When I was a child, I emphatically rejected the idea of ever learning how to play the piano.

It always appeared to me as the stereotypical activity for “smart” suburban kids, and since I fell into that category, it was just expected of me. But the prospect of spending hours of lessons and rigorous practice sessions on fingerings, posture, and all the other aspects of early classical music training never appealed to me. Even as I learned other instruments, from recorder, to guitar, to clarinet and eventually bass clarinet (which often comically towered over my small frame), I never established strict practice routines, and one by one they eventually fell out of my life as well. However, around my second year of high school, I picked up a peculiar habit. After all the students and teachers had left, I started to sneak into the back closet of the music classroom. I would close the door, turn off the lights, and make my way to the electronic keyboard that rested there. For a half hour to an hour at a time, multiple times a week, I would just explore the instrument with no knowledge of formal technique whatsoever. Using a harmonic language that I developed from my music classes, my time in All-State honors choirs, musical influences at home, or even the songs of my church choir, I taught myself to improvise and express the musical ideas that were deep in my mind, using this instrument that I never thought I would ever sit down and play.

Following my high school education, I attended the Michigan State University College of Music and received a Bachelor of Music in Music Education. While there, I received classical vocal training from some of the nation’s foremost opera singers and choral conductors and deepened my understanding of Western music theory and history. At the same time, I fell deeply in love with contemporary a cappella (as made famous in the movie Pitch Perfect), as a way to blend choral technique with a more diverse and relevant set of musical repertoire. I grew immensely in this environment directing and arranging music for my own ensemble, State of Fifths, which went on to compete in and win a number of regional competitions and awards. I later expanded to arrange for and coach scholastic and professional groups across the Midwestern United States.

This type of broad exploration is often missing within academic discussions about music education. If featured in sociology studies, the subject area is often only heralded for positive statistical relationships between taking music classes and standardized test scores. Music education advocates, seeking any ammunition to fight against the tide of shrinking funding, will then lift up these arguments with administrators and legislators. Even thriving music education programs often resemble the types of lessons that I rejected as a child. Choirs, bands, and orchestras mimic conservatory models, rarely deviating from classical repertoire and technique. Genres of popular music are often only included as “dessert”, a final concert reward after spending the year on what directors deem to be more meaningful content.

These recognitions are what first led me into music education policy, before shifting to education policy and public policy more broadly. Pursuing this, I came to attend the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with focuses in Education Policy and Democracy. In my second year, I had the immense privilege of studying with Dr. Nathan at the Graduate School of Education and joining EDU A310S, a course at the intersection of my interests where we observed examples of democratic schools and constructed frameworks of democratic education based on our observations and prior experiences, which forms the basis for this chapter.

I argue that this status quo represents neither the proper goals, justifications, nor methods of music education, and will apply the pillars of my framework of democratic education to the context of a music classroom, in hopes of presenting a general model of Democratic Music Education.

Framework for Democratic Music Education

Equitable Decision-Making

Democratic music education begins with a policy landscape created through equitable decision-making.

Democracy in the broadest sense is defined by the ability of a population to have meaningful input on governing decisions to which they are subjected. In a government sense, definitions range from the presence of free and fair elections to the incorporation of equal voice and equal rights. This is the same in the general school context, from the nature of assessment to classroom structure, the design of a democratic form of education must incorporate broad bases of feedback from students and community members. From the natures of dress codes to the types of performances done in a year to the repertoire, this is also present in the music classroom. Often, appointed or elected councils of dedicated choir/band student leaders, and parent-led music booster organizations which guide supplemental fundraising will be deeply involved with the teacher in the year’s planning. This is crucial for helping students to facilitate learning at their own pace and with their own interests, as I was able to do at the keyboard in high school.

Community and Belonging

Democratic music education fosters a sense of belonging for all in the community: students, teachers, parents, and administrators alike.

This is nowhere better exemplified than in choir programs as they can become the centerpieces of communities. In Auburn Hills, Michigan, the small city where I grew up, local businesses would often advertise choir events in the front windows of their stores and pay for advertisements in the concert programs. Then the choirs and other small ensembles would perform at Christmas tree lightings, at sports events, in local parades, and more. This is not at all unique to Auburn Hills, and I saw it replicated in small towns across Michigan when I would go on tour or clinic as a music teacher. Music classrooms also tend to be homes for students who are considered outcasts elsewhere in the school setting: from those that do not perform well in other academic subjects to those that are seeking a social space to fit in with others who have common interests. They find that in the shared experiences of learning and discussing music, traveling for events, and the emotional release of performing pieces on stage. Performing in an ensemble is a difficult endeavor, requiring constant skill development as well as intellectual and emotional courage, but it is also a collective one. The effectiveness of a performance depends on how well each voice can recognize their own identity, how they can meld with the voices around them, and how strongly that shared purpose resonates with their audiences through song. Music classrooms can be both a place of unity for the broader community, as well as a micro-community for students within school environments, helping them to grow socially as well as academically.

Agency and Achievement

Democratic music education builds a sense of student agency and recognizes excellence and achievement in all forms.

This tenet places a responsibility on music educators in a democratic classroom to be adaptive and recognizes both multiple points of entry (within levels of ability, cultural background, and prior understanding) and multiple conceptions of success. More concretely, in my classroom this means recognizing that a student with a developed ear from singing in the church, a student that has been reading music in private instrumental lessons for years, and a student that spends hours making hip-hop beats on their computer after school, all present types of musical excellence. The way that I shape my teaching must validate their differing experiences and advance the skills necessary for our shared context as well as the skills specific to their own musical understandings. Metrics of success and achievement must be similarly tailored in this way, encouraging students to grow in our shared musical context, but also providing space for them to actively make decisions within their own. What does it mean for them to be a musician or an artist? What do they hope to create, and for whom? The act of finding these answers will open avenues for self-initiated musical endeavors to be recognized. In a band setting, this may take the shape of having recording assignments throughout the year that include parts of the ensemble repertoire as well as passages and solo sections from songs that a student listens to outside of school or allowing students to put together a ‘garage band’ of friends with a shared musical interest for an assignment.

Open and Guided Communication

Democratic music education enables learning through open and guided communication.

Learning music is more than just skill-building; it is learning to engage with and critique music as a form of personal and cultural expression. It is building language to have informed conversations about musical elements present in the music you listen to, as well as to reflect on your own performances. I would joke with students in music theory classes that after leaving, they will never hear music the same way again. What once was merely a song now becomes a myriad of intricate decisions on melody, harmony, instrumentation, and more. In the best cases, students can understand the depth of these creative choices and apply their findings to the music they create. The classroom functions to grant the initial vocabulary and encourage them to apply it in conversations about music that holds meaning to them or to music that they wish to explore. Intellectual curiosity then opens the door to discussing the contexts, stories, and values that lie within every piece of music, which motivates even more impactful discourses.

World-Shifting Impact

Democratic music education has the ultimate end of enabling students to use music to have a meaningful impact on the world around them.

At the core of my music education philosophy is a phrase that many of my students have heard me say ad nauseam: “Music is Storytelling”. At its core, music is a collection of organized sound and silence that often moves people as a form of entertainment or cultural expression, but it also has immense power as a narrative tool. Music is at the core of history’s most important social movements, with powerful calls to action. Music allows people to communicate their deepest wishes across divisions of language and nationality. Through music, education is able to complete a task that is vital to the personal growth of students in a modern world, and that is to teach empathy. Through songs, and studying the cultures and backgrounds of the artists that create them, students are able to more critically engage with the world around them. The unique emotional effect of music allows deeper connections to be forged between people.

In the process of teaching or running clinics with a choir or an a cappella group, after we work through the basic musicianship, I will always ask the group, “What is this about?” or “What are you trying to communicate?” Some groups want to put on a good show, others want to tell a specific story, and yet others have a more general message in mind. A strong musical background allows students to recognize and engage with these meaningful messages in the music they hear, and then share their own messages, through songwriting, performance, protest, or other artistic outlets. This is the most powerful tool that students can gain, more than any grade or test score, as it grants them the ability to move people, and through them, change the world.

Applying the Framework in a Vocal Music Education Context

In summary, a democratic music education begins with equitable decision-making, incorporates community and belonging, recognizes student agency and achievement, engages them in learning through open and guided communication, and enables them to have world-shifting impact throughout their lives. To more specifically apply this framework to the vocal music classroom in which I am most familiar, I focused on three questions: “Who is singing?”, “What do we sing?”, and “Why do we sing?”

The Who? element incorporates the sense of community and equitable decision-making tenets. Answering this question begins with a recognition that singing is not solely an innate talent that is either possessed from birth or not, it is a skill to be built. Anyone with the desire to develop that skill or engage in the community is welcome. The process of developing the membership of the ensemble should encourage students of all backgrounds to join and contribute. This also encourages diversity and provides space for a broader population to engage in the process of music making.

The What? element is closely tied to this, especially when it comes to aspects of diversity, as it encourages students and educators to explore beyond the types of music traditionally included in academic settings. In addition to the genres of antiquity within the Western Classical Art Music tradition, students and educators alike should have the ability to study contemporary popular music genres from around the world with the same rigor and depth. It facilitates student agency by granting them the authority to choose music to perform that aligns with their experiences and values and facilitates open communication by building the language to discuss the values of different musical cultures.

Finally, the Why? focuses on the potential impact of democratic music education. Not every student in a music class will go on to pursue a professional career as an artist or musician. So why then is it still critical? The rationale for teaching this subject is not solely to secure 1st Division competition ribbons and medals, to add skills to a resume, or to improve standardized test scores in other subjects. The purpose of music education in this view is one of enabling students to change the world around them through a medium that is ubiquitous throughout our society and culture. Students are able to cultivate emotional literacy, empathy, and broader social and cultural understanding. Music educators in a democratic classroom constantly push themselves and their curricula in order to provide opportunities for students to realize this potential. From writing their own music that shares their personal stories to allowing space for smaller ensembles to perform outside of the classroom, and so much more. This model is best exemplified in many arts-centric schools, some of which are detailed elsewhere in this book, but there is a broader case to be made that every K-12 music classroom can ask these questions and provide this type of impact for its students and the world around them.

Lift Every Voice

From the outside, music education tends to resemble a black box. Students and teachers go in, and then performances come out, occasionally accompanied by stories of the hard work and tight relationships that are formed in the process. But the actual mechanics of this, the long hours of rehearsing and traveling and practicing, the emotional effort put in by teachers and students alike to create works of art together, tend to be obscured to those outside of the immediate community. Music education thus tends to take a back seat as it is also not a subject that lends itself well to standardized testing, or the types of quantitative data claims about long-term earnings or other metrics of economic success that flood policy discourses. Many skills and facilities built in a music classroom fly under the radar of assessment and students may not even recognize them. But in a time where highlighting “student voice” is paramount to education policy, music education has to be at the center, as nowhere else in the school is the promise of lifting up student voices as literally realized as in the music classroom.

I often think back on the story of my personal journey with the piano as well because it summarizes these broader lessons for democratic education. If I had been forced to take private piano lessons as a child or required by my parents to practice my instruments every single day under strict supervision and constant assessment, it likely would have pushed me away. Instead, I was given the space to expand my musicianship at my own pace and grew to invite others into the types of music that moved me the most. Now, music has become the way that I best understand and engage with the world around me.

I have used this musical language to arrange pieces about joy and sorrow, love and loss, faith and truth. I have used it to make connections with musicians and communities across the country. I have used it to find my voice as a young Black man and speak out against the systemic injustices in this world. And I have used it to teach my students to do the same.

This, the use of music learning processes to become more fully realized human beings that can shape the world around us, is democratic education in its truest form.