Back to the USA . . . I have been offered a new position in the MISSISSIPPI is actually a very important place for music, as the source of innovative performers that have forged new styles and made a substantial impact on music in much of the world. Musicians from Mississippi include leading blues performers Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Bo Diddley, W. C. Handy, Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker and B.B. King, pioneers of rock and roll Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, jazz legends Lester Young, Hank Jones, and Gerald Wilson, contemporary jazz masters Tom Malone, Mulgrew Miller, Mose Allison, and Cassandra Wilson, pioneers of country music Jimmie Rodgers and Charley Pride, renowned songwriters like Jimmy Buffett, and even revered art music composers such as William Grant Still and Milton Babbitt.
University of Southern Mississippi is ideally situated - in the original heartland of American musical innovation - for studies of American music traditions that will be of interest to musicians and educators in other parts of the USA and the rest of the world. For anyone interested in the roots of blues, jazz, or rock, this is a perfect setting for research.
Recently,
Hopefully the experiences of developing intercultural music programs in Europe, indigenous/minority music education in
This is an exciting new opportunity and I am eager to work with the students and world-class music faculty at
It was encouraging to see several outstanding students apply to the GLOMAS program, with an especially large number at the
Part of my job at the
More details regarding this new program are described in the following open-access publication:
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].
Below is more information regarding this program, as explained on the Master of Global Music (GLOMAS) program website:
The Master of Global Music (GLOMAS) is a joint study programme offered in
Graduates from this Master degree programme will demonstrate:
(1) a high level of
(2) knowledge of
(3) an ability to effectively lead music ensembles, communicate and teach music across a diversity of formal and informal settings, and
(4) an ability to successfully
The GLOMAS
Click here for further information: http://glomas.net
Music may be rightfully regarded as the most significant American cultural export, since even Hollywood movie production is increasingly rivaled by regional industries, such as India’s Bollywood genre and Hong Kong’s action/martial arts films, as well as enormous multi-national productions (like Avatar and Lord of the Rings, which were partly made in New Zealand), and we must not forget that many Hollywood movies also feature American roots music as well as themes derived from American music.
Blues, jazz, and early rock and roll pioneered the use of highly danceable, groove-based song forms structured with chordal harmony as a backdrop for sophisticated improvisation by both vocalists and virtuoso instrumentalists. While some would still insist that aspects of European art music are more highly developed, it cannot be denied that each of these American genres - particularly jazz - clearly served as some inspiration to the majority of major European art music composers (as well as popular music performers in much of the world) during the twentieth century, and the value of this music is increasingly recognized worldwide by musicologists in the twenty-first century. Further research is needed on how the richness of this unique musical legacy – and its global impact – is effectively taught at all levels of formal and informal education.
Below are links to some of my writings and projects that address related topics:
· Hebert, D. G. (2010). Jazz and Rock Music. In W. M. Anderson & P. S. Campbell (Eds.), Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education, Vol. 1 (third edition).
· Campbell, P. S. & Hebert, D. G. (2010). World Beat. In W. M. Anderson & P. S. Campbell (Eds.), Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education, Vol. 2 (third edition).
· Hebert, D. G. (2009). Musicianship, Musical Identity and Meaning as Embodied Practice. In T. Regelski & J. T. Gates (Eds.), Music Education for a Changing Society: Guiding Visions for Practice (pp. 39-55). Dordrecht and New York: Springer Press.
· Campbell, P. S., Hebert, D. G. & Will, R. J. (Eds.) (2001). Around the Sound: Popular Music in Performance, Education, and Scholarship - symposium proceedings.
· Hebert, D. G. & Campbell, P. S., (2000). "Rock Music in American Schools: Positions and Practices Since the 1960s," International Journal of Music Education , Vol. 36, No. 1 (pp. 14-22).
Terve Maria is the title of the concert, at the Vanha Kirkko (
I am singing the lowest bass parts with this choir, which has released numerous CDs in recent years. Here is a link for further information about Kampin Laulu:
The urgency and irony of this situation in the case of hunger is striking, yet school music teachers also frequently find themselves in a similar situation with regard to music, which they freely share with students who are musically deprived, often lacking even the most basic knowledge of songs and rudimentary techniques for creating meaningful sounds. Such teachers politely avoid any explicit acknowledgment that these kinds of problems are mostly due to insufficient parental involvement - spanning generations - that gradually leads to the extinction of amateur music making as a socially integral practice.
Contemporary music teachers earnestly struggle to overcome the de-musicalization of a society that rewards commercialization and the gratification of individual greed (a value usually passed on from busy parents to children reared on television ads), and promotes an increasingly efficient miseducation guided by standardized test scores and the kind of trivia that enable people like Glenn Beck and Paris Hilton to become identified as important voices of their generation. Music naturally seems out of place within any education that offers so little room for promotion of altruism, critical thinking or creative achievement, and is therefore targeted by school systems as an unnecessary expenditure in a thoroughly commercialized society.
What can be done?
Fortunately, this phenomenon of de-musicalization is not an incurable global pandemic, although it may sometimes appear to be so. In fact, it is preventable, but requires systemic intervention at all levels of formal and informal education, from prenatal and early childhood programs through even activities offered at retirement facilities. It requires that the field of music education, and its ultimate mission, be viewed more broadly: lifelong, lifewide, inclusive of an array of genres, practices and locations that extend far beyond the strictures of traditional schools.
Still, those who participate in such educationally deviant activities may find themselves labeled “musical” and viewed with suspicion as an “eccentric artist”, perhaps even listed as a “person of interest” for inciting the public production of communal sounds. Indeed, we must recognize that such communal musicalizers are already among us, lurking beside park benches, in community centers, playgrounds, summer camps, in churches and synagogues, maybe even directly teaching young children and their mothers, thereby resisting the spread of de-musicalization. Perhaps, in time, even a priest or poet may be inspired to write “A spectre is haunting
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