Reflective thought as a way of meeting and positioning oneself in the world of music University students are habitually told to reflect on readings, lectures and course plans, however, too often this reflection is understood as a separate stage, something you do afterwards in private, and the actual purpose of reflecting – to challenge and change old conventions and practices – is forgotten (Kushner, 2006). I was reminded about this issue while leading seminars for this year’s undergraduate course ‘An Introduction to World Music’, where reflection, or lack thereof, became an important theme. In this post I will discuss why reflection thought is a crucial tool to develop an understanding of music as a global social activity. To highlight the role of reflection as process rather than result, Saville Kushner suggests that reflection is “like a glove that needs the human hand to achieve meaning” (2006:14); it has to remain a means and never a goal in itself. This is especially important when we want to broaden our horizon of music, an area where conventional cultural understanding tends to be remarkably rigid. One of the themes running through this years World Music course was ritual and spirituality in music, a subject which was generally considered exotic and fascinating by the students. Unfortunately, the exoticism many of them attached to such diverse activities as Kaluli drum making, BaAka yodelling, and Shona Mbira healing ceremonies often led them to see these people and their music as radically different – even ‘primitive’ and ‘undeveloped’ – whereas one of the aims for the course and seminar leaders was to highlight global human communion within a diversity of music practices. Encouraging reflexive thought thus became an important tool to help students to move away from simplistic definitions of people and music simply as ‘other’. First, it is useful to consider what we might mean with reflective thought beyond the ‘what was good – what was bad’ language of course evaluation forms. Educator and pragmatist philosopher John Dewey argued that reflective thought demands an, ‘active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusion to which it tends’ (1991:6); and, he continues, ‘reflection … implies that something is believed in (or disbelieved in), not on its own direct account, but through something else which stands as witness, evidence, proof, voucher, warrant; that is, as ground of belief’ (italics in original, 1991:8). What Dewey stresses, is that reflective thought is a tried-and-tested thought. It is not only an assumption; it has been compared to our previous experience, experimented on, and finally accepted as a belief until something else proves us wrong. Reflective thinking thus includes, an awareness of a problem, a search for a solution, an evaluation of the supposed solution, and finally understanding, and action based on the new beliefs gained through the reflective process. In the course of lectures and seminar, we first of all had to make the students realise that their definitions of people and music – about which they arguably knew little – as exotic ‘others’, was a real problem for their understanding of the same, and that these presumptions had to be challenged. This meant that rather than talking about readings and details of various music traditions, I often found myself discussing and demonstrating that much of their familiar European middleclass preoccupation with music have parallels in aspects of music making they labelled as exotic. This led to interesting discussions on issues ranging from birthday songs, Christian church music and all-night raves to the music jingles of television commercials and news programs which help us locate ourselves within a mediated commercial society. Through these exercises at least some of the students began to critique and reflect on their own listening experience, and see the way they thought about music as a way rather than the way. However, even though the issue of intercultural musical understanding was at the heart of the course – the course leader had gone to lengths in inviting expert musician to talk about their music, and arranged taster sessions where students got to embody some of the music, rhythms and structures we had been reading about – the final exam still showed that many could not take the leap and begin to think about music in more wider terms beyond a conventional ‘West European’ perspective. Unfortunately this difficulty to look beyond the familiar is not confined to first year undergraduate students. I recently heard that a senior lecturer in composition at a well-regarded music conservatoire in Sweden referred to pentatonicism in music, ‘as an example of an inferior music tradition’ (anonymous student, personal communication, May 13, 2015). Many informal conversations with British musicologists and composers over the last six years, make me suspect that such a comment could as easily been uttered at a music department in the UK. Even after decades of influences from post-colonial studies, sociology and anthropology, the field of music studies remain uncomfortably conservative. I believe that this highlights the importance of encouraging reflexive thinking at an early stage, in order to let students develop a critical understanding of their musical background and help them to consider their own position in the world of music(s).
Esbjörn Wettermark, May, 2015
References
Dewey, J. (1991 [1910]). How We Think. New York: Prometheus Books.
Kushner, S. (2006). Adolescents and Cultures of Reflection. in P. Burnard, & S. Hennessy (eds.), Reflective Practices in Arts Education (p. 13-22). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
University students are habitually told to reflect on readings, lectures and course plans, however, too often this reflection is understood as a separate stage, something you do afterwards in private, and the actual purpose of reflecting – to challenge and change old conventions and practices – is forgotten (Kushner, 2006). I was reminded about this issue while leading seminars for this year’s undergraduate course ‘An Introduction to World Music’, where reflection, or lack thereof, became an important theme. In this post I will discuss why reflection thought is a crucial tool to develop an understanding of music as a global social activity.
To highlight the role of reflection as process rather than result, Saville Kushner suggests that reflection is “like a glove that needs the human hand to achieve meaning” (2006:14); it has to remain a means and never a goal in itself. This is especially important when we want to broaden our horizon of music, an area where conventional cultural understanding tends to be remarkably rigid. One of the themes running through this years World Music course was ritual and spirituality in music, a subject which was generally considered exotic and fascinating by the students. Unfortunately, the exoticism many of them attached to such diverse activities as Kaluli drum making, BaAka yodelling, and Shona Mbira healing ceremonies often led them to see these people and their music as radically different – even ‘primitive’ and ‘undeveloped’ – whereas one of the aims for the course and seminar leaders was to highlight global human communion within a diversity of music practices. Encouraging reflexive thought thus became an important tool to help students to move away from simplistic definitions of people and music simply as ‘other’.
First, it is useful to consider what we might mean with reflective thought beyond the ‘what was good – what was bad’ language of course evaluation forms. Educator and pragmatist philosopher John Dewey argued that reflective thought demands an, ‘active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusion to which it tends’ (1991:6); and, he continues, ‘reflection … implies that something is believed in (or disbelieved in), not on its own direct account, but through something else which stands as witness, evidence, proof, voucher, warrant; that is, as ground of belief’ (italics in original, 1991:8). What Dewey stresses, is that reflective thought is a tried-and-tested thought. It is not only an assumption; it has been compared to our previous experience, experimented on, and finally accepted as a belief until something else proves us wrong. Reflective thinking thus includes, an awareness of a problem, a search for a solution, an evaluation of the supposed solution, and finally understanding, and action based on the new beliefs gained through the reflective process.
In the course of lectures and seminar, we first of all had to make the students realise that their definitions of people and music – about which they arguably knew little – as exotic ‘others’, was a real problem for their understanding of the same, and that these presumptions had to be challenged. This meant that rather than talking about readings and details of various music traditions, I often found myself discussing and demonstrating that much of their familiar European middleclass preoccupation with music have parallels in aspects of music making they labelled as exotic. This led to interesting discussions on issues ranging from birthday songs, Christian church music and all-night raves to the music jingles of television commercials and news programs which help us locate ourselves within a mediated commercial society. Through these exercises at least some of the students began to critique and reflect on their own listening experience, and see the way they thought about music as a way rather than the way. However, even though the issue of intercultural musical understanding was at the heart of the course – the course leader had gone to lengths in inviting expert musician to talk about their music, and arranged taster sessions where students got to embody some of the music, rhythms and structures we had been reading about – the final exam still showed that many could not take the leap and begin to think about music in more wider terms beyond a conventional ‘West European’ perspective. Unfortunately this difficulty to look beyond the familiar is not confined to first year undergraduate students.
I recently heard that a senior lecturer in composition at a well-regarded music conservatoire in Sweden referred to pentatonicism in music, ‘as an example of an inferior music tradition’ (anonymous student, personal communication, May 13, 2015). Many informal conversations with British musicologists and composers over the last six years, make me suspect that such a comment could as easily been uttered at a music department in the UK. Even after decades of influences from post-colonial studies, sociology and anthropology, the field of music studies remain uncomfortably conservative. I believe that this highlights the importance of encouraging reflexive thinking at an early stage, in order to let students develop a critical understanding of their musical background and help them to consider their own position in the world of music(s).
Esbjörn Wettermark, May, 2015
References
Dewey, J. (1991 [1910]). How We Think. New York: Prometheus Books.
Kushner, S. (2006). Adolescents and Cultures of Reflection. in P. Burnard, & S. Hennessy (eds.), Reflective Practices in Arts Education (p. 13-22). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.