Joy
May 21st, 2006 by vincebates
I chose to adopt “musicing” as the title for this blog because, in my opinion, it reflects the human and active elements of music and making music. It took a few years for me to accept this term introduced and popularized in music education circles by Christopher Small and David Elliott. I thought “music making” would suffice, but now realize that there remains a distinction between music making and music listening, composing, producing, etc. Also, music making still objectifies music; it is a thing to be heard, managed, studied, honored, directed, and even obeyed. “Musicing”, to me, means any and all human action related to music. Now, I’m not going to get into what I think music is (its nature and value and all that); that’s a topic for another day. Basically, I don’t think music has an inherent or singular nature or value. It is human action and it can be whatever we want it to be.
One of my earliest memories of musicing might help illustrate what I mean: When I was a child we lived 100 miles from the nearest town in the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada. We had no electricity, indoor plumbing, TV or other conveniences (intrusions?), but we had a piano and my parents procured a harmonica for each of their, at that time, seven children. I remember playing my harmonica (by ear and from harmonica tablature) amongst the trees down by the creek. I wasn’t performing for anyone and noone was telling me what to do; it was just something I did for fun. Joyful play, I think, is integral to musicing.
I like Nel Nodding’s book, Happiness in Education; her ideas fit my own view that school should contribute to a joyful life now and long-term. In my 14 years of teaching music in the public schools I have noticed a real disconnect between music in life and music in school. In life outside of school music is “musicing”; people engage in musicing because it is personally fulfilling–because it might lead to increased happiness and fulfillment. In school students engage in music for the same reasons, but also because their friends are participating, because it’s an easy credit, because it’s the least objectionable option, because they like the teacher, because their parents where in the same musical groups, because they will get a cool looking musical instrument, because it will look good on a college application, and, yes, because they have to. That school music making and music listening are not as fun or personally fulifilling as real life musicing is illustrated, I think, by the fact that few students continue engaging in the musical actions they did in school.
This blog will explore how music in school can become joyful and personally fulfilling musicing. It corresponds with my ecolumn “teaching praxis” on the Mayday Group’s website (www.maydaygroup.org).
