EDITORIAL

Abstract

Editorial Estelle R. Jorgensen In June 2019, panelists Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Joseph Abramo, Randall Allsup, and Cathy Benedict drew attention to “Music Education in Times of Darkness” in their presentation to the International Symposium XII for the Philosophy of Music Education held at Western University, London, Canada. They could not have known the full extent of the disasters that would befall the world in the years following, including a Covid 19 pandemic, the continued spread of authoritarian and anti-democratic regimes, wars, famines, corruption, pervasive misinformation and disinformation, natural calamities, a Russian invasion of Ukraine on the European continent, racial and civic unrest, and an attempted political coup in the United States that heretofore viewed itself as a beacon of equality, democracy, and freedom. Collectively, they examined the importance of resistance against the rising tide of neoliberalism and autocracy and challenged musician educators to find a way through these “dark times” towards more humane approaches to music education. Their intersecting articles now appear in the symposium that leads off this issue. This symposium constitutes a self-contained discussion introduced by the authors. It comprises a quartet of articles dealing with matters of obligation to resist cooption by the political right, the question of whether creativity suffices to ensure criticality, resistance to neoliberal subjectivities among friendship groups in popular music, and subversive versus subsumptive creativity as a form of resistance. Kim Boeskov reflects on the problematic of the ambiguity of musical practice for the social analysis of music educational practice. In thinking of music education’s ambiguous relationship to matters of social justice, Boeskov forwards three principles of musical ambiguity that are of potential value in reflecting on social analyses of music education. These are music’s “bidirectionality,” “multiplicity of social meanings,” and “in-betweenness.” In unpacking these ideas, Boeskov [End Page 109] complicates social interpretations of musical and music educational practices and resists what might otherwise constitute oversimplified social readings of events. Ketil Thorgesen and Thomas von Wachenfeldt reflect on the musical learning and socialization of young Black Metal musicians through German and Nordic interpretations of the notion of Bildung. They show the similarities between the ideals and means of Bildung and the informal learning and socialization of these musicians. Thorgesen and Wachenfeldt suggest that juxtaposing Black Metal music and notions of Bildung provide conceptual tools for critiquing “hegemonic discourses” in music education. Rounding out this issue are two book reviews: Nasim Niknafs’ review of Lauren Richerme’s Complicating, Considering, and Connecting Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2020) and Martin Berger’s review of Juliet Hess’s Music Education for Social Change—Constructing an Activist Music Education (Routledge, 2019). [End Page 110] Estelle R. Jorgensen Yarmouth Port, MA Copyright © 2022 The Trustees of Indiana University