All or nothing

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine today about how music education is changing. My friend, Evan Tobias, is a Music Education professor at ASU.  For what it is worth, as much as there are people who claim I am a "cutting edge" music educator, Evan has me beat by far.

Anyway, we were talking about how there are all these backwards perceptions of music that seem to permeate educators on all levels, and then these same people seem so shocked when they are forced to come to grips the realities of a changing musical world.  Evan is far more diplomatic than I am, but I could not help but to refer to them as fundamentalists.

We talked about all kinds of permutations, but they all seemed to come down to a single overriding concept:  the notion that music is not, or should not, evolve is ridiculous.  Think about it.  Most music education is solely focused on the music and music techniques that have long since past.  That is not to say they are irrelevant - that kind of thinking actually makes me just as upset (and I think Evan too, though I do not want to speak for him - check his blog to get more specifics from him.)  It's more about this prevailing sense of some music is valid and some is not.  Drives me crazy.

And let's not forget that this goes both ways.  I spend so much time working with my more "contemporary" students on seeing the value of "classical" music to their own work.  A tip if you are ever having to do something like that.  Approach it from the standpoint of the composer's motivation. What was being said with the music? That kind of insight is far more universal than you might think.  Using that approach I have turned a huge number of rock oriented musicians into fairly well versed classical fans.  Frankly once the door to universal musical validity is opened, it seems like a flood gate that cannot be closed.  Also works the other way with more "traditional" students as well.

Evan and I spoke for a quite a bit of time about all this, and basically decided that the musical standards we have all come to know are not the problem.  It's the application of those standards that is the real issue.  By the way, I am fully aware of my bias on this subject - I did, in a very small way, "pioneer" a new type of music education, but still, any time we are deliberately setting limits...well, that just seems so "unmusical" to me, if I can be that cliche.

All music students should learn to view all music as valid.  All of it.  There should certainly be personal preferences and tastes to guide us, but the notion that some is more viable than others is very hard for me to reconcile.

I must confess that our conversation was hardly confrontational as we both hold pretty much the same views on this subject, but to that end, I think Evan's idea of a kind of consortium of like minded thinkers in this area could really help.  I cannot believe he and I are the only ones that think this way.

Lots more from me on this subject, I am sure, in the future.  Stay tuned.