Pedagogy and Performance Practice, a Multicultural Approach to Musicking and Citizenship

The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance is a school where Western Classical Music and Early Music are a minority amongst other degree programs that focus more on Traditional Irish music or World Music. Within this unique environment, I have—in addition to teaching piano, harpsichord, and chamber music—coordinated numerous cross-cultural and interdisciplinary projects that have aimed to engage faculty, students, and audiences in meaningful dialogue, examples of which I will discuss in this paper. For instance, lectures on Music & Rhetoric within my Performance Practice class incorporate African American sermonizing traditions, including the art of “Whoopology.” In a lecture I call “Stylistic Ownership,” students analyse renditions of Amazing Grace sung by Shape Note singers, as well as by Aretha Franklin, Jessye Norman, and former President Barack Obama. Likewise, my public seminars have brought world-renowned masters of Baroque violin, traverso, and voice into informative conversations with performers of Irish Traditional fiddle, flute, and Sean-nós song. Participants explore their respective approaches to oral and notated performance practices. My pedagogy stems from the core values of multicultural diversity that are exemplified by the highest ideals for which a society strives. Just as in the civic sphere of our common citizenship, Musicking gains from stylistic pluralism. We learn about our own artistic “values” by looking beyond our own history and canon. By not remaining insular, we gain new perspectives by living in a world of diverse practices, while finding common ground by way of our shared intent and communicative (musical) experience.