Media Review: Facing the Music: Shaping Music from a Global Perspective

Abstract

Schippers, Huib. Facing the Music: Shaping Music from a Global Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. xx + 220 pp. Index, softcover. ISBN 978-0-1953-7976-1, $24.95. Facing the Music: Shaping Music from a Global Perspective provides historical details and contemporary views of cultural diversity in music education from the perspective of Huib Schippers--an experienced musician, educator, performer, researcher, critic, and policy maker. A wide variety of musical and educational experiences are brought to life through descriptive narratives and case studies woven into the exploration, critique, and analysis of the dynamic nature of teaching and learning music. The author skillfully guides readers in an exploration of the varied connotations of terminology such as tradition, authenticity, and context; methods for approaching cultural diversity in education; and meanings of the relationships between teacher, learner, and learning environment. The culminating result of Schippers's work is his Twelve-Continuum Transmission Framework (TCTF), a model that can be used to describe, predict, and/or prescribe music transmission processes in music classrooms, community settings, higher education institutions, and the fields of ethnomusicology, musicology, and music research. Schippers organizes the book into seven chapters. In chapter 1, he cleverly frames the discussion topics in the remainder of the text through descriptive narratives of twelve consequential experiences that influenced the author's thinking regarding teaching, learning, and creating music. These engaging narratives range from realizations stemming from twenty years of sitar study in India and California to insights gained through shorter observation periods of teaching diverse musical practices. In chapter 2, Schippers provides a conceptual history of world music, describing various meanings in terms of unfamiliar/exotic music of primitive people, and music related to geographical position or time period. He goes on to discuss the perceived use or status of ethnic music as defined through nonmusical qualities of the makers/owners, musical interactions between cultures, and the philosophical concept of music as universal language. He introduces the first continua of his TCTF, a framework intended to clarify approaches to cultural diversity, from monocultural (where a dominant culture serves as the singular frame of reference) to transcultural (where open and deep exchanges occur between cultural groups treated equally). The chapter concludes with descriptions of current thought and research on music within the music education and ethnomusicology fields. In chapter 3, Schippers addresses issues surrounding the myth of authentic traditions in He notes that because most musics are transmitted in contexts far from their original conception, music educators have a responsibility to carefully consider issues of tradition and authenticity as they find ways to create meaningful student learning experiences. He guides the reader to consider five principal approaches to recontextualization and presents three more continua to his model to examine approaches to tradition, authenticity, and context. Individuals highly interested in music transmission may find chapters 4 and 5 valuable. Shippers discusses the technical, social, cognitive, and institutional dimensions of teaching and learning music. …