he idea of music as praxis has generated considerable atten-tion among music educators but is nonetheless often mis-understood. Most generally, the concept of music as praxis focuses not on music as a col-lection of ‘works’ to be con-templated in leisure time but on the per-sonal and social values of music in always highly varied and relevant contexts of use.
In not focusing on ‘works’—either notat-ed, or in the sense of recognizable per-formances—as carriers of supposedly ‘pure-ly musical’ meaning, praxial theory turns attention to particular musics1 and to the central and vast contributions they make to the everyday life of a society or culture.
When “music” is regarded as praxis, then, it is not regarded as “a unitary art form”
but “refers to fundamentally distinct types of activities that fulfill different needs and ways of being human” (Turino 2008, 1).
Praxial theory does not deny value to conditions of use that involve contemplat-ing ‘works’—for example, the concert tra-ditions of Western classical music. Such con-templation is its own praxis, involving one type of music with its own standards and values, not the standard of quality for all musics (Dixon 1995). Concerts of jazz and rock, for example, are significantly differ-ent forms of socio-musical praxis; ones in which the social components and values are far more obvious, though no less im-portant than they are for concerts and re-citals of classical music (Shepherd 1991).
Understood as praxis, music (of all kinds) is central to the fabric of a society or culture. Indeed, culture itself is praxis, a
“continuous and unending structuring ac-tivity” (Bauman 1999, 43), and social prac-tices2 such as music are the building blocks
T
of society (Tuomela 2002). Thus, asConfu-cius understood in acknowledging the con-tribution of music to both social cohesion and change, music is one of the most im-portant avenues through which people in-teract in creating the various social net-works, structures, and institutions of daily life. The sociocultural life resulting from musical praxis is thus not secondary—an epiphenomenon—or ‘appreciated’ only in rare moments of leisure: as praxis, music is a “powerful human resource” (Turino 2008, 1) for everyday life.
People in societies around the world use music to create and express their emotional inner lives, to span the chasm between themselves and the divine, to woo lovers, to celebrate weddings, to sustain friendships and com-munities, to inspire mass political movements, and to help their babies fall asleep. Music is the basis of a huge industry and can be an avenue to money and fame. It is also a con-stant of everyday life... (Turino 2008, 1).
Music, considered as praxis, is there-fore central to an infinite range of mean-ings and implications that are too often overlooked (or rejected) by traditional musical scholarship. However, as sociolo-gist of music Peter J. Martin (2006) dem-onstrates, descriptions and analyses of mu-sical structures alone cannot reveal their meaning and significance; these reside not simply ‘in’ the structures (i.e., as fixed and purely musical) but also arise ‘from’ the sit-uated contexts in which musics are used in social life or “as social life” (Turino 2008).
Similarly, philosopher of music Aaron Rid-ley (2000) criticizes what he calls the “au-tonomania” of music scholars and aestheti-cians who treat music as though it is en-tirely autonomous of social contexts,
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ings and influences; as though it has been parachuted in from Mars (1–16).
On the contrary, music is central to the construction of ethnicity and identity (Stokes 1997), for example. Green (1997) analyzes musical practices and meanings in relation to gender, while other scholarship reveals the close (and often problematic) relation-ship between race and musical meaning (Randano & Bohlman 2000) missed by strictly musical analyses. In Scott (2002), various authors analyze, among other prax-ial themes, music in relation to the body and to social class (59-146)—again, aspects of musical meaning that are ignored or de-nied by standard analyses of ‘works’ in purely musical or aesthetic terms. Especially nota-ble are the “social uses and social control of music”—its praxial role in manipulating social behavior (Brown & Volgsten 2006).
In support of regarding music as praxis is scholarship that challenges the very premises of the traditional aesthetic accounts upon which the conception of music as “for its own sake” depends. Philosopher Jean-Marie Schaeffer, for example, implicates such aesthetics as an ideology used to legitimate and sacralize the category of “fine art” it has falsely created (Schaeffer 2000, 3–134).
In a similar vein, social historian Preben Mortensen (1997) points out the various social bases—actually, biases—of many aes-thetic theories; social influences on their own thinking that aesthetic theorists are unaware of or studiously ignore or reject in their arguments for timeless, faceless, and place-less purely musical meaning. Pierre Bour-dieu (1984) has shown how readily such thinkers forget or overlook the influence of social and ideological forces on their own theories—theories that nonetheless deny relevance to just such social variables. Like-wise, aesthetician/historian Jacques Ranciere (2006, 2009) treats traditional aesthetic the-orizing as itself a matter of praxis; a politi-cal practice that represents art and music as (somehow) above everyday life.3
This all too brief survey of some schol-arly themes that support the idea of music as praxis is itself is suggestive of the need for a praxial approach to music education; one that
celebrates, investigates, analyzes the social role and importance of music in just such (and additional) terms or themes, and that thus promotes a greater, more informed, more effective role for music in students’ everyday lives and throughout life. When music edu-cation thus enhances the range and role of musical praxis in society—by facilitating the skills of a given praxis, by enticing students with new choices of musical praxis, by ad-vancing existing skills in ways that open doors to more frequent or new praxis—music be-comes more than a pastime of a few; it is seen as a foundation for the lives of all.
Such rooting of music education in the ongoing and important contribution music makes to daily life and to the constituting of society and culture does not deny or devalue music’s aisthesic properties; the af-fective appeal that, in fact, renders music so constructive in the many forms of hu-man sociality it engages and facilitates. On the contrary: regarded as praxis, music is not an extra to be ‘appreciated’ only in lei-sure time. It becomes undeniably vital and valuable in down-to-earth, pragmatic ways that, if acknowledged, honored, and ad-vanced by music educators, clearly verify that music and thus music education are, in fact, basic to everyday life well-lived (Di-Nora 2000).
References
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1999. Culture as Praxis. Lon-don: SAGE Publications.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction. Trans. R. Nice.
Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Brown, Steven and Ulrik Volgsten. 2006. Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
DiNora, Tia. 2000. Music in Everyday Life. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, Robert. 1995. The Baumgarten Corruption.
London: Pluto Press.
Green, Lucy. 1997. Music, Gender, Education.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Martin, Peter J. 2006. Music and the Sociological Gaze. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Mortensen, Preben. 1997. Art in the Social Order.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ranciere, Jacques. 2006. The Politics of Aesthe-tics. Trans. G. Rockhill. London: Continuum.
—. 2009. Aesthetics and its Discontents. Trans. J.
Corcoran. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Randano, Ronald and Philip V. Bohlman, eds.
2000. Music and the Racial Imagination. Chica-go: University of Chicago Press.
Regelski, Thomas A. 2007. “The ethics of music teaching as profession and praxis.” In, Kunskapens konst, Vänbok till Börje Stålhammar, ed. Eva Geor-gii-Hemming; 241–272. Örebro: Örebro University, Ridley, Aaron. The Philosophy of Music. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Schaeffer, Jean-Marie. 2000. Art of the Modern Age.
Trans. S. Rendell. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Scott, Derek B., ed. 2002. Music, Culture, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shepherd, John. 1991. Music as Social Text. Cam-bridge: Polity Press.
Stokes, Martin, ed. 1997. Ethnicity, Identity and Music. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Tuomela, Raimo. 2002. The Philosophy of Social Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Turino, Thomas. 2008. Music as Social Life. Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press.
Notes
[1] “Music” is a singular category that consists of various “musics,” having the same relationship that
“food” has to the various “foods” that make up the category.
[2] A “social practice” and “praxis” are often used as equivalent terms, and “practices” is often preferred to “praxes.” However, there is a sense, stemming from
Aristotle, in which “praxis” also carries ethical con-notations and can involve “malpraxis” (i.e., malprac-tice). This becomes important when considering teach-ing as a professional and thus an ethical praxis, not just as a collection of practices (Regelski 2007).
[3] For further exploration of other and related prax-ial themes, see these specprax-ial issues of Action, Criti-cism, and Theory for Music Education (http://
act.maydaygroup.org/): 3/1 (2004) on identity; 3/3 (2004) on social theory; 4/3 (2005) on race; 5/1 (2006) on gender; 6/4 (2006) on social justice; 7/1 on democracy (2008).
Thomas A. Regelski is
“Distinguished Pro-fessor of Music”
(Emeritus), State University of New York at Fredonia NY.
A graduate of SUNY Fredonia, and a former public school music teacher, he took his Masters de-gree in choral music education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and his PhD in Com-parative Aesthetics at Ohio University.
He has taught choral conducting, secondary school music education methods, and foundations courses to undergraduate and graduate students. He has taught at Aichi University in Nagoya, Japan, the Si-belius Academy in Helsinki, Finland (where he had a Fulbright Award in 2000), Helsinki University, and was a research fellow at the Philosophy of Educa-tion Research Center at Harvard University.
He is the co-founder of the MayDay Group, an international/interdisciplinary society of scholars in-terested in music, music education, and cultural studies and, from its inception until 2007, editor of its e-journal, Action, Criticism, and Theory for Mu-sic Education.
In addition to over 70 published journal articles, he is author of Principles and Problems of Music Education (1975), Arts Education and Brain Re-search (1978), Teaching General Music (1981), Teaching General Music in Grades 4–8 (2004), and co-editor (with J.T. Gates) of Music Education for Changing Times (2009). Thomas A. Regelski is cur-rently living in Finland.
Ajankohtaista Actual
Ulla-Britta Broman-Kananen