Discursive Patterns of White Privilege: Rhythm, Race, and the Invention of Percussion in Higher Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Issues in Music Education (Table 6)

Abstract

This discourse analysis employs Foucault’s method of problematization to interrogate contemporary normative conceptualizations of percussion education in higher education and what I term the Modern Musical Percussionist (MMP), as objects/subjects existing outside the production of power/knowledge in which notions of evolution, rhythm, white privilege, and systemic racism circulate to structure institutional forms of cultural and musical exclusion. Through an examination of historical documents, the analysis highlights the discursive conditions of possibility for the invention of percussion in the mid-19th century, as well as those of the MMP in the mid-20th century. The findings show that notions of raciaL difference circulate throughout the formation of percussion in higher education and in the constructed imaginary of the MMP.

Author

• Robert G. Schoville, University of Wisconsin - Madison