Sustaining Cultures in the Music Classroom

In the previous column, I talked about the importance of creating a space in the classroom for different voices to be formed and heard. I also suggested that students’ “funds of knowledge,” loosely defined as their life experiences and knowledge, could potentially serve as materials for critical discussions on diversity (Gonzalez & Moll, 2002). In this column, I would like to explore some strategies that teachers may consider to strive for more balanced power relationships between different cultural groups in the classroom.

While it is important to foster diverse voices in the classroom, it is equally important to sustain their presence in our classrooms and communities. This stance is critical as students of color have become the majority in U.S. public schools since 2014, with black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander being the major minority groups of color (Pew Research Center, 2014). Scholars like H. Samy Alim and Django Paris (2017) advocate culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) and call for “schooling to be a site for sustaining the cultural ways of being of communities of color” (p. 4). Promoting linguistic, literate, and cultural practices of minoritized groups is not just about acknowledging the presence of diverse cultural groups but also about the “skills, knowledges, ways of being needed for success in the present and future” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p. 5). As globalization facilitates the flow of knowledge and the fall of trade barriers, it also leads to the intensified competition among workers across the globe. The intensified competition across the globe creates new demands, as the Committee for Economic Development (2006) indicates:

To compete successfully in the global marketplace, both U.S.-based multinational corporations as well as small business increasingly need employees with knowledge of foreign languages and cultures to market products to customers around the globe and to work effectively with foreign employees and partners. (pp. 1–2)

It would not be an overstatement to assume that linguistic and cultural dexterity will soon become the keys for success in this increasingly interconnected globe. Cultivating diverse voices is even more urgent given the demographic and cultural changes in the United States. For music teachers in the classroom, we may start by drawing on students’ experiences and cultures, including traditional and contemporary cultural knowledge (Lee & Walsh, 2017).

In addition, Alim and Paris (2017) caution us against “the static relationships between race, ethnicity, language and cultural ways of being” (p. 7) and advocate an understanding of culture as dynamic. Instead of assuming a deterministic clash between the past and present, CSP sees that the past merges with the present and forms a continuum. Where young people locate on this continuum depends on how they live and negotiate their racial/ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identities. In my own work with Asian immigrant youth, I learned that Asian immigrant youth’s music engagements are complex and may go beyond linguistic or racial/ethnic identities. For instance, I learned from some second-generation Chinese American students that their fondness of Korean boy band music is mainly because of the choreography, costumes, and unique combination of group members. To quote one student’s words,

I like their dance. I find them cool. K-pop in general, their outfit and their stage outfit are a lot different from what we have here [in the United States]. They are crazier and more adventurous than what we have . . .

Despite the unfamiliarity of the Korean language, the stage representation, fashion, and music style in the Korean boy band create new connections, through which these Chinese immigrant youth cross the original linguistic, ethnic, and cultural identities; participate in K-pop culture; and emerge in new ways of being musically. Based on the aforementioned claims of CSP, I offer a few pedagogical ideas for teachers to consider in their classrooms.

For sure that these ideas will need to be adjusted to respond to the unique context, community, and student body of your classroom. No matter what pedagogical approaches you design to embrace diversity in the classroom, it is crucial to remember that we must move beyond recognizing diversity in the classroom. Acknowledging the presence of diverse cultures in our classrooms without valuing the language and cultural knowledge of our students seems inherently contradictory and dismissive of our new demographic outlook. We must also be open to sustain cultures and languages in ways that leave space for them to crash, emerge, and transform in ways that are lived and used by young people (Alim & Paris, 2017). After all, sustaining cultural and linguistic diversity is about sustaining the freedom to live lives in ways that do not deny them the access to a better future.