Music in African American Schools and Communities in Postemancipation Albemarle County, Virginia, 1865–1915

• In Event: The Curriculum as Contested Space

Abstract

Influenced by recent trends in historiography and questioning the metanarrative embodied in historical music education research (Cox, 2002; McCarthy, 2013), music scholars began to study the past from multiple perspectives, initially through a lens of feminism and postcolonialism. Historians have yet to re-story American music education to include African American narratives. The purpose of this larger project is to map out a landscape for documenting the role of music and forms of music transmission in the everyday lives of African Americans. In this paper, we report findings and research directions resulting from a case study based on the history of music education in its broadest context in Albemarle County in Virginia, during the first fifty years of emancipation.

Authors

• Marie F. McCarthy, University of Michigan

• Adria R. Hoffman, University of Virginia