Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools by Geoffrey Baker (review)

IF 0.7 0 MUSIC
Kim Boeskov
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According to Johansen, the self-critical turn is characterized by an increasing number of music educators directing criticism toward music education itself by denouncing overly romantic visions of “the power of music” and scrutinizing how music educational practices are implicated in the propulsion of problematic social forces of inequality, oppression, and injustice. Baker’s widely read book from 2014, El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth,2 thoroughly denounced the globally acclaimed Venezuelan ‘musical miracle’ as a myth. Based on extensive field work in Venezuela, Baker painstakingly dissected El Sistema as an archaic, morally, and pedagogically flawed model of music education veiled in the empty rhetoric of music as a tool of social redemption and documented how such models are ripe with opportunities for abuse, in every sad sense of the word. The continuation of Baker’s critical project is published in the form of a four-hundred-page book, entitled Rethinking Social Action Through Music. Baker presents the text as “a ‘post-El Sistema’ project”3 as it constitutes a departure [End Page 92] from his preoccupation with ‘The System’ toward potential alternatives to the Venezuelan model. He finds such an alternative in the Red (Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín), a network of music schools in the Colombian city of Medellín, which figures as the center of attention in Baker’s institutional ethnography. However, even as the Colombian institution is invoked as a counterexample to its Venezuelan sibling, the Red is not held up for its ability to enact social change or display of innovative pedagogical principles. What Baker finds exemplary and worthy of investigation is the willingness he locates within the administrative layer of the Red to continuously engage in reflective work with regards to the tensions, conflicts, and pitfalls, as well as potentials of musical-social work. Particularly, Baker’s attention is directed to the decision-making processes and discussions among the leaders of the institution; how senior staff members adopt self-critical stances, how needs for institutional change are recognized, the recurring frictions between musical staff and members of the institution’s social team, and tensions between public statements expressing confidence in the program’s efficacy and internal conversations full of ambivalence and doubt. It is with reference to the reflexive processes of the Red that Baker conducts insightful and well-informed discussions of a range of themes relevant to music educators and scholars. Baker situates his analysis within the wider landscape of SATM (Social Action Through Music), which can roughly be understood as the field of musical practice emanating from the large socio-musical orchestral programs conceived in Latin America in the last decades of the 20th century and subsequently spread as ‘Sistema-inspired’ offspring throughout the globe in the beginning of the 21st century. Yet, the discussions found in this book are easily connected to pertinent themes of the philosophy and sociology of music education, such as the notion of artistic citizenship, decolonization, the political nature of music education, ‘the social’ in music education, to name a few. One of the striking qualities of this book is its ability to identify important issues in the local context of Medellín, extract the underlying mechanisms and through empirical examples unfold a much broader discussion of what social justice and social change might mean in the field of music education. Baker, originally educated as an ethnomusicologist, reflects on these topics with depth and nuance, underscoring the relevance of approaching these complex issues through ethnographic work, rather than basing such discussions solely on conceptual exploration. Appearing as a red line throughout the book is Baker’s insistence on foregrounding the ambiguity and ambivalence of musical-social work. 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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools by Geoffrey Baker Kim Boeskov Geoffrey Baker: Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021) If indeed there exists, as Geir Johansen has proposed,1 a self-critical movement within the field of music education, Geoffrey Baker is undoubtedly one of its leading figures. According to Johansen, the self-critical turn is characterized by an increasing number of music educators directing criticism toward music education itself by denouncing overly romantic visions of “the power of music” and scrutinizing how music educational practices are implicated in the propulsion of problematic social forces of inequality, oppression, and injustice. Baker’s widely read book from 2014, El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth,2 thoroughly denounced the globally acclaimed Venezuelan ‘musical miracle’ as a myth. Based on extensive field work in Venezuela, Baker painstakingly dissected El Sistema as an archaic, morally, and pedagogically flawed model of music education veiled in the empty rhetoric of music as a tool of social redemption and documented how such models are ripe with opportunities for abuse, in every sad sense of the word. The continuation of Baker’s critical project is published in the form of a four-hundred-page book, entitled Rethinking Social Action Through Music. Baker presents the text as “a ‘post-El Sistema’ project”3 as it constitutes a departure [End Page 92] from his preoccupation with ‘The System’ toward potential alternatives to the Venezuelan model. He finds such an alternative in the Red (Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín), a network of music schools in the Colombian city of Medellín, which figures as the center of attention in Baker’s institutional ethnography. However, even as the Colombian institution is invoked as a counterexample to its Venezuelan sibling, the Red is not held up for its ability to enact social change or display of innovative pedagogical principles. What Baker finds exemplary and worthy of investigation is the willingness he locates within the administrative layer of the Red to continuously engage in reflective work with regards to the tensions, conflicts, and pitfalls, as well as potentials of musical-social work. Particularly, Baker’s attention is directed to the decision-making processes and discussions among the leaders of the institution; how senior staff members adopt self-critical stances, how needs for institutional change are recognized, the recurring frictions between musical staff and members of the institution’s social team, and tensions between public statements expressing confidence in the program’s efficacy and internal conversations full of ambivalence and doubt. It is with reference to the reflexive processes of the Red that Baker conducts insightful and well-informed discussions of a range of themes relevant to music educators and scholars. Baker situates his analysis within the wider landscape of SATM (Social Action Through Music), which can roughly be understood as the field of musical practice emanating from the large socio-musical orchestral programs conceived in Latin America in the last decades of the 20th century and subsequently spread as ‘Sistema-inspired’ offspring throughout the globe in the beginning of the 21st century. Yet, the discussions found in this book are easily connected to pertinent themes of the philosophy and sociology of music education, such as the notion of artistic citizenship, decolonization, the political nature of music education, ‘the social’ in music education, to name a few. One of the striking qualities of this book is its ability to identify important issues in the local context of Medellín, extract the underlying mechanisms and through empirical examples unfold a much broader discussion of what social justice and social change might mean in the field of music education. Baker, originally educated as an ethnomusicologist, reflects on these topics with depth and nuance, underscoring the relevance of approaching these complex issues through ethnographic work, rather than basing such discussions solely on conceptual exploration. Appearing as a red line throughout the book is Baker’s insistence on foregrounding the ambiguity and ambivalence of musical-social work. In fact, his critical encounter with the field...
通过音乐重新思考社会行动:寻找Medellín音乐学校的共存和公民身份杰弗里·贝克著(评论)
杰弗里·贝克:《通过音乐重新思考社会行动:Medellín音乐学校寻求共存与公民权》,作者:金·博斯科夫杰弗里·贝克:《通过音乐重新思考社会行动:Medellín音乐学校寻求共存与公民权》(剑桥,英国)如果真像Geir Johansen所提出的那样,在音乐教育领域存在一场自我批判运动,Geoffrey Baker无疑是其中的领军人物之一。根据约翰森的说法,自我批评转向的特点是越来越多的音乐教育家将批评指向音乐教育本身,谴责对“音乐的力量”过于浪漫的看法,并仔细审视音乐教育实践如何与推动不平等、压迫和不公正的问题社会力量有关。贝克在2014年出版了一本广受欢迎的书《体系:编排委内瑞拉青年》,书中彻底谴责了享誉全球的委内瑞拉“音乐奇迹”是一个神话。基于在委内瑞拉广泛的实地工作,贝克煞有煞有章地剖析了El Sistema,认为它是一种古老的、道德上的、教学上有缺陷的音乐教育模式,这种模式被掩盖在音乐作为社会救赎工具的空洞修辞之下,并记录了这种模式是如何成熟的,在每一个悲伤的意义上都有被滥用的机会。贝克的批判计划的延续以一本400页的书的形式出版,名为《通过音乐重新思考社会行动》。Baker将文本呈现为“后el Sistema”项目3,因为它背离了他对“体制”的关注,转而寻求委内瑞拉模式的潜在替代方案。他在哥伦比亚城市Medellín的音乐学校网络Red (Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín)中找到了这样一种选择,它是贝克的制度人种志关注的中心。然而,即使哥伦比亚大学被认为是委内瑞拉兄弟学校的反例,红色大学也没有因为其实施社会变革或展示创新教学原则的能力而受到赞扬。贝克发现值得研究的是,他在红色的行政层面中发现了一种意愿,即不断地从事关于紧张、冲突和陷阱的反思工作,以及音乐社会工作的潜力。贝克特别关注的是机构领导人之间的决策过程和讨论;高级工作人员如何采取自我批评的立场,如何认识到机构变革的需求,音乐人员与机构社会团队成员之间反复出现的摩擦,以及对项目有效性表达信心的公开声明与充满矛盾和怀疑的内部对话之间的紧张关系。参考《红色》的反思过程,贝克对一系列与音乐教育家和学者相关的主题进行了富有洞察力和见多识广的讨论。Baker将他的分析置于SATM(通过音乐的社会行动)的更广阔的景观中,这可以大致理解为音乐实践领域,起源于20世纪最后几十年拉丁美洲构想的大型社会音乐管弦乐项目,随后在21世纪初作为“系统”启发的产物在全球范围内传播。然而,本书中的讨论很容易与音乐教育的哲学和社会学的相关主题联系起来,例如艺术公民的概念,非殖民化,音乐教育的政治性质,音乐教育中的“社会”,仅举几例。本书引人注目的特点之一是它能够识别Medellín当地背景下的重要问题,提取潜在机制,并通过实证例子展开更广泛的讨论,讨论社会正义和社会变革在音乐教育领域可能意味着什么。贝克最初是作为一名民族音乐学家接受教育的,他对这些主题进行了深入而细微的反思,强调了通过民族志工作接近这些复杂问题的相关性,而不是仅仅基于概念探索的讨论。贯穿全书的一条红线是,贝克坚持强调音乐社会工作的模糊性和矛盾性。事实上,他对这个领域的批判性接触……
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CiteScore
1.60
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10.00%
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