Political Contexts and Multicultural Music Education

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Avoiding the “P” Word: Political Contexts and Multicultural Music Education Deborah Bradley

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Department of Curriculum and Instruction and School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison

To cite this article: Deborah Bradley (2012): Avoiding the “P” Word: Political Contexts and Multicultural Music Education, Theory Into Practice, 51:3, 188-195 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2012.690296

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Theory Into Practice, 51:188–195, 2012 Copyright © The College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University ISSN: 0040-5841 print/1543-0421 online DOI: 10.1080/00405841.2012.690296

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Deborah Bradley

Avoiding the ‘‘P’’ Word: Political Contexts and Multicultural Music Education

Socio-historical contexts are integral to both general and music educational practices. However, when music teacher education candidates ask such questions as, “How can we engage in musics outside of the accepted canon and talk about these issues in my class without being accused by parents or administrators of being ‘political?’ ” they restrict possibilities for engaging with context meaningfully. Yet students, in their complex and often sophisticated musical lives outside of the formal institute of schooling, carry out these kinds of discussions and understandings with ease and nonchalance. Using the companion lenses of critical race theory and antiracism education, this article Deborah Bradley retired in 2010 from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and School of Music at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Correspondence should be sent to Dr. Deborah Bradley, Curriculum and Instruction and School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Room 244-C, 225 N. Mills Street, Madison, WI 53706-1795. E-mail: [email protected]

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explores the reluctance of some music educators to engage those socio-historical contexts deemed political within multicultural and world music, asking: Without such contextualization, how is cross-cultural or intercultural understanding possible?

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N THE SPRING OF 2009, I taught a graduate seminar at a large public university in the midwestern United States. The seminar was entitled “World Music Pedagogies,” and drew from the theoretical and pedagogical framework of antiracism education (Dei, 2000, pp. 9–10). Course readings encouraged students to interrogate the relationships between cultural context and pedagogical approaches within selected world music traditions and practices in music education settings (Schippers, 2010). One course goal was to analyze the tensions resulting when teachers import world musical traditions into North American teaching contexts. Another goal


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Avoiding the “P” Word

sought to investigate implications for pedagogical approaches motivated by current trends to internationalize curricula in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. It was decidedly not a how to course in teaching world music, but a course designed specifically to elicit discussions about the politics of world music in education, including racial politics. I had anticipated that there could be resistance to interrogating the discourse surrounding socalled world music, especially since the participants included several students with ethnomusicology backgrounds. I did not, however, anticipate the very strong resistance from the students to discussing historical contexts for the music itself, particularly for genres that emerged from conditions of political strife. The resistance became evident during week 3 of the seminar when one student asked: “How can we engage in musics outside of the accepted canon and talk about these kinds of issues without being accused by parents or administrators of being ‘political?’ ” My response at the time was to counter with, “How can we not talk about those issues if our goal is to improve crosscultural understanding through music?” Both the student’s question and my answer have haunted me since. When and how did the music classroom become a place where discussing the cultural and political history of another country (or our own, for that matter) could get teachers into trouble? I worry about what was implied in the question— that the mere mention of historical context when teaching music is deemed to be political. If that is the case (and certainly the students in the seminar believed it to be), how might we ever achieve meaningful cross-cultural understanding through multicultural and world music education?

to teach them, why we select some musics and avoid others, and what is implied by those choices. These questions are pertinent not only to music education, but to many other disciplines. For example, how can literature teachers speak of historical contexts for novels in ways that are not similarly political? My point with the class had been to demonstrate that some of the most popular world musics in North American classrooms had historic political origins, which a strictly aesthetic approach to music study (one focused solely on music’s so-called common elements— melody, harmony, rhythm, form, timbre, and texture) frequently overlooks in K–12 education. Moreover, such an approach “segregates artistic pursuits from life” (Danto, cited in Elliott, 1995, p. 29), even though such pursuits derive their meaning from the life contexts in which they arise. For example, the South African freedom songs emerged during antiapartheid protests, in a manner similar to the music of the United States’ Civil Rights Movement. The South African freedom songs have become among the most popular world musics in North American classrooms. One such song, Siyahamba, has been arranged by a plethora of composers for a wide variety of classroom settings—choir, orchestra, band, hand bell ensembles, and various combinations of ensembles and instruments (Bradley, 2001). Yet it is rare to find references to the antiapartheid movement within most published versions of Siyahamba. Without knowledge of that context, however, the song’s great depth of emotion and full meaning cannot truly be experienced. The same is true for the African American spirituals, whose deeper meanings cannot be fully understood without knowledge of the politics of human slavery. Bell asserted:

Politics, History, Life

The spirituals cannot be heard and fully appreciated with a classical ear. Moreover, it is not only the melody but also the words that require a different level of “hearing” : : : to “hear” the spirituals in the fullness of their beauty and meaning, the listener must abandon preconceptions based on classical European musical paradigms. (Bell, cited in Dixson & Rousseau, 2006, p. 3).

The question raised by the seminar students came somewhat unexpectedly, since the discussion about historical contexts for music did not feel particularly political to me. I thought the political part of the discussion was yet to emerge: what musics we choose to teach, how we choose

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Education in and Through Music

By semester week 3, the seminar discussion in “World Music Pedagogies” had not yet progressed far enough to explore how songs like Siyahamba might fit into an antiracist educational approach (Bradley, 2006); in other words, we had not begun to interrogate why we might choose to include (or not) Siyahamba into the curriculum. We had not even begun to listen for the deeper meanings embedded in its text. The question arose shortly after the mere mention of apartheid, implying that the historical context from which the song emerged was dangerous discussion terrain. Yet without knowledge of the historical context giving birth to such music, how can we begin to hear, to develop a deeper cultural understanding, such as that which multicultural music education seeks to foster (Campbell, 1994, 2002, 2004)? In February 2011, as I wrote this article, many of these same graduate students took to the streets to protest a budget bill in the Wisconsin legislature that sought to revoke the right to collective bargaining for teaching and research assistants, for public school teachers, and for university faculty—indeed, all state workers in Wisconsin have since been denied this right. I mention this because their engagement in this particular political fight perhaps suggests their attitudes about politically charged topics in the music classroom had shifted. Personal communications with some of these students, however, revealed that little had changed in their classroom practice as a result of the protests. The reasons for my doubts form the basis for this article. Using an analytical lens that combines antiracism philosophy and critical race theory (CRT), I consider how the socio-historical context of certain musics seems dangerous terrain for some teachers. The fear of political discussions in the classroom resides in tension with these same teachers’ own political activity outside the classroom—activism in which they had a personal stake (i.e., the protests against Wisconsin’s “budget repair bill”). How does this tension relate to education more broadly? The music of the South African antiapartheid movement, for example, emerged during protests against racial oppression by a government convinced of White

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supremacy’s legitimacy. Perhaps the students’ fear was not about discussing politics per se (as in state budgets), but politics utilized as code for race. Many authors have described the fear of race talk (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Bradley, 2006; Morrison, 1992; Pollock, 2004). It is indicative of a “divorce strategy” that hooks (1992) asserted keeps the discourse of race separated from discourse about the politics of racism. This article, then, investigates this substitution of the term politics for race in students’ thinking as one way that Whiteness operates in music education.

Defining Whiteness Whiteness is a cultural attitude that defines normality both by and for White people in societies. It is an amalgamation of qualities including the cultures, histories, experiences, discourses, and privileges shared by Whites. Even though White people may work against racism, overtly racist talk, and the discourse of color-blindness, because they benefit from invisible racial privileges associated with being White (McIntosh, 1990), Whites cannot reject Whiteness (Marx, 2006, p. 6). The term Whiteness is often linked with White privilege, the concept that Whites are advantaged in society because of their race. White privilege operates in such a way that Whites may not be consciously aware of the privileges they hold, which “can be as obvious as being able to find bandages and pantyhose that match the ‘flesh’ color of a White person’s skin,” to “not routinely being followed by security in department stores” (Marx, 2006, p. 7) or stopped by police for “driving while Black.” Furthermore, because most White people believe that being trusted rather than distrusted is a condition that everyone experiences, or because they see White cultural behaviors as societal norms, many Whites are reluctant to accept the notion of White privilege. Critical race theorists posit that Whiteness operates as an ideology prioritizing the rights of individuals over groups, and White groups over minoritized others. These rights incorporate the absolute right to exclude not only groups and


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individuals but ideas, and thus operates as a perversion of the legal ideal of free speech (Gillborn, 2008). In my graduate seminar, the right to free speech was challenged by students who believed that South Africa’s history of apartheid was an unacceptable topic for classroom discussion. Toni Morrison has long argued that cultural Whiteness forecloses opportunities for open debate about issues of race because “ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, even generous, liberal gesture. To notice is to recognize an already discredited difference” (Morrison, 1992, pp. 9– 10). Extending her argument, then, I proffer that my students’ anxiety about musical contexts they deemed as political represents a cultural Whiteness that avoids talking both about race and the politics of racism. In this case, political functions as code for race—a topic to be avoided both in polite conversation and classroom discourse, even though such discussion may be necessary to provide context.

Antiracism Education in Theory and Practice Throughout this article, I draw upon the work of scholars in both CRT and antiracism education. I am often asked what the difference is between the two. Although there are no distinct boundaries—indeed, the concepts have a great deal in common—I think of antiracism as an umbrella philosophy and pedagogy within which CRT serves particular purpose. Dei (2000) defined antiracism education as “an action-oriented political and educational strategy for institutional and systemic change that addresses the issues of racism and the interlocking systems of social oppression (sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism)” (p. 13). CRT forms a valuable part of the theoretical framework for antiracism work, providing a unique analytic lens to interrogate how racism operates. CRT begins with the notion that racism is “normal, not aberrant, in American society” (Delgado, 1995, p. xiv) and, “because it is so enmeshed in the fabric of our social order, it appears both normal and natural to people in this culture: : : : Thus, the strategy becomes

one of unmasking and exposing racism in its various permutations” (Ladson-Billings, 1998, p. 11). Antiracism education shares this strategy. CRT draws upon the technique of storytelling to integrate the experiential knowledge of those who have shared histories of racial oppression “to transform a world deteriorating under the albatross of racial hegemony” (Barnes, 1990, cited in Ladson-Billings, 1998, p. 11). When called upon to label my work, however, I generally describe it as antiracism education, and this approach infused my teaching in the Spring of 2009 when the graduate students in World Music Pedagogies pushed back against conversation that they felt was too political for their music classrooms. Perhaps my selfidentification as an antiracist educator caused some students to jump to conclusions—yet, as I mentioned earlier, our discussion had not yet reached the point of fitting Siyahamba into an antiracist pedagogy. Our discussion had been centered on South Africa’s history under colonialism and how this influenced the music and texts of the freedom songs. Thus, I believe the students’ reluctance to engage in political discussion found its roots in Morrison’s (1992) “graceful, liberal gesture” that strives to avoid any mention of race, but more pointedly, avoids acknowledging the complicity of Whites in past and ongoing racial oppression. The liberal gesture born of cultural Whiteness results in coding race as politics. In the next section, I attempt to describe how cultural Whiteness supports this divorce from the political in educational settings.

Politics as Terror In a provocative article entitled “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” bell hooks (1992) described the terror that notions of Whiteness conjure up for many Blacks, and the amazement of Whites at learning that they were sometimes viewed as terrorists in the imaginations of Black people. This representation draws on a long history of (some) White people performing acts of terror against Blacks: lynchings, beatings, church bombings, arsons, and other terrors. As

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a result, Blacks found it necessary to protect themselves by donning a cloak of invisibility—to avoid looking White people directly in the eye by casting their eyes downward in the presence of Whites. It is a part of North American history that many Whites choose to forget, since remembering requires acknowledging that one’s ancestors were complicit in acts of terror against Blacks. Such amnesia, however, places White students in the double bind of being both oppressed (by the cultural expectations of Whiteness) and oppressor by failing to acknowledge this history. Near the end of the article, hooks (1992) cautioned against what she perceived as a trend to divorce the discourse of race from “recognition of the politics of racism” (p. 345). Over the years since the article’s publication, much has been written about race and the politics of racism. Yet I want to make the case that the students’ reluctance in World Music Pedagogies to discuss the political–historical situation in South Africa provides evidence of the continued effectiveness of the divorce strategy that hooks identified. Political and historical contexts become divorced from the musics to which they gave birth. The students, all of whom were experienced music teachers, collectively feared any classroom discourse that could be construed as the politics of racism, even when such politics were historically grounded. They feared such discussions might result in criticism from parents or potential disciplinary action by administrators or school board. Rather than engage in a discussion about historical apartheid in South Africa, which could easily lead to the history of racism in North America, students attempted to foreclose the debate by positioning politics as their imagined terror. Politics as terror manifests as fear of disciplinary action or even loss of employment. Politics as terror provides powerful motivation to remain mute on sensitive topics. In drawing this analogy, I want to make it clear that I do not equate these White students’ fear of politically potent discussion with the fear of Whites experienced by Black people. These are in no way comparable terrors. As hooks (1992) described, Blacks literally feared for their lives at the hand of some Whites. To attempt to equate

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this to fear of job disciplinary action would be offensively trivializing. The point I wish to make is that the students’ reluctance to engage in anything resembling political discussion represents how Whiteness has become its own disciplinary agent for White people. It is part of the “legacy of White domination : : : an indication of how little this culture really understands the profound psychological impact of White racist domination” (hooks, 1992, pp. 345–346).

White Fright Sherry Marx (2006) wrote about “passive racism” as “so ingrained in American institutions, philosophies, and practices that it is often times completely invisible to the Whites who benefit from it. Frequently it is invisible to the people of color who are victimized by it as well” (p. 10). People in North American society fail to see racism because it is so deeply embedded in every aspect of daily life, including social conventions related to polite conversation. Morrison, Pollock, and others have made the case that Whites have suppressed talk about race by declaring it inappropriate for conversation; I make the case that declaring politics as equally unsuitable for conversation within educational settings serves as a firewall preventing discussion that might lead to questions about race and racism (or other difficult topics). Mills (2003) described White supremacy as a “sociopolitical system” that generally “ignores or marginalizes race” (p. 40). One technique for ignoring comes through avoidance of race talk (Landsman, 2001; Morrison, 1992; Pollock, 2004). Fortunately, since the relatively recent emergence of antiracism pedagogies and critical race theory in education, some teachers have become more comfortable negotiating race talk in casual conversation and in pedagogical discussions. White supremacy as a flexible, ever-changing sociopolitical system has responded by subtly encouraging a broadened definition of what counts as political. In doing so, topics for discussion that create “White fright” (Meyers, 2003) move beyond fear of the unknown other into the type


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of fear expressed by the World Music Pedagogies students: fear of discussing topics perceived as potentially controversial. By subsuming race into the umbrella term political, and by associating political talk with the fear of sanctions against teachers, politics and racially charged histories remain socially and pedagogically unacceptable for classroom discussion. As Mills (2003) explained, White supremacy is a multidimensional system that extends beyond the “formally” political (the juridico-political realms of official governing bodies and laws) to all areas of economic, cultural, cognitive, evaluative, somatic, and even metaphysical spheres (p. 42). One technology for ensuring its own continuation is to control the discourses in which educators engage. Thus politics generally becomes something to be avoided, and when politics implies race and racism, even the most obvious historical examples of racism, such as South African apartheid, U.S. Jim Crow laws, or the genocide of Native Americans in the 1800s, become topics deemed unfit for the classroom.

Conclusion: Confronting the “P Word” in Music Pedagogy A commonly heard sentiment, “Music is a universal language,” suggests that musical understanding translates across cultures with no need for contextualization. Belief in this myth leads many music teachers to employ pedagogies focusing strictly on music’s common elements (which, at closer look, are not particularly common from culture to culture). The belief that music’s sonorous qualities have meaning without reference to the historical and cultural contexts from which the sounds emerge lulls educators into misguided pedagogies focused on performance, where attention to notes and rhythms takes priority over important cultural meanings. “Although music is a universal phenomenon, it is bound to social context, and thus, the culture that produces the music also constructs its meaning” (Koza, 2001, p. 242). Thus, to reach the goal of multicultural and world music education— to promote understanding across cultures—it is


pedagogically necessary to “engage : : : in discourse on issues such as globalization, identity, and authenticity that surround the music” (Campbell, 2004, p. 13). These are inherently political discourses that emerge from the socio-historical conditions of people, places, and cultures. How might music educators engage students in touchy subjects like apartheid in South Africa, or the U.S. history of slavery, to open these important avenues for understanding the historical conditions that gave birth to the music? An antiracist approach suggests taking a close look at the lyrics of the familiar African American spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot: I looked over Jordan, and what did I see Comin’ for to carry me home? A band of angels comin’ after me, Comin’ for to carry me home.

On the surface, the song speaks to a promise of life after death. But scholars believe the song conveyed a different meaning for those in slavery: Jordan was code for the Ohio River (which separated slave states from free states). The band of angels were those who assisted runaway slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad (Dixson & Rousseau, 2006). By including this meaning alongside the surface interpretation, students’ understanding becomes much deeper. Similarly, discussing the South African freedom songs’ relationship to the fight against apartheid humanizes the people of South Africa in ways that studying just the music cannot accomplish. A rich, more complex form of crosscultural understanding may take root when music classroom conversations dare to include these crucial contexts. Avoiding discussion of such crucial historical and political contexts upholds a system of White supremacy that reinforces through fear of reprisal what Pollock (2004) termed colormuteness. I am quite certain the students in my World Music Pedagogies class would not claim to subscribe to White supremacist thinking. Indeed, I believe that each one of them would state an abhorrence of such thinking. Yet fear of what might be misinterpreted as political-speak had

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coerced some of them into unconscious submission to White supremacist thinking. What Morrison (1992) once termed a “graceful, liberal gesture” has become a disciplining technology to prop up White supremacy by creating fear of certain types of discussions. Educators who present sanitized contexts for the music they teach or who avoid contexts altogether contribute to the ongoing devaluation of the arts in education. A people’s music holds their histories, their belief systems, their humanity. If teaching is a political act, teaching music is even more so. When music educators can find the courage to adopt empowering pedagogies (Freire, 1970, 1998; Giroux & Simon, 1989; Jorgensen, 1996) that take on discussions about even uncomfortable political histories, they harness music’s potential to develop deeper understandings about people and cultures. By avoiding the p-word, however, they submit to a system driven by the ideology of White supremacy that continues to value particular musics, and particular people, over others.

Notes 1. Ethnomusicology is the study of the music of a culture or subculture, considered either as a combination of sounds or as an aspect of sociocultural behavior; also, the comparative study of the music of more than one culture (Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com). 2. A comparison here might be to the controversial new edition of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, which excised all derogatory slang words describing African Americans.

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Bradley, D. (2006). Music education, multiculturalism, and anti-racism—Can we talk? Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 5(2). Retrieved from http://act.maydaygroup.org/php/previous.php Campbell, P. S. (1994). Musica exotica, multiculturalism, and school music. Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning, 5, 65–75. Campbell, P. S. (2002). Music education in a time of cultural transformation. Music Educators Journal, 89, 27–32. Campbell, P. S. (2004). Teaching music globally: Experiencing music, expressing culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Dei, G. J. S. (2000). Power, knowledge and anti-racism education. Halifax: Fernwood. Delgado, R. (Ed.). (1995). Critical race theory: The cutting edge. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Dixson, A. D., & Rousseau, C. K. (Eds.). (2006). Critical race theory in education: All God’s children got a song. New York, NY: Routledge. Elliott, D. J. (1995). Music matters. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Seabury Press. Friere, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gillborn, D. (2008). Racism and education: Coincidence or conspiracy? London: Routledge. Giroux, H. A., & Simon, R. I. (1989). Popular culture, schooling, and everyday life. Toronto, Canada: OISE Press. hooks, b. (1992). Representing Whiteness in the Black imagination. In L. Grossberg (Ed.), Cultural studies (pp. 338–346). New York, NY: Routledge. Jorgensen, E. (1996). The artist and the pedagogy of hope. International Journal of Music Education, 27, 36–50. Koza, J. E. (2001). Multicultural approaches to music education. In C. A. Grant & M. L. Gomez (Eds.), Making schooling multicultural: Campus and classroom (pp. 239–258). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? Qualitative Studies in Education, 11, 7–24. Landsman, J. (2001). A White teacher talks about race. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Marx, S. (2006). Revealing the invisible: Confronting passive racism in teacher education. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Pollock, M. (2004). Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schippers, H. (2010). Facing the music: Shaping music education from a global perspective. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.


McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, 49, 31–36. Meyers, K. (2003). White fright: Reproducing White supremacy. In A. W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of race (pp. 129–158). New York, NY: Routledge. Mills, C. W. (2003). White supremacy as sociopolitical system. In A. W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of racism (pp. 33–48). New York, NY: Routledge.


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