According to Franses (2013, 2014, 2016), artists such as painters, writers, and classic composers did their best work at the optimal moment in their lives, and the moment was found to be close to the divine proportion of 0.6180. This study showed that, on average, songwriters wrote their own hits at 0.5206 of their life, which seems to be related…

In 1950, percussionist and pedagogue Paul Price established an accredited collegiate percussion ensemble course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the first of its kind in the country. In this article, I argue that Price's accreditation of the genre, coupled with his many other entrepreneurial initiatives, was made possible by the…

In this article, we situate songwriting in elementary spaces as a vehicle for personal and musical expression and informed by popular music practices. We offer insights for how educators can anchor students' work by encouraging them to create songs for a specific purpose like shedding light on social issues relevant to their lives. This article…

Modern band programs have spread throughout the United States to create learner-centered and culturally affirming school music experiences for children. The four key concepts of modern band, (1) approximation and scaffolding, (2) decision-making, (3) iconic notation, and (4) culturally sustaining (music education), are congruent with many…

Music and visual art share many common elements, principles, and processes. The numerous commonalities shared between music and visual arts afford for natural, meaningful integration opportunities that create natural synergies. Synergy or syntegration is achieved when the learning outcomes accomplished through the integration of subjects are…

Marching and indoor concert bands have used music from the classical European repertory for many years. The benefits and drawbacks of such usage are numerous. One of the benefits of marching band transcriptions is a wider dissemination of cultural capital to more diverse audiences. To explore the implications of marching band transcriptions of…

Gender in music has been explored over recent decades with growing recognition of the challenges that are faced by women in the field. There has been substantial work exploring the Western music canon but little that addresses the music of Australian women, and more specifically, repertoire written for the wind band genre. With thousands of…

The future of American music education may be found in its past--a time when music teachers instilled lifelong amateur music-making in their students. There are differences between amateur and professional musicianship, and the focus of American music education shifted from amateurism to semiprofessionalism in the mid-twentieth century. An…

This article explores how music and lyrics serve as modes of storytelling in the language classroom, integrating a multimodal approach and the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages. In the 'Sing My Story' project, language students creatively write their own lyrics, which are subsequently performed by either student musicians or target…

The golden section has become a well-known concept in the study and practice of music. However, no study has examined why the golden section may have become so popular in both music practice and analysis. The meta-analysis reported here reveals that the golden section has been related to one or more pieces of music in 113 items of published…

The performing arts, specifically the Mexican balladry called corridos, can offer new vistas for what constitutes civic inclusion, poetics, and worldmaking for racially and linguistically minoritized youth. This paper provides a textual analysis of "El Llanto de El Paso," a corrido (ballad) written by youth balladeer, Josué Rodríguez,…

In Verona, Northern Italy, a music group is revalorizing a local "dialetto" ('dialect') by putting it to music. By both reviving hundred-year old songs and writing their own music and lyrics, they are widening the cultural reach that this language has and they are finding contemporary ways for people to engage with it. Unlike political…

Music is inherently connected to sociopolitical contexts and relations. Music and politics are intertwined both historically and presently, and there is much literature exploring the relationships between music and various political movements. In considering the importance of an approach to understand these connections and relationships, I suggest…

The place of Stephen Foster and the music of American minstrelsy should be reconsidered for the music classroom. Some of this repertoire can be offensive because of its historical context and racially insensitive language. Critical theory can provide a framework for choosing repertoire that creates dialogue about racial structures in music. The…

Originally rooted in aesthetics, David Elliott's thoughts about jazz education have changed considerably from his 1983 dissertation through his 1995 landmark book, "Music Matters," which outlined his praxial music education philosophy. The purpose of this article is to extrapolate the apparent evolution of David Elliott's thoughts about…