Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T14:30:29.643Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Daughters of Tradition, Mothers of Invention: Music, Teaching, and Gender in Evolving Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Louise Wrazen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since the 1980s, I have been observing members of the Polish Górale community teaching their music and dance in Canada. Over these years I have witnessed several generations continuing or being initiated into a “so-called traditional music of a particular place” (Wolf 2009b:5), that is, the mountains of southern Poland, while otherwise participating in a local culture quite different from that being taught in Canada and the US. Both women and men have been devoting their valuable time to teaching children how to sing, dance, and play in the Górale style (po góralsku) in preparation for a variety of ensemble-based performances. Being variously involved in these activities over the years has led me to consider this transmission process. This paper builds from this experience to reflect more generally on music and dance learning in contemporary contexts and deliberately focuses on the ongoing human component in a process now greatly facilitated by new technologies. In particular, it considers music learning as it relates to paradigmatic gendered performance styles that have been recontextualized within evolving intercultural settings.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 42 , 2010 , pp. 41 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 By The International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Bakan, Michael B. 1999 Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. 1998 “Culture's In Between.” In Multicultural States: Thinking Difference and Identity, ed. David Bennett, 29–36. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinner, Benjamin E. 1995 Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith 2006 Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. (Orig. pub. 1990)Google Scholar
Campbell, Patricia 1991 Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning. New York: Schirmer.Google Scholar
Colwell, Richard, and Richardson, Carol 2002 Ed. The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cooley, Timothy J. 2002 “Migration, Tourism, and Globalization of Polish Tatra Mountain Music-Culture.” European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 9:208–26.Google Scholar
2005 Making Music in the Polish Tatras. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Cooley, Timothy J., Meizel, Katherine, and Syed, Nasir 2008 “Virtual Fieldwork: Three Case Studies.” In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, ed. Gregory Barz and Timothy J. Cooley, 90–107. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cowan, Jane 1990 Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cusick, Suzanne G. 1999 “On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex.” In Audible Traces: Gender, Identity and Music, ed. Elaine Barkin and Lydia Hamessley, 25–48. Zurich: Carciofoli Verlagshaus.Google Scholar
Diamond, Beverley 2001 “Identity, Diversity, and Interaction.” In The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 3: The United States and Canada, ed. Ellen Koskoff, 1056–65. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Francis, Becky, and Skelton, Christine 2001 Ed. Investigating Gender: Contemporary Perspectives in Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, Elizabeth 2004 “Feminist Theory in Music Education Research: Grrl-illa Games as Nomadic Practice (or How Music Education Fell from Grace).” Music Education Research 6/1:67–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Linda, and Renzulli, Linda 2007 “Teaching and Gender.” In Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer. http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405124331_chunk_g978140512433126_ss1-8 (accessed 13 January 2010).Google Scholar
Green, Lucy 1997 Music, Gender, Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart 1996 “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Padmini Mongia, 110–21. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Herbst, Edward 1997 Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theatre. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Herndon, Marcia 2000 “Epilogue: The Place of Gender with Complex, Dynamic Musical Systems.” In Moisala and Diamond 2000:347–59.Google Scholar
Jagger, Alison M., and Bordo, Susan 1989 “Introduction.” In Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstruction of Being and Knowing, ed. Alison M. Jagger and Susan Bordo, 1–10. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Kippen, James 1988 The Tabla of Lucknow: A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 1995 “Theorizing Heritage.” Ethnomusicology 39/3:367–80.Google Scholar
Koskoff, Ellen 1999 “What Do We Want to Teach When We Teach Music? One Apology, Two Short Trips, Three Ethical Dilemmas, and Eighty-two Questions.” In Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, 545–59. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2001 Music in Lubavitcher Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
2005 “(Left Out in) Left (the Field): The Effects of Post-postmodern Scholarship on Feminist and Gender Studies in Musicology and Ethnomusicology, 1990–2000.” Women and Music 9:90–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, Roberta, Dolloff, L. A., and Howe, S. W. 2002 “Feminism, Feminist Research, and Gender Research in Music Education.” In Colwell and Richardson 2002:648–74.Google Scholar
Magowan, Fiona 2007 Melodies of Mourning: Music and Emotion in Northern Australia. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Magrini, Tullia 2003 Ed. Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McGregor, Glenda, and Mills, Martin 2006 “Boys and Music Education: RMXing the Curriculum.” Pedagogy, Culture & Society 14/2:221–33.Google Scholar
MENC (Music Educators National Conference) 1985 Becoming Human through Music. The Wesleyan Symposium on the Perspectives of Social Anthropology in the Teaching and Learning of Music. Reston, Virginia: Music Educators National Conference.Google Scholar
Moisala, Pirkko, and Diamond, Beverley 2000 Ed. Music and Gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Motyka, Władysław 2004 Śpiewnik Górali Polskich. Milówka: Beskidzkie Towarzystwo Oświatowe.Google Scholar
Nettl, Bruno 1983 The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-nine Issues and Concepts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
2005 The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one Issues and Concepts. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. (New edition of Nettl 1983)Google Scholar
Newman, Daniel 1980 The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
OCT (The Ontario College of Teachers) 2004 “Narrowing the Gender Gap: Attracting Men to Teaching.” http://www.oct.ca/publications/documents.aspx?lang=en-CA (accessed 11 January 2010).Google Scholar
OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) 2009 Education at a Glance. http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_39263238_43586328_1_1_1_37455,00.html (accessed 11 January 2010).Google Scholar
Pilcher, Jane, and Whelehan, Imelda 2004 Fifty Key Concepts in Gender Studies. London: Sage Publications. (Reprint 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pine, Frances 1992 “Uneven Burdens: Women in Rural Poland.” In Women in the Face of Change: The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China, ed. Shirin Rai, Hilary Pilkington, and Annie Phizacklea, 57–75. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
1996 “Naming the House and Naming the Land: Kinship and Social Groups in Highland Poland.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2/3:443–59.Google Scholar
Reed, Susan A. 2009 “Women and Kandyan Dance: Negotiating Gender and Tradition in Sri Lanka.” In Wolf 2009a:29–47.Google Scholar
Reyes, Adelaida 1999 Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Rice, Timothy 1994 May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2003 “The Ethnomusicology of Music Learning and Teaching.” College Music Symposium 43:65–85.Google Scholar
Roulston, Kathy, and Mills, Martin 2000 “Male Teachers in Feminised Teaching Areas: Marching to the Beat of a Men's Movement Drums?” Oxford Review of Education 26/2:221–37.Google Scholar
Schippers, Huib 2010 Facing the Music: Shaping Music Education from a Global Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, Mark 2000 Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. (Orig. pub. 1993)Google Scholar
Stokes, Martin 1994 Ed. Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Oxford: Berg Publishers.Google Scholar
Sugarman, Jane C. 2003 “Those ‘Other Women': Dance and Femininity among Prespa Albanians.” In Magrini 2003:87–118.Google Scholar
Szego, Kati 2002 “A Conspectus of Ethnographic Research in Ethnomusicology and Music Education.” In Colwell and Richardson 2002:707–29.Google Scholar
Wnuk, Wlodzimierz 1985 Górale za wielką wodą. Warsaw: Ludowa Społdzielnia Wydawnicza.Google Scholar
Wolf, Richard K. 2009a Ed. Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice, and Experience in South Asia and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2009b “Introduction.” In Wolf 2009a:5–26.Google Scholar
Wrazen, Louise 2004 “Men and Women Dancing in the Remembered Past of Podhale Poland.” The Anthropology of East Europe Review 22/1:145–54.Google Scholar
2005 “Diasporic Experiences: Mediating Time, Memory and Identity in Górale Performance.” The Canadian Journal for Traditional Music 32:43–51.Google Scholar
2007 “Relocating the Tatras: Place and Music in Górale Identity and Imagination.” Ethnomusicology 51/2:185–204.Google Scholar
2008 “Beyond the Polish Tatras: Performing Pride, Identity, Difference?” In The Human World and Musical Diversity: Proceedings from the Fourth Meeting of the ICTM Study Group “Music and Minorities” in Varna, Bulgaria 2006, ed. Rosemary Statelova, Angela Rodel, Lozanka Peycheva, Ivanka Vlaeva, and Ventsislav Dimov, 231–37. Sofia: Institute of Art Studies.Google Scholar
n.d.a “A Singer and Her Voice: Creating a Place of Her Own in the Polish Tatras.” In Performing Gender, Place and Emotion, ed. Fiona Magowan and Louise Wrazen (forthcoming).Google Scholar
n.d.b “The Voice away from Home: Singing with Marysia in Poland and Canada.” In Female Singers in Contemporary Global Contexts, ed. Ruth Hellier-Tinoco (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Znaniecki, Florian, and Thomas, William I. 1996 The Polish Peasant in Europe and America: A Classic Work in Immigration History. Abridged and ed. Eli Zaretsky. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar