Undergradaute Learning from Amateur Musicking: Rethinking the Music Academy's Deep-Gendered Hidden Curriculum through Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

U.S. higher education supports a deep-gendered view of art (Korsmeyer, 2004) perpetuated through the music academy’s cultivation of the individual artist for professional, competitive Western classical musicianship (Campbell, 2017; Kingsbury, 2001). This (White) “masculine” aim (Jorgensen, 2003) reflects “productive processes of society” associated with the public sphere of work, competition, and intellect (Martin, 1994) and devalues home musicianship and music for everyday living as “feminine,” including those culturally diverse “reproductive processes” that teach virtues such as care and generosity, along with culturally diverse musics that support informal, collaborative amateur musicianship. Recognizing gender’s intersectionality (Collins, 2016; Crenshaw, 1989), this study applies the label “deep-CF” to describe the latter musical values, in contrast to the dominant music-curricular values, here labeled “deep-WM.” Premised upon Christopher Small’s theory of “musicking” (1998) and Martin’s theory of “education as encounter” (2011), this study theorizes amateur musicking as deep-CF hidden curriculum (Martin, 1976). Deep-WM miseducation devalues amateur musicking (Dewey, 1934) and neglects those “musical hungers” (Laird, 2008) for knowledge, identity, and value that diverse students seek to satisfy through amateur musicking as they navigate “culture-crossings” (Martin, 2000) between home and world. This hidden curriculum inquiry is a narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000; 2013) that responds to Jorgensen’s call to research spaces where people come together to learn music as a “social, practical, musical, and political endeavor” (2009). The study gathers undergraduates’ stories about nourishment of their epistemological, ontological, and axiological learning in two elective-curricular ensembles (Jazz Choir and Steel Drum Band) and one co-curricular ensemble (Gospel Choir) at the University of Oklahoma in 2017. Undergraduates’ stories testify that these campus amateur musicking communities offer everyday musicalities, value altruism over egotism, develop culturally curious individuals, require independent musicianship, and provide respite from the daily pressures of academic life (Duchan, 2012; Green, 2001; Regelski, 2005; 2007). These ensembles’ deep-CF pedagogies reflect shared African Diaspora cultural values of communal, participatory music-making that incorporates physical movement, bold timbres, and improvisation (Burnim, 2015; Floyd, 1995; Maultsby, 1995). Students learned that music is a socially constructed cultural phenomenon and functional social action that can express individual and collective identities to unify people in a common cause (Rice, 2014, Slobin, 1993). This curriculum inquiry’s thesis is that amateur musicking is a kind of collaborative self-education that responds to students’ musical hungers for knowledge, identity, connection and service. Its pedagogies are nourishing rather than perfectionist, diverse in character, contingent on cultural aesthetics, kind of group, curricular status, etc., sometimes enacting a transformative pedagogy (Greene, 1995) that educates students for democratic civic actions serving the common good (Woodford, 2005; Elliot et al., 2016). The study concludes with a proposal to establish Centers for Amateur Musicking, an administrative innovation in higher education involving partnerships among music, education, and student affairs to value and develop culturally diverse campus amateur musicking communities inside and outside the formal curriculum.