How Musical We Are: John Blacking on Music, Education, and Cultural Understanding

Abstract

The distinguished music scholar John Blacking (1928-1990) made the study of music in culture and the nature of musical thought and behavior his lifelong quest. Although an anthropologist by training and an ethnomusicologist in his academic output, he produced a vast quantity of publications on the nature of musicality and musical development in the Venda children of northern Transvaal, South Africa. There are multiple purposes of this research, starting with a profile of the professional career of John Blacking, from his musical beginnings in England to his South African Odyssey of fieldwork and teaching of music as a social and cultural force, and finally to his teaching and scholarly contributions as an academic powerhouse and articulate advocate for the education of children in and through music in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. An examination follows to gauge the extent of John Blacking's fieldwork and theoretical views relevant to music, education, and culture, with particular attention to Blackings approach to the study of children as a distinctive musical culture and the nature of their musicality, the central role of physical movement and dance as integrated within the musical experience, and the development of world musics in educational programs.