Teachers as Agents of the Repatriation of Music and Cultural Heritage

As the movement to repatriate music from archives gathers steam, the question of how to effectively disseminate the music to people in the culture of origin becomes a pressing issue. This chapter argues that K–12 teachers have a distinctive ability to reintroduce archival music, through three major approaches. In “close-by child-songs by children,” teachers design lessons that incorporate field recordings of children’s music from their home culture, making the music child-centered (and culture-centered). In “child-songs from further afield,” lessons include archived children’s music that is not from the home cultures of the students; such lessons can highlight the similarities across cultures of children’s music. In “adult cultural heritage music,” teachers use the recordings of adults’ musicking experiences in the culture of origin. As such, the music of children is not represented, but the adult musical heritage is disseminated. Examples of these pedagogical approaches to repatriation are provided.