I turned this post into an academic journal article with proper citations–click to read it in Visions of Research in Music Education. Also see the Adam Neely video! White people appropriating black music is America’s main contribution to world culture. Black music itself is a big deal, too, but it is dwarfed by the commercial …
Continue reading “White people with acoustic instruments covering rap songs”
My favorite rap song of the moment is Young Thug’s “High,” which prominently samples Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” https://soundcloud.com/inabundnce/young-thug-rocket-man-remix
For the past two years, I’ve been working on a doctorate in music education at NYU. I’ve finished my coursework, and after I do my candidacy exam this fall, I’ll be ABD (All But Dissertation, as the academics say.) (Update: I passed!) I’ve spent the summer laying the groundwork for the dissertation, and thought you …
I don’t have much to add to what everyone else is saying, except that I really love her music, more than just about anything.
Ever since Jordan Peterson’s fans started getting in my face online, I’ve been exploring his work. He’s a fascinating and disturbing character. On the one hand, he’s a respected academic and clinical psychiatrist (or, he was until recently.) He dispenses valuable self-help advice, especially for depressed and anxious young men. This fan video gets across the …
In my last semester of doctoral coursework at NYU, I took a class called Research On Urban And Minority Education, taught by Alex Freidus. For my final paper, I wrote about the racial politics of music education. I had written versions of this paper for other courses, but Alex supplied some key concepts and vocabulary I …
A gentleman named Myron Magnet, whose muttonchop sideburns have to be seen to be believed, has this to say: What is keeping down American blacks today is not racism, oppression, or lack of opportunity. That’s over. Black Americans are now free. What holds them back is the ideology of “authentic blackness”—a black identity rooted in …
Continue reading “Racism is not over and America’s prisons prove it”
In my paper about whiteness in music education, I tried to make a point about sampling classical music that my professor was (rightly) confused about. So I’m going to use this post to unpack the idea some more. I was arguing that, while we should definitely decanonize the curriculum, that doesn’t mean we need to …
Continue reading “The orchestra hit as a possible future for classical music”
If you’re the kind of person who reads my blog, then by now you’ve probably seen the video for Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” If you haven’t seen it, watch now. Be warned that it’s upsetting. Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, is best known as a comedian, a writer, and an actor. He’s an intelligent …
Update: evidence that racism is an urgent problem. Further update: the online alt-right has some feelings about this post. Music education is in a ”crisis of irrelevancy” (Reimer, 2009, p. 398). Enrollment in school music has declined precipitously for the past few decades. Budget cuts alone can not explain this decline (Kratus, 2007). School music …
