All Music Is Folk Music:
A Student Centered Teaching Philosophy

“All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.”

Louis Armstrong

“Country music is three chords and the truth.”

~ Harlan Howard

“The history of a people is found in its songs.”

~ George Jellinek

“There are two kinds of music the good and bad. I play the good kind.”

Louis Armstrong

I position myself as a critical cognitive constructivist who views music and education as emergent human processes taking place inside relational worlds that shape and are shaped by the intersectional contexts of their production. Engaging in these practices in the role of an educator is something that demands an ethics of respect for the other and decentering of unitary perspectives toward a plurality of ways of being both educated and musical. 

The heart of music education is people. There is no music without people, their communities, histories, cultures, and contexts form the music. In this way All music is folk music. It makes us and shapes us as we are making and shaping our musics. That reflexive nature demands that music education be considered as a site of potential empowerment or oppression where educators can validate and invalidate identities and disrupt or perpetuate oppressive practices not just “in music” but in its role as shaper of self and relation to the world. As a powerful practice for both self knowledge and agency inside cultural worlds access to a responsive and ethical music education must be considered a fundamental right for every student regardless of socioeconomic status, race or disability. Music education allows students to “name their world”.

The goal of music education should be to empower students in understanding, responding, and creating in music from Migos to Tallis and from Gamelan to Bachata and to promote a  development of skills and literacy across the wide spectrum of musical expression. I consider myself to be interested in a praxis of music education that is dedicated to achieving these goals of empowerment to allow students to not only learn the theory and techniques of one approach to music making but also to apply their learning to right action.  Developing a personal canon of musical works and ethical approaches to musics of others as a negotiation of self with the multifaceted and overlapping cultures of any lived experience.