Too Many Cultures, Too Little Time? Unpacking the “Depth vs. Breadth” Tension in Global Music Education

by William J. Coppola, Ph.D.

CMEA Global Music Representative

One of the most common questions music teachers ask when seeking to diversify their curriculum is, “How do we decide which cultures to feature?” Fortunately, the introduction of culturally responsive teaching to the field of music education offers a powerful proposal: we should start by centering the musical cultures with which our students most closely identify (McKoy & Lind, 2022). But there’s another question that arguably gives music teachers even greater pause: “How do we decide how many cultures to feature?”

This question reflects a classic tension between “breadth” and “depth”: if we focus on too many cultures, we might not achieve enough depth with any of them; if we focus on only a small handful, we might lose out on a greater breadth of musical expressions around the globe. We usually see breadth and depth as opposing ends of a balancing scale, with one coming at the expense of the other. And so begins the classic internal battle: If I choose “these” musical cultures over “those” ones, am I implicitly suggesting that the latter ones are less important? On the other hand, if I try to squeeze in as many cultures as I can, might I inadvertently end up tokenizing some or all of them? There’s no way we can become experts in every musical culture we wish to feature, after all, so does aiming for breadth risk inadequate (at best) or offensive (at worst) coverage of these musical practices?

I certainly resonate with those teachers who question whether there’s a proper solution to this ostensible stalemate. Through critical reflection and openness, we can usually find for ourselves the most appropriate balance between breadth and depth that works best for our students. But giving teachers the agency to establish their own equilibrium doesn’t settle the matter entirely, since no matter where we strike the balance, we still might feel like we’re sacrificing either one or the other. Indeed, this is sometimes used as an excuse for snubbing diversity efforts altogether in music education. For instance, in response to calls for diversity made in the College Music Society’s “Taskforce Manifesto” (Sarath et al., 2017), the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA, 2016) questioned, “Might continuing to teach from many diverse offerings risk a shallowness of experience?” (p. 5). Asking teachers to cover many cultures with which they’re neither familiar nor trained might risk more harm than good, right?

But what if we didn’t need to think about global music education in such terms? I’d like to suggest that there’s another way we might think about the balance between depth and breadth—one that doesn’t lead us to conclude that we’ll always be falling short in some way. It requires, in my view, a return to one of our most fundamental questions: Why do we do what we do? I don’t pose this question in terms of global music education, or even music education generally, but in its broadest sense—in the art of teaching, writ large. Do we teach certain things because we expect our students to absorb and hold onto them forever? If so, our efforts just might be a fraught endeavor. (Case in point: I took calculus in high school, but could barely tell you a thing about it today!)

The same goes for global music education, in my view. Do I expect that my students will remember everything they might have learned in my classes? Of course not. (In fact, this is precisely why I usually avoid convergent assessments like multiple-choice exams.) Rather, it’s my hope that students will develop a deeper sense of curiosity about the ways in which music expresses the diversity of human life. Importantly, we need to be careful to help students think of curiosity not in othering or exoticizing terms, but with a cosmopolitan sense of “open-earedness.” I think even a nugget of curiosity, properly cultivated, can grow into a lifelong fascination with the world’s wide-ranging musical expressions. This is what I’m aiming for; not any kind of world music “expertise.”

I’m not saying that “knowledge about” global music isn’t important. Sure, I want students to “know” when Korean jeongak or Balinese gamelan music is traditionally performed, why griots are so important in many West African communities, and why I consider trovadores in Puerto Rican jíbaro music to be such masterful improvisers. But what matters more to me, at least in the long run, is that my students’ musical explorations will instill a deeper sense of curiosity with respect to their place in the world, driving them to learn as much as they can about the various artistic expressions that humanity has thus far offered us. In short, I want students to see their place on this earth as something larger than themselves.

To this end, I think two primary aims of any meaningful global music education should be to develop a sense of (a) curiosity, awe, and intrigue toward music as a pan-human phenomenon, and (b) self-sufficiency as learners are empowered to embark on their own unique journeys of artistic self-discovery. Together, I think these aims drastically improve the chances that meaningful learning will happen long after students have left the classroom. In some ways, this might reflect the old adage, give a person a fish, you feed them for a day; teach a person to fish, you feed them for a lifetime. By reframing things in this way, we might embolden ourselves to look beyond the guilt-ridden feeling that “we’re not featuring x number of musical cultures per year” and to instead focus our attention toward instilling a kind of cosmopolitan self-sufficiency among our students.

How might we go about this? First, I agree with Juliet Hess (2021) that we should look beyond global music education as some sort of cartographic “scratch-off” map. Rather, we might do well to approach music education through the lens of cultural humility, which I previously suggested in last summer’s issue (see Coppola, 2022). In this way, we understand our journeys as interminable, further reinforcing the notion that there is no “optimal” level of “mastery” that can be achieved by striking some ideal curricular balance over an instructional term.

Second, in order for students to develop the personal agency to embark on their own global music journeys, we should familiarize them with the tools and resources that enable them to become self-sufficient explorers in this regard. As much instructional time as I might spend deep within some particular traditions, I also spend plenty of time helping students become comfortable using the most trustworthy resources for exploring culturally diverse musical practices—including Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Association for Cultural Equity, the World Music Pedagogy book series, and many more. A perfect example of this happening in real-time can be seen in Juliana Cantarelli Vita’s (2021) dissertation, in which elementary-aged students autonomously explored archival recordings and breathed new life into collected songs as they reflected the musical heritages of children across the globe.

Would either Juliana or I claim, by the end of our time with our students, that they will have achieved some sort of mastery over x number of musical cultures? No. (Impossible!) But might we both confidently say that our students know exactly where to look, how to conduct their own research, and what kinds of ethical questions they should be asking themselves as they self-directedly discover once-unfamiliar musical practices that continue to pique their curiosity? Absolutely.

In that case, I would suggest that our students are getting exactly what they need.

References

Cantarelli Vita, J. (2021). ‘Because songs reflect the people’: Archival recordings of children’s music as pathway to respectful resonance (Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington).

College Band Directors National Association. (2016). A position paper by the CBDNA Music Education Committee. https://www. cbdna.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/CBDNA-The-Callfor-Perspectives.pdf

Coppola, W. J. (2022). It’s okay to not know: The power of cultural humility in teaching global music. CMEA Magazine, 75(3), 26–27. https://calmusiced.com/communication/magazine/

Hess, J. (2021). Cultural competence or the mapping of racialized space: Cartographies of music education. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 227, 7–28. https://doi. org/10.5406/bulcouresmusedu.227.0007

McKoy, C. L., & Lind, V. L. (2022). Culturally responsive teaching in music education: From understanding to application (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Sarath, E., Myers, D., & Campbell, P. S. (2016). Redefining music studies in an age of change: Creativity, diversity, and integration Routledge.