Bridging Musical Worlds: Musical Collaboration Between Student Musician-Educators and South Sudanese Australian Youth

Abstract

This chapter reports results of an innovative contemporary model of applied urban ethnomusicological research investigating the effects of collaborative musical engagement between students from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (SCM) and South Sudanese Australian youth in the culturally diverse metropolis of Sydney, Australia. The Bridging Musical Worlds project was conducted in 2016 during a period of extraordinary global migration. In Australia, children and young people of South Sudanese heritage occupy a prominent place in emerging communities in many large urban areas but are often subject to discriminatory discourse. The project enabled SCM music education students to engage in reciprocal teaching and learning opportunities relating to South Sudanese music and culture and globalised popular music. In this chapter we outline the major outcomes of the project, including social inclusion through collaborative participatory music making, and explore the impact of these musical activities on the development of cultural competence and intercultural understanding for tertiary students.

Culturally responsive and meaningful music education: Multimodality, meaning-making, and communication in diverse learning contexts

“…These three examples of music learning contexts are not intended to present an exhaustive list of appropriate communicative modes within specific cultural and linguistic contexts, but to demonstrate the range of modality that is opened up through consideration of ensembles of modes in music teaching and learning. There are important potential flow-on benefits from engaging in culturally responsive music teaching and learning, including psychosocial outcomes such as self-esteem, confidence, and cultural empathy (Cain et al, 2016) and increased social cohesion (Marsh et al, 2020). The disruption of the primacy of the linguistic mode enables richer forms of expression and musical meaning-making to occur in multiple ways for students who may bring different strengths to learning, aside from linguistic mode.…”

“…It is important for music educators to understand that privileging some modes over others may disadvantage learners who do not have lived experiences or frames of reference situated in these dominant modes (Gay, 2015). It is also critical that music teachers learn about culturally responsive pedagogies because students may come from different social and cultural backgrounds, and that they may continue to be disadvantaged and have their learning hindered by mono-modal and mono-cultural music learning experiences (e.g., Carson & Westvall, 2016; Gay, 2002; Marsh et al, 2020).…”

Introduction: The Politics of Diversity in Music Education

“…the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, an equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture" (p. xvi). In higher music education, intercultural projects have consciously challenged once taken-for-granted professional boundaries and understandings of what it means to study music at the tertiary level, with collaborations established between institutions, with students, as well as together with underserved communities (Marsh et al 2020). Further, practice-based research at the intersection of music education and ethnomusicology has underlined the importance of societal networks and expanded notions of professionalism (Saether 2020), highlighted the inherently unpredictable nature of intercultural collaboration and the need for flexibility (Westerlund et al 2015).…”