Praxial Philosophy of Music Education
Musicianship, Musical Identity, and Meaning as Embodied Practice
by David Hebert
Hebert, D. G. (2009). Musicianship, Musical Identity and Meaning as Embodied Practice. In T. Regelski & J. T. Gates (Eds.), Music Education for Changing Times: Guiding Visions for Practice (pp.39-55). Dordrecht and New York: Springer Press.
Based on topics that frame the debate about the future of professional music education, this book explores the issues... more
Based on topics that frame the debate about the future of professional music education, this book explores the issues that music teachers must confront in a rapidly shifting educational landscape.
The book aims to challenge thought and change minds. It presents a star cast of internationally prominent thinkers in and beyond music education. These thinkers deliberately challenge many time-worn traditions in music education with regard to musicianship, culture and society, leadership, institutions, interdisciplinarity, research and theory, and curriculum. This is the first book to confront these issues in this way.
This unique book has emerged from fifteen years of international dialog by The MayDay Group, an organization of more than 250 music educators from over 20 countries who meet yearly to confront issues in music teaching and learning.
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Extending the idea that music has new meanings, David Hebert argues for music (and therefore music education) as embodied culture, and thus urges a more visceral music learning process. Citing examples from a variety of well-known musical traditions, Hebert supports a music education rationale based on humans' capacity for being multi- musical, bringing this capacity to bear on music learning much more systematically than traditional music teaching systems do in most classrooms. This stretches the students (and, of course, the teacher) and encourages them to reach toward the unfamiliar with both confidence and curiosity.
To bring this off within school programs, teachers must recognize that factors of identity play important roles, both in terms of personal self-actualization and in collective identities that are embodied and maintained by institutions. In pursuit of this idea, Hebert explores "fundamentalism" as a feature of identity that resists what he calls "hybridity" and change, but which yields when meaningful avenues for embodied musical experiences are expanded for students. Hebert closes with implications for policy and practice in music teaching and learning.