Welcome to our first edition of 2020, with a focus on world music. I'm delighted that we have been able to offer subscribers a free CD with this issue, courtesy of our sister magazine Songlines. The CD features a thrilling selection of tracks, taken from the best of recent world music albums. And on page 25, we provide some handy starter ideas to help you create lively classroom activities based on it.
What exactly is ‘world music’? It's a term denoting music from all over the globe, of course, but it also implies music that is somehow ‘authentic’ – and it would be enlightening to ask your students to consider just what that might mean.
Another discussion point could be the extent to which world music traditions are fundamentally different from music we are more familiar with. Is it possible to look closely at a distant musical form, however strange it might seem at first, and conclude that it is entirely unique? Or is there always some crossover, some point of shared experience?
These are themes that run through the magazine this month. Exploring gamelan on page 16, we discover that while its musical scale and conventions are quite different to those of western music, its sense of communal effort and achievement could translate easily to many schools in the UK. Gamelan is from Indonesia, so for contrast we hear from a British teacher of western music who visited that country's capital, Jakarta, to mentor a group of local piano teachers (page 27). There is obviously something in the western musical approach – graded exams and all – that meets a demand in Indonesia, and it is interesting to consider how alien some western musical practices might seem when they become someone else's ‘world music’.
All things considered, perhaps an interest in world music is simply an interest in music – in all its dizzying variety and with its wide range of social implications. As ever, I hope this issue of Music Teacher supports you in exploring such ideas with your students.
