Little Kids Rock and modern band in US schools: A punk problematic

Abstract

The pervasive Eurocentric model of music education in the United States is hegemonic, pursuing a model of performance excellence in large ensembles that, by the time young people reach high school, excludes most from music making opportunities in school. Despite numerous efforts to challenge the dominant paradigm since the 1960s, little change has happened from within the music education profession. Since 2002, nonprofit organization Little Kids Rock (Music Will) has leveraged outsider perspectives and philanthropic resources to galvanize momentum nationally towards adoption of curricula and musicking practices that focus more on popular musics and lifelong learning. Through a programme of professional development, curriculum provision and instrument donations, Little Kids Rock has both engaged in active resistance against, and established strategic partnerships with, state governments, university departments, school districts, major industry players including the National Association of Music Merchants, and education brands such as Berklee College of Music. Little Kids Rock promotes a new stream of music making called “modern band” as a disruptive phenomenon that emphasizes creativity, cultural relevance and student-centred learning while reinforcing entrenched hegemonic structures. Drawing on the history of Little Kids Rock and the modern band movement, the authors use Kahn-Egan’s (1998) five tenets of punk to frame a critical examination of the modern band phenomenon and the ways which Little Kids Rock operates at various points along punk’s ideological spectrum in attempting to “transform lives through restoring, expanding and innovating music education” in US schools.

Correspondence and improvisation: An autoethnographic exploration of drumming in nature

“…This autoethnographic paper is a continuation of that DIY ethos, as a process of reflection on personal practice in writing (Attfield, 2011;Stephens-Griffin and Griffin, 2019). The improvised, woodland drumming described in this article also provides examples of DIY learning, construed as part of a punk pedagogical practice (Lee and Smith, 2023;Smith et al, 2022;Torrez, 2012) wherein I ascribe what Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) term 'pedagogic authority' to nature and the environment. Through a rich process of embodied, 'fleshy listening' (Stefánsdóttir and Östersjö, 2019: 380), I choose to learn, through engaging with nature, about how to be and how to make music with my surroundings.…”

Punk and education research: ‘Don’t want to be taught to be no fool’

“…In their paper, Little Kids Rock and Modern Band in American Schools: A Punk Problematic, Gareth Dylan Smith, Bryan Powell and David Knapp (Smith et al, this issue) highlight the possibilities for challenging dominant paradigms in music education. To do this, they explore the ways a nonprofit organisation, ‘Little Kids Rock’ [LKR], works with schools to ‘[disrupt] the hegemonic structure of music education in US state schools’ (Smith et al, 2022, this issue). For this discussion, readers step back closer to – but perhaps not fully within – formal school settings to reflect on punk’s potential for offering a way to understand the work done by LKR as a practical response to the conservative conformity and hegemonic practices of mainstream music education.…”

Utilization of social media Instagram as a promotional media for the Band Death Vomit in 2022

“…Rock music began to be recognized in the mid-1960s. Rock music itself is very different from other popular music because rock music uses a strong beat and is dominated by electric guitars (Smith et al, 2023). Some rock bands later developed into hard rock and heavy metal.…”