oh, that magic feeling!

3 downloads 38912 Views 2MB Size Report
Anthem Project (NAP) as an identity building project, questioning where the ..... powers I believe help make effective my own project of anli-racism through mul- .... The child of color in the website header dramatically illustrates this erasure. The.
OH, THAT MAGIC FEELING! MULTICULTURAL HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY, COMMUNITY AND FASCISM'S FOOTPRINTS DEBORAH BIRADLEY University of Wisconsin-Madison

[email protected]

This paper examines how significant musical moments, occurring within singular contexts, may be performative to the development of community. While community is often viewed within music education as an unequivocal good, I argue that this result may not always be beneficent. In this paper, I look at one unique performiative moment through the lens of anti-racism education as the potentialfor community conceived as multicultural human subjectivity. Drawing upon the arguments of Theodore Adomo, Paul Gilroy, and others, I then examine this same moment as one in which the seeds of fascistic community may also be sewn. From this background, I examine the ongoing project of the National Association for Music Education (MENC) known as the National Anthem Project (NAP) as an identity building project, questioning where the lines blur between solidarity, nationalism, and fascistic forms of community within the potentially significant musical moments that NAP may also foster.

© Philosophy of Music Education Review, 17, no. I (Spring 2009)

DEBORAH BRADLEY

57

INTRODUCTION This paper investigates how significant musical moments, occurring within singular, unique contexts, may be implicated as performative in the development of community.' While music educators often suggest the potential outcome of community as an unequivocal good, my purpose here is to explore 1) how significant musical moments may be performative for community that is open and accepting of difference, experienced as what I have termed "multicultural human subjectivity"; and 2) how such moments may also be performative for fascistic forms of community. After defining multicultural human subjectivity, I describe one particular performance of the Mississauga Festival Youth Choir that, when viewed through discourses of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, and framed within a pedagogy of anti-racism, 2 may potentially be performative for emerging multicultural human subjectivity. I next examine how the same moment may simultaneously contain the seeds of fascism 3 rather than beneficent community, using the writings of both Theodor Adorno and Paul Gilroy as lenses for the interrogation. While multicultural human subjectivity and fascistic community may be viewed as extremes of good and evil respectively, my concern is for the porousness of their boundaries, similar to the way love and hate are considered as manifestations of the same emotion. In this view, striving to develop musically a sense of community always and already runs the risk of the development of its fascistic forms, albeit to greater or lesser extent depending upon the situation. While musical performances resulting in such powerful feelings of community may be rare, they occur with enough frequency to warrant closer examination. Following from this discussion, and with the understanding that "nationalism is another name racism takes," 4 the third section of the paper looks at the National Association for Music Education's (MENC) ongoing National Anthem Project (NAP) 5 as a nationalist identity-building project. My critique of NAP questions where the lines blur between solidarity, nationalism, and fascistic forms of community within the potentially significant musical moments that NAP also fosters.

BACKGROUND My interest in the performativity of specific musical engagements in part derives from mny experience as an adolescent singing in school and community choirs. These experiences led me later in life to question their influence on both my worldview and my pedagogy as a music educator. As a teenager, my choir experiences helped me understand my connection as an individual to the wider world. For example, experiences during the U.S. Civil Rights movement with

58

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW, 17:1

spirituals and freedom songs helped me begin to conceptualize, even if superficially as a young white, middle-class woman, the implications of living in the United States as a person of color. Later in life I began to ponder how these experiences motivatedtme to engage in scholarly work integrating anti-racism pedagogy with music education. My choir experiences gave me the desire to teach, to pass on to others a chance for the type of understandings about the world that I felt I had gained. This desire went beyond sharing the music; I wanted to share the experience of the music. Wayne Bowman concurs that this desire to share experience is crucial to educating musically The desire to share one's passion for music with others is both laudable and crucial to musical instruction. But it is important to remember that this passion is a function not just of what music is,but of our experiences with it,and 6 what and who we have become through such experiences. Bowman's concern for what and who we become through our musical experiences likewise motivates my research. I want to understand better how our engagements with world music may be implicated in constituting identity, here defined as self-understanding. 7 In particular, I want to understand how learning and performing world music within an anti-racism pedagogical perspective may contribute to an emerging self-understanding described as multicultural human subjectivity. My research attempts to understand our experiences with world music as "technologies of the self,"' and the investigation into multicultural human subjectivity9 suggests that in particular contexts, we may be moving beyond restrictive racial, ethnic, and national identities as a result of what Ulrich Beck calls "cosmopolitanizationi," an internal globalization that "transforms everyday consciousness and identities significantly. Issues of global concern are becoming part of the everyday local experiences and the 'moral life-worlds' of the people.'' 0 Victor Roudometof applies Beck's arguments for cosmopolitanization to the societal level, suggesting that cosmopolitan societies may be emerging in which "cosmopolitan values rate more highly than national values."'" He defines cosniopolitanism as a "moral and ethical standpoint,"' 2 but equates Beck's terminology of cosmopolitanrization with the perhaps more familiar term "glocalization,"' 3 where global concerns are embedded in local issues and activities. As Roudometof argues, individuals living in glocalized societies can adopt either opern, encompassing attitudes, or closed, defenisive postures along a Continuum." Operi encompassing attitudes related to cosinopolitaniization suggest the possibility for emerging multicultural human subjectivity, the potential for which may exist when individuals experiernce multiple musical cultures through significant performance exlperiences.

DEBORAH BRADLEY

59

DEFINING MULTICULTURAL HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY My interest in multicultural human subjectivity in part derives from Michel Foucault's notion of the subject as the product of discourse.1" If, as Foucault has argued, subjects are formed through discourse, what effect do multiple, conflicting discourses, or discourses that argue against unitary subjects (the various postmodern discourses), have on the way individuals view themselves? In Performativity and Belonging, Vikki Bell draws from both Foucault's work and that of Judith Butler' 6 on performativity to argue that theories of "the subject" are implicated in the concept of identity. Thus investigations into identity require that attention be turned to "the production of selves as effects."17 Where identity is viewed as an effect produced in response to discourse, the continually shifting, dynamic, and fluid discourses of globalization, cosmopolitanization, and anti-racism suggest multicultural human subjectivity may be one such response. It is important to note that multicultural human subjectivity does not imply a unified subject or a fixed identity. The fluidity of discourse in combination with particularities of place make the notion of "situated subjectivity"18 useful, since discourses affect local concepts of identity in sometimes idiosyncratic and particularistic ways. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper argue that the term identity is called upon to bear too much load, to stand for too many varied concepts. They propose instead "self-understanding" as an alternative for articulating the way individuals think of themselves as the product, or effect, of the discourses that surround them and by which they are most influenced. Self-understanding thus distinguishes how individuals view themselves from political identifications, while acknowledging that these identifications may form part of an individual's self-understanding. Multicultural human subjectivity acknowledges the multiple understandings through which we may "perform ourselves" in response to discourses of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and so forth. As such, I offer it as a term within a politics that is ever vigilant against those ways of posing the relation between places and identities that have too readily sought to locate that relation between people and places, or people and their bodies, or people and history.'9 Mtulticultural human subjectivity as a form of self-understanding suggests resistance to the sometimes over-determined identities constituted within discourses, particularly those of race, ethnicity, and nation. Nonetheless, discourses of race, ethnicity, nationalism, gender, religion, and so forth wield subtle influence on an individual's self-understanding. Within locations marked by transnationalism, concepts of cosmopolitanization, or glocalization, 20 suggest that "something is going on" that affects how individuals living in these locations understand themselves. These understandings may lead to more

60

PHILOSOPHYOF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW, 17:1

open attitudes toward others, or conversely, may contribute to a hardened sense of boundary between "us" and "them" (closed attitudes). Multicultural human subjectivity suggesls an individual-level sense of identity that is open, influenced by glocalizing discourses, including the discourses employed in teaching and learning music r11lt.1iculturally. I view the anti-racisrn pedagogy of my music education praxis as one of the discourses that may influence self-understanding. As such, multicultural human subjectivity suggests resistance to oppressions articulated through socially and discursively constructed identifications of race, ethnicity, nation, gender, ability, and so forth. It also acknowledges the fluidity anid dynamismn of discursively constituted boundaries, providing potentially more open understandlings of what it might mean to be human. I would like to reiterate here the importance of pedagogical discourse ini teaching and learning situations to the possibility for emerging multicultural human subjectivity as a form of self-understanding. Deborah Britzman writes about queering reading practices, such that those practices emerge as an imaginary site for multiplying alternative forms of identifications and pleasures not so closely affixed to-but nonetheless trarisforming--what one imagines their identity imperatives to be. Then pedagogy may be conceived ... as a technique for acknowledging difference as the only condition ofpos-

sibility for community. 1

Borrowing from Britzman's concern for reading practices, when world music practices and multi-cultural forms of music-making are taught within an antiracisin perspective, I believe students rnay begin to re-imagine their individual identity imperatives in ways that: move beyond restriclive identifications based upon discourses of race or ethilicity, gender, national affiliation, and so forth. By using the abstraction multicultural human subjectivity, I seek to disrupt hard categories of race, ethnicity, and nationality, to acknowledge difference as the only condition of possibility for community, where community is understood as an imagined state of being derived from shared attitudes, interests, or goals that exist concomitantly with human differences. In this sense, the term has something in comnmomn with so-called post-race discourses: the "color-blind future,""2 and the "planetary humanity" 2" of which Gilroy writes. Multicultural human subjectivitý, similarly resonates with Richard Rorty's call for a human solidarity that asks us to "think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in tile range of 'us.'"z At a minimum, multicultural human subjectivity suggests tile type of cosmopolitanism Timothy Brennan describes as "a level of abstraction where difference is graspable.""5 The notions of human solidarity, planetary humanity, multicultural human subjectivity, and oilter arguments that re-imagine what it means to be human

DEBORAH BRADLEY

61

without racialization,26 however, while seemingly inclusive and worthy goals for humanity, simultaneously exclude those who do not subscribe to such ideas about human identity. Barend Kiefte argues that we have an "ethical responsibility" to resist forms of community based on unitary identities as a means by which fascistic tendencies of identity may be subverted.27 Although I have herein described the abstraction multicultural human subjectivity as a non-unitary form of resistance to such fascistic tendencies of identity, it would be naive to gloss over the way musical engagement contributes in certain contexts to a sense of oneness, or what Charles Keil labels the "urge to merge."28 In some circumstances this urge to merge becomes restrictive and fascistic; Keil states it unequivocally, "participation is fascism.""9 While this is perhaps an over-simplification, the musical urge to merge sometimes produces profound moments in our lives; the sense of euphoria arising from potent performance experiences may suggest an encounter with something greater than our collective selves. Such euphoria, while magical, is also sorcery, easily manipulated. Within such moments may also lie the seeds of fascism.

HALELUYA! PELO TSA RONA! I offer here a case in point, an example of a musical performance that created a powerful, albeit temporary, sense of community that may be read in multiple ways. The following excerpt from my personal journal describes the scene: On August 6, 2003, MFYC performed for the opening ceremonies of the Prison Fellowship International Convocation at the Sheraton Centre in

downtown Toronto. Over 900 people from more than 180 countries were in attendance as delegates to this event .... We had been hired for this event in part because of our reputation as an "ethnically diverse" group. The event coordinator had specifically requested that we focus on our gospel and world music repertoire, as well as a more "traditional" sacred opening piece. We were well received during our first set, but when we began our second set with "Gabi, Cabi," a South African freedom song, I could feel a change in the energy of our audience, and I thought, although I couldn't

be positive, that I heard a few voices singing along with us. We were singing in Zulu.

However, when we began "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona," there was an absolute explosion of energy in the room. There were cheers and whoops and other exclamations, and I could literally feel the joy in those outbursts on my skin. Although I was facing the choir and so could not see the audience, I could sense that people were on their feet dancing to our song, a sense that was confirmed by the expressions of wide-eyed delight I saw in the eyes of the choir members. There were claps and stomps on the offbeats, whoops and hollers in the rests ... But it was from this energy, this joy, this fleeting moment that I caught a

62

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW, 17:1 glimpse of how very deep a meaning this particular song held for the South African delegates to this event, many of whom had been imprisoned during the apartheid era for the "crime" of seeking justice. 1 think many of the choir members caught a similar glimpse...._.

During interviews with choir members several months later, many stated that the Prison Fellowship Convocation concert was their "most meaningful choir experience. rilese choristers spoke of it as a moment of deep realization that the song was "real" and carried meaning for "real people," as the following interview excerpts indicate: Kate: Yes! And all the Africans started dancing as we sang-because I think they hadn't heard it ["Haleliyahl! Pelo Tsa Rona"] since they left.... And they were SO happy ... it was amazing to see their faces just light up-and even the people around theni- they didn't know what was going on but they were happy to see these people happy-and I think-well, myself and another girl, we were both talking about it for days afterwards.... Raka: I nearly broke down in tears because nobody ever does that at our concerts, and it just made nie very very happy-them doing that-they were all smiling and happy-they all definitely recognized the song! . . . I thought-wow! They recognize this song! My interview with Amber created a performative moment of deep realization for I)oth of us: DB: Any particular experiences you have had with our choir that you feel are especially meaningful for you? Amber: The Prison Fellowship-I always go back to that. I loved that-I loved seeing people who knew [the song]-that was so cool. Now I want to go to like Ghana and do Bobobo and everyone will know it-that would be so cool. .... And they just started cheering and the), got up dancing, and it felt very powerful, because they knew what it was, and we knew what it was. Like we're so used to our parents going, "Oh, that was an interesting, fun piece" but [liey don't understand-but this was like-they are dancing and we know the dance! It was so cool! I can't really describe it but it was like that barrierwas just gone. Liter in the interview, Amber offered further description of her reactions at the PHI concert: Amber: But these people who have virtually completely different lives, these delegates from a country half way across the world from us, it was like it was one corimmion thing-for a minute there it was like there was nothing

DEBORAH BRADLEY

63

between you, I guess. I don't know-I probably would have gone over and danced with them if we weren't on stage. Singing "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" created an epiphany moment for Amber with a profound depth of understanding. Her exclamation, "they knew what it was and we knew what it was!" suggests that this was a moment of recognition that transcended race, ethnicity, and nationality. Gilroy argues in The Black Atlantic that such moments of recognition, "produced in the intimate interaction of performer and crowd," are actually signifying practices mediated through the body. In Gilroy's argument, this musical recognition produces "the imaginary effect of an internal racial core of essence."'" Although like Gilroy, I, too, reject notions of essential internal cores, racial or otherwise, is it not possible that in Amber's moment of recognition, she realized a possibility for multicultural human subjectivity, where despite discourses of race, ethnicity, and nation, there was, at least briefly, only humanity? Deborah Wong describes two Asian-American actors' stereotypic imitations of black Americans as "corporeally enacting the cultural memory of other racialized representations."'3 2This idea resonates deeply with me as it relates to MFYC's curriculum of global song. The performance of"Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" sung by children of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to an international audience, was similarly a corporeal enactment of racialized memories and cultural meanings borne of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Framed within an anti-racism pedagogy, the moment brought these meanings into the local youth choir culture. The racialized memories and cultural meanings signified in "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" entered the moral life-worlds of the choir members when they performed before the South African delegation and an audience who understood it as a signifying practice. In the moment when the boundaries disappeared between performers and audience, the space opened for multicultural human subjectivity. It was a moment of recognition among people of diverse backgrounds, one that allowed choir members to create themselves through others while being themselves. Thus the moment may be viewed as a performative technology for multicultural human subjectivity in which the possibilities for global community, for planetary humanity, were momentarily imagined. Britzman argues that antiracist pedagogy must rethink community in ways that "allow community to be more than a problem of repudiating others through those narcissisms of minor difference.""3 Antiracism as a critical pedagogy, while making apparent Whiteness as a continuing barrier to social justice, must also help our students understand that narcissisms of minor difference do not define any group of people. The "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" moment allowed my students and me to rethink community as the potential for multicultural human subjectivity, as both visceral and corporeal.

64

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW, 17:1

WHERE'S THE PROBLEM? FASCISTIC COMMUNITY AND MUSIC EDUCATION Each time I relay this story, the memories associated with it flood back. It was very powerful musically, and provided a beautiful, if fleeting, moment of hope for a future when humanity may truly embrace the ideals of social justice for all. So-why worry about the "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" moment beyond its inplications for emerging multicultural human subjectivity? I will address these concerns in this next section of the paper through Adorrio's essays on music education during the Third Reich, a regime that manipulated music's performativity to build support for Nazis,i under the guise of German nationalism. A presentation by Alexandra Kertz-Welzel 4 and a resulting published article35 about Adorno's concerns for music education caused rie to take a reflexive hard look at my own anti-racism pedagogy. As Kertz-Welzel explains, Adorno was Linequivocal in his belief that music education should never be put to any use beyond teaching music as an intellectual and sensory experience. His stance was predicated on music education's complicit, in indoctrinating youth to the cause of Nazi fascism during the Third Reich. The issues she raises are troubling, since I cannot deny that in my anti-racism praxis, music serves as a means to disrupt the hegemonic status quo and shallow understandings of people and cultures perpetuated by official multiculturalisn 36 and insipid approaches to 11ultic1ltural education. Music education in the Third Reich reinforced Nazi ideology arrong youth, while the music of certain German composers reiterated German ultra-nationalism to the public at large. I have no doubt that the uses to which the Third Reich put music provide compelling evidence of music's performative powers. After all, these are the very powers I believe help make effective my own project of anli-racism through multicultural and world music education. But Adorno's urgent call for continued sclf-reflection suggests that I take stock of my praxis, asking, is my own pedagogy a fascistic imposition, masquerading as something that many people would accept unquestioningly as "for the common good?" More pointedly, was the "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" moment itself fascist? Did "we" in that moment create a community that excluded those who did not share our sense of solidarity? Multicultural human subjectivity as a form of resistance suggests a sense of "unity" as a goal. As Butler argues, the insistence upon unity implies that "solidarity, whatever its price, is a prerequisite for political action. But what sort of politics demands that 37 kind of advance purchase on unily?"' Kertz-Welzel explains Adorno's criticism of idealistic theories that suggest education can promote "freedom" or "humanity" as ideologies built Upoll unexamined assumptions, since the terms are abstractions that appear to deal with people, but in reality do not. 38 This was an important con-

DEBORAH BRADLEY

65

cern for Adorno: freedom and humanity are terms with popular appeal, terms the Nazis used very effectively to gain power. In the present day, too, these terms are often used in ways that undermine their actual meanings. Although I do not use the term "freedom" to describe goals for my anti-racism pedagogy in multicultural music education, denying that multicultural human subjectivity implies "humanity" would be impossible. As Kertz-Welzel indicates, "Adorno argues passionately against all kinds of blind music activism that serves humanistic and idealistic ideologies in terms of making the world a better place through the musical engagement of children."39 Music education should not be used to "engineer humanity" because the potential results of such engineering can neither be predicted nor controlled. On this point, I must admit that I strongly believe that learning the music of global cultures through an anti-racism lens can help make the world a better place as students gain a deeper understanding of how racism is embedded in North American society. Adorno's controversial theories include the argument that music has an obligation to challenge false consciousness and to create "critical awareness of the problems and contradictions, the alienation and suffering inherent in modern life."14' Avoiding false consciousness, however, occurs only "when [music] presents social problems through its own material and according to its own formal laws-problems which music contains within itself in the innermost cells of its technique."41 Although Adorno's views on music's autonomy contrast with my views of music's sociality,42 I find his concerns with false consciousness useful in rethinking anti-racism as an ideology whose potential for fascism lurks beneath the surface. The abstraction multicultural human subject is primarily a call to a broadened sense of community among humans. Although including more "others" in our constructions of the group we call "us" is something many authors have advocated,43 Adorno argues that music deliberately crafted to foster a sense of community purveys false consciousness. Keil writes that the "urge to merge" associated with musical participation "promises ever deeper and more satisfying knowledge of who we are." While this may at first glance seem desirable, he goes on to caution that "it may become harder ... to distinguish betveen participations that really revitalize, equalize, and decentralize as opposed to those that promise the equalities in the future if followers will only make sacrifices now.."4 Keil's point is well made. How do we make distinctions between musically fascistic participations and those that revitalize, equalize, and decentralize? Following this line of thought, the "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" moment may be understood as one from which fascism could easily have been sparked, with multicultural human subjectivity as its siren song. The moment brought choir members and audience together in a corporeal expression of solidarity; the pal-

66

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW, 17:1

pable memory of that moment lingers like an addict's need for the next hit. This speaks, I believe, to fascism's insidiousness. The feelings arising from being included in a collective "we" are so powerful (recall Amber's statement, "it felt very powerfil"), feel so good and so unconditional, that we seek to replicate those experiences without thought to their potential outcomes. This realization forces me to acknowledge that even the lofty ideal of multicultural human subjectivity holds potential to become fascistic rather than be a recognition of, as Brilzman suggests, "difference as the only possibility for community." NA'IONAL ANTHEM PROJECT With Adorno's concerns about music education and fascism in mind, I turn now to MENC's National Anthem Project (NAP). NAP appears to be born of the music education discipline's anxiely about the declining number of school music programs in the United States. The motivation for NAP derives from a Harris poll suggesting that two out of three American adults don't know all of the words to "The StarSpangled Banner"-and many don't even know which song is our National Anthem [sic] or why it was written. But where did the people who do know the words say they4 learned "The Star-Spangled Banner" and other patriotic music? At school! " The initial website4 6 for NAP equated this apparent lack of knowledge directly to the elimination of music programs from schools, without acknowledging the many other possible explanations for why some people cannot sing the words to the "Star Spangled Banner." As MENC's argument goes, "budget cuts to school music programs in recent years have led to dwindling opportunities for students to learn an important part of their cultural heritage-patriotic music." Based upon an assumption that it is both a social and cultural necessity to sing the "Star Spangled Banner" from memory, NAP is framed within yet another advocacy argument for music education in the schools. SIhave several concerns with this argument. First, MENC's positioning of the "Star Spangled Barner" within the rmusic education advocacy argument locates the anthem as the means to an end, or what Adorno refers to as "a propagandistic device or an ideological export article."'47 Music used thusly is, according to Adorno, a purveyor of false consciousness. Adorno's concern for false consciousness prompted the anxiously reflexive gaze into my own anti-racism pedagogy. Calling upon various world musics to reinforce notions of human solidarity by acknowledging difference diverges considerably, however, from MENC's construclion of a unitary American identity through singing the "Star Spangled Banner" and other patriotic music. MENC justifies NAP through arguments that

DEBORAH BRADLEY

67

"all Americans" should know the lyrics of the national anthem and "take pride in singing it together,"48 yet how the category "American" is constituted is nowhere defined on the project website. Given the controversies surrounding a Spanishlanguage version of the "Star Spangled Banner,"49 one wonders how MENC views singing the "Star Spangled Banner" in Spanish or any other language.10 Would it dilute what it means to be "an American?" The MENC website for the NAP offers little to no acknowledgement (in either text or pictures) that the United States is a country whose population is racially and ethnically mixed, indeed is multi-cultural; the site implies a unitary, predominantly white, American identity. While the face of one child of color appears in the banner repeated at the top of each page associated with NAP, white faces and military bands dominate the majority of website images. As Gilroy writes, ultranationalist and fascist movements of the twentieth century deployed elaborate technological resources in order to generate spectacles of identity capable ofunifying and coordinating inevitable, untidy diversity into an ideal and unnatural human uniformity. Their synthetic versions of fundamental identity looked most seductive where all difference had been banished or erased from the collective. Difference within was repressed in order to maxiinize the difference between these groups and others." The long-view shots of many of the pictures of crowds celebrating the national anthem suggest an eerie uniformity that indeed pictorially erases difference from the collective and, in my opinion, flies in the face of multicultural education. The child of color in the website header dramatically illustrates this erasure. The faces of the two white children flanking the child of color are cropped below their noses, each picture allows the viewer to discern that one white child is a boy and the other a girl. In contrast, only the child of color's eyes and top of head are pictured. Thus, this child's gender cannot be ascertained, graphically rendering s/he not fully human. The NAP website posits the lack of school music programs as denying students the opportunity to learn "an important part of their cultural heritage -patriotic music" (emphasis added). This statement assumes a monolithic American identity and a single American culture. There is no acknowledgement that many U.S. citizens have strong cultural ties to other countries--nations that these citizens likely also consider an important part of their cultural heritage. The statement denies the bi-culturalism of Native Americans or the plural citizenship of many people now residing in the U.S.52 NAP serves to reiterate a U.S. national narrative that may be viewed as denying diasporic identifications through assimilation into a unitary identity of "American." As Gilroy asserts, the nation-state has regularly been presented as the institutional means to bring the spatial and temporal order

68

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW 17:1

of diaspora life to all abrupt end. Yet attempts to assimilate open up "a historical and exlperieritial rift between the locations of residence and the locations of belonging.""3 When individuals are unable to assimilate because of skin color, ethnic heritage, language, or religion, the dichotomy of "us" and "them" is reinforced, accentuatirng differences between groups. '[he NAP slogan "restore America's voice" borders on banality given the United States' dominance as a world power. Yet the statement implies that somehow, the nation has only a weak voice, or even no voice at all, and that singing the national anthem in schools will rectify the situation. Gilroy, citing Roger Griffin, reminds us that fascists "claim to offer dynamic rebirth after periods of national weakness."'5 4 Adorno offers important warnings against such promises. In "Education after Auschwitz," he writes that "in the age of international communication ... nationalism cannot really believe in itself anymore and must exaggerate itself to the extreme in order to persuade itself and others that it is still substantial."" tit another essay, lie describes this persuasion as the display of an aggressive spirit of community as anl end in itself, played up artificially so as not to allow any questioning of its real meaning. ... The more it pretends to be the expression of "we the people," the more certain we may be that it is actually dictated by very particularistic clique interests, intolerant, aggressive and greedy for power. 6 Does NAP promote particularistic clique interests? MENC posits the project as rusic education advocacy (considered sacrosanct among many music educators), but it is a thinly veiled hidden curriculum.57 The NAP website (www.thenationalanthemproject.org) graphically illustrates Adorno's statement concerning clique interests and power. There is a strong military presence in the pictures found on the site, including a hyperlink"8 to purchase the recording Liberty for All, a collection of patriotic songs performed by the U.S. Marine Band. The list of supporting organizations for NAP reiterates the military presence, and includes the American Legion, tIe Military Family Network, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Military Order of the World Wars, the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution,59 and the United States Department of Defense. The "national presenting sponsor" is Jeep®, the trademark of a vehicle originally developed for wartime usage. The list of corporate sponsors of NAP includes The History Channel, Bank of America, Gibson Musical Instruments, ASCAP, and Comn-Selmer, Inc. It would be hard to deny the special interests of these groups who have joined forces to promote the National Anthem Project as a particularistic expression of"we the people." The original NAP website offered potential for a cyber-community of project participants via electronic bulletin board.6" Teachers from around the country

DEBORAH BRADLEY

69

posted experiences performing the "Star Spangled Banner" in schools and at local community events. Within the hundreds of individual posts to the bulletin board, one is hard-pressed to find dissenting voices. One teacher who has posted to the board several times, however, dares to question the warlike lyrics of the "Star Spangled Banner," the appropriateness of this particular song as a national anthem given its history, its appropriateness as music literature for public school children, and even questions MENC's somewhat dogmatic focus on the anthem as a back-door advocacy argument for school music education. Yet this teacher is in the minority, augmenting my concerns about the "with us or against us" attitude expressed within many posts to the forum. Is NAP's cyber-community truly open to diverse opinion? The tone of the vast majority' of posts suggests to me that few of those contributing have thought deeply about the project's implications, and are highly critical of those who dare to ask questions. One poster who questioned why the "Star Spangled Banner's" lyrics about rockets and bombs were considered to be patriotic, received the following dismissive reply: "Uhhh-it's patriotic because it's the National Anthem as approved by Congress and years of history? Is it really that complicated?"'" The vast majority of posts praise both the project and its effect on those students who take part, elevating the "Star Spangled Banner" to the status of sacred song. Christine, one of the minority dissenting voices, writes: Rather than treating a piece of music with what seems like almost religious respect, I think it's more appropriate and also more educational to have children study it, and then to decide for themselves what sentiments they feel should represent their feelings about patriotism rather than having it decided for them. Teaching kids to be patriotic isn't just teaching them to parrot back words they don't understand, it's teaching them to think about issues for themselves.6" While Christine's post gives me some hope, as a minority viewpoint it does not alleviate the anxiety I feel about the performativity of musical moments that reiterate militarism or ultra-nationalism in their expression of "we the people." The following contributor writes about her own significant musical moment singing the "Star Spangled Banner." The author's language is reminiscent of my description of the "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" moment: On Sept. 14 at 9:00 AM, all 665 students, 45 teachers, and all cafeteria staff in our school stood and sang the "Star-Spangled Banner." As I stood in the middle of the gym floor, tears of joy streaming down my face, I too took on a "new" meaning of our National Anthem! What an awesome experience. Thank you, MENC, for inspiring this project!!63

70

PHILOSOPHYOF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW 17:1

CONCLUSION Although I resist labeling the "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" moment as fascistic-after all, it is a favorite memory from my years as conductor of tile Mississauga Festival Youth Choir-I have come to acknowledge that such moments hold potential to till the ground for fascism. The imagined communitye formed within such moments creates a 1powerfuilly seductive sense of oneness that can easily be manipulated with disastrous consequences. The line separating a critical pedagogy based upon anti-racism principles and practices from the fascistic imposition of anti-racism as ideology can easily be crossed. A similarly fine line exists between a healthy patriotism for one's country and ultra-nationalism. How one chooses to engage with patriotic music in the classroom can have profound effects, as Adorno's essays on music education in the Third Reich indicate. In "Education after Auschwitz," Adorno calls for education to foster critical thinking by "transforming itself into sociology, that is, it must teach about the societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms." 65 This argument provides a counter-point to potential accusations of fascism in my own anti-racism project. Anti-racism as critical pedagogy aims to engage students in reflection, encouraging and enabling them to identify and interrogate power structures. But as Bowman argues, when we fail to question "a system's premises and basic categorical assumptions, the parties in potentially ethical situations unwittingly preempt the transformative power of genuinely ethical inquiry."66 It is easy for "engaging in critical thinking" to collapse into an imposition of ideology when the teacher is passionate about the ideology in question, and particularly when the mediuilI within which one works is as potent as musicking.67 Assuring myself that anti-racismn is "good ideology" does not resolve the dilemma: it can lapse into fascistic imposition in the classroom, even if the ideology can be justified as "serving the comniion good." The Nazis, too, held that their actions were for the good of the German people, justifying their use of music in the classroom to reinforce Nazi ideology under the guise of building patriotic citizens through public education. Adorno suggests that in situations where the collective becomes more iriportant than the individual, the attitude of adjusting to the deniands of organizations and the promotion of ideals open the space for fascism.68 The imagined community created through musical experience at times generates seductive feelings of unity that are easily manipulated. Thwarting the seduction demands an ongoing reflexivity, requiring us to interrogate significant musical experiences such as the "Haleluya! Pelo Tsa Rona" moment, and the potentially significant moments fostered within MENC's National Anthem Project.

DEBORAH BRADLEY

71

NOTES 'I use "community" in this paper to describe a feeling of solidarity that may derive from a shared sense of common attitudes, interests, or goals. 2 Anti-racism is defined here as an action-oriented, educational, and political strategy for institutional and systemic change that addresses the issues of racism and the interlocking systems of social oppression (sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism). George J. Sefa Dei, Power, Knowledge and Anti-racism Education, ed. George Sefa Dei and Agnes Calliste (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2000). 3 While "fascism" is sometimes defined as the totalitarian principles and organization of the extreme right-wing nationalist movements from 1922-1945, in this paper the term follows the general usage of "any system of extreme rightwing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice." "Fascism n." The Oxford American Dictionaryof Current English (Oxford University Press, 1999). Oxford Reference Online (Oxford University Press, University of Toronto) Libraries. 12 November 2007, http://www.oxfordreference.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/ views/ENTRY.html?subview= Main&entry=t2 .e 11020. 4 Rebecca Aanerud, "Thinking Again: This Bridge Called my Back and the Challenge to Whiteness," in This Bridge We Call Home, ed. Gloria E. Anzaldua and Analouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2002), 76. 5The project began in 2005 and was initially scheduled to end on June 14, 2007, but has since been extended through June 14, 2008. 6 Wayne Bowman, "Educating Musically," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, ed. Richard Colwell and Carol Richardson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 74. 7 Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, "Beyond 'Identity,"' Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (2000). 8Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 9 Deborah Bradley, "Global Song, Global Citizens? Multicultural Choral Music Education and the Community Youth Choir: Constituting the Multicultural Human Subject," PhD diss. (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 2006). "SUlrich Beck, "The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies," Theory, Culture 6 Society 19, no. 1-2 (2002): 17. "Victor Roudometof, "Transnationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Glocalization," Current Sociology 53, no. 1 (2005): 116. 2 "I bid. 3 " Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London; Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1992), 173. "4Roudometof: 121.

72

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW, 17:1

"5Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 1994 ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), xiii. 16JuLdith BUIler, Gender Trouble, 1999 Rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 1990); Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993). 7 Vikki Bell, ed., Performativity and Belonging (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1999), 1. "8 Brubaker and Cooper: 17. 19Bell, ed., 10. 20 Beck; Robertson. 21 " Deborah P. Britzman, Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 85-86, italics in original. 22 " Patricia J. Williams, Seeing a Color-blindFuture:The Paradoxof Race (New York: The Noonday Press, 1997). 23 Paul Gilroy, Against Race (Cambridge, MA: Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2000; reprint, 2001, 4th printing). 24 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989; reprint, 1994), 192. 25 Tiniothy Brennan, At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now (Cainbridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 27. 26 "Gilroy. The subdivision of humankind into categories based upon skin color, culture lines, ethnic characteristics, and so on as an enactment of power. 7 1 Barend Kiefle, "Gilles DeleUze: The Ethic of Difference and the Becoming-absent of Community," in Who is This "We"? Absence of Community, ed. Eleanor M. Godway and Geraldine Fiinn (Montreal and New York: Black Rose books, 1994), 178. '8Charles Keil and Steven Feld, Music Grooves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 98. 29 Ibid., 170. 30 Bradley, personal journal, August 12, 2003. 31 Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 102. 12Deborah Wong, "The Asian American Body in Performance," in Music and the Racial Imagination, ed. Ronald Radano and Philip Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). "33Britzman, 102. 34 Alexandra Kertz-Welzel's remarks included interpretations of two Adorno essays not available in English: "Kritik des Musikanten" and "Zur Musikp5dagogik" from T. W. Adorno, Dissonanzen. Einleitung in die musiksoziologie, Gesa-

DEBORAH BRADLEY

73

mmelte schriften (Frankfurt: Frankfurt am Main Suhrkamp, 1973). Presented to the MayDay Group Colloquium: Kertz-Welzel, "Music Education, Fascism, and the 'Musikant': Adorno on Making Music," in MayDay Colloquium 2005: Discourses and Practices of Hegemony, Power, and Exclusion in Music Education (University of British Columbia, Vancouver: MayDay Group, 2005). 1extend my sincere thanks both to Alexandra Kertz-Welzel and Charles James of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for their assistance in translating passages relevant to this paper. "3'Kertz-Welzel, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Adorno on Music Education," Research Studies in Music Education 25 (2005). "36The policies and practices defining and delimiting what constitutes multiculturalism enacted by governing bodies, school boards, etc. The term official multiculturalism is often used in contrast with "popular" or "grassroots" lnulticulturalism as a reality of life in diverse societies Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism, and Gender (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, Inc., 2000), Barnor Hesse, ed., Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas,Entanglements,'Transruptions' (London: Zed Books, 2000), Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politicsand National Identity in Canada,AnthropologicalHorizons (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). "37Butler, Gender Trouble, 20. "35Kertz-Welzel, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Adorno on Music Education," 2. 39 1bid, 9. 4 °Bowman, PhilosophicalPerspectiveson Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 308. 4 Ibid., 313. 4 'Bowman, "Sound, Sociality, and Music: Part One," The Quarterly Journalof Music Teaching and Learning 5, no. 3 (1994). 43 Gilroy, Against Race; Rorty; Williams. 'Keil and Feld, 98. "45MENC, "The National Anthem Project: Restoring Arnerica's Voice . . . Through Music Education" (2006). 46 The website was substantially revised in April 2008, and this initial rationale no longer appears. "47Adorno, "National Socialism and the Arts," in Essays on Music, ed. Richard D. Leppert (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1936; 2002), 383. 4 1http://www.nationalanthemproject.org/. 49 The version of the Star Spangled Banner that is published on the National Anthem Project website is in English only. No references are given to the Spanish version that has recently become a topic of some controversy. For discussion

74

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW 17:1

of the controversy, see Jim Rutenberg, "Bush enters anthem fight on language," New York Times, April 29 2006. "'0The NAP bulletin board does contain discussion among participants about singing the SSB in Spanish. 5 "Gilroy,, Against Race, 102. 52 " Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). "Gilroy, Against Race, 124. 54 Ibid., 146. "Adorno, "Education after Auschwitz," in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). "16Adorno, "National Socialism and the Arts," 382. "Michael W. Apple, Education and Power, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1995).

"lShttp://www.ivieenc.org/publication/books/rniscAliberty.1html "5it is worth noting that the Daughters of the American Revolution are not

represented on the website. 6 "°Accessed at hltpt):H/www.natioinialanthemproject.org/nap_formi .htmnl#nb). 61 Accessed at http://www.nationalantherniproject.org/messages/1028. html. 62 Accessed at hlttp://www.nationalanthenlproject.org/messages/1032.html. 63 Accessed at ititlp://www.thenationalanthemproject.org//niessages/582.lhtml. 64 Benedict R,. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 6 'Adorno, "Education after Auschwitz," 203. 66Bowman, "Educating Musically," 68. 67 " Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performingand Listening, Music/Culture (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998). 65 " Kertz-Welzel, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Adorno on Music Education," 7.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Oh, that magic feeling! Multicultural human subjectivity, community and fascism’s footprints SOURCE: Philos Music Educ Rev 17 no1 Spr 2009 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.