Hande SAĞLAM, Wei-Ya LIN
9th International Symposium of the
ICTM Study Group on Music and Minorities
July 4-10, 2016
Université de Rennes 2, Brittany, France
Topic 3: New Research
Paper Abstracts
Hande SAĞLAM (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
The Current Situation in Viennese Music Education Systems.
Understanding, Learning, and Transmitting “Other” Musical Languages
Since March 2015, the department of wind and percussion instruments in music education and the institute of folk music research and ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna are collaborating on a project called “Music without Borders – Multilingualism in Music and Understanding the ‘Other’ and the Unfamiliar”. Teachers and pupils of a primary and a secondary school are partners and research associates.
The project focuses on three main research topics:
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Primary and secondary school children will be made familiar with research methods used in ethnomusicology and music education. They are expected to subsequently question and perceive more consciously both their own as well as other’s identities.
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Improved communication, conscious togetherness and sustainable research experienced through the pupils’ own motivation are deployed during learning to ultimately allow pupils to reflect on issues of identity themselves.
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New didactic concepts for intercultural music teaching are developed in cooperation between ethnomusicology and music education in order to facilitate teaching, learning and understanding of interculturality within school curricula.
At the same time, we aim to familiarize university students -future music teachers- with the ‘real world’ by immersing them in the environment of a ‘typical’ Viennese class, with a majority of pupils stemming from diverse minority communities.
This paper analyses problematic aspects of intercultural music transmission, and aims to prefigure and suggest new perspectives for transmitting diverse musical languages without generating any type of cultural hierarchy among them. The primary objective in this transmitting process is to create an implicitness of “otherness” as a prerequisite for achieving mutual communication not only among minority groups but also with majorities.
Wei-Ya LIN (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
Representing Musical Identities of Children with Migrant Background – An Example from the Research Project “Music without Borders”
In recent years, various studies have shown that ethnomusicology and music education can complement each other by applying similar concepts and research methods on similar objects of investigation, and by posing common questions. Therefore, shared features in academic research and actual practice of music education can be identified.
The interdisciplinary project “Music without Borders” combines scholarly ethnomusicological research methods with praxis-oriented methods used in music education. One major aim of the project is to identify and understand musical identities of children with immigration background. As a result, a CD and a songbook will be created in the final stage of this project.
The interdisciplinary approach applied constitutes an optimal cross-section between academic research and musical practise. Nevertheless, different interpretations of various issues rooted in the given disciplinary discourses have to be overcome. How does cross-disciplinary communication work, and which role does an ethnomusicologist play in this scenario? How can both scholarly research and practice-oriented methods benefit from each other? These questions will be discussed in my presentation.