Umoja Flute Institute

become open-minded and curious about the music and cultures that they may not be familiar with, and be ready to dive in and appreciate the ‘new’ musical and cultural experiences.

If one of the important goals in studying diverse musical cultures is to understand more about the culture, we may want to emphasize on the musical characteristics that are unique to the culture. We may need to introduce students to traditional folklore that tells stories of a culture. Of course, we do not want to exclude modern music through which we may be able to explore how music of a culture evolves through time. In addition, we can find musical elements of particular cultures in the popular music of today. Global perspective of music education, that is developing a global understanding of musical cultures, can be achieved through learning the uniqueness of each culture and then drawing conclusions on the commonalities of musical practices and experiences across cultures.

In conclusion, ‘Global Music’ seems to be currently the politically correct term that we should use. If it is a term that shows our support to DEI and acknowledges that all musical cultures are of equal footing and much appreciated, this is definitely the way to go. However, music educators need to be aware that each musical culture is unique and should not be generalized by global music. This is unlike the justifications of the popular musicians who want to explore new sounds by creating a fusion of diverse cultural sounds. Music educators need to help students in exploring the beauty in each of the musical cultures and appreciating that uniqueness. Then, the students will become knowledgeable of music globally and eventually achieve global understanding of music and cultures. That is a high goal to aim for, but it is our mission as music educators of the current time.

References

by Zack Pitt-Smith CMEA Urban Schools Representative

Aswad, J. (2020, November 3). Grammy awards change name of ‘world music’ category to ‘global music’ to address 'connotations of colonialism’. Variety. https://variety.com/2020/music/news/grammyawards-change-world-music-to-global-1234821922/

Fung, C. V. (1995). Rationales for teaching world musics. Music Educators

Journal, 82(1), 36-40.

Kalia, A. (2019, July 24). ‘So flawed and problematic’: why the term

‘world music’ is dead. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ music/2019/jul/24/guardian-world-music-outdated-global

Schippers, H. (2009). Facing the music: Shaping music education from a global perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

Umoja Flute Institute was created to provide community and support for Black flute players of all ages. We are having an awesome opportunity for students aged 12-18 to cocompose with flutists Allison Loggins-Hull from Flutronix.

If you have any Black students who are flute players, I'd love to get in contact with them and get them involved. Membership is $25 for students but we have a lot of money that was donated for scholarships. Feel free to share our website and this flyer with them. Thanks and feel free to reach out with any questions.