Abstract

Musicking holds tremendous potential for reducing prejudice and increasing intercultural empathy. Increasing creative agency in music holds great possibility for increasing individual agency in extra-musical life domains, and thereby doing social justice work. But what are the most effective pedagogical strategies for enabling both creative agency and positive intercultural engagement, and how can researchers best evaluate them? What are the logistical and ethical challenges of organizing an applied ethnomusicology/community music project that integrates diverse heritage musics and creativities in a multicultural society? In this interactive working seminar, Professor of Ethnomusicology Juniper Hill will begin with an overview of her previous ethnographic research on community music programs in South Africa and her new action research project in Germany. She will then raise methodological and ethical questions relating to such projects and invite all present to contribute to a discussion of how to meet these challenges.

Juniper Hill is Professor and Chair of Ethnomusicology in the Institute of Musical Research at the Julius Maximilian,University of Würzburg. A recipient of a Marie Curie, Alexander von Humboldt, and two Fulbright fellowships, among other awards, she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Finland, South Africa, and the US, and Ecuador. Her research interests include creativity, intercultural dynamics, revival, and pedagogy in higher education and informal learning. She is the author of Becoming Creative: Insights from Musicians in a Diverse World (OUP 2018) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival (OUP 2014).