Popular Music

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Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New

Classroom Pedagogy. By Lucy Green. Aldershot and
Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008. 213 pp.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6522-9

Anna Szemere

Popular Music / Volume 30 / Special Issue 02 / May 2011, pp 288 - 290

DOI: 10.1017/S0261143011000110, Published online: 27 May 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261143011000110

How to cite this article:

Anna Szemere (2011). Popular Music, 30, pp 288-290 doi:10.1017/S0261143011000110

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288 Reviews

law and beyond. For the first time in language and hip hop studies, Cyprus, Egypt,
and Roma rap in Hungary are featured in an academic setting. For those apprehen-
sive about whether the book will require an expertise in hip hop lingo, a glossary of
hip hop terms and quick reference of frequently used terms is provided in the
volume. This is a very dense book but it is rich with analysis and insight.
Terkourafi’s ability to find scholars with such diverse research skills yet allied
research goals makes this book a joy to read. I suspect that this book may be too phi-
losophically complex for most undergraduates or laypeople, but it is a necessity for
graduates interested in a fascinating conversation about linguistics and hip hop.

Aaron R.S. Lorenz

Ramap College, USA
alorenz@ramapo.edu

Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy. By Lucy
Green. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008. 213 pp.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6522-9
doi:10.1017/S0261143011000110

Lucy Green is the author of a series of widely respected studies on how and why the
ideology, organisation and workings of contemporary music education continue to
fail the overwhelming majority of young people. Drawing on what was called in
the UK the new sociology of education, Green has theorised musical meaning,
knowledge/power, and experience. Moreover she has been in the forefront of seeking
pedagogical alternatives to restrictive and still rather elitist practices prevalent in
Britain and in much of the industrialised world. This book offers a disarmingly
simple yet compelling, well theorised proposal of a music educational alternative
grounded in the findings of a large-scale, multi-stage research project. In essence,
the project aimed to replicate informal music learning as practised by popular musi-
cians in a formal classroom setting.
In her introduction, Green reviews the developments of the past 40 years in
Western (and Westernised) musical education. In response to the critique of edu-
cational sociologists, musical curricula have become spiced up with a variety of styles
and genres which students encounter in their leisure time. The influx of popular
music as well as the introduction of improvisation, composition and other forms
of creative, child-centred practices undoubtedly lessened the tension between a clas-
sical music-centred educational regime and students’ taste and investment in popular
music. But, as Green points out, the gap has not disappeared. Many pop and rock
performers complain that formal music education did not further their musical skills
or stimulate their interests. More disturbingly, underprivileged and minority stu-
dents perform persistently poorly and are left untouched or alienated by the current
pedagogic approaches, despite the diversified music content.
In interpreting this sorry state of affairs, Green introduces the twin concepts of
inter-sonic and delineated meaning. The former is derived from the inherent sonic
properties of a musical idiom; the latter is the product of sociocultural contexts
and associations. For instance, classical music’s inter-sonic meaning is inaccessible
to most students due to their lack of exposure to it outside school, whereas its deli-
neated meaning is associated negatively, as it is, with old people and plain boredom.
 Reviews 289

Pop and rock music may be more inter-sonically meaningful to them but the manner
of its presentation and treatment in the classroom renders its delineated meaning less
than positive due to the canonisation within popular music. In other words, for
today’s 13-year-old, a Pink Floyd song may be only marginally more relevant than
a Mozart sonata. In a previous book, Green studied the ways popular musicians
learn to sing and play instruments outside formal education. In Music, Informal
Learning and the School she explores how positive inter-sonic and delineated meanings
can promote the acquisition of practical musical skills and what she terms ‘critical
musicality’ once that same informal method of learning is reproduced in the
classroom.
Twenty-one secondary schools, 32 music teachers and over 1,500 students par-
ticipated in the seven-stage project conducted in London and nearby Hertfordshire
over a period of four years. The methods included both the collection of quantitative
data based on surveys and qualitative data gleaned from observation by teachers,
transcripts of recorded learning sessions and interviews with students and teachers.
Green asked the teacher participants to turn from instructors into observers, facilita-
tors and, eventually, assessors of their students’ learning process. Students, arranged
in small friendship-based groups, were virtually left alone with a musical recording
(a commercial CD) and the task to ‘aurally copy’ the music they heard with the help
of an array of instruments at their disposal, which they were free to choose from but
in which, typically, they had had no previous training. They started with music of
their own choice, ensuring familiarity with the inter-sonic meaning, and ended up,
in the last stages of the project, with classical music pieces, some of which may
have been known to them as soundtracks for television commercials. In between,
they had a chance to compose, rehearse and perform music and, on another occasion,
watch invited amateur musicians model this activity. (Although a minor point, it
wasn’t clear why the session with the amateur musicians followed rather than pre-
ceded the session where students were asked to create original music.)
One particularly compelling observation concerned the successful and resour-
ceful ways students coped with a largely unstructured learning environment
where initial chaos and idling gave way to effective collaborative work. No less
remarkable was the way this environment proved stimulating for the creative and
enthusiastic participation of students known by their teachers as passive, disaffected
or rebellious. Yet the rise of these pupils’ status did not imply the marginalisation of
the ‘good students’, those who fared well in a conventional pedagogical setting. On
the contrary, Green reports, this latter group of kids, many of whom were learning to
play instruments outside school, stopped feeling shy and unappreciated about it and
were able to elicit respect from their mates for their knowledge and skills.
Evidently, grandiose, nationally recognised projects like this one pose methodo-
logical challenges that complicate the assessment of the data. Green must be com-
mended for devising a thoughtful and sophisticated plan, checking for several
distorting factors (most importantly, the ‘halo’ effect) which, if left unchecked,
would have eroded the credibility of some findings. In general, her data is ample
and well organised to substantiate her argument. Often, however, the deployment
of these data impairs the flow of her text. Young teens are seldom the most eloquent
speakers, and Green’s abundant use of direct, unedited quotes from them, while jus-
tified in a journal article or a dissertation, does not work well in a book.
To summarise, this is a compelling and inspiring account of an important
research project meriting the attention of everyone who is interested in how teens
290 Reviews

of diverse ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds can be stimulated to approach, enjoy

and appropriate multiple styles of music with a keen and analytic mind.

Anna Szemere
Portland State University, USA
aszemer@pdx.edu

Technomad. Global Raving Countercultures. By Graham St John. London and

Oakville: Equinox, 2009. 312 pp. ISBN 978-1-84553-625-1 (hb), 978-1-84553-626-8 (pb)
doi:10.1017/S0261143011000122

For all those who still think that raves and Electronic Dance Music Culture (EDMC)
can be dismissed as destructive hedonistic practices anchored in what is perceived as
mainstream culture, Graham St John proves the opposite to be true. Focusing exclu-
sively on communities that mix the principles of pleasure with politics, this book
retells post-rave history by introducing us to new forms of resistance. St John
attempts to provide us with both a historical narrative of EDMC and a global cross-
section of raving tribes (Europe, North America and Australia). Although at times
this seems to be a complex undertaking, St John succeeds in showing the truly global
connections, the cross-fertilisation of not only musical influences, but cultural and
political practices.
Chapter 1 sets the tone for the book in that it introduces the main themes which
are referred to throughout: being outlawed, and subsequent modes of resistance. The
spectrum of resistance that is discussed reflects a complex pursuit of freedom: com-
plex in that individuals or groups seek freedom from various forms of perceived
oppression in a variety of ways.
The second chapter deals with the sound system culture in the UK, tracing its
roots back to Jamaican dance hall. St John argues that alternative attitudes and
motivations that existed within the dancehall culture were adopted in UK techno
counterculture. By doing so, St John politicises the techno counterculture right
from the off. This allows him to present the political aspects of this youth culture
as a constituent. The history told with regards to techno culture is that of politics,
resistance and an alternative lifestyle away from commercialism.
The next chapter is dedicated to specific tribes which are the result of the emi-
gration of tribal UK sound systems. As shown in the overwhelming depth of knowl-
edge presented, St John is clearly both an observer and a participant. The reader
might occasionally experience information overload, especially since the linguistic
terminology of tribal sound systems is not only reflected in names and titles but
also in the numerous quotes. However, this chapter presents us with the ethnomusi-
cological evidence that supports the theoretical framework of this book.
Chapter four is the most interesting of all in that it develops a typography of
different vibes, drawing on the theories of Victor Turner, Michel Maffesoli and
Emile Durkheim. Nine different modes of resistance are identified: Dionysian, out-
law, exile, avant, spiritual, reclaiming, safety, reactionary and activist. Distinctions
between the individual modes are made very clear when being described on a purely
theoretical level. Discussing various active tribes across the world, these distinctions
seem to blur and cross over at numerous occasions in later chapters. And yet, St
John’s introduction of ‘vibe tribalism’ enriches any discussion on the nature of