What We Teach and What They Learn: Social Identities and Cultural Backgrounds Forming the Musical Experience

Abstract

Abstract This paper reviews the literature on identity to highlight some major ideas in music education. We discuss how people construct musical knowledge within a particular cultural context and social background and its consequences for instruction. At the same time, we illustrate different issues by showing excerpts from our research. Employing theoretical resources, coming from different trends on what identity is, this paper consists of four parts. In the two first sections, we will discuss the concepts of social and musical identities, making evident the ways individuals construct meanings and interact with their cultural environment in the shaping of their social identity. In the third and fourth sections, we will argue the role of schools as shapers of identities; concluding that, in musical training, a focus on fostering broader artistic experience is more important than a focus on academic content, increasingly more so in a contemporary globalized world. "Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I’m not the same me I was." —Ernesto Che Guevara