The Emergence of Children’s Multicultural Sensitivity: An Elementary School Music Culture Project

Abstract

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine student outcomes of a curriculum designed to address the overlapping aims and practices of music education and multicultural education ideals in a fifth-grade music class. The following questions guided the research: What are the student outcomes as a result of a traditional music curriculum when it is designed to focus on selected musical cultures of Africa and the African diaspora? Are children capable of developing cultural understanding through a process of learning experiences that include emphasis on the sociocultural features of the musical cultures? What are the culturally specific musical skills that children develop in classes based on the goals of multicultural and music education? A curriculum was created to explore five selected musical cultures. This was followed by an examination of children’s responses and perspectives and the impact of the learning experiences. The most pertinent themes were: cultural authenticity in performance, social bias, and multicultural sensitivity. This study benefits music educators by offering evidence that children can develop musical and social understandings as a result of curricular design and consequently, how that learning shapes children’s understanding of processes that are historical, cultural, and even democratic.

Keywords

music education multicultural children African diaspora ethnomusicology

For nearly a half century, music educators in the United States have articulated the potential of providing students with rich experiences in the world’s musical expressions. An examination of the nexus of music, education, and culture is warranted to better understand their impact on children’s musical and multicultural understandings. Music educators are considering issues surrounding cultural traditions and, to a much lesser degree, race and class (Abril, 2003; Allsup, 2003; Bradley, 2012; Campbell, 2004; Hess, 2013; Kindall-Smith, 2013; Sands, 2007). However, substantive experiences in music that extend beyond the sonic elements to explore music’s sociocultural meanings and functions are mostly missing. Abril (2003) defined a sociocultural approach to music teaching as “instruction that goes beyond the addition of culturally specific materials to the curriculum, by delving into . . . knowledge construction and prejudice reduction dimensions . . . of multicultural education” (p. 30).

During my years teaching music to elementary school children, I studied and performed music from multiple music cultures and regularly incorporated these sonic traditions and pedagogical practices into my teaching. I was struck by the children’s abilities to pick up culturally specific musical stylings, whether vocal, dance, or instrumental. I also sensed their curiosity about the ways and practices of the people from these cultures, but existing curricular requirements limited my time allotment for such discussion and exploration. To address this intersection of the aims of music education and multicultural education, music educators need more information about children in school music experiences that are intended to create a space for engendering sociocultural and sociohistorical understandings, concomitant sensitivities, and ways of constructing knowledge while learning music through conventional means of listening, performing, and music literacy skill development.

Literature Review

Leading multicultural education scholar, James A. Banks (2004), crafted five dimensions of multicultural education: content integration, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, knowledge construction, and an empowering school culture and social structure. Each dimension interrelates with the others even as each also carries distinct characteristics, and all are relevant to the work of music educators in elementary-, secondary-, and tertiary-level classes.

Banks (2004) used the label knowledge construction to refer to teachers helping “students to understand how knowledge is created and how it is influenced by the racial, ethnic, and social-class positions of individuals and groups” (p. 4). When music educators work with varied repertoire, it is necessary to encourage children’s critical analysis of the nature of cultural knowledge and acknowledge different modes of learning (Veblen & Odom, 2005). It can be complicated and confusing to try to understand knowledge from another’s perspective. This process of taking another’s perspective (Hunter & Elias, 2000) aids children’s understanding of how people in cultures other than their own construct knowledge and interpretations of their worlds, including music. Music educators have the opportunity to engage their students in an examination of the culture that leads to the very music being studied, rehearsed, and performed.

Despite a growth of interest in multicultural education goals in music education, relatively little research has focused on what elementary school children can understand of sociocultural and ethnomusicological constructs embedded in a multiculturalized curriculum that includes the examination of power relationships and the effects of privilege. Examinations of practical challenges encountered by elementary music teachers when working to include diverse music traditions in elementary school music curricula (Edwards, 1998; Klinger, 1996) found the main barriers to meaningful learning experiences as time restraints, lack of training and materials, and uncertainty regarding how to address sociohistorical and sociocultural context relevant to the music. Children’s musical learning can be achieved through multiple means, but in-depth understanding of another culture is most apparent through unique learning experiences that include sociocultural and sociohistorical information and experiences and can improve children’s attitudes toward music from less familiar cultures (Abril, 2003).

Multiculturalism has been criticized for failing to address power and privilege, instead focusing on commonalities and celebrating differences. Bradley (2006) considered decolonizing multiculturalism—decentering the emphasis on Eurocentric and white traditions—in music education by examining the manner in which race and racism are woven into pedagogical practices. She argued that multicultural music education has the ability to perpetuate racialized understandings of world music traditions. This conscious and unconscious privileging of Western European art music in school curricula has created an advocacy for the development of an ethnomusicological perspective for music teachers to attempt avoidance of “neo-colonial attitudes” (Drummond, 2010, p. 117). Scholars working to impact existing paradigms in music curricula (Hess, 2013; Neto, Pinto, & Mullet, 2016) emphasize the importance and effectiveness of challenging traditional repertoire and pedagogical approaches; emphasizing the context of all musics presented, including sociocultural and sociohistorical features; and working toward a transformative music education that works to eliminate the marginalization of particular people and their cultures.

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine student outcomes of a curriculum designed to address the overlapping yet potentially synchronous aims and practices of music education and multicultural education ideals. Pursuant to this purpose, a 13-week daily schedule of music education experiences, known as the Music Culture Project (MCP), was designed and implemented for a music class of fifth-grade children. The MCP was replete with characteristic pedagogical events including listening, singing, movement and dance, and performance on classroom instruments and featuring African (Ghana, West Africa) and African-diasporic (Puerto Rico, Jamaica, African American heritage songs, and African American hip-hop) musical genres.

Specifically, the following questions guided the research: (1) What are the student outcomes as a result of an elementary music curriculum when it is designed to focus on selected musical cultures of Africa and the African diaspora? (2) Are children capable of developing cultural understanding through a process of learning experiences that include emphasis on the sociocultural and sociohistorical features of the musical cultures? and (3) What are the culturally specific musical skills and understandings that fifth-grade children develop in music classes based on the goals of multicultural education and music education?

An examination of these questions was intended to provide insight into the capacity of fifth-grade children to deeply engage with music of less familiar cultures and grow in knowledge of people’s lives in communities from which the music and traditions emerged. In this study, I sought to offer evidence that children can develop musical and social understandings as a result of curricular design and consequently, how that learning shapes children’s understanding of processes that are historical, cultural, and even democratic.

Method and Setting

For this research, I employed an ethnographic method to examine the aims and practices of music education and multicultural education ideals at work during 13 weeks of daily music classes (approximately equal to a year’s worth of school music instruction) in an elementary school music project. The data included in this report are a result of a larger ethnographic study examining multicultural and music education goals (Howard, 2014) among a culture-sharing group of fifth-grade children.

I acted as a participant-observer by designing the curriculum, arranging for and collaborating with the four culture-bearers included in the project, and teaching each of the daily music lessons. In addition to taking fieldnotes after each lesson and culture-bearer workshop, I conducted interviews with the fifth-grade children throughout the study. While every child in the class was interviewed at least one time, focus group children gave interviews on four separate occasions. I organized two focus groups for semi-structured interviewing: (1) three boys: two identified as Asian American and one as White, and (2) three girls: one identified as Latina, one as White, and one as Asian American. In addition to ensuring racial diversity and an equal gender representation, the selection of focus group participants was based on their consistently demonstrated ability to verbally express their thoughts and feelings. I video-recorded all interviews and lessons and transcribed the resulting 45 hours and 23 minutes of footage, resulting in more than 153 pages of single-spaced text.

Interview questions probed the students’ grasp of how and why musical behaviors, beliefs, and practices are constructed as part of a greater cultural knowledge. The interview process with the children allowed for a continuous unfolding of ideas during the course of the study as questions and comments were based on the content of the lessons. The interview structure was based on children’s perspectives, honoring their ability to tell their own stories and demonstrate their own understanding. The questions raised in the interviews ranged from the musical experiences toward topics such as prejudice, stereotyping, and equal rights as related to the music culture at hand.

To aid in the children’s discussions arising from experience and study of the selected musical cultures, I utilized a technique of “provocative declaratives” and interrogatives (Vavrus, 2002). Vavrus (2002) described the provocative statements as: “deliberately formulated to elicit reactions to values and beliefs held by groups of people. Subsequent conversations bring forth contradictory and moral perspectives to help participants clarify unexamined assumptions that drive their actions and the actions of others” (p. 125). I crafted the declaratives (Figure 1) to cover topics related to the featured music within the lessons, including race, stereotyping, historic events, and issues concerning the content of a school curriculum.

Figure 1

Selected Provocative Declaratives and Interrogatives

A daily process of transcription and analysis allowed for customization of instruction in order to follow the direction of both the intended plan and the children’s inquiries and interests as they arose. The process of field-noting created a cumulative account that produced an interpretation of the significant events and discussions (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). I carefully reviewed all fieldnotes, interview texts, and lesson transcriptions for musical and sociocultural themes using a three-phase coding process. The first phase consisted of reading the data with close attention to recurring themes. A second focused phase honed in on the most relevant themes.

Once I identified these themes, the third phase involved developing a framework for a thoroughgoing interpretation of the children’s development of musical and multicultural understanding as a result of the MCP. This reflection and analysis revealed several emerging themes related to the children and their experiences as a result of the MCP. Triangulation was achieved through my observations and daily reflections and the interview and lesson transcriptions. I validated and refined my interpretations through member checking with all participants. I worked to reduce any researcher bias related to my teacher-researcher role through casual conversation and dress, interviewing the children in friendship groups to make them more comfortable, and having discussions while sharing meals together where they were repeatedly encouraged to speak honestly and frankly.

The setting for the study was Pinecrest¹ Elementary School, located in an urban, affluent, and mostly white neighborhood in the northwest region of the United States. The student population was predominantly White (77%), with a mix of other races and ethnicities. Participants consisted of: (1) four guest culture-bearers: a master drummer and dancer from Ghana, a member of a Puerto Rican folklore ensemble, a steel pan virtuoso from Jamaica, and a 40-year veteran of black gospel performance; (2) 25 fifth-grade children including 15 girls and 10 boys, ages 10 to 11; and (3) myself in the role of music teacher and researcher. The majority of the children identified as White (n = 20), one as Latino (Colombian), two as Asian (Taiwanese, Indian), and two as biracial: White/Asian (Indonesian), White/Asian (Chinese).

The Music Culture Project

A partnership between the university and the Pinecrest parent-teacher organization facilitated my music teaching role. With the full support of the school administration, I collaborated with a classroom teacher to arrange for lesson times. I did not expect to have daily access to the children and was surprised when the teacher asked me, “What would the ideal situation be?” When I responded, “Every day?” he readily agreed.

I created and implemented the MCP with the purpose of delivering music instruction that embraced listening, singing, playing, and creating and activities intended to address the rich cultural context of the music. Rather than focusing on one particular music culture, the MCP featured an Africa–African diaspora theme to allow children multiple interfaces with genres linked by their cross-cultural musical similarities. This theme also allowed for the children’s introduction to the migratory flows of people and their cultural expressions from the western edge of the African continent to the Caribbean and the United States.

The 52 daily lessons ranged in length from 30 to 60 minutes depending on the given schedule of the day. Each of the four culture-bearers guest-taught a class workshop session of 90 to 120 minutes to “put a face” on the music studied. I collaborated with the culture-bearers to design the content of their sessions before their visits to ensure that their work was tied to the guiding questions of the study. We collaborated to determine the repertoire, activities, and cultural information that would be the most fitting given the orientation of the study.

The MCP was comprised of experiences from five musical cultures that are interrelated by history and lineage: Ghanaian, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, traditional African American, and African American hip-hop culture. The MCP lessons began with musical experiences from Ghana then turned to the four other distinct cultures. The intention was to feature as many regions as could be appropriately and adequately covered by two to three weeks of daily instruction for each culture, with the quality of musical and cultural experiences at the forefront of the decisions about content and approach.

Results

The children’s words and reactions are the most effective means of addressing the research questions. The relevant themes that emerged from the data were used to create a framework of vignettes that exemplify the learning environment, including exchanges between me and the children. The three most pertinent themes were cultural authenticity in music performance; social bias, including subthemes of cultural appropriation, racism, music as identity, and discrimination; and multicultural sensitivity.

Cultural Authenticity in Music Performance

The first vignette explores what children can sense of a musical performance that reflects cultural authenticity. While music educators may feel pressure to recreate a musical experience as close to the original cultural context as possible, attention also needs to be given to the realities and practicalities of the culture of the children themselves. A school music performance is not necessarily more or less authentic than a version from the original culture. Rather, when seeking authenticity, it is found in how the performance reflects important aspects of the original culture such as language, instruments or close substitutes, culture-bearer input, rhythmic groove and melodic interpretation, and performance practice (Abril, 2003; Edwards, 1998; Klinger, 1996; Schippers, 2010).

The video depicts a middle school orchestra concert playing the Puerto Rican song, “Que Bonita Bandera” (What a Beautiful Flag), that the children have just finished after several lessons. The video is slightly blurry, making it impossible to identify any of the participants. This YouTube video typifies public school concerts in the U.S. that include modified arrangements of selections from outside the mainstream of Western art music, so simplified for novice players that all cultural characteristics are erased. These musicians perform this particular rendition at such a slow tempo that it renders the main melody almost unrecognizable, although the pitches are technically accurate and played expressively.

The children are attentive to the video, quietly commenting to each other, pointing out instruments they recognize and the numbers of players in each section on the stage.

Julieta breaks the ice, “At first, I couldn’t tell it was the song. And then it was like I sang in my head and then I maybe got a little of it.” Lacey wonders why the tempo is so slow. Audra can barely pick out the main melody. We brainstorm what the music teacher in the video might do differently to make the piece sound like a plena.² Melanie suggests increasing the tempo while clapping the clave pattern to demonstrate what she imagines. Shane wonders why there was no percussion included, “At least a maraca, you know? I mean, come on!” Vikas wonders where the flag is since that is the subject of the song and plastered everywhere in all the other videos they watched. Henry suggests that having someone sing the lyrics would help the audience understand what the song is really about.

This scenario depicts the children interweaving their musical skill development alongside a growing awareness of important cultural factors. Prior to this exercise, the children participated in lessons that contained intense listening to multiple recordings of Puerto Rican musicians performing the very plena performed by the orchestra in the video. The children had already demonstrated a level of proficiency by performing the piece during the previous series of lessons. What they expressed during this exercise demonstrated that they were attuned to the feel, groove, and flavor of what constitutes the essence of a plena. Also apparent to the children was the missed opportunity to celebrate the very reason that the song is so popular—the Puerto Rican flag. The children were keying into what Glasser (1995) identified in her exploration of the history and culture of the Puerto Rican migration experience as reflected in her book title, My Music Is My Flag.

Social Bias

One of the significant examples of social bias that the children explored through the MCP was cultural appropriation. The term appropriation applied to the African diaspora can have negative connotations deriving from its use in describing the relationship between black and white cultures (Berríos-Miranda, 2013; Born & Hesmondhalgh, 2000; Feld, 1988; Maultsby, 2005). In the following vignette, the children grappled with a familiar song that has a controversial background.

Cultural appropriation

Before returning to the Ghanaian tune, “Zaminamina,” from the day before, we revisit a comment that Julieta uttered on hearing me sing the song. The lyrics to the song reminded her of “Waka Waka,”³ a widely known song by Colombian pop star Shakira. With Julieta’s comment in mind, I located the YouTube video that featured Shakira in the performance of “Waka Waka,” a melody similar to “Zaminamina,” with the very same lyrics.

On mention of Shakira’s song, Julieta and Sarah immediately begin singing the refrain, “Zaminamina eh eh, Waka waka eh eh,” and then the children view the official video.⁴ “Waka Waka” was the official song for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and so the video contains the expected images of various star athletes performing incredible physical feats. Still, the majority of the focus is given to Shakira’s lip-synching of the vocals.

As the video ends, I share that Shakira did not, in fact, compose the popular song “Waka Waka,” even though she is officially credited as its songwriter. I guide the children to the map so that they might see the location of Cameroon: in West Africa, the source of the tune that Shakira borrowed, or appropriated, as it were. They note the close proximity of Cameroon to Ghana and discuss the recognizable word “Zaminamina” used in both countries.

The children comment on the idea of “borrowing” someone else’s music and not giving credit or compensation, as was allegedly the case with Shakira (Jill, 2010) and the Cameroonian musicians whose music she had appropriated (Mackey, 2010). Gregory crinkles his nose at this idea, and Sarah shakes her head in disapproval at the lack of respect shown to the Cameroonian musicians whose song it truly was.

I describe the controversy among some black South Africans over the choice of Shakira, a non-African, as the singer for the official song at an event in a predominantly black country. Rebecca, ever insightful and wise far beyond her 11 years, wonders aloud, “Well, maybe that’s ’cause there was this one white person with all these black people in the back for a song that was from black people.” Sarah wonders, “Couldn’t they find one person from Africa to sing it?”

What might at first appear to children to be blatant discriminatory practices can in fact involve a complex “socio-musical process” involving “competent imitation” (Manuel, 2006, p. 27) and a “global musical-cultural flow” (Born & Hesmondhalgh, 2000, p. 25). The children were puzzling out questions of ownership, the reality of a wandering tune, a “borrowed” song, and a song that had been appropriated and incorrectly attributed. Shakira’s song became fertile ground for provocative discussion of just such “traffic in musical grooves” (Feld, 1988, p. 36) between black and white musicians. These contemplations relate to previous research on children’s developmental understanding of ethnicity and race, in which Quintana (1998) identified children of this age showing “awareness of subtle aspects associated with ethnicity not directly tied to literal features of ethnicity (e.g., socioeconomic differences), . . . and awareness of ethnic discrimination and prejudice” (p. 29).

Calling out racism

Children studying the issues surrounding race may even have experienced what Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, and Manstead (1998) identified as “group” guilt, or identifying with people that they did not or could not know personally. Following is a vignette that tracks three girls as they tackle the difficult subject of slavery as related to the musical and cultural content of the lessons. I purposely employed a provocative declarative (Vavrus, 2002) to prompt the discussion.

Rebecca, Faith, and Julieta are gathered together with me in an intensive discussion of commonly held perceptions of Africans. They identify musical and textual differences between current pop music from the U.S. that they enjoy listening to and the traditional music that they had studied and performed in the Ghanaian unit. I mention to the girls that I “heard” people say that everyone in Africa is the same. All three of the girls react immediately and passionately, even the normally reserved Rebecca, talking all at once to express their strong disagreement with the statement.

Faith unknowingly switches the topic from people and music in Ghana to African Americans, jumping from Martin Luther King in the 1960s to the unfair treatment of slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries. She mentions that “their” music sounds as it did because of what “we” did to “them.” When I ask Faith to explain what she means by “their” and “them,” it only then becomes clear that she is referring to slavery in the U.S. In spite of her slippery foothold on the “who” and “when” in question, she continues emphatically:

Because whites, we [gesturing to herself], did not treat them [blacks] good. We thought brown was yuk! But that’s not true! It does not matter about your skin color, and actually, African Americans were right! [Hits her palms on her lap for emphasis]

Of importance in this vignette is the girls’—Faith’s in particular—obvious demonstration of sensitivity and even empathy as a response to the thoughts and emotions that were provoked through the lyrics and stories included in the performative and cultural experiences in the African American heritage songs. Faith’s strong reaction and inclusion of herself in the perpetrator category was an example of guilt by association (Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, & Manstead, 1998). Doosje et al. (1998) found that this feeling of guilt comes with being white, as a consequence of group behavior regardless of agreement or participation. The three girls recognized that discrimination based on skin color exemplifies the power that allows some groups to be disadvantaged at the expense of others and clearly expressed their disapproval (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Kawakami, 2010).

Music as identity

Through the study and performance of the previously mentioned tune “Que Bonita Bandera” (What a Beautiful Flag), the children further demonstrated cultural sensitivity as they learned the history behind Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth of the United States. Since the U.S. government had forbidden the display of the Puerto Rican flag for more than 50 years, from 1898 to 1952 (Martínez, 1997), it had become a symbol of defiance and the desire for recognition (Glasser, 1995). The song developed into an emblem of cultural pride for Puerto Ricans living on the island and also for those living on the mainland. Following is a vignette that demonstrates the children’s recognition of the importance of knowing a song’s place within a culture:

Vikas makes it clear that he is bothered by what he views as unfair rules surrounding the ban against a display of the Puerto Rican flag in the U.S. Shane offers, “Well, I would be pretty mad that we’re not kind of part of anything. It wouldn’t make me feel good that I’m not part of the big organism.” It becomes apparent that he is identifying with people he does not know, feeling an empathetic response to an unjust and illogical legal reality. Vikas says, “If we’re part of a big community, and if we’re not allowed to vote and another part of the community is allowed to vote because we’re a colony, then I would be mad.” Shane sums up his opinion, “Yeah. If we didn’t know how important the song was to people in Puerto Rico, we would probably just sing it and I probably wouldn’t care so much. But since I know now, it makes me feel different about it. Like, it is more important.”

The children’s interactions in this vignette are supported by Hunter and Elias (2000) findings that children in fifth grade increase their ability to engage in taking another’s perspective, thereby heightening the quality of their social inferences.

Calling out discrimination

Nieto (2005) identified the social constructs that define inequality in public education, including race, ethnicity, social class, language, gender, and sexual orientation. While sexual orientation was never part of the MCP design, it repeatedly emerged in regard to a particular song that was very popular. In the following vignette, the children make connections between different forms of discrimination as addressed through music. Their actions connect to previous findings of Kim, Green, and Klein (2006) that children incorporate awareness of their own and other’s cultural backgrounds into the development of social competence.

I ask the children if they think that music helps to work through difficult feelings. This brings to mind for Faith a hip-hop song that was considered an anthem for marriage equality. The rap song is filled with lyrics that challenge discriminatory behavior toward the gay community. Faith confesses that the song makes her cry, “Like when he [the rapper] said that some people would rather die than be [gay] . . . ” Her voice trails off as Julieta and I start to sing the refrain of the song including the lyrics, “I can’t change even if I try.” Julieta, eyes wide, exclaims about the song, “It’s just like slavery now! It’s not as harsh, but it’s like what turned into sort of slavery now.”

The discussion clearly moves Julieta. She describes her feelings with her hands curled into little fists:

I’m shaking. I’m like, so . . . I feel like I’m proud of myself to say this stuff and to be able to learn this stuff. I’m literally shaking wanting to cry and burst out into tears!

Developing Multicultural Sensitivity

At the outset of the MCP, the children were a long way from understanding gradations of difference and knowing that the stereotypes they believed were due to their inexperience and ignorance of the realities of a place and people. Various displays of bias through inexperience became teaching moments for the shaping of multicultural sensitivity.

Multicultural sensitivity (MS) can be defined as a large-scale outcome of educational encounters within a school curriculum. Other terms with similar definitions include intercultural competence, cross-cultural adaptation, and intercultural sensitivity. In their examination of an arts program with 8- to 12-year-old children, Dziedziewicz, Gajda, and Karwowski (2014) similarly defined MS as the “desire or motivation to understand, appreciate, and accept the differences between diverse cultures” (p. 33). MS stretches across a spectrum of manifestations, from children’s fundamental awareness of commonalities and distinctive traits across cultures, to increased curiosity and motivation to learn, to a deepening respect for people through knowledge of their music, to a genuine empathy for people of various sociocultural circumstances. As part of a process for fostering multicultural diversity competence, Garcia (1995) proposed three criteria for multicultural sensitivity: (1) the ability to demonstrate respect for and understanding of people of diverse cultural backgrounds, (2) the ability to communicate effectively with people of diverse cultural backgrounds, and (3) the ability to work collaboratively with people of diverse cultural backgrounds.

Children’s development of multicultural sensitivity was widely evident as outcomes of the MCP, whose purpose was to afford them both musical and multicultural experiences. The children were granted a time and space in which they were not only recipients of musical sound or imitators of musical expressions modeled for them but also thoughtful participants in making sense of the music. They were guided to know something of the performative potential of the music, reflection of cultural values within the music, and function of music as a window into other cultural histories and circumstances. The children engaged in “perspective taking” (Hunter & Elias, 2000), which refers to the ability to identify signs of feelings in others and infer others’ view of a situation. The design of the MCP steered the children to consider different phases of perspective taking as described by Hunter and Elias (2000): What is the other seeing, feeling, thinking, intending, and what is the other like? An example of deeper sociocultural understanding leading to empathetic development is found in a conversation between myself and three of the boys:

During a lunchtime interview, we discuss if particular songs make them feel or think differently. Two of the boys agree right away while Lucian quietly chews his food, thinking about his response. Vikas offers, “Like the song we sang that talked about Rosa Parks.⁵ If I didn’t know about her, I wouldn’t feel any emotion for it, I would just sing it as a happy song. But like, to know the story is better because you can feel what they felt. I think it’s more fun to sing it like that.” The boys chatter a bit longer on this topic when Lucian, typically quiet, adds his thoughts about understanding the stories and people connected to the music they learn, “If you didn’t know the story, it would be like if you’re telling a dog that you’re going on a walk in a high-pitched voice. He doesn’t know what you’re saying. He just knows the voice it is. So, you don’t really know what it means.”

Quintana (1998) found that children in this key age group, transitioning out of middle childhood into the preteen years, are capable of understanding culturally sensitive issues since they typically “can hold more complex and integrated views of racial groups, become aware of individual differences within ethnic groups, and recognize similarities across . . . groups” (p. 36). Shiner (1998) described children at ages 10 to 11 years as growing their self-understanding and with the capacity to handle social conflicts. By the age of 10 years, most children are able to identify broadly held prejudicial beliefs (Quintana & Vera, 1999), even if they have not yet mastered the vocabulary to describe such social constructs. McKown and Weinstein (2003) explored this expanding sensitivity of children in middle childhood, confirming that “children move from virtually no awareness of others’ stereotypes, to being able to infer an individual’s stereotype, to awareness of broadly held stereotypes” (p. 511).

The children’s written responses at the end of the project demonstrated a wide range of cultural awareness similar to Quintana’s (1998) findings on children in middle childhood. Some of the children were more comfortable discussing basic cultural facts, some reflected on what they recognized as their own biases, while others delved into the sociocultural matter connected to the music and demonstrated a growing sense of respect and curiosity for difference. Some children commented on cultural matters, bringing into focus their interests concerning geography or the meanings of foreign language texts, while others expressed curiosities and concerns for the musicians and dancers and people living within local communities from which the music originated.

In some cases, the children expressed a deep sense of empathy, as found in Allison’s written reflection,

I used to think that slaves got treated really bad, and now I know that is true, but they never gave up. They [were] strong about it. I really admire them and I know it’s embarrassing [how they were treated], but I would never do anything like that to them.

The children were immersed in experiences that pushed them to question their beliefs about different musical genres, cultures, and social constructs, including race and racism, stereotypes and discrimination, cultural identity, diversity, and cultural appropriation.

Exploring the Benefits of the Music Culture Project

Children are capable of grasping elements of cultural context as it relates to musical repertoire (Abril, 2003; Campbell, 2004; Edwards, 1998). The MCP pressed further in efforts to understand children’s developing cultural awareness and sensitivity as emerging in class discussion as well as in their performances, conversations, behaviors, and written expressions. An integral part of the MCP was the design and delivery of musical cultures of Africa and the diaspora in such a manner that could illuminate “how the present relates to the past, how oppression and privilege affect music” (Hess, 2013, p. 334) and to situate the music in not only a sonic context but a sociohistorical and sociocultural context. The MCP was geared toward the development of cultural awareness through school music experiences that are thoughtfully crafted and inclusive of musical, sociocultural, and pedagogical content. This approach is supported by Hunter and Elias’s (2000) findings that fifth graders not involved in interracial experiences are at a serious social disadvantage.

These children were challenged to probe the significance of particular musical forms and elemental features, song texts, instruments, dance movements, sensitivities related to race and racism, class, slavery, and other discriminatory practices over time. The components of social bias—prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination—were brought up repeatedly through the song lyrics, stories behind the music, video recordings of performers, and experiences with culture-bearers. The children interacted with sensitive and often difficult social constructs, such as racism, and found a way to give voice to their thoughts about the justice (or lack thereof) they were discovering in connection to the musical cultures.

The children were guided to know the performative potential of the music, reflection of cultural values within the music, and function of music as a window into cultural histories and circumstances. Through the content and approach of the MCP, children enthusiastically received opportunities to connect to a broader world of music and people beyond their more limited experiences in their school and neighborhood communities.

Replication of the MCP in whole or in part is conceivable, especially if a music educator is earnest in efforts to continue musical training in one or more musical cultures beyond earlier education in Western traditions. Music educators intent on creating teaching and learning experiences that contribute to the development of multicultural sensitivity must be willing to take the time with their students to fully understand music as sound, behavior, and values. They will need to know the context of the music they will teach and will find themselves enlightened too as they learn something of the stories of musicians who make the music.

While the MCP allowed for approximately a year’s worth of music class in 13 weeks, there was only enough time to cover one diasporic culture. It could be of benefit to explore other diasporic communities and their musical traditions. The origins of the African diaspora are centuries old, but the Roma and the Sephardic diasporas also have long histories. In addition, newer diasporic communities are emerging with regularity, including but not limited to Somali, Hmong, and Syrian populations. Perhaps these learning experiences can contribute to what Ahmadi, Shahmohamadi, and Araghi (2011) termed cultural intelligence, which is defined as an individual’s capability to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity.

Creating learning environments that allow children to engage with music as culture requires music educators who are equipped to design and implement curricular experiences that effectively navigate common power struggles that privilege particular music cultures over others. Kindall-Smith (2013) explored music teacher education efforts to create music methods courses that address social biases including systemic racism. She observed her undergraduate students’ navigation through matters of social justice in three music education courses and found positive attitudinal changes toward diversity. Relatedly, in analyses of culturally responsive research in music education (Bond, 2017; Locke & Prentice, 2016), the power of music teacher education that features diverse music traditions, the importance of including meaningful interaction with the music’s context, and a critical approach toward music education are all reaffirmed.

Limitations

It is reasonable to wonder about the lasting impact of learning experiences such as those had in the MCP. The fifth-grade children in this study responded to the specific music cultures included in the MCP. However, the inclusion of only five interrelated music cultures may have affected their interpretations and reactions. Follow-up interviews with the children might illuminate whether the positive effects were long-term. There is little research on the lasting impact of such interventions. There is the work of Neto et al. (2016), who sought to discover whether music curricula could positively impact racial prejudice through instruction featuring music from a marginalized culture. Results showed a reduction in prejudice among students who received instruction featuring music of the marginalized population and no reduction among students who received traditional music lessons. Even more telling are the long-term results showing that prejudice was reduced, and still lowered two years later. This speaks to the power of instruction designed with the intent of increasing sensitivity, awareness, and understanding of other cultures.

Another limitation was the predominantly white student group and broader community in which this research took place. Additional research could implement the MCP in a variety of demographic settings to compare results or create new MCPs based on the particular community culture. Further study with children of different ages could also add to the relevance of the current findings.

It could also be argued that my particular skills and knowledge may be reflected in the student outcomes. There was a two-year history between myself and the children, and a positive rapport was already in place prior to commencing the study. Further research could replicate the MCP in the same school setting with a different researcher or a new group of unknown students. It is also difficult to gauge whether every student experienced a similarly positive experience, as this was not a focus of this investigation.

Conclusion

The results of music education initiatives such as the MCP may well have the power to transform pedagogical practices. When children can identify sociocultural and sociohistorical meanings of the music and begin to sort through their own biases toward people and cultures in ways that turn the corner from suspicion or negativity to curiosity and respect, then music is that much more powerful in a school curriculum and the greater global community. A music-and-culture curriculum holds great promise for the holistic development of elementary school children when the foundations of knowledge, skills, and values are shaped.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Karen Howard is assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas. Her research interests are related to anti-racist and equity pedagogy, and global music and dance traditions.

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