ArticlePDF Available

What's with the K? Exploring the implications of Christopher Small's ‘musicking’ for general music education

Authors:
Odendaal
Odendaal
Odendaal
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Olli-Taavetti Kankkunen at Sibelius Academy
Olli-Taavetti Kankkunen
Hanna M. Nikkanen at Vantaan kaupunki
Hanna M. Nikkanen
  • Vantaan kaupunki
Lauri Väkevä at University of Helsinki
Lauri Väkevä
Download full-text PDFDownload full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract

In this article, we discuss Christoper Small's concept of musicking in order to explicate his understanding of music as a practice and the implications of such an understanding for today's general music education. Our main argument is that, armed with Small's concept of musicking, we can deal with music in its full social-cultural significance. From this standpoint, music is not only just a collection of specifically musical practices but also a community of practice that affirms our existing social habits and helps us to transcend these habits through exploring and celebrating new relationships. Rather than taking music merely as something that people do, Small suggests that it is one of the most important ways of living as a human being, comparable to verbal communication. We also argue that based on this view, music should be seen as a central part of general education, not to be compromised by taking it out of school.
Whats with the K lin
k.docx
Content uploaded by Hanna M. Nikkanen
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Hanna M. Nikkanen on Mar 25, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Whats with the K abstrac
t.docx
Content uploaded by Hanna M. Nikkanen
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Hanna M. Nikkanen on Mar 19, 2018
Content may be subject to copyright.
Hei!
You will get free access to the article
What’s with the K?
Exploring the implications of Christopher Small’s ‘musicking’ for general
music education
through this link:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14613808.2013.859661
Best regards
Hanna M. Nikkanen
... Neither women are formally trained in music or their genre, yet their raps, beats and artistry have resonated with fans across the globe (Odendaal, Kankkunen, Nikkanen & Vakeva, 2014;Waldron, 2011). Technological advancements had made it pretty common to have artists emerge from producing on their laptops, like Juice WRLD, or like these two women, writing and recording in random rooms at home (NBC Chicago, 2019;Shikhan, 2017;Daw, 2020). ...
... However, the industry does not seem keen to their success as revealed in their songs, Industry Games (2020) by Chika and, Practice (2020) by Princess Nokia (Frasqueri, 2020, track 7;Momberger, Lido, Thomas, & CHIKA, 2020, track 2). The author argues that is because of debates of their musical authenticity (Odendaal, Kankkunen, Nikkanen & Vakeva, 2014). ...
... Moreover, categorial fit limits the full authentic expression of an artist, especially their intersections. The hegemonic power of the industry hinders music's progression by questioning authenticity, whether due to technological influence or lacking formal music training, when the only requirement for great music is musicking (Odendaal, Kankkunen, Nikkanen & Vakeva, 2014;Waldron, 2011). As our identities require more intersectional expression, thereby musicking, the music industry is hindering not just itself, but its future success with consumers by serving as an exclusionary hegemonic power. ...
Fan Review [with notes] of the Music Industry's Hegemony
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2020
A Critical Discourse of the Music Industry’s Hegemonic Actions of Exclusionary Categorization and Awards This paper includes a critical empirical study with the data being in-depth interviews which allow the everyday fan or daily music user to express their beliefs. Case studies of favourite artists were used to analyze the production, dissemination and reception of their works, and how the socioeconomic system of the music industry has affected these works, therefore, uncovering the social reality created by the industry which is misaligned with the consumer’s reality.
View
... This paper is drawn from doctoral research which used critically reflexive autoethnography (CRA) to analyse my shifting position within the field of general classroom music (Odendaal et al., 2014;Larsson and Georgii-Hemming, 2019). I question the types of pedagogy I employed over the course of my career to deepen my understanding of general classroom music and to enhance the teacher education I offer beginning general classroom teachers who wish to enter the field. ...
... A KS3 pupil's interest in music was enhanced when they engaged in some form of music practice. Through shared musicking (Small, 1998;Odendaal et al., 2014), I could incentivise KS3 pupils, even those pupils who had little experience of making music. Illeris (2009, p.8-11) identifies the interactive processes that are required to incentivise pupils to connect with content or knowledge. ...
Rethinking pedagogic identities for Key Stage 3 general classroom music teacher education: an autoethnographic study
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2023
My role as a university-based, general classroom music teacher educator in England has become unclear, exacerbated by policies that have undermined the field of classroom music in schools and the role of universities in teacher education. Using self-critical inquiry enacted as critically reflexive autoethnography, I interrogated my professional practice to rethink my pedagogic identity. Theoretical perspectives, drawn from Bernstein and Bourdieu, were used to chart my shifting identity. This paper introduces a theorised model to illustrate a range of pedagogic identities for Key Stage 3 (KS3) general classroom music teacher education.
View
... Small (1998) himself identified connections with the environment, "musicking is an important part of understanding ourselves and our relationships with other people and with other creatures with which we share our planet" (13). Similarly, Odendaal et al (2014) emphasise the active, participatory, social-cultural, and situated nature of Small's (1998) musicking arguing that it can be viewed as a way of living. ...
Caring for our planet: a world apart or same difference? A global music collaboration
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2024
Purpose The impact and collective threat of climate change is of key concern to all. Music and arts education can play a role by responding to the ongoing climate crisis through the creation of artworks as activism. This paper discusses a collaborative online international music project and its potential contribution to sustainable development education. Design/methodology/approach 10,427 miles and 11 hours apart, music education students undertook the project, working in groups with a mix of students from Aberdeen, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia in each group. Each student collected video footage that captured their experience of climate concerns related to their environment. Students combined and edited the footage then collaboratively composed music to accompany the footage. This research was conceived as a collaborative self-study project undertaken by the authors as music teacher educators. Findings The results show a range of musical and extra musical outcomes and challenges. Evidence suggests that a collaborative online international music learning experience may contribute to sustainable development education and regenerative practice more broadly. Students began to develop their practice as educators for school and community contexts embedding learning for sustainability and climate consciousness, thus enabling them to develop as active global citizens. Originality/value This paper argues for greater attention to the affordances of digital collaborative music technology tools to facilitate creative projects as well as the need to reimagine musical experience, drawing together strands of music, sustainability education, technology and global citizenship. This paper also argues for the importance of embedding the UN Sustainable Development Goals in teaching and learning in Higher Education.
View
... Therefore, similar to balcony singing in Italy ( Van der Sandt & Coppi, 2021), we decided to play in the street outside the building while they sang with us from their front porch. These musicking sessions, which we consider social-cultural events (Odendaal et al., 2014), were an opportunity for the older adult residents to move outside their rooms and building to the porch and into the fresh air and sing. Moreover, since we had to work from home, on the whole, it was also the only time in the week to make music and interact face-to-face with colleagues. ...
A duoethnography about musicking at an older adult care home during COVID-19
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2023
Loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a global problem. Older adults, who are considered high-risk individuals, have been particularly impacted and have experienced increased isolation and loneliness. Musicians also experienced loneliness during the lockdown period. Therefore, the purpose of this duoethnography is to explore the culturally situated meanings two research participants ascribe to musicking at an older adult care home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research participants are two community musicians who have facilitated weekly musicking sessions at an older adult care home for the past five years. During the hard lockdown, we serenaded the older adults in the street in front of the care home. Our data collection was stimulated by photos, session plans, song choices, diary reflections, and individual accounts. To explore our dialogical understanding, we used storytelling and Pinar’s (1975) four step method of currere, namely regressive, progressive, synthesis and analysis. The findings indicated that musicking during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed us to share and express compassion and care towards the older adult residents and each other. We, therefore, argue that musicking, with the necessary hygienic precautions, should be encouraged as a form of reciprocal care during a global pandemic.
View
... I refer to both musicing (Elliott and Silverman 2014) and musicking (Small 1998). These terms are not used interchangeably but are used according to my interpretation of the process of music as either praxis or a complex matrix of social relationships (Odendaal et al. 2014). ...
(Un)caring: A framework for understanding care in community music(k)ing1
Article
  • Nov 2022
In this article, I provide a conceptual analysis of care in community music. Despite growing interest in the belief that an ethic of care should inform our community music practices, truly considering what caring means may be challenging. Caring through musicking is further complicated by the inherent power imbalances in interventionist forms of community music. I refer to this conundrum using the term (un)caring. The topographic decision to write (un)caring using a bracketed qualifier is meant to reflect the dialogic nature between caring and uncaring. This concept analysis proposes that (un)caring is informed by negotiation of the following critical attributes: (1) (un)attentiveness, (2) (un)responsiveness and (3) (in)competence. This concept analysis contributes to the continual development of community music theory by providing an evaluative and theoretical lens through which community music practitioners could engage in critical discussions concerning the ethics of community music practice and research.
View
... Unless stated otherwise, references to 'music' and expressions such as 'musical engagement' should be considered equivalent to music-making. For the sake of clarity, I avoid the terms 'musicking' (Small, 1998), 'musicing' (Elliott & Silverman, 2015), and 'music(k)ing' (Froehlich, 2018), since each refer to specific conditions that are not necessarily fulfilled in all situations of music-making (Froehlich & Smith, 2017;Odendaal et al., 2014). from their personal preferences (Herbert & Dibben, 2018;Isbell & Stanley, 2011;Mantie & Tucker, 2008;Pitts & Robinson, 2016). ...
Characterizing musical vulnerability: Toward a typology of receptivity and susceptibility in the secondary music classroom
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2023
  • Res Stud Music Educ
Although teachers and researchers frequently acknowledge that music education can benefit pupils’ academic achievement, health and wellbeing, and social development, classroom music-making can also have long-lasting, detrimental impacts. Individuals’ experiences of failure, disappointment, and exclusion in the music classroom highlight an urgent need for music education to be reframed by an understanding of ‘musical vulnerability’: individuals’ inherent and situational openness to being affected—positively or negatively—by the semantic and somatic properties of music-making. Drawing on existing vulnerability studies, in this article I evaluate how classroom music-making can foster both positive receptivity and negative susceptibility, depending on its delineation of identity and physical embodiment. I then present reductive analyses of phenomenologically-informed interviews, in which 12 secondary music teachers described their past experiences of being pupils, and their present experiences of teaching pupils, in music classrooms in the United Kingdom. Using excerpts from their observations of teaching pupils, I describe how interactions between individuals’ interpersonal and personal vulnerabilities—including personality, musical, and neurological differences—affected occasions of musical receptivity and susceptibility. As individuals negotiated conflicting musical expectations, they sometimes fostered fruitful resilience but sometimes encountered profound resignation. I draw on these findings to construct a preliminary typology of musical vulnerability and emphasise the need for future research into proactive differentiation in the music classroom.
View
Community Music: Almanya Eğitim Sistemindeki Yeri ve Türkiye’ye Yönelik Perspektifler
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
Bu yazı, Community Music kavramının Almanya’daki gelişimine odaklanarak farklı kaynaklar aracılığıyla bu süreci ele almayı amaçlamaktadır. Aynı zamanda, Türkçe’de henüz yeterince kaynak bulunmayan Community Music terimini açıklamaya ve tarihsel gelişimini özetlemeye çalışacaktır. Yazar, bu metinde bilinçli bir şekilde Community Music terimini Türkçe’ye çevirmemiştir. Bunun temel nedenlerinden biri, bu kavramın Türkçe için oldukça yeni olması ve Türkçe’ye kazandırılmasının zaman ve süreç gerektirdiğine olan inancıdır. Yazar, doğrudan ve öznel bir çeviri yapmak yerine, bu sürecin doğal bir evrimle ilerlemesinin daha sağlıklı olacağı görüşündedir. Ayrıca, Community Music teriminin Almanca’da da İngilizce orijinaliyle kullanıldığına dikkat çekilmektedir. Yazının sonunda, Almanya akademisinde 2012’den bu yana yaşanan gelişmelerin bir parçası olan Türkiye kökenli bir yazar olarak, bu terimin Türkiye’de ve Türkçe’de nasıl karşılık bulabileceğine dair bazı çıkarımlar ve önerilerde bulunulacaktır. This paper aims to examine the development of the concept of Community Music in Germany by exploring this process through various sources. At the same time, it seeks to explain the term Community Music, which currently lacks sufficient resources in Turkish, and to summarize its historical development. The author has deliberately chosen not to translate the term Community Music into Turkish in this text. One of the main reasons for this decision is that the concept is still quite new in Turkish, and its integration into the language requires time and a natural process. The author believes that instead of making a direct and subjective translation, it would be healthier for this process to evolve naturally. Additionally, it is noted that the term Community Music is also used in its original English form in German. At the end of the paper, as a Turkish-origin scholar who has been part of the German academic landscape since 2012, the author will present some insights and suggestions on how this term could be adapted into Turkish and find its place within Turkey’s academic and musical discourse.
View
View
The Emerging Ecological Shift
Chapter
  • Jan 2024
This chapter explores the emerging ecological shift in music education theory and practice. The chapter presents a critical view of ecological thinking and the need to recognise and address the unintended consequences of cultural and educational practices. The chapter examines global sustainability agendas such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in order to move beyond inward looking perspectives of sustainability as conservation of existing practices and to re-frame music education. The chapter calls for an ecological awareness which recognises that social-ecological “wicked problems” are not simply issues of our ecological footprint; in short, that artists are ecological whether they are aware of this or not.
View
‘Spectaculars’ and the study of popular musicking
Article
  • Jul 2022
In US popular music textbooks, women’s contributions are often relegated to the margins. This is not because women have been absent from popular music history, but because music scholarship leans towards the study of formal structures and technical ability and away from the emotional or embodied components of music. I advocate for a shift towards studies in popular musicking, both in scholarship and in the classroom. I argue that an emphasis on spectacular performances – collaborative events designed to awe and entertain and which incorporate many elements of musicking – will open doors for discussions of more women artists and artist fanbases largely made up of young women. With an examination of two such spectaculars, I show how music analysis can include extramusical components such as dance, audience, stage presence and even costumes. The study of popular musicking creates space for more women’s stories in scholarship and the classroom.
View
Music Psychotherapy with Refugee Survivors of Torture. Interpretations of Three Clinical Case Studies.
Book
Full-text available
  • Oct 2010
Sami Alanne. 2010. Music Psychotherapy with Refugee Survivors of Torture. Interpretations of Three Clinical Case Studies. Sibelius Academy, Studia Musica 44. Music Education Department. Doctoral dissertation, 245 pages. The clinical data for this research were derived from three music psychotherapy cases of torture victims who in 2002 to 2004 lived as either asylum seekers or refugees in Finland. The patients were all traumatized men, originating from Central Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, who received music therapy sessions as part of their rehabilitation. Music therapy was offered weekly or bi-monthly for the duration of one to two years. Music listening techniques, such as projective listening, guided imagery, and free association were applied in a psychoanalytic frame of reference. Data included 116 automatically audio recorded and transcribed therapy sessions, totalling over 100 hours of real time data that were both qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed by the researcher. While previous studies have examined refugees and other trauma sufferers, and some articles have even discussed music therapy among torture survivors, this is one of the first empirical research studies of music therapy specifically among patients who are survivors of torture. The research thoroughly describes each of the three subjects in terms of their experiences relating to music, therapy, torture and encounters with Finland, as well as their progression through the therapy. The narrative of each case study makes frequent reference to transcribed data from the music therapy sessions to provide a naturalistic view of the patients and their experiences. Transcribed discourse and clinical notes from all 116 therapy sessions were analyzed in terms of 66 variables of the “situated person” pre-identified as significant according to both the pilot study and previous theory and research in this area. Within each session, the frequency and temporal location in which these variables appeared were systematically recorded and later factor analyzed for reformulating and reducing the dimensions of the data to achieve new meanings. From the analysis, 8 statistically significant factors emerged, suggesting explanations that, in terms of these particular variables, music therapy approaches were effective for promoting verbalization as well as regulation and expression of emotions. The subjects also completed four tests on multiple occasions: (1) Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), (2) Symptom Check List-25 (SCL-25), (3) How Do You Feel Today? questionnaire, and (4) Alanne Music Therapy Outcome Questionnaire. All four tests were administered at the start of the therapy, at the end of the therapy, and six months following the conclusion of therapy sessions (for a total of three times), and two of the tests (Alanne Music Therapy Outcome Questionnaire and How Do You Feel Today?) were also administered one additional time 6 months into the therapy sessions. Three patients in music psychotherapy and their two compared persons of torture survivors who had the best other general psychiatric treatment filled the questionnaire similarly (N=5). Their general rehabilitation was followed for a two-year period with the questionnaires. According to the data analysis from clinical discourse and tests, all three subjects responded positively and demonstrated some improvement due to their music therapy treatment, although with varying degrees of satisfaction. The therapy increased the consciousness of patients regarding their traumatic experiences, however music was perceived as related to positive imagery and pleasurable experiences, and as an aid in calming and relaxation. These findings suggest that some music psychotherapy methods may be effective in treating patients who are survivors of torture and related traumatic experiences. Keywords: music therapy, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, factor analysis, refugees, torture survivors, traumas, asylum seekers, hermeneutic phenomenology, clinical improvisation, projective listening https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/235010/nbnfife2016080922633.pdf
View
Music on Deaf Ears: Musical Meaning, Ideology and Education
Book
Full-text available
  • Jan 2008
First published in 1988, Music on Deaf Ears continues to attract the attention of music sociologists, philosophers, educationalists and others. This revised edition includes a new Preface, an additional chapter, and a number of editorial changes. With reference to different musical styles from the classical to the popular realms, the book develops a theory of musical meaning and ideology. This is entwined with an analysis of how music education reproduces social class patterns of musical consumption, value and educational success. The author identifies a range of common-sense assumptions about music, musical value and musical ability that were deeply engrained in English culture and the English education system of the 1980s; and reveals them as ideological positions that were reproduced through schooling, regardless of, or even in spite of teachers’ or pupils’ conscious knowledge and intentions. Despite the radical changes towards musical diversity which took place during the 1980s, schooling nonetheless continued to reflect and reproduce the traditional and conservative values endorsed by the wider society. The book provides a record of information and documentary evidence concerning the historical development of music education, and the views of teachers, at a period of change in 1980s England; as well as an insight into arguments and ideas that were used to interpret that system within the intellectual climate of the day. It offers a method for thinking about the relationship between musical meaning, ideology and education, which can be applied to a range of contexts – different educational systems, different countries or regions of the world, different historical eras – in relation, not only to schooling but other systems of music teaching and learning.
View
View
Music in Everyday Life
Book
  • Jun 2000
The power of music to influence mood, create scenes, routines and occasions is widely recognised and this is reflected in a strand of social theory from Plato to Adorno that portrays music as an influence on character, social structure and action. There have, however, been few attempts to specify this power empirically and to provide theoretically grounded accounts of music's structuring properties in everyday experience. Music in Everyday Life uses a series of ethnographic studies - an aerobics class, karaoke evenings, music therapy sessions and the use of background music in the retail sector - as well as in-depth interviews to show how music is a constitutive feature of human agency. Drawing together concepts from psychology, sociology and socio-linguistics it develops a theory of music's active role in the construction of personal and social life and highlights the aesthetic dimension of social order and organisation in late modern societies.
View
View
View
View
View
View
View