Resisting a Mashup/Remix: The Need for Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Israeli-Palestinian Music Education Spaces

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Music Education

Abstract

Mashups and remixes are perceived to foster a hybridity of politically motivated cultural expressions and representations of students’ lifeworlds in intercultural music settings, while also captivating audiences. I argue however that they can also lead to cultural trespass as virtue-signaling and musical product over process, further entrenching colonialism in music education. Utilizing data gathered in a participatory research project with Israeli and Palestinian former staff and students of music education-dialogue programs, we analyzed how mashup/remixes were used to erase and dilute political messages through performing unity and diversity, preserving the status quo rather than music learning potentially fosters equity and inclusion. I draw implications from this analysis for the need of culturally sustaining pedagogies in Israeli-Palestinian music education spaces.

Author

• Shoshana Gottesman, Teachers College, Columbia University