Voicing Imbas: Performing a Philosophy of Music Education

This article explores the proposition that the performance of music has the potential to make an important contribution to philosophical inquiry relevant to music education. This proposition engages a number of different scholarly trajectories that emerge from a perceived need to redress an imbalance in the understanding of knowledge. It suggests that imbas or performed knowledge offers a quality of insight into human life. The nature of this insight is experiential and accessed through performed actions. What is happening at the Irish World Academy, the discussion argues, is the performance of a philosophy of music education, a philosophy that places performance at the heart of its pedagogical enterprise.