No justice, no peace: an arts-based project with a college choir

ABSTRACT

This study examined the changes in perception toward systemic racism of twenty-six first-year students at a mid-sized university in central New Jersey. All were members of the first-year choir and, with their conductor, participated in a three-week workshop called ‘No Justice, No Peace.’ The goal was to examine social justice issues and systemic racism in society and to produce multimedia works of art to express their changing attitudes. Reacting to prompts by the facilitator, they created original poetry, singing, movement, and visual art projects recorded and posted on YouTube for public viewing. Critical pedagogy, critical pedagogy for music education, and activist pedagogy provided the theoretical frameworks. Coding techniques from the grounded theory literature offered a structure for the data analysis. We invited four students from the choir to participate in open-ended interviews and to share their final projects. We found that the students had positive feelings about the project, which did provide a safe space for dialogue among the students. But little changed in their attitudes and understandings about systemic racism and/or their commitments to social justice by condemning acts of racism and injustice when they see evidence of it in society.

KEYWORDS:

• Activist music pedagogy
• racism
• social justice
• black lives matter

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

André de Quadros

André de Quadros is an ethnomusicologist, music educator, and human rights activist, with professional work in the most diverse settings in more than 40 countries, spanning professional ensembles; projects with prisons, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees, and poverty locations; and victims of torture, sexual violence, and trauma. He is a professor of music at Boston University, where he holds affiliations in African American Studies, African Studies Center, American & New England Studies Program, Center for Antiracist Research, Center for the Study of Asia, Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, Initiative on Cities, Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, Latin American Studies, Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking, Prison Education Program, and The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He is a visiting professor at Victoria University, Australia. In 2019, he was a Distinguished Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge. Recent publications are his 2019 book, Focus: Choral Music in Global Perspective (Routledge), a 2020 co-edited book, My Body was Left on the Street: Music Education and Displacement, (Brill), and a 2021 co-authored book, Poking the WASP Nest: Young People, Applied Theatre, and Education about Race (Brill).

Frank Abrahams

Frank Abrahams is Professor of Music Education Emeritus at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. A native of Philadelphia, Dr. Abrahams holds degrees from Temple University and New England Conservatory. In addition to his work in music education and administration, he enjoys an active career as a pianist, choral conductor, and in musical theater. He is the founder and conductor laureate of the Westminster Conservatory Youth Chorale and is the founder and conductor of the Westminster Conservatory Collegiate Chorale. For 20 years, he was the director of the Summer High School Music Theatre Workshop on the main campus at Rider University. He is the former Associate Dean for the Arts in the College of Continuing Studies.Abrahams has pioneered the development of a critical pedagogy for music education. This teaching model encourages music teachers and ensemble conductors to adapt instruction and rehearsal technique to address individual differences in learning styles and empowers students to be musicians. He has presented research papers and taught classes in the United States, China, Brazil, Taiwan, Hungary, Israel, Italy, and the UK.Abrahams is the curriculum facilitator for the Society for Music Teacher Education. He is editor of the Westminster Conservatory Youth Chorale Jewish Music Series, published by Transcontinental Music Publications (Hal Leonard) and senior editor of Visions of Research in Music Education. He has been a member of the editorial board of the Music Educators Journal. With Paul Head, he is co-author of Case Studies in Music Education (GIA Publications), Teaching Music Through Performance in Middle School Choir (GIA Publications) and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Choral Pedagogy (Oxford University Press). With Ryan John, he is co-author of Planning Instruction in Music (GIA Publications).