An Investigation of Strategies Developed by Music Learners in a Cross-Cultural Setting

Abstract

Through discussion of the strategies invented and used by learners in a cross-cultural music context, this article investigates the proposition that learners respond to culturally influenced pedagogic settings in proactive and individual ways. Listening, cognitive approaches to music and learning, and invented notations are analysed as three ways that non-Balinese members of a Balinese gamelan address the acquisition of musical skills and the memorisation of a complex repertoire that is foreign to them as both musical object and cultural artefact. Through these three strategic areas, this article suggests that in current, globalised music education, where cultural disjuncture between learners and musical styles is increasingly common, music learners learn by adapting strategies from their previous music backgrounds and integrating these with newly constructed strategies that respond to specific learning hurdles. Culture as a vector of music learning is considered.