Initiating Music Programs in New Contexts: Toward a Democratic Music Education

As the first decade of the twenty-first century drew to a close, the era appeared deeply contradictory and disappointing in many ways, casting doubt on hopes for a more just world. Yet amid this troubling uncertainty, signs emerged that inclusiveness and solidarity might not be empty words. Daniel Barenboim’s book Everything Is Connected described the power of music as a potent metaphor for life, urging readers to consider music “in the same way as human existence” (2008, p. 133). This period also saw an increase in vibrant communities of practice (Wenger, 2006, 2015), where young people engaged with diverse artistic domains, learning collectively and surviving through artistic engagement despite obstacles.

Any effort to redefine music education, we argue, is inseparable from realizing that it cannot remain neutral in the face of the major challenges educators face today. Justice, inequality, and violence cannot be met with indifference. The search for a democratic music education demands a multilayered reflection in which every voice matters. In this spirit, we connect with recent work that brings music and arts together with conflict transformation and peace building. Bergh and Sloboda (2010) provided an excellent review of the literature on both positive and negative uses of music during conflicts, exploring how music can aid peace and help transform conflict.

As a foundation for our use of “democratic (music) education” in this chapter, we acknowledge John Dewey (1916) and his well-established relationship among education, democracy, and social reform. Henry Giroux remarked that Dewey “reminds us that education can function either to create passive, risk-free citizens or to create a politicized citizenry educated to fight for various forms of public life informed by a concern for justice, happiness, and equality” (1989, p. 184). Wayne Bowman echoed this, stating that “we are unlikely to make meaningful progress until and unless we recognize that the relationship between musical issues and social ones is not peripheral or contingent but constitutive” (2007, p. 110).

Within that framework, this chapter aims to contribute to that layered reflection. We first examine the principles of advocacy, providing a rationale from multiple authors before adding our critical perspective. The next part lays out a framework for a sustainable music education program from a democratic standpoint. We then address initial and ongoing music teacher education, proposing a professional profile fit for work in both formal and nonformal musical contexts while maintaining an ongoing critical, reflexive attitude. Finally, we present research findings on social music education projects underway in Brazil and one project for social inclusion through music currently active in Portugal.

Reframing Advocacy

In 2004 the International Society for Music Education established its first official Advocacy Standing Committee; the following year, the organization devoted an entire issue of its journal to advocacy for music education. Prominent authors offered a broad account structured around the why, how, where, and what of advocacy. We focus here on the why-music essays, emphasizing that the core of the matter depends on the discourse we, as musicians and educators, construct about why music cannot be removed from any educational program. We begin by summarizing the arguments that came forward, grouping them into three domains plus the approaches of two authors considered separately.

First, advocacy appears as a form of lobbying, a professional activity for those best positioned to persuade politicians that music education is essential “for our students, our communities, our nations, and to civilization” (Mark, 2005, p. 95). This tendency to link advocacy with political action will be addressed later through Wayne Bowman’s crucial perspective.

A second set of arguments draws on the cognitive neurosciences and related fields. Some researchers highlight how music connects activated brain regions and stimulates brain structure growth, and that musical practice improves fine motor coordination and phonology (Gruhn, 2005). Isabelle Peretz (2005) uses developmental psychology and neuropsychology to argue for music’s uniqueness, suggesting its abilities operate independently of other cognitive and affective systems. Donald Hodges (2005) continues this line, asking for a definition of education and reviewing modern understandings of intelligence, including Howard Gardner’s notion of musical intelligence. Hodges claims music constitutes an in-built knowledge system that helps people understand their inner and outer worlds, though full development requires the input of learning (2005, pp. 111–115).

Graham Welch builds on Hodges's argument by looking at singing development and the formation of individual musical identities, consistently stressing education’s functions of “fostering” and “hindering.” He argues that it is essential to offer proper opportunities to celebrate human musicality, summarizing his plea with the phrase “we are musical.” From an ethnomusicological perspective, Bruno Nettl (2005) asserts that music provides something humans cannot get from nature or culture alone. While agreeing on the premise that “we cannot live without music,” Robert Walker (2005, pp. 135–138) takes a different direction by contending that music is basically listened to rather than performed; therefore young people need educating as conscious listeners rather than performers, since “most children will never develop very far as performers.”

Finally, we consider the contributions of Wayne Bowman (2005) and Bennett Reimer (2005). Despite disagreeing on some points, both argue that educational failings must be corrected before advocacy can succeed, yet each provides a distinct viewpoint that deserves close attention.

Bowman’s analysis starts by examining the essence of advocacy—its limits and possible hazards. Like Mark, he sees advocacy as political activity, a form of lobbying that can easily become a conservative defense of the status quo. He writes:

[I]ndeed music’s power itself, always depends upon (a) how, (b) by whom, (c) for whom, and (d) under what circumstances we engage in the process of (e) musicking and (f) teaching. All our ambitious claims for music depend upon extenuating circumstances and contextual variables, circumstances and variables our bold claims must acknowledge because they are things over which we often have relatively little control. (2005, p. 126)

Bowman further explains that music’s values are always socio-politically contextualized and can always be refuted; they are grounded in human action and cultural setting. He then places musical experience firmly “in the nexus of mind and body, of individual and social, of action and understanding” (2005, p. 127). He ultimately concludes that “the best source of valid, reliable, and responsible advocacy arguments is the qualified professional whose charge it is to deliver ‘the goods’” (p. 128).

Bennett Reimer acknowledges the importance of the various arguments music educators have made yet warns of a pervasive, unexamined belief that what music educators do “(1) does in fact develop musical intelligences; (2) does in fact serve the needs of the great majority of students . . . and (3) does in fact help students gain the deepest satisfactions music can offer” (2005, p. 140). He counsels against proselytism in favor of critical self-examination of educational practices. If educators successfully “deliver the goods,” in Bowman’s phrase, the apparent need for advocacy might well vanish.

We now present our own concept of reframed advocacy, linking it to the ideas above while adding another dimension.

We fully support arguments that speak for a well-rounded education where music holds its deserved place. Those arguments help define music’s intrinsic value and justify its mandatory place in school curricula. Yet as Bowman notes, the true crisis may belong not to music itself but specifically to music education. What might need to be highlighted is the connection between music’s power in people’s lives and music education as a means of personal empowerment accessible to all.

We do not claim to discover the ultimate argument but wish to make a significant contribution here. To begin, we reject the view that advocacy is merely political and conservative rather than philosophical. For support we turn to the philosopher Simon Critchley (2007) and his concepts of ethical experience and “true democracy.”

Looking back through all the advocacy arguments, we sense a persistent discomfort. However seminal the proposals for reshaping music education remain, it still seems that conventionally imagined beatific musical experiences exist entirely apart from societal problems. Therefore we adopt Critchley’s starting statement, “philosophy begins in disappointment,” and consider its implications for understanding why music education has not truly established itself at the center of democratic education. Critchley holds that there is no sense of the good—here meaning high-quality music education for all persons—without “an act of approval, affirmation or approbation” (2007, p. 15). Because approval always refers to something, it becomes a demand, a demand that requires approval. This demand-and-approval structure constitutes the ethical experience: “the subject of the demand—the moral self—affirms that demand, assents to finding it good, binds itself to that good and shapes its subjectivity in relation to that good” (p. 17). An ethical experience unmistakably involves an experiencing subject.

Applying this ethics to advocacy means accepting advocacy’s philosophical nature while understanding politics not as a conservative defense, but from a radically different view. Critchley (2007, p. 120) writes, “If ethics without politics is empty, then politics without ethics is blind. The world that we have in sight overwhelms us with the difficult plurality of its demands. My view is that we need ethics in order to see what to do in a political situation.” Reframing advocacy thus means adding the ethical argument and presenting it as a political task that demands from music educators a limitless sense of responsibility. This calls for a more radical politics realized “as praxis in a situation that articulates an interstitial distance from the state, and which allows for the emergence of new political subjectivities” (Critchley, 2007, p. 114). Similarly, Bowman asserts that “as a fundamentally social phenomenon and a powerful means of mediating inclusion and exclusion, music is always an undertaking with profoundly ethical dimensions and implications” (2007, p. 110). For Critchley, true democracy implies cooperative alliances that hold the state and the established order accountable, acting on them “to better it or to attenuate its malicious effects” (2007, p. 117).

We see ourselves as participants in just that kind of cooperative alliance—one that begins and ends with the essence of musical experience as a multifaceted human activity, involving an understanding of how people engage in various communities of musical practice. In this light, advocacy for music education is also a democratic act that contributes to reshaping what democracy itself means.

Constructing Sustainability

Two scenarios set the background for our contribution on building sustainability. The first describes a personal musical experience; the second comes from a prominent conductor discussing his recent music-education project.

We found ourselves in a concert hall in Porto, Portugal, listening to a performance of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise as arranged by German composer Hans Zender for small orchestra and tenor. Attendees included many young people; tickets were cheap and the soundscape varied, featuring harp, guitar, accordion, plenty of percussion, and two wind machines. This was more a “composed interpretation” than a simple orchestration. For eighty-five minutes we experienced intensely physical sounds and psychologically evocative effects: textures shifting, amplified harmonics, and physical movement from musicians.

The magnificent tenor voice of Christophe Prégardien flowed effortlessly cantabile one moment and erupted into dramatic intensity or spoken singing the next, while the creative musical material never lost the Schubert original’s dramatic depth. At the piece’s close, the audience rose to thunderous applause. Meanwhile, conductor John Elliott Gardiner announced his participatory project called “Take a Bow,” performed in June with the London Symphony Orchestra and featuring string students from beginners to advanced levels.

The Schubert event shows how even classical music can remain a lively, ever-relevant art capable of reaching a wide and varied public, including young people. Gardiner’s involvement underscores the so-called ever-growing interest among many major musicians in pedagogical work, as well as their desire to draw more children into music. Both examples illustrate tasks for constructing sustainable music education programs. We first distinguish between internal and external sustainability.

Internal sustainability means setting up educational principles strong enough to guarantee musical consistency into a program consistent with its social and cultural context. External sustainability is about creating a web of connections between schools, teachers, students, families, and stakeholders, emerging from a sense of social responsibility.

Regarding internal sustainability, we turn to Peter Abbs’s (2003) three reciprocal principles of education. The first, that “education is existential in nature,” underscores that meaningful instruction requires active student engagement. Drawing parallels to expressions for making our lives visible, confessing ourselves, becoming “the free and willing agents of our own actions and understanding” (2003, p. 15), the musical implication is plain: acknowledging life distinct across education demands adjusting traditions through continuous theoretical awareness before something missing gets complicated. Applicable to music discipline expression, teachers on entering classroom contexts find instruction explicitly constructing dynamics the school cannot achieve without quality projects understanding youth from growth inside what captures the early values starting any musical assignment shaped literally never far away ensures material staying consistently informed integrated outside materials during participation delivers strong base improving viability. Our sense recalling Maxine Greene possible from different fields but some still tie deep despite outcomes still pointing visible relations facing shared discussions support ideas present action trying remains. Starting movement fitting examples arriving expectation despite eventual consistent artistic comprehension key constructive using general quality settings future opportunity building reflecting stages yet provides independent paths what balances entire views practicing tools solving remain systematic educational advances needing local analysis responsible fully reflect position youth learn trusting communal authentic through continuous dedicated to values originally good provided first phase sustainable nature approach important own consistent program sustainable outside needed match linking frames outside meeting throughout point outcomes achievable resources directions properly increasing clarity implementation open proper model now preparing proper building generation wanting universal general bringing further resources ensures construction required demand needed components broad-based requirement. Looking group successful using remains music itself working visible common to every context within same accountability improve conditions still basis broad possible dialogue integrated content contributing surrounding future priority especially where roles shared increased without uncertainty seeing structure improving global position direct opportunities creating outcomes programs beyond priority deep care cooperative stance teachers authority young own action dedicated focused built direct final accountability completing sustainable core target preparation teacher powerful music context realizing democratic voice includes every group every learning new establishing communities including options approach above improved process careful common good benefiting sustaining

Some express themselves through imagery; others, through body movement; still others through musical sound (p. 57).

Students must be protagonists in their own learning. A music program should maintain open doors to unknown music, provide moments of reflection and revision, and create “gaps which constantly invite, provoke, unsettle and support [their] deep self-involvement” (Abbs, 2003, p. 15).

The second principle — Education is essentially a collaborative activity — elaborates on the idea that we do not exist without the other; hence an individual who is to be educated needs a community. Abbs argues that the existential educational act cannot happen without dialogue, without exploring others’ conceptions in pursuit of shared understanding. In musical terms, this principle suggests that activities such as appreciation, performance, improvisation, and composition must be conceived as collaborative moments where participants make sense together.

The third principle — Education is always a cultural activity that must be continuously deepened and extended — expands the previous existential and collaborative processes. It calls for progressively initiating students into the culture of a particular discipline (Abbs, 2003, p. 17).

According to Abbs, education exists to set up a conversation down the ages and across cultures, across both time and space. Students are thus challenged by other ways of understanding and, at the same time, acquire ever-new material — metaphors, models, ideas, images, narratives, facts — for shaping, reshaping, and testing the never-finished process of their own intellectual and spiritual lives.

For music education, this last principle strongly evokes the need to go beyond confined walls: to move back and forth through musical epochs, styles, and genres. The teacher must forge connections “across time to weave the cultural cloth” (Abbs, 2003, p. 17). Together with the other two principles, it builds a framework in which internal sustainability is constructed and reconstructed through appropriation by students and teachers, thus ensuring the program’s continuity.

Maxine Greene offers exciting ideas for interrogating how to engage a community — in the broad sense of the word — in building what we called the external sustainability of a music education program. A community can be thought of as a network of schools, students, families, and anyone willing to invest in a new program. Immediately we face the problem of reconciling different political and socioeconomic demands. The state often aims at producing “happy” statistics to show that we are developing in the right direction (Guinote, 2007; UNICEF, 2008, 2016), while private stakeholders must understand the crucial role of investing in culture and education. The Executive Summary of OECD (2002) “Financing education: Investments and returns” states:

However, it takes more than great expectations to achieve the benefits that can flow from a greater investment in human capital. It takes a good understanding of the nature and role of human capital and how to design specific measures to enhance its supply. At present, these issues are imperfectly understood and measured in terms of capturing human capital in its various forms, analyzing its relationships with individual and social outcomes, and measuring human capital formation, stock, and returns. (p. 6)

Exploring these contradictions is no easy task; it calls for major effort and imagination — “it may be the recovery of imagination that lessens the social paralysis we see around us and restores the sense that something can be done in the name of what is decent and humane” (Greene, 1995, p. 35).

A community must adopt a number of ideas as its own. This means all parts involved — schools, students, families, and other stakeholders — share what may be considered the common good (Steer & Smith, 2015). In a music program, especially one implemented with populations at risk (such as many Brazilian NGO projects developed with socioeconomically impoverished populations), there must be a fight for enlarged acceptance: taking the program into collective hands, caring for its continuation, and being prepared to defend it from both social and economic threats. While roles will differ, all actors in the network should commit to the program, much in the sense of Greene’s words: “democracy, we realize, means a community that is always in the making” (Greene, 1995, p. 39).

Summarizing this section, we affirm the complementary character of both sides of building sustainability in a music program — internal and external. It is the way a program can sustain itself internally, through its foundational principles, that may engage the whole community in its acceptance and defense.

Initial and Continuing Music Teacher Education

Following from the previous sections, the process of analyzing and reflecting on initial and continuing music teacher education identifies major challenges that music educators should not ignore. The time has come to critically reflect on what it means to teach music to populations across diverse cultures and educational settings.

As we noted at the beginning of this chapter, music education must not be “neutral.” Bowman (2007, p. 119) stresses his great concern to situate issues of social justice within music and thus within music education:

[Music] is cultural and social (and therefore, I believe, political) — always and already. That being the case, whether issues like equity and social justice can or should be addressed or confronted in music education is not really the question. The real questions are (a) Whose interests have been served by excluding and ignoring them, as we have done historically? and (b) What kinds of musics and values and insights and people have been kept out by our territorial tactics?

Such thoughts confront us with the need to acknowledge that the core of teacher education has not been sufficiently reflexive regarding a music education in which pluralism and diversity may be “a direct function of the diversity and pluralism of our membership, our musical practices, and their attendant curricula” (Bowman, 2007, p. 119). In a similar vein, Bruner (1996) emphasized the role of culture in education. This can be translated into the idea that both teachers and pupils have musical life stories, and that those experiences must be shared in different ways, recognizing a musical universe present in diverse social and cultural contexts.

Sloboda (2001) strongly denounced a supposedly “neutral” approach to music education — what he calls the dominant music educational paradigm of the twentieth century. His argument was that everything had been constructed to serve a significant minority, who are to be taught the understanding and performance of the classical canon. This dominant paradigm, unfortunately, was still being practiced in the early twenty-first century in many countries, including Brazil (Figueiredo, 2004a; Penna, 2002). More recently, Benedict explores the concept of alienation in reference to implementing Orff and Kodály methods in music classrooms, away from the free play and creativity their authors originally intended, alienating “both teacher and student from musicking” (Benedict, 2009, p. 213). She maintains that methods may “become a form of production that serves to reproduce systems of domination as well as a very particular form of cultural capital” (p. 213).

These ideas are central to the work of sociologist Philipp Perrenoud (2008), in which “the reflexive paradigm” appears as the possibility of reconciling scientific and practical reasoning, knowledge of universal processes and knowledge of practical doings, ethics, implications, and efficacy. From this perspective, teacher and student may work as coauthors of music development in class, thus eliminating the idea that students are passive receivers of transmitted knowledge. We suggest that the reflexive teacher assumes he or she does not have answers for all questions, and is accordingly prepared to cope with many unexpected situations, placing herself in the condition of an apprentice. Solutions to proposed problems are thus constructed in a jointly shared process.

Acknowledging that not everything is under control points to an essential paradigmatic revision whenever initial and continuing teacher education for contemporaneity is under debate. Edgar Morin (2000) also identifies the need for a paradigmatic rather than a programmatic reform in education — one primarily concerned with our ability to organize knowledge. Rather than a more-or-less deterministic conception of societal evolution, the teacher could bring into his practice a notion of “knowing about knowing,” while underlining uncertainty and discussing errors and illusions inherent to all pedagogical interactions in the construction of knowledge (Morin, 2000).

The authors briefly revisited here call our attention to ideas paramount for constructing any program in initial and continuing music teacher education. While the literature systematically describes the predominant presence of so-called Western high art music (Boyce-Tillman, 2004; Jorgensen, 2003) in music education graduate courses, it might be better for continuing education to let other perspectives become part of a more encompassing teaching practice. Estelle Jorgensen (2008, p. 33) emphasizes embracing the principle of balance, in the sense that it requires “embracing complexity”:

The principle of balance is especially helpful in a pluralistic worldview because it recognizes the claims of values that may sometimes be contradictory or in tension. [ . . . ] In music, these tensions can be evident in the diversity of musical traditions and the common threads that seem to run through them: musical orality and literacy, instrumental and vocal music, great and little musical traditions, and musical transmission and transformation.

In fact, many music teachers feel uncomfortable with practices they never experienced in their own education: if they have never been involved in improvisation, they feel they will never be able to perform it; similarly, if they never played or sang folk music, it feels as if this is an ability they will never acquire (Boyce-Tillman, 2004; Higgins & Mantie, 2013). Continuing education is thus a precious tool for involving teachers in multiple musical practices and providing continuing development and sharing among a community likely to have similar needs.

Educating Music Teachers Today: Setting the Principles

Several authors have been proposing essential components of contemporary music teacher education capable of bringing about significant changes. Below we present and discuss some of these core aspects.

A philosophical attitude. Throughout the preceding sections we hope we have made clear the importance of philosophy in reflecting on music teaching and learning in today’s diverse contexts. Adopting a critical and reflexive attitude in teaching is highly desirable if we are to permanently revise our practices (Figueiredo, 2004b; Pollard & Tann, 1997; Schön, 2009). Borrowing again from Morin’s idea of philosophy being most significant as a force of interrogation of the great problems of knowledge and the human condition, in connection with Critchley’s concept of “philosophy beginning with disappointment,” we may grasp the essence of a teacher who does not accept “absolute truth” and is permanently available to critically approach what is relevant in the educational context. Education is part of a much larger and complex cultural process, demanding a professional able to engage beyond classroom walls. We believe the metaphor of the teacher as philosopher amplifies the role of the music educator (see Elliott, this volume).

The importance of context. The discussion of context in education has grown significantly in recent decades (Bowman, 2001, 2002; Hargreaves & North, 1997). Contemporary music education recognizes that music fulfills diverse functions. While various institutions direct their programs almost exclusively toward training future music professionals, music as a social practice demands our attention. Small (1998, p. 208) alerts us:

The big challenge to music educators today seems to be not how to produce more skilled professional musicians but how to provide that kind of social context for informal as well as formal musical interaction that leads to real development and to the musicalizing of the society as a whole.

The great challenge lies in recognizing that teacher education in today’s world must be a much larger endeavor — one that provides a wide range of musical skills and also empowers future educators with tools to value musics of different cultures and understand what they represent in people’s lives (see O’Neill, this volume).

The curriculum issue. Our previous subsections — philosophical attitude and importance of context — call attention to the curriculum. Estelle Jorgensen (2002, p. 56) refers to the multiple and often conflicting ways to approach curriculum; we wish to take a stance as well. Drawing from her broad account of curriculum visions and considering this section’s purposes, we embrace a view of Curriculum as Discourse

The notion of discourse draws on postmodern ideas in education and the social sciences about the frames of reference in which individuals and institutions construct realities. These encompass ways of conceptualizing and talking about ideas and the variety of practices that exemplify, flow from, and reinforce them. (Jorgensen, 2002, p. 56)

By doing so, we believe we remain consistent with our previous theoretical affiliations — for example, Maxine Greene and Henry Giroux. This view of curriculum calls for a music teacher critically engaged in developing a coherent, plural, and meaningful music education for the diverse student populations she may encounter in professional life. The connection between thought and action is crucial for this trilogy of coherence, plurality, and meaningfulness. Coherent because it aims at understanding musical experience as part of a sociocultural context that may be explored, known, and recognized through music. Plural in focus, enabling real experience of the multiple forms humans have developed to enact music. Meaningful because it emphasizes musical experiences that promote “self-growth, self-knowledge, musical enjoyment, flow, and the happiness that arises from these” (Elliott, 1995, p. 308).

Finally, this proposal for initial and continuing music teacher education needs a strong ally in research — the fundamental tool for understanding and solving issues arising from everyday practice. Thus, music teachers will be better prepared to make decisions, live with the unpredictable, and stay motivated to find new solutions for emerging problems.

Promoting Social Inclusion Through Engagement with Music

Considering a growing literature that presents evidence of significant gains when children and young people participate in singing and ensemble playing, what follows offers a brief account of two realities. In light of the ideas discussed previously in this chapter, these may illuminate what can be understood as democratic music education.

Music Education in Social Projects in Brazil

In Brazil today, social projects generally involve developing various actions directed primarily at socioeconomically impoverished populations, taking place in different settings. While music education in the school curriculum is poorly developed, social projects have taken on a relevant function, providing many young people with unique opportunities to participate in musical activities.

Many of these projects are developed by NGOs, implicitly assuming a large part of the responsibility for improving life conditions for socially and economically excluded populations. This is a peculiar situation in Brazilian society: while the state lacks a coherent music education policy for all, it supports, and sometimes funds, music education activities undertaken by NGOs for a restricted portion of the population. (Santos, 2005, p. 32)

While relieving itself of the responsibility to provide music education for everyone within the school system, the state offers small funding for musical activities administered by NGOs. For the vast majority of students, what remains is a poor school for poor people. (Santos, 2005, p. 32)

There is no doubt that these musical activities have produced significant gains for the populations involved (Figueiredo, 2008). However, the fact that they are often implemented by NGOs contributes to their discontinuity, mostly due to limited financial resources.

Research on social projects involving music has raised a number of issues, including:

• Promoting citizenship and social inclusion, sense of belonging, and group identity through music as a social practice (Kleber, 2006; Souza, 2002)
• Self-esteem and improved quality of life through the possibility of professional engagement with music (Lima, 2003; Santos, 2005; Souza, 2004)
• Creating new life perspectives through musical experience, especially in projects working with populations severely excluded due to race, drug abuse, and violence (Hikiji, 2006)
• Valuing popular music culture through shared experiences involving teachers, students, and musicians, breaking barriers between high art music and popular music (Braga, 1997, p. 134)

This brief summary of research findings from Brazilian social projects shows that while musical and pedagogical issues constitute the core challenge for music educators, they are all the more complex because different contexts demand differentiated pedagogical approaches. The success or failure of these experiences is inextricably linked to the context in which they occur, forming an integrated continuum: music always takes place in a particular context, and every context has music as one of its social manifestations.

Orquestra Geração

Inspired by the Venezuelan state-funded program known internationally as El Sistema, Portugal launched the Orquestra Geração project in 2007. A partnership between the Amadora municipality and the Lisbon National Conservatory’s School of Music marked its beginning. Like its Venezuelan counterpart, it focuses on social inclusion through musical involvement, especially for children and adolescents facing high educational and social vulnerability. The first Orquestra Geração nucleus started in October 2007, funded by the European Community’s EQUAL program and the Gulbenkian Foundation, integrating 5th, 6th, and 7th graders from a secondary school in Amadora. A second nucleus began in 2008–09 in another disadvantaged area, backed by a shopping-center chain. By 2014–15, the project had expanded across the Lisbon metropolitan region and five northern Portugal locations, reaching over 700 participants. The initiative has been recognized as one of Europe’s 50 best practices.

Participants attend three weekly sessions: general music education, choir, and ensemble work. Specialists teach the classes, including several Venezuelan educators who grew up within El Sistema and now perform in Portuguese orchestras. Music sessions happen at schools during extracurricular time. Public presentations have taken place—the first nucleus performed at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation (July 2008) and at the European Parliament in Brussels (November 2009)—while subsequent orchestras have appeared in Portugal’s most iconic concert venues. These concerts typically draw highly engaged audiences, primarily the children’s families and friends.

This project serves as a model for action and intervention, with its features systematically examined (Boia & Boal-Palheiros, 2016; Veloso, 2015, 2016; Mota et al.) through key concepts that include:

• Recognition: cultural domination by another culture often viewed as alien or hostile to one’s own (Fraser, 1997, 2000)—that is, the disconnect between the classical repertoire central to Orquestra Geração and the participants’ everyday “their” music. The emphasis on classical music raised the need to understand why children’s program adherence remains high when faced with their own musical roots.

• Inherent meanings and delineated meanings: following Lucy Green (2006), negative responses to inherent meanings emerge “when we are unfamiliar with the musical style, to the point that we do not understand what is going on, and thus find the musical syntax ‘boring’”; negative responses to delineations arise “when we feel that the music is not ours.” “Music celebration” takes place “when we are positively inclined both ways” (2006, p. 103).

• Critical pedagogy: music-teaching practices are seen here through the social construction of knowledge as a “product of agreement or consent between individuals who live particular social relations (e.g., of class,

race, gender) and who live in particular junctions in time” (McLaren, 2009, p. 63).

These considerations, which lie at the heart of comprehending both the Brazilian programs and Portugal’s Orquestra Geração, pose a challenge: investigating how projects can secure both internal and external sustainability. This means (1) guaranteeing—based on Peter Abbs’s three reciprocal educational principles—their musical consistency and suitability to the social/cultural context of implementation, and (2) nurturing social responsibility in building a coherent network of schools, teachers, students, families, and stakeholders.

Conclusion

Writing this chapter has let us approach the idea of launching music programs in uncharted contexts from an engaged, democratic music–education viewpoint. We contended this could be done by reframing advocacy—acknowledging it is not merely political pleading for the status quo but a philosophy-driven effort uniting ethical arguments with political responsibility. Onto this foundation we discussed sustainability as a dual, principled process supporting long-term program continuance. We addressed initial and continuing teacher education in light of these ideas, hoping the paired yet separate realities of our two countries create meaningful space for reflection and robust debate.

Reflective Questions

1. How can democratic and engaged music education be defined and strategized?
2. To what extent do convergent and divergent viewpoints shape music education? Can you provide an example illustrating this in socially focused projects and

school-curriculum music teaching?

3. What constraints hinder embedding nonformal music education practices in formal school settings?

Key Sources

• Abbs, P. (2003). Against the flow: Education, the arts and postmodern culture.
• Critchley, S. (2007). Infinitely demanding: Ethics of commitment, politics of resistance. Verso.
• Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Morin, E. (2000). Les Sept Savoirs nécessaires à l’éducation du futur. Paris: Seuil.
• Perrenoud, P. (2008). Développer la pratique réflexive dans le métier d’enseignant. Nanterre: ESF Editeur.

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