Music Education Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2009
Journal
British Journal of Music Education
Volume
26
Issue
2
First Page
213
Last Page
224
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265051709008444
Abstract
Using Marx as a lens through which to interrogate music methodology, in particular those espoused by Orff and Kodaly, this article suggests that rather than the free play and creativity Orff and Kodaly intended, the implementation of these methods in a strict and unmindful manner, often alienates both teacher and student from musicking. Thus these methods have become more real than the music itself and as such, music making within them is abstracted from the use-value of musicking and consequently exchanged as a commodity. The article explains how methods become a form of production that serves to reproduce systems of domination as well as a very particular form of cultural capital. This lens also allows us to realise that, as we move farther away from the process of inquiry originally embedded in the conception and construction of these musical engagements, the educative process becomes more and more myopic. This, in turn, determines, delineates and narrows possibilities of and for meaningful learning.