Full Description
This book examines the community-based learning and teaching of 'traditional' music in contemporary Scotland, with implications for transnational theoretical issues. The book draws on a broad range of scholarship and a local case study of a large organisation. A historical perspective provides an overview of new educational formats emerging from the mid-twentieth century folk music revival in Scotland. Practices through which participants encounter and perpetuate the idiom of traditional music include social music-making, learning by ear and participatory and presentational elements of musical performances. Individuals are shown as combining these aspects with their own learning strategies to participate in the contemporary community of practice of traditional music. The work also discusses how experiences of learning contribute to identity formation, including the role and practice of 'tutors' of traditional music. The author proposes conceptualising the teaching and learning of traditional music in community-based organisations as a 'pedagogy of participation'.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Music Examples
Acknowledgements
Preface
Learning and teaching traditional music: Refocusing the questions
Introduction
Transmission and enculturation
'Traditional' music
Community-based settings
A 'non-formal' setting?
Communities of practice
Masters and apprentices
Family
Oral tradition and music literacy
Socialisation
Researching the case study
Methods and ethics
Notes
'A passport into a community': Setting the scene
Learning and teaching: the revival and post-revival contexts
Learning and teaching: formal education
'Take off': community-based organisations
Introducing Glasgow Fiddle Workshop
Locality: a sense of place
Introducing the tutors
GFW in a stylistic community of practice
Notes
'I'm a better learner now': In the class
Joining a class
Learning the shared skills
Learning and teaching a tune
The role of listening
Playing it through
Varying, ornamenting and arranging tunes
Dealing with notation
Choosing repertoire
Notes
'Actually doing it': Participating in performance
Participation or presentation?
GFW sessions
Slow session and pre-class warm-up
Prepare for the pub
Very slow session
Islay Inn session
Concerts
Cèilidh dances
Member-led groups
Notes
'You can make it your own': Individual musical trajectories and organisational constraints
Encouraging agency at GFW
Self-directed learning
Making progress: reflecting on learning
'Expressing' the tune
'Learners' and 'musicians'
Music as leisure and levels of involvement
Non-participation and dissent
Musical trajectories beyond GFW
Notes
'A sense of who we are': Creating a musical identity
A GFW identity
A community-based identity
A traditional music identity
Tensions and boundaries: 'who we are' vs. 'who we are not'
Notes
Community-based learning and teaching: Towards a pedagogy of participation
Learning and teaching traditional music in a post-revival landscape
The ethos of the 'community-based' organisation
Repertoire
Tutors
Learning and teaching practices: between participatory ethos and individual musical trajectory
Conclusion: A pedagogy of participation
