What's with the K? Exploring the implications of Christopher Small's ‘musicking’ for general music education

Abstract

In this article, we discuss Christoper Small's concept of musicking in order to explicate his understanding of music as a practice and the implications of such an understanding for today's general music education. Our main argument is that, armed with Small's concept of musicking, we can deal with music in its full social-cultural significance. From this standpoint, music is not only just a collection of specifically musical practices but also a community of practice that affirms our existing social habits and helps us to transcend these habits through exploring and celebrating new relationships. Rather than taking music merely as something that people do, Small suggests that it is one of the most important ways of living as a human being, comparable to verbal communication. We also argue that based on this view, music should be seen as a central part of general education, not to be compromised by taking it out of school.

Keywords:

• Christopher Small
• musicking
• general music education
• aims

1. Introduction

To music is to take part in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composition), or by dancing. (Small 1998, 9)

There is a dilemma that every music teacher faces: whether to focus on music as an object of instruction or on the student as a subject of learning. In this article, we argue that if one agrees with Christopher Small that ‘music is not primarily a thing or a collection of things, but an activity in which we engage’ (Small 1987, 50), some aspects of this dilemma may be resolved.

During the last decades, many music educators have argued that music should be understood as a human activity (see e.g. Alperson 1991; Elliott 1995; Regelski 1996). In a similar vein, Small (1987) coined the word ‘musicking’ to specify the active and participatory – and, hence, communal – nature of musical action. Small posited that musicking is ‘a sure pointer to the nature and the preoccupations of the society’ (Small 1977, 4). Musicking creates a web of relationships between, and among, musical sounds and people situated in the physical and cultural space of musicking (Small 1998, 23, 184). Observing these relationships makes it possible to gain an understanding of the society that gives birth to musicking. Thus, Small's concept bridges the gap between music and society, resolving the tension that teachers might experience between what they teach and who they teach.

For Small, musicking is also a means ‘by which we explore our inner and outer environments and learn to live in them’ (Small 1977, 3–4). Musicking is thus not only merely a way to rehearse life but also creates ‘the public image of our most inwardly desired relationships’: not just ‘showing them to us as they might be but actually bringing them into existence for the duration of the performance’ (Small 1987, 70, italics original). In musicking, we are exploring, affirming and celebrating who we are in relation to the fellow humans and to the world (Small 1987, 56, 1999, 9, 2011, xiii). This means that musicking can be seen as educative process in the sense that those who ‘music’ learn new things of themselves and of the contexts in which they ‘music.’ As such, it is important to think through the implications of this concept for music education and to relate Small's ideas into current discussions in music education research and philosophy.

In what follows, we first explore Small's notion of ‘musicking’ in relation to Elliott's (1995) praxial concept of ‘musicing’, mapping the terrain between taking music as a specific praxis and as a multilevel system of social relationships. We move on to affirming Small's more extensive conception, applying Lucy Green's (2008) distinction between music's ‘inter-sonic’ and ‘delineated’ meanings as a critical reference. We conclude with a suggestion of what Small's account of musicking implies for general music education through which we can celebrate musicking in its full social meaningfulness and promote agency in community life.

2. Exploring the K

Musicking is an important component of our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with other people and the other creatures with which we share our planet. (Small 1998, 13)

Small originally coined the term ‘musicking’ in his book Music of the Common Tongue (1987) to emphasise that music is a human activity rather than a product or a collection of musical works (Walser 1996, xi). However, it was only in the early 1990s that scholars in music education began to discuss the implications of the idea of music as a verb rather than as a noun. At this time, the general idea of art as a practice was not entirely new: it had already been suggested by analytical aestheticians seeking for a new understanding of the role of art in society (Danto 1964; Dickie 1980).

In the philosophy of music, the 1987 book What Is Music?, edited by Philip Alperson, paved the way for new understandings of music as a practice (Alperson 1987). In the book, Sparshott (1987, 43) discussed the possibility of taking music as ‘something we can say people do, we have some idea what is it to do that thing rather than something else, and can apply this distinction to the behavior of people who do not themselves have any such concept in their language’. From this standpoint, as Alperson pointed out, music can be called a techne, ‘a body of skills organized to a practical end’ (Alperson 1987, 11). This idea was extended to music education in Alperson's article published in a special issue of Journal of Aesthetic Education in 1991. Instead of taking music as techne, Alperson argued that aside from the aesthetic rationalisations of the meaning and worth of music and technical rationalisations of its skill-based activity, a music education philosophy can be built on an understanding of music as praxis, ‘rooted in the context of human practices, which, […] are forms of human activity that are defined (in part) precisely in terms of the specific skills, knowledge, and standards of evaluation appropriate to the practice’ (Alperson 1991, 233–234).

David Elliott followed this lead, coining the term ‘musicing’ to mark music as praxis, or as ‘something that people do’ (Elliott 1995, 39). Elliott argued specifically against the aesthetic philosophy of music education as represented by Bennett Reimer (1970, 1989, cf. 2003, see also, Alperson 1991). Reimer had argued that the pedagogical meaning of music is primarily related to its expressive value – potential which is actualised in the aesthetic experience of the student who encounters a musical work (Reimer 1970, 1989, cf. 2003). Elliott saw Reimer as thus reducing the pedagogical import of music only to the meaning of a musical work, instead of considering the full-scale meanings of music to human life (Elliott 1995; cf. Reimer 2003). Elliott also shared with Alperson (and Small) a critical view of the expressivist understanding that music's aesthetic meaning should be the basis of music education and argued against enclosing the pedagogical significance of music within musical works or within a special mode of experience that musical form affords. In line with Alperson, Elliott deliberately focused on elaborating what he took to be a prevalent concept of music as an aesthetic object, arguing that ‘musical works involve many kinds of meanings’, and thereby reminding his readers that musical understanding of these works has many forms, all of which have to be taken seriously in order to explain the significance of music in human life and education (Elliott 1995, 125; see also, Bowman 2000). However, Elliott preserved Reimer's basic insight that a philosophy of music education should begin from the analysis of what music is, rather than from a more extensive construction of what it means as a social phenomenon (Elliott 1995, 9; see also, Cohen 2010).

Like Sparshott and Alperson, Elliott (1995, 39–45) framed his philosophy in Aristotelian terms, arguing for a conception of music as a praxis that consists of a collection of sub-praxes, each with their own culture-specific norms, standards and values. For Elliott, musical praxis marks ‘action committed to achieving goals in relation to standards, traditions, images, and purposes’ of a given social-cultural life form, or a community of musicing (Elliott 1995; cf. Small 1998, see also, Alperson 1991). Music amounts to what ‘is done’ in musicing, and brings forth musical products, or ‘listenables’ for the listeners to ‘listen-for’ attentively (Elliott 1995, 39–45). Thus, Elliott's understanding of the meaning and value of musicing seems to necessitate the idea of music as a noun with a reference to a set of cultural artefacts to be appreciated in terms relevant to the musical praxis. It is from these praxis-related terms of making and enjoying musical ‘listenables’ that music education should find its focus (see also, Cohen 2010, 133).

There seems to be a fundamental difference between Elliott's concept of musicing and Small's concept of musicking. For Small, musicking takes place as a social-cultural ‘event’. What makes a musical event musical is not a musical work, or a ‘listenable’, but the specific way in which participants relate to musical sounds, to each other and to the physical context in which they interact (Small 1998, 183–184). It is these relationships, rather than the ‘listenable’, which is the object of musical activity. There also seems to be a more substantial semantic meaning implied: the added ‘k’ in musicking appears to indicate a discursive shift from considering musical action as an action that pertains to musical ‘listenables’ to considering it as a multi-levelled set of dynamic relationships situated in sonic, social and physical spaces. Thus, Elliott's praxial account of musicing seems to be more focused on producing and enjoying specifically musical goals, whereas Small's musicking seems to relate more to the openness of possibilities emerging from the music event.

Even if Small also seems to accept that musicking embraces specifically musical values, and that these values are realised within a cultural setting, he does not introduce musicking as a normative point of departure that determines what action is proper for a given setting of musicking. Instead, Small argues that the term musicking can be taken as a conceptual tool that remains useful ‘as long as we keep our value judgments clear of it’ (Small 1998, 9). The value of the term is tied to the consequences of the actual ‘event’ of musicking, and these consequences cannot be determined beforehand, as they change according to the actual conditions of the ‘event’ (Small 1998). Hence, Small does not submit to the idea of music as praxis, guided by practice- and situation-specific phronesis (cf. Elliott 1995; Regelski 1998). This, however, makes Small's concept challenging when applied to music education: if we cannot anticipate the ‘good outcomes’ of musicking beforehand, how can we guide the musical development of our students?

Hence, we seem to end up with a set of pragmatic questions. What would be the actual pedagogical benefits of subscribing to Small's musicking instead of the more praxis-specific concept of musicing? Could it be that when we use the word ‘music’ as a noun, even when referring to a specific social action of making and ‘listening to’ music (as in Elliott 1995, 40–41), we put ourselves in the danger of separating the social practices connected to music from ‘specifically musical’ actions? It seems that if music is taken as a social activity, rather than a set of musical goal-specific actions, it does not have to amount to a musical ‘listenable’, nor to a uniform praxis that determines its own norms and standards according to its own values. Instead, a more extensive concept of what it means ‘to music’ emerges, and with it, perhaps, a possibility of more inclusive educational critique. However, this possibility requires further examination of Small's ideas of music as social practice.

3. Affirming the K

Art is … essentially a process, by which we explore our inner and outer environments and learn to live with them. (Small 1977, 3–4)

According to Small (1987, 52, 55, 185, 1998, 8, 207), ‘everyone … is born capable of musicking’, ‘with gift of music’ as universal as the ‘gift of speech.’ Thus, everybody can ‘have a musical voice’ in a manner similar to the near universal human ability to communicate through language. In this sense, music is a ‘common tongue’ that unifies people. In the same way, one needs to learn to use language in order to understand it, and one also has to learn how to music in order to understand musicking. Hence, there is always some kind of education going on when musicking takes place: musical communities constantly orient new members into how to participate in musicking. Informal music education is thus a primary way to learn the ‘common tongue’ of music, and formal or institutional music education builds on this practical foundation.

Small further argues that ‘since musicking always takes place in a social context, its meaning has a social as well as an individual dimension’ (Small 1987, 50). He thus assumes that musicking is a universal social activity which reflects local cultural norms and presuppositions and establishes a complex web of relationships between musical sounds, people and physical space (Small 1999, 184). Here Small seems to anticipate current discourse, for sociopsychological and social-cultural approaches have become commonplace in research of music and music education, arguing for the fundamentally social nature of musical activity (see e.g. DeNora 2000; Wright 2010; Karlsen and Westerlund 2010).

In line with current social-cultural approaches, Green (2010, 25) maintains that music is mediated as a cultural artefact within a social and historical context: ‘[t]hese contexts are not merely extra-musical appendages, but they also, to varying degrees, form a part of the music's meaning during the listening experience’ (Green 2010, 25). Green (2010, 27) divides the components of musical experience into ‘inter-sonic’ and ‘delineated’ meanings, arguing that, even if ontologically connected, these two sets of meanings should be taken as logically distinct: the meanings that exist between sounds and their influences on each other and the meanings that humans, with their own histories and understandings contribute through cultural discourse, constitute intertwined aspects of the meaning of the music. Small (1999, 13) would probably agree, but he also highlights that musically significant relationships exist between the participants in the ‘music event.’ Moreover, Small (1999, 16) stretches the concept of musical meaning further than Green by arguing that physical space shapes the social space of musicking. Thus, he seems to view social and spatial relationships as inherent and ‘intra-musical’ in the deepest sense, as they also constitute music as a sonic-social phenomenon.

Whereas for Green, the social context affects musical experience, for Small, musicking constitutes our experience of social relationships in a musical event. The relationships involved in a musical event share common features that together enhance the experience of the event. What we experience is not just music as a culturally determined system of references, but a more extended field of meanings. When we are truly moved by music, it is because all of these sets of relationships work together to create a momentary ‘ideal’ of a more inclusive system of relationships (Small 1987, 70). This ‘ideal’ is no less than a projection of ideal society: an alternative way of life as we would like to live it. It is also a projection of ourselves, our identities, as we think we are, or would like to be, or would like to be thought of as being (Small 2011, xi). Small seems to take this generative power of musicking as universal in the sense that people everywhere can generate ideals of how their life could be through musical action.

The experience of the ideal social order can be very powerful. Hence, it can pose the danger that certain values are ascribed to certain kinds of music, leading into ranking of different ‘musics’ according to their judged cultural value, and thus constituting hierarchies between styles and genres. However, Small is adamant that musicking as a concept should initially be kept value free. The idea of musicking is, for Small, simply a tool ‘for understanding the nature of the music act and its function in human life’ – a way to show that music is always embedded in our societal ways (Small 1999, 12). Nevertheless, even if the concept of ‘musicking’ may be value free in itself, the societies in which music is practiced certainly are not. In whichever way musicking takes place in the social setting, it becomes part of the cultural narrative of the setting, simultaneously reflecting and constructing the underlying values of the society and the more extensive cultures in which it is practiced. Put in Green's (2010) terms, there is no way music can be thought of as value-free apart from its delineations.

To underline this point, Small (1999) analyses the event of a symphony concert, as an example demonstrating how the narrative of the ‘music event’ can reflect and support the dominant values of middle-class Western society (see also Small 1987). If we accept Small's extensive concept of musicking, it is not only just the sounds that carry these kinds of dominant values but also the social and physical space within which musicking takes place. The whole social-cultural system in which musicking takes place is involved in determining the significance and the value of music in a society. Here we begin to see how Small's extensive concept of musicking implies normative issues that transcend what goes on when music is performed. This opens the possibility of introducing a social critique to music education and reintroduces the dilemma framed at the beginning of the article, namely, whether a teacher should pay more attention to the sonic or social aspects of music.

Small (1977, 76, 97, 1998, 50) openly advocates a revolt against the ‘scientific world view’ that, according to him, makes a distinction between the world of facts and the world of values, making us strangers in the latter. The scientific world view is reflected in the social order of musicking that dominates Western art music culture, represented by a symphony concert with its clearly defined musical roles. From Small's standpoint, a symphony concert can be seen as a ‘ceremony which celebrates, among other values, the isolation of the individual in western society’ (Small 1987, 302). In turn, when musicking is not based on the ritual of performing precomposed musical works to a connoisseur audience, separated from the performers by the edge of the podium, but becomes more improvisational and open in nature, it can create a situation ‘in which all individuals can be relied on, without force of rules, to contribute freely to the common good’ (Small 1987, 180).

While these kinds of distinctions between the natures of musical events seem simplistic and thus problematic, they do demonstrate Small's vision of an ideal musicking society in which cooperation, respect, equality and freedom of creativity are valued. His normative idea behind conceiving music as musicking seems to be exactly this: when we expand our inherited notion of music-as-object to music-as-form-of-community-life that can find its own inherent value in its multiple system of relationships, we introduce the possibility for cultural critique that not only pays attention to how music relates to society but also makes it possible to change society through musical involvement. This is certainly an idea worth considering when discussing the value of music in general education, to which we will turn next.

4. Celebrating the K

4.1. Musicking in general education

It can be argued that education is always concerned with the future, aiming at expansion and deepening of the meaning and the quality of subsequent life. According to John Dewey ([1916] 1966), this takes place when educators and the educated share experiences and negotiate their meanings in order to support growth. Growth is here simply understood as an ongoing process of widening the shared realm of meaning through cultural participation. In this sense, growth necessitates communication that feeds the social imagination of the educated, as they learn to conceive future social uses for the knowledge and skills they learn. In this regard, musicking can also be seen as conducive to growth: to the degree that a music event reflects ideal social relationships, it also heralds enhanced ways of conjoint life (Small 2011, xi).

Musicking can also be seen as a political act, a medium of promoting agency: it can empower growth by building a sense of communality, making people more aware of the possibilities of shared life. However, musicking can also entrench dominant conditions, even guide people to destructive ends (see e.g. Turino 2008; Alanne 2010). Thus, all musicking may not be educative: put in praxial terms, all musical praxes may not contribute to growth-conducive values of the society, even if they would fulfil their own norms, standards and values. It is also possible to ‘mis-educate’ through music (Bowman 2002, 64; Regelski 2009, 16; see also Reimer 1970, 93–94).

Small seems to be rather optimistic in his belief that musicking can be taken as a way to herald a better society. He seems to be content to accept that the positive values of musicking are simply what musicking amounts to in ideal social conditions. Again, the difference between Small and Elliott seems to be that Elliott concentrates on the listenable results of musical praxes, positing that as long as these results are judged to be good, the conditions of musical praxis are fulfilled and positive life-values attained (Elliott 1995; cf. Regelski 1998). In turn, Small takes a ‘music event’ to be constitutive of social value in itself, as long as it does not hinder our visions of a better society but offers possibilities for exploration, affirmation and celebration of community values. Both seem to take music(k)ing as a fundamentally normative, socialising and educating medium and expect that it can realise its educational values through musical participation (see also Regelski 1998, 20–21, 31). This seems to be Green's (2008) stance, as well, even if for her, it is primarily music's inter-sonic meanings that make it possible for the students to immerse themselves in musical practices, thereby providing the basis on which musical learning can proceed towards a critical musicianship which is alert to music's delineations. In this way, musical action that deals primarily with musical sounds and their relationships can be conducive to further learning about music's cultural connotations and, therefore, education in music.

However, when musicking takes place in general education, the question of how to base one's value critique becomes focal, meaning that we need more than assurance that music, in itself, can promote social values conducive to growth. We need some kind of a standard for deciding what kinds of musical experiences are educational and what not. Even if musicking can be taken to introduce its own socialising values, realised through communal participation in musical transactions, a general music educator should have some kind of independent value basis on which to judge the goals, methods and standards of her work. As part of general education, music education seems to be normatively accountable for more than the values that are realised in musicking. In the following, we will elaborate on some of the aspects of pedagogical normativity in relation to Small's ideas of music-as-activity, arguing for the need of a more clearly defined ground on which to evaluate the educational goals, approach and assessment of such an activity.

4.2. Educational goals

The emphasis on the social aspect of musicking that we have highlighted throughout this paper can be used to challenge the goals of music education as general education. Often music education aims at learning style-specific techniques needed to perform and to appreciate musical works in a given idiom: hence, its emphasis is on production and reception of a musical-aesthetic ‘listenable’ rather than on learning and growth (Green 2003). Taking seriously the full social understanding of Small's concept of musicking necessitates bringing the students to the forefront of the educational activity, suggesting a pedagogical perspective that does not subsume to goals predefined by musical praxes. It is the student, as part of the community of musicking, who is in the focal role in musical signification: the students’ relationships to sound, to other students and to the shared physical environment determine what is to be learned from the ‘music event.’ In this sense, the goals of music education are not only student-specific but also determined by the social context of musicking.

However, Small's notion of musicking also implies that the music teacher should be considered as part of this social context: music teachers’ goals can be as relevant for the musicking community as any other participant's goals. Hence, the view that an unbridgeable gap exists between a teacher and a classroom can be challenged by considering the complex web of relationships formed in every ‘music event’, including those taking place in musical classrooms. Small (1977, 217, 2010, 289; see also 1998, 224–225) argues that the music teacher can work as a mentor and a ‘pacemaker’ in musicking. This necessitates that the music teacher accepts her part in the musical community that works towards shared goals, managing its direction and pace – not shouting from the sidelines, but running ahead, anticipating shared meanings that emerge from collective musicking. This removes the necessity for the teacher to hold all the strings in her hand in terms of defining curricular goals and makes her an integral part of the project of building of a musical community that is able to set its own goals for mutually accepted tasks. Building such communities can be taken as a general value goal of music education.

Considering the full educational implications of musicking also suggests a different view on individual expression in relation to educational goals. Even if there is a place in all communities for an expression of individuality, this does not have to amount to individualistic expression: rather, it could mean expressing the insights gained through musical learning to the benefit of the whole community. Small (1987, 94, 291) argues that it is possible to be involved with a community of musicking that does not highlight individual performance as communication between an artist and an audience but as an expression of the shared values of the entire community. This kind of expression, that Small finds to be modelled by African and Afrodiasporic musical communities, is realised in active participation in a ‘music event’, when the participants invest themselves actively in the process of exploring, affirming and celebrating their relationships to sonic events, each other and the physical space. Forming such a participatory community requires the educator to focus on musicking in itself as a communicative activity rather than mere a transmission of musical information. Music educators should work as dynamos that help the community members to establish new relationships through which to explore, affirm and celebrate their relations, and this activity can be taken as the ultimate goal of musicking.

As indicated above, the concept of musicking implies a goal to develop musical agency. Barnes (2000, 25) defines agency as possession of internal powers and capacities to intervene in the course of events. Musical agency, then, can be taken as a capacity to use one's musical skills for self-regulatory strategies as well as for social coordination and interaction (Karlsen and Westerlund 2010, 232). A similar kind of idea can be found in Elliott (1995), where the goal of music education is to develop the student's musicianship in order to support her self-growth in a musical community of practice. However, whereas Elliott posits that the task of music education is ‘to develop dynamic communities of musical interest’ (Elliott 1995, 306, italics added), Small sees musical agency as the development of dynamic communities through musical action. Again, in Elliott, musical agency seems to focus on a capacity to act along the values, norms and standards of a musical praxis to obtain specifically musical goals, whereas Small appears to extend musicking to circumscribe the capacity to participate in one's community.

For Small (1987, 1999), the central precondition of musicking is free participation. The freedom brings with it a possibility to consider alternative avenues of musicking, providing individual ‘music(k)ers’ with room for making new expressive decisions and for determining new musical goals within the musicking community. Looking for alternative ways of musicking can even be taken as central goal of music education, if one accepts that it is the task of educational practice to expand the semiotic reach of the learners by providing them with new opportunities to make connections between what they have already learned and what seems to hold potential for future learning (Dewey [1916] 1966). This is also in line with Barnes (2000), who argues that the possibility to act differently is central for developing individual agency. This view does not have to devalue individual contributions deemed by the community as ‘non-musical’ as non-educative. Rather, we can see them as integral parts of musical participation that, hopefully, lead to richer musical experiences by expanding the realm of what is accepted to be ‘musical’ in a given setting. It is highly relevant that in Small's thought, the concept of ‘music event’ is extended from a concert performance to a much larger cluster of activities, including situations where everyone in the community takes part in musicking, even without former experience or formal education in music. This extension helps music educators to recognise the importance of promoting musical agency not only among those who excel in playing musical instruments but also for everyone interested in participating in the social event of musicking. Thus, Small's concept allows for an inclusive and democratic idea of what musicking can amount to in educational terms, and thus, of formulating educational goals for music as a community endeavour.

4.3. Approach

The central educational goal, described above, of creating a community that empowers the agency of each possible member – the teacher included – has interesting implications for discussion of choosing the proper approach of music education. By ‘approach’ we mean here more than a distinct method: a general way to come to grips with the educational situation, involving both the educator and the educated, the subject matter, the techniques of teaching and the actual learning process.

Small's concept of musicking seems to imply that the pedagogical focus can be on communality. Instead of taking music education as a set of practices that helps individual students to develop into better musicians, judged by comparing their abilities to those of the other students, it suggests that artistry can be conceived in terms of participation and sharing ideas. While doing ‘the best we can with what we have’, ‘our only responsibility is to the pleasure we and our fellow-musickers derive from our musicking’ (Small 2011, xvi, xvii). This emphasis on communality calls for pedagogical approaches that open new possibilities for all interested to join musicking communities. Music education, from this standpoint, should be inclusive rather than exclusive in its approach, promoting agency in whatever form it is found in the social-cultural situations of musicking.

In turn, taking music education as an area for building community suggests that we develop an awareness of the larger communities in which music education takes place. Such an awareness can aid in removing the ‘box mentality’ of formal music education: education through musicking can contribute to a sense of community both within the educational institution and within the more extensive community of music(k)ers. Considering every venue a potential place for musical participation also leads to recognition that musicking can take place in unexpected locations. ‘Busking around’ the institution can thus become an expression of the incipient community that, even if it would be supported by formal music education, could draw in those left ‘outside’ the community. Making musicking inclusive to everybody allows for musical communication to be established as an expression of the values of more extensive communities, providing the missing link between formal music education and informal practices of learning. This, in turn, suggests that we take seriously the pedagogical implications of community music education and informal learning – from this perspective, pedagogical approaches should serve the more general needs of forming a musical society, aware of the transformative potential of ‘music events’ that take place in all realms of culture (see also, Green 2008; Partti and Karlsen 2010).

4.4. Assessment

With the openness of pedagogical approach comes the challenge of assessing learning outcomes. Indeed, Small sees assessment as one of the main problems of music education in the schools. Even if music teachers would be interested in bringing music education towards the ideal of the musicking community, the policy of individual assessment in schools requires teachers to run contradictory practices (Small 2010, 287–288). Of course, not all music education settings require formal assessment; however, for those that do, Small's notion of musicking seems to suggest a drastic re-evaluation of assessment policies and procedures.

It can be argued that if music educators begin to focus on building community rather than on the individual talent, evaluation becomes more important than assessment (Väkevä 2011). This would mean that instead of focusing on clearly defined goals, assessed with some measure of achievement, evaluation would be first and foremost interested in musical experience, valued in qualitative terms. If we accept that education is, at root, ‘a process of living and not preparation for future living’ (Dewey [1897] 1996), it makes sense to pay attention to the richness of music-related meanings emerging from the active relationships of sonic events, music(k)ers and physical space. Informal learning might offer models for this kind of evaluation: for instance, Lebler (2008) argues that when considering assessment in popular music beyond the traditional categories of assessment for and of learning, we could focus on evaluation as learning. This would empower ‘students in the act of assessment as active participants, and this involvement is intended to produce learning in itself’ (Lebler 2008, 194). Lebler's notion seems to fit with the Smallian ethos of building a community through musicking, since it brings forth the possibility that a community can take part in the evaluation of its own actions. ¹ Focusing on community evaluation in this way might make community formation a central topic of evaluation, over and above the assessment of attainment of specifically musical goals (see e.g. Rikandi 2010). Lebler (2008) further argues that changing the focus of the goals and methods of teaching without changing the focus of assessment will likely not have a lasting effect on what participants experience as important. If this is true, we need to think over the grounds of assessment in terms of evaluation as a communal procedure, embedded in the very practice of musicking.

5. Conclusions

In this article, we have discussed Small's concept of musicking in order to explore the pedagogical implications of considering music as a system of multi-level relationships between sounds, people and the physical field of musical action. For Small, musicking is an ‘event’ in which people explore, affirm and celebrate these systems of relationships for affirming their identity. While not all musicking is conducive to growth – in the sense that it would build ethically sound communities that help us to expand our shared realms of meaning – Small argues that in specific cases of musicking, such relationships may be realised that can be taken as ideals for a society that endorses participation, agency and positive freedom. From a general educational standpoint, it then becomes critical to distinguish such musical–social situations from those that hinder growth by fixing the musical habits of the participants along institutionalised lines that separate rather than unite people in their common quest for meaning.

In his work, Small specifically criticises Western art music-related concert practices in which participation of the audience is supposedly inert. According to Small, these kinds of practices are not humanising, as they prevent the communication between the participants of the ‘music event.’ However, in a more extensive sense, it should make no difference what musical–cultural genre is in question: there can be practices of musicking in any culture, and it is the task of general music educators to help people to participate in them. While Small builds his argument against de-humanising musical practices on the empirical differences he finds between (certain) African or Afrodiasporic and European musical systems of agency, his more general argument seems to be that whatever music we are involved with, there is always a possibility to ‘do’ it in a way that promotes ethical relationships between people immersed in community life.

In this conviction, Small appears to avoid the difficulties involved with both taking music as an aesthetic object and as restricting it to specifically a musical system of agency, or musical praxes. However, when taken as part of general music education, the concept of musicking has to face the dilemma that we mentioned at the beginning of this article: it has to help us to solve the tension between music as a study subject and a student as the subject of learning. From the general educational standpoint, it does not suffice to say that the educational value of music can be found in the aesthetic meaning of a musical work or ‘listenable.’ Nor does it suffice to say that by learning to participate in musical praxis, the students learn to realise the ethical values inherent in that practice, and thus to promote their own well-being as part of a specific musical community. One can always ask: What are the ethical values of that specific community? What is the general educational significance of musicking in terms of general communal well-being? How does musicking make us better people in general, not just in terms of the musical praxis at hand?

It is significant that in Small's view, social relationships are not extra-musical but connected to the relationships created between people, sounds and places. If music education is organised around musicking, it has to deal with the abilities, skills and responsibilities that help one to be a member of a musicking community. In other words, the ‘common tongue’ of musicking has to be learned, but we should also acknowledge that this takes place most naturally by participating in ‘music events’ wherever they are found. Nevertheless, we should have some criteria on which to evaluate such events. From the standpoint of general education, the question becomes: Can these criteria be found outside the culture-specific situations of musicking? Pace Elliott, Small clearly takes the communal goal of musicking to have precedence over any sound-specific and place-specific norms, standards and values. He also expands the educational significance of music outside the dual logic of music's ‘inter-sonic’ and ‘delineated’ meanings to the multiplicity of relationships that define musicking as a social-cultural action of experiencing sound in a physical space. Whatever the ‘context’ and ‘content’ of musicking, as long as a community of free-willing participants practices musicking while committed to the project of exploring, affirming and celebrating their relationships through musical transactions, it can enhance musical agency. If agency is taken as a capacity to use one's musical skills for self-regulatory strategies as well as for social coordination and interaction in musicking (Karlsen and Westerlund 2010, 232), it becomes focal in music education to help people to find themselves musicking. In our argument, this can be conducive to growth and, thus, contribute to the well-being of the society.

Notes on contributors

Olli-Taavetti Kankkunen is a general music teacher and choir conductor in Tampere University Teacher Training School, Finland. He has published book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as presented papers in international conferences in the fields of music education and soundscape studies. His main research interests are philosophy of music education, philosophy of ethics and Acoustic Communication Theory. His doctoral thesis in progress at Sibelius Academy's Doctoral Academy deals with listening education in basic education.

Albi Odendaal recently graduated with a DMus degree from the Sibelius Academy. He has worked as a high school teacher and accompanist in South Africa. His doctoral research focused on the practicing and learning of music using perceptual learning style as a lens.

Hanna M. Nikkanen is a teacher and researcher in the field of music education. Currently, Nikkanen works as a music teacher in a secondary school and is completing her doctoral studies at Sibelius Academy. Leaning on Deweyan pragmatism and applying Small's idea of musical performances as rituals, her doctoral thesis deals with the role of musical performances in constructing the educational culture of the school, elaborating also the concept of narrative learning environment. Earlier Nikkanen has worked as a piano teacher, as a music teacher in a primary school, and as lecturer of music education at the University of Helsinki.

Lauri Vakeva is a professor in music education at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. A co-author of three books, he has also published several book chapters and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as presented papers in international conferences in the fields of music education, musicology, music history, and popular music studies. His main research interests cover Afrodiasporic music, popular music pedagogy, history of popular music, pragmatist aesthetics, philosophy of music education, informal learning and digital music culture. Aside from academic career, his work assignments have covered working as a musician, music journalist, general music teacher, and instrument teacher..

Notes

1. This is also a central goal in the Finnish national curriculum for general music in comprehensive schools. One of the objectives is that the students will learn to act responsibly as members of music-making and listening groups. The final-assessment criteria include, for example, that ‘the pupils will participate in group singing and know how to sing’ with others. They should also know ‘how to listen to music produced by others, so as to be able to participate in instrumental practice and make music together with others.’ Even earlier, at the end of the fourth grade, assessment deals directly with musicking: a criterion is that the pupils ‘know how to act as members of a music-making group, taking the group's other members into account’ (Finnish National Board of Education 2004, 231–232, italics added).