Popular Music Education, Aesthetic Judgment, and Gender Relations in Hungary

Abstract

Abstract The chapter is an inquiry into sociocultural reproduction through popular music education in formalized settings, with a focus on gender relations. Looking at the experience of Hungarian musicians, active in a variety of music genres, of engaging in popular music education, it explores, first, how the relationship between genre conventions and values and the musical education experiences of girls and women can be described. Second, it looks at how a patriarchal order is maintained, reproduced, and reinforced through these conventions in popular music schools. Third, it identifies strategies and practices of care and (female) solidarity, both individual and collective, that respond to or question the patriarchal structure of music worlds. With the help of interview data, I reveal ways in which symbolic violence is used in Hungarian popular music education to keep women in a subordinate position, and highlight the connection between acts of symbolic violence and locally embedded genre conventions. In addition, I argue that even well-meaning acts of care may contribute to the reinforcing of the gender order.