Lucy Green - How Popular Musicians Learn - A Way Ahead of Music Education

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ritish Forum for Ethnomusicology

How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education by Lucy GreenReview by: Vic GammonBritish Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 11, No. 1, Red Ritual: Ritual Music and Communism(2002), pp. 159-163Published by: British Forum for EthnomusicologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149890.

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BooksLUCY GREEN, How popular musicianslearn: a way aheadfor music educa-tion. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing,2001. xii + 238pp., index. ISBN 0-7546-0338-5 (hb. ?42.50)Lucy Green has written an interesting andoriginal book. It is about the attitudes,values and practices of popularmusicians.It is also aboutlearningandteaching stylesand about whethera fruitful interactioncantake place between formal methods ofteaching and informal modes of learning.It is descriptive, analytic and prescriptive,wantingto suggest "away ahead for musiceducation".

Green is a classically trainedmusician,a teacher, piano teacher and academic.In recent years she has run the highlyesteemed and successful MA in MusicEducation at the Institute of Education inLondon. (Why she did not get the recentprofessorshipat the InstituteI have no idea,but the strange and unfathomableways ofuniversities should not continue to amazeme). She is a productive writer. Her firstbook, Music on deaf ears, is in my view aprofound and fascinating work, althoughmanydeemed it too theoreticalfor the audi-ence of teachers and educators who couldmost benefit from it. Her second book,Gender and music education, is the mostsignificantwork on the subject yet producedin this country. She has always shown atalent for qualitative, empirical research,and How popular musicians learn couldwell proveto be hermost accessiblebook todate. She bringsto herempiricalwork wide

reading, developed understanding and aformidablepower to draw on a wide rangeof materials.Herwork is informedby someethnomusicology and she speaks to somecentralconcerns of the discipline.I have recently heard Music in HigherEducation described as a "Cinderellasub-ject", andMusic Education as a "Cinderellasubjectof a Cinderellasubject".I have seencolleagues' eyes glaze over when I havetried to interestthem in problemscreatedbythe Music National Curriculum.Yet surelythe way in which any society tries to intro-duce and develop music among its youngpeople ought to be of interest to a widermusical community. The questions thatGreen asks are importantandprofound.Her basic material for the study is a setof interviews with fourteen musiciansrangingin age from 50 to 15, all performersof "Anglo-Americanguitar-basedpop androck music". The interview material islively and informative and it is obvious thatthose interviewedhaverespondedpositivelyand given rich responses. In a pleasingtouch the book is dedicatedto them.

I come to this book having spentmost ofthe last ten years involved in trying to helpmusic graduatespreparethemselves to besuccessful classroom practitioners in pri-maryandsecondaryschools. Thus theques-tion title of Green's firstchapter"What s itto be musically educated?" s a crucial one.The reality is that our society andits highereducation institutions have no consensusonthis question. Graduateswho presentthem-selves for PGCEcourses have a wide rangeof skills, knowledge and understandingbutfew present anything like an adequatebreadthto cope well with the challenges of

BRITISHJOURNALOF ETHNOMUSICOLOGYVOL. 11/i 2002 pp. 159-80

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Britishsecondaryschool music classrooms.We wait with interest to see whether theadvent of "benchmarking"n highereduca-tion will do much to change this situation.Fromthe cynical words of some HE musicteachers(not in my own institution I hastento add),I doubt that it will have much effectother than the commissioning of paper(orratherelectronic) exercises to "prove"thatthe benchmarksarebeing addressed. Greenbelieves that musical success in music edu-cation should not be measured in terms ofthe achievement of a professional musicallife as an outcome but in wider, lifelongbenefits (17).

Green accepts Everitt's rather gloomyfinding that in contemporaryBritain onlyabout one per cent of the adult populationis an amateurmusic-maker(Everitt, 1997).I am a little suspicious of this finding, par-ticularlywhen the notion of "participatory"seems to imply some sort of public partici-pation or exhibition. Comparisonswith thepastareextremelydifficult,and much of themusic-making Green cites from the pastwas of a domestic nature.My own work onchurch bands is cited - these were fascinat-ing institutions,buta churchband of instru-mentalists and singers may well haveconstitutedone per cent or less of the pop-ulation of an English parish.Some writers,often basing theirargumentson instrumentsales, have estimated that there has beenmore musical activity in recent decadesthan ever in the past, although buying aninstrument is not playing it and does notnecessarily imply "participation".Formalamateurmusical institutions such as choralsocieties and brass bands tend to report along-term decline, which would tend tosupportEveritt's and Green's views.The point where I would totally agreewith Green is that the great increase informal music education has not resulted ina concomitant increase in publicly visibleamateurmusic-making.Thereis an elementof fashionhere, and the characteristicmusi-cal activities of nineteenth-centuryurbansociety may not be the most appropriateor

a post-modern society. I live in Hudders-field, reputedly one of the most musicaltowns in England: the music-making isthere, yet one has to seek it out. I interpretRuth Finnegan's work in a more positiveway than Green is able to.Where I find myself even more enthusi-astically in agreement with Green is thesense that something is wrong with formalmusic education - something is missing.She explores whatthis might be throughananalytical contrast between formal musiceducation and "informal music learningpractices".She believes that formal musiceducation can be improvedby the incorpo-ration of some elements from "informallearning practices".

Again, my own past experience as ateacher trainer would support this view.There were always exceptions, but some ofbest trainee teachers I have worked with,those who demonstrated a larger numberof the practicalskills needed to succeed inthe classroom, came out of undergraduatecourses on jazz and popularmusic. Some-times they lackedknowledgeof the Westernart music tradition,but in terms of practicalwork with kids they often had the edge.

Early in the secondary PGCE course Iran an improvisation session in order toexplore the ways in which improvisationcould be taughtto 11-14 year olds (theseskills featuringin the requirementsof theNational Curriculum).My idea behind thesession was not tofrightenpeople, though tterrifiedsome. I thoughtit such a pity thatpeople who had spent thousands of hoursdeveloping their instrumental skills couldnot make a coherent musical articulationwithout written music in front of them.Such a thing would be unthinkable totrainedactors,andartists would only needastimulus and a sketchpadto start to createsomething. It should not be surprising hatsome of the mostcreativeBritishrock musi-cians were educated at artcolleges.It is not thatGreen is arguingthat all isperfectin thelearningof popularmusicians.Some of this is quite haphazard,and no

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doubt much time and effort is wasted inblind alleys. Some learnersfall by the way-side, among them those who could havebeen encouragedto continue with a timelyinterventionby someone who could under-stand the problem they were experiencing.On the otherhand,the attritionratein termsof formal instrumental lessons is high;many pupils do not respond to them posi-tively and give up (including, interestingly,some of the interviewees who went on tobecome successful popular musicians).Similarly, in spite of the changes that havebeen made in the school music curriculumwhich havetried to make the subject"musicfor all", GCSE Music only attractsa smallpercentageof the numbers who takeGCSEArt andDesign courses.I thinkGreenmightbe a little over-generous in her estimateof the wide-ranging nature of the GCSE(introduced in 1988). It certainly did freecomposing and performing from stylisticconstraints whereteachers et this happen),but in the listening section of thepaperstheposition of western classical music is stilldominant, with popular and world musicstyles seemingly a token presence. Thereluctance of successful GCSE studentsinterested in popular music to take upA Level is to be expected as this emphasison the western classical tradition ncreasesatA Level (166).Green, however, notices a significantchange in the way school music was expe-rienced by her older and younger inform-ants. Those who experienced what shedescribes as "traditionalmusic education"gainedlittle from it andgenerallyfelt alien-ated during class lessons. The popularmusic skills these pupils acquiredwere notrecognized and encouraged by teachers.In contrast, the younger interviewees'responses to "the new music education"were farmoreappreciativeas post-NationalCurriculum eachersdevelopedmore inclu-sive attitudes and practices to the range ofmusic supported and encouraged by theschool. While casting no doubt on thesefindings at all, the small size of Green's

group of interviewees might mean that thefull range of students' experiences is notreflected. In a recent survey that I myselfcarriedout,of 50 first-yearmusicundergrad-uates (popularand "unpopular" tudents-the words fail us ). I found a completerangeof assessment of the value of their schoolexperiences to their musical development.There still seem to be plenty of schoolswhere pupils are not getting a positiveexperienceof Music in spiteof the NationalCurriculum, OFSTED and the Qualifica-tions and CurriculumAuthority.One of the really fascinating findings ofthe book is that when those who havemainly acquiredtheir skills throughinfor-mal learning become teachers themselves,the positive aspects of their own informallearning are not reflected in their teaching.In short, they tend to teach popularmusicskills in a very traditional instrumentalteacherway.As Greennotes, "It s one thingto experiencea way of leaming and anotherthing to recognise its feasibility as a teach-ing method ... it is reasonable to hypothe-sise thatformalpopularmusic instrumentaltuition methods have muchin common withformal classical instrumental tuition andrelatively little in common with informalmusic learningpractices"(178).Green is clear what the benefits ofinformal learning are, and these includethe enjoymentthepopularmusicians derivefrom theirpracticeandlearning.A key find-ing in Green's book is that, because theyenjoyed and valued what they play, themotivation of popular music learners ishigh. They like the music they play so theyperseverewith it. Interestingly, hey demon-strate a tendency to consider that they hadnot learntanythingunless it had been taughtto them formally - a sad reflection oncontemporaryattitudes and values.A central learningpractice of the popu-lar musicians studied is attentive learningand close copying of recordings.This goesalong with a dispositionto make the writtenalways secondary to the aural(a great dealof commercially published popularmusic is

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inaccurateanyway - so it is good that themusicians can use their aural skills well)(96). A great deal of popularmusic learn-ing is "byfeel, ear, trial and error" 92). Inaddition,peer learning goes on though thecopying and exchanging of ideas and tech-niques (97). Learningpractices are akin tothe ways young childrenpick up language(100), which begins with a jumble of rela-tively unconscious processes out of whichgreaterlevels of conscious systematizationdevelop (103).Earlier n the book Green comes up withthe rather startling hypothesis, yet to befully tested, that "Young musicians whoacquire their skills and knowledge morethrough informal learning practices thanthrough formal music education may bemore likely to continue playing music,alone or with others, for enjoyment in laterlife" (56). If this is true, and my ownresearch and observations suggest that itmight well be, it is a considerable indict-ment of formal music education.If the mainachievement of any form of education is toshow people thatultimatelytheyare failuresand to so demotivatethem that they do notwish to continue with that activity, thathardly rates as a significant educationalachievement.

Formal music education"neglects" heseinformal learning practices, Green argues,and is impoverished as a result. Formalmusic education cannot attempt an exactemulationof informal music learning prac-tices butit can incorporate ome of the valu-able practicesinto its repertoryof methods(184). Of these, crucial would be listening,watching and copying, including "solitary,close attention to recordingsof music theylike andidentify with"(185, 189).

Defying the aural nature of music, it iscommon with some teachers in classicalinstrumental uition for students o work at apiece thattheyhave never heardperformed.(I would go further hanGreenandsay thatI have known teacherswho felt that to listento a piece that was being studied was a type

of cheating - the test of the student shouldbe whethertheycould get the music "off thepage".) Green would have instrumentalteachers incorporate listening as part oftheirpreparation ndpracticeroutines 188)and have pupils learn by listening andclosely copying recordings - ironically areplicationof "ahighly traditionalandfor-mal pedagogic method in that it involvesobedience to the authority of a master"(189). I totally agree with this: I have longfelt that auralcopying is a great stimulantto the development of musicianship andso much more rewarding than arid auralexercises.

The otherimportantarea that instrumen-tal pedagogy could incorporatewould bestimulating "interactingwith their friendsand peers". In classroom teaching I havelong felt that too often far too muchtime istaken up with explanation and instructionandnot enough with actuallyplaying.Dex-terityandfacilitycome throughpracticeanduse, and thus lessons I have observedwheremost of the time is spent performingandinteracting musically (as in a WestAfricanpercussion ensemble) have, I would say,resultedin the best learning experiencesforpupils. Western instrumental eachershavelong been wedded to the idea of the soloinstrumental esson and haveonly tendedtomove away from it with reluctance underthe pressure of economic necessity. As anumber of educationalists have arguedandas is the practice n othercountries, t is per-haps time to see the positive advantagesofgroupinstrumental eaching.I am loath to suggest an area that thebook does not tackle and which it was notGreen's intention to tackle, so this para-graphis more of a thought sparkedby herbook than a criticism. Certainsocial forcesin recentyears (includingboth Conservativeand New Labour politicians) have madesocial class a sort of taboo subject.Issues ofsocial class impinge strongly on this areaand yet tend not to get discussed. Thematter is quite simple. The admission to

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universitycourses of music is often condi-tional on theachievement of a high gradeinanABRSM instrumentalexamination.Thisin turnalmostalways dependson long-termparentalmoral andfinancialsupport n buy-ing instrumentsandpayingfor instrumentallessons (whether private or school-based)and supporting and encouraging practice.This thereforedependson having sufficientfinancial resources and the disposition tosee this as a good thing to spendmoney on.This inevitably leads to a filtering-outprocess that excludes people from familybackgroundsthat are unable or not cultur-ally disposed to give the necessary supportto musical children. Let us hope that thedevelopment of popular music courses,more flexible entry requirementsand dif-ferent methods of assessing potential andability will do something to address theaccessibility of university music study.Some of the interviewees were rejectedwhen they triedto enteruniversity.I wouldhave loved to know more about the socialand culturalbackgroundsof the musiciansGreeninterviewed.

There is much that is rich, challengingand thought-provokingin this book. It ischallenging to many established ideas andpractices. It is also optimistic and humane.It will be interesting to see the reactionsto the book and its proposals. I seriouslyexpect it to be rubbishedor ignoredin somequartersas it is simply too challenging toexisting paradigms.But Green,in hercare-ful empiricalwork,has groundedher studywell and her ideas and findings need to beconsidered seriously.ReferenceEveritt,Anthony 1997)Joining n: an investi-

gation intoparticipatorymusic. London:Calouste GulbenkianFoundation.VIC GAMMON

School of Music, University of Leedsv.a.fgammon@ eeds.ac. uk

Y. KOJAMAN, The maqam music tradi-tion of Iraq. London: Y. Kojaman([email protected]) 2001.258pp., illustrations, musical exx.,tables, compact discs. ISBN 0-9539752-1-5.

When Rodolphe D'Erlanger wrote hismonumental study of the melodic modes,rhythms and forms of modem Arab music,he classified his data according to twomain "branches" r traditions: he "hispano-arabe", represented by Morocco, Algeriaand Tunisia, and the "orientale", repre-sented by Egypt, Syria and, implicitly, therest of the Arab world (D'Erlanger 1949:334ff; 1959:141ff).

D'Erlanger's work was originally pre-sented to the first internationalcongress ofArab music, held in Cairo in 1932. At thislandmarkevent, an unprecedentedgather-ing of ensembles from Morocco, Tunisia,Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraqperformedto leading musicians and schol-ars from Europe, Turkeyand variousArabcountries. As ChristianPoche has observed,"musicianscoming from far afield ... whowere thought to practise the same art,far from revealing themselves as homoge-neous, literally astounded observers withtheirdegreeof diversity" Poche 1987:100).TheIraqiurban radition, l-maqdmal-iraqi,was represented by the celebrated singerfrom Baghdad, Muhammadal-Qubbanchi,accompanied by the traditional ensembleknown as al-chalgi al-baghdadi. Theirperformances revealed a unique melodicrepertory,distinct in its formal procedures,performancepracticeandterminologyfromthe neighbouring "oriental" traditions ofEgypt and Syria.Since 1932, numerous historical andtheoretical studieson the Iraqimaqdmhaveappeared n Arabic,andseveral notatedver-sions of the repertoryhave been published.Yet, with the exception of the importantcontributions of Scheherazade QassimHassan, the European-languageliterature

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