Rethinking Music “Appreciation”

This study reflects upon and explains the strategies developed in teaching music appreciation in a large urban secondary school. These reflections were developed through an action research study that took place during the 2005-2006 school year. Taken in the broadest, possible view, this study is a small example of how globalization and its offshoots – diversity and multiculturalism – are inherently paradoxical. Fundamentally, these phenomena are characterized by trans-national flows of capital, labor, communications, and culture that tend to unite and broaden many aspects of peoples’ perspectives and identities – personal, creative, and musical. However, the same forces that power uniting and broadening can also divide, and erase local and personal identities. Such threats often fuel the determination of “marginal groups” to assert their independence negatively or positively – through all forms of creativity. As a music teacher, my task is to help students resist and replace negative forces with positive personal and cultural agency. Hence, the purpose of this study: to examine and describe the factors that contributed towards the resentment and discomfort my music appreciation students experienced at the start of the school year. It became evident that such emotions were the surface symptoms of issues related to social justice, diversity, democratic teaching and learning, and multiculturalism.