Concerning justice and music education

Abstract

In this paper, I explore matters concerning justice and music education. I briefly sketch responses to five interrelated questions: Why should music educators be interested in justice? What is meant by the term social justice and how is it distinguished from justice of other kinds? How do liberal views of humanity, particularly the preciousness of people and living things, serve as a basis for justice, broadly construed? What are the means and ends of re-mediating injustice? How can music educators act on behalf of justice? And I make the case for a comparative view of justice broadly construed and offer several practical steps in working against injustice and towards justice in and on behalf of music education.

Notes

1. A notable exception to this approach is evident in Bauer (2003) What is an appropriate approach to piano instruction for students with down syndrome? Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.

2. Greene, Dialectic of Freedom, 17, writes: ‘When people lack attachments, when there is no possibility of coming together in a plurality or a community, when they have not tapped their imaginations, they may think of breaking free, but they will be unlikely to think of breaking through the structures of their world and creating something new.’

3. On the political and social interpretations of folk spirituals, that Portia Maultsby (personal communication, October 1, 2006) notes were called ‘slave songs and spirituals in the literature of the era,’ see Miles Mark Fisher (1953), Negro slave songs in the United States (reprint., New York: Citadel Press, 1969); Lawrence W. Levine (1977), Black culture and Black consciousness: Afro-American folk thought from slavery to freedom (New York, NY, Oxford University Press) and his African American Music as Resistance, in: M. V. Burnim and P. K. Maultsby (Eds) African American music: an introduction(New York, NY, Routledge, 2006), 587–598. Maultsby (personal communication, October 1, 2006) notes that ‘because whites of the period interpreted the songs of slaves as “barbaric,” “wild and senseless in matter,” “meaningless” and “nonsensical” scholars concluded that the missionaries, slaveholders, European visitors, etc. were not aware of the cultural and socio-political meaning folk spirituals held among slaves.’ I am indebted to Portia Maultsby for bringing these references to my attention. For performances of folk spirituals connected with the Underground Railroad, see The long road to freedom: an anthology of Black music, Sound recording, (New York, NY: Buddha Records, Distributed by BMG), 5 sound discs, Disk 3, in particular, ‘Wonderful Councillor,’ ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd,’ ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ ‘There's a Meetin’ Here Tonight,’ and Many Thousan’ Gone.’

4. On ‘outlawing the use of “drums and other loud instruments” because of the communication function of these instruments, which,’ as Portia Maultsby (personal communication, October 1, 2006) notes, were used in ‘planning and executing insurrections in the South,’ see Eileen Southern (1997), The music of Black Americans, 3rd edn. (New York, NY, Norton), 172; Dena J. Polacheck (2003) Epstein, sinful tunes and spirituals: Black folk music to the civil war (Urbana, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press); Dena J. Epstein (2006) Secular folk music, in: M. V. Burnim and P. K. Maultsby (Eds) African American music: an introduction(New York, NY, Routledge), 35–50. Maultsby (personal communication, October 1, 2006) notes that ‘Bodily movement often accompanied music-making when instruments were used. After they were abandoned, hand clapping and foot stamping became more pronounced and [rhythms] more complex, assuming the rhythmic patterns and structures of instruments.’ I am indebted to Portia Maultsby for bringing these references to my attention.

5. Benhabib, Claims of culture, p. 19, lays out three conditions for her ‘universalist deliberative democracy model’: ‘egalitarian reciprocity,’ ‘voluntary self-ascription,’ and ‘freedom of exit and association.’

6. Isaiah Berlin (1990), in: H. Hardy (Ed.) The crooked timber of humanity: chapters in the history of ideas(Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1990), quoting Kant (1794) Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht,, in: Kant's gesammelte schriften (vol. 8) (Berlin, 1912), 23.

7. For an earlier discussion of this hypothesis, see Jorgensen, In search of music education (vol. 3).

8. Although Benhabib hopes for a universal legal system that ensures justice for all, these cultural and societal pluralities are in the midst of being contested. Adherents of particular beliefs and practices hold to them recognizing that their approaches do not have an exclusive hold on truth but need to be seen alongside others. Benhabib's pluralistic approach to ‘institutions, associations, and movements in civil society’ in her deliberative democracy flies in the face of fundamentalist movements based on the assumption of the one true way, see Benhabib, Claims of culture, 138–139, 184, 186.