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ABSTRACT
Inspired by local arts community engagement initiatives and community music interventions internationally, Wits University (in Johannesburg, South Africa) developed a model of service learning that links the intentions, methodologies and purposes of these domains to promote student learning and benefit communities. This paper examines the quality and content of Community Music students’ learning in a pilot project located in Limpopo province in South Africa. Data from student focus groups and academic essays were analysed in terms of the discernible levels of students’ ‘academic, personal and civic learning’ [Ash, S. L., and P. H. Clayton. 2009. “Generating, Deepening, and Documenting Learning: The Power of Critical Reflection in Applied Learning.” Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education 1: 25–48]. This critical reflection framework enabled students to articulate and deepen their learning, demonstrating their development in creative musical leadership and sense of social responsiveness and responsibility. Findings prompt further interrogation of the purposes and impact of community music service learning as a model of community engagement in South African higher education, to advance the key role of the arts in South Africa’s social transformation.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tshulu Trust staff, homestay guides and translators and musicians Obed Ramashiya, Moses Maliase, Reuben Tshitangano and Samson Netshiphephe, for your substantial contributions to this project and for partnering with Wits University Community Music. Thanks also to the school principals, educators and children at HaMakuya primary schools for allowing us to work with your learners and for welcoming Wits students and staff into your community. Thanks to Wits University Drama for Life facilitators Peter Molefe and Sibongile Bhebhe, who guided my students' and my own thinking about this project. Community Music students' participation and insightful reflections contributed substantially to this paper. All direct quotes from student essays and focus groups are cited with their permission. Finally, I would also like to acknowledge Lara Allen who introduced me to HaMakuya and founded Tshulu Trust (Tshulu Trust is a South African non-profit organisation – registration number IT 12/08).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Susan Harrop-Allin has worked in South African music education and community development for 25 years. She holds a piano Performer’s Licentiate (ABRSM) and a Ph.D. in music education and ethnomusicology at Wits University, where she lectures in the Schools of Arts and Education. Susan is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Community Music, and a director of the Johannesburg Youth Orchestra Company and Rena Le Lona Creative Arts Centre for Children, in Soweto. Her research examines children’s musical games and their implications for pedagogy, employing multimodality and multiliteracies as theoretical frames. Publications comprise book chapters in several international books and articles in South African and international journals. Her recent research focuses on higher education community engagement and student service learning through music and the arts.
Notes
1. In laying out the higher education transformation agenda in the mid-1990s, post South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, the new South African government called on universities to ‘promote and develop social responsibility and awareness amongst students of the role of higher education in social and economic development through community service programmes’ (South African Ministry of Education Citation1997, 6–10).
2. For example, in the South African Council for Higher Education’s Service learning in the disciplines - lessons from the field (Citation2008), all of the 14 case studies are located in the social sciences.
3. In South Africa, it is estimated that 10 million people live in ‘poverty nodes’ of extreme poverty and lack of services. Poverty nodes are characterised by ‘underdevelopment, contributing little to the Gross Domestic Product, absorbing the largest percentage of the country’s population, incorporating the poorest of the rural and urban poor, structurally disconnected from both the First World and the global economy, and incapable of self-generated growth’ (Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Programme of Action Citation2005).
4. Tshulu Trust is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation located in HaMakuya in northern Limpopo province in South Africa, which aims to alleviate poverty and enhance local economic development by assisting the community to utilise their natural and cultural resources sustainably (Allen Citation2011).
5. Preliminary findings of children’s learning and the project’s impact on HaMakuya primary schools are reported in the proceedings of ISME’s Community Music Activity Commission, 2014 (Harrop-Allin Citation2014).
6. HaMakuya, in the far north-eastern part of South Africa, is part of the former ‘homeland’ of Venda, under apartheid. It is home to the ethnic, linguistic group called the VhaVenda, whose music was made famous by John Blacking in Venda Children’s Songs (Citation1967) and How Musical is Man? (Citation1973). The main forms of Venda music-dance are the women’s dance tshigombela, social or ‘beer songs’ called malende, the men’s reed-pipe ensemble tshikona, girls’ and boys’ courtship dance tshifase, and the girls’ initiation dance called the domba. Most are still practised in contemporary Venda society, albeit for different purposes and intentions, although more traditional conceptions and uses of music do exist (Kruger Citation1999, Citation2001, Citation2007a, Citation2007b).
7. According to Ash and Clayton, ‘there is a wide variety of ways civic learning may be defined, such as in terms of participatory democracy, social justice, or an ethic of care. Specific learning goals in this category might relate to such issues as change agency, power, privilege, leadership, economic and political systems, governmental processes, community organizing, and public problem-solving’ (Citation2004, 30).
8. In Southern Africa, music and the arts are often used in advocacy and education, for example, in HIV/AIDS education (see, e.g. McNeill and James Citation2008; McNeill Citation2011).
9. I have coined the term ‘creating musical worlds’ to describe an approach that employs drama-in-education methods with music, and which also mirrors the storytelling and narrative musical structures of Venda music (Kruger Citation2007b). Participants are enrolled into an imaginary world, where sound pictures, instrumental sound design, body percussion, poems, movement and song is used in co-creating a story with participants, around a central theme. The teaching approach is similar to ‘narrative theatre’ (Sliep Citation2004), but uses music as an integral way of telling a story (rather than only a soundtrack) within the imaginary framework created through process drama.
10. Butana Molefe is an applied drama facilitator in the Wits School of Arts’ Drama for Life Division, which partnered with UJ (2011–2012) and the Wits Music Division since 2013, to deliver applied drama workshops in HaMakuya schools, in collaboration with community music students and lecturers.
11. HaMakuya, in rural northern Limpopo Province, is considered a national poverty node by the South African government. Unemployment is estimated at 90%, the matric failure rate is about 80% and there is little economic development or access to basic services. Most people rely on social grants to survive (Berman and Allen Citation2012; Harrop-Allin Citation2014).
12. Based on my experience visiting many schools in this area over the past nine years, it is clear that, although well-intentioned, teaching remains authoritarian, based on rote-learning and a superficial understanding of the curriculum (see Harrop-Allin and Kros Citation2014). The reasons for this are complex and deep-rooted, but research demonstrates that poor teaching and learning is partly because of teachers’ own abysmal education and training in Bantu Education, which was a key mechanism of the South African apartheid state (as detailed in Cynthia Kros’ Bantu Education and the Seeds of Separate Development Citation2010).
13. The workshops broadly employ Multiliteracies’ Pedagogy, which orientates teaching and learning toward Situated Practice; Overt Instruction; Critical Framing and Transformed Practice (New London Group Citation1996; Cope and Kalantzis Citation2000).
14. Having worked with local musicians for eight years during the ethnomusicology fieldtrips, the project now employs the same musicians to collaborate with university students in school workshops as they understand the intentions of the project and can include Venda music and compose new songs appropriate for the workshop themes. The HaMakuya musicians are Samson Netshiphephe, Obed Ramashiya and Moses Maliase, who also teaches traditional music in the same schools where the Wits service learning project operates (from 2013 onwards).
15. All direct quotes in the findings on student learning are taken from students’ academic essays, with consent from each student to both quote them and use their first names.
16. Academic learning here relates to the Wits Community Music course content, which comprises: an examination of community music scholarship and critical perspectives in the literature; an introduction to group facilitation methods and practical training in teaching music; seminars on community music in contexts of health, music therapy and disability; student performances in healthcare settings as well as student placements in community music organisations.
17. My argument is that the emphasis on processes of co-creation, communication and musical collaboration mitigate the challenge Boyte expresses. These include recognising and including children’s own music and harnessing HaMakuya musicians’ expertise in the workshops; bringing schools together with teachers, community members and careworkers in joint performances, and working from a pro-indigenous musical knowledge position. Student responses also confirm their own learning and growth rather than their position of expert; many students felt the opposite: they were learning from Venda musicians, and from the children much more than learners learnt from them.
18. Sibongile Bhebhe is an applied drama facilitator from the Wits School of Arts’ Drama for Life Division and has worked on both the UJ and Wits Community Music service learning projects in HaMakuya.