Toward a Decentered Music Education Using a Rhizomatic Approach

As we work to connect equity to our curriculum and pedagogy, a rhizomatic approach may provide a valuable lens for reconsidering traditional conventions. Such an approach underlines interconnected multiplicity with a noncentered, nonhierarchical emphasis. Applying a rhizomatic method, I offer music teachers some practical applications to challenge conventional curricular tendencies in subtle but important ways. Instead of using an additive approach to the Western classical canon, this approach helps to engage in music comparatively or relationally, which can enable teachers and students to think broadly across categories by recognizing the interconnections between musics. More important, lessons adopting a rhizomatic approach may help teachers and students consider all musics as bearers of equal status and honor many diverse forms of music.