This post was published in the Journal of Popular Music Education!
Pierre Schaeffer and DJ Premier
Introduction
Digital audio workstation software, recording equipment and MIDI controllers have become steadily less expensive and easier to learn over the past two decades. As a result, it has become possible for schools at all levels to offer “an art class for music” (Kuhn & Hein, 2021) in which students learn to write and produce original songs. However, music teachers in the United States usually find themselves unprepared to teach such a class. University music education programs focus on the performance and history of Western art music to the near exclusion of all else. When these programs address electronic music, it is usually in the context of “art” music. It is extremely rare for a preservice music teacher to learn to produce dance music or hip-hop.
As I write this, music technology courses are becoming more the norm than the exception in American university music programs, at least as electives, and are spreading rapidly throughout secondary schools as well. The coronavirus pandemic has driven a rapid adoption of technology-driven instruction out of necessity. The curriculum standards, subject matter and classroom practices of school music technology courses are still very much in flux. The music education field therefore has a unique opportunity to shape and define music technology as a subject before it becomes fully standardized. I will argue that it is not enough to teach preservice music teachers the skills needed to create electronic musics. Music educators must also engage with aesthetics and cultural contexts. It is particularly important that they critically examine the racialized divide between “art” and “popular” music.
Continue reading “The politics is in the drums: Producing and composing in the music classroom”
