Understanding the Intrinsic Role of Culture: The Most Important Element in Creative Music Education

Performing music is essentially a creative act, but music exists only within the culture which nurtured its development over time and its various social and political uses in society, as a recent multicultural event in Japan illustrates. Creativity in music can only be recognized within the cultural context in which the music exists. How a culture uses some particular sounds and not others can identify creativity. Creativity in music is initially subsumed within cultural boundaries and traditions which, if understood properly, can become a platform for understanding other cultures. For example, the evolution of western music since the 16th century has followed mathematical, scientific, philosophical, social and political developments, changing considerably over time, to produce extremely powerful emotional musical analogues to cultural intelligence and sensibility. Using western culture as an example illustrating the importance of cultural context for all music, creativity in music is identified and explained. Finally, creativity in popular music is shown to be in part a reflection of developments in 20th century western art music. The role of popular music in education is discussed in the context of some contemporary developments in educational theory.