Michael Davidson | Decolonising music instrumental teaching in England
Michael has shared the following paper: Decolonising Instrumental Music Teaching in England
Michael Davidson has worked for a music service for 40 years, initially as an instrumental music tutor, before developing and project managing musical inclusion projects. Supervised at SOAS by Angela Impey and Lucy Duran, his doctoral research explores how diversifying instrumental music teaching can build alternative forms of citizenship in England.
Michael is currently lead teacher/researcher within Musicnet-East Changing Tunes, a partnership of Youth Music, Music Mark and Hertfordshire Music Service, and one of 13 founder members of AMIE, the Alliance for a Musically Inclusive England.
The partnership runs a National Music Services’ Working Group for Inclusion and funds action research projects for members to research and share the challenges, enablers and benefits of embedding musical inclusion practice within their core work, rather than as short-term commissioned projects.
Thank you for sharing this paper. I was particularly interested to think about how the points that are raised may also apply to the organisation of the HE curriculum. Where we want to open our doors to a wider range of musicians, students still find barriers in the organisation of the curriculum which can often still reflect the values of graded instrumental progression that you have also described. I think that where you say music education ought to be based on the “contingent, praxial holistic values of music-making beyond aesthetic outcomes” this is key for all forms and levels of music education. There is more to do to think what this could look like in a music HE performance or composition setting, but your paper is a great prompt to do so.