Whose cultural capital is it anyway?
‘the best that has been thought and said’
When considering ‘the best that has been thought and said’ in English literature, it would be unlikely that anyone would argue with Shakespeare and Dickens falling into that category. But you couldn’t reliably argue that either of these is ‘better’ than Hugo or Goethe because they come from completely different languages and traditions.
Music is like this too. It is made up of multiple ‘languages’ and traditions, so despite the national curriculum dropping heavy hints about ‘the great composers’ one cannot just default to Beethoven and Mozart as our only form of ‘cultural capital.’ No matter what anyone says, classical music is not inherently ‘better’ than other forms of music, so to truly extend and develop our pupils’ cultural capital we need to look beyond the music of dead white men and embrace the other ‘great composers and musicians’ working across different musical traditions.
Why not look at Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald from the Jazz tradition? Explore Stephen Sondheim and Lin Manuel Miranda’s work in musical theatre? Consider the country music of Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton? Even Ed Sheeran and Gary Barlow could be said to be some of the ‘great composers’ of the pop music tradition. And of course no debate about the value of music education these days is complete without a reference to ‘child of grime’ Stormzy! There are a myriad of options to explore beyond the confines of the Western Classical tradition.
The national curriculum encourages us to explore a range of musical traditions, and if we can find the best exponents of each tradition then we can expand our pupils’ cultural capital at the same time as widening their appreciation of the musics of the world. It is particularly important to show that we value our own pupils’ cultures, so when designing our curriculum we should aim to include musical traditions representative of the cultural mix of our school population. Alongside this we should also value our pupils’ own musical interests, whether or not these are linked to their cultural backgrounds, as this is a powerful motivator as well as a great way to personalise learning.
In short, in order to truly value the cultural capital of music we need to respect all forms of music equally, and yes, that does include, but is not limited to, classical music!
