It’s Okay to Not Know: The Power of Cultural Humility in Teaching Global Music by William J. Coppola, Ph.D., CMEA Global Music Representative
Greetings from Southern California!
It’s my privilege to be the newest Global Music Representative for CMEA after Lily Chen-Hafteck’s many years of exceptional service. As my first-ever contribution to the CMEA Magazine, I wanted to share a new concept that’s really made a world of difference (no pun intended!) in my own thinking about world music education. When I was teaching elementary school music in New York City, I made it a priority to feature as much music from around the globe as I possibly could. The trouble was, I sometimes felt debilitated thinking about all the ways I could possibly get it wrong. I feared doing a disservice not only to my students, but to the cultures I was trying to celebrate. As a white, North American music teacher with no formal training beyond classical and jazz music, I knew that most journeys into the world of global music would be as an outsider. And the more I started talking to music teachers across the country, the more I came to realize just how widespread this feeling was in our field. At virtually every workshop I conducted, at least one person would ask me, how do I make sure I don’t inadvertently offend the cultures I’d like to feature in my classroom? The tenets of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) offer us one helpful approach: to decenter ourselves and draw from the wealth of cultural capital that our children (and their families) bring to the classroom (Lind & McKoy, 2016). But what about those music practices with which neither I nor my students were very familiar? Although reflecting the identities and experiences of our students is a crucial part of cultural diversity, it’s not the whole story. Bringing global music into the classroom is also about recognizing the vastness of humanity beyond ourselves. It’s about celebrating the cultural knowledge inside our local classrooms alongside cultural
expressions from the furthest reaches of the globe. Not just local, and not just global, but a truly “glocal” adventure, we might say. But out of fear of misrepresenting the music (or the people whom the music represents), many people shy away from engaging in such experiences, privileging instead their personal “tried-andtrue” selections that become their security blanket over the years. Eventually, “Jambo” implicitly becomes the welcome song from East Africa; “Sakura” becomes the Japanese song for beginner instrumentalists; and “Al Citrón” becomes the passing game that all Mexican children play. When we begin to rely on a select few songs to fulfill our world music goals, we run the risk of unintentionally tokenizing the very cultures we wish to elevate. Is there a lesser of two evils, then, between the risk of tokenism on the one hand and getting it completely wrong on the other? My response to this question has grown into a sort of mantra for me over the years: It’s far better to do something to the best of your ability than to do nothing out of fear of inadequacy. As educators, our fear of doing a disservice to global music obviously comes from the best of intentions. But I also think it’s in no small part connected to the primacy we place on expertise in the classroom. Music education philosopher Randall Allsup (2016) reminds us that experimentation and open-ended experiences are often feared in music classrooms because they take us too far away from the comforts of our own expertise. But as Leah Cohen (2013) writes in her celebrated book I Don’t Know, our fear of getting it wrong “can breed a habit of shirking responsibility and avoiding vulnerability—behaviors that ultimately distance ourselves from the very prizes we crave: true connection with others and integrity within ourselves” (p. 4). When it comes to teaching music over which we can claim no expertise or first-hand experience, I believe a shift in mindset
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CMEA Magazine