Further Research in Japan

During the summer of 2009, I will be using my vacation time from Sibelius Academy to conduct research in Japan as a Visiting Research Scholar in affiliation with Professor Shuhei Hosokawa at Nichibunken: the International Research Center for Japanese Studies.

I am excited about this important opportunity, since Nichibunken is one of Japan’s prestigious National Institutes for the Humanities and Professor Hosokawa is a highly respected Japanese musicologist who shares my interests in sociomusicology, popular music, wind bands, and music technology.

I anticipate that Nichibunken will be an unusually stimulating environment and look forward to returning to Finland with new findings regarding both historical and current musical practices in Japan. I hope to also help forge some new relationships for Sibelius Academy with both educational institutions and music industry in Japan.

The following link provides further information regarding Japan's National Institutes for the Humanities:

http://www.nihu.jp/e/index.html

Click HERE to view my current homepage at Sibelius Academy.

Finland’s Fantastic Schools

The educational system of Finland surely has many strengths, but it is difficult to know what to make of some of the astonishing reports about Finnish schools that have been appearing in the international mass media in recent months.

Some reports seem to be based upon a questionable combination of second hand information with test scores and outdated financial figures, and some others merely regurgitate what has already been said in previous news articles. Still, it seems clear that something remarkable is happening in Finnish education. The typical Finn's language skills and knowledge of science, humanities and the arts is very impressive. There is a great emphasis on creativity here, and there seem to be relatively few social problems due to egalitarian public systems, although rates of alcoholism and suicide may be slightly higher than other nations. Rigorous, comparative research is needed so convincing findings can be attained regarding the successes of this national system. The following articles provide some background on this topic:

http://www.helsinki.fi/news/archive/7-2008/3-09-32-47.html

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120425355065601997.html

http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=41557

One author in the United States has suggested that much can be learned from Finnish schools, including how problems in American schools might best be solved:
http://www.federalwaynews.net/articles/2008/06/25/interact/columnists/column01.txt

Here is an interesting blog post by Finnish researcher Teemu Leinonen on the topic of comparisons between schools in the United States and Finland:
http://flosse.dicole.org/?item=comparing-schools-in-finland-and-in-the-united-states

I intend to conduct some thorough research into this question while living in Helsinki, and will certainly share my findings in future publications.

Below are some links to various articles on music education in Finland:

Finnish Music Education
http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=25821

Overview of Music Education in Finland
http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/overview+of+music+education+in+finland

Positive Effects of Music Education in Finland
http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/the+positive+effects+of+music+education+in+finland

Other Related Links
http://sociomusicology.blogspot.com/2007/12/from-boston-to-helsinki.html

Future of Jazz Education?

In April 2008, the International Association for Jazz Education declared bankruptcy and was suddenly disbanded after having served the jazz education community for nearly 40 years. Meanwhile, MENC: The National Association for Music Education announced that it may no longer be having national conferences in the United States.

Related links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/arts/music/26jazz.html
http://www.apassion4jazz.net/iaje.html
http://sociomusicology.blogspot.com/2008/04/music-conferences.html

As a Seattle native and former school music teacher, such developments were particularly surprising. Many do not realize this, but Seattle is increasingly regarded nowadays as an important center for innovations in jazz education and popular music pedagogy. In each of the recent Essentially Ellington festivals, Seattle high school bands have attained the highest honors. Garfield High School has produced many important jazz and rock musicians, including Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Ernestine Anderson, as well as rock drummer Dan Peters (from Screaming Trees, Nirvana and Mudhoney). Nearby, Roosevelt High School has also produced many notable musicians, including Mike McCready (rock guitarist with Pearl Jam), Duff McKagan (rock bassist with Guns N’ Roses and Iggy Pop) and various others. Another important contributor to the local jazz scene has been Washington Middle School, which for many years has had one of the finest middle school level jazz programs in the world.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/19/arts/NA-A-E-MUS-US-Essentially-Ellington.php

http://www.rooseveltjazz.org

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/360871_needle28.html

Community organizations, such as Earshot Jazz and Experience Music Project, have also contributed to local school music programs through various partnerships.

In the middle school music program that I taught in Seattle several years back, the students benefited greatly from a residency of Jovino Santos Neto, funded by Earshot Jazz. I was also able to attain grant funding from the Simpson Center for the Humanities to bring local artists from many different traditions into the school music program: an Irish fiddler, blues songwriter, Thai and Ghanaian musicians, and various others.

Hopefully the International Association for Jazz Education will be replaced by another organization soon, and I have a feeling that the solution might come from Seattle. Meanwhile jazz education and popular music pedagogy are fully in a groove with many exciting new developments in Europe and Australasia.

European Culture and Japan

Here is a photograph I took last night in Paris of the statues at Trocadero, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. There were also many Japanese tourists taking photos at this same location. I am on my way to present research on Japanese wind bands at the IGEB conference in Luxembourg. Using a phenomenological approach, I will discuss various perspectives on conducting the works of Japanese wind composers, as well as the Saito Method of conducting. Below is the abstract of my paper:

Conducting Japanese Wind Music: Analytical and Phenomenological Insights

Increasingly, myriad statistics lend support to the claim that Japan has become an important center for Western art music in recent years, an ironic assertion considering its obvious geographic and cultural distance from Europe. The field of wind music is particularly illustrative regarding this point, since Japan is among the world’s largest markets for wind band sheet music and sound recordings, and is home to the largest wind instrument manufacturer, the largest band competition, and even professional wind bands that resemble major symphony orchestras in terms of subscription ticket sales, world premiere performances and recorded releases. Many notable wind compositions for professional-level and amateur ensembles have been produced by Japanese composers, most of which have yet to attain attention outside Japan. Using analytical and phenomenological perspectives, this study describes the experience of conducting two Japanese works for amateur wind bands: Tetsunosuke Kushida’s Asuka and Hiroshi Hoshina’s Fu-Mon. The author has interviewed both composers in Japan, and recently conducted these pieces in 2008 with the All-State Honor Band at the annual festival of Connecticut Independent Schools. This study grapples with the notion of wind conductor as “agent” in the cultural mediation of hybrid genres, and includes discussion of implications for how wind music from other non-western nations might be approached in a manner that arguably ensures “authenticity” and cultural sensitivity.

The First Band in Japan?

Some important new discoveries were made during this past week regarding John William Fenton (b.1828), who formed what appears to have been Japan's very first band comprised of western musical instruments. Fenton arrived in Yokohama in 1868, just at the start of the Meiji era, where he founded bands and orchestras and even composed the first version of Kimigayo, Japan's national anthem. Over the next 140 years, Japan would enthusiastically embrace western music, eventually becoming a globally significant producer and consumer of European and American genres, ranging from classical to jazz, rock, and more. Until this week, however, the final chapter of Fenton's life had remained completely unknown to music scholars both within and outside of Japan. It was thought that after living in Japan, Fenton had settled somewhere in the rural midwestern United States, where he disappeared.

Suddenly, after more than a century of mystery, there are some new details. On June 16, I was contacted at my Boston University office by a thoughtful genealogical researcher in California who had on that very day obtained records of Fenton’s final years in . . . of all possible places . . . beautiful Santa Cruz, California. It was very kind of her to provide this information, and I was able to help communicate these details to Toshio Akiyama so he could announce them at the Japan Bandmaster’s Association meeting in Kyoto this past Saturday. These findings will be one other new detail included in my book on wind band music in Japan that is scheduled for publication later this year.

Multiculturalism in Music and Education

[click on image for details]


To what extent do musical experiences open windows to intercultural understanding?

For the past few decades the effects of multiculturalism have been seen in the field of music education within North America, Europe and elsewhere. While many contributions in this area have been effective and inspiring for a new generation of music students, others have reinforced stereotypes and given “multiculturalism” a poor image. Although the ideals of multiculturalism may now seem to be rather widely shared, there is actually little agreement regarding finite connotations of the term and the motivations of those who would advocate it as a component of educational philosophy. “Multiculturalism” is no longer the popular concept in educational discourse that it had been in the 1980s and 90s, and in many nations there is less interest in recognizing the cultures of minority peoples than in attaining a unified and patriotic national identity. Why is this so? Is multiculturalism no longer relevant? How have the meanings of "multiculturalism" changed in the domains of music and education? More research and scholarship are sorely needed in this field.

Recommended Links to Related Websites:

Center for Multicultural Education (University of Washington)
http://depts.washington.edu/centerme/home.htm

Globalization and Education (University of Illinois)
http://globalizationandeducation.ed.uiuc.edu/Teaching/index.html

Cultural Diversity in Music Education (CDIME)
http://www.cdime-network.com/

International Society for Music Education
http://isme.org/

Current Activities in this Area:

* I authored the chapter on “Jazz and Rock” and co-authored the chapter on “World Beat” for the third edition of Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (Rowman-Littlefield/MENC).

[2012-UPDATE: See

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

Also, here is a webpage with individual links to several of my publications on this topic:

http://hib.academia.edu/DavidHebert/Papers

Colloquium on Music Education Curriculum Reform

The MayDay Group Colloquium XX will be held at Boston University, June 5-8, 2008. Action for Change in Music Education is the motto of the MayDay Group. The theme for this meeting is "Connecting school music to the community, society, and life: Curriculum, policies, and practices." Several interesting speakers are scheduled to give presentations at this colloquium. I am assisting Dr Patrick Jones in his convening of this event.

Please examine the links below for details:

Colloquium Schedule

http://www.maydaygroup.org/php/events/MDGXXSchedule.pdf

Colloquium Brochure

http://www.maydaygroup.org/php/events/MDGXXBrochure.pdf

Action Ideals of the MayDay Group

http://www.maydaygroup.org/php/actionidealsexplained.php