Towards a framework for creativity in popular music degrees

Abstract

[opening paragraph] Let us begin with semantics. The only reason we might use the term ‘popular music degree’ is to differentiate its content from that of a ‘music degree’ – not ‘classical music degree’, but ‘music degree’. That is to say, the default semantic in higher music education is to assume that ‘music’ means ‘classical music’, despite the fact that the Western Art- music/classical canon represents a only a tiny proportion of the music that global society consumes today, and an even smaller proportion of what has been produced historically. Specialized music education in the developed world is dominated by the Western classical music tradition, and in higher education this is historically characterized by the ‘conservatoire’1. In the seventeenth century the primary function of the earliest French and Italian music schools developed out of the church’s need for composers to write music, and singers to perform it. As the demand for secular instrumental music expanded, what we might call the ‘Naples model’ of selective conservatoires spread across Europe2; their primary raison d’etre was to train instrumental and vocal performers to achieve sufficient expertise to play the music of the day (Nettl, 1995; Papageorgi et al., 2010; Parkinson, 2013; Stakelum, 2013). [continued]...