USA), Sangmi Kang (Eastman School of Music, USA), CABUTE postdoc Milton Wabyona (Makerere University, Uganda), CABUTE postdoc James Isabirye (Kyambogo University, Uganda), ISME Routledge Book Series Assistant Editor Esther Chunxiao Zhang (EdUHK), recent PhD graduate and Cantonese opera expert Kimmie Sin-Yee Ma (EdUHK), and Yuki Morijiri (Tokyo Gakugei University). The event featured insightful presentations by two PhD students who are nearing completion: Knut Eysturstein and Erisa Walubo, a stimulating presentation by Craig Resta on approaches to historical research in music education, and some brief introductory presentations of thesis concepts by new CABUTE Master students Vincent Muhindo, and Hellen Hasahya. Michael Chi-Hin Leung (EdUHK) also gave an interesting presentation on his music education technology research.
I recall
back in 2007 while working as an Assistant Professor at Boston University, I visited beautiful Kyoto, Japan for some research, and at some point realized it could
be worthwhile to develop an online portfolio to post various academic and
artistic activities, including photos and videos. That is when I launched this blog
Sociomusicology.
Now it is really hard to believe that on the final day of September 2025, the site has attracted
a half-million page views. Compared to newspapers and magazines, 500000
is not a very large number, but it is encouraging to see what can come from persistence
across years, even in what would seem to be a niche academic subject area: music
education, ethnomusicology, comparative education. I will post here an analysis
of the traffic to this site, which could be interesting for anyone else who
might also consider making a blog of their academic work.
It was a
pleasant surprise to be invited by two different universities this
Autumn to serve as a PhD examiner for students from Malaysia who have completed quite
interesting doctoral dissertations.
One dissertation
is a mixed methods empirical research study at the Royal College of Music, London, that examines
how musical expressiveness is learned among Malaysian college students, with
particular attention to non-western understandings of expressiveness in music
performance.
Another doctoral
dissertation is performance-based, an artistic research study at Malaysia’s
leading private university (UCSI University)
that examines the characters and vocal characteristics of soprano roles in
opera.
I look forward
to learning from this innovative research, and to posing some useful questions,
and will report in detail here when the process is completed with new music Doctors
from an exciting part of the world.
Indeed, Malaysia is a quite interesting country, with a megadiverse tropical environment, and over 34 million people in a rapidly developing economy. It is notable that Malaysia invests heavily in education and has over 20 universities. There is an array of traditional music genres Malaysia, from the Nobat court music to genres associated with dance drama traditions, as well as regional and minority folk music styles, and even lovely children’s songs.
Also, the Malaysian Philharmonic
Orchestra, along with a new generation of singers and other world-class performers, have
become known in the global field of western classical art music.
We can surely
expect Malaysia to continue becoming an even more globally-impactful place for music
and education in the coming years.
It was
exciting to learn yesterday that a book I developed with Jon McCollum is now
being published in Chinese translation by a team of outstanding music scholars.
Click HERE for more
details (in Chinese language).
I eagerly look forward to co-hosting the 2025 SEM Historical Ethnomusicology Section meetings with its current Chair, Otto Stuparitz, and to giving the following presentation at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
AI vs.
IP: Who Owns the World’s Music Today?
David G. Hebert (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences)
Abstract:
At the 2025
Paris AI Summit, VPOTUS Vance declared to world leaders that “excessive
regulation” harms the AI industry and will not be tolerated by the USA. His
position contrasts with another VP, that of the world’s largest music company
(Universal), who denounced AI’s “wholesale hijacking of the intellectual
property of the entire creative community.” Indeed, as Suchir Balaji showed,
the “fair use” doctrine cannot reasonably apply to the “training” of AI,
whether in the form of text, images, or music, since the resulting synthetic
products are designed to compete commercially with human-made creations. Law
has arguably not kept pace with new technologies, including music AI, which
flagrantly violates the spirit of copyright. How are ethnomusicologists to
respond to AI in ways consistent with our values? Currently, the US, China, and
Europe are the main centers of AI innovation, and of these the EU most
explicitly protects privacy and AI safety (e.g. GDPR, EU AI Act). The US is
also one of the only major countries that is not a signatory to major
international agreements for safe AI development. Since SEM is a US-based
organization, its members must consider the impact these US policies will
ultimately have on music ownership and music creation worldwide. Based on a
decolonial approach to IP in the context of international law, this presentation
will identify established ethnomusicological values, then outline the legal
arguments (and counterarguments) for regulating AI to protect musicians, promote
cultural survival, and even ensure the future of human personal identity.
.......................
This theme is also related to the work that our new postdoctoral researcher, Karan Choudhary, will pursue over the next few years, and who I hope may join me in future SEM conferences. His earlier work appears in the book Ethnomusicology and Cultural Diplomacy as well as various law journals.
Image
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta#/media/File:Atlanta_Skyline_-_Piedmont_Park.png
National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) is the most international university in Taiwan, and among the highest ranked in Asia for teacher education and educational research. With a history of more than 100 years, it was founded during the Japanese occupation, known then as Taihoku College.
The College of Music at NTNU is also the
most prominent Music institution in Taiwan.
I look forward to the opportunity to give an invited lecture there in Autumn 2025, during which I will share insights gained from the Global Competence Partnership project.
It was a
pleasure to learn just a few days ago that an article co-authored with my PhD
student Erisa Walubo
has been accepted by the journal Philosophy
of Music Education Review. We expect it to be published sometime in the
next six months.
The article
offers a novel philosophical analysis of differing views on the notion of decolonization
and how it can be applied to music education, or what is called “musical arts” education
in much of Africa (since there it often entails the integration of singing,
drumming, dancing, story-telling, and other practices).
Erisa Walubo is now
revising what promises to be a strong PhD dissertation on Indigenous music and dance
practices in Ugandan education, and has other interesting research articles in
various stages of writing. Our collaboration, and Erisa’s doctoral studies, are
sponsored by the CABUTE project,
which also has many other publications under development, including by our
postdoctoral researchers in music education James Isabirye and Milton
Wabyona.
We eagerly look forward to seeing what the entire team will accomplish through the CABUTE project and the long-term impacts that their work will have for the improvement of education in Uganda.
Congratulations to Erisa and the entire CABUTE team!
I look
forward to giving a keynote speech on Music Diplomacy for a major event in
September 2025 at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. Some of my favorite music scholars will be there.
Click HERE for details.
[UPDATE 30 September 2025: Here is the new website for this project: https://www.hvl.no/en/research/project/singing-maps/]
It is
exciting to be visiting Sapmi, the Sami homeland in the far north of the Nordic
countries, for research on the Sami joik and singing practices. The Sapmi Singing Map project is probably the largest research project ever on Sami singing,
involving a team of researchers (interdisciplinary, both Sami and non-Sami) across
the next four years, with the purpose of not only documenting the joik but also
developing research-based and culturally appropriate educational resources.
As part of the
first phase of fieldwork, the team is visiting Kautokeino, Maze, and Øksfjord
to interview and film notable joikers from diverse localities and generations. Yesterday
we also crossed the Finnish border, filming the local nature and wildlife to
help show the context of this heritage. There will be several more visits
across the coming years, in different seasons, to help us better understand how
to meaningfully describe this remarkable land and its unique people.
Five PhD students and postdoctoral researchers are now accompanying me to participate in the 2025 International Postgraduate Roundtable cum Summer School (IPRRFSS) hosted by the Graduate School, Education University of Hong Kong.
Established
in 2011, the IPRRFSS offers an array of interdisciplinary research presentations in various formats. This is my second time to participate.
The 2025 theme is “Interdisciplinary Frontiers: Exploring Mind, Language and Environment for a Sustainable Future” and keynote speakers include psychologist Tatia Lee, linguist Xiaofei Lu, social psychologist Ying-yi Hong, educationist Marcus Pietsch, and other renowned scholars. I will be performing some music for the event's Gala Dinner along with EdUHK pianist Philbert Li (links to some of our previous performances are HERE and HERE).
We look
forward to seeing the outcomes from this exciting event which is likely to inspire
the young scholars who come to IPRRFSS from many different countries.
Below is a video from the 2024 IPRRFSS …
Image
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong#/media/File:Kowloon_Panorama_by_Ryan_Cheng_2010.jpg
More recordings are available HERE.
Montreal is
one of the largest cities in North America, with a diverse and vibrant arts
scene. Above is a photo of downtown Montreal that I took shortly after arriving
here.
It is a
pleasure to be visiting Montreal for a board meeting of the International
Society for Music Education (ISME), held here
since we plan to hold the 37th ISME World Conference in Montreal in
one year: 26-31 July 2026.
The
deadline to propose presentations for ISME 2026 is coming very soon!
Here is the
conference website: https://www.ismeworldconference.org/isme26
Posted here
is the Call for Papers and other essential information. I am thankful to be one of the Invited Speakers along with distinguished scholars from around the world.
The deadline to propose standard paper presentations is 15 November 2025.
It is
exciting to now be visiting Australia for a meeting of the Asia-Pacific
Symposium for Music Education Research (APSMER).
This trip is sponsored by the Global
Competence Partnership project since I will give a presentation here in Perth
with our Hong Kong-based partner Koji Matsunobu.
Earlier in
this voyage, I also gave a speech on AI for a symposium at Chulalongkorn
University in Bangkok, joined a Board meeting of the Open Global Music Academy (OGMA),
and taught Arts Policy for law students at China University of Political Science
and Law.
Displayed here are
photos from the event in Thailand, the CUPL course, the OGMA Board meeting, and
a visit to the University of Melbourne school of music led by its former
director Gary McPherson.
It was thrilling to finally have a chance to visit a uniquely important center for music diplomacy in Europe, the Barenboim Said Academy, in Berlin, Germany.
I am so grateful for the invitation to give a lecture, meet students and staff, and learn all about their innovative activities. Particularly during this time, when tensions in the Middle East are surely as difficult as ever before, it is exciting to see what is being accomplished in Berlin through the unique power of music.
I am eager to return, and look forward to new collaborations and opportunities to report on their inspiring activities.
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A special
issue has just been published, Ethical Questions in Transforming Music
Practices, in the journal Approaches – The
Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy.
It was a
pleasure to serve on the Board under the leadership of Sanna Kivijärvi and Taru
Koivisto.
The
published issue is available online through these links: https://journals.qmu.ac.uk/approaches/issue/view/36/34 (PDF) and here https://journals.qmu.ac.uk/approaches/issue/view/36 (Journal's website).
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I look forward to giving a keynote speech for
the Association for Future Music Education
(AFME)’s 5th International Conference in Seoul, Korea (February 6-7, 2026).
The conference is titled “Echoes of the
Anthropocene: Rethinking Music Education in an Era of Crisis.”
Seoul is a very high-tech city that I have very much enjoyed
visiting over the years, and here is a link to one of my publications that contains
discussions of Korea:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-68434-5
It is nearly time for the 2025 Bergen Summer Research School!
The PhD Candidates for the first cohort of our new course Creative Innovations in Higher Education are coming to Bergen, Norway from 17 different countries and territories: South Africa, Madagascar, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Philippines, China, India, Spain, Norway, Germany, Czech Republic, and the Faroe Islands.
They also represent a broad array of academic fields, from the natural sciences to social sciences, arts, and humanities.
We expect two
weeks of exciting discussions that may lead to some long-term
collaborations to strengthen conditions and practices at universities worldwide.
This year,
BSRS is led by Birgit Kopainsky,
a prolific researcher and professor of systems dynamics at University of Bergen.
Click HERE to access the original song we presented at the Opening Event of BSRS 2025.
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It is
exciting to soon be giving presentations at the Asia-Pacific
Symposium for Music Education Research (APSMER) conference in Perth, Australia.
APSMER is
the Asia and Pacific regional conference of ISME,
a global organization for which I serve on the Executive Committee and Board.
My
presentations this year include (1) a co-authored paper with Koji
Matsunobu that expands further on the concept of eco-musicality that we
propose as a basis for philosophy of music education, and (2) a symposium presentation
with Jiaxing Xie on our
new book (now in the final editing stages) called A Philosophy of Music
Education for the Era of AI: Dialogue between Chinese and Western Perspectives
(Routledge).
We will
also launch an innovative project that has been in development for several
years, the Open Global Music Academy (OGMA) network, which will now be affiliated
with APSMER.
I look forward
to seeing colleagues and learning about the latest research in this field from
across the Asia and Pacific regions.
Image
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth#/media/File:Perth_CBD_skyline_from_State_War_Memorial_Lookout,_2023,_04_b.jpg
I look
forward to giving an invited keynote speech for the Global Philosophy of
Education conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in March 2026.
This event
is being organized as part of the project Global Philosophy of Education (GlobalPhilEd), sponsored by Volkswagen Stiftung,
and led by philosophers in Germany and the Netherlands, including Anders
Schinkel, Johannes Drerup and Anouk Zuurmond.
This event
promising to be very interesting, with discussion of ideas concerning educational
philosophy from around the world.
Image source:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam#/media/File:KeizersgrachtReguliersgrachtAmsterdam.jpg
It is
exciting to now be hosting a joint doctoral dissertation seminar through the GAME research group, with participants from several countries and regions: China, Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Norway, and Uganda.
Here is our seminar schedule for 16 April 2025:
Presenter and Respondent; Presentation Title
Sherry Qiaoyue Liu (respondent, Dr. David G. Hebert)
Impact of Participating in a Community Choir on Adults in Shenzhen, China
Flora Jinhan Wei (respondent, Dr. James Isabirye)
Pre-Service Music Teachers in Mainland China: A Mixed-Method Research
Kristian Tverli Iversen (respondent, Dr. Yuki Morijiri)
Research Design for a Study of AI in Music Education
SHORT BREAK
Elizabeth Anne Oltedal (respondent, Dr. Yuki Morijiri)
Conviction and compromise: An exploratory study of social moderation in the assessment of music performance
Marianne Løkke Jakobsen (respondent, Dr. Luna Ning Luo)
A Study of Interactions and Learning Experiences in the Cross-Cultural Virtual Learning Space: Case Studies of Instrumental Music Education between Denmark and China
Kay Wing-Ki Li (respondent, Dr. David G. Hebert)
Cultural Differences in Metacognitive Teaching: A Study of Instrumental Music Learning in Hong Kong
SHORT BREAK
Erisa Walubo (respondent, Dr. Luna Ning Luo)
Decolonising Ugandan Primary Music Teacher Education through exploration of Indigenous practices of Amayebe musical tradition
Sergio Garcia-Cuesta (respondent, Dr. James Isabirye)
Citizens Are/As Artists: An integrative approach to music education
Knut Eysturstein (respondent, Dr. Milton Wabyona)
Tracing Faroese Music Heritage in Education: Archival and Interview-Based Approaches
David G. Hebert: Concluding Remarks
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The Nordic
Network for Music Education (NNME) has offered joint intensive Master courses
for decades that have contributed to developing a shared professional community across Nordic and
Baltic countries. Today we are excited to announce that we have funding to
offer a course in 2025.
The
2025 NNME course is titled Socially, Ecologically, and
Ethically Responsible Music Education and will be hosted by University
of the Arts Helsinki at the Kallio-Kuninkala villa on 3-7
November 2025. Prof. Marja-Leena Juntunen is the local course host.
Grants are
available to cover the costs of travel, lodging, and food for a limited number
of participants.
This will
be an outstanding opportunity for Master students in Music Education from
across the Nordic and Baltic countries to present the concepts and ongoing work
on their final thesis or project and obtain useful feedback.
Participants
will also have the chance to learn traditional songs and folk dances, make
music with peers from other Nordic and Baltic countries, and learn from
presentations related to the conference theme by Katya Thomson,
Marja-Leena Juntunen, Heidi Partti, David G. Hebert, and others.
Additionally, there will be traditional sauna, hikes, shared meals, and a visit
to the Ainola, the home of Sibelius.
Here are
links for more information about NNME and its courses:
https://www.hvl.no/en/collaboration/networks/nordic-network-for-music-education/
Image
source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kallio-Kuninkala_-_Sibelius_Academy_-_panoramio_%281%29.jpg
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I eagerly look forward
to participating in a Board meeting of the International Society for Music Education
(ISME) in Montreal, Canada, during summer 2025.
This will be an opportunity to discuss and collectively make decisions regarding ISME
and its array of activities, while also making detailed plans regarding its
upcoming world conference to be held in Montreal
in summer 2026.
There are very interesting people on the ISME Board, from several different countries worldwide, and with expertise in diverse subfields of music education. We also have excellent leadership from the President, President-Elect, Past-President, and CEO, and the dedicated support of friendly and competent staff with the ISME executive office. This will also be my first time to Montreal, which seems to be an amazing city with a great
history.
ISME is commited to democratic governance, and members are welcome to share any issues or concerns they would like to see raised for discussion at the meeting. We hope for ISME to satisfy all members for its role in supporting music education worldwide.
Public
domain image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mtl_from_mont_royal_(cropped).jpg
It is an honor to announce that we will be hosting a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)-funded researcher during part of 2025-2026.
Yuki Morijiri (Associate Professor, Tokyo Gakugei
University) has proposed research that will develop cross-cultural insights
into Music Performance Anxiety, and other important topics, in collaboration with the GAME research group in
Bergen, Norway.
Several years ago I lived in Japan, where I worked for Nichibunken, Yamanashi Gakuin University, and Tokyo Gakugei University, and ultimately produced some publications in the field of Japanese Studies. Japan has seen many changes across the years, and remains a globally prominent center for innovation in such fields as musical instruments and music technology.
We are very pleased to have this opportunity to host an
accomplished researcher from a country that is so important in the fields of music
and education.
Public domain image
source: https://snl.no/Japans_historie_etter_1945
We are very
happy to announce that James
Isabirye (Kyambogo University) and Milton Wabyona (Makerere
University) are being awarded postdoctoral fellowships, funded by the Norwegian
government, through the CABUTE project.
It will be a pleasure to offer some mentoring as these accomplished scholars proceed toward completion of their research on music teaching and learning in Uganda.
Their proposed studies promise to bring new insights to the field of music education, with both local and international applications.
It is a
pleasure to announce some PhD-level courses that will be offered in online
format in 2025.
Doctoral
students and postdoctoral junior faculty members (e.g. Assistant Professors,
Lecturers, etc.) affiliated with any university are welcome to participate in these
two courses:
Doctoral students
affiliated with any university can participate in this course as well (and in
special cases, it may also be open to advanced Master students):
https://www.hvl.no/en/studies-at-hvl/study-programmes/courses/2025/phd911/
We also
look forward to the upcoming PhD course Creative Innovations in Higher
Education at Bergen Summer Research School: https://www.uib.no/en/rs/bsrs/173600/creative-innovations-higher-education
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