Harmolodic Pedagogy and the Challenge of Omni-Musicality

Abstract This essay considers the pedagogical legacies of ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood and jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, both of whom began their careers studying musical improvisation in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Drawing from a contemporary pedagogical case study that draws from those legacies, The Omni-Musicality Group at UCLA, the article posits four ethical standards that can guide music teachers in jazz studies and ethnomusicology alike towards cultivating ethical dispositions that are relevant to twenty first-century challenges. This is framed in terms of Aristotelian virtue ethics, which leads to a discussion of the relevance of musical universals not as ontological or aesthetic questions, but as ethical ones.84