Pushing the boundaries of "music": cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary possibilities for "other" musics in the Australian music classroom

This is an exploratory paper which considers approaches, contexts and purposes of music education. It is particularly concerned with how the study of ‘other’ musics, or ‘music of a culture’ in the NSW syllabus, may be reenvisioned, not as separate units, but as integral to the study of music in general. Radano and Bohlman (2000:3) have argued against traditional musicology’s promotion of a musically centred ‘Europe’ “whose cultural and artistic boundaries, despite centuries of global encounter, remain tidy and distinct.” I suggest that in order to avoid such traditional assumptions, music in schools may be taught in ways which emphasize an idea of music as something that has since the earliest times developed in the process of cultural exchange (Fletcher, 2001:599). Understanding music as a socio -cultural and political construct means continuous reflection on problematic concepts like ‘culture’ and ‘authenticity’. It also means pushing the boundaries of what ‘music’ is as a discipline. In this paper, I add to debates on cultural diversity in music education, and emphasize cross - cultural and cross - disciplinary possibilities of music education by pushing music’s cultural boundaries, particularly in relation to television and foreign languages.